Les Paul Classic Pickup Swap to Seymour Duncans (then back to the originals)

I decided to try out some Duncans for my new Les Paul Classic, just to see if I would like a more classic pickup tone over the more aggressive ceramic, high-output 496R and 500T pickups that originally came in the guitar.

Installation was simple. It doesn't get much easier than a Les Paul when it comes to electronics. During the pickup installation I went ahead and did some quick maintenance while I had all the strings removed. I cleaned the fretboard, oiled the bridge parts and thoroughly cleaned the guitar. Once I got the pickups installed I immediately re-strung to test the new Duncans... and... I didn't like them as much as the original pickups. ;) There is just something about the 496R and 500T PUs that sound so good in this guitar. They are very aggressive, yet still able to retain good note separation.

So after a day or so I put the originals back in. My guy at Guitar Center agreed to take back the Duncans for a full refund, even though I installed them. I spend a lot with them, so I get special treatment (which is nice). ;)

New Amp!! Fender Blues Jr.

I finally got a new amplifier. It's been a long while since I bought one, since I have been so happy with my Atomic amplifiers and the computer-based Line 6 TonePort. I really like this little amp... it has that beautiful Fender clean tone and it can create a really nice early break-up blues tone, as well.

I am running it with the excellent Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde overdrive/distortion combo pedal. This is a great pedal! The overdrive sounds about as close to a real Ibanez TS-808 Tube Screamer as I have ever heard. The distortion is fantastic sounding... much better than pretty much any other distortion pedal I've played. It's musical sounding, useful gain. This pedal plus the Blues Jr. is deadly! ;)

I have my Wylde Crybaby Wah Wah in the chain along with an old Boss DD-3 I have had since I was a kid. Never had much use for it until now. I have the DD-3 set for "shred style" tone thickening when wailing on full distortion with the Visual Sound Hyde pedal. ;) Sounds great. I also bought the Planet Waves tuner pedal, which is built like a friggin' tank. It works very well and it has true bypass, which is a must for a tuner pedal. You don't want something like that sucking your tone.

I recorded a rough take with a blues backing track using an SM-57 and the TonePort straight into the computer. I setup the backing track loop in Cubase SE, put on some headphones and let it rip. Here is the raw recording with just a touch of EQ and some thickening by track doubling and a hard stereo pan: Blues Jr. Test Recording (mp3 format, 3.1 mb). I used my Custom Shop '60s Relic Strat with the overdrive pedal engaged and the neck pickup selected on the guitar. No other effects, pre or post, were used.

This is a fun little amp that's easy to get a good Blues tone with (hence the name!)

New Guitar!! Goldtop Les Paul Classic

I'm baaaaack... and with a major haircut! Still cycling and loving it, but the guitar has seduced me back into all things music.

Whoa! I finally did it... I bought a Gibson! I said I would never be a Gibson owner, and I certainly never thought I'd ever own a Les Paul. I always had trouble playing them because I grew up playing the flat profile Strat shape. After spending a good amount of time with my Grestch Power Jet I finally trained myself to handle the higher bridge.

I LOVE this guitar. It is a Les Paul Classic, so it isn't the most expensive model but not the cheapest either. This particular one felt really good, has tons of balls and plays exceptionally well. After spending a few days probing thoroughly I just can't find anything wrong with it. ;) It's definitely a keeper.

The Classics have the thinner 60's profile neck, tall frets and slightly yellowed trap inlays. The fretwork on this guitar is very good and well finished... nut is superbly cut and the Nashville TOM bridge appears to be of the pre-slotted variety, so there are no slotting issues on the bridge. The thumbscrew pins are bent slightly because the stopbar was screwed down way too tight and I think the string pressure bent them. I have new ones on order from Stew Mac.

I'll be re-stringing with a "reverse wrap" on the stopbar from now on. This will allow me to screw the stopbar all the way flush to the body without having too sharp of a string angle (thus, avoiding more bent pins and a collapsed bridge!). This should also provide better coupling and a slightly rounder, warmer tone. Since this particular guitar seems a bit on the treble side I think a reverse wrap will balance things out nicely.

This guitar has tons of sustain! The stock pickups are really hot and could probably stand to be lowered a tad from the very high factory setting. I'll probably experiment with some Duncans just to see if I like them. I will also be ordering a new blank pickguard and truss rod cover so I can get rid of the unnecessary script on those items.

Overall I am very happy with this guitar! I have always wanted a Goldtop Les Paul, and I am lucky to have found one with such good fit and finish. Gibson quality can be hit or miss so I feel extra fortunate that this one turned out so well.

More to come as I do some PU mods and set her up!

Tour de France

Claudia and I just finished watching the Tour de France. We are having a really good time with the cycling thing, and in the process we have found some good friends who ride.

I have decided to create a new blog to chronicle the adventures of "Team Gringo". ;) You can catch the blog here @ teamgringo.blogspot.com. I have a new gear addiction and it's pretty serious! I'll be sure to take plenty of photos and do some careful write-ups of our stuff when I can.

Still playing guitar, just less. I have my sights set on some great new guitar gear this coming fall so let's see what happens.

Taking a Break

I have decided to take a break from playing guitar for a while and try something a little different. I have quit smoking (as of April 23rd) and have not had one since. My wife and I are giving bike riding a try to see if we can lose some weight and get healthy. ;)

I bought us a couple of cool Bianchi's and a car rack for the RX-8. Finally I found hobby that is actually more expensive than guitars! :) I am not quitting the guitar, just playing less and taking a much needed rest from tinkering, obsessing over details and worrying about my picking technique. Jeez, I have had enough of that for a while. ;)

Cycling is so much fun, and it's something Claudia and I can do together . My new heroes also dress in tight lycra... what a crazy thing. :)

See you out on the road.

20th Anniversary RG Gets New Pickups

After a long wait for the pickups to arrive, it was finally time to finish up the 20th Anniversary RG. I ordered two PAF Pros in hot pink ;). One F-spaced for the bridge and the other regular spaced, plus an SDS-1 single for the middle, also in pink. I ended up not liking the sound of the SDS-1, nor the pink color since it really didn't match the humbuckers at all. So I removed it and took DiMarzio up on their 30 day satisfaction guarantee and sent it back for a swap-out with a pink FS-1. I had a black DiMarzio single coil cover laying around, so when the FS-1 arrived I put that on instead since the pink single coil cover still didn't match the humbuckers very well.

I bought some great original 80's NOS (now old stock) neon knob and switch tip sets from a great guy on Jemsite that lives in the UK. Shipment was prompt and exactly what I was needing to complete this baby.

The pickups were a breeze to install electronically, but presented some difficulty in keeping themselves level in the pickguard. I came up with the idea to use the foam from a paint brush to create a pad underneath the pickups to help keep them level under the strings. Works great!

I love sound of the PAF Pros, they really have a nice chimey quality with plenty of crunch and tons of harmonics that truly captures the 80's lead and rhythm sound beautifully. The FS-1 is a pretty high output single that balances really well with the humbuckers... and the best thing is that these pickup selections are period correct, meaning that these were available for purchase in 1987. A neon green DiMarzio cliplock strap completes the package. Now this thing really looks like it was born in the 80's! Can't play an 80's Ibanez without a neon cliplock strap. :)



Check out the before and after. Narly, brah!

Gretsch Power Jet Gets a Setup

After playing her for a little while it was time to get the factory strings off, clean the board and get some fresh strings on it so I could do a proper setup. With these guitars you have to be careful when removing all the strings at once since the bridges "float" on the guitar's top... meaning that there is nothing anchoring the rosewood bridge foot to the guitar except string pressure and a couple of small "pins" screwed into the body under the foot itself. However, the bridge does not fit tightly over these pins and, therefore, some deviation from the original position is possible. So, if you remove all the strings at once for maintenance or repair, you must first tape off the edges of the bridge so you can have a reference of where it was before you removed it; that way you can put it back in the precise place it was when it's time to re-string. This is important since scale length and intonation are both affected by the final placement of the bridge.

On my Power Jet, I have since had the bridge permanently "pinned" (or in this case, attached with wood screws) to the guitar top. I had master luthier Rick Hancock do this work (as well as a fret level and a few other details) so that the job would be done as perfectly as possible. As I mentioned earlier, final bridge placement is critical to proper playing feel and intonation so I didn't want to chance it by doing the work myself. Rick counter-sunk the screws into the bridge foot right underneath the thumbwheels so they are practically invisible. Now the bridge is stable for string changes and, more importantly, under heavy playing where the bridge would sometimes move around causing tuning problems.

