Quantcast Ryan's Guitars: February 2008

Friday, February 29, 2008

New Gear!! Korg Pandora PX5

I just picked up the Pandora Px5 guitar effects processor and amp modeler. This is one cool little piece of gear! The sound quality on these things is truly unreal... I would easily put it up there with a Pod XT for recording. These are great for practicing and/or quick recordings of scratch tracks or musical ideas. If handled properly even final guitar parts could conceivably be done with it.

Click the link below for a quick demo I did using only the Korg Pandora Px5 for drums, rhythm guitar tones and lead. I used the free Ableton software included in the box to record everything.

Korg Pandora Px5 recording test (mp3, 2.02 MB)


Unlike previous versions you can now plug in to your computer via USB for updates and also to create and organize patches, drum loop chains and more. It is a very cool little device that is not much bigger than a cellphone! I highly recommend one of these for someone looking for a great practice tool that can also double as a piece of serious recording gear.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Deluxe Strat Overhaul

After the resounding success in cutting a new nut for the used Music Man Sub1 I recently purchased, I decided to go ahead and replace the nut on my '02 Candy Tangerine American Deluxe Stratocaster. Some years ago the original nut was replaced with bone by a local luthier soon after I bought the guitar, but I quickly realized how badly bone nuts can bind with tremolo use so I had it changed to Graph Tech by another local luthier. This nut was very poorly installed, with a large empty space underneath most on the length of the nut! This practically killed most of the open string notes on the guitar.

Cutting the new nut took me two tries to get right, mostly because of the funky nut slot in this guitar. It was not a nice, neat slot like the one on the Music Man. I finally got a good fit and I am very pleased with the result! Of course, I used my favorite nut material (Slip-Stone) since it works so well with tremolo use... plus, it is creme colored for a stock Fender look.






Next I took off the horrible Graph Tech hybrid saddles I installed some time ago and went back to the stock stainless steel bridge saddles the guitar originally came with. Not only do these sound better, but with a small application of 3 in 1 oil on each saddle at the point of string contact they also bind less than Graph Tech saddles. No kidding!

One last thing I did was to put back the original string tree that came on the guitar. My goal with the nut material color, original saddles and original string tree was to get the guitar back to its stock look. And I succeeded. ;) It plays and sounds better than ever.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Les Paul Boutique Pickup Shootout!!

I was privileged to get to try out some fantastic boutique humbucker pickups that a great guy from the Gear Page was kind enough to lend me to try in my Les Pauls (thanks, 70sRocker!). Two of the specimens I received were WCR humbuckers designed specifically for Les Pauls (though they'd probably sound good in other guitars, as well), and the other was a Voodoo Florence. Each one had its own flavor and tone, and they all sounded good. I installed all these for testing in my '06 R7 Goldtop.

The three I had were the Peter Florence Voodoo (bridge pu), the Crossroads (neck pu) and the high-output Ironman (bridge pu). I really liked the Ironman due to the massive sound and output. This thing is a monster! :) Overall, though, it was a bit dark for my taste.

Test recordings done with the Ironman bridge humbucker in my 2006 Les Paul R7 Goldtop:

Dirty Lead (mp3, 1.2 MB) - Lead over a backing track I laid down - both tones recorded with Line 6 TonePort

Clean Tone (mp3, 434 KB) - Clean tone using Mesa Boogie Mark III, Bogner 2x12 cab mic'ed with SM57 straight into the computer, no EQ.

Next up was the Crossroads neck pickup. This thing was warm and creamy... just the perfect thing to fatten up the neck position in a Les Paul. Sometimes Les Paul neck pickups can be a bit on the bright side, and I like that sound, too... but this pickup was just gorgeous and fat.

Test recordings done with the Crossroads neck humbucker in my 2006 Les Paul R7 Goldtop:

Dirty Lead (mp3, 1.2 MB) - Lead over a backing track I laid down - both tones recorded with Line 6 TonePort

Clean Tone (mp3, 434 KB) - Clean tone using Mesa Boogie Mark III, Bogner 2x12 cab mic'ed with SM57 straight into the computer, no EQ.

