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

Had my Greco P-bass up on Reverb for a couple of months, but then I made the mistake of playing it again and realising it's better than I remembered.
So I might have to keep it now. The pickup doesn't sound especially impressive on its own, but it sits in a mix quite nicely. So it's useful as a recording tool.
I installed some lightweight tuners and that made a big difference. It was too heavy before but now it's manageable. You wouldn't think 170 grams less would make a difference, but I guess it's more about the balance than the overall weight.

Dirt cheap Dolamo overdrive from eBay, YES. Beautifully cranked on my Tele, wide range of tones, no background noise, goes from a bit burred to snarly in very good ways. $A31 delivered so probably $US 20?

Apparently it’s a Timmy clone. Nice quality for no money, and I can dial in the sounds I want to hear very easily.

following my acquisition of a shijie strat a couple of months ago, i've continued my quest to acquire high-quality knockoffs of established design classics with this mij tokai love rock, which arrived earlier in the week

https://i.ibb.co/BqzjjVS/IMG-6276.jpg

that's pretty love the classic gold top look

gorgeous!!

went to put a fresh set of strings on the love rock and the nut fell clean out of the fretboard, having apparently only been held on by the tension of the strings

ffs

That’s common enough and not a major issue. All you need is a dab of superglue / krazy glue to tack in in place, make sure it’s snug to the end of the fretboard and the edges of the neck, then hold it down firmly for a few secs while the glue sets. Only a small amount of glue, less than you may think, and doesn’t need to cover the surfaces completely.

this is one of the worst looking things I have ever seen, no matter what clever shit it can do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgWLonnch_8

I guess you could slice an egg with the headstock though?

It's weird that 'woodworker' guitars are so often bad examples of both woodworking and luthiery.

Charlie Clouser's Moog MIDI lap steel is cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OubCmnlEjiI

A little pickguard makeover for this 70s FST-70. Think I'll go black for the other plastics too.
https://i.imgur.com/AcD5fKn.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/evk6skX.jpeg

https://www.christies.com/-/jssmedia/images/features/articles/2019/05/21/the-black-strat-david-gilmours-iconic-fender-stratocaser/rl-138-eamonn-mccabe.jpg

how did you get a photo of me?

i just made my first electric guitar purchase ever - not really for me but for when my kids get older. they all take music lessons now so i won't be surprised when they get older and want to try and start a band so i figured why not have one around the house. for now it'll be for me to noodle around with.

what did you get!?

dig the gilmour look mkkkkk xps

I just have Squiers for the time being - a strat and a Bass VI which I bought in a big Cure phase a few years back

I bought a VI during my big Cure phase, which started in 1985 and is still going

My Bass VI is still waiting on me to take it to get the Staytrem installed and some La Bella strings and a full setup.

that's maybe the last guitar I really covet

the classic Gilly black strat look is timeless

The whiter knobs are harshing my buzz tho. I have a commitment to the black/black/maple aesthetic for 70s Fender styles.

what did you get!?

dig the gilmour look mkkkkk xps

― I Chet the Holmgren (Spottie), Friday, 3 May 2024 06:57 (yesterday) link

lol, thought i mentioned it. 97 fender california series stratocaster.

Nice

now you’ve made me play Dark Side of the Moon for the first time in a decade

howd it hold up?

Did it...rule?

Alas I am just not a Floyd fan - I will rep for Us and Them any day but too many of the tracks go for giant overkill (and sax, far too much sax)

I’ll happily watch Live at Pompeii any day of the week tho

Syd's Esquire would be a fun partscaster to build, I always thought it was olympic white but I guess it was Inca Silver (or a spray paint silver?)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Syd_Barretts_Fender_Esquire.jpg/480px-Syd_Barretts_Fender_Esquire.jpg

Fender sold a signature with mirrors you stick on yourself, a few years back

Someone returned one of those Jimmy Page mirror Telecasters to my local Guitar Center after attaching the mirrors. I guess they just accepted it but were only knocking $200 off retail.

oh that must be the one I’m thinking of, duh

i didn't now tweedy had a signature martin (makes sense though), obviously entirely out of my price range but this is gorgeous, i love the finish so much, not sure how i feel about the goofy fretmarkers thing

https://www.martinguitar.com/guitars/discontinued/00-DB-Jeff-Tweedy.html

nothing on 12? really?

i think this is an issue with acoustic signature models, it's hard to make them look distinctive without a weird inlay or a reimagining of fret markers.

Tweedy’s signature SG was nice, kind of a desaturated Pelham Blue

The Martin OO is my favourite (although I own an O). Sigma’s versions of that series are so so cheap and so excellent and I recommend them to everyone, I gave an OO-15M to a friend as a Big Gift a few years back

is Sigma related to Martin as a company? I was never sure on that

They were the Martin “made in Japan” offshoot in the 70s. Bought by a German company fifteen years ago. Fantastic guitars, I’ve played them through all eras and they’re terrific. Cheap as anything.

