The Great Ongoing Guitar Thread

Wow, poor guy. I did have several very good chuckles reading that part about the atavistic spazzed out drummer. Nice.

OK, all that talk about pedals got my GAS going, damn you all. I just dropped by Guitar Center and bought $504 bucks worth of pedals: a Fulltone OCD, Fulltone GT-500, and a ZVEX OCD. I love that 30-day return policy – I can evaluate them at my leisure, and I may keep one or return them all, who knows? I don’t, yet. I’ve spent maybe 5 minutes with each, so I’ve got a ways to go. I had been hoping they’d have a ZVex Super Hard On, ZVex Box of Rock, or a Fulltone Fulldrive, but they were fresh out of Fulldrives and they don’t stock the others at the stores, only online. I’ll post a report after I’ve had a couple of weeks to mess with them.

Re: Guitar Center’s return policy - Is there anything to stop me from buying and returning equipment, expensive guitars, and so forth every month? Could I just walk in and buy a Les Paul Custom Shop and keep returning it and buying it again, forever? Why even own gear?

Whoops, mixed up my pedals. I actually have a Fulltone GT-500, ZVex Distortron, and a Fulltone OCD.

I don’t know about Guitar Centre - I’ve rented many times from Long & McQuade here in Canada, and there are a few drawbacks to it.

  1. They do not rent everything in the store. Usually, the rentals are restricted to used instruments or instruments that the store has written off and dedicated to rentals.

  2. What they do rent is not always in top notch condition. It can be hit and miss - mostly I’ve rented keyboards and they’ve been okay, but not great. I rented an Epiphone Les Paul copy with a neck that clicked, and whose strings would drop about a whole tone down every time you bent to the floor to fiddle with a pedal. I had a Godin Concert classical and an Art of Lutherie 12 string in Victoria that were okay and astonishing, respectively. I then rented a Godin Concert for a memorial service here in Toronto and the nut came off when I restrung it. Granted, I was doing something nasty to it, but still - I was not impressed.

  3. Specialty instruments are harder to rent. Classicals, archtops, vintage instruments tend to be difficult to obtain unless you are ‘somebody’. (Bucky Pizzarelli played a hand-made classical worth at least $5,000 from L & McQ at the Old Mill Inn in Jan. of 2008, but even if he puts a giant pick gouge in it, they could still sell it based on the fact that it was Bucky Pizzarelli put that gouge there…)

  4. For mere mortals, if you scratch it, nick it, dent it, etc., you end up buying it anyway - I was thinking about that very thing as I abused that poor Toronto Godin Concert. Yes, I need another classical, but this one ain’t it. Do I really want to have to buy it? (I restring a second guitar so it can play down a minor third - as a result, there’s actually more tension on the strings and the sixth string was way too thick for that poor nut! That rental ended up costing me more in strings than the rental itself.)

Hi, Ministre! Your points on rentals were well put, and thanks much for them, but I don’t think we’re talking about quite the same thing. At GC you’re buying the instrument and returning it within 30 days, no questions asked, full refund. This is not the same as renting. I imagine there’d be a problem if you got a serious ding in a guitar (or some other instrumental equipment), but the staff seems to just shrug and take the item back into stock. In an earlier guitar-shopping thread, I detailed buying a Schecter $700 guitar, that I later took back when I saw a scar on the body that I didn’t put there. GC just took it back, no hassles. Which leads to my question – is there something that would preclude my buying the same guitar from GC every 30 days? It’s essentially a free guitar if your credit company doesn’t start racking up fees and you don’t mind going to GC once a month.

Umm, oops. My apologies. I can’t help you there - I’ve never bought an instrument that I didn’t intend to own, and I’ve never taken one back except to get something fixed/replaced. (The Fishman pickup in the bridge of my Tele was defective - 2 week turnaround and replacement on warranty. No worries.)

I had a lesson in the invulnerablity of the Telecaster yesterday. As we were setting up for the last show of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at my daughter’s school, one of the kids moved the bench my guitar was resting on. It fell twice - once from top of the bench to the floor, landing on the hinges of the case and then from its side to the top of the case. So the neck got a good whiplash to the treble side and then the whole instrument would have dropped to the lid.

So, I open the case (this is why I schlepp Big Ed around in his hard shell case instead of a gig bag) expecting the neck might be loosened or torqued. Nothing. Nada. Not even out of tune.

Good thing, as the show was a freebie. (as the teacher in charge is handing me a couple of bottles, she’s saying something like ‘I hope you like wine’; as I look at the bottles and say ‘Thank you’, I’m secretly thinking ‘Good Lord, we drank better stuff than this when I was drinking in elementary school’, but I didn’t say it.)

