Guitarist Wankery Depository - Page 3

That's too bad about the drums, they could have sounded a lot worse, so there's that. What kind of mics did you use on them?

If you can find them cheap on eBay or Criagslist, get yourself some Sennheiser 421 mics. They are very good versatile mics, I recently miked a kit using the 421s on the kick, floor and one between the rack tom, and it came out really nice, but this was done at a studio with a isolation booth.

Basically you should be able to mic the kit with just the 421s and SM57s on high-hat and snare, that should come out as good as you can expect. Of course it also depends on the player how he keeps his drums tuned and the room.

I came pretty close to getting one for $165 on eBay, I ended up underbidding at the last second. It'll take some due diligence to get a hold of a cheaply priced one, just keeping looking.

I found that using a CAD E-100 on kik is a nearly religious experience. Don't know how much they are these days, but if nothing else you can get a decent MXL condenser mic for fiddy bucks.

It's really good, but I've found if the conditions aren't just right that it'll lack that punch that's needed, more recently I've found myself loving the 421 on kick drums.

Looking around I've actually found the E-100 to be fairly cheap, new and used depending on where it's being sold. Also, Blue Kick Ball Dynamic Mic is a pretty good mic, I've only tried it out once on a kick, it ended up sounding pretty damn good.

Late to this party, but I used to play bass. Played for more than 6 yrs, then stopped when I started law School 15 yrs ago. I started again after I graduated, but got in a car accident & fractured my left clavicle (where I used to sit my strap), and never got back into it. I found the amount of ground I had lost daunting. I used to love the shit out of playing my bass. Back in college I'd hurry back to the dorm after class, literally itching to get my hands on my axe. I have an 86 Ibanez Roadstar II. A couple people have offered decent sums of money for me to sell it (it's got a nice thin neck, which is good 'cuz I got small hands), and a P style pickup. It's black w/ a white pickguard. If I ever have more money than I know what to do with, I'd like to have it sanded down & pained electric blue. I'd keep the white pick guard. I played thru a GK 400RB head, and ran that thru a Hartke Systems Transporter 2 x 10 (its small size made it ideal for dorm use). I jammed w/ a couple guys in collegfe & called ourselves a band, but never played in one very seriously. Jamming was always fun when I got to do it, but just playing was the thing I liked best. One day I was practicing, and playing "Aces High" by Maiden into the hall (and my room was at the top of a stairwell, so the whole damn dorm probably heard me). Guy who lived in the room next door comes up the stairs on his way back to class, stops and watches me until I finish the song. I play the last note and he says: "You got GOOD." All the validation I ever needed, really. I keep telling myself I'm gonna get back into this one of these years. My wife keeps trying to encourage me to do so, because she thinks my son will think it's cool (he's three, and I dread the thought of him wanting to handle my bass; it probably weighs more than him). Maybe that'll be my New Year's resolution. At the risk of sounding extremely gay, can I ask if anyone else followed B.B. King's lead & named their guitars? Anyone else owns up, maybe I'll cop to the name I gave my bass.

Wow. Just found out what my 13-year-old nephew's getting for Christmas: my brother evidently found an amazing deal on a used Joe Strummer Signature Telecaster in prime condition (well, as prime as anything can be that's SUPPOSED to look beat all to hell!).

Wish I was gonna be there to see his face... The Clash are just about his alltime favorite band.

My nerdness knows no boundaries, brother.

Main axe...a frankentele I put together in 1990 is named The Terrycaster.
Fender Custom Tele FMT is The Red Queen.
My Epi Wildkats are El Gato and Tiger Lilly

No name for the basses or the acoustic, though. So my nerdness must know some boundaries after all.

I'm still trying to work out the pedigree for my guitar: it's an Asian-made hollowbody electric that (apart from the string count) is an exact copy of a Hofner Beatle bass. My wife picked it up used for me some years ago.

I figure I should determine its actual birth name before I go giving it one of my own.

Need to pick up a good chorus pedal. Any recommendations? Last one I had was an old Ibanez SC-9 from the early to mid eighties.

guitar porn

25 awesome guitars

http://www.mosriteforum.com/forum/vi...90f8f768c1dbc4

I've posted something like this previously, but wanted to share this with you guys. Scoot down the thread here a bit and watch the old guy build some mosrite guitars.

Tell me you've heard of Mosrite guitars. Punks.

My son and I will occasionally pick up a cheap-o strat kit off of the bay and put it together as a father/boy project. It's an inexpensive way to spend some good quality time together. He has some physical/emotional issues and I've found this sort of thing gives him a sense of "triumph" he doesn't feel a whole lot in his life.