Test recordings done with the Voodoo bridge humbucker in my friend's 2003 Les Paul R9 Dark Burst:

Dirty Lead (mp3, 1.2 MB) - Lead over a backing track I laid down - both tones recorded with Line 6 TonePort

I did a control test using my beautiful 2007 R9 Cherry Burst Les Paul with stock Burstbucker pickups. I think the Burstbuckers in this guitar sound every bit as good tonally as the boutiques. Let your ears be the judge. ;)

Test recordings done with the BurstBucker bridge humbucker in my 2007 Les Paul R9 Cherry Burst:

Dirty Lead (mp3, 1.2 MB) - Lead over a backing track I laid down - both tones recorded with Line 6 TonePort

Clean Tone (mp3, 434 KB) - Clean tone using Mesa Boogie Mark III, Bogner 2x12 cab mic'ed with SM57 straight into the computer, no EQ.

Test recordings done with the BurstBucker neck humbucker in my 2007 Les Paul R9 Cherry Burst:

Dirty Lead (mp3, 1.2 MB) - Lead over a backing track I laid down - both tones recorded with Line 6 TonePort

Clean Tone (mp3, 434 KB) - Clean tone using Mesa Boogie Mark III, Bogner 2x12 cab mic'ed with SM57 straight into the computer, no EQ.

Well, that is it for the boutique pickup shootout. ;) It was a lot of fun and very eye opening in terms of tone and pickup types. I really enjoyed this a lot, and if it weren't for 70sRocker from the Gear Page, I'd never have gotten the chance to play with these.

Monday, February 11, 2008

New Guitar!! James Tyler Classic Strat

Yes! It finally happened... I got a Tyler. I've been wanting one of these for a couple of years now, but I could never just pull the trigger and buy one. It turns out that Jim Tyler is now sick with a number of ailments and the future of Tyler guitars is uncertain. It is rumored that he may even decide to stop building instruments altogether, so naturally I just had to snap this one up when it came along.

A very nice friend from the Gear Page (that also lives right down the road from me) grabbed this brand new beauty at a guitar show in Nashville, TN over the weekend (this guitar was unplayed and still in factory packing). At $3200.00 and some change the price was slightly less than retail with no tax, which I was happy about. ;) This particular specimen is a Candy Apple Red Classic model with a covered humbucker in the bridge position and two singles in the middle and neck with a 5 way switch, a volume and two tone knobs. It has a Wilkinson vintage tremolo bridge, standard Graph Tech nut and awesome quality Kluson tuners that I've never seen before. Not sure if these are Schaller, Sperzel or Grovers... but they are very nice tuners.

The whole guitar is a work of art from the ultra smooth finish to the precise fretwork and perfectly sculpted neck and body. It is a real pleasure to play and it sounds fantastic! The bridge pickup is low output, very clear and not too bright (not sure yet if this one is a Tyler creation or a Duncan). However, it sounds more like a single coil on steroids than a true humbucker. The two single coil pickups are almost certainly DiMarzio Virtual Vintage singles. I have two of these in another Strat and so I am pretty familiar with them. The overall sound of the guitar is nice and dark with Stratty overtones... this is definitely a modern sounding Strat... no ice pick here. This a pure progressive rock, fusion guitar with plenty of balls for when you need it, but still gentle and elegant when you're going for the melodic lines.

The weight is nice at 7.69 lbs. and the fat neck is dream to play on. With tall wide frets, multi-radiused fret board and neck join cut-away shred licks are a breeze and the satin finish guarantees fast playing action. The only mod I've done so far was to drop a Strat tremolo arm spring into the Wilkinson trem arm holder to keep the tremolo arm from sinking too deep into the hole. This is a design flaw on vintage style Wilkinson tremolos, but a super easy fix nonetheless. I have the trem float set to about one full step of pull-up on the G string at the 12th fret. This is usually where I set my floating Strat tremolos as a rule, and this guitar is no exception. This gives me enough pull-up for good vibrato and cool 80's style flutter effects when desired. ;)

This is a fantastic guitar and I am so happy to finally have one in my collection. I waited to the last minute to buy one, that's for sure. But had I bought sooner I'd have surely paid too much, so it really did work out in the long run.

Friday, February 08, 2008

New Locking Tuners for R9 Les Paul

Based on the success of the TK-735-001 Gotoh Locking Tuners for Les Pauls that I put on my R7 Goldtop, I decided to purchase another set for my R9. The installation was just as smooth as it was for the R7, and tuning stability is much better, even though this guitar was pretty stable to begin with.

Apart from the tuning stability, I also love the ease of string changes. Much faster and easier to slide a string in, lock and tune up than to have to deal with multiple wraps. I can't stress enough how good the quality on these things is and how much they look like original equipment.

These can be rather difficult to track down, but can usually be purchased at Elderly Instruments or Allparts.com and Amazon: