jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

scratch that about Jerry Jones, it might be a late 60s danelectro model, I wish I could see the headstock.... I seem to recall Dano making some hollow guitars at the end of their run. If its from Neptune NJ it should have a late period "fenderish" dolphin headstock and if its a recent Jerry Jones it should have the earlier coke bottle shaped headstock, also, I want to say that hollow longhorns have some kinda humbucker sized pickup and he's covering the pickups, plus I don't remember ever seeing a dano with a scratchplate like this one... I ish I could see the truss adjust at the neck joint, hollow danos have a weird, hideous truss adjust you can't miss and I don't think anyone would try to clone it

do a google search for "longhorn hollow guitar" and see what the vintage stuff looks like next to this and I am sure you will figure it out... I can see some of a really weird bridge assembly under his arm and I feel like that has to make it a late 60s Dano guitar, again there is probably no modern replica to put on a tribute-model....

John Flansburgh from They Might Be Giants used (or at least he's been seen) with a couple of odd guitars.

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120213035817/lefthand/images/5/55/John_Flansburgh.jpg - this Gibson archtop which looks like L00, but I'm unsure.

I thought you were right, but though the pic is awfully small, this guitar CLEARLY has F holes and an L00 is an oddball archtop with a round flat-top style soundhole... there may be a few vintage years where the L00 had F-holes, but you can do that research yourself on google... it could be a non-gibby too... a Framus, a Kay, Harmony, it does appear to have a Ginny 'mustache' headstock, but boy is that picture small! Its most likely an L4 or an L30 I think....

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01162/arts-graphics-2005_1162266a.jpg - I believe Danelectro had the model that looks like this.

its like a hollowbody dano longhorn, but Neptune NJ never cranked out a hollow version, nor did they make anything but 4 and 6 string longhorn basses.... therefore I guarantee you its a Jerry Jones custom thinline longhorne, probably a 1 off as I have seen his longhorn solid guitars, basses and double necks, but NEVER a hollow version and I don't know of anyone else who makes (made, JJ retired) high end Dano-inspired stuff

http://equipboard.com/pros/john-flansburgh/fender-telecaster - I know, I might have screwed up, but I definitely need second opinion. I think this is Fender American Vintage '62 Telecaster.

probably, could be a custom shop closet classic, or even a mexi classic 60s, or a partscaster like my favorite tele, so stick with the description you have, there are too many generic looking rosewood board tele models to count and they are all available in surf green... its a tele and a tele is a tele is a tele, gotta love it.... incidentally, the jacket he's wearing is a 70s Jordache curdory sport coat, I own that jacket

Hey, don't mean to be a killjoy, but if you're looking to get into/back into playing guitar a fancy amp, and pedals won't help you. You can have all the amazing tone in the world, but you need to be able to use it.

its nice to have gear that lets you play your best, whatever your skill level is at the moment

I want to think you're down south, in like Atlanta or somewhere? I don't find myself out of the PA/NJ/NY region much now that I am approaching middle age, but if I find myself in your neck of the woods I might just take you up on that! I'll bring the beer.

Dude ... I just watched the clip for fun ... I think you misunderstood what he is saying. Just before the clip starts (rewind a sec) he says "oh wait actually before that happens ... one side goes to the pedals and the amp, the other goes to the compressor" dude he is splitting the signal BEFORE it gets distorted and in his pedal chain. He's splitting it straight out of his guitar.

That's how it sounds to me, anyway. And it makes way more sense.

I think you're right Nick!

Signal flow as follows:

Ernie Ball Volume Pedal - Tuner out to TU3 (always on) Main signal out - Exotic Compressor - EQ - Xotic Wah - Digitech Whammy 4 - Jim Dunlop Hendrix Pedals - Super Ego - (board jump) JHS Presteige (Buffer Booster used to get signal level back up a bit) POG2 - AnalogMan KOT L - Rockett Archer - JHS Muff - Z.Vex Fuzz - ISP Decimator - Visual Sound Chorus side - AnalogMan KOT R - Echosex 2 - JHS Buffered Splitter (STEREO Signal) - Eventide H9 - Visual Sound Echo side - Strymon Timeline - Strymon Big Sky - Stereo Out to Korg SDD-3000 to two custom Vox AC15HW.

Most of the boutique pedals and the delays are true bypass, I was thinking of getting a looper but I may go with a pedals rack and a voodoo lab midi ground control system in the future and I can make do with a simple booster (JHS Presteige) until then.

yeah, you need the midi switcher because if you add a few more rack processors you are going to be competing with The Edge! That's a lotta tap dancin' w/o his great midi system!

