very cool, mat3k4.
re pickups, I have generally been fine with the stock pickups in my various Teles. For my main Strat I changed to Samarium Cobalt Noiseless a while back and have never wanted anything else. That is my sound now.
― imam and apple pie (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 11 February 2022 02:53 (three years ago)
In general, I'd say with most guitars, Telecasters even more than others, depends on what type of guitar you got. Ashtray bridge? Swamp ash or Alder? Maple neck or rosewood. Is the guitar really light?
Lots of lower end Telecasters also have pickups that have ceramic magnets and not always the best pots and caps for sound. Sometimes if the pickups are not bad, you can really change the sound with that part of the wiring first.
There are boodles of options out there. I think the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound telecaster pickups are pretty good and not crazy expensive. Obviously you can go from there into much more high end custom made things.
The guys I know around here that build guitars for a living tend to favor using Fralin's pickups in Telecasters, but they are hand made and are not cheap.
― earlnash, Friday, 11 February 2022 02:17 (one hour ago) link
It's an '84 MIJ Tele, alder body, rosewood neck, no ashtray. The thing is, I like the twangy sound of a tele bridge pickup, at least when I hear other people play. Maybe I'm not used to hearing it up close. It also sounded better through the tweed-style amp I played it through in the store, and probably in their more deadened and acoustically better space vs my acoustically kind of fucked up basement, admittedly. My amp is a Fender Princeton 68 Custom RI. I recently changed out the speaker for a Creamback, which I thought improved but did not entirely fix my sonic issues. It's a weird amp, it has some great sounds but gets muddy if you turn the bass up much, which might be part of why it's hard to EQ out the harshness without losing the twang that I like.
The neck pickup is fine but it's not that twangy, and a little bit bland imo. I feel like there has to be a sweet spot of twang with some of the edge taken off.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 11 February 2022 03:36 (three years ago)
Sorry correction, it has what I guess is referred to as an "ashtray bridge." It does not have one of those ashtray bridge covers which is what I thought you meant.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 11 February 2022 03:38 (three years ago)
CAD - will keep you posted on the Porter pick-ups, really hoping I like them
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 11 February 2022 03:41 (three years ago)
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, February 10, 2022 10:36 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
the sweet spot is probably called getting lollars or fralins or some other boutique tele pickups
― call all destroyer, Friday, 11 February 2022 03:46 (three years ago)
or porters!
I've never bought/installed a boutique pickup, but I have this weird thing where I hate the name "Seymour Duncan" and love the names "Lollar" and "Frailin," just tasty names for some tasty tele twang.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 11 February 2022 03:58 (three years ago)
Another thing I've thought about is doing a four-way mod and using the middle position. Right now the middle position on my tele kind of sucks.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 11 February 2022 03:59 (three years ago)
using the series position I mean
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 11 February 2022 04:00 (three years ago)
Seymour Duncan is the standard for bass pickups imo.
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 11 February 2022 04:01 (three years ago)
my jaguar has seymour duncan antiquities which fucking rule, so do not count out SD. they're a big boring name in the pickup world but they know what they're doing.
― call all destroyer, Friday, 11 February 2022 04:03 (three years ago)
If you'd like a less expensive "classic Tele" bridge pickup which sounds pretty great, I can recommend the Tonerider Hot Classic. I think it's the same factory that did the highly regarded original Classic Vibe pickups. They're under $50 new, or cheaper used.
― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, 11 February 2022 05:51 (three years ago)
certainly better than the stock 80s MIJs, I adore those guitars but not their pickups.
― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, 11 February 2022 05:52 (three years ago)
Very interested to read about the Godin + Porter pickups results
I tried using Godin for a while in the live setting before switching to an archtop. I play fingerstyle acoustic normally and wanted something that would approximate the feel and sound, while working at any viable volume. Their odd stratocaster hybrid was appealing on paper and in the hands but ultimately the sound just wasn't exciting enough for me to stick with it.
― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, 11 February 2022 12:44 (three years ago)
maybe a daft question, but are there any pick-ups where you can route the top and bottom sets of strings to separate channels and then have a stereo output so you can send bass notes to a different fx chain, so you could have dirty distorted bass with clean sparkly treble etc?
― o shit the sheriff (NickB), Friday, 11 February 2022 12:59 (three years ago)
i guess the workaround is splitting the signal and sending it through high pass and low pass filters
― o shit the sheriff (NickB), Friday, 11 February 2022 13:01 (three years ago)
I haven't tried this, but it looks like the Submarine pickup might be the solution - you could stick it under the low strings and send it to a bass amp, or under the treble strings and put them through high gain.
https://img.audiofanzine.com/img/product/normal/2/6/262828.jpg
https://www.submarinepickup.com/
― imam and apple pie (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 11 February 2022 13:18 (three years ago)
ah, that looks perfect - thank you!
