rockabilly69

Oh yeah, a bad customer service situation can lead to sore apples, but if I had to be limited to one brand of pickups I would say Throbak are the most consistently in line with what I want to hear. The guy just seems to have that low output PAF thing down. I have heard other brands of pickups that get there, but not as consistently as Throbak, especially the SLE101. With Lollar Imperials I thnk the low winds are the closest to what I like. And I'm also a fan of Wolfetone Legends. Speaking of bad customer service, Tyson Tone Lab pickups, especially his Precious and Grace pickups, are also fantastic, BUT, that guy consistently takes forever to get you your pickups, many people have complaints about him and have cancelled orders.

Do be contrarian, I think throbak are consistently one of the best sounding pickups made. They are very similar to OG PAFs in the sense that are microphonic, and if you're going to use a high gain amp, they are going to be touchy. I've had to remove a cover and put a bid a silicone on one coild to tame a bridge pickup. But back in the 70's many people pulled real PAFs out of their guitars for the same reason. But I have never had a Lollar that sounds as good as a Throbak. And I have played way more examples than most people of Imperials and SLE101s. My number one Teye guitar has Imperials in it along with two other Teyes I've owned.

Oh glad you listened, I can hear the The Chain element for sure, and maybe a bit of Black Water. But the musical well that I drink from, especially when playing my National Resonator, is more Chris Whitley. Andt's funny that you say this song has an onimous melody, as today someone told me it sounded sinister. When I wrote this melody I was just singing about the frustration of my situation with my exwife/lover, a dancing girl so to say

I would love to do that, get one right from the source, and have it setup perfectly to my liking while I was there!!! I play alot of acoustic guitar and resonator with my band, and because of that we have to keep our volumes approriate. I posted this in another thread, but in this song I doubled my Martin HD28 with my National M2 reso. Listen to the drums, you can tell that we aren't that loud. We record in my very small studio so anything really loud would overtake the room.

Did you get any sound samples of the app before you delivered it, it looks pretty cool.

Well rock and roll can be unkind, but we keep our stage volume and rehearsal volumes at a totally reasonable volume. Now that nonstop cacophony at Heritage, which doesn't let up, is sure to kill some ear drums! And BTW, my main gig is playing acoustic, and it's funny, I went acoustic so I wouldn't damage my hearing

How the guys that work there avoid hearing damage is beyond me. That is one noisy environment.

Pictures, cause people like pictures... Gotoh 510 standard 18:1 Gotoh Luxury Engraved 510 21:1 Schaller M6 Schaller M6 top locking back view Schaller M6 top locking top view...

I've switched between Gotohs 510s and Schaller M6s, for both aesthetic reasons and for different tuning ratio, 21:1 on the Gotoh 510, and cannot hear a difference. I personally love M6 tuners. I have them on a PRS and 3 Zemaitis guitars. You sure you got genuine M6 tuners, I've never heard of sharp buttons.

Oh my that's a stunner

you'll love it!!!

Tim, that is one of the best music books that I've ever read. I'm glad you posted it as I hope others get turned on to it! And thanks for the nice words on my playing and listening to the song.

Yeah I've never seen or heard of a Fender amp earlier than this one! And that Nachoburst was pretty cool too!

Thanks DB, I am pretty lucky to know Lynn Wheelwright. When he needs someone one to demo his stuff, he usually calls me, or the other guitar player in our band Vorraro, Ryan Hawthorn. We have goten to play some seriously cool guitars and amps, stuff people dream about, and more than once, Lynn has allowed me to keep guitars/amps overnnight so I can really learn about them. Lynn is a a walking encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to vintage electric guitar stuff, but when it comes to actually using the gear and making music with it, he loves to get feedback from Ryan and I. Check out Lynn's work on this book... https://pinecasterbook.com/the-authors/