I like your 2 ac15HW setup, you are a man after my own heart (I like to use at least 2 ac30s --HWs, vintage or similar handwired stuff-- even when I am not running stereo effects, a Vox and a Matchless together really is a super wide and complex sound). If there are certain effects you always use in combination, there's an all analog solution that's cheaper than the ground control but is easier to deal with than the looper and it even has a nice buffer bult in as an option. Check out the Carl Martin Octaswitch. It may reduce your tap dancing a little if implemented wiseley. I am not sure why you have so many different delays when so many of your delay pedals have tap tempo features. I get that the SDD3000 has a great preamp to act as a final signal buffer as well as having a unique, bright and crispy delay sound, but the strymon timeline really does most of the analog simulations you could need with sound quality that's unsurpassed even by TC and Fractal, so the VS H2O and Echosex seem like overkill.

There's a lot of potential drag on your signal here without the buffers and you are really changing the loading on your pickups with them. I am not surprised you need the ISP noise reduction with all this extra signal chain. If it were me I would get a Radial Tonebone Dragster for my guitar strap to reintroduce a proper, reactive load that your guitar pickups can 'see' and then consider going wireless from there with an effect rig this nutty. But I am not a big fan or the perfect 1megohm load buffers present to your guitar, even with all the signal loss through gobs of cable (and I own some tweaky, hifi standalone buffers), other guys don't like the sound of a guitar straight into an amp.

I would also think about making something this complex into a wet/dry/wet rig with an ac30HW or maybe a tweed fender as the center/dry amp that also will be a cleaner sound to get some definition back in your overall tone. The higher headroom of the 30 watter will help with that as will feeding the ac30 from a point in your chain somewhere before your last dirt box. So after the decimator you would have a good, active ABY like radial's (yes I use a lot of their stuff, no I am not an endorser, just a fan), hit the analog chorus (its not stereo? bummer.... I recently scored an old Ibanez FL9 in a trade that I really like but its not stereo either, grr), get some more dirt from the KOT, then split to all your fancy digital stuff and then out to the 2 ac15s which will get extra dirt and all the modulation and stereo delays for an ULTRAWIDE sound. In smallish clubs the soundmen will not love you when they have to put 2 more microphones up, but fuck 'em. If you're going complex, I say go big or go home. In the words of Meatloaf "you have to go over the top to find out what's on the other side!" This isn't a smallish club rig anyway.

if you can't play a little you are going to find this to be a very difficult enterprise because you have 2 different hills to climb in roder to be able to successfully express yourself in the musical idiom you have chosen.... the learning curve on all this software can be an uphill battle coming in cold to the world of synthesis and and recording/mixing w/o studio experience dickering with all these filters and such.... If you are COMPLETELY new to this I would start with a couple books on music theory, songwriting, the history and evolution of electronic music, electronics, recording etc etc

I wish I could tell you where to start, but I began my life in the 4 track era and then graduated to learning from an experienced techno producer and sound engineer in his commercial studio in addition to experimenting at home

I don't, yet ... but I can make it for you. Not trying to solicit, really. I'm pretty busy.

speaking of busy, I just picked up some more low capacitance shielded coax for those instrument cables you asked me to make and should be getting around to them shortly... I'll gmail you when they are ready

I like to think this also yields a better player, because you are forced to focus on playing on a smaller amount of pieces. The best drummers I know can make a simple 3-pc Jazz kit sound like a 7-pc kit by hitting the snare and hi-hat various ways. It's kind of amazing.

also THIS!

I'm totally out of my depth here, but I always felt the best part about drums was you could buy one piece at a time.

THIS! I am no drummer, but I own some random and uncommon kit pieces (as well as my own nice cymbals) and lots of high quality stands for recording purposes. If I needed a kit I would buy it a bit at a time.

wow, that's a cool situation

Druid? Funny, she doesn't look Druish ...

maybe if we give her back.... HER OLD NOSE!

early '00s singlecut thinline with the artcore headstock, block inlays... it doesn't look like a figured bubinga top, that would jump out even at this odd angle PLUS it has a black pickguard, not red... so you are correct, its an Ibanez artcore ab75 in transparent red instead of the more common tobacco burst... I'll bet he's got some nicer guitars now!

What else ya got? I can name that guitar in.....

n/m its from 2005

when is the photo from? looks old, maybe the early 2000s, a year range will help me tell you what Ibanez model it is

who's John Fratelli?

