. . . to a new blog about guitars, basses, amps, and effects, and all the things you can do with them. (And to them.) Your host: Joe Gore, musician, music journalist, software developer, guitar hacker, pedal builder,and fretboard lifer. The sponsors: the sonic wizards at Seymour Duncan, dedicated to helping guitarists and bassists own their tone. The subject matter: anything about guitars, basses, recording, gigging, pickups, amps, pedals, and DIY.
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Hey, has anyone checked out the super-cool “Body Builder” section over at Warmoth Custom Guitar Parts? It’s an incredibly fun interface that lets you select a guitar body and add all the appointments. Your dreams become reality before you very eyes. Which is all well and good — unless you have really bad dreams!  How come nobody makes ’em like THIS? Which brings us to the latest Tonefiend contest. Mind you, it’s not much of a contest, but that’s cool — it’s not not much of a prize either. The “rules”: 1. Create a guitar body image using the Warmoth Body Builder (or other online guitar visualization tool) 2. Take a screen shot and post it to comments below. 3. Whoever creates the weirdest/funniest/ugliest image wins a weird/funny/ugly stompbox. Enter as many times as you No voting this time — I pick the winner, to be announced next Monday, the 21st. Runners-up will be enshrined here in a “Hall of Shame” slideshow. Note #1: Not all of Warmoth’s body types feature the realtime animation function — you’ll probably get the best results with Teles, Strats, and Jazzmasters. Note #2: This is in no way a put-down of Warmoth. I love their stuff, and I truly dig the Body Builder — what a fun way to conceive a guitar! It’s just one of those tools that’s impossible not to abuse. You know — like guitars in general. UPDATE: Reader AiXeLsyD13 shared this link to a list of online virtual guitar builders. I hereby declare these tools — none of which I’ve tried — fair game. In other words, you may use any online guitar-visualizer tool — but no cheating with Photoshop or other image-editing software. And photos from life are definitely off limits, because I’ll never sleep again if I find out that some of these things are actually out there…waiting. Also: The Warmoth builder can be a little funky. Sometimes it skips past some hardware steps (i.e., the all-important woefully mismatched knobs). Sometimes the selected pickups don’t appear through the pickguard. You just have to fiddle around till you get something, um, memorable. That’s it for now. I’ll be back later after I finish clawing my eyes out.
The clip is an accompaniment to the post below about using unspotted Seth Lover pickups with the expanded Phase 2 version of the Jimmy Page wiring scheme. One of the coolest things about SoundCloud (beside the nifty waveform view) is the fact that it supports notes. Just click on the little icons beneath the waveform to read a description of which pickup settings are being heard at a particular point. Sweet. Work for you? Computer? Phone? Tablet? Any comments or questions? (Thanks in advance for for your unpaid beta testing!)
 Does this guitar LOOK like it has over a hundred settings? Just a quick follow-up on the Pagey project, which first recreated the original Jimmy Page wiring scheme, and then explored an even more extreme version using Seymour Duncan Triple Shot Mounting Rings. Once I’d finished the project, I had to decide whether to keep the guitar heavily modded, or revert to something simpler. It probably won’t surprise you to hear I decided to keep the extreme Phase 2 wiring, with its added germanium overdrive. But as cool as the Duncan ’59 model pickups sounded, I wanted to revisit the Duncan Seth Lover pickups I’d previously had in the guitar. They’re bright — twangy, even — compared to the ’59s, and I like the midrange honk they add by virtue of being unpotted. (I’ve written about the pros and cons of potting here.) I’ve recorded an example of how the guitar sounds with the Seth Lovers. (You can’t make exact comparisons with the previous Pagey videos, since I used an amp for those, while the new examples were recorded through an amp simulator, though the “Seth” character still shines through.) I’ve included the clip in the post after/above this one, because it’s my first audio example using SoundCloud, and I wanted to say a few words about that.  "There's GOLD in that thar pickup!" And call me shallow, but…I really dig the way my guitar looks with the Seth Lovers installed. Between the teensy switches on the mounting rings and the push/pull pots, you really have to look hard to tell the guitar is not merely non-stock — it’s a morbidly overdeveloped tweak machine. Funny — I’ve always found gold hardware a little bit tacky. But now I’m so enthusiastic about the look of gold that I feel like this guy at the right.  I haz a band. My ol’ pals at Guitar Player magazine interviewed me for an instructional article on looping for next month’s issue. It was especially flattering to be invited, because the interviewer was Barry Cleveland, a fine guitarist and a leading figure in the looping community. I put together this little video to demo the digital rig I use onstage with my duo band, Mental 99, and I’ve cross-posted it here. It covers software, hardware loopers, looping techniques, and the like. Have a listen.  