Guitars... what you've got / what you want

well thanks internet, now I have one of the Squier JM XIIs on back order.

Pics

haha as if there was ever a doubt you were buying one of these xp

sadly inevitable I guess, altho this is only the third new guitar I've ever bought in 35 years of dicking around with them.
xp this jawn (not my photo)
https://i.imgur.com/6oFaCr6.jpeg

i'll be really interested in what you think of it when you get it, in the one demo video i watched the pickups seemed weird, but obviously that's something that can be modified.

What’s the first song you’re going to play on it?

xp they seem to have crazy high resistance, I actually have a more standard JM pickup I plan to drop into it - maybe shift neck to bridge and put the standard one in the neck pos. First song? something off the third Velvets album, "Beginning to See the Light"? maybe "One Day" by The Church, I have about 8 weeks to learn the riff again.

wait no ... "ELECTRIC LASH"! I've never even played an electric 12.

Speaking of electric 12 strings, can anybody id this one? I bought it from a pawn shop in high school, then a few years later I had to give it to my friend's husband to repay him for bailing me out of jail lol. It's quite gone now because that guy fell off the face of the earth, but I'm super curious about what I had.

https://i.imgur.com/dJgCf9c.jpg

Looks like an Aria / early Greco / one of the US nameplate brands for 60s Japanese guitars

e. g. here’s an Orpheus
https://tonegems.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/orpheus-12-string-electric-guitar-DSCF1660-horz-768x391.jpg

I figured it would be a crap shoot. Those guitars are very plentiful, but poorly documented. The photo isn't hi res enough for me to read the emblem on the headstock (even in the physical photo).

I thought it was constitutionally established that when you have 12-string you're supposed to play "Turn, Turn, Turn."

I have a soft spot for "You Bowed Down," which is the same riff

Or the “September girls” solo

https://www.txirula.com/fender-vintera-ii-60s-bass-vi-rw-frd.html#

Apparently during the Fender-owned Guild era they made a guitar called a DV-52, which is supposedly like a stripped down version of the D-55. It looks like they go for $1000-1400 on Reverb. I know the Fender era isn't the most loved Guild era, but the guy who mentioned this to me said he really likes his. So if you want a D-55 and don't want to lay out that much cash, seems like a good option.

I recently bought a very shitty and beat-up affinity strat at a carboot for £5. I don't really need another basic strat, let alone a crap one, so could anyone suggest any cool/weird mods could I do to make it into something a bit different? Preferably for cheap, don't think I want to spend more than say £100 on this thing

I would try some Sonic Youth string gauges/tunings (where they have like two Ds, two Gs, two high Es) or straight up ostrich tuning

Yeah that could be fun for a while and something i could keep changing over time. Was just looking at fretless necks, would that be a terrible mistake?

Hmm, just been watching some fretless videos and I'm hearing some sitar-like sounds. Think it would really lend itself to playing up and down single strings and that would actually be pretty cool with some alternative stringing to provide sympathetic drones

Personally if I wanted fretlessness I would just go get an instrument designed to be fretless, like a cello or whatever.

When I interact with a guitar (which is not often), I am okay with it feeling and behaving like a guitar.

How about a pair of low Ds and another of Gs and then break out a slide and do a funky morphine impression

A cello's about two hundred quid! I did find a viola in a dustbin the street but it has been a struggle to get pleasing tones out of it. I'd have been better off taking the dustbin and banging in that instead tbh

I owned this Sandman bass for a while but the scale length was insanely long, way longer than any bass I'd ever played couldn't really get comfortable with it but it looked cool

https://reverb.com/item/7784288-waterstone-mark-sandman-bass-black

it says 34 the same as my jazz but there is no way

What's the deal with B-Benders - do they go out of tune like crazy? Are they hard to maintain?

https://danelectro.com/product/sitar-resonator/

I didn't realize Danelectro brought back the Sitar reissue. Gotta start saving, I almost got a Jerry Jones version locally before the guy realized he could get way more for it via Reverb.

https://reverb.com/item/69062653-nepco-guitars-usa-made-v-style-electric-guitar-2023-galactic-sparkle

Danelectro-y Flying V!

for being such a mutant that works really well! it's so delightful how lightweight Flying Vs and Danelectros are.

cool, love it. good origin story here:

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/nepco-danelectro-v-style-guitar

what I’ve got? too many guitars
what I want? all of the other ones

prices seem to be coming down on used gear, pieces staying up a little longer than normal, etc.

it did feel bubble-like

hey all

need some advice. so it looks like i may be joining a pretty cool local band that my friend plays. going to be playing guitar (their guitarist is moving to another city)

i went to see them with the current guy, i think i can handle it playing-wise.

however, i only have a real small fender champion tube amp (just a volume knob, nothing else)

guy has like a mega pedal board full of cool (and expensive) effects pedals

so, my dilemma is i already need to buy a bigger amp but cannot affort drop all this dough on boutique pedals and shit....

i'm wondering if anyone has experience with modelling amps like the boss katana or vox etc? are they bad? sound okay? just trying to come up with a solution

(have a simple jhs reverb and and DOD 70s reissue overdrive pedal but that's it)

Amps: what you've got an what you want.

