The Great Ongoing Guitar Thread

Cafe Society
3083

Wow, that has a lot of features, and sounds good for what I figure is a digital pedal. I have their Mastotron fuzz, and I like it a lot. However, I think having the depth knob buried under a secondary interface might be a deal breaker. Really, that pedal needs about 3 more knobs and an input for an expression pedal to make all of its features usable. I’m supposing it doesn’t have them in order to use the same case Zvex uses for their other pedals.

Thanks, really cool pedal, but probably not what I’m looking for.

3084

Get an iStomp and use it for your Random Pedal needs? It’s Good Enough till you decide you need something specific.

3085

Hehehe, no. I know I want a tremolo pedal, and I would willfully smash an iPhone, which is necessary for an iStomp. If it wasn’t tied to the iPhone for maintaining it, I’d get one in a second, because it’s neat. It’s a personal thing, software keyboards make me want to kill. It’s my fat thumbs (but the wife is married to her iPhone, hmmm, I might get one yet). Plus, I don’t think that’s a bypass switch.

I’ve always liked the Electro Harmonix effects, but didn’t want to be myopic about it. I came here because this thread has way better signal to noise than any guitar forum I’ve been on. For instance, I wasn’t even aware of the weirder ZVex pedals until squeegee mentioned the one he did, even though I own one of their pedals. Like I said, it looks fantastic, but one feature I demand is missing. I don’t want to have to use two hands to adjust the depth if I was too ambitious when I set it originally. Otherwise, that pedal does things I hadn’t imagined a tremolo doing.

I’m leaning toward the Wiggler. It sounds a lot like the tremolo on my 30W Decca. I’d use it, but it can’t keep up with a drum set. If I smash the tubes by being exuberant, it won’t be the first pedal I’ve broken that way. The only thing that’s keeping me on the fence is the Worm’s nice phaser. I’ll finally make a decision by the beginning of next week.

3086

I posted a thread in GQ that is more of an electronics question than a music question but those of you who are into the electronics of guitars and amps may know the answers.

3087

Just wanted to share a guitar tone that I achieved that I’m particularly proud of:

Lay Your Burden On Me - Hunter Johnson

This is one of the songs off of Hunter Johnson’s new CD that I played guitar on. My guitar comes in with the riff at 0:11 seconds in and I played the solo too. In the studio, we ran my Rez-O-Glass guitar through a mkI Rat pedal and then into an old, low wattage 60’s Supro amp (I think?) with an 8" speaker that we pushed to 11. I was surprised at how gloriously nasty it sounded.

I can now die a happy man knowing that I got a tone like this down to tape at least once. :smiley:

3088

Very cool - really greasy, bluesy-rock tone. Overall a Whites Stripes-ish feel, but less-screechy vocals. Your lead tone is great and really fits your blues-driven solo. Thanks for sharing.

3089

Thanks, man. Hunter’s vocals are really great. The dude kind of oozes soul and honesty when he sings. You should hear him sing some Otis Redding…:eek:

3090

I use my iPod Touch for mine. But this is the one with four knobs, you download the pedal into the pedal device. Then you wander off with the iPod. Only need to plug it in to switch things. There’s another one that mandates you keep the iPod plugged in and use it to manipulate things. Never using that again.

It’s true bypass and stereo in and out.


I really reccomend it for anyone who has an ithingy about, because the pedal programs are like five bucks a pop, and it’s great for just screwing around and finding the rough shape of the pedal you want.

3091

Wow, nice job, 'Shooter! Love the tone.

3092

Status: just rewired my son’s Jagmaster. Well, it’s basically my guitar now since he gave up playing. I redid the pots and cap and put in a GuitarFetish Pro Alnico V Hot Humbucker in the bridge, and a GuitarFetish “Classic II” Alnico 2 PAF in the neck. I was quite curious to see how the GF humbuckers sound, and I have to say they sound really, really good. The “hot” bridge pickup isn’t really all that hot, about medium if that, which is pretty much what I wanted. Really nice clear tone on both, very musical.

This was all done to replace the freaking awful “Duncan Designed” pickups that came with the guitar; I don’t know why Duncan puts their name on those things, it’s not doing them any favors.

Total parts cost with everything was <$90 and this guitar went from uninspiring sounding at best to pretty kickass. I can’t recommend a pickup upgrade in a lower end guitar enough, it’s like brand new awesomeness.

3093

I can’t agree with this more. When it came time to get a bass recently, I really would have liked to get a Squier Jazz Bass. I’m pretty forgiving of pickups, but the “Duncan Designed” ones were equivalent to the ones in the Sears bass I started with. New pickups were going to add another $90-100 to it. That made it more expensive than the Epiphone offerings, so I tried them out. The ones I’ve heard in Squier guitars are no better (but after my experience with the Furrian, maybe it’s the strings).

3094

No, it’s not just you or the strings. I’ve had Duncan Designed in not just the Jagmaster but an Epi Dot Studio. I replaced those with a Duncan SH-1 “'59” in the bridge and a GuitarFetish Mean 90 in the neck. Huge – huge! – improvement; that guitar went from dull & average tone to lively & fun to play. I don’t know squat about bass pickups, but I wouldn’t be surprised if D-D bass pickups also suck.

Kids, if your cheap guitar sucks, try new pickups (and pots and caps). It won’t help your action, your tuning stability, or lots of things. But the potential for better tone is inestimable.

3095

I just wanted to share a few thoughts about my latest project…

I’m finally doing the recording that I’ve been talking about for the last few years. 4 composers, 16 songs will go on the album, plus I have another 9 pieces that I’m recording just to use as demos. It’s all voice and classical guitar, self-accompanied.

