jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

i really like gretsch's sparkle tops and stuff like cadillac and georgia green

I had a caddy green duo jet for years

I had a bass player that had an f-hole bass that squealed with feedback for the whole show

honestly, the lack of f-holes doesn't work well at reducing feedback, it just changes the way the guitar feeds back.... go figure! now, on the BB King 355 the omission of F-Holes really helps the feedback in conjunction with the center block and as you can hear from BB, Lucille models retain the signature ES thinline series sound

i played one that had them painted on it wasn't bad but the painted f holes were turn off

that's just the spec for some of the signature models, its definitely weird, but you're talking about a company that did drum wrap tops on the Duo Jet and the silly wester stuff like the G brand and the belt buckle soldered to the trapeze tailpieces LOL

most Gretsches are outrageous cosmetically and you learn to embrace it or you lump it....

actually that's normal on some of the Chet Atkins models, expensive vintage examples were like that too.... Chet's specs, they thought it would reduce feedback without having to resort to a center block like a 335.... believe it or not, all the Chet models George Harrison played with the Beatles had painted on F-Holes

Gretsch actually stayed away from center-blocked,335 type guitars until a few years ago when they released some blocked electromatics

http://cosplayers.acparadise.com/72269/b2f3dc4f06a860cf667156303780e2cb.jpg

I have tried a lot of the current production import 335 style guitars and I gotta tell you I am not impressed with almost ANY of them.... the Viking was a serious let down, everything about it felt cheap and the fit and finish are pretty run of the mill Chinese junk....

if I were buying a new import 335 clone I would go Eastman, they are the only ones, epiphones included, that feel like real guitars to me.... play an Eastman next to a Viking, current Guild starfire, an epi 335pto and anything else out there and you will see what I mean

I will say that the new gretsch electromatics are generally very good compared to the competition, but they're kinda their own thing whereas all the guitars I already mentioned sit squarely in the 335 camp tonally

have you looked at vintage lawsuit guitars? I love my Yamaha and I only paid like 700 for it.... pretty universally great 335 rip-offs.... if you wanna spend more you can get some really great stuff, but then you're pulling into Gibson price ranges

YMMV though, just saying, not too knocked out by affordable semis these days.... which is funny because the import solidbodies these companies are cranking out are universally decent

I mean, just allowing a photo and a print source link would be killer, some entries I've done, particularly all the work I put into Pete Townshend, have had interview evidence and multiple photos available for each item.

uh, yeah, I think.... Iw as more thinking Mr Burns from simpsons

whatever you like, just imparting info... I personally find the proco rat and its relatives to be the most versatile distortion out there -- capable of some fuzz-like sounds too

but these days if you spend some money there are so many good dirt pedals with different shades of skronk, they are all good for a lot of tasks, hard to dislike most dirt boxes!

ahoya hoya

is your action crazy low? check your neck relief and look for twists and if the relief is symmetrical adjust the truss accordingly (necks tend yo backbow in winter).... if not, just replace the nut, easy job, break out your files... check the bridge saddles first of course to see if heavy handed strumming has worn the notches down, I see that a lit these days

Their drums beats, which are the most important attribute to a song being punk or not IMO, don't have the main punk beats.

ummm, I'm not sure about that....

I feel like that's a great analogy to use. Bravo.

hahaha, when iw as an engineer I think I spent way too much time trying to describe sounds and styles (or decode from dumbass-musician-ese) with people with little formal training, limited taste and no acoustics or electronic knowledge... not to say they were all crappy musicians, just hard to talk to, so you start building a universal musical vocab so you can streamline discussions with these folks and get making records instead of going back and forth for ages just trying to get on the same page so you can make a plan

I prefer Cash.

me too., though I hesitate to compare them... Dylan's more like Pete Seeger and later on he' like Seeger as revised by Jack Kerouack

greetings, there's a permanent 'hello' thread in the general section of the forum where we encourage all our new members to greet the community in its entirety (the guitar/bass and electronic boards have a lot less regular traffic than general)

http://equipboard.com/forums/general/topics/the-hello-thread-please-allow-me-to-introduce-myself-wave

Shera, is that you first name or a homage to the 'princess of power', he-man's sister?

http://www.ghostofthedoll.co.uk/powdermonki/handmade/images/badges_retro-toys/tv_she-ra-1.jpg

