jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

for the RG you wanna use all 4 coils individual in differing combos of series and parallel on the same switch.... you will need anew fangled, so-called "super-switch" 5 way knife switch or you will want to put it on a rotary control like PRS's super-humbucker wiring.... you can't do it with a traditional switch...

without seeing the guts of the RG I dunno what will work best in there. I am sure it already has a 5 way, but the superswitch is somewhat bigger under the hood. If the guitar has the strat type knob layout I would turn one into a rotary and do the PRS wiring and ditch the blade switch, they are too easy to bump while playing anyway.... I would also do something more interesting than what you are suggesting since wiring your very banal configuration on one switch will be just as big a painas doing something more interesting.

and how big is your neighbor's castle?

As a subgenre pedant, I'd put them as prog rock, with metal elements, especially in the lyrical apects, and occasionally in the musical side of things; it can get quite intense.

my ex-wife's like you.... gotta fins a subgenre for every frickin' song... maddening...

the good gotohs are VH-1s. The best VH-1s have braided Gibson wire, the ones with the grey plastic cable aren't as good and anything else is really meh... in Maxons any U series pickups are pretty decent, each type supposedly has different magnet grades and winding pattern/turns. The most PAF-like are the "dry Z" maxons, but the U and PU series pickups ALL sound good. Some Ibanez and some Tokais used the Maxon stuff apart from Greco who used them until about 85, Burny always used the Gotohs as did the lower end Tokais. I think Ibanez rebranded all their pickups.... the super 70ss Ibanez bucker that has such a following is a rebranded Maxon whereas their hotter offerings in guitar slike the destroyer were Gotoh copies of dimarzios.

I don't like the cobalts or anything that's not mostly nickel so I'll stick with my classic ernies... I am sued to them for better or for worse and everything else sounds and feels wrong, not to mention it requiring me to reintonate the guitar just to try them... ugh!

its actually a proto-339 by Greco, called an sa500. Gibson custom copped the small size from Greco for the small bodied ES models in the 90s. The original MIJ version is the same depth as a 335 whereas the Gibson version is a little thinner than a 335. I have come close to buying 2 different 339s that had great necks and a good over all sound, but didn't have the hollowness I was seeking. Sounded too much like les pauls in the end (I was A/Bing with comparable LP and 335 models from the same year both times at the store... all 57 classic equipped through a vox ac15 heritage or HW depending on what the store had). The other thing the old Greco has going is a block that only runs from neck joint to the bridge so there's even more air space to add the hollowness. That also makes it lighter than a 335 or even a 339, even with the added depth. The one I am looking at is only a little over 7lbs. the one I pictured has nicer flame, the one I might get is more of a plain top. I am debating doing it. The price is great and the frets are in great shape and the overfret binding is intact, but there's a lot of lacquer wear and chipping and the body binding is cracking in a few places. If I buy her I know I should sell something of comparable value, but I am so happy with my stable that I cannot pick a guitar or amp to part with so I'm kinda hedging. This is from the same Japanese guitar-pusher who offered me the fixer-upper Greco LP that I finally passed on. This costs even more but is 100% functional. I am nervous because the price is really good. I have dealt with this guy before and I wanna trust him, but I keep thinking there must be something hes not disclosing that has him selling her 20% under current market value... its always a crap shoot with dealers, man. I bought my Yamaha from him, but there were some little issues with that when I got it that he coulda been more open about. His assessment of the truss mobility on that guitar was not so accurate and its only because I ahd him completely slack the rod prior to shipping to the USA that I was able to lubricate the adjustment bolt and get the encka s straight as I prefer. He also didn't tell me how worn out the nut was and that's hard to see even in a high res photo.... so who knows what this Greco is really like. it appears to have some deent PAF copies in her. The Maxon and Gotoh made fabulous PAFs with vrious magnet grades and different coil windings from abou 75 to 90. I was always skeptical until I got that Greco Mick Ralphs with the good Maxon-made PAF clones. Wow. They don't sound exact;ly like any of the old gibbies I have played, but they DO have the elusive "2nd note" thing happening on single notes into overdrive with mazingly complex doublestops, the magical tone shift on your vibrato and they have the right EQ response with tight bass, thick mids with NO sub-800hz honkiness to them and an airy, jangly top even when crunchy. And I haven't heard any other PAF clones that do all of that, whereas even the weakest output and hottest output PAFs in old-ass guitars exhibit those mystical qualities. Whatever Maxon did, they put a lot of work into ear testing the formula before going into production. or they just got lucky because all the parts and tooling were more readily available less than a decade after the end of PAF production....