The shows went well - I was on guitar, piano and sound effects (there was a poor old Heintzman upright that has suffered years of abuse. Why is it always the second Bb up from the bottom that doesn’t work? I took the front off, prepared a couple of strings with pennies, played the inside with brushes and shoved the soft pedal bar for thunder crashes. It sounded great, but I think the poor thing’s in for even more abuse now as students try to figure out how I did all that…) and I had a Grade 5 student play piano with me for most of it. I wrote out simplified versions of the melodies in the target keys for her, and she banged them out on the electric while I comped and threw in as much rhythm and bass as I could. Hardest part was catching all the 5/4 and 7/8 bars that got accidentally thrown in.

It’s funny - there are lots of shows where it would make sense to have the Musical Director be the guitarist - Wizard of Oz isn’t one of them. My life would have been much easier if I’d been the pianist. In order of priority, I’d much rather have had piano, a melody instrument like sax or trumpet (to double the kids onstage and herd them up.), drums, bass. A guitar/banjo would be a luxury instrument, like a nice double for the fourth trumpet to have…

Still, it was fun getting to make up underscoring to all kinds of scenes…

My wife is amazing, and I don’t say that often enough. We’re on family vacation starting Thursday, and we’re going to Montréal. My wife is going to take the kids and do something fun with them on Saturday while I get to spend the day at the Montréal Guitar Show.

All I have to do is surrender my credit card, wallet and chequebook the instant I’ve got my ticket.

My GAS is acting up so bad right now, I’m swallowing bean-no like it’s tic-tacs. OOH, bad singer. Bad Singer!! The only reason you’re allowed to go is if you don’t buy anything! AAAUGH! Tie me to the mast! Put wax in my ears, too!! I can withstand anything but temptation!!! AAAAAUGH!!

I’ve been considering putting different pickups in my Epiphone Dot, because the sound of the guitar is kind of boomy and dull. I was just staring at the guitar, and realized: how the heck do I do this? I can see that popping out the pickups and soldering in new ones doesn’t look difficult. But what if I need to change out the pots+caps? There’s no panel you can open up to get at the pots and other wires, unlike every other guitar I’ve owned.

I guess you’d pop off the knobs, loosen and remove the nuts on the pots, and then somehow reach into through the f-holes and fish them out? The f-holes are not very big – I can just touch the volume pot and the pickup selector housing, but I can’t see how you’d work on the controls or how you’d manage to get the pots back into their holes again. It also seems like the likely you’d drop a part into the body and be unable to retrieve it.

Anyone here ever soup up a “Dot”-style guitar? Any advice? Is there supposed to be a panel to open the control cavity, and my cheap-ass guitar lacks that? When they made this guitar, did they just attach the controls to the top before gluing the face onto the body??

Awesome!

Heh, nice Homeric image. GAS is a delightful pain in the ass sometimes.

http://www.seymourduncan.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67942

Aaaappparently it is as tricky as it sounds. But I think the advice in this thread here makes sense. It might make more sense if I had a Dot in front of me, but I think it’s logical enough.

Wow, thanks for the link. Sounds like it’s going to be bitch to do. The main suggestion from that thread is to tie floss or thin wire to the pots and selector switch, then fish it all out through the f-holes. The floss/wire facilitates getting the pots and switch back into the holes when you’re done. The first response also added, “Takes patience and a steady hand, and maybe a little gynaeocolgical training.” Heh.

I have never swapped pickups in a 335 semi-hollow type and don’t think I would try. I have not heard good things, hassle-and-frustration-wise.

Le Ministre, I am very jealous - I have heard great things about the Montreal Guitar Show - very much like the Healdsburg Festival in wine country California…

Hey, WordMan, a couple of questions:

You’d posted some tribulations about wiring your Tele-that-thinks-its-a-Gibson, which I can’t seem to dig up. There was some info along the lines of “if the pickup is X ohms, then you need a X-ohm pot and a X-uf cap”. Is there some online reference that explains this relationship? I’ve googled up various wiring diagrams, but nothing that goes over the basics.

Secondly, that Dot of mine is laminate mahogany, and sounds pretty dull. Do you think it’d sound better with P90 pups, or PAF-style? I want a nice, bright clean tone that could verge into dirt if pushed, though barely. It currently sports “Seymour Designed” humbucker pups, which I’m told aren’t great.

I’ve done it in my Univox 335 copy a couple of times. It is a pain, but doable. My technique was to tie string to the components, then tie the string to a rigid wire. The wire made it easier to thread through the holes.

I’ve never been to the Montreal guitar show, but there are two yearly in the DFW area. My wife plays too, so I plain don’t get to go usually, or we’d be broke. If you do sneak some finances in (100$ could get you something playable at one here, but you’ll want more), walk through once before you even think about buying anything. There’s always so much stuff!

