| Author | Message | ||
     Lemonchili_x1 |
Hey Court, Remember in June your 6-string acoustic was little out? Did you get it sorted out? When I got home with my guitar and bass one of them (I think it was the PRS SE) had a note that if the action was out it would need a minor truss rod adjustment as the neck settled down, and I was thinking it might be the same thing. The bass I got needed a very slight adjustment and has been fine ever since. You'll be happy to know the PRS SE we found at Mandolin Brothers has been going great - I absolutely love it, and I've found I *really* like the P-90 pickup. I'll be looking for another guitar with P-90's...  Thought you might like to see my latest toy  . Nothing too fancy, but my first all-tube amp...  | ||
| Strato9r |
Hey, Graham, how are you digging that SE-1? I picked one up the day after you posted this message, and it seriously kicks butt. Funny, (Or, spoiled rotten lucky) thing was, the day you posted was my birthday (and Neil Young's) and my wife bought me a Gibson '56 Les Paul Junior reissue, so I'm in P-90 heaven. Amazing how two different slabs of mahogany with a big a$$ed coil of wire screwed onto them can sound so radically different, but they do. Both stellar, just really different. Tomorrow, another soapbar powered beauty enters the fray, this time a weirdo Fender Telecaster that just came in on trade at the shop I do repair work for. It's a factory built guitar, set neck rather than bolt on, and a semi- hollow, double cutaway body with an f-hole. It has a pair of Seymour Duncan soapbars in it, and it sounds amazing, but again, radically different than the Gibson or PRS. Long live 60 cycle hum! | ||
| Lemonchili_x1 |
I am *loving* the "One", one of the best buys I ever made I think. It can be a really sweet sounding guitar... but really it's a stripped down hot-rod, it's like a Boss 302 Mustang with all the interior ripped out and open pipes. It's my "go to" guitar now I found a Guitar Player review which sums up my thoughts quite well: "Simple. Gorgeous. Meaner than a rabid chupacabra who has been up all night drinking bad bourbon and losing at the Vegas blackjack tables. That’s really all you need to know about the One. This is a rock monster. Pure and simple."  Your wife sounds very cool with great taste! Interesting what you say about the difference between the SE and the Jr... How would you describe the difference? There is a bigger difference than I expected between my SE and my Les Paul copy (a nice '70's vintage "Vorg"). cheers, chili | ||
| Strato9r |
My wife is VERY cool, and....yeah! The 56 reissue (Billy Joe Armstrong model; code name "Floyd") is a real MoFo; huge sound from top to bottom, ultra dynamic response, and an enormous range of tones from one pickup, a volume and tone control. It "feels" really vintage, with a neck identical to my buddy's original '58. The SE-1, by comparison, "feels" a lot more slick, typically PRS, but the tone is pure snot; viscious and biting with gobs of midrange, and about as subtle as grain alcohol. Funny thing is, the tone is really a product of the instrument itself; just for kicks, I swapped out the original pickup for several different Seymour Duncan soapbars, and the thing transcends the electronics, and sounds amazingly similar whether the pickup is a Vintage, Custom, or Hot design; the acoustic tone of the instrument is what you get when it's plugged in. I did not get by the shop to pick up the Tele yet, but when I called down there earlier, one of the guys was ripping it up through a JCM 800, and even over the phone it was pure Leslie West. Yum! We should get a BadWeb band happening! | ||
| Lemonchili_x1 |
"...just for kicks, I swapped out the original pickup for several different Seymour Duncan soapbars, and the thing transcends the electronics, and sounds amazingly similar whether the pickup is a Vintage, Custom, or Hot design; the acoustic tone of the instrument is what you get when it's plugged in." Funny you should say that... After getting the SE One I was so impressed with the tone I wanted to get the LP to sound more like it, especially on the bridge pickup which always sounded a bit thin to me. I eventually decided on a set of EMG's (P60 neck and P81 bridge), and when I changed them over... It sounded like a hi-fi, high output version of before! Nice, but still not really anything like the "viscious and biting" grit of the One. I mentioned this to the guy who does my guitar repairs and he said "Well, how do they compare acoustically?"...  <blank> I'd never even thought to compare them unplugged! I checked them out a few days later and they are totally different acoustically despite their similarities, the Vorg LP is brighter with much less bottom end, the One is really full and with that big mid/lower-mid sound. Changing the pickups was a good learning experience From what you've done, I think I'll leave the One exactly as it is! Post pics of the Tele! I'd still like a Tele one day... but I'm now thinking of a mahogany bodied one. I did some digging alittle while ago and found Fender have done a surprising amount of specials or short runs of Tele's with features like mahogany bodies, set necks, 24.75" Gibson scale and Gibson style bridges, even carved tops. I'd really like another SE, and just about anything with P-90's (maybe a Tele?), but I'm really curious about 7's at the moment... these are the latest on my wish list:   I have a thing for EMG's at the moment too! A BadWeb band... I believe we have the technology... | ||
| Strato9r |
Yeah, I really dig Sevens, especially non-trem ones and arch top types; it's really cool to have the option of playing baritone range stuff for comping. I've never owned a seven, but a guy I know has one and it kicks butt. To get that low down seven tone, at one point I had three different guitars tuned down to "B", strung 14-70 (Actually VERY nice to play, as the strings were basically tuned to where they'd normally be. Plus, I didnt have to get used to a different guitar, and that wide neck.). One was a 56 Les Paul Custom, the other a Howard Roberts Fusion, and "Zeke", my ten pound Telecaster. These things were monsters, and our band had the freakiest set list ever; everything from Motorhead to Pat Metheny to the original Star Trek theme. The "B" tuning worked great because you could cover really cool chord voicings on jazzier stuff, then play huge, octave lowered metal stuff that was just scary, especially "Ace of Spades" and Black Sabbath's "Into the Void". Paul Reed Smith NAILED it when he said that an electric guitar is a GUITAR first, and has to sound good acoustically, because that is the sound that will be multiplied a thousand times by the pickups and amp. I've owned a few PRS instruments, and every one of them sounded phenomenal, but with amazing tonal variety from model to model; a hardtail 22 sounds chimey and immediate, where a 24 with a trem is throatier and seems to bloom into feedback easier. But that SE-1, man, that thing IS a gutted Mustang with no business in the car pool lane! BTW, stock soapbar in the One has about 9.3K of DC resistance (about the same as a Duncan Vintage or warm factory P-90) It is VERY nicely made, and I'm actually going to put it back in because has a bit more top end, and works perfectly with the hi-pass filter installed on the factory volume pot. Most PRS guitars have them, and they are really useful because you can turn down the volume to clean up your amp tone, and not lose the top end of the signal. That is another big difference between the Junior and the One; turn the Junior down to "6" and it's creamy and articulate. The One at "6" is bright and chimey, with a really expressive "changggg" to strummed chords. Good acoustic tone and nice pickups are obviously essensial for good sound, but quality pots, and little details like properly spec'd caps and filters can really maximize tonal potential. One of the coolest pickups I've heard lately is the Duncan PhatCat, a P-90 that fits in a standard humbucker mounting ring. I put a Neck/Bridge pair into by buddy's Epiphone 335 Dot, and, wow, they are sweet and very "juicy", matching the acoustic tone of the big red semi-hollow perfectly. Plus, because of the way Duncan builds their pickups, when both pickups are on, there is almost NO hum...... That EMG pickup combo that you have is a great one; the 81 is clear and powerful, and has a nice freqency curve that puts things right where they jump out in the bridge position, and that 60 is really bright, which I LOVE in the neck position. EMGs are cool because the tone control actually sounds nice throughout it's range, and can really sweeten up the 60 in the 5-7 range. Plus, and this is something really useful when you get to the gig: NOT all places have nice, clean, hum free wiring. As a matter of fact, most rooms are full of neon beer signs and dimmer switches and God knows what kind of grounding, if any. As much as I am disturbingly in lust with the sound of single coil pickups, it sucks to have a blast of hum ripping out of your rig in time with the flashing "Come On Inn" sign above the stage. EMGs? A total non issue, either with RF noise or ground issues, as the EMGs do not utilize a ground wire to the strings. I usually bring a guitar with a humbucker to every gig whether I use it or not, just in case. My Tele has a Duncan Hot rails with a push/pull control that goes from series to parallel in the bridge position, and my Les Paul BFG has the stock P-90 in the neck and Burstbucker in the bridge. Ya never know..... There are a LOT of unusual factory versions of Teles and Strats, and because they aren't as "vintage", there are some awesome deals out there on incredible instruments. What I have seen is that because production on these instruments is usually a lot lower than the more traditional models, attention to detail is often above par, sometimes WAY above par. If you come across one, The StratoSonic from a few years back is stellar in every regard. The one that I had (and sold to buy my BMW R100) was a Butterscotch finish, single P-90, mahogany bodied beauty with a bolt on neck, (Gibson scale), the nicest (REALLY) wraparound bridge I've ever seen, and exemplary attention to detail. Still have not brought the Tele home, but it's paid for so it's mine. I'll get the photos up as soon as it gets here, or rather, my Very cool wife, who is able to understand things that DONT have vaccuum tubes in them, will help me get them posted! Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr | ||
| Lemonchili_x1 |
Freaky... I've been messing around in the last week trying an old pointy head Yamaha in B tuning to see how much I'd use it before I buy a 7. It's pretty cool, but maybe I should have tried heavier strings than 12-56  , I'll PM some questions on setup. 14-70's would be pretty over the top!  Sounds like it was a monster band I didn't know about the filter cap on the volume pot. It certainly works really nicely. I really like having just the volume control, it makes me pay more attention to amp settings. You're right about the EMG tone control though, it's got a nice subtle roll-off, very easy to control, I prefer it to most other tone controls. Any thoughts on what PRS's (USA or SE), or other brands for that matter, that have a similar tone/character to the SE One? I'm assuming the mahogany Soapbar models would be similar if not exactly the same, and the mahogany (no maple cap) Singlecut models. I've been working on a new song this week and the EMG 60 is *very* cool. It took me a while to find the tone I was looking for, but a clean-ish amp and a fuzz pedal is my friend... hehehe...  |