My taste in musical equipment occupies two zones: the irreplaceable, and the easily replaceable. My main studio guitar is a 1934 O-15M, impulse bought it for 5k in 2016. My then-bf was with me and he always discouraged my acquisitionary tendencies but he said “holy shit buy it now” when I played it. It’s the best guitar. I love its chunky V-neck.

But I can’t take it anywhere except to a studio. I like have a humidifier for it and it alone, it’s my only valuable acoustic instrument. (I had a really nice Lowden for a while but sold it, sounded amazing in a room but was hell to record). Got a Sigma OO-15M as my “same thing, but replaceable” guitar. It was and is great.

I play high gain in the live setting and the Sigma wasn’t working so good. I switched to an archtop. I play an ES-350 clone now, also made in Japan, but with a fancy noiseless P90 installed. (I got a Kinman. Somebody posted online “stop shopping around, stop hesitating, just fucking buy a Kinman”. I echo this sentiment. I can’t imagine a pickup sounding better than the one I bought from them).

So, my Sigma wasn’t getting used, by me. Thom Gill was borrowing a lot, taking it on tour. Martha Wainwright plays it in various YouTube videos. Thom had a bad time a couple years ago so I gave him the guitar because I love him and he’s the best guitarist I can think of. So yeah, I don’t own a Sigma any more but I loved mine, I’d buy another in a heartbeat if I ever needed one for anything.

I’ll post about my archtop, why not. I have a couple songs where I fade up an Eventide H9 on the “Mangledverb” setting and it was always making my Sigma feed back. “Try a Godin,” they said.

So I got this Acousticaster. I fucking hated it. Too light, neck felt flimsy, sounded vaguely annoying. But it didn’t feed back. I took it out on tour but hated the sight of it, it felt like I was dating somebody who wouldn’t stop quoting The Simpsons.

I was on tour in Japan. I was walking in Shibuya. I had never played an archtop before. Sam Amidon plays one, I looked it up after seeing him live, it’s some kind of an L6 or whatever, so I knew what they were. I walked in to Walkin. I wasn’t even planning on it, I literally just saw the place as I was walking by and though “ooh a guitar store”. They stock Westville guitars, almost all new stock, and a cheaper factory-made line called “Archtop Tribute”.

I didn’t know anything about electric pickups. I played every guitar in that store. I got to their Archtop Tribute ES-350 clone, it had a single P90 on it. I fell in love. I bought it on the spot.

I didn’t know about humbuckers or Charlie Christians or anything. Over time I started to realize the drawback of a P90– the hum. I thought about getting a second pickup installed, for the phasing trickydoodle, but I play fingerstyle, and I had been told (and had noticed) that you lose your transients when you do that. So I frittered away wondering how on earth I was going to solve this problem and then bit the bullet and bought a Kinman and my friend Andy installed it and it sounds so fucking good.

I wish Archtop Tribute would make more 350s! I follow them and look at all the axes that come out of their factory. Really good price for those guitars.

that's awesome thanks for all that info, i do want a small body guitar i should keep an eye out for a sigma

i've always been skeptical of noiseless pickups and i have no idea why i am

Yeah, I spent a good two years trying to find “the perfect cheap acoustic” and Sigma won by a mile. But I play small body and prefer mahogany, so my range of choice is pretty small

And weirdly, regarding the Kinman? I was so stressed. I spent three weeks trying to figure out what the hell I was gonna do. Emailed the guys in Shibuya. Consulted all these different guitar techs. Went to the antique store and tried a bunch of other archtops with other pickups. I even was trawling through Internet Archive stuff trying to find more information on other Archtop Tribute models.

After a thousand hours of reading forums and subreddits I saw somebody post “just buy a Kinman”. It had to be a blind buy, I didn’t know anyone who had one. I bought it. Definitely it is in my top five most successful blind buys of all time. Sounds fantastic.

loved those stories - and I am a sucker for people gifting instruments, a beautiful and selfless act. Giving an artist a voice? Gets me everytime. I gave both my daughters nice electrics for their 18th birthdays and I get such a rush hearing them play and enjoy them.

Gave my friend's son my Boss Katana when he started playing before COVID, he's still using it onstage with his psych band. Which is good because at the clubs they're playing it's only a matter of time before someone breaks into their hand me down van.

I love my Kinman Jazzmaster pickups, completely noiseless but still 100% JM pickups.

Ah! There you go. Yay for Kinman

Yeah I briefly had a MIJ JM with a Kinman prototype in the bridge, it was a wonderful pickup, all that top end glass and husk.

do triple p-90 guitars do the out of phase thing strats do? I had a firebird with that config like 10 years ago and don't remember it. on the other hand, I didn't really play clean tones at the time so I'm not even sure I checked.