There's also the DI Box to consider, but I don't think they function to remove dirt from a signal.

you can't take distortion out of a signal, period. You can reduce the gain in voltage into the device that's producing the distortion until it no longer audibly clips, but anything down the chain from your source of distortion will at best be distortion neutral but more likely will add a little more distortion

you can get a pretty passable faux leslie out of any decent BBD type of flanger, I recently got an old Ibanez FL9 in a trade and it can do everything from chorus to fake leslie to some of the tamer jet plane effects, you just have to be super careful with your settings

If you have a pedal, any pedal, with a volume knob on it and you turn really down... it will clean a dirty tone very well... and what better than a compressor that will make tha clean tone full and smooth. I might as well try it myself! :-)

that didn't even occur to me to use the output on a dynacomp or whatever like I use my guitar's volume control. It should have. I built a boost pedal with 2 volume levels, one designed to be anti-boost. But the OP said the compressor was after his dirt boxes, so that can't be it.

After what Boom just wrote? I wouldn't trust my crap Aria with that tech, then again, It's probably relative to the location.

Let's hope the Hollywood branch has a good tech... for future reference.

I would stay away from big box stores for any tech work. As I've said many times, when Sam Ash hired me they didn't test my skills in ANY WAY. In LA you have a world of amazing guitar and amp techs at your fingertips. Seriously, you have everybody. For tube amps alone you have Dave Friedman, Billy Zoom, Fred Taccone.... you guys are lucky.

I was told if they are correct that the ABC is the wrong one for my box, they will send me the correct one for free. Sweet.

well there's some good new on the Spector front

Oh! I forgot to mention. The reason for me going to Guitar Center was because ALL.... that's right, ALL furniture makers, cabinet designers, and craftsmen in town refused to even return my calls.

that's the down ide of living in a "t0wN'... where I live we get available amenities but there's nowhere to park....

Gently let him know that guitar center is about to lose your business, even on strings (implying heavily that you will disseminate this story by word of mouth and through the internet) and ask him what, if anything, he intends to do about it.

I think you should go on Reddit and start ranting.

Give details.

Let the lot of 'em know how terrible Guitar Centre is, calm down, and hopefully you will help people to avoid said Guitar Centre's tech

rolls eyes see if GC will fix your fucking bass first

Update:

Guitar Center's tech did a really shitty job.

I am not entirely surprised given the price he charged you. No one working for a 3rd party who has proper and sane attention to detail would put in that much labor so cheaply unless they intended to rush through. That said, it was a fairish price for a private tech working out of his house. I coulda done it in a day in the shed and would have charged 100 bucks. I know from my experience working for Sam Ash as a tech for a few days before getting fed up with them that they did nothing to test the skills I claimed to have and that I could have been lying out my ass about my ability to repair/modify electronics, set up guitars and perform basic woodworking tasks. In my case I was able to do all the things required of a tech and also assess any valuable vintage gear that walked in for hidden defects, however a less scrupulous person will come in having only replaced the odd humbucker and straightened a few necks planning to learn the difficult tasks on the job. Then he's learning on YOUR precious instrument.

I am sorry to hear that this negative experience has added to your anger issues. My ex-wife has major anger problems and she has attempted to quell them by avoiding people, sadly it only made them worse as solitude makes you even more intolerant of others as you become less and less used to putting up with their foibles and faults. Always remember that you have probably done some bonehead things yourself that pissed other people off and hang onto the times when you met someone who checked their rage and forgave you (or at least pretended to, sometimes pretense is the only thing that keeps society from descending into a firefight). In this case you are right to be worked up, particularly given that money was eschanged for services that were not properly performed...

but there is a lot of potential for redress because you are dealing with a national, niche retailer. When you calm down I would go to the manager and politely register a complain about the way this idiot mangled your prize spector. Gently let him know that guitar center is about to lose your business, even on strings (implying heavily that you will disseminate this story by word of mouth and through the internet) and ask him what, if anything, he intends to do about it. Given GC's sorry bottom line these days it is likely he will eat at least some of the cost of the work in order to keep his branch's reputation intact and keep his sorry-ass job shilling b-grade guitars for top dollar.

as for the stripped screws, they are probably made of cheap Chinese 'steal' (heh heh) with too much carbon in it. I run into this problem all the time with modern wood screws, but never with old ones. I try to keep a stash of common sizes around in case a modern wood screw in a guitar or cabinet strips or breaks.