I polished the frets and cleaned the board with 0000 steel wool, cleaned and polished the body with extra fine carnauba wax and re-strung with Ernie Ball Skinny Top/Heavy Bottom strings. This is another hybrid string gauge (I seem to love these hybrid gauges). They are 11s on the wound strings and 10s on the unwound. At first I was thinking about going to a lighter gauge than the regular 10s that came on the guitar... but I have since discovered that the Bigsby tremolo soaks up a lot of the string tension, so, the guitar actually needed a heavier gauge to compensate for this. The hybrid 10/11 set balances out the Bigsby nicely, while still keeping the treble strings pliable for easy bending.

New Guitar!! 20th Anniversary RG

It finally came in! I ordered it from Rich Harris of Ibanez Rules who is awesome to deal with, by the way, and knows pretty much everything about Ibanez guitars. This thing has the brightest paint job I have ever seen! ;) It's so bright and unique that it is actually very difficult to photograph well.

Fit and finish is excellent. I have noticed that the fret ends are a little prickly, but due to the flat radius (and, at least, the way I play) I don't feel them when fretting. Other than a couple of design improvements by Ibanez, this guitar is almost exactly like the ones they made back in 1987... they have the same neck profile, pickup config, maple board, crazy color ;) and original Edge tremolo of the original '87 models! In fact, they are making exactly 1,987 of these guitars (mine is #946 - see photo bottom right).

The Edge trem is so smooth and works beautifully. I find it more comfortable than the newer Edge Pro and wish they had never stopped making it. Pickups are crap (as usual) in these guitars and will soon be replaced with the pink PAF Pros I ordered and a pink SDS-1 single... as well as neon green knobs and a pink selector switch. Other than that, the guitar will remain as is. ;)

More to come as I play it and do the PU mods. So far it feels great and seems destined to be one of my favorites!

G3 Show in Nashville - Gilbert, Petrucci and Satriani!

So yesterday me, Nik and my wife hop into a rental car and take off for Nashville entirely too late because Nik was dumb enough to take only a half day off from work. That meant that he would inevitably be delayed (and he was).

So we get to Nashville with plenty of time before the show, but not enough time to go hit the guitar stores like we wanted. Plus, Nik was in charge of bringing the digital camera, which he did, but he forgot the memory card. Thanks Nik. ;) Luckily, I ran into a guy I know from the Jemsite forum named Wade (who happens to also be from Memphis). What are the odds?! His digital camera batteries were almost dead, so we pooled our resources and took his memory card and placed it in our camera so we could keep taking pictures. Worked out great!

The show started around 7:20pm, which was earlier than originally scheduled. We were there in our seats already, so it didn't affect us. Paul Gilbert opened the show with "Get Out of My Yard" and then went into "Hurry Up". He played a few more songs from "Get Out of My Yard" and then he and Bruce Bouillet started ripping some old Racer X stuff. It was awesome! Bruce Bouillet was simply incredible and played the crap out a Les Paul (of all things to use for Racer X material!) ;) Gilbert was true to form and ripped some amazing licks. His performance overall was less than I expected from an entertainment aspect, but I really do think he might not have been feeling well that night. Still, it was awesome to see him as I had never had the pleasure of watching him perform live before.

Next up was John Petrucci. All I have to say is "WOW"! Holy shit this guy is gifted. His playing was pick melting fast, but all very toneful and melodic where and when it counted. I was so impressed by his performance, and even my wife who isn't a player leaned over to tell me how beautiful John's playing was several times during his set. He started with "Jaws of Life" then went into "Glasgow Kiss". His set ended with "Damage Control". For several songs he was playing his new Music Man "Ball Family Reserve" JP guitars... some 6s and a 7 string.

Then finally Satriani came out and put on a incredible show. He played "War", "Satch Boogie", "Flying In a Blue Dream", "Super Colossal", "Circles", "Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing", "Surfing With The Alien" and "Always With Me, Always With You". I was really close to the stage when he came out and it was just so awesome to get to see this guy up close. I mean, he is one of my biggest influences... I must have listened to "Surfing with the Alien" at least ten thousand times. :) He was flawless, as usual, and seemed to be having a good night despite a mishap with his stage monitor during the early part of the first number. It was quickly replaced and the show went on without a hitch after that.