His protest stuff was always pretty good, though his heroes were better... less poetic but even more direct. I like John Wesley Harding and just generally some of the stuff he did with The Band behind him, but really, being a musician first and a lyricist second I prefer The Band on their own. I don't really know the words to a lot of songs and never will, but if you hum a few bars of something I will recognize it, get an instrument and learn it from memory.... but if you wanna play name that tune with me you better be prepared to sing because I want know the words! and that's Dylan's thing, he's a word guy. I'm not. I struggle writing lyrics because as much as I like the English language I just can't put poetry ahead of the music and I feel that way as a listener too. Musically The Band was just stronger without Dylan. Even if his lyrics were great, that just doesn't cut it with me. Dylan's a sketchy musician and either a great lyricist or a mediocre poet.

I'm glad you said it and I didn't have to... I kinda held my 'tongue' on this one!

http://www.billboard.com/files/media/musicares-2015-person-of-the-year-gala-honoring-bob-dylan-billboard-510.jpg

a 'fro by any other name is still as bitchin' .... alright, its more like a mullet/afro hybrid, but whatever, I think Dylan and I'm like 'johnny's in the basement lookin' at my afro...' or 'the answer is 'fro-ing in the wind...'

he's always had a bitchin' 'fro

yes but i'm just satisfying my curiosity i love customization especially on guitars

I tend to acquire off-the-shelf pickups on the cheap at guitar shows and throw them in a drawer before I even know what guitar they might go in. I will generally have a handful of unused pickups of various types, even stuff that doesn't fit in any of my guitars.... so just buy those hotrails, if you don't like them chuck them in a drawer.... I think right now I have a spare strat, a spare tele set, a few Duncan humbuckers, a couple old gold foils that will get used some day.... you get the idea

if I am looking for a really specific sound I generally call my friend Ken at Angeltone pickups and have a chat about the sound I want, what the guitar is made of and different winding methods, magnets, wire and stuff and then he makes me something. So far all the stuff he's wound me has hit the exact tone I was seeking. But it costs :-( he doesn't charge me the additional custom fee he has on his website but we are still talking about a 100 bucks for 1 pickup

you learn a lot on the phone with a guy like Ken.... the small winders are really knowledgeable and fun to chat with

oh, hey, I forgot about the 60s/70s acoustic tuck n roll amps, great solid state clean, direct nd in your face, the sound can be a little hard but for some music its just right... always cool to have one around when recording as an option for cleans

also, my old Selmer Treble N Bass head has a pretty nice clean tone and a lot of headroom... its like a darker voiced Marshall 50 watt with more headroom, a very nice clean sound anywhere from 2 to 6 on the dial... warm, warm, warm, totally unfendery but not as hard sounding as a superlead set clean but a lot punchier in the lows than a vox

also keep in mind that speakers pay into this, celestion style speakers, even the high wattage ones, will break up earlier than the amp sometimes... switching to something firmer will give any amp a cleaner sound! any tube amp with a vintage gain structure run through EVM12Ls will clean up some... if you're playing an old marshall and want its clean sound to come out, ditch that cab full of celestions and try it with EVs or Fanes... David Gilmour is known to make his Hiwatts even cleaner by using selmer cabs loaded with Fane Crescendos, a speaker with very little breakup even when pushed and HUGE power handling, I think they are like 100 watts making his cabs able to take 400 watts, his whole rig is dialed in for clean with effects disengaged and the pairing of those amps and speaker cabs means he can really take some heads off with his clean sound before he's even mixed into the PA

cheer up, everyone has bad performances... I once forgot to play a solo at a pretty big show (at least 400 people attending) and when I tried to come back in I played in the wrong key completely, got in the right key and flubbed a ton of notes and then the singer had the balls to say my name after the solo section just making the embarrassment worse.... I mean, my mom was at that one, I felt like such a wanker and that whole show was one of my all time worst, a real low point

but I played more shows and it faded after about a year.... I honestly haven't thought about it for 5 or 6 years until today when I was trying to thin of something similar that happened to me so I could give you a pep talk

this dude threw down a challenge, you decided to be really impressive and your subconscious betrayed you... if you take anything from this let it be this; you are only as good as you are on your worst day, so don't be too quick to show off...