There's just not a lot of photographic documentary evidence for all of Fender's acoustic guitar lines since the riginal 60s/70s bolt-ons because no one plays a fender acoustic. If its not a custom jobby this guy's acoustic is something from the Spring Hill series, though I can't find a single photo of a Spring Hill series acoustic with all the features this one has.

these days all you really need is software, idea and patience, but its nice to have a comprehensive set of toys....

It might be custom shop. I was just hanging out with a friend of mine and I played his fender custom shop tele and its a subtley weird looking tele that doesn't look like ANY stock model you've ever seen right down to oddball bridge and saddles. Little details like the oddball point at the end of the fretboard make me think its some short-run masterbuilt axe. It sure looks like fender's basic custom shop dreadnought with that decorative fingerboard point thrown on. Fender will do whatever you want if you pay.

Sorry again, but i've seen that M-Audio Keystation 49 is a very popular choice with half the price of the novation, around 90 euro. Since i'm new and don't really need all these knobs

yes you do, the minute you start figuring it all out you will miss the extra knobs on the control surface... you'll go to automate a complex acidy synth line, tweaking filters and LFOs and you'll be like "aww hell, I can't assign all the parameters to knobs!"

wow, the new sonar looks pretty spiffy... I remember learning basic sequencing on the old win 2.0 version of cakewalk and having to record the results to a fostex 4 track or Tascam reel to reel, its bringing a tear to my eye thinking about how times have changed....

"Fender" is written on the headstock, so we know that much :-) Other than that, I notice it has no pickguard, and the end of the neck comes to a point.

I haven't come across any Fenders that match this one exactly. Any ideas?

it doesn't look like an affordable, off the shelf at GC type model... who is that a picture of?

I'm pitting the deluxe memory boy, against stereo memory man w/ hazarai, and I know the latter can do LOFI sounding RING MOD delays, but can the deluxe memory boy?

I don't believe it can, thing is these 2 pedals aren't remotely the same architecture... the Hazarai version of the DMM is digital whereas all the other Memory Man/Boy pedals as far as I am aware are analog like the old DMMs of my youth that achieved their great sound through classic BBD chips, think of it as being like old boss DM series delays... the Hazarai DMM is most definitely a DSP effect like a boss DD series delay with gobs of extra features juiced out of the modern, powerful DSP processor

I ordered a small brass nut off of eBay and the guy filed the string slots to a smaller gauge than what I had ordered. I asked the GC tech how much it would cost to have him make the gauges bigger and he said $80 by itself. Routing 2 inches into a block of would and carving out detail costs less money than a 3 minute job on a nut. Crazy.

that's fair for the routing work which is a an easy day's work that you could do yourself if you had a good router and workspace.... that's a deal for the nut, shaping a nut, particularly hard materials like bone and brass is tedious, difficult and (believe it or not) poisonous work. He is hooking you up for 80 bucks out of a corporate retailer like GC. I would charge you 100 to work on it in my shed.

the refret will cost you... refretting is REALLY tedious and time consuming and even I won't DIY it... its removing the old frets that wigs me out... I really have to question what brass frets willa dd to your bass tonally. Nickel/silver frets are another medium hardness alloy and should sound similar, heck, even stainless steel frets don't sound THAT different, they just last longer. It seems like the expensive refret is really just cosmetic work that you could put off or ignore completely. If it were me I woulda got a nut made from an alloy that matched the existing frets, brass doesn't have quite as much musical magic as people think. I have a lot of experience with brass vs steel as far as nuts, saddles and strat sustain blocks go and only in telecaster and ABR-1 saddles is there a distinct difference... any metal nut does the metal nut sound on guitar (though I think brass is popular because its a little easier to file than steel), though on bass YMMV

http://www.gbase.com/gear/fender-modern-player-mdrn-plyr-j-crimson-red

Goddamn I've been looking for one of these with a rosewood fretboard and a decent finish for a long time.

But those pickups...