I am rambling at you, but you get what I am saying.

what's an HM2 again? using the amp's inbuilt features is always a great place to start. Know your amp. Why buy a 2 channel an amp and live on the clean channel. I am an ac30 guy and they do not have a dedicated drive channel or anything, but I really use all the channels on all 3 of mine. I use the vib/trem even for non modulating. It has its own voicing and I use the shit outta it for focused midrange soling. I am one of those guys wholoves the AC normal hannel too. Its got a billion uses, man. People get put off by how dark it is below noon, but its just a tube and a straight wire with gain, nothing bogging you down. Dark? yes, but FAT. Loves telecaster bridge signals to boot. Loves em. Know your amp before you buy anything else. Odds are it does a lot between all the footswitch features and your guitar's knobs. As an LP guy you have a world of options before you even mod the stock controls. If you add a phase or coil tap the sky's the limit, Liam.

Maybe you don't need an SG standard right now... get the new TV, that benefits everyone in your family. I mean, you HAVE a brand new LP you are just getting to know. I am naybe not the guy to be telling you this with my long running history of rabid guitar acquisition, but I have slowed down substantially since becoming a dad. I have gotten rid of way more stuff than I have purchased. I went through a burst of guitar buying and selling over the summer around the time I joined EB, but I had mostly been selling gear for the last year or so before I started to feel like I wanted more guitars again and decided that I was enjoying the SG I got the year before u was born SO much that I was going to move over from fenders and gretsches and do more Gibson an guild type of stuff. No joke, I had 6 tube amps from the 50s thru present now I have 4. And the 4th is not particularly valuable, just an ac4hw. I had like 20 fuzzes. Now I have one or two. I had 4 or 5 ODs, now I have NONE. I had a pile of attenuators, I sold them because I never use them (and the ac4 made the weber one redundant for home playing too... if 15 watts is too loud I can play the ac4). I got rid of the last of my rack gear that was just sitting here. Even a piece I wanted to keep, the electrix filter factory. I never use it anymore and its worth a lot so I could her. I bought it new in the store like 15 years ago. Oh well. Seriously, bursts of guitar and gear purchasing need to be offset by liquidating stuff you aren't using so much anymore... especially when you are a DAD.

Also, the SG standard is a guitar I would really do used, man. The last handful of years have NOT been good years for the SG. There's a guitar center only version from 2013 that's not bad, has a medium neck and tappable 57 classics, but otherwise things had been going downhill for SG production since the start of the new decade. They really had a good patch during the time that Gibson also offered the SG classic and the Pete Townshend signature SG special. But really anything from the late 90s into last decade is pretty good. I have just personally encountered more good SG standards made between 05 and 10. I have't played the 16 traditional SG standard yet, but I know last year they had a few models without innovations and they were kinda meh and the 2014 ones were not up to snuff in my opinion. I played a lot of Sgs made between like 2011 and 2014 and it was the slightly older ones I really liked for tone and feel. I wound up with an older one. The one I fell in love with and bought is an 08 I think. I forget now. She has been in her case mostly these days. Her and my 77 Greco mick ralphs don't sit on stands because the neck joints are too delicate to risk being knocked over by the sprout. I am seriously thinking of buying one of these from a dealer I know. I think the one he is unloading is a 79 or 80:

http://img13.shop-pro.jp/PA01277/346/product/87956270_o1.jpg?20150318130536

By the way, thank the BBC or whoever was responsible for that kids' show Mr Maker. Me and Lu have been way into it!

no, bakelite is a vintage plastic, one of the earliest types of plastic. It was used in early electronics parts as an insulator/dialectric and for pickguards and pickup covers for very early fenders and other electrics of the era.... its a real "Americana" thing....

I didn't think it was a secret! I got the distinct impression from Murphy that he outgrew his Bowie phase and now wants to be the goth Peter Gabriel... well, he wouldn't say he's goth, he's too cool to admit he helped birth the goth scene even though admitting that comes with mad street cred in my book. But whatever Peter Murphy... carry on. Try not to drive when you're fucked up.

yeah, dude, you need to retin your each of your iron's tips every so often. You can't count on extra solder from the last job sticking to it and 'tinning' it. Solder flux can help a lot too, expecially with ground bus wire to the bridge or the abck of pots. It seems un-rock, but doing it right 1st time saves hassle and saving yourself hassle is VERY rock n roll.