Anyway, we whipped one up recently. Thought I'd share it with you folks. He decided on the headstock shape and paint color scheme and to do the "Vai Swirl" approach. I'm pretty proud of what we did together. I'll play it for the first time at my regular Thursday night gig. The neck isn't great...there's a high 13th fret I'm going to have to dress at some point. But if nothing else, he'll get to see HIS guitar under the lights.

And, true to my nerd form, it's been named Blaze. Because that's how I roll with the guitar thing.

Groovy finish.

Perhaps a neck with a maple board will suit the look better, though?

Still, I like.

Agreed. But for less than a hunnert bucks, you get the neck they put in the kit.

I've been thinking I may go to guitarfetish.com and see what necks they have in stock. Maple might be the way to go on this one. I like maple strats better than rosewood, anyways.

It all depends on the body colour for me, as far as that's concerned, but maple would look gorgeous with that finish. Nice job, fellas!

High-five for the naming, by the way. That needs no justification or apology, in my book.

No shop needed, really. The guitar came filled and sealed. We just painted the sucker white and then used a tall kitchen trash can to do the swirl paint job in.

Thanks for the compliment. The boy did that part of things. We did a few tests on some scrap lumber to make sure we had an idea of what we wanted.

Got to play Blaze last night at my usual Thursday night gig. It sounded very Gilmour. I've never had a guitar sound very Gilmour before, so I was excited. The harmonics were insane.

I think I'll have fun getting to know this one.

 

Meet the Red Queen.  A Fender Custom Tele FMT my kid brother got for me several years ago.  I'd done some tracking on a couple of his recording projects and he paid me with this guitar.  It originally came with Black Canyon pickups...which meant nothing to me beyond being Fender buckers.  Not bad sounding, but nothing major.

 

 

These are the new Seymour Duncan P-Rails pickups I just had installed.  Seen also are the SD Triple Shot pickup rings.  You wire the four wires of the pickups to the little board on the rings and the two switches on the left are put into play.  With the little mini-switches you can have the pickups in humbucking (series) and humbucking (parallel) modes as well as each coil seperately.  The parallel settings on the humbuckers are amazing...mids and output are cut and there's more glass and bloom in the high end.  The P-90 coils have a nice snarl to them.  The strat rails...together...aren't half bad, but nothing to write home about

 

 

.

 

Anyway...thought I'd share.  This is my usual #2 guitar.  My main is a tele I put together about twenty years ago.  Been using the strat and the fmt lately a lot, though.

i am using a yamaha guitar presented by my parents on my birthday!!!

Played guitar obsessively from 16 to 26 but then just stopped.  Until I was 36.  Tried to pick it up again but my cack fingers failed (muscle memory lackig).  Practice heavily again until I got good again but then the 2nd was born and so free time went out the window.

 

Used to have a bunch of pedals, 5 guitars (Epiphone strat copy, Aria Pro 2 semi accounstic, hohner 12 string accoustic, hohner 6 string accoustic and my sole surviving guitar) and a bass.

 

Due to student financial strife I sold everything except my last remaining. 

 

when my Gran died I got given a grand and my Dad told me to get something I would keep forever.  Loved the shape of the Jaguar so I went to a shop in Edinburgh and bought one.  Now I haven't confimed this (although the serial number does tie in with the date) but here are the details I was told when I bought it.

 

1962 Fender Jaguar, original paint job stripped and now down to basic wood (this was done pre-my purchase).  Apparently used to belong to the guitarist froma  band called Danny Wilson Says who had a minor hit with Mary's Prayer so apparently my guitar has been on Top of the Pops.  At the time none of that was any interest to me, I just liked the natural wood finish.

 

Subsequently I've found out that if it had the original paint job it would be woth a mint, as it is I have it insured for a substantial amount.

 

Apologies for the blurry picture, the two year old has lost our real camera so had to use the phone one.

 

Been playing for about 25 years with a few 'rest' periods here and there. Currently writing a sort of folk opera thing about the last man in a post-apocalyptic Berkshire who finds a copy of the 1974 boundary commission report. Written within is the nefarious plot to take the best bits of Berkshire and give them to Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. He promptly declares war on Oxford which has walled itself up and houses those clinging on to civilization. The story also features 6-fingered mutants from the West Country.

 

Just bought a 5-string banjo for the mutant music and am currently learning some of the more useful rolls (just got the hang of the Scruggs roll). Banjo is hard! The hardest part is programming your brain to naturally pick the drone note (a g string which starts at the 5th fret), it feels so alien at first that a high note would be played so close to your thumb, all your instincts are telling you to pick a different string!

 

My main electric is a PRS Custom 22, but the guitar I play on the most is a cheap Tanglewood acoustic that is so much fun to grab and pick away at.