I've had this Fender Princeton '68 Custom for a while (basically a modified "reissue" that I bought of fb marketplace a few years ago). I like it but I always feel like it's a little too loud for home use, and it's not the best pairing with my tele somehow (although switching out the stock speaker for a creamback improved it).

I keep thinking about a vintage vibrochamp, or maybe a tweed champ. Those would cost a little more than I could get for the princeton. I'd also be losing an amp that I can technically gig with (although I've played exactly one electric gig in the last 12 months, on which I played three songs).

Vintage blackface princetons are v expensive and probably not worth it to me. I've tried a couple of princeton-style Tylers that I thought were cool and not a ton more than I could probably get for my 68 custom.

The 68 Custom is not a bad amp it just has some limitations to it. I like it better with humbuckers or with my strat vs with my tele.

i'd like to get a trad amp, but this band has a record coming out that's already recorded and he has a lot of sounds on the record that you need effects for

or maybe i could probably get some of those cheap ass mooer type pedals and fake it?

congrats ums! katana seems like a huge amount of bang for the buck if you're going to be using the onboard effects and you could get plenty weird with some of that stuff (synth! ring mod! slicer!!). probably wanna get the foot pedal for it though if you're using it live. guess it boils down to whether or not you can get a decent basic tone out of it that you're happy with? have seen people complain that they can be a little cold or lack soul, but you could always pick up a decent preamp pedal to run it through first. was looking at them myself for kind of the opposite reason - got lots of pedals already but just want an amp that sounds good at low volumes and you can run them at 0.5W

he has a lot of sounds on the record that you need effects for

what effects do you reckon you need?

yeah first of all this is super exciting news!

a few things come to mind, i haven't tried a newer modeling amp but i am a very analog person and even working with the interfaces/controls would probably drive me a little crazy....also a bigger regular tube amp is a better long-term investment for you and anything else you may want to do in the future. so the current guy may have a bunch of pedals but is he really using all of them in ways that are super important? like there's a chance that there are two or three things he relies on a ton and the rest are sort of nice to have. i would see if you can figure that out and then budget what you can afford that might get you most of the way there. also you're obviously going to have a big upfront expense no matter what but a pedal board you can add to and modify over time as you see what works where if you go all-in on a modeling amp you're kind of backed into a corner. so i would start with an amp you're really happy with and the figure out the pedals gradually. also not for nothing but taking that boss katana as an example, you're also going to probably be buying a $150 foot controller to use it live which is like 1.5 useful pedals in itself.

full list of effects for the katana is here btw (the reverbs and delays are a few pages down):
https://static.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/BTS_KTN-Mk2_eng04_W.pdf#page=15

I don't feel convinced that the Katana is the solution. I have spent enough time around Katanas and Line 6 Spiders and whatnot and... as I said, I am not convinced.

Personally I just use a good ol' Blues Junior when I want an amp. Straight in.

If I am using effects pedals I figure I may as well go direct, so it's a Sansamp Blonde or Para Driver. Blonde is really good for guitar. Para Driver slightly better for other instruments.

Me, I only need three sounds: clean, dirty, and weird. (The "weird" varies, between phaser, delay, ring modulator, flanger, etc.)

Also what call all destroyer said

okay cool thanks everyone, i think i was kinda hoping to get talked off the ledge about the katana

i unfortunately don't really know what was on his pedal board or how much he was actually using, so like suggested it's possible he was only using like 3 out of 7 or whatever

but the arguments for quality first is convincing...plus I do have two pedals that are good and useful - hall reverb and overdrive, so those are two fairly staple pedals i have

i suppose from there, maybe a good digital delay pedal would be good. -- also THANKS i didn't know the footpedal controllers were extra, that's a big deal...

some amps have spring reverb and tremolo so that is more sounds

so if I have:

overdrive
reverb

next most important pedal i'm assuming is a digital delay?

Reverb should be always on. If you like your amp's onboard reverb, you don't even need a pedal.*

Drive or distortion will get you from clean to dirty.

Delay is fun but fussy - it's easy to set a Rockabilly style slap-back delay. But if you want yo sound like The Edge, that takes a lot more effort, with tap tempo and possibly even multiple delays. Very difficult in a live setting.

For you, I recommend a Phase 90. Boom, done.

yeah definitely some sort of delay with a wide range of delay times and preferably delay types (boss dd8 maybe?)

would also get some modulation, like a chorus that can also do vibrato and maybe flanger or phaser if you fuck with those

you might need some distortion / fuzz too though? get a rat imo

okay yeah probably a modulator too

DEFINITELY going to need digital delay based on the show i saw

as far as a fuzz/distortion, tone wise he was leaning towards clean tones, it's not post-rocky exactly but mostly instrumental with a saxophone player but nothing like heavy heavy at all

this is what i got for overdrive, was on clearance once on harman's site

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13NouN_n_3s

* = I don't love the onboard reverb of my amp so, alas, I need a different reverb. Fortunately I have the best one in existence (MXR) so I am fine.

To Nick's point, there are a few "Swiss army" pedals out there that can do a bunch of different modulation types. I haven't tried them because a Phase 90 gives me all the underwater sounds I need.

One significant question is, what guitar(s) will you be playing? Amp recommendations would depend on that.