Really like the color on that guitar, milo.
― Deicide at Chuck E. Cheese (PBKR), Friday, 21 May 2021 20:10 (three years ago) link
Cool guitar Milo
― Elvis Telecom, Friday, 21 May 2021 20:48 (three years ago) link
Yeah it's cool to see an old one that isn't natural/black/mocha. I looked at a bunch of those when I was looking to buy a guitar from 1974 (when I was born).
― joygoat, Friday, 21 May 2021 21:14 (three years ago) link
I feel like you don't see that style pickguard in white a lot - it's kind of an interesting look with the chrome screws and chrome pickups, something a little bit industrial or DIY about it in a cool way
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 21 May 2021 21:23 (three years ago) link
Just a couple of cool clips I came across recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnQYoRYedF0
And this one I posted somewhere else, but don't want it to get lost in the shuffle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DpIUdFFr3w
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 21 May 2021 21:52 (three years ago) link
so this is the 1985 Fender Japan Tele from upthread - what colour do you think it is?https://i.imgur.com/vYmbFn0.jpg
― assert (MatthewK), Sunday, 23 May 2021 00:41 (three years ago) link
that's right, it's Sonic Blue
https://i.imgur.com/LDdzmRA.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/iccTSDL.jpg
― assert (MatthewK), Sunday, 23 May 2021 00:42 (three years ago) link
That Jerry Donahue is sick
― Mr. Cacciatore (Moodles), Sunday, 23 May 2021 01:46 (three years ago) link
I had a GE Smith Tele, those are some nice guitars. Held value too, sold it for more than I paid to some dude in France.
I think once you know what you like and if you got someone local that you can trust to not shaft you in the deal, parts guitars are the way to go. The modularity of Leo Fender's designs is really the most powerful part of what he did. I'm close to building another one and have been getting the parts together. It is going to be another Gibson/Fender hybrid with a Strat mahogany body and I have a Duncan '78 and a couple of P90s, all Alnico II. Output wise, they should hang together pretty well (fingers crossed).
Hopefully ending up looking like this...
http://www.ysw-tct.com/temp/img/20210522221547_2495138204_2197_1.png
― earlnash, Sunday, 23 May 2021 03:17 (three years ago) link
I'm pretty spoiled, I got a friend that I have known for like 20+ years that has lived working as a luthier/guitar tech and has worked on a bunch of pro's and old vintage gear doing restoration and building stuff. RS Guitarworks is local to me and they have done work for boodles of people and do some amazing work, they are cutting the mahogany strat body for me.
― earlnash, Sunday, 23 May 2021 03:21 (three years ago) link
Me, twenty minutes ago: why the hell would I watch a 20 minute video ge smith?
That was oddly compelling and soothing for some reason; getting sucked into watching it reminded me of when I somehow ended up watching joe walsh talk about setting up a les paul for 20 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7gMwE7phoM
― joygoat, Monday, 24 May 2021 14:19 (three years ago) link
Walsh is an oddly compelling personality. There's a part of me that is inclined to dislike him, but there is a goofy edge to his schtick that is disarming.
― balsamic panic (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 24 May 2021 14:34 (three years ago) link
And one can quibble with the history - Les did not "invent" the LP. As the well-told story goes, he had approached Gibson with his solid-body prototype (on which which they passed). They named it after him for commercial reasons, but one could argue that Gibson was going to jump into solid bodies anyway, with or without Les.
― balsamic panic (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 24 May 2021 14:46 (three years ago) link
Joe Walsh has always struck me as a guy just happy to be there, wherever "there" happens to be at any given moment.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 24 May 2021 14:51 (three years ago) link
don't think I've ever posted this, but kind of a kooky bass I found on Reverb once. Made by McGibney Guitars, this was a prototype unit.
Basically it's sort of a replica of a bass that never existed in the first place. It's short scale and overall it's like a Gretsch Electromatic Double Jet like Malcolm Young plays mixed with a Guild Starfire.
Pickup is a TV Jones, it's got a cut knob like a Gretsch and the switch is has that "mud" setting.
Strung with flatwounds, pretty great for thumpy 60s kinda sounds.
https://i.postimg.cc/BnDdGth5/PXL-20210521-191415166-MP.jpg
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 24 May 2021 15:51 (three years ago) link
that's fun! what are the black things? thumb rests?
