zenmindbeginner

I'm a non shredder and get along just fine with a Centaura... or Diablo.

Ooh, I just played that Friday (on vinyl). Gonna start today with Ravel's Bolero. From there, who knows? Maybe some Beatles, maybe some Miles Davis, Gary Burton, Jim Hall, or Brubeck. Winter is always my favorite season to play "Sketches of Spain"... you should throw that one on. : )

I write a lot in C# tuning, so I keep 2 guitars with that tuning... solves F# too since the stuff that is usually in A is now in F#. I also keep a guitar or two in Eb tuning which is how I like to play lead, so I have the hard keys covered. lolz

Yeah, it's most likely that you have a short or your grounding out your hot signal... damn switch might be bad. As far as what's in DiMarzio's line that would compare, the 36th Anny is a good match for the bridge and the Air Classic is a good match for the neck. An Antiquity Duncan bridge would actually sound really good in the neck and would give you a more authentic sound than an Air Classic. The Ant neck models are a bit dark and period correct for late 50's PAFs but the OEM pickups that DiMarzio made for Hamer were pretty bright and the bridge Antiquities are pretty close IMHO. If your pickup really did short out... it's most likely the connection for the hook-up wire at the beginning and ends of the coils and that can be repaired fairly easily. And don't forget that guys like Fralin will do rewinds and you could just need a rewind at worst... that would actually be a really good bet. I think that MJ at SD will rewind your DiMarzio for you... she's pretty open minded. Lots of choices if you need to actually fix or replace the pickup but I would bet that it's 1). your switch, 2). you have a portion of your hot signal going to ground somewhere due to maybe frayed shielding or errant solder blob or 3). the solder connections for the hook up wire failed. It's least likely to be a break in the coil or a dead magnet but anything can happen. ; )

She's got my right arm but thank God not my sexness. I think she plays with conviction and force Pretty bad arse if you ask me.

Is there supposed to be a video or something?

in 1983, I wanted to play guitar really bad but was only 9 or 10 and didn't have a job. My brother received a bass guitar from my Dad that year and started to mess around on it. Dad would go on to give my bro and I some sort of "lessons". My Dad would let me use his guitar during the lesson. He taught us the Asian guitar riff heard in the opening to "Turning Japanese" and the 4 note per string chromatic scale. Basically, I didn't learn anything cool or useful and had to give my Dad his guitar back at the end of every lesson which was retarded. Then, 1984 hit and RATT, Motley Crue, Scorpions and all of that earlier metal and hard rock had turned into mainstream MTV schlock and I ate it up with a fucking spoon. But had no guitar. My brother put his bass in the closet and just didn't play it at all that year. I however BURNED to play the guitar sooooo bad but had no outlet. My brother and I returned to NC the following Summer and my Dad continued the lessons but allowed me to play the guitar between practices. He taught us the "boogie woogie" melody, taught us to swing and taught us the bar major chord and the intro to Proud Mary. He also gave me the guitar to take back to Chicago. The guitar was an embarrassment in the days of pointy shredders because it was a Norlin Epiphone Wilshire with covered pickups and a god awful body shape and pickguard. I played the fuggg outta it though. Still had no real decent lessons or anything at that point. My mom paid for my brother to have lessons that following school year. He would come home with the lessons on tape and he was paired up with a guitar student so I was able to play his tapes and use his notes to start jamming on my own. Still no real decent lessons but I was learning as much as I could get my hands on. I soon discovered chord charts and went on to learn a little music schooling like the notes of the scales and whole notes and all of that shite. I had been saving my money from birthdays and Christmas for a couple of years at that point because me goal was to have a decent guitar. I begged my Mom to pitch in some and take me shopping for an axe after that Christmas season was over. She said that she would think about it. Well, the Bears won the Super bowl that year and she took my brother and I to a big ol' party where we were like the only kids. My mon was cool and treated us like little adults and wanted to know my picks for the gambling "pool" at the party. I did four picks and went about stuffing my face with as much party food as possible (I LOOOOVED FOOD as a child and sometimes that was all that I was interested in). Well, I won 3 out of the 4 quarters and went home $150 richer that night. My mom took this as a sign and pitched in the money and we bought my red Scarab II with that money... my Mom ended up pitching in around $170 or so we just scored so to speak. Well, that guitar student dropped out of my bros class and there was an opening for me and I ended up getting lessons for about 3 months before he kicked me out (he didn't particularly like hair metal and I kept up with the RATT, Dokken and stuff... he got to the point where he couldn't stand me). Those were the only lessons I've ever had. His method of teaching consisted of asking me to bring in songs I wanted to learn on cassette with me. He would then learn them quickly like a savant and teach them to me in a FUCKING HURRY!!!! He taught me some shit like what it meant to augment or diminish, the major and minor scales and that was it. No advice on technique, how to play, theory or anything else. Gary from the Sound Post in Mt. Prospect... they were a Hamer dealer but I didn't buy my Scarab from them. So, I just had my Mom buy me "Guitar For The Practicing Musician" when the issues had songs in it I wanted to learn. I've had no real learnin' and am COMPLETELY FUCKING jealous of you fuckers that had parents with money who bought you decent lessons and just fucking gave you nice gear. My Mom did all that she could do for me on her waitress income... God bless her for doing all that she could. I consider myself "self taught" but this is the actual long story behind it. Thank y'all for indulging me. : )

Any metal band that refuses to recognize Tool as Gods of metal are incompetent and blasphemous.

How did this guy fit so many damn guitars in a doublewide?

You guys put an AWESOME cap on a long and tasking journey for just a simple pickup review. SD doesn't know about the review yet since it's a 4 day weekend and you guys decimated the anti-climactic vibe I was left with after I got done late Thursday night. I'm all isolated here hunkered over my computers and this thread is like plugging into the socket of life. In Randy Newman's words, It Feels Like Home. I had this vision for the opener and was driven (no pun intended) to make it happen for real... I was inspired by this small preview for Disney's CARS 2 movie But I wanted a vintage theme because I was aware that the "Super V" logo was the old 50's Chevy "V" just inverted and with the same sort of "Magneto" font as Chevrolet used. The car just had to be a mid 50's Chevrolet with a red paint job. I spent some time on this graphic design that I created from scratch (the clouds are sampled). I'm not an After Effects guru but I can get around in it and am working on my animation skills every chance that I can get. I fully expected a JB with a roughcast Alnico II (which I am familiar with) instead of the original polished Alnico V... nope much less output than that... is the magnet degaussed? I didn't get a gauss rating and I don't think they are giving that info out with every Custom Shop pickup like they used to. I tend to think that the wire is smaller than 44AWG. I don't know for sure if the gauge of wire is smaller than 44AWG... it could be a metric gauge which would be like 44.5AWG and not quite 45AWG. That information is sort of classified... I can speculate but won't receive any definitive answer from SD. Of course Evan Skopp tipped us off a bit with that line about the Super V being similar to the prototype JB. Duncan isn't all that keen on telling everybody flat out what the prototype JB even was... you get pieces of information here and there and have to sort of put it together. The whole theory behind the JB/Jazz combo was in my mind to flip the Telecaster pickup scheme where you had a 42AWG wire for the bridge and 43 or 44AWG for the neck. The JB is 44AWG and the Jazz is 42AWG... everybody loves their tele bridge pickups but the necks are always a bit underwhelming and too dark. Seymour was like... what if I wind