The end jam was incredible. They played "Foxy Lady", "Purple Haze", "Goin' Down", and "Jumpin' Jack Flash"... at one point with Satch on a Les Paul!!!! Gilbert did his drill thing and John played with a rubber chicken as a joke at one point. :) It was an awesome show, for sure. Afterwards we got to meet Paul Gilbert and get some photos... and also out-of-the-blue I happen to spot Mark Tremonti hanging around outside! So I snapped a photo of Nik and Mark. He was a really nice guy and I enjoyed meeting him and chatting about Alter Bridge and guitar playing.

So, despite our late start and the camera snfau, the night was a success overall. I'd do it again!

New Guitar!! Gretsch Power Jet Firebird

Yes!! I finally got a Gretsch. :) I have been wanting one for some time now and recently, for some reason, I was really craving a Duo Jet. So I did some research and finally decided on the Power Jet Firebird instead. Basically the same guitar with a few more appointments... and it's red. :)

The Power Jet is a single cutaway Mahogany set-necked guitar with a chambered Mahogany body. With the awesome TV Jones Power'Tron pickups the tone is unreal. I opted for the Bigsby Vibrato tremolo ('cause I love trems) and the Bigsby also has another distinct advantage on this guitar... it adds more coupling and mass to the guitar top thus increasing sustain and resonance (as compared to the fixed trapeze string retainer, which is an option on this guitar). The neck is a nice profile, (not too thick/not too thin) and it has an Ebony board with a 12" radius which is perfect for getting the action low. The 22 frets are medium jumbo and are very close to a Dunlop 6105 profile. I have it strung with D'Addario 10s, but I am considering switching to 9.5s to see if I like them on this guitar. The 10s are a tad stiff for me, but I may be able to get used to it.

The switching controls are pretty bizarre if you're not familiar with Gretsch. First, there are no tone knobs. Tone is controlled via a three-way switch on the top bout, and (looking down at the guitar in playing position) to the left of the Tone Switch is the three-way Pickup Switch. The knob on the lower bout at the cutaway is the Master Volume and the two knobs on the lower bottom are individual pickup Volume Knobs. The Tone Switch works very well, surprisingly. In the middle position (called pos. 1) the switch is "on" or the equivalent of your Tone Knob on 10. The switch in the down position (called pos. 2) is like having your Tone Knob rolled off slightly... and the up position (pos. 3) is a more aggressive Tone Knob setting similar to it being turned almost all the way down. Very effective feature and much faster than having to use a knob to dial in these settings. Otherwise, the rest of the controls are pretty straightforward.

In my next post I'll detail what I had to do to get all the factory "new-ness" off the guitar and what I had to do to set it up. Not an easy task if you've never done a setup on a Gretsch before. ;) But for now let's just say I have it setup like a speed demon and this thing kicks ass! Super low action, good tuning stability (which will get better as all the new parts begin to settle) and even the Bigsby works beautifully without going out of tune. I still have more to learn about fine tuning Bigsbys and stabilizing floating Gretsch bridges (more on that in my follow-up post to come).

Overall, I am extremely pleased with this guitar and it fills a big gap in my collection. The tone is incredible, fit and finish much better than I expected, good fretwork and a beautifully shaped bone nut! I'm not going to be able to put this thing down for a long time. :)

New CryBaby Wah - Zakk Wylde

I have been needing a wah pedal for my computer-based recording device (Line 6 TonePort UX2). My sales guy at Guitar Center (Devin) convinced me to get the Wylde CryBaby. At first I was skeptical, but once I got it home and heard it on my gear I really love it! I like Zakk Wylde, but I can't say he is my favorite guitarist, so this decision was based purely on Devin's recommendation. He was right. This wah has an insane sweep. I like a powerful wah pedal... one that you know is on when you're using it and this one has it in spades.

If you like a strong wah wah, I highly recommend this one.

New pickups for Deluxe Strat

I was playing my Deluxe Strat recently and finally decided to replace my OEM middle and neck Noiseless pickups with some DiMarzio stacked singles. I got the Virtual Vintage Blues pickups, and they are quite nice. Very good tone and output balance in combo with the DiMarzio Fast Track 2 bridge pickup I put in there when I got the guitar years ago.

I wish I had done this sooner because now I can switch pickups on higher gain patches and keep a consistent tone and volume while playing. The original SCS Noiseless pickups are nice, but they were very bright and had pretty low output. And, to boot, they couldn't be adjusted too closely to the strings without exerting the dreaded magnetic pull that causes loss of sustain and "warbling" notes. The DiMarzios, on the other hand, have low magnetic pull and lots of output. They are a little less bright and sound very full and "mean". Just what I like. ;)