― call all destroyer, Monday, 24 May 2021 15:55 (three years ago) link
Dag, I am into that. My band's bass player (ordinarily a standup aficionado) has been getting into some really glossy Italian short-scale instruments, strung with flats, and they are weird and lush and unexpected
― balsamic panic (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 24 May 2021 16:04 (three years ago) link
xpost - yeah - the right one is for old school thumb playing
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 24 May 2021 16:08 (three years ago) link
Deluxe update: damn it sounds good, Wide Range Humbuckers are everything I hoped for, needs a new pickup switch unless I can make intermittent drop outs work for me.
― Joe Bombin (milo z), Monday, 24 May 2021 19:51 (three years ago) link
nice, i've never heard those wide range humbuckers before
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 24 May 2021 20:31 (three years ago) link
goddamn I wish I could justify this
https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/msg/d/minneapolis-gibson-marauder-vintage/7327482434.html
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 27 May 2021 19:41 (three years ago) link
You can buy a pretty nice guitar for $1200, crazy that Norlin Maurauders are going for that much.
― earlnash, Thursday, 27 May 2021 20:09 (three years ago) link
yeah it's kind of annoyinglots of $500-600 guitars going for over a grand now
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 27 May 2021 20:11 (three years ago) link
I just always loved the look of Marauders
lots of $500-600 guitars going for over a grand now
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, May 27, 2021 4:11 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
i've always dug the squier venus and those have shot up to $1200 after sitting in the 600-700 range for years.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 27 May 2021 20:20 (three years ago) link
If it was a 2 humbucker one, you might be onto something but some of them have those weird active pickups too. Those and the tele pickup ones sound pretty dull to me.
The Norlins that are cool as heck to me are RDs. Those are expensive as hades now though.
Back in when I was Scarface level gearwhore I had a weirdo '72 SG custom at one point which had really oddball thin and narrow neck. Sounded ok, but it was weird to play. Long gone now.
I do still have an odd 'sg' '74 SB-450 bass which is pretty Norlin funky with a Fender scale length, made of maple. At some point probably in the late 70s someone put a Badass bridge on it. It's got some neck dive but it sounds grungy as heck. I record it through my 50 watt '68 Bassman head, it sounds pretty much Mel Schacter fart of doom tone wise. Bridge pickup is screwed up, not much signal at all, but when you mix with the neck pickup it kinda thin/cancels it out a bit and it has a great grind sound.
This is that bass through a Tech 21 xxl bass distortion into a Ampeg preamp. Probably my favorite recorded bass tone so far...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA3GPftNgM4
― earlnash, Thursday, 27 May 2021 20:25 (three years ago) link
that is a good heavy tone
xpost - the other thing that annoys the shit out of me is prices on "lawsuit" guitars...like the whole fuckin point of it was hey you can get something approximating a 70s fender or gibson for a lot cheaper and if get a little work done and some upgraded parts it's pretty close
what is the point if they cost a lot?
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 27 May 2021 20:55 (three years ago) link
I made some money on a couple of those Ibanez LP copies, which really were not "copies" as mine were both bolt on necks. They looked cool but they were not all that.
Those ESP/Edwards LP copies are pretty nice, in someways better than say a comparably priced Les Paul Studio etc. Tokai's are a bit more hit and miss, the newer ones are about like any late model Epiphone. Only Orville I ever got to play was a Firebird copy and it was nice one.
Its harder to find people to play music and make it happen than get instruments. I find them fun to look at but I'm kinda out of my whoring around phase. I would much rather be able to play in a band on a regular basis again.
― earlnash, Friday, 28 May 2021 01:27 (three years ago) link
They are all cool, but if you are not making music with them, it's just a stamp collection.
― earlnash, Friday, 28 May 2021 01:28 (three years ago) link
Edwards makes a nice looking ES-335 Dot, but they started climbing too much even before the pandemic. Wish I’d gotten one when they were $800 or even less.
― Joe Bombin (milo z), Friday, 28 May 2021 03:12 (three years ago) link
made a more general thread Guitars... what you've got / what you want
― Spottie, Friday, 28 May 2021 22:10 (three years ago) link
― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Monday, 31 May 2021 15:19 (three years ago) link
hahahaguitar is 90% mental, the other half is physical
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 31 May 2021 15:58 (three years ago) link
Hijacking this thread, as a non-musician, to ask a question about a guitar sound that's always seemed very distinctive and adorable to me.
I associate it most with songs like Pale Blue Eyes and Candy Says from the Velvet Underground's third, but here are a couple of others:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvvcWGs9BtAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2--qEsswbYE
Is that a particular kind of guitar?
