rockabilly69

Holy Moly that's a bunch of birds! Do they all belong to one person, or was this at one of the Heritage gatherings?

Kuz told me the finish on my H535 P90 is a special Marv Burst, I love it. I really like the transitions...

H137/LPSpecials are pure rock and roll machines. There's something to be said for a nice lightweight mahogany plank with two P90s (or one)! Glad to see you out there using yours for what it was intended.

You're basically saying my buddy is full of it, and equating him with so called internet modding experts. The guy I'm talking about is one of the finest players I know, and he is one of the best amp guys I know who's got a killer ear for tuning amps. If I was going to trust anybody's opinion on sound it would be his, not some internet expert. And BTW he didn't do it for a tone change, his guitars had overly thick finishes that he thought would feel better if they were thinned, and they guy that knocked them back did a great job and rebuffed them to a gloss. And as I said, the finish looked, and more importantly felt great when finished. The tone thing was just an added bonus that he wasn't expecting and he didn't say it was a massive improvement. I don't think you have enough practical experience to call this BS. Yes, wood doesn't breathe, but thinner finish can help the wood vibrate more (if the wood isn't just plain dead). On a good piece of wood, thick poly finishes dampen resonance. And many people that call this BS are playing with potted pickups that have zero ability to hear any difference in the improved resonance. I've done quite a few finish experiments. And I've stripped three different guitars of mine with poly finishes, and all three of them looked, felt, and sounded better than when I started. You can keep on believeing what you want about finishes, but I will believe what I've felt, seen, and heard. Gibson has sprayed too many guitars with thick overly plasticized lacquer, and many people I trust, who've thinned them, or better yet, refinned their guitars can hear a difference. And another thing that distinquishes poly and urethane (and even overly plasticized nitro), from a properly shot thin nitro, is that it's way harder to repair finish flaws with poly/urethane/plasticizednitro. Certain finish repair people I know won't work on certain gibsons because of the plastizers That's another reason alot of us prefer a good thin nitro finish.

I actually have a close friend with serious musical chops that had a local finish guy knock back the finish on his Gibson 1956 Reissue Les Paul, and on his 1959 Reissue Les Paul. I personally thought it was a mistake when he sent them off. But the guy did a great job on them, and they actually look better, and more importantly, feel better to play (less plastically feeling for lack of a better term.) Both of these guitars have pretty microphonic pickups (Throbaks in both), and he swears the guitars sound more resonant.

..."calibrated" is just a little hotter bridge pickup to get good balance. I don't see why they would be hated I think they sound great. This is a pretty good demo, with no BS talking...

That's a sweet looking guitar, with some nice looking wood, and the split inlays look great too! Unless you love the Phat Cats, I would put back the stock pickups. If they are the MHS pickups, they are some of the best Gibson has done in a while. And I love that they dumped the tonesucker varitone! One thing, I think a proper set of reflectors would look great on it too, ones that have an insert that actually reflects. Here's a set of nice non aged ones for a reasonable price. https://toneshapers.com/products/toneshapers-kit-reflector-knob-set-black-silver-black-tip

Sounds like we work pretty much the same in the studio, behind me is a Blue Robbie, Manley VoxBox, 2 Universal Audo LA610A(s), Sebatron VMP4000e, and an Presonus/DiMaria ADL600 and there's also 3 channels of NEVE pres And besides a bunch of good solid state mics like the U87, and U89, most of the other mics are tube (LAWSON the one I'm singing through, VIOLET, NEUMAN, etc). But even then though, the recordings still see a fair share of digital plug-ins. I just don't like digital on the stage That MISSION pedal is a volume pedal, but I do have and like their expression pedals.

Yeah but I can live with those compromises. And my response was to your statement there are NO consequences of the Fractal. In the real world there are plenty! I can't deal with menus on digital units where I have to reset my FX to the venue, and I play in a ridiculous amount of different venues a year, and in the venues where we get a soundcheck, the room totally changes when all the bodies get there. On my pedal board I change everything I need in under a minute or two, and if one pedal goes down, I can still use all the other FX, if a digital modeler, preamp/FX unit goes down,you lose all the FX. And a backup unit would be too expensive ($700 for the cheapest VP4). Although I love having a few gain/drive pedals along with the Origin FX Revival Drive on my board, the only FX I really need are volume pedal, tuner, trem and delay, everything else I can cover from my amps. And before you think I'm a luddite who doesn't know his way around technology, I've owned a recording studio most of my adult life, with the last 20 years being computer based, so I've programmed more pieces of menu driven gear and software than most people will do in a lifetime of gigging. I recorded plenty of songs, (with amp and FX plug-ins) where there were no amps in the room or pedal boards, but I will still take a pedal board (with as many analog FX as possible) everytime, and a killer tube amp! That said, I've seen many people use Fractals/Kempers/etc and they sounded just fine, so there are many ways to skin a cat so to say, I just prefer my way! BTW I do have a compromise board where I use an HX stomp to program all the 'verbs/delays, and modulation FX..

Any piece of equipment has compromises. Take it out on a stage a few hundered times a year and you'll find them

my board...

No poker chips on my H150s, and personally I like them better that way, I tried one on each of them and off they came! And I prefer the Heritage pickguard to the Gibson guard, I like the way it follows the body contours. I don't feel the same way about their semi-hollow pickguards, they look too small to me, and definitely not as nice shape wise as the H150 guards. I had MojoAxe make me one Gibson style for my H535P90 that cus sold me and I love it.

When I started my new band, I thought I would be the plug straight into the amp guy, but I assumed the other guitarist would be playing all the solos, while I covered the rhythm. But as I wrote some of our newer songs, I found that I wanted to play some of the solos, and some of the songs had us trading solos, so I brought my pedal board into the equation, and frankly I'm glad I did, because I think our sound is a bit more consistent. Also it's nice to have trem and delay along with various flavours of overdrive. My board is... Ernie Ball Volume Pedal Jr Peterson StroboStomp Mini Red Witch Glassio Fuzz Durham Sex Drive Origin FX Revival Drive Custom Boss RE20 Delay Voodoo Labs Analog Trem Dr Scientist Reverberator

Both good looks, but I think the black looks a bit more rock and roll, and I think it would look even more so with black tophats Guitar sounds good in the video, do you have any original music on video?

Where are the videos? Twenty years ago I went to see Les Paul at The Iridium, and on his break, I hung out with him a bit. While we were talking, the girl that I went with told him that I was pretty good guitarist, and surprisingly, he asked me if I wanted to jam, but I didn't have my guitar wth me, and I'm not really a jazzer so I opted not to. I realized later that many rock/blues guitarists have jammed with him, and it went well, so I kinda regret my decision. Another funny thing was, that night he was trying out a new bassist (his regular bass man was sick). The new bassist was quite a good looking girl, and he was making a lot of jokes about why he should hire her full time. It was a fun night.