I'm still a bit of a smack talker when it comes to music because its hard not to be a know it all when you have a huge wealth of legit knowledge, but I definitely don't show off when I play anymore because the older I got the more frequently I would be thinking I was going to impress people and I would wind up embarrassing myself or some unassuming dude at an open jam would hop up and blow me away without trying to even though I was playing my absolute best... the worst is when you're showing off your chops and some dude just throws something down that's simple, easy to execute, but beautiful and he makes your flash sound like garbage... so yeah, I think there's a moral to this story, which is that you coulda easily answered the guy's request for something crazy by saying you would rather play music the whole class would enjoy or answer general questions about music and playing the bass -- AND once you did bomb you might've pointed out to the class that the great thing about music is that, unlike a lot of other activities in life, its not a contest

its basically an ac30 top boost, right down to the speaker efficiency, but yeah, they have a slight voice of their own, his other ac30 offerings like the stingray and z-wreck and stuff have more of their own clean sound, butwhen I say ac30 I am lumping in any top-boost style amp and you can lump most of the ef86 channel amps with the matchless DC30, they are all apples and apples

they're a sound, other pickups have another sound... decide what you are tryingto do and then think it over...

you're impossibly young, aren't you?

they are kinda like a wider firebird humbucker with bobbins, no cover and not a ton of epoxy linking the coils mechanically, what of them?

a fender pickup has polepiece magnets with 'flaltwork' on either side to form a bobbin and the coils is wound directly on the magnets with the non magnetic flat pieces creating the height of the coil.... the insulation and gauge of the wire give as much of the sound as the dimensions of the bobbin... in teles the baseplate on the bridge plays a big role because they used various steel formulations and various finishes from zinc to copper to raw, changing the magnetic field around the pickup... the saddles and bridge play into it too, more onteles but reallt on all fender guitar as ferrous components near the bridge affect the tone

but there are tons of other pickup ideas... fender's singles and Gibson's bucker have becme the stndards but the field was littered with great sounding ideas in the 40s, 50s and 60s.... I used to own a duo jet with dearmonds that was a studio ac, best sounding pickups ever.... kiinda a P90ish bobbin but with height adjustable magnet polepieces, a reined fender idea so it hyrbided the fat p90 single sound with the snap of a tele, but the coils were medium width and super tall lending a certain mid clarity.... it was magic until I had to play on stage and then the hum was murder LOL

dano lipsticks and burns trisonics are sealed designs with wire would around a abr magnet, but in a dano its a smaller coil directly on an oval ground alnico 8 magnet (mildly unusual magnet material) whereas the burns uses a tape would coil set around a anisotropic bar magnet (weird in pickups), and the slightly diferent contruction gives them a different character... thoughsimilar due to the coil around a bar idea... firebird buckers, interestingly, are small coils on small bars out of phase in series and then peoxied into the smooth cover...

there's a lot to this

how deep do you wanna go? I am an expert.

know that every pickup style, when made with care is special and worth playing

if you respect the deadly power of electricity, can do some algebra and can decipher a schematic then a tech is only needed for catastrophic issues you can't diagnose... and the more you service your amp stable the less likely you will fail to diagnose and repair an unhealthy tube amp....

a P90 is a single coil, just not fender style design... there are tons of single coils out there that aren't fender designs from back in the day:

dearmonds (gold foils, dynasonics etc)

dano lipsticks

P90s

Kleenex pickups

staple pickups

hi-lo trons

guild singles

pre-Gibson epi 'NYC' singles

burns trisonics

tons and tons, I could go on but memory fails!

even in humbuggies, before the Gibson format took over there were two other competing dual coils from Gretsch (filtertron) and Guild (HB1) that sound totally different from a PAF or T-Top

if it was making a loud hissing/snapping/frying-bacon noise? filter caps, normal problem, replacing them ahs NO effect on tone

if it was intermittent it was a cold solder joint or a bad tube

I could go on.... if it was outputting sound at all and powering up though you know the most expensive components, the transformers are okay

I love guys who sell malfunctioning amps because they are electronically ignorant, 9 times out of 10 its a tube or an even cheaper part and if its not? filter caps, still cheap to recap the whole power supply!

heads up, the big muff is not a true fuzz, its a very grainy diode clipping distortion... the transistor stages overload eachother a bit but like a classic fuzz box contribute little to the quality of the distortion stock because of the diode clamps squaring the waveform.... if you remove one set of diodes the pedal becomes a supa tonebender and sounds even more fuzz like... there are some vintage fuzzes (like octave fuzzes, the fox tonemachine and univox superfuzz come to mind) that use diodes and the big muff is kinda the evolution of that aesthetic, the missing link between 60s fuzztones and 70s hard clipping distortions

when I think classic fusion distortion I always seem to think of 60s fuzzes like the fuzz face, tonebbender & fuzzrite OR I think of later sounds when the style was really evolved and I am thinking of something like an mxr dist+ or the early mesa gain sound that's ALL AMP

A Boss Flanger (bright and chimey... real bell tones) is not as overpowering as an EHX Electric Mistress (can really take over when a fuzz is involved... definitely play with your signal chain on this one!), compare those sounds for staters online then hunt out some used or clones...