I dunno if you can still get it, its old, but PSP had this badassed thing called the pianoverb that simulates the reverb produced by blasting the strings of a piano with a loud noise, so its a slightly tonal reverb... hard to describe the actual sound

Tool aren't precisely metal, but they are metal but most non-musician and non-metalhead standards. If you mention them to joe-listener who mostly likes pedestrian rock, hiphop and pop top 40 they will say Tool play metal. I think that's accurate in a very broad sense and really genres are about being broad as every band or artist has their own take on a particular style (or should, shame on you bands who excessively imitate).

I wasn't really crediting tool's success to Maynard, even their early success. He contributed. But like many bands full of extremely proficient musicians they are a bit faceless without him. He adds a focal point for the casual listener and used to define the band's personality if not tis sound. I think if you take that focal point away from the casual fan Tool will sell a lot less records and tickets. Their real fans will likely be pleased, but the fan who owns a handful of singles on their iPod but will shell out for a ticket when they are on the road? I dunno. Those kinda fans make up a lot of album and ticket revenue. Look at acts like stone temple pilots. They tried to do it without scott 3 times now (twice under a different name) and they just do not fill the same number of seats, even with the linkin park kid doing a fairly convincing weiland impression. The question for the other 3 members of tool is a financial one. Its unfair, but the business works this way. Your singer can hold you hostage more or less if you are not careful. That's what made me throw in the towel on my own music career. Between management issues that got wrapped up in the court system, financial problems and the vocalists mercurial attitude I just couldn't see the point of going on when Iw as pushing 30 even if surmounting even 2 of those obstacles coulda seen us going national very quickly. It justw asn't worth the headache anymore knowing that no matter how much went right the singer might get squirrely and tank things on me...

"has much better tone than..." 5 words only a marketer would put together in that order... its different. Titanium as a saddle or a trem block is definitely closer in tone to brass than it is to steel and it lasts forever. Does it have better tone than steel or brass? well? in my experience its a good balance between steel and brass in a tele saddle but the fact of the matter is I wound up with steel on one tele I kept and brass on another, so better? just different. My esquire is super traditional. Light swamp ash body, maple fingerboard, traditional bridge.... it came with mid 50s steel saddles, I put compensated hipshot brass ones on. After trying a complete rutters milled bridge with his "invisibly" compensated steel saddles on my frankentele I decided to try his titanium broadcaster sized abrrels.... I wound up back with the hipshot brass ones. The mids were the same from the titanium but the brass just had a more "narrow" frequency response that sounded better to me. The titanium had too much of everything, whereas steel is strong and tight bass and bright top... its so subtle though. If durability is a primary concern like it is for Floyd guys who have that knife edge to deal with and all those moving parts bashing around as the divebomb, then titanium provides an excellent tone that has the fatness of brass as well as some of steel's characteristics too and it LASTS FOREVER.

The main thing to watch out for shopping for epihone LPs as far as I am concerned is a good one. If there are any good ones made since 1995 I am still watching out for it! the stuff your describing should not happen on any guitar with the moniker "pro." Every one of the epi versions of the grownup gibsons has some flaw like that flat spot you mentioned.... I think if your actual Gibson weren't from the oddball run last year you would be as critical of your epi as I am of chinese epis and some korean and Indonesian ones in general. Face up, you are fixing her and keeping her for sentimental reasons. Your fiancée gave her to you. That's a big deal. If my ex-wife ever gave me a guitar, even a recent import epi? I woulda treasured that thoughtfull and well-meaning gift and maybe we wouldn't be divorced! I also woulda made a point of playing the guitar in front of her all the fucking time whether I liked it or not.... but shes still a cheap, questionable made student guitar. A lot of the absolute dregs of the Gibson USA line are in the same boat. Cheaply made student guitars with inflated price tags. At leas the import stuff doesn't carry the glorious Gibson logo, right? I prefer unauthorized foreign copies that were made for the direct Asian market. They are generally better bang for buck, even new MIJ copies like ESP's popular Edwards lacquer-taste series.... even if I look at guitars meant for export to the west, I would take the right LTD eclipse or Schecter LP shape over an epi (I ahte to say this, but the schecter Robin Zander signature school's the epi dot pro in every way, you have to spend double to get an acceptable epi 335 type guitar), the "other" brands who are based in Japan and use factories in Japan and Korea to produce guitars for the US market are generally vastly superior guitars if you can find one where the cosmetics aren't horribly "brutal".... LTD makes a sparkle top eclipse I am always tempted to buy.... or you want a really good import setneck at a great price? FUCKING REVEREND, dude. They even do a semihollow SG shape... every one I pick up plays like butter and sounds pretty damn good stock. Their boltons rule too. Worthy successors to the USA made reverend boltons that were a cult favorite when Iw as a kid (wish I ahd bought one then, damn).

