The guys over at Six String Bliss has really upped their game lately. If you haven't listened lately you have missed a lot. Their coverage of 2009 Winter NAMM with guest corespondent Snoozy Shrugs was out of sight. The rough but rapid shows launched from their hotel room every night were shows 132 through 136 and they were great! Some how in the middle of all this NAMM coverage they found time to sit down and do an interview with a guy who was arguably the worlds first rock and roll guitarist Ernest McLean who played with cats like Fats Domino and Little Richard back in the day. That ended on being episode #137. Then in show # 139 Pipes does the solo interview thing with modern blues rocker Eric Sardinas live from the sound check. This week is show # 140 where they interview amp builder Adam Grimm of Satellite Amps. These are kicking boutique tube amps that are priced right in line with many factory production amps. Oh.... I happen to be on this show as well doing a little segment about tone they some of you have heard me go on about before. I'm going to try to start recording one segment a month for the guys to use if they want. Subjects could be pretty much anything. Here's one I did for them a while back that I converted into a youtube video. It's a review of the Electro Harmonix POG. I've bought a better mic since then.
“When all government...in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided...” Thomas Jefferson
Over the years countless pickups have made their way through my little shop. Everything from dead 1950's Fender Strat pickups and 1960's FilterTrons needing to be rewound to the Katrina pickups that were nearly tossed out as unusable. Yep... it's been a long strange trip. But not one of those pickups has sparked as much interest, intrigue and even a little bit of controversy like this strange pickup from Finland that I rebuilt a few years ago. I have written about it extensively and the other day I decided to present the story in a more modern medium. Check out this video.
So.. I was talking to a couple of cats in their late 20's a little while back and we were talking about how to get different tones from a guitar. One kid says, "How do you get that ACDC tone?" and the other piped up right away. "That's easy... just crank everything to 11 and rock!" Now.... I've been listening to ACDC since about 1977 and never has Malcolm or Angus tone struck me as over the top super distortion. Even on a tune like "I'm a rocker" or "Hells Bells" the tone is well defined and smooth and breaks up with the picking dynamics and aggression of attack. I made them listen to "Ride On" as homework.
One thing to think about is this. If your running a signal chain looks like this... Squash-o-Matic compressor > Wonder Wah > 12 band EQ > Super Skull F#@%er Mega Distort Pedal > Flang-o-tron > Echo-Zilla Analog Delay and then run all that into a 200W Mega Colossus DistortusMaximus amp with everything set to 20 you have sort of negated the subtle nuances of your expensive boutique hand made pickups or your vintage NOS tone caps. At some point the guitars effect on the tone starts to become a moot point if you don't keep it simple.
Now.... don't get me wrong. I'm not hatin on stomp boxes. I have over 50 stomp boxes and I'm adding and swapping and modding new ones all the time. I've heard the guys that yell "If you need a stomp box your guitar or amp must suck!" But that just ain't so. It's one thing to get that 15 watt valve amp to sound good in your bed room. It's another matter all together to get it to sound good in a bar, or an out door stage or a warehouse. For those type of situations it can be handy to have a good EQ pedal or a distortion pedal with a good EQ built in. And the simple truth is that if you're going to try to sound like Warren Haynes you will need a Boss Metal Zone pedal. If you're trying to sound like Tom Morello you'll need a Digitech Whammy and if you're trying to sound like Michael Schenker you'll need a CryBaby.
You really have to decide what you want to do with your sound and build it from the ground up. Ever bit of your rig, from your finger tips to your speakers are going to play a part in you tone. How much? Well, that depends on your musical style. If your playing through 4 distortion boxes then I wouldn't worry too much about the tone cap you have on your Tele.
I ask you to think about these things when you are considering a new set of expensive hand made pickups. It will help me direct you to the right pickup or perhaps even recommend not replacing your pickups at all.
Oh... and that ACDC tone? Try a well made guitar built in the Gibson or Gretch style with vintage spec pickups (ie, not hot) and run that into a good tube amp and set most of the knobs on about 5. Try it out and tweak the amp from there.
Without a doubt the most popular guitar pickup I have made is the Bolero Humbucker. First introduced at the 2007 Winter NAMM show it was an instant hit and has remained so ever since. The Bolero is a nod to the hotrod humbucker sounds of the '70's. With a DC resistance of 14.8k ohms, the hotter, wax potted coils give it a great bite for driving your amp. The vintage style Alnico-5 bar magnets ensure a controllable output that can clean up nicely when needed. The 4-wire lead allows for coil splitting and phasing switching.
For those who don't know Greek Mythology, Stelios is the mythical Greek God of Shred. If your looking for proof here is a little something he did while taking a break in front of his computer.
If you like that check out some more of his YouTube work right HERE . I can't wait to hear what he does with his new Searcy String Works pickups.
For those of you who don't know I'm a huge UFO fan and today I noticed this on the UFO web site.
Feb 2, 2009 2009 is shaping up to be a busy time for UFO, what with the studio sessions in Germany (where they're recording the new album, due out later this year), and also the forthcoming tours and festival shows which are being booked right now. But amidst all the good news, the band also need to share some other news with you. For a while now, Pete Way has been dealing with a medical condition which affects his liver, and he's currently undergoing treatment to cure it. The medication he's on makes him tired and dizzy, and he feels that taking part in the recording sessions and the hectic touring schedule would be too much for him at the moment, so he'll be taking some time out from UFO until he is match-fit. But as we all know with Pete, he won't be able to stay away from rocknroll for long - so it's very likely that he'll be doing a few gigs here and there with Waysted. UFO wish him the very best and hope for a swift and full recovery. We love ya Pete! Get well soon man.
Here's a Peavey Wolfgang bridge humbucker I got in for a repair. These guitars were built by Peavey for Eddie Van Halen from late 1996 through the end of 2004. Seems one of the coils is dead in this pickup so I'll be doing a rewind on it. The good coil reads 7Kso that's what we need to wind the new coil too. The pickup also has a ceramic magnet. The most unusual aspect of these pickups would be the little solder lugs built into the bottom flange of the bobbins. It really helps to clean things up in the soldering department. One other little detail that is interesting is that the base place it black so that it doesn't stand out so much when used without a pickup ring.
The guys over at Six String Bliss has really upped their game lately. If you haven't listened lately you have missed a lot. Their coverage of 2009 Winter NAMM with guest corespondent Snoozy Shrugs was out of sight. The rough but rapid shows launched from their hotel room every night were shows 132 through 136 and they were great! Some how in the middle of all this NAMM coverage they found time to sit down and do an interview with a guy who was arguably the worlds first rock and roll guitarist Ernest McLean who played with cats like Fats Domino and Little Richard back in the day. That ended on being episode #137. Then in show # 139 Pipes does the solo interview thing with modern blues rocker Eric Sardinas live from the sound check.