I love the BF2 and wish I knew what I did with mine, but keep in mind it loses its chime and gets harsh and gritty with hot pickups as the buffer tends to overload so if you play high output pickups beware.... same goes for the lovely Ibanez FL9 flangers, though when you overload those a little its more pelasant sicne their flanging circuit has a different response overall

the OP should try a FoxxRoxx TZF , they are amazing, real Thru Zero Flanging like using 2 tape machines, but unlike most Thru Zeros its not digital, somehow Foxx did it with analog componentry! he's a wizard and everything he makes is top notch, but like his Octron the TZF is a standout!

in tube amps? apart from big fenders...

vintage Hiwatt... post 72, they were a little dirtier in the early years... power of a marshall, tons of headroom and clarity, a little fender in the mix, but lower harmonic distortion... very fast response but with just enough tube harmonics and compression to give the sound some color and nice sustain.... the 'golden age' hiwatt DR heads are damned clean most of the way up the dial but have a wide 'sweet spot'... the finished design is a really unique design too, not like anything else

AMPEG! They made more than bass amps, guys (and even the bass amps are so well designed that they can easily be dialed in for wonderful clean guitar tones.... great preamps on these guys).... Everett Hull was a jazzer who HATED rock 'n roll and thought tube instrument amps should be distortion free up to 9 or 10! other than the jet and reverboroket (both have killer clean but are light on headroom compared to their siblings, the jet because its tiny, the rockets because some of the engineers slipped a more rock n roll design past 'ol Everett) the rest of the line has fabulous headroom.... my favorites of the Hull era are definitely the Gemini series, especially the Gemini II with the 15".... after Hull sold the company the V series is fabulous though a bit hard to service and prone to failure after 40 years of abuse, people think drive from these amps because the stones endorsed them and they are favored by Josh Homme these days, but in actuality even the VT4/V2 and B25, the smallest ones, have way more headroom than you will need for most gigs and the cleans are sweet and highly tailorable due to the most sophisticated tone shaping and well tuned preamp circuits of the era... at a time when fender was ruining their amp line Ampeg was taking their old aesthetic and applying it to the rock market and while fender's innovations were poorly implemented and fairly superfluous after leo sold, after Hull sold ampeg the engineers really ahd a field day implementing more and more useful and unique features like the active, semi parametric inductor-driven midrange on the Vs.... if they weren't such a bear to keep u with I would still have one.... the reissue V4B gets pretty close to the old V sound and reliability won't be a problem due to age

while the headroom isn't there in a loud situation, vox ac30s have a very nice, highly compressed and colored clean tone when set moderately... depending on the year the response will be slightly different and the headroom will vary, but its a great sound.... and they slide into breakup more easily from a nice clean sound more easily than any other amp

Matchless DC30, EF86 channel.... very similar to an ac30 but the firmer output section makes it punchier even when powerfully overdriven, but the hot EF86 provides some fantastic wide bandwidth clean like nothing you have ever heard... again, you need to be careful setting it up for clean because the amp WANTS TO BREAK UP, but it can be done at band levels in full power mode with the stock rectifier and its so sweet, very unique sound and feel

Sunn... apart from the model T, vintage Sunn amps have huge clean tones that sit between an old fender twin and a hiwatt... they have a very blackface preamp coupled to a hifi output section (basically a Dynaco ST70 power amp design... the early ones actually used Dynakit monoblock hifi amps as their power section, but later they started scratch building them with little circuit revision)

another unheralded knockout gem for clean is the 50s Gibson Rhythm King, it has a mellow, jazzy voice and huge headroom for the era, when its starts to breakup its subtle and you will will still sound pretty clean well up the dial.... its a great tone... the Gibson GA50T is their second cleanet 50s amp and its pretty sweet too.... also ahs a phenomenal trem circuit like the GA40 les paul... but yeah, the old gibbies are mainly low output and have less headroom than their fender counterparts, but the bigger models have a fantastic tweed voice with MORE headroom than their fender coutnerparts.... they are aren't all arounders, but what they do is like nothing else before or since