Just how many colors can you coax from one guitar? This post is about a guitar wiring scheme that only geeks and tweakers could love. I think you’ll dig it. In Phase 1 of this project, I recreated the original Page wiring scheme using an ’82 Paul, a pair of Duncan ’59 model pickups, and four push-pull pots. The result was a great-sounding, almost absurdly versatile guitar, though the sheer number of options was downright bewildering. So naturally, the only way forward was to make the instrument even more bewildering by adding additional sonic options. This version offers all the sound of the Phase 1 model, and a buttload more. Several buttloads, actually — and I’m not talking about those skimpy metric buttloads! I gutted all the Phase 1 electronics. (Man, that hurt!) Next, using the same pickups, I added a pair of Duncan Triple Shot Mounting Rings. These provide four settings per pickup: humbucker, inner coil split, outer coil split, and both coils in parallel. (The Phase 1 plan offers only one split-coil setting per pickups. While you can configure the two pickups in parallel, you can’t do so with the individual coils in each pickup like you can here in Phase 2.) Here’s the wiring diagram I worked from. Since the Triple Shots add four new switches, the Phase 2 wiring requires only two push/pull pots. I wan’t about to let that real estate go unused! I installed a homemade germanium overdrive circuit (similar to the one we made in DIY Club) inside the guitar. My third push/pull pot activates it, and the fourth selects between two input caps, so I get a choice between a fat, Sabbath-style drive and a brighter, thinner Bluesbreakers-type tone. Check out the demo video: MORE→  Looks like a pot — but it's not! In the comments on my post on the Mongrel Strat with the Obsessive-Compulsive Tone Control, reader Dave mentioned a related product: The Stellartone ToneStyler. I ordered one and popped in into my dual-humbucker Hamer 20th Anniversary guitar (which still boasts the Seymour Duncan Joe Bonamassa pickup set I demoed here.) (Quick memory refresher: The Vari-Tone appeared in several historic Gibson guitars, notably the ES-345. It uses a half-dozen different-sized capacitors to alter the voicing of the tone pot. It also adds an inductor, which preserves lows while the capacitors remove highs. Result: the rolled-off settings have a somewhat piercing, nasal character, as opposed to the usual dark, wooly sound of a rolled-off tone pot.) Like some cool DIY versions of the project, the ToneStyler omits the inductor. And while it looks like a conventional tone pot,it’s actually a 16-position switch that selects between stepped capacitors, all of them smaller than in a conventional tone control. Result: rolled-off tones that maintain more volume and impact than in a conventional tone control. Have a listen:
Orlando Julius — “O.J.” — was a kind bandleader who patiently coached me on how not to suck at the styles. I learned so much about time-keeping, note placement, and consistency. And if there’s a better consistency exercise than playing an unvarying one-bar pattern for a half-hour song, I can’t think of it. I haven’t performed literal afrobeat in many years, though I still find myself alluding to the style. In fact, I just nipped down to the studio and recorded this lick: The Quintessential Fela Kuti Lick…and it still makes me happy.
MORE→  Hey kids! You're never too young to mod your guitars! As promised, here are a demo video and tech notes for the first phase of the Pagey Project, which recreates Jimmy Page’s original Les Paul wiring scheme. (The upcoming Phase Two will expand on the idea with even more crazy options.) All I can say is, sheesh! Why did it take me decades to try out this awesome Les Paul mod? I think it’s because I had a nasty dual-humbucker guitar many years ago with series and coil-split switches. Even though I knew the pickups were crap, it still prejudiced me against alternate humbucker wirings. “Just pick up a Fender!” I’d think. Another factor: I lacked the sophistication to know that, while many of the tones unlocked by the Pagey wiring sound thin and/or weird on their own, they can be quite useful in context. And make no mistake — except for the series switch, all the alternate Page sounds are smaller than stock Les Paul sounds. And that’s a good thing! They’re great for crystalline clean tones, ratty faux-P-90 distortion, and simply making the regular Les Paul sounds seem gigantic by contrast. Have a listen. There video starts with a 90-second overview, then works through the system in detail:
MORE→  Double the sounds available from your axe! Man, preparing the Pagey project has been a real eye-opener! Expect some surprising results! (Hint: There’s much of interest, even for players who have zero desire to sound like Page.) I’ll be posting the first video and tech walk-through after the weekend, but in the meantime, I wanted to update you on the game plan, which, frankly, only became clear once I started soldering. If you haven’t downloaded the relevant schematics, you can snag them here. (Reader Jeff pointed out pointed out a difference between the two versions of the four-push/pull wiring. I have no idea which version page used, but I went with the version from Scott Miller’s Guitar Player magazine article because it offers a bit more control — and this project is all about control!) We’re going to tackle the project in two phases. First, we’ll look at the original Pagey wiring, using four push-pull pots and period-accurate pickups (I went with Duncan ’59s with four-connector cable). I’ve wired up my ’82 Les Paul in exactly this fashion, and it’s pretty dang cool. Yes, it’s a complicated job, but not as tough as anticipated. Amazingly (for me) it turned out great on the first attempt.
MORE→  Weird — back when I wrote this GP cover story, I never even noticed the Hello Kitty guitar! Maybe it’s because of the crescendo of chatter about a Smiths reunion, but I’ve had Johnny Marr on the brain lately. (Full disclosure: I am a total, drooling fan.) I keep coming back to how deceptively simple his parts are, with an emphasis on the “deception” part. There’s always much more happening than initially meets the ear. Perfect example: “This Charming Man,” the band’s first single. It’s always been my favorite Smiths guitar performance — even more than the apocalyptic tremolo and harmonizer work of “How Soon Is Now?” Maybe it’s because I’m still astounded by the originality and sheer chutzpah of the young guitarist, who was all of 19 when the track was released. “This Charming Man” is a perfect little pop guitar part, with an African highlife-inflected head and lots of pretty open-string chiming throughout. But the deeper you dig, the more you uncover. And you won’t believe what I uncovered during my latest Smiths geek-out:
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