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

xpost, interesting I'll listen for that next time he's at a store. obv my friend has a perspective of a touring tech/repair guyso he's constantly fixing/doing setups etc and I'm sure it's more of a pain in the ass

i just got my first electric guitar-- a casino bought from a friend in superb condition. it really is delightful, getting it and playing it has been my favorite event of the year.

i am still terrible and learn-y basic at guitar, but it is friendly, very light. i'm just playing it with a mustang micro and wheeeeeee! so similar to that 335 in appearance, but full hollow. i guess they are howling feedback machines, but i'm a long way from that worry i think.

mine has a trapeze-- is that because of the hollow body maybe?

congrats! Casinos are so cool

nice hunt3r!

ty!

i am pretty guitar ignorant but saw pics of some wildkats and i was like, "huh, that is the hottest possible guitar thing i've seen," and friend said "similar in look to gretsch g5655t, if you like that." maybe if i ever learn to play i can "what i want" it.

mine has a trapeze-- is that because of the hollow body maybe?

file under things i want badly and have no business buying

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/msg/d/medford-ovation-magnum-bass-guitar/7725488125.html

what a beast

get it and re-install that EQ system PRONTO

That’s so cool, had no idea they made an electric bass

Kim Gordon played one of those in the early days of Sonic Youth.

does anyone have experience with Rickenbacker guitar knockoffs? I'd really like a Rick but it's pretty hard to find anything that's not $2K+...or any other type of guitar that might give you that sound

aren't ric knockoffs famously hard to come by since the company loves to sue people?

Neer really looked into this, but I wonder if you could just buy some Rickenbacker pickups and have them installed on a different guitar.

Rick is really weird on that stuff, you pretty much cannot buy their pickups.

Duncan makes some but even then they are in their custom shop lines.

Get a Gretch with some Filtertrons, I’d say that is an easier to find option in a similar part of the ball park.

Those G&L wide ranch pickups on say an ASAT are not totally dissimilar to the modern Rick pickups which are hotter than the old ones.

thanks for the info all, rick is a weird company...but i guess they keep people paying a super premium price

gretsch sounds like maybe the best bet, they are so common to see used now

This is not the fun answer but if I had to pick one guitar to imitate the sound of a Rickenbacker, I would quite possibly take a single-coil thinline Tele, a compressor, and an EQ pedal. (And honestly the thinline part is optional.)

maybe seek out one of those Greco Ric copies, you can get them thru those sites that handle Yahoo Auctions transactions

also this was too good a price and too pretty to pass up. 2004 R serial, G&G case. Nothing much to tell other than it's great, and stock apart from the bridge and the knobs because I had them spare. Sticker is the previous owner's, I'll let it go for a while but its days are numbered.
http://i.imgur.com/VJJwLWL.jpeg

gorgeous

i did some deep-ish research into rickenbacker a few years ago, they basically still run the company like it's 1958, but it seems to work for them

Used to have an early 90s Tanglewood Ric 330 copy with weird toaster pick ups. Pretty crappy guitar, traded in my perfectly serviceable Fenix Tele for it due to a teenage love of Peter Buck and George Harrison. Sounded thin (and not in the way I wanted) and was set up badly, but at least grappling with it made me a better player in the long run. If only I'd known and held on to that Tele - it would have saved me years of frustration and pain. I'd second the Tele compressor and EQ trick. A Danelectro will also get you into that jangly zone, although it has a character of its own. I've got a Gretsch and never found it particularly Ric-like - bought it as my Neil Young/Howe Gelb guitar.

Have to say that while I used to think they were great looking guitars, I find them kinda ugly these days, particularly the 330. The bass is a design classic though.

they look more and more like furniture to me

- my main guitar is a late ‘60s galanti grand prix - a funky weird old Italian guitar i love: https://www.instagram.com/p/CPcDy49hhBl/

― na (NA), Saturday, 29 May 2021 01:37 (two years ago) link

i love this guitar, it plays great, sounds great, stays in tune etc. BUT as you can see in the picture, it has pickup selector buttons instead of a switch (galanti started out as an accordion company and they used accordion buttons i guess). the button mechanism is notoriously fickle, and mine has always had problems. basically the bridge pickup always works, but often i am unable to switch to the neck pickup or the combination of the two - if i pick those buttons, there is no sound. occasionally everything works like it should for a while but it always eventually stops working again, sometimes in the middle of playing. however, this suggests the problem is the mechanism, not the pickups or wiring. i have had it "fixed" twice by different shops but both times it has started up again after a couple of months.

i'm vaguely considering having a tech replace the buttons with a standard pickup switch. i am loathe to mess with the aesthetics of the guitar and make it less "original" but also it would be nice to be able to actually reliably use all the pickup options. i think the ideal would be to leave the switches as they are, but not connected to anything, and have them add the switch, but that might require them cutting some wood out to make space for the switch wiring. i haven't actually looked under the pickguard myself. anyone have any thoughts on whether getting this done is worth it?

