Bump. Also, working on an Ovation Celebrity Elite re-fret and installing MOP fret markers, a Dean resonator with a faulty blend pot, and cleaning up a Kustom 60W L2 amp. I’m trying to figure out how bad I want this amp because it is probably one of the nicest sounding grunge/rock amps this side of a Marshall plexi. It still has the original speakers and they are in great shape, which is amazing considering they’re almost 40 years old!
60 watts is a loud-ass amp. Do the ways you might attenuate it still provide that great tone? Or do you gig Big often enough to warrant it?
I was in CA for a bit. Checked out guitar shops in Santa Cruz. Steve’s Trading Post is a great local almost-pawn-shop focused on instruments. Real gigging instruments with horrendous mods, like a Ricky 4001 bass with a hacked-in Gibson pickup. Hey, it worked for Eddie.
Then went to Sylvan. High-end stuff; always fun to run the racks. The best guitar in the shop was a Santa Cruz Guitar Company (SCGC) 00-Skye, or the Eric Skye signature model. Skye is special player - uses a small-bodied flattop to play classic jazz. Check out this version of Miles Davis So What: Eric Skye -So What -Solo Fingerstyle Acoustic Guitar - YouTube. Tasteful above all, but totally badass, right?
Anyway, his guitar sells well. This example had this rich, brick-red Cocobolo back and sides that looked and sounded like Brazilian Rosewood to my ears. Basically like it was hooked up to a PA that had warm-tube reverb mixed into the signal. 3-D depth with no metallic ice-pickyness. Forgive the wine words - it was a great guitar. Really fun to play.
Even with the master vol down around to 2-3 you can crank the drive and Ch.1 vol and keep the tone. My son was wailing away on it between my custom Tele and his LP Studio and the hits just kept coming.
I’m totally jealous as I have a three hour drive to Edmonton to even get to look at stuff like that. I would love to be able to work for Santa Cruz, I love their guitars and their corporate ethos about giving back to the forests.
Totally badass! Harmonic bends,WTF? I didn’t even know you could do that! Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed that.
Yeah; don’t fuck with Eric Skye. I love his work.
Glad to hear about the amp. If your son and you are both grooving on the amp, what am I missing? Yay.
ETA: Forgive my laziness; what’s your custom Tele? I’ve assembled two.
When we were at Sylvan, he was pulling down dreads, something he hasn’t done in the past. I am going to let him play my old Martin D-18. Blow his ever-loving mind. He’s played it before, but you don’t appreciate tools if you don’t know how to use them 
Thread link from build. Pre-Bigsby.
Guitar Nerd Alert! Gratuitous blah blah ahead!
Warmoth 72 Thinline body finished in clear wine red nitro, 1978 MIJ maple neck refretted with tusq black XL nut, Bigsby B7 w/vibramate (makes string changes soo much easier), Grover 406 locking tuners, Lindy Fralin Split Blade blues wind pick ups with a 4 position selector (N,B, N+B serial, N+B Parallel) and a phase reverse switch.
Too funny - mine is a Gibson SG-blood red Tele, set up like a Les Paul Special - two P-90s and a short-scale neck. My boy’s main electric now. Great minds.
BTW, I should have said B5 Bigsby, the one with the Fender logo.
Funny, I’m doing an LP with P-90s as my next build. Great minds indeed!
Well, I finally broke down and bought myself an acoustic. I usually have some shitty banger of a guitar lying around, but the last one I had had horribly high action and the fretboard eventually snapped off the body. I bolted it back on but, as could be expected, the intonation was just way off and the guitar was useless. So it’s been about half a decade since I’ve had a guitar around to strum.
So I did something completely unthinkable: I just read some reviews and bought a guitar online. I’m self-taught on guitar (I’m a keyboardist by training) so I don’t really care that much and I’m not that intimate with my guitars where I have to play and fall in love with one before I buy it. So I ended up going with a cherry sunburst Yamaha FG730S. Just over $300. Holy shit is this thing good. Just love the tone on it, beautiful, bright low end, comfortable neck, nice volume. Now I just have to build up my callouses on my fretting hand.
Great news! Sounds like you got a great guitar for your needs and you are going to be playing it that is pretty much what counts!
The Virgin Mary was tired
Tired of listening to gossip
Gossip, and complaints
But she’s gonna hear mine.
I decided that the wife’s SG Jr., no matter what its positive qualities, It’s baseball bat neck wasn’t meeting my SG needs. I wanted to buy an SG, with P90s, if I could swing it. While I was at work, I spotted a recent-issue SG, with a 60’s profile neck, and P90s, in white, with a case. $500, with free shipping. I eyed it off and on through the night. When I got home, I pulled up the page, and it was still available. I thought about if for a few minutes, and decided to buy it. When I clicked “add to cart”, it had already been sold.
So now, I’m looking for the perfect SG at that price, instead of just “SG”. I didn’t even want white before, but now it’s gotta be a finish that doesn’t show the woodgrain, even if it isn’t white. I’m thinking about calling this guitar Moby Dick, but I’ll probably spend $200 more on a similar guitar that has a gig bag.
First of all: best of luck on your quest and I hope you get what you want. I seem to recall some previous post where you describe yourself as a tall person. I am a good 6’3" and have always felt that an SG felt itty-bitty in my hands.
I have played a few Epi SG’s with P-90’s that were inexpensive but could deliver that raw, P-90 on a thin slice of mahogany goodness.
BWAHAHAHAHHAHA, (snort)…(goes outside and smokes a cigarette partly because it’s like, 10pm last Tuesday, in 1865, in my personal time zone*, and I need to wipe the tears from my eyes… and I’m drunk… and that mistake could only happen on the internet…or maybe in movies).