he ruins the band's vibe? apart from my questions about what the fuck that even means I really wonder what tool would be without him. His unique vocal adds a lot to what they are doing. The music is creative and the performance proficient, but the stand out vocal and original lyrical content really helps sell tool to non-metal peeps like me.

Anyway, you can'y have a band named tool and have a singer who behaves normally. All singers are tools, but if you name your band tool then your singer needs to be the biggest tool out there short of Axl.

I will reserve judgement until it comes out... whenever that is.

Titanium sounds a lot like brass but is indestructible like steel. Aluminum is really light and not very dense. It will wear diwn fast under heavy strings. Its most commomnly used for stop bars, 50s noncomp wraoarounds and tele barrels. You need a big chunk of it with no string grooves to resist string tension without being gtound doen or bent. It has a sound though.

I haven't even done drop d for a decade unless i am playing slide. I had a tele in keef open g 5 string for awhile but i never played it. Standard works. I am fluid and badassed in standard tuning.

I have never played an epi lp that wasn't mij or very early 90s mik that was worth a damn. The current epi mic 'pros' really look the bill but everything about them feels slightly off in a way upgrade hardware will not alleviate. They are not to my liking nor are the chinese 335s. Even the slash epi lp. I wanba like them because i could buy 2 or 3 for what i paid for some if my instruments, but even blindfolded i think i would balk at the feel of the neck and fingerboard. I do want to try the epi bonamassa signature. He seems like a tool but he really stands behind his signature gear.

The damged lp in question is a 70s greco 700 model so its got a mix of norlin era features and 50s features to it leaning heavily towards 50s.

I mean, that's my impression of the special. The enck just feels less shaped than a standard, a lot of time the neck angle is a little off too, which isn't technically a big deal, but it can limit you setting the action low if you like low action or conversely it can make it difficult to get the stop bar set for optimal sustain. A neck angle that's off a degree or two also effects string tension and how the strings pass thru the nut when tuning.... you get the idea. The specials aren't awful, they're just not a stripped down standard, which is how they are marketed. They're a whole other playing experience that is just not for everyone. As well as binding the fingerboard, Gibson just seems to put a lot more care into the standard necks, probably because they just HAVE TO do more sanding on the shoulder to get the neck binding flush with the wood for finishing. Might as well really create a nice neck profile by hand while you are doing all that tricky binding work.

I know all about waiting for parts when your stash runs out or you have the wrong shaft diameter on a pot or toggle. Infuriating, right?

I am trying to talk myself out of another fixer-upper guitar right now. I can technically afford it, fix it for $15 plus my labor and if I need the money later or don't like it I could flip it for a tidy profit.... but it would probably be wiser to keep my money in the bank, plus I have no idea when I will have time to sculpt and cut a new LP nut. I don't need a late 70s Japanese 59/60 burst copy, right? Its not one of the best ones, just an OKAY one. Lacquer and fret-edge binding, correct 2 piece plain top, but I suspect its a pancake body like the earlier, less accurate versions of this model and its on the heavy side for my taste, the high side of 9lbs. Las time I had a 10lb Gibby I found myself at the chiropractor for a year! Plus 8 to 9 lbs seems to sound better for how I play. Lively, but still with plenty of sustain. Another point is that its completely unplayable and VIRTUALLY unsellable in its present condition... still, my dealer buddy in Tokyo is willing to mail it to me for almost half the USA market price on one of these. And it really is on of the better ones. Hes like a guitar vampire sucking my financial blood with all his awesome finds. He knows I can't resist a steal... I told I'm no, but he's like "are you sure, James-san?"

on paper the difference is pickup configuration and neck binding... period.... in the 60s the SG jr had a wraparound bridge, 1 dog ear p90 and no binding, the special had the same wrap bridge, 2 soapbar P90s and binding and both were directly equivalent to the LP jr and special (the TV doublecuts being the basis for the whole SG design with the butt joint at the neck and big cutaways for fret access)... the standard had 2 PAF humbuckers, a an abr1 bridge and stop bar and neck binding.... and of course the custom was a standard except it had 3 humbuckers, an ebony fingerboard with binding and the larger, multi-ply bound headstock.