 

Quote:

My favourite shape has been the Guild S-100 or the good old SG for years now but because of dudes like J Mascis and Kurt Cobain I have a soft spot in my heart for those tweaked looking Jaguars and Jazzmasters. I like the light, warm wood finish on yours with that deep rum-brown spangled pick guard.

cheers man :)  It's one of my favourite things ever.  When I saw it hanging in the shop I feel in love with the wood finish and all the rest of the history meant squat.
 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/science/06wsfmusic.html?_r=1&ref=science

 

Musical Improvisation and Science.  Just for you guys....

I have a guitar blog over at tumblr

 

physicsoftheheart.tumblr.com

 

Thought I'd share.  Hope to see some of yall there.

So after the NYE in the converted shearing shed, with loads of people jamming I have decided to pull finger and actually start playing guitar again.

 

It's been three weeks now and I'm loving it.  The wife also has a good voice so we've been jamming away together, pretty much me learning a heap of 80's soft rawk or what have you since that's what she used to sing in the shower ;p

 

So I decided to expand this and have a look at the Top 100 tabs on ultimateguitar.

 

And how upsetting it is :(

 

There's a Justin Bieber song in there for fucks sake.

 

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/top/top100.htm

 

unrelated to this I'm saving up for a Johnson Barn Burner mini amp.  Had a play with one at the local music shop and it's actually pretty mean.  It's only a hundy but we're on a tight budget so it'll be couple of months yet.

 

 

oh, and finally I've been teaching the oldest to play the Ukelele.  When she can easily move between 6 chords I've told her I'll start teaching her guitar.  She's got 4 chords sussed now and is practicing strumming and moving between them.  Loving it :)

 

So, got my wee amp, dug out my old Zoom box that the wife got me, and this is now my new, modest, setup.

 

Well, as modest as a setup with a 50 year old vintage guitar can be ;p

 

You just as well could stick that Jaguar pic in the Salma thread because I wanna get it pregnant. I recently bought one of those new Epiphone Jazzmasters & it completely shits on my modded Les Paul & my modded Fender Tele. It's easily the best sounding guitar I've ever owned.

 

Right now, I'm full-on gagging for the new $1800 Johnny Marr signature Jag:

I'm seriously thinking about selling off half my gear to get this thing [drool].

quality vid, cheers Art!

 

I love my jag to bits.  Being a smaller gentleman it suits me down to the ground.

An $1800 Jag?  Holy shit.....

 

I'm currently using the Epi Wildkat in my new band and recordings.  Lurv me some P-90 sweetness.

Yeah, Epi's got some really nice hollowbodies. I had a cherry red Epi Dot for a while. Quality guitar for the price but I sold it cuz Epi necks are like thick tree trunks. The slim Fender necks have improved my playing ten-fold. They feel so good.

https://www.yousendit.com/download/WUJZeUNPcTI3N0J4Tk1UQw 

 

Did a version of "All Along The Watch Tower" with my band (wife, daughter, buddy and I).  Sort of went a different direction with the arrangement, but I liked it.  

 

Thought I'd share.

Got this for Christmas/40th birthday.  Love my natural finishes :)

 

 

Nice.

More of a bassist myself, though I do have a few super cheap acoustics I keep around in alternative tunings. BADF#AC# is what I have been tuned to for a while now.

Every now and then I come across something that straddles the line between making me want to give up and making me want to practice a lot more.

 

So after getting the itch again over the last 3-4 years, I've decided to take up bass again. I played for a few years (At a bedroom/wholly unsophisticated level) but let it go as writing/theatre stuff began to take over. But inevitably the urge started coming back and have finally decided to take the plunge and jump back in. My brother (Who's a guitarist) and I are saving at the moment to hopefully buy a bass sometime in the next month or two, and are currently weighing up candidates based on what stores in Melbourne seem to regularly have in stock.

I'm curious to know of any Chewer recommendations for cheapish/entry level basses. I used to have a Squier Jazz, which was a good axe but I'm kind of hankering for something different aesthetically from your average P-bass/jazz configuration. Basically I'm looking for the best quality possible up to about US$300-350, which is obvious, but at least something with good playability and a decent tone and I can always upgrade the hardware at a later point.