I apologize, sir. You must have me confused with another poster. You are nearly a foot taller than myself, and I have small hands, with stubby sausages for fingers The wife’s SG Jr. would be the ultimate guitar, other than the fact the goddamn neck is so narrow. I have (too damn many) other guitars, with varying neck profiles. Few satisfy, other than the Goya that I have with the bizarro-world wiring that includes a tone pot that I (and no one on the internet so far) thinks should do anything, but yet it does**. Wiring by modern Nikola Tesla aside , the neck is almost identical in scale and profile to my old roommate’s SG - a thin (yeah, break prone), wide neck, with a fairly flat profile. I think it’s the perfect neck for my combination of stubby/sausage fingers. 
Do you have models that I can search for? I stuck a P90 and a Tiesco pickup in that Goya more than two decades ago. I’m pretty agnostic about the name on the headstock, but I want a set neck with a tune-o matic tail, and I don’t want to have to get the chisels out again.
500 simoleons is my artificial limit on what a sane person would pay for a “player” guitar. Anything more than that is an extravagance, in my opinion. As time goes on, that seems to only become more true. I’m gonna kick myself over that guitar for many moons unless I find it’s twin,
- Seriously, I work 40 hours in 3 days if you measured days strictly in hours; at night. My week started at 10pm CST Monday, and my weekend began at midnight Thursday. I still have fairly normal weekends with the wife. When to sleep and when to not are vague, amorphous concepts to me. At it’s root, my schedule is because I hate meetings; and it’s advantageous to the company. I just had a meandering conversation with my neighbor, who was headed to work, about this. Did I mention that my weekend began 8.5 hours ago, and I’ve been drinking 7 of those? MMMMMMM, scotch scotch scotch.
** It’s a GFB-23, but only in name and chassis. I didn’t come up with this wiring scheme, I just changed the pickups before I understood that previous owner had his roommate do something that few people understand. It’s a weird guitar.
Sorry for the mis-attribution. Yeah, again IMHO, I get why you’d dig an SG. They look great on the right person and sound great in the right hands.
No recollection whatsoever on the Epi’s, sorry. As I recall, some had a matte gray or TV (faded yellow) finish; others were variations of cherries and sunbursts. In my experience, you have to play 20 to find a good one, but they are out there.
Given your neck profile preferences - cool that you know what workes for you - and your price point, I might suggest a 70’s Japanese replica, or an 80’s Ibanez quasi-SG (I am sure they had solid-mahogany models. Well built, often a steal, and a tendency towards slim fast necks. No clue how wide the necks are - may be 1 11/16" which was happening a lot back that. I hate narrow necks.
IMO Yammies have been underrated guitars, both the acoustics and electrics. The idea they are “just” student guitars is dumb. I haven’t played one yet I haven’t liked. I tried a Pacifica in a music store that I vastly preferred to an American Strat that was triple the price.
scabpicker, does it have to be an SG, because I also really like these little guys. Hagstrom F-200 and they are available as setnecks.
Yeah, the more I play it, the more I love this thing. I still apparently have the finger strength for barre chords, and this thing is pretty easy to barre compared with my last guitar, but I can use the callouses especially on my pinky so I don’t cut up my fingers. The last guitar I bought was around the same price in 1997 and didn’t sound and feel even half as good. All the reviews were right, at least for my value of “right.”
No problem whatsoever. It just made me laugh so hard, and no-one who had seen me IRL would describe my hobbit/dwarf self as you did. 
I loves me some lawsuit guitars, but I haven’t found the right one equipped with quasi-P90s in many years of searching. Furthermore, see below.
Well, I’d like to say that it doesn’t have to be an SG (and even without single coils or coil switching, I’m sexually aroused by the Hagstrom name), but this Hamer is sitting in a local store. It is new, with the stickers still on everything. It’s neck is almost the twin of my Goya, and it sounds almost as good. If I test any amp in that store, I use that guitar. I want to buy it now, but I know that it’s just a single pickup (and my wife’s SG Jr. has the same setup), and I know that I really do want an SG with at least a Gibson family name at this point.
Of course if I find the “right” guitar, or I play that Hamer one too many times, or it magically grows another pickup, I might get it. If I can find a LP Special with a Tune-o-matic bridge, two P90’s, and an SG style neck in my price range, I’d lose my SG lust. I’m almost flexible, but in specific ways.
Sounds like you will have to navigate those rocks, scabpicker. I have some desires that come with a specific brand associated with them; others that don’t. Couldn’t tell you why it matters in some cases, but not in others, but it does.
I believe Hamers were built in different locations to target price points, but your basic US made Hamers are criminally-underpriced because they have the wrong headstock. I have played ones that are incredibly well made.
I will toss this out there: my old '57 was a Les Paul Special - two soapbars. Wonderful guitar. I loved the Both Pickups, middle selection. But, but the same token, when I was faking having an LP Jr. and just using the bridge, there was a wide spectrum of tones available.
How’s your woodworking and soldering skills? For less than a grand you could buildexactly what you want.
I had an idea the other day and I can’t believe I’d be the first one to think about it. Anyone ever hear of this:
Some rockers use the Strat three-way as an effect, switching while they play or on a sustained note. Has anyone ever wired it to a floor switch to leave hands free while rocking through the pickups?
My singer had an LP Special that he recently sold without mentioning it to me. I don’t really like the current production, because I can do without the wraparound bridge, but the ones with tune-o-matics are pretty much my favorite guitar.
If I built that, it’d probably play. But it would look like it was worth about a nickel.
Thanks for listening, folks. I’ll either get over it, or buy one. Either way, I’ll live.