I thought this might be a fun thing to talk about. Last night I spent at least 8 hours playing through a really cool historic amp, a 1941 Fender amp, which you could read about here in these two articles... https://reverb.com/news/the-vibro-set-where-fender-really-started https://www.fretboardjournal.com/video/hear-one-of-leo-fenders-first-musical-instruments/ (that's actually me playing the Strat and the ES125 in some of the videos posted) Last night I was recording the tones of the amp with some different guitars than the ones we used last time. All of them belonging to me, except for one (see below). And the owner of the amp, famous guitar historian Lynn Wheelwright, had me test it out with a new speaker that was custom made for the amp by the Jupiter Speaker company. Lynn built an external speaker cabinet for it, which was probably a good idea, because I was playing with the amp at almost wide open volume at times. The amp itself had just gone through a tune-up, so we were checking it out how to see how it was performing. The amp was plugged into a brown box voltage regulator. The amp performed great, and even after 8 hours of being on, there was no sag in tone that I could hear. And it was really a quiet amp compared to many of the vintage amps I've played through (most every model 50's tweed, and 60's blackface amps). Here's a picture of the Vibro amp (only one volume control which works on the mic channel only, no volume for the normal channel) with the external cabinet miked up as it was set up in my studio (brown box to the right)... I had some rhythm tracks recorded before Lynn got there, so I just played the lead fills on each guitar, so we could compare the sounds of each if them through the amp. I played my Strat, my Tele, and my Gretsch G6120T 55VS (DeArmonds) through it. I chose the Strat and Tele guitars because they are partscasters that I built, and both are better than my Fender Custom Shop guitars. They are three of my favorite instruments, which I have played through some great vintage amps, and Lynn really wanted to know how I felt this original '41 amp compared to these amps. We had already tested the amp with vintage guitars a while back (55 Strat, 56 LP Special, and an early sixties ES125). Lynn may have some reproductions of this amp made in the future, so we were doing some research to see how well the amp played with some modern guitars, and how it compared to modern boutique amps. I say if they got the reproduction right, this would be a cool amp to own because it has some really cool tones. Especially for someone like me, that really likes slightly dirty vintage guitar tones. It gets great clean tones with lots of harmonic content, and some pretty great dirt when cranked, but I really loved it with just a bit of hair on it. It just has a unique voice. I ran the amp through it's paces playing from whisper quiet, to rattle the external cabinet loud. And like most amps, it had it's sweet spot were it revealed the qualities of each guitar. There really wasn't a guitar that it didn't like! The only thing we hadn't tested it with was a humbucker guitar. Well Lynn just got a new Nacho Les Paul, and I told him it would be cool to test the humbucker sound with it. He was thinking the same thing, so he went home got his Nacho, and brought it back to my studio. Here it is... And we plugged it in and it sounded great. It sounded very vintage. The body was very resonant, and the pickups had the microphonics that people associate with a good PAF. The action was a little high, but low enough for me to get the job done. I got the takes with the Nacho on the first pass. I really wanted to hear more of the Nacho, but it was getting late, so I asked Lynn if he would leave it and the amp with me, so I could see I could find some really good tones. Only thing, when I was testing out the other guitars, I was going for some fast picking on the Gretsch, which had on some heavier .012 flatwounds, and I developed a blood blister on my fingerpicking hand (I rarely use a pick). So I was mainly looking to play less aggressive with the guitar while testing for tones. I thought it would be cool to find some tones that would be unique to that guitar and amp combo. While I was twiddling the volume knob on the amp, I heard this really cool acoustic like tone out of the middle position of the Nacho, very Stones like, so I wrote a little slide guitar song around it. There are three tracks, the first rhythm on the middle position, slide guitar with the bridge pickup, and a little solo with the bridge pickup for the third track. BTW I was plugged straight into the amp, no pedals here As a matter of fact if you listen closely, you can hear those Nacho pickups getting some cool compression and double tones. And the amp was just turned up enough to get a litte hair. This is what I came up with...

There are so many good companies that make pedal boards, power supplies, gig bags or hard cases for them etc. It's hard to give advice when we don't know what's floatin' up in your noggin. When I start building a new pedalboard, I think of the job that it is going to do, and then I build to that. I needed a very simple board as a backup for my main acoustic board just in case it goes down, and knowing I was going to use 4 pedals, it wouldn't need to be very big. So I figured I could make one from parts I got at the local home depot. I used some black paint, simple shelving, aluminum from the metal stock, and screws and handles from the fastener section. The only thing that didn't come from home depot was the rubber feet which I already had here. I power it with a one spot to the tuner. And the tuner powers everything wlse from it's convenience 500mv 9 volt DC outlet. It has all the pedals I need for my acoustic guitars that are equipped with magnetic pickups: volume, tuner, EQ, reverb and delay. The beauty of building your own board is that you can make it the exact size you need it. After I built mine, I did a google search and found a company that had a gig back that would fit it.

The Marv Wineburst that Kuz was kind enough to send on to me... And for you blasphemers, here it is with a proper pickguard...

Mark, right there, is why I went solo! I have a band band, and a duet, but I make most of my money as a solo! Good luck with your new drummer, and sorry to hear of your friend's passing.

...good to see things are rolling along. "New Dave" seems like a good fit!

I like 10's on my electrics (except my two banjocasters which use 9's) , 12's on acoustics, 12 or 13's on resos (if it will work without the cone rattling I use 12's). I play so much that anything heavier hurts my hands.