Funny that this thread has taken a bit of a Jag-love turn, because my current frontrunner is the Squier Jaguar vintage Special SS. It's a shortscale bass (Which to be honest is not a problem as I always tended to practice at the computer or watching TV, which makes a shorter neck much more manageable) but it has a jazz-and-P-bass pup configuration which should make for a nice range of tones and has been getting rave reviews for its sound and feel. While online videos are never the most reliable method of research as you don't know what people are playing through or their settings, this guitar has consistently sounded the best. It also happens to look very nice indeed:
 

 

Another advantage of this bass is that the Bass Centre in Melbourne are offering it with a beginners package including practice amp, cords, strap and tuner for A$500, which is a great deal and covers most things I'll need. Well, I might get a new strap - long gone are the days where I'd strap a bass so low it was impossible to play if your surname isn't Ramone, but at the same time I can't abide the 'nipple height' thing either.


The next candidate is the Epiphone Les Paul Special Bass PB, which is going for around A$450-500. I've always wanted a LP-shaped bass, and this one's gotten pretty solid reviews and I dig the all-matte black thing it has going:

 

 

 

The third big one for me is the Epiphone Thunderbird. This one's a bit more expensive, averaging around A$600-$700 but has gotten excellent reviews. The only real flaw that's come up is its top-heaviness, which I expected as it's always been an issue with Thunderbirds:

 

 

 

Ultimately, we don't want to decide on anything until we've had a chance to sit down and at least try whatever bass we end up getting, but I'm suspecting that in terms of quality and value for money, the Jag is looking like the best atm. A practice amp would be ideal from the off, while although the Epis both look like great guitars and we may go for one of them instead, it would be nice not to have to save up for an amp separately. In the meantime I'm learning basslines on my brother's acoustic guitar to get my fingers re-trained. It's kind of amazing how much they remember. Can't wait!
 

So I've been playing for about a year now. Or rather, teaching myself to play, and I've managed to graduate from total shit to mostly shit. I've mostly been learning on an acoustic, a Yamaha that I bought for $130 two Christmases ago, doing lots of Carter family/bluegrass kind of stuff (and some simple blues). I got a really good deal on a Gibson Les Paul Standard a few months ago, and I take that out sometimes, but so far it's only functioned as a really expensive Rocksmith controller. My eventual goal is to start focusing on blues and jazz styles once I've got the basics down. Anyway, here's a picture of my LP (plus one of the headstock:

 

 

 

 

Also, the feds owe me a fair bit of money, and I'm thinking of using it to upgrade my acoustic. Seriously considering a Simon and Patrick Woodland Folk Pro, which is just a beauty. I Love the sound, but haven't had the opportunity to play around with one yet. Thankfully, there's a local dealer that stocks S&Ps, so I should check one out soon enough. 

 

 

 

Be careful, bud.  "Jazz Styles" is a quicksand of gargantuan proportions.  Worth your while, but geez.....

 

Should you *want* to look deeper into it, I highly recommend the Ted Greene books you can get.  He wrote several back in the seventies and they're monsters.  This is my fave:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Chord-Progressions-Classical-Voicings/dp/0898986982/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359504526&sr=8-1&keywords=ted+greene+modern+chord+progressions

 

Just amazing stuff.  You can spend months on the first three pages alone.  Again...TOTALLY worth the investment of time, but easy it ain't.

Yeah, I'm definitely thinking YEARS down the road on the jazz stuff. For the immediate future it's going to be blues and country for me, and maybe learn some folky/rocky stuff to play at parties for family and friends. But then I think it was Joe Pass who started learning and then got a record contract within something insane like a year or a year and a half?

 

I'm just about to start Travis picking, which is what they tell me is one of the first real steps.

BTW.....SWEET Paul you have there.  What are you playing it through?

 

While I'm with you on the country and blues thing (I'm more blues-based than anything...still), I still think the book I recommended might be worth your while sooner rather than later.  Brian Setzer said it more eloquently than I when he said (paraphrasing): The more I learn to play jazz, the better I get at playing everything else.

 

If nothing else, the fret-board mapping in the Ted Greene book will accelerate your other studies by magnitudes.

 

I've received permission from my beloved to build a guitar this year.  I'm contemplating posting "work in progress" reports here from time to time, should I go through with it.  Still haven't completely decided if I'm going to take the plunge yet.  I've built several "kit" type guitars, but never one from scratch.

Thanks! My cousin donated his old Crate GFX-65 when he found out I bought it. I got a really good deal on the guitar, but had just enough money and had to act fast so I couldn't get any gear with it. The Crate's pretty loud and has a pretty crunchy overdrive, which makes the few blues licks and scales that I do know a lot of fun. At this point in my life is more than enough to live up to my knowledge and ability of the instrument. I haven't really researched amps that much yet, mainly because I'm just focused on building my acumen. I figure after another year or two I'll be obsessing over what sort of tone I can get and start looking for something else.

 

Best of luck if you do build your guitar.

Also, I'll definitely check those books out. Thanks for the recommendation!