Somewhere in my childhood the SG jr disappeared and the special became an SG standard without binding but with 2 uncovered bukers that are typically the same as th stsndard's covered humbuckers.... occasionally the SG jr would be reissued in place of an lp jr that year and for a while they made the SG classic that was essentially a vintage SG special with an ABR1 instead of a wraparound bridge (these guitars were universally badassed if you like P90s and really work well with a bigsby,,, fucking Pat Smear plays a classic with a Bigsby sometimes, and he can afford whatever he wants as a foo fighter and 80s punk icon)....

but along the line the attention to detail on the special went down. The neck shapes felt less and less "finished" for want of a better term. The neck angle wasn't always just right like a standard, and the pieces of mahogany were never well-mated tonally...

my favorite Sg standards overall are from the late 90s until like 2010 (I think, my cutoff was the year Gibson got raided by the EPA)... mid 90s and earlier SGs tend to have a slimmer enck than I like unless it was a year with a non-cutom-shop 61 SG reissue, but whatever the eyar was that the regular Nashville 61 SG RI became a standard model was the year the SG standard was switched permanently to a 59/60 roundback profile that is my favorite

neither do I but I am aware of them and their ways through a friend...

I really don't voluntarily listen to many extremely downtuned bands. Not to into it apart from the originators, Kyuss.

Try 13s on 25.5" scale and 14s on 24.75". Or why don't you google search what mastodon uses? Bill Kelleher is always tuning stable, drop tunes gibsons and has huge powerful hands. If you are trying it on fender scale you could just go down a gauge from Kelleher to get the tension feeling right on the longer scale with the brutal 45 degree break angle on fender bridges.

Its a les paul, set neck, but the body and neck are unfinished and the neck's not glued in yet? IR cunfuzzled.

When you were younger? You can be younger than 15? I shouldn't make fun. I got my 1st 45s when I was like 6, but hell if I can remember being that young now or even where I put all my vinyl last time I moved....

"Hope I die before I get old..."

Shit. I forgot to die.

A purpose buil magnetic design can be great on an acoustic if you use the right strings. The dearmond 200 is not suited to the job. On an electric it is prone to microphonic feedback and massive hum/rfi interference. It can be worth it for the wonderful and unique tone when its dialed in right. On an acoustic it will probably be a feedback nightmare at stage level. Its also a very destructive mod.

I say 'dialed in right' the polepiece magnets on these pickups and the similar gibson staple puckup are notoriously hard to set. Too low and you get a shrill brittle tone, too high and they exert string pull like a fender pickup. Get really liw into the body of the pickup and you go from shrill to open and glassy but tend to get more microphonic squealing because of the vibration against the unpotted coil. If you must put an old school magnetic pickup on an acoustic consider the old dearmond rhythm king. It was designed to retrofit to an acoustic archtopand works well on an acoustic. It also clips onto the fingerboard in a nondestructive way and can be adjusted on its clamp to find an ideal location under the strings. Martins with the dearmond 200s on them just got yjem because martin had them laying around after a failed attempt at cracking the electric/amp market. By the way, old martin tube amps sound great. Of you see one at a yard sale, buy it. Think tweed deluxe on steroids.

There's so much to this. Maybe I'll stick with what works for me already. I could spend this money on another guitar.

You mean the whole body and neck arecarved from big pieces of rosewood?

Agree with everything you said there. That... doesn't... always happen :)

when it comes to history you'll find I am way easier to talk to than I am about gear and guitars. I love history, but I don't have any emotions wrapped up in it like I do guitar collecting!