― Alba, Tuesday, 1 June 2021 19:38 (three years ago) link
To be clear, it's not the acoustic bit at the start of the Cate Le Bon I'm talking about; it's the liquid-toned electric guitar that comes in at 34 seconds.
― Alba, Tuesday, 1 June 2021 19:40 (three years ago) link
That sound exists as much in the effects and processing than the type of guitar IMO.
It will be _easier_ to get to that tone with a single-coil guitar and a clean amplifier. You'd be a lot of the way there with a Stratocaster in the middle positions, because you'll have the requisite hollowness.
You would want light reverb and maybe something like a touch of vibrato or chorus for the liquidity. Room mics. But overall it's what you _don't_ do to get to that sound. You don't want a lot of low end and you don't want distortion.
I could get something like that with a Strat on the neck pickup / position 2 or 3, using a Fender amp like a Deluxe Reverb. I'm told VU down-tuned but I don't think it's necessary.
― Nostradamusferatu (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 1 June 2021 20:07 (three years ago) link
There are pictures of Lou playing a Gretsch around that time, I’d say it’s that on PBE.
― 29 facepalms, Tuesday, 1 June 2021 20:18 (three years ago) link
A lot of that sound would be the amp, probably a smaller amp (e.g. Princeton) with treble rolled off and mids ("presence") pushed up a bit. Agree that a Strat or Tele neck pickup would give you the right kind of starting point.
― assert (matttkkkk), Wednesday, 2 June 2021 03:21 (three years ago) link
Thanks all. This is all very interesting to me as a guitar no-nothing.
― Alba, Wednesday, 2 June 2021 18:56 (three years ago) link
Err, know-nothing.
It was a shock to me, when I tried out a tube amp after a long time with just shitty solid state practice amps, that the amp is half the instrument. Makes sense in retrospect, but if your amp is crap, literally everything will sound bad through it. But a nice sounding little amp will make music from nearly any guitar.
― assert (matttkkkk), Thursday, 3 June 2021 01:58 (three years ago) link
I recall an interview with Pete Towshend's longtime guitar tech Alan Rogan who said that before any tour/gig, Pete chose which amps he was going to use first and then matched the guitar to the amp.
― Elvis Telecom, Thursday, 3 June 2021 02:26 (three years ago) link
like everyone who started playing in the 90s i learned on a cheap solid state practice amp, and i remember getting some fender solid state that was loud enough for gigs and knowing in my heart that this was not the tone that would make anyone fall in love with playing electric guitar. i'm very attuned to the high frequencies and the highs on a solid state amp are so brittle and spiky and bad. i spent a bunch of my high school job cash on a fender prosonic and i remember plugging into it for the first time, and even strumming it clean and at low volume i was thinking oh yeah this makes a lot more sense.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 3 June 2021 02:38 (three years ago) link
Ugh, I was actually just thinking recently about my early years playing on a solid state amp (lower end fender, not terrible but not great) and how much I disliked the sound of my electric but couldn't understand why. I'm sure the 90s digital multi-fx processor I was using didn't help much either. Glad it seems like nowadays there are many more reasonably priced, well made tube options. Finally playing through a tube amp was such a revelation for me, and even there it wasn't really the right tube amp (Fender hot rod deluxe when I was playing jazz) and it took me even longer to find out how good the tone could really sound with the right amp.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 3 June 2021 15:19 (three years ago) link
mattttt otm -- amp is AT LEAST half the instrument. Would rather play my chepo Johnson Solara through the Fender Princeton I have now than play a $3000 ES-335 through my old solid state amp.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 3 June 2021 15:20 (three years ago) link
Just one of many things that makes me a little jealous of young guitarists today - in the youtube era it's so easy to figure out how to sound the way you want to. When I was playing it was basically the knowledge of your guitar teacher plus maybe a couple of friends who barely knew more than you.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 3 June 2021 15:21 (three years ago) link
yeah we wasted so much money on garbage digital effects back then
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 3 June 2021 15:29 (three years ago) link
I've learned so much just in the last couple years, from youtube videos, about how to get a better sound. I honestly don't even think I realized that amps had "sweet spots" I thought you just turned them louder or softer. I only had a vague idea how to get a good natural amp overdrive sound just from cranking (probably because I spent years with a hot rod deluxe that was too loud to crank and had a separate drive channel), and I had also never really tried the trick of turning the amp higher, guitar lower, and picking softer for tone.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 3 June 2021 15:55 (three years ago) link
also a golden age for affordable, lower-power tube amps. even 10-15 years ago pickings were pretty slim.
― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Thursday, 3 June 2021 18:55 (three years ago) link