Edit: Squeegee, I can’t make a blanket statement about the P-90, but I have two guitars with one each. In the Goya, it’s in the neck, and it’s clear, but dark. In the SG jr, it’s in the bridge. It’s still not really bright, but it’s clear and sharp. PAFs in my experience sing, and are brighter. (I prefer the P-90)

Bottom line is that you have a guitar that sounds a bit dull - there can be a number of factors that can cause that - something as simple as not having the pickups the right distance from the strings or something not great about the body wood or the neck joint or something.

Assuming that you have checked out most of the variables and are concluding that it is in the electronics - okay, humbuckers, as a rule have a fatter, thicker tone. Getting them to sound brighter when you are used to Telecasters is a tall order, indeed. The potentiometers for 'buckers are generally 500k; single coils are generally 250k. I would assume that your Epi’s stock pots are 500k. You may open up the tone by replacing them, however - all 500k pots are not alike and I have replaced pots and really upgraded the tone to my ears. There is a place call RS Guitarworks (link to site - I am sure I have mentioned them before) which offers at least two different kinds of pots: standard electronics pots which they have checked for functionality (a 500k pot may actually only deliver 400k or more than 600k); or some “super pots” which have better components.

So changing out pots would be a way to go. In terms of matching a capacitor with the pots for your tone control - I just tend to go online and do searches on the Gear Page, Seymour Duncan’s and RS Guitarworks’ message board forums and generall Googling to look this stuff up. I know that in a standard Gibson circuit (which can also be found online pretty easily, there is a standard cap value for the tone pot - .022? .047? - I never remember. And lots of stuff about swapping out one value for another and the how it can affect tone. When I was building my Tele Special, I was blending two different circuit designs and put the wrong value cap in; when I reviewed the circuit after realizing how wasp-y the tone felt, I put in the cap value that was on the other circuit I was referencing and that - along with a couple of other mods to the circuit - did the trick. I am sure I wrote it up in that thread.

Finally, if you swap out pots and caps and still feel like your Dot isn’t bright, then it is worth swapping pickups. Find out the rating on your stock pickups - I would assume they are somewhat low, but they may not be fully PAF style low-output humbuckers. More modern style 'buckers have a higher output that sounds great crunchy but leaves the cleans sounding flat. Duncan, other big makers and all the small boutique pickup winders off PAF-style low-output humbuckers which can really improve the overall tone. I know Seymour’s '59, Antiquity Series and many others get great reviews. I will say this, too - a buddy of mine was bummed about his Made in Mexico Tele because he wasn’t getting the tones he wanted - after I swapped out the pickup in my Tele Special because it wasn’t a match with the mahogany body, I sent the original one to him. He put it in his Tele and says is completely transformed the guitar…which is a way of saying the stock pickups in Fender and Gibson’s lower-priced range are often only okay and an upgrade can do a lot for you.

Best of luck. Oh, ETA: and to **scabpicker’s **point, using strings to keep things organized as you pull pickups and pots in and out of your 335 style is essential…

With regards to ‘pics or it didn’t happen’, here’s a photo of my new Danelectro.
Man, I’m liking this guitar.

This link shows how to do it on a ES335, but the procedure is the same.

As for the pickups, there are a lot of opinions -
Burstbuckers, 57 classic. 57 plus, 59 classic, P90, Texas BBQ, Pearly gates, etc etc etc. Everyone thinks their favorite brand and “flavor” is the only one. They all claim tho capture the sound of the original PAF pups. They don’t. But some are pretty damn good all on their own.

By the way, I swapped in a pair of Seymour Duncans on my LP, but that being a solid body, would tend to naturally be less boomy than yours - a SH1 59 neck and a SH4 JB bridge. They sound pretty good. Also, mine has an access cover in the back so it was a quick and easy job.

Wow, next time I do mine, I am buying some surgical tubing. That’s the best method I’ve ever seen suggested.

I’m not sure that’s a conclusion I can make, but aside from the pickup height (which I’ve messed with) I don’t know that there’s anything else I can change about this guitar other than the electronics.

That’s a fair point. I think I’m going to take back my comment about wanting a ‘bright’ sound. Perhaps ‘rich’ or ‘round’ would be a better characterization of what I want. I already have a bright guitar, the Tele you mention, and its always a thrill to play and watch it cut glass. The Dot OTOH is just kinda thuddy & boomy, with unexpected bottom end and a dull midrange. I’d be really happy with a rich clean tone for jazzy playing and chord work. I don’t need a blues axe, I’ve got a perfect one of those.

Huh, I wouldn’t have expected that. I could see having a poor tone if there’s a mismatched pot or cap, but I wouldn’t expect replacing those with the same value would matter at all. Good to know!

I don’t care to have a crunchy semi-hollow, so I wouldn’t want a high output bucker. I was thinking more along the lines of just good round PAF or clean clear P90. I think; I’m new at knowing what pickups sound like what tone.