Any switch can be replaced with a better quality equivalent, but I’d start with some Deoxit on the contacts inside if you’re comfortable with opening it up. No need to ruin its originality if it can be persuaded to work better.
You may also have a short somewhere, e.g. the neck pickup signal touching a ground (would explain why the combo setting makes no sound). A little tube of deoxit and a cheap multimeter will get you a long way.

NA, my main/core memory of the Galanti GP was seeing Polvo many times in the early 90s and Ash's main guitar was a finicky GP that he abused to no end but I distinctly remember he had taped down certain buttons with electric tape.

https://i.imgur.com/f8I7Ivh.png

more here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LKxmoZv-nE

i just saw that today! i was doing some basic research on my guitar and someone pointed that out on another board.
the other funny thing is that no one can agree what kind of pickups it has. the consensus seems to be minihumbuckers but some people say single coil.

Seems unlikely they’d be humbuckers, it’s going for a Jazzmaster equivalent and that era is rife with single coil pickups inside humbucker cases, I doubt they would do it the other way round.

Wow that is some complex switching. I bet it’s full of dust and oxidation, deoxit will be your saviour.

https://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=75313&start=15

whoa thanks for finding that. that does seem complex, though that must be for the three-pickup model. i would hope that the repair places i took it to did the dust/deoxit thing but maybe it's susceptible to dust getting in there.

They might be unlikely to use deoxit, it’s a bit of a niche product. I know it from fixing up old hifi gear.
You can get it in a little bottle with a brush applicator like nail polish, good for wiping between contacts. Can’t do any harm. You want the red stuff, the gold is a lubricant for faders etc.

i did open up my guitar and deoxit the button switches, and i thought it fixed the issue because they did work correctly immediately after, but they stopped working again shortly after. still glad i got over my fear of opening it up. might give it another pass at some point.

Very encouraging start tho, there are no serious issues beyond signal path. It’s possible there is a shield or a wire touching part of the switch assembly, maybe taking a pickup signal to ground, which was taken out of contact by opening it but settled back into place after.
You can try plugging it in to a practice amp while it’s opened up and tapping on pickup poles with a screwdriver to hear what’s working or not. No danger to you in doing that.

Instructions unclear. Pickup plugged directly into wall outlet. Amplifier in bathtub. Beginning to smell smoke, hair approaching Christopher Lloyd levels. Losing consciousness. Await further direction.

press "record" and play hard

Just coming here to say that matttkkkk's guitar upthread looks awesome. A Jaguar or Jazzmaster in Candy Apple Red with white pickguard and pickups and a rosewood(?) fretboard is exactly the kind of thing that floats my boat.

I feel like the only weirdo who never wanted an offset guitar. Don't hate em but don't particularly like em.

snoball you’ll probably like its sibling I restored it couple of years ago - https://i.imgur.com/KVxTecr.jpeg

argh “a couple” I meant

Yeah, I commented on the Jaguar upthread.

I feel like the only weirdo who never wanted an offset guitar.

I've got to say that it's really only the Jaguar and Jazzmaster that I like. Most other offsets look strange to me the way I imagine that all offsets might look to other people.

They kind of look like they’re in flight to me. But if you forced me to choose just one guitar it’d be a Telecaster.

I think that offsets without the floating trem look extremely weird (too much unused real estate), but also JM's with smaller/strat-ier headstock look even weirder:

https://i.imgur.com/4KvuudS.jpeg

Wish that Fender/Squier would do more period-correct reissues in terms of body/headstock shape (EXCEPT for the bridge lol)

Guessing you're not a fan of the Offset Telecaster then!

Yeah that guitar looks amazing

I have been using this beautiful ES-350 clone with a single P90, I tried in on a whim in 2017 and fell in love immediately and have been using it ever since…

…but I’m resigning myself to the fact that a single P90 is just too hum-risky and I’m considering my options (replacing the pickup, or installing a second P90, idk idk idk)

Kinman and Lindy Fralin both make hum canceling P90s - I believe the Kinmans sound better but are eye-wateringly expensive

damn this hits such a very specific set of pickups/body style/etc that i've been looking for

https://reverb.com/item/78494451-vintage-revo-series-surfmaster-thinline-twin-electric-guitar-greenburst