― o shit the sheriff (NickB), Friday, 11 February 2022 13:21 (three years ago)
That’s a fucking cool idea
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 11 February 2022 13:26 (three years ago)
Are the stock 80s MIJ tele pickups just known to not be that great? If so it actually makes me feel better because I was starting to think “maybe I was wrong and I never really wanted a twangy tele after all.”
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 11 February 2022 13:30 (three years ago)
Crud, bad img tag but you get the idea. This work?
http://www.guitarsite.com/files/submarine-pickup.jpeg
It is a fucking cool idea, ngl. I can imagine someone who is deft with a loop pedal could go beyond sounding like two guitars. You could become a guitarchestra.
― imam and apple pie (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 11 February 2022 14:25 (three years ago)
― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, February 11, 2022 6:44 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink
I'm a huge believer in Godins in terms of quality vs. price. I don't think there's much out there that compares. However, they are 1) apparently incapable of making a guitar that doesn't look kinda dorky in some way and 2) their in-house pickups seem to be really dull and lifeless pretty much across the board
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 11 February 2022 14:31 (three years ago)
With you on point 1. I am also unconvinced about the utility of cutesy little EQ sliders on the front of a guitar (which, let's face it, you can't see and are unlikely to manipulate while playing). Especially since at any subsequent point in the chain there will be multiple opportunities to shape the tone.
rant: Which is its own problem! Even modest rigs have so many tone-shaping options that the mind reels. I'm like, hmm, should I mess with the graphic eq here next to my armpit? Or maybe the other knobs labeled "tone" at the bottom of the guitar? Or how about I mess with one of the 10 or 15 knobs labeled "tone" on one of the 6 to 10 pedals in front of me? But then I turn around and look at my amp and, shit, there are two or three or four tone knobs there too. Hmm. Oh fuck, the amp is mic'd and that mic is going into a channel strip with multiple tone knobs, then into a mixer. Are there tone knobs on the mixer? Yeah you betcha. Are we done yet? No, because the recording or performance will be mixed and mastered by people who are turning knobs and moving sliders that relate to tone.
Welp, guess we're done with tone but - no wait! Everyone listening to this music will be doing so on a device that has tone controls.
― imam and apple pie (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 11 February 2022 14:59 (three years ago)
ha yeah it's funny, also why i'm a skeptic on "tonewoods" for electric guitars, though knowledgeable people that know way more about electric guitars than i seem to think it's something
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 11 February 2022 15:07 (three years ago)
though w/my godin, i've been in a couple stores in the last week casually shopping and this neck, fretwork, fit & finish on a guitar that retails for $850 (i got mine for $600) is good or better than plenty of $1500ish guitars i've played recently
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 11 February 2022 15:08 (three years ago)
Clearly the "literally only pickups matter" crowd is wrong and probably basing everything on some oversimplified scientific tidbit they picked up. Wood should make at least *some* difference, although I don't know how much or why. There's some interesting theorizing about it in this thread:
https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/guitar-amps-gizmos/70017-how-does-acoustic-resonance-change-amplified-tone.html#:~:text=Changing%20the%20pickup%20height%20certainly,field%20the%20strings%20are%20in.
But if how the body of a guitar resonated literally made no difference, a les paul would sound exactly like an L5 as long as they had the same pickups and strings.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 11 February 2022 16:08 (three years ago)
The test would really be whether a Les Paul and a L5 are as similar/different/uniquely identifiable from each other as two Les Pauls or two L5s are from each other no?
There are an enormous number of variables - pickup winding, pot values (10-20% variance on average IIRC) strings, string height, pickup height, etc. - where you can’t just throw out two differently-constructed guitars and say they sound different.
If there are audible differences (which I doubt to be honest), they’d be so minute as to be irrelevant when you’ve got a tone control and amp EQ.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Friday, 11 February 2022 16:22 (three years ago)
I definitely think some of the unplugged acoustic sound indirectly makes its way into the final amplified sound. Regardless of whether the pickups are microphonic or not. When you strum an unplugged guitar, you are hearing the string vibrations die away, and they clearly die away differently on different guitars. This implies that different guitars will subtract from the initial attack in different ways. So the pickups are still going to pick some of that up regardless of whether they can detect the acoustic vibrations or not.It might not necessarily be the wood species playing the biggest part, it could be other factors like the guitar's overall construction style. But I am fairly sure that some of the unplugged sound does indirectly go through the pickup.