old magnatones have KILLER clean.... the big ones, the little guys have like ZERO headroom and the big ones are maybe a little more open than an ac30, but man do they sound good... the new ones sound pretty good but sound more modern to my ear... they capture some of the spirit but really crossover into other signature clean tones and have less of the vintage vibe (no pun intended, get it? magnatone invented true stereo vibrato)

in solid state amps the JC120 (asTel_Nobody mentioned) is a benchmark of the solid stte boom, but Yamaha made a bunch of amps in the alte 70s that look kinda like Fenders and share the same feature set and layout as a twin that are some fantastic clean amp that are less sterile than a Jazz Chorus with its chorus disengaged... I'm always tempted to buy one

some rarer amps that really kill for clean are the Vox ac50 and 100, listen to any beatles record between 'For Sale' and 'Help!' to hear the glorious, gooey cleanness! the preamp is like a low gain ac30 into a very obust power section that operates in a hybrid way giving it a mix of ac30 and marshall feel, clean or dirty

the rarest great clean amps are without a doubt the Vox UL series.... another beatles amp as well as being a Zep amp and being the mainstay of Bernie Sumner (joy division, new order) all through his early career, they are a hybrid amp sorta like a musicman, solid state preamp (cribbed from the US Thomas organ made solid state voxes like the super beatle) into a tube power amp, but they are glorious for clean to my ears... sadly few were made and they've become quite collectible often commanding more money than early ac30s

honorable mention to the music man HD hybrid amps I was just talking about, very clean though not my favorite clean sound.... a lot of people really like them though and they are both affordable and indestructible

a lot of these amps are things you only know to seek out and try if you are a total amp nutter like me, but in the search for my sound I tried everything when I departed from fender in the late 90s.... I left out a lot of boutique stuff that's just refined fender cleans (dumble type amps and early mesas come to mind) and another response covered 2 of the most popular modern varieties of that idealized fender sound anyway...

excellent

for straight expression usage I would go Mission or Moogerfooger

as I said, its like one of the big Morleys, maybe a bit bigger.... y'know, like the size of 70s treadle phasers and flangers... in fact, I had a mu-tron foot flanger back then and the VS volume was the same basic size as that

that's correct, top notch with or without using the visual reference, which is more than gimmick in practice. I've used someone else's version 1 in the studio for some swells that needed to be really smooth and peak out at different levels to match the drummer's dynamics with different amounts of amp grit on those peak (it was a real specific thing we were shooting for with a cocked wah creating feedback/dirt into a really loud marshall, just one of those really specific noises you add after all the really musical parts are tracked and there's a rough mix with a final vocal take/comp)... I couldn't get them dead on with my volume control so I borrowed that VS pedal and it was so easy with the visual reference to know where my crest was and how much space I had to blow things up a bit more each bar. The pedal had very little tone coloration and was smooth as butter to operate with an intuitive range to the sweep. I mean, they're visual sound because of the meter on the volume pedal, which was their first offering and in my eyes is still their flagship. Its not THAT big, maybe the size of a standard Morely... I'm not usually one for playing with my eyes, but its hard to tell how much room you have until max volume on volume pedals, but the VS just gives you that tip off when you need to be exact.

looks tidy enough! especially for a first build

if anything I woulda glopped more solder on those switch terminals in case they wiggle when you're stompin' in the future, solder's not glue and usually less is more but on a part that might move it can be good to really glop it on just in case (to avoid the joint going cold if the switch swivels and the connection shifts).... I assume you have a strong mechanical connection on those terminals, right? like the wire was wrapped through that eyelet so that it would barely budge before the solder was applied? many pros will criticize me, but I only make nice, neat joints when my connections are tight enough mechanically to pass signal on their own.

I thought that was off the table awhile ago. The VS kills, really great product...

oh yeah, sorry, the picture's not good enough to ID whether that's an oddball gibby or epi V model, a stock one refined or maybe something like a Hamer Vector.... or a luthier one off clone. I wouldn't touch this one. He's probably just posing with it for a laugh anyway.

I didn't read the article as criticizing our servers.... it more seemed like it was giving props to this guy's enormous popularitythat his fans could take down a popular and established gear site... they seemed to be giving us props for being so thorough with everyone's gear that the dude's fans would flock in regarding EB as the authority on all things rig related!