I am sorry for your trashy family. Apart from my mother-in-law (who I am still close with) and a few of her family members, my ex-wife's family is trashy like yours. Even the legit members who have not beat their kids, gone on SSI or had run ins with the law like the cop uncle my ex moved in with are rednecky at best. Someone described them nicely as "salt of the earth" not long ago. I feel your pain. Some of them are so racist they are offended my son has my last name because it ends in a vowel. People like this will needlessly fuel the ongoing custody battle with their limited funds and foolish encouragement, cosigning 'mom's' constant unemployment and dependency when I would be happy to settle with the ex at any time if she would move closer and get a part time job. I just kinda wish people like this would disappear. I never thought to have so much contact with this element of American society, my wife was estranged from the rednecks when we married.... I feel your pain.

I am far from perfect, but I am a fairly reasonable, compromising and affable sort of guy with few, if any, prejudices. People on the other side of the life attitude spectrum give me a lot of grief because I just don't know how to handle them.

I guess I can see that "other side of the coin" analogy with those 2 records. Its still not to my taste nad just pales in comparison to Toxicity for my own listening pleasure. As short as the song were I skipped through many of them upon 1st listen seeking some highlights before settling in to try to embrace the whole album. Always a bad sign with me as I am NOT a new-school, track skipper by nature. Having grown up on vinyl and cassette I usually don't reach for the skip button on a cd player or mp3 player unless I am TOTALLY bored.

speak for yourself. I can't get through any of their other material. Toxicity had a vibe all its own. It managed to be modern in conception and old-school in completion. The other albums are different indeed. You can't make the same record twice but I don't need to hear anything else from SoaD. I'm good with Toxicity. I honestly thought they broke up.

Then again, I felt pretty oorly about most of Era Vulgaris and thought the 1st 3 albums were all QoTSA had to offer til I bothered listening to the most recent record and was pleasantly surprised, so maybe a new SoAD record will blow the top of my head off. But its unlikely. They're just not that versatile as musicians from what I can hear. They probably suffer from the metal curse of narrow proficiency.

I was just saying in general that the LP is a dead medium for better or for worse... but I guess a new SoaD album is cool. they ain't ever going to top toxicity so they coulda just quit. Anything else they do will just be overproduced dreck or retreading the same narrow lane they started out in. Metal, like punk, is so limiting. If you get too expansive with it you lose the edge... Toxicity was so cool though. great, dry sound in the Steve Albini vein but with louder vocals. They did cool things with time changes and such without getting too prog rock. It reminded me of a new York hardcore record than a metal album. It had none of the wankery and dick measuring but all of the interesting shit of say a tool record.... in your face even when the dynamic was low. Hard to repeat and impossible to top I think.

it should be vox like, its just a 50s cathode follower tonestack preceeded by a triode stage... which is what a top boost really is - not so different from a tweed bassman, plexi or laney supergroup apart from some caps and resistors for voicing that 1st triode stage, a midrange pot and like 1 resistor value and placement in the actual tonestack... lookat a Gibson GA77, 70 or any of the treb/bass tweed fenders like the pro and you'll find they are virtually the same as the top boost circuit, the Gibson is even voiced damned similar from input thru 1st stage, there's 1 part's difference and its not the value but the implementation, I think Dick Denny lifted the schematic from the GA77 but got it wrong (or he reverse engineered one and made an error or the amp he used was built wrong, quite common in early Gibsons) when Vox decided to add tone controls to the ac30 brilliant channel... Vox definitely referenced Gibson amps a lot. The AC15 is very similar in conception to the GA40 Les Paul model, especially the 2nd series on with the 5879 mini-pentode as V1 and the weird-ass (but awesome) seth lover vibrato circuit on channel 2. No negative feedback, the weird-ass tone control wired into the phase inverter, long-tailed-pair phase inverter in a small amp that Gibson and Fender would typically have used the cathodyne or paraphase PI configurations, channels mixed directly at the PI... but yeah, look at the big 6L6 Gibsons from 55 to about 61 and you will see a proto top boost ad these amps usually have a non-tonestack channel too. The pro/super/bandmasters are similar but the 2 channels just have slightly different voicing and the 2nd gain stage that drives the tonestack before the cathode follower doubles as a simple tube mixer. But all these amps are awfully similar. A tweed deluxe has a lot in common with the ac30 too. Cathode bias, no negative feedback, low power filtering, small tube rectifier, but the front end is basically the same as the bigger tweeds but with a shared 1 knob tonestack that is effectively a set of variable bright caps and variable deep caps on either side of a pot, pretty much everything smaller than the Bassman even got the cathodyne or the superprimitive para phase inverter.... but I could go on and on. If you like tweed fenders and vox ac30s you will like any 2 gain stage cathode follower setup with a 2 band tonestack...

