Guitars of future past!

In smaller tube amps there's always a smudge of hamonuc distortion on the cleans. It may not be audible as overdrive, but the subtle overtones are what make tube amp tones juicy and desirable. A jc120 can give you boneclean guitar if thats what you want. That said, i have 30 watters so that i can get a very clean and punchy top boost sound when i want to be all pixies/bob mould with od switching. But doing more if a classic rock type thing i really like playing in 15 watt and letting the amo breathe and if it means my clean tone us not soclean when i dig in so be it. I don't aproach amps and guitars, dirty and clean in the black and white way you youngsters do. There are lots of subtle shades and i get them with my fingers and knobs based on how i am feeling...

Must be something that comes with experience! I must admit I am developing my tastes constantly. I love fender clean tone and vox clean tone, both are pretty different though. I like the JC120 for clean and chorus but beyond that I wouldn't want one.

Something I like to do on my friends hotrod deluxe is play it where there a slight crunch then back off the guitar volume to clean it up, love being able to do that.

By the way how long wire do you need to wire the output on the toggle to the jack in a les Paul? Is 2ft long enough? If so I'll buy this cloth wore that has 2ft white, 2ft black, 2 red and 2ft yellow just to make life easier with wiring up the pick ups ao I don't get confused with which wire os which.

2 feet each is morr than enough.

Thought si, just had my concerns

well good luck...

Thank you, I look forward to have my les Paul back, though this conductive paint is annoying inside, unless you put masking tap over the lugs on the pit where they can contact the body you short everything out. May just use long pots, by the way are the Emerson pro cts pots with +/- 9% vs the cts +/- 10%. The Emerson work out as 465k - 535k I think and the cts 450k - 550k (if my math in my head is right?)

I've been there with the shielding paint for my (former) LP special.... its a pain, but if you try a sponge brush from an arts and crafts store instead of a real bristle brush you will be able to apply it in a more effective manner with less dripping. As you apply it, try holding your wife's hair dryer over it on HOT/FULL power to get it set in place too ;-)

Use long shafts. It will be easier. LPs and short shaft pots are a pain even if the top is routed to accommodate them.

Your math looks close enough. Honestly we are not talking about a lot of variation. Anything over 350k sounds right. I would worry more about getting pots with a smooth taper. CTS regular pots have a nice taper as do Bourns.

Epiphone did it, a good job too, just annoying and ill go long shaft pots then and save some effort. I think I'm gubna go linear pots because I usually prefer them to audio though the cts audio pots have a nice taper om them

I like linear...also try out log pots (audio is reverse log)... they are cool too

I think I have log pots in my Ibanez, those or audio, don't remember what I put in there. Have to try reading the code on the back if I haven't soldered on them

No need to look. If they sound alright and feel good turning them its alrigjt, man. Electronics are really about what feels good to you and can allow you to sound the most like yourself. I sound so much like me anymore that you need to change several variables to skew my sound. Changing pickups or the amp won't take away my "jimness." but if you screw with all the electronic elements, maybe give me an ibanez jem and a mesa? Maybe i won't sound a lot like me without a lot of knob tweakin. But any older styled guitar with more vintage guts into an old amplifier design i will sound like myself. Anything nastier than 2204 or 2203 marshall and i have to really fiddle to find a sound tjat will allow me to get my tones. And i may need to play deafeningly loud to do it. But thru most people gear with their giitars i sound nothing like them. It can be so drastic people might think i flipped amp channels! All but the highest output guitars really sound different when I play them. Not better per se, just the way i fret abd strum and such is distinctive and hard to obscure. Everything i like is about accentuating that. Its great to sound like yourself.

Guys, I've already said I don't play it that loud, and probably should play it louder,, though I can't without my parents excommunicating me. Read the whole thing.

With all those triode stages you should have plenty of gain for anything short of "chugga chugga scooped cookie monstuh metal" (raaahh) even before audible power amp and phase inverter distortion. Youcould take your modulations, delays and and maybe an mxr microamp or ehx lpb1 and get a pile of tones.

Ugh. I have to go to my day job the rest if the week.