After much debate, I settled on performing everything ‘live’ to tape and editing the best performances together, as opposed to recording the guitar part and the voice part separately. Ultimately, I decided that what we’d lose in terms of separation and balance would be more than compensated by the ability for the guitar to accompany the voice, and for the voice to have its freedom of expression. None of these pieces were written to sound metronomic, after all.

The other big decision was to record the guitar naturally in a live acoustic rather than using the pick-up and adding reverb. This one wasn’t that hard, as I hate the sound of that piezo quack on any acoustic instrument.

So we’ve been recording in a church in downtown Toronto - the acoustic is gorgeous with a rich reverb. Outside noise is a bit of a challenge - we’re only a block or so north of Queen Street, which is quite busy. We’ve lost a bit of time to waiting for trucks to pass, distant sirens, etc., but it hasn’t been too bad.

We opted for 4 sessions of 3 hours each, and the sessions are spaced out by a week. I haven’t been spending any time listening back - the recordist has a very good ear for both music and sound issues, and my friend SC is following the score, and offering his advice. My biggest question is always ‘Did we get at least one good take of every bar, or should I do one more?’ Having someone else there to answer that question takes a ton of pressure off me. It’s also good to have someone listening for clams, clangs, buzzes and cushion farts. (The Dynarette cushion that I use to raise the instrument to the optimum angle is prone to squawk if the instrument moves against it - I now have a velvet cover for it so it won’t make as much noise…)

It’s a strange thing, this quest for an artificial perfection beyond what you would expect from a live performance. I’m trying to hold to the idea that the recording should reflect the very best of what you can do (because it doesn’t seem to be able to compensate for what you can’t do, at least not on my budget).

Having a week between pieces is one of the smartest moves I’ve ever made - it gives me just enough time to woodshed one set of pieces at a time without losing the overall groove of the project.

Speaking of which, I need to hit the woodshed again. I just wanted to take a few minutes to tell you what I’d been up to lately…

3096

I’mma just gonna leave this here.

BigShooter, there is nothing more I can say about that recording. It’s everything you want good, solid, lo-fi rock and roll to be.

3097

And damn, now I’m a bit wiser, that would have squeaked under the purchase price of my Epiphone (It was a return). Thanks.

3098

Wow, Le Ministre - that all sounds great. For the type of intimate, nylon-strings + vocal work I’ve heard from you, that set up sounds great, well, minus the traffic sounds :wink: Best of luck and keep us posted - please share clips of whatever you can and count me in for a purchase.

My situation is interesting - I continue to focus on the archtop acoustic I got, the old Gibson L-7c. Really fun to explore jazzier chords.

But check this out - so, I started noodling with Take Five because I dig the riff and I seem to be able to make the 5/4 time work. My son thought that was cool, so he started playing Take Five on one string and then working on some of the chords I had sussed out. Well, that wasn’t enough so he walked over to the little, not-so-great small spinet-type piano we have tucked away that we got from my mother-in-law and started playing it on piano.

My son does not play the piano - at all.

Within a a few minutes or so, he had the parts for each hand worked out - and then cleaned that up a bit of help from a youtube vid - and now, about 4 days in, he sounds like he has known it for a year or two. He also has Moondance by Van Morrison (a riff I used for jazz comping practice). I was trying to get him to work on his left hand as the engine for any groove he sets up, so he adapted AC/DC’s Sin City riff to a groove he could use for that purpose. What’s not to love about that? :wink:

We’re kinda gob-smacked. He’s 15, a very solid guitar player (go figure) - and this piano competence jumped out of his head, full blown like Athena from the head of Zeus.

He is very excited - I have to be careful, since this is his thing and I don’t play piano. He’s working on laying down a groove and using his right hand to either play variations of the main chords, or to arpeggiate and otherwise toss in fills over the groove. He’s focused on muscle memory and figure out the keyboard’s locations and landscape because he’s never thought about them before.

This will be interesting - he could drop it as fast as he picked it up, or this could be a really good thing for him. I will try to get him to listen to Bach a bit, and since he and I play jump blues stuff, some boogie woogie, like Meade Lux Lewis…

3099

Thanks guys!

WordMan - great to hear about your kid. You should be proud :cool:

Le Ministre - sounds awesome. Can’t wait to hear it!

3100

I’m a tinkerer, and I replace pickups in most guitars. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into understanding pickups and their effect on the sound of guitars and basses.

But I’ve never felt the need to replace the Duncan Designed pickups in my Squier Jaguar Bass. Now, I don’t use the Jazz pickup, because a Precision pickup is all anyone needs on a bass. So that’s what I use. It sounds like a P Bass; there is no problem with it at all.

I’ve used guitars that have DD pickups, and not liked them. The J Bass pickup could go and I might get a usable sound from a (humbucking) replacement. But that P Bass pickup sounds good, and I don’t feel any need to replace it.

3101

BigShooter, where can I buy Hunter Johnson’s CD? Google has gone stoopid on me and I don’t see where it’s available. Help?

Ministre, I’d love to hear whatever it is you’re recording when it’s complete. I’ve never heard you play, and it’s probably way different from the type of stuff I attempt, and I’d like to know more. It also sounds like quite a lot of effort you’re putting into the recording, and I hope the rest of your sessions go well. Can I assume that to “woodshed” means basically practicing each piece before recording?

3102

Hey, Shakester, I know less than nothing about bass guitars. What does a J vs P pickup get you? They’re both single coil, right? Does a bass player use the tone and volume controls on a bass similar to how a guitar player would? Do you diddle them when playing, or just find your tone and not touch them again? Does your tone tend toward “diming” the controls and adjusting the amp, or something more interactive? Are two pickups in a bass very useful to some players, or just icing and players tend to pick one setting and stay there?