EDIT:

hell the hotrod deluxe, blues jr? all have this arrangement and are only a couple parts difference from an ac30 preamp. One could mod their blues jr you be a top boosted ac15 quite easily if they so desired. Disconnect the mid knob, change a few caps and resistors, change the way the bass pot is wired to the treble pot and ground and then change the bias scheme from fixed to cathode bias, probably need to adjust some resistor values to get the low voltage/high current configuration for the el84s vox used.... then you lift the negative feedback loop and voila... you could do something similar with a hot rod deluxe too I'll bet making a mutant hybrid design with American tubes run british style.... it'd have some attributes of Neil Young's 6L6 5E3 and some attributes of the ac30 and bigger fenders.... but since they are all PCB amps I wouldn't recommend trying. You will probably just burn some traces up.

people still record and release full-length albums? wow, that's good news

Connect negative North to positive South and tape over to insulate. Connect Positive north to the core of your single conductor lead... then connect bare and negative South and/or the bare ground lead to the braided shield. Tape over the connections or heat shrink them. I would disassemble the pickup so I culd get the new wiring inside the baseplate and just have the new braided Gibson wire sticking out.

Be precise and neat. Keep the old leads as short as possible and your solder joints small and clean. Don't fuck it up. Its 1st try or throw it out.

you talk so much smack about these epi pickups, its funny... you have no basis for comparison or a very limited one. "They sound as good or better than such and such pickup I have only tried in a different guitar in a store for 15 minutes... and I have never played a 50s Gibson with original PAFs anyway so I am blowing smoke to justify my personal preference for a much maligned stock bucker. But I have a strat with a JB and this is way more PAF than that." Well sure it is. The only thing a pre-dirtyfingers gibson bucker design and a JB have n common is 2 coils of wire. Why not just say, "I really like them and wanna salvage them" ????who cares if they are "better than a burstbucker?" lots of stuff is to my ears and lots of stuff is just plain different. YMMV, man. No need to talk up a pickup to justify yourself. 'Better' is so subjective anyway. They work FOR YOU. That's more important than a subjective comparison with something you don't own and have never gigged with. None of your gear would work for me. I am not used to it. I am ooked on the 59/custom hybrid, but I warn everyone its a "me" thing and that its maybe not great for everyone.

Yes, I am smacking you down right now so you will just accept that one man's trash may be your treasure and that's a god thing. If you sound good to you with these pickups then they are great pickups for Liam. Are they better than a burst bucker? They are for you! For me neither will be good as I can only seem to get into the pro Neck and then only if tis connected with a much hotter bridge. But I owned all of em for a bit and didn't say they were bad, just abd for me.

In the end there is good tone, bad tone.... and my tone. The 1st 2 are contextual and kinda fanciful. The third is not to be had by anyone who isn't willing to cut off my hands and sew them to their their own bleeding stumps while making off with myJMI ac30....

although I recorded the entire UYB recor with only marhsalls and fenders and still sound like me... completely different guitars too...hmmm

its funny, their high-end amps are their worst sounding offerings... they are finicky as heck about settings and how loud you run them in spite of being true class A which should be kay at any volume, but their preamps can get harsh in those models, dunno why. The cheaper Laneys usually sound pretty good. The GH50L I ahd and my friend's GH100L sounded pretty good. Marshally. Not as good as a real 800 but deAD CLOSE.

Has anyone tried one of these Fryette high voltage tube effects with an ef86? I tried the SAS distortion in a GC and wasn't blown away. As a ight OD you get some tube flavor from the EF86 pentode, but as you crank the drive it gets more and moe like your average distortion box.... don't want the toen control either. Didn't care for the single knob tone and coulda done without it. I think its basically a hard diode-clipping, DS1/OD250 type thing powered by a tube instead of an opamp. I could see its uses I it didn't have the tone control because it did great low-gain tones tat kill transistor and dual triode-based OD boxes when the diodes were just clipping your hardest peaks and the tube would change "color" based on thte input signal dynamics, but I couldn't get the tone control to interface well with every amp I put it thru... they shoulda left her flat or done TMB tone controls.

