Last time I installed the neck of my Telecaster project, but not a single piece of hardware was attached. The time has come to take a crack at the tuners. It’s in my opinion that the best way to install the tuners is as the first piece of hardware. That way you can loosely fix some (old) strings to the bridge and move it around to get the best spacing possible. On this body that’s a possibility since the holes that were pre-drilled for the bridge attachments allow for some movement. Continue reading “Tele Build Blog, Part 2: Prepping the Headstock for Tuners”

“Cramp!”

As a guitarist, your hands are your life. Any discomfort or injury can seriously hinder if not impede one’s ability to play to the best of your capabilities. It kind of goes without saying that punching things is generally a bad idea, try to avoid that if at all possible. But if you have any sort of pain or stiffness issue it’s not only a physical hindrance, it’s psychological too –  you’re hesitant to play that expansive lick that even though it would be perfect, you know it’s going to hurt so bad you may not pull it off correctly. Continue reading “Hand Health: Coping with Carpal Tunnel and Arthritis While Playing Guitar”

I’m a hardcore Les Paul lover. For years I refused to play anything else but Les Pauls. I tried to get all the tones I wanted from them, but three years ago that started to change. I got myself a hollowbody Les Paul and saw myself using that guitar for ‘hollowbody tones.’  With that guitar as a stepping stone, a small urge developed inside me to get a Strat and a Tele. Not just any Strat and Tele, but guitars based on vintage models: Ash, Alder, Maple and Rosewood, in the period correct combinations. Continue reading “Seymour Duncan SSL-1 California Set for Stratocaster”

Let me first say this:
The Seymour Duncan Custom Shop RTM bridge humbucker is one of the coolest pickups you’ve probably never thought about trying.

When the good people at Seymour Duncan told me I could choose any Custom Shop model to review for this blog, I had no idea which one to pick. Generally, all of my guitars sound pretty good. There were no glaring weaknesses or trouble spots that really needed addressing, but I had my pick of some of the best custom-wound pickups in the business and I was absolutely not going to waste that opportunity.

Continue reading “Review: Seymour Duncan Custom Shop RTM Humbucker”

It won’t flatten out your dynamics OR fit on your pedal board.

If there is one effect out there than seems to cause guitarists the most confusion, it’s definitely the compressor. I read plenty of people on the Seymour Duncan Forums asking about them. What do they do? Do I need one? What do the controls do? Is it even working?
The compressor is one of the most useful tools available to a guitarist, or any musician for that matter. Unfortunately it’s also one of the most misunderstood devices on the planet. Perhaps it’s because the effect isn’t in-your-face obvious, like distortion, phase, or delay. It could also be the mysterious control names. Attack? Release? Is there a crazed wild animal inside the pedal? Continue reading “Squeezing the Mystery out of Compressors”

Working musicians know that the key to a positive gig experience isn’t just in how prepared we are, but how well we are able to deal with and respond to the things we never thought to prepare for. We know not to flip out over a bad monitor mix or because the Jagermeister is the wrong temperature; we are professionals. We do our best to keep a positive attitude and roll with the punches. Continue reading “Gigging at the Edge of Reason, Episode 1”

When you walk around in a nice guitar shop it’s hard to not drool over the lovely finishes some manufacturers seem to produce. Incredibly glossy with a flame or quilt top that almost looks 3D. The first time I stepped in a guitar shop that carried Paul Reed Smith guitars I could hardly believe that these figures were Mother Nature’s handywork! As a matter of fact I had to touch the top in order to believe it was flat and that the 3D effect was part of the wood. Since I couldn’t afford a PRS for years I decided to build my guitars with parts by Warmoth and have them finished by a friend of mine. He finished five guitars I currently own and the result was absolutely amazing. Lacquering a guitar was a special ‘recipe’ that was a secret to me that I had to unlock. Continue reading “How Do They Make Those Quilt Tops So 3D-Looking?”

The best secret weapon in Black Country Communion’s armoury is their ability to make music that sounds like it could just as easily have been made 35 years ago, in terms of musical directness and honesty. That was true of their first two albums and it’s true of Afterglow too. There’s a kind of magic that happens when Joe Bonamassa, Glenn Hughes, Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian play together, and it’s all over opening track ‘Big Train’ and its follow-up, ‘This is Your Time.’ This isn’t blues-rock: it’s bluesy rock music.  Continue reading “Review: Black Country Communion – Afterglow”

Before there were amplifiers with master volumes, dedicated gain selectors and almost complete armies of overdrive pedals and stomp boxes, guitar players relied on pickups with higher output to drive their amps into higher gain territory than previously possible. Many players would swap out a pickup for a hotter specimen. The Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB was one of the first pickups to hit the market and found it’s way into player’s hands fairly soon. Even players who had guitars that were equipped with single coils would sometimes switch to humbuckers. A very notable instrument was Seymour Duncan’s Tele-Gib. This guitar originally came with 2 single coils but was retrofitted in the early 70s to have 2 humbuckers.

Unfortunately, players who wanted to keep the pure single coil nature of their guitar but who needed extra output had some problems. There wasn’t a viable solution for them. They could go with humbuckers or lower output single coils, but hotter single coils? Forget it.

Until David Gilmour bursted into the scene! He asked Seymour Duncan to make him some hotter single coils, and those eventually became the SSL-5. Offered to the public in the early 80s, these pickups offered players a hot single coil. With its stronger magnets and more powerful winding, this pickup filled the need for many players. The SSL-5 is a hot yet true single coil. The SSL-5 was quickly adopted by many players, professional and casual alike.

Seymour Duncan’s Evan Skopp told us the following about the design stages of the SSL5:

When the so-called SSL-1C, which was a one-off designed for Mr. Gilmour, eventually went into production, it became the SSL-5 Custom. The SSL-5 you buy today is essentially the same pickup as the SSL-1C that Phil Taylor ordered from Seymour and which went into the Black Strat.

For Fender’s DG Black Strat reissue and as a tribute to this bit of guitar history, we stamp “SSL-1C” into the bottom flatwork of the SSL-5s that are installed in the bridge position of that guitar. 

You can get just one pickup if you want to beef up, for example, the bridge pickup, or get a hot single coil to keep up with a hot bridge humbucker. It is also possible to get a complete calibrated set, though, with the middle pickup reverse wound with a reverse polarity, to cancel out any additional hum you might experience.  To enhance the versatility of this set even further, you can get this set with a coiltap as an option. This will reduce the output by almost half and will yield a clearer, cleaner tone with a bit more spank and sparkle.

With enough power to drive non-master volume amps but not so much that your tone becomes an unbalanced, wooly mess, the Seymour Duncan SSL-5 Custom offers an incredibly versatile platform for many styles.

I always wished to own a Telecaster, but after having tried over 20 guitars I still was without a Tele! So, I decided to build me one. I started out with Allparts parts though, since I don’t have the time (nor capabilities) to really build from scratch. I have the theory that you want a thick maple neck and medium heavy, medium dense ash for a body. The maple will give the bite, and the thickness will give you some lows. The body though will have to be dense enough to keep up with the treble and upper mids the Tele should have, but open enough to give it some smoothness. I got this theory after playing a lot of Teles. The ones with the highs I liked had a full maple neck and a medium heavy and medium dense ash body. The ones with a thinner neck had too much bite and the ones with a lighter ash body were too ‘kind’ sounding, not dirty or raunchy enough. Continue reading “Telecaster Build Blog, Part 1: The Neck”