I think everyone who has been playing a while has their own distinctive style and tone, professional or bedroom warrior. No one has the same strumming style as me at all, I strum and pick individual strings at more less the same time on just simple power chords, no one else I know does it, I also have a way of playing chords, just strumming really but I guess I have my own thing going on how I do it for it to sound like me playing. Not something I can help, just how I play and I like it, I have my own sound and none of my friends can mimic me which I like alot haha. No one seems to be able to get guitars to sustain like me or have anywhere near the same vibrato sound as me despite having a very similar technique. I need to get lessons though in my opinion, there's stuff I want to learn that teaching myself isn't working such as sweep picking and i want to teach myself to read music again at some point in time.

I think its cool how we all have our own barebones sound when you take away the distortion and effects, we could all do the same 3 chords but sound different to eachother

Exactly. All the individuality is the cool thing about electric guitar and why its such an icon of freedomand non-violent rebellion. As long as you don't muffle the signal with tons of crap the guitar is like you personality amoed up tohowever many watts your amp produces. Or maybe tins if effects liading diwn the signal IS your personality. Like david gilmour.

And the guitar is easy. Everyone on earth bit my ex-wife can learn to play enough chords and licks to startexpressing themselves (though there are times I wish the guitar were more challenging so it would keep the morons out).

Yea, I love playing guitar and just doing my own thing making stuff up as I go along, occasionally I get something that sounds good and wrote it down the play with it for a while. Often I'll come up with a killer riff and the struggle to think of what I could wrote around it.

I was teaching Claire how to play guitar before she got pregnant, she insists on playing a strat despite the scale being too big for her small hands. She can play better on my les Paul but loves the strat and she's claimed my Ibanez when I get it. She might find that easier to play with the ultra thin neck ob it though.

My daughter has claimed my art120 haha, she loves it and is always trying to play it and my son likes me paying it, always puts him to sleep :)

I like my effects but hate tap dancing, need a looper pr to do a midi set up in a rack because that looks fun to do and can control presets and individual pedals. I think once I hate my 4 modulation pedals, chorus, polychorus, phase and delay buy I might not get a delay as I fail to see what id use it for. I'm not keen on it so its probably a waste of money unless I get a cheap one. I have a small clone which is great but want more flexibility so replacing with the hardwire stereo chorus.

Have you ever had a rack with effects pedals in linked to a rack mounted midi thing that's controlled by a midi foot board?

nah, I always had my rack as a separate chunk of gear from stompboxes. I never used a lot of effects so...

Fair enough, something I've seen lately and wanted to maybe give it a go. At the moment I mainly use my ds-1 and my CM-2 I just want modulation now mainly now, so reckon I'll have 6-8 pedals max on my board really. Might get a programmable looper so I can switch on a few effects at once but also want to be able to use individual effects at other times, so not sure what I'm looking for in terms of pedal switching really but would like something to make it easier for turning on 3 effects at once. I guess I'll see how I feel when I have those modulation pedals and see if I think I need it or not

I am getting into the idea of switching preamps and some analog effects around with the loops in G system or Helix... and of course utilizing a lot of the effects in them when required to have anything apart from great amp tones and maybe a basic analog drive like an sd1 for solos. I want to modernize a little so that I have more options but can still do all the things I usually do in my dinosaur style of electric guitar playing. I dunno though. I have yet to bite the bullet. I have so much going on right now that its fun to dream and impractical to buy anything I am not sure I will love. I shouldn't be speding on luxury items I am unlikely to use frequently. I have lots of amps, maybe I could justify another guitar, but I really should keep my hands off the helix and G system until my universe settles down into a more manageable routine. Its getting there. I dunno if I will change my mind about the effects processor/switching setup by the time I legitimately have funds available and the free time to enjoy more toys. I barely have time to enjoy the toys I already have LOL. Sometimes I think my son enjoys my guitar collection more than I do. He was really bonding with them on Sunday. He went through my pick bucket to get a pink pick and then I ahd to get all of Daddy's "buitars" out, all of em.

I used to use my rack as a set-and-forget thing to embiggen my sound with a cheap doubling effect on large stages and maybe some slapback. I mainly used it on stage with an old spx90 processor doing a stereo thing off the line out from my hot plate.... distortion switchin was all about amp switchin and I would occasionally have modulation and/or fuzz out front of the clean or dirty side. When I used effects on the road it was a mix of a few things used very subtley. I mainly worked with amp tone. Great, old-style tube amps turned WAY up have always been the backbone of my sound. I can never get anything else to do my thing except crazy expensive soldano heads, and ven those are not exactly the "Jim" sound... if I ever do another sideman gig I figure I will wanna have more effects options to please the musician I am playing for....

Bump. More guitar experiences and war stories guys!