But Fryette (aka VHT) also made the Boostassio which is a high voltage EF86 boost with just output and bias controls. Obviously output controls how much signal you send down the line, but bias controls the plate voltages to take it from hifi, recording gear tones to really grimey, mis-biased skronk. Anyone tried one?

well, someone bought the beatup PODHD500x on reverb for the full $299. I guess my lowball offer of 250 spurred someone int action. guh

I would comment that historically the confederate flag is less offensive than it is in a modern social context. Its association with the KKK, particularly during their worst periods of terrorism in the depression era and later against the civil rights movement has given it the status of a swastika. Historically the civil war was fought over mre than slavery. There was an interpretation of the constitution at its core that had been simmering since Jackson. On both sides of the fighting you found copious numbers of white supremacist non-slave-holders. In its historical context I think the battle flag is a symbol of armed revolt against an over-strong federal government. I also have known people to fly it in that spirit. I am not saying I approve, just commenting.

Seaking of Texas, while Texas seceded from the union and joined the confederacy with one of the most vitriolic racist declarations of any southern state, their involvement in the actual war was minimal and mainly involved providing logistical support to the real-deal slave states while making a tidy profit. To me a Texan flying the battle flag is just like a Swiss banker flying a swastika.

before you go in on an ironheart, have you seen the new Laney GH50R released at NAMM last week? check it out in person ASAP. I like the ideas. Its the first non-boutique with a power-scaling setup so you can drive the power tubes. It seems pretty versatile and its gotta be built as well as the ironheart stuff if not up to the snuff of Laney's lionheart, fancy paants amps (that look better than they sound other than the 5 watter my friend has)...

it looks like Laney expanded on the modified JCM800 format of the GH50L, which was a pretty good amp. I had one as a backup to my '80 JCM800 when I was into that thing. The 800 really like to be turned up for a blend of preamp gain and output tube grind, but even the 50 watter is HELLA loud with gain and master at 5. The Laney 50L was the same. This guy seems to have included 2 separate paths for low and high gain instead of the 2203/2204 format where its 1 channel with a lower gain option. Plus its got the power scaling thing going for when you want big, 80s arena rock tones and if you don't care about having a clean tone and just want vintage distortion and gobs of 80s lead goodness you can get into plexi turf by using the low gain channel at 9 or 10 and getting all your actual drive from the PI and EL34s, then scaling back the power to avoid hurting anyone. Then your gain channel will be that over-the-top JCM800 at 10 tone where every stage is totally saturated....

tempting you yet? I promise your the Laney should sound more like a classic marshall than anything made by Marshall since 1990

you are stuck in this "if I can only have 1 tube amp to accomplish all the jobs from late night noodling to gigging a big theater..." problem most people go through. Me? I just have 3 or 4 wattage ranges available at any time. But if you can only have 1 amp to rule them all, maybe something like the Laney with tons of ways to achieve overdrive at different places in the circuit and with tons of headroom when you want it is the ideal solution!

don't spoil the irony with all these details!

for effects and maybe some of the high gain preamp models

nah, the problems I'm talking about are from the wood drying out because it wasn't properly dried before contruction... common these days... but yes, keep your Gibson in the case. I don't keep mine in the case, but I make a lot more money than you do probably and just have the one kid LOL.. you have double the expenses and double the sprouts who might knock a guitar over that I do.... and Lucian took my 335 down once and I just barely saved it from a headstock break!

the pickups won't work with acoustic strings as they have lots of non-ferrous metals and jack shit for magnetic field (the strings, the pickups have lots of wire winds around individually adjustable A5 poles, wow)... these guitars are all bad implementation of technology... to be fair I think Kurt Cobain used a guitar like this with 1 DeArmond on the unplugged performance we all liked so much in the 90s, but even at the time no one ever accused Kurt of sounding good or being a 1/4 way decent player

dearmond 200 pickups are amazing... I had a gretsch with the current dynasonic verions of them and a guild with original white bobbins (briefly, want another).... they have the worst 60 cycle single coil hum known to man, but apart from that are GLORIOUS

you can go to a guitar show and get the slanty cover martin version of these pickups for a couple hundred bucks a pair or you can get TV Jones' T-Armond replicas that are great.... get a matin dreadnought made of the right woods and install the setup, then wait 50 or 60 years until the wood ages in and you can get this stupid sound