I bet I can rip those out and put a Seymour Jazz Set...

yeah, fender humbuckers in the Gibson style stink, PU! A jazz and JB are a great combo for a rocker who needs a balanced and warm clean at the neck too, but they are not the be all end all. They are very late 70s/early 80s pop/rock. Great but almost a stereotype and low in piano like lows and bell tone highs. At the moment I am really digging Duncan's 59/custom hybrid. Its a fairly high output pickup with really mismatched coils. It bucks hum really well still, but has great chimey highs and very open and full lows like a hot single coil but with the cutting mids of a Duncan custom or JB, especially under heavy distortion. I modified one of mine to make it mellower. I paired it with a Duncan pearly gatyes enck (a serious output mismatch with them stock), but I swapped the magnets so the pearly has an A5 magnet for stronger lows, highs and boosted output and the hybrid has the A2 to bring the output down a smidge and give it a mellower character. But the hybrid is just awesome either way and modding potted pickups like that is not for novices!

anyway, I am just saying that there are some really amazing pickups available just from Duncan that blow the classic jazz/JB set outta the watter for complexity while retaining power at the bridge and clarity at the neck. I have a Burstbucker pro neck and stock 59/custom hybrid in my LP platinum and that guitar sounds fucking fantastic. Way better than the LP I had with a jazz/JB combo....

but that's a genuinely old guitar with water damage and finish checking, not a fake

And God I wish people sold stuff like that on eBay and Craiglist :'(

they do, and at guitar shows.... no mortals can afford a genuine '61 strat, even in bad condition like that... the real cream is at Chicago Music Exchange and Gruhn's in Nashville, although OK guitar gets some great stuff, that guy is like the king of quality, vintage ES guitars... he has a gbase.com store as well as his brick and mortar location as does CME

Is it really? I think there was something about the neck too, but I couldn't remember for the life of me. All I remember is that those strats and teles feel okay, bu the Jazzmaster just seemed to just sit right with me. I even tried the older ones on the vintage room at Guitar Centre and they felt just as good.

the stock pickups are the thinnest, twangiest pickups fender ever produced with their ultr-large and shallow underwound bobbin and alnico 5 rod magnets with the ehavy staggering, is just such a surfy, fender sound! and the weird tone circuitry is a real fenderism too as is the vibrato system, so yeah, the jazzmaster is really fender stock

I like jazzmasters, they are cool in that they totally fail to be jazzy and also aren't very rockin' in the 50s/60s/70s classic sense of that term. Once you start messing with the formula its not really a jazzmaster anymore, its just a cool offset body guitar. Idig that too. Most old Jazzies I have played have nice fat necks too...

but that's a genuinely old guitar with water damage and finish checking, not a fake

Got my heart set on a Jazzmaster, no doubt. But I had a few ideas going around while college holds me back.

that's an about face from a Gibson? The JM is the fenderiest of all fenders, lol. Great guitars though. Try putting 70s wide range buckers in it like Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth... or get all Fano JM6 and put a good set of actual P90 soap bars in.... just make sure you get a real nitrocelluloid tort chell pickguard or a gold anodized one... anything less is just wrong on a JM

The only custom job I have ever liked is the custom Road Worn Jazzmaster by Fender for its subtlety. However, a good relic looks like a guitar that survived a flood. I like the idea of something that's been stripped to the core, yet still unleashing some killer blues solos.

when you go that far its almost like a 'burnt/raw finish'

No I bought this one used and on the back of the pedal it said that removing the back of it will void the warranty.

They might repair it anyway, Ibanez doesn't care if you are the 2nd owner or if you tamper with the pedal even though the Ibanez warranty is non-transferrable and opening it up voids the warranty to boot. Can't hurt to ask the manufacturer. The 90s style DoD switches are some kinda cheap plastic SPDT I think. Its been awhile and I can't find any info on the model of switch on page 1 of my google search. Having someone fix it for you might cost you more than you paid for it. We are talking about a readily available cheapie here. I loved the great value of DoD pedals as youngster, but as I outgrew the mediocre tone of their dirt boxes I wound up giving them away as birthday gifts to people I disliked or using them as paperweights and doorstops. If I had a grunge pedal laying around I would give it to you for free but I never owned that one, it just seemed lame that they tried to cash in on the music that was huge when I was learning to play and I was outgrowing DoD by the time it came out.

I've had a Fx69b grunge pedal for a few months now and today the foot switch stopped working. I opened up the back of the pedal and tried to see if I could get to the under side of the foot switch. I couldn't so I put the cover back on, plugged it into my amp and it worked. But after a while I came back and the switch wouldn't work again. Any recommendations on what to do or should I take it to somewhere like guitar center?

Wow, they still make the Grunge pedal, LOL! DoD/Digitech will probably fix the switch under warranty, email them. I see you own a swollen pickle and a rat both of which are way more authentically grungey than the Fx69b. Score yourself an old mosrite fuzzrite or clone, a univox superfuzz type pedal, an MIJ boss DS1 and a DoD OD250 and you will have every popular seattle distortion sound.