― mirostones, Friday, 11 February 2022 17:13 (three years ago)
Yeah I feel pretty confident it does too, in some indirect way if not microphonically, and I doubt guitar makers have simply been wrong for decades as proven by experiment guy on youtube or whatever.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 11 February 2022 17:41 (three years ago)
Artisans are a terrible place to turn to - see: audiophile snake oil thread - because whatever they were taught and what they've done has been successful for them so it must be true. Thomas Keller will tell you to rest your steak on the counter for half an hour before cooking, despite the fact that this does nothing and if it did it would be negative. But Thomas Keller has 20 Michelin stars and you don't, so who's the better chef?
Sustain, pick attack, etc. are introducing a lot of outside questions to the idea of tonewood ie 'can you hear a difference in ash and alder or between a rosewood fretboard and a maple fretboard.' The way a guitar is built changes your approach to picking and strumming, some bridges will have more sustain than others.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Friday, 11 February 2022 18:07 (three years ago)
Just thought I'd throw in a tangent here:What's everyone's take on double neck guitars? Are they irrevocably associated with 1970s rock star indulgence in a way that would always lend them a certain comic air?I don't have any immediate plans to buy one, but I have sometimes thought that you could do cool stuff with them. Like, if you had an open tuning on one neck and a standard tuning on another one, the combination would probably be interesting.
― mirostones, Tuesday, 15 February 2022 00:56 (three years ago)
The comic air is the cool part.
bass/six-string double necks are the way to go
http://www.first3songs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/boris-sydney-first3songs-olga-0933.jpg
― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, 15 February 2022 01:05 (three years ago)
Always thought it was cool that those were built for Takeshi by the high-end custom shop at First Act
― assert (matttkkkk), Tuesday, 15 February 2022 01:49 (three years ago)
For all those times when you want the bass to drop out during the guitar solo
― imam and apple pie (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 15 February 2022 10:32 (three years ago)
Juliana Hatfield has a high end First Act too. It sucks that the company collapsed, because they could've put some cool stuff in the mid-range market if they'd ever gotten their shit together.
― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Tuesday, 15 February 2022 13:03 (three years ago)
https://bigtakeover.com/images/21943.jpg
― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Tuesday, 15 February 2022 13:08 (three years ago)
xpost I had thought it would be cool to have a 12/6 string double neck and do a live loop pedal thing, layering 12 string stuff over the base of 6 string loops
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 15 February 2022 14:09 (three years ago)
When I think about double neck guitars my mind immediately hears four seconds of a tv show that aired 27 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n1l-_UiWbs
Followed by remembering how much my cousin and I used to make fun of this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZbSDuS4Pyg
― joygoat, Tuesday, 15 February 2022 19:21 (three years ago)
Batio! He's absurd, but I just recently watched a video of him doing a guitar clinic and he seemed like a super nice guy.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 15 February 2022 19:42 (three years ago)
https://abernethyguitars.com/available-builds/sonic-empress-thc119
I like these that are half Fender offset, 25% prewar acoustic and 25% 1950s department store guitar.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, 15 February 2022 23:37 (three years ago)
ffs why would you choose to do a slotted headstock
― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 16 February 2022 00:46 (three years ago)
It's provocative, it gets the people talking
― papal hotwife (milo z), Wednesday, 16 February 2022 01:21 (three years ago)
Have:Gretch country club 1961Ibanez,dunno but it's blackHondo, it's a Gibson copy I think, but a good one.Want:Nothing really. Maybe a bass.― Mark G, Friday, 28 May 2021 22:44 (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink
Want:Nothing really. Maybe a bass.
― Mark G, Friday, 28 May 2021 22:44 (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink
https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/y161/MarkGrout/IMG-20220221-WA0003.jpeg
I has a BASS!
― Mark G, Tuesday, 22 February 2022 11:03 (three years ago)
*pops Seinfeld sting*
― assert (matttkkkk), Tuesday, 22 February 2022 12:36 (three years ago)
(which were all done on keyboard anyway I guess)
i love it when dudes use ad titles like "vintage 1993 Samick Stratocaster"
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 28 February 2022 23:14 (three years ago)
xpost - SG basses are some of the most badass looking instruments
It's an Epiphone, but yes it does look of.
― Mark G, Tuesday, 1 March 2022 11:28 (three years ago)
Buttload of new Yamaha Revstars just dropped.
https://www.sweetwater.com/yamaha-revstar/series
― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Thursday, 3 March 2022 05:03 (three years ago)
some wild colors
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 3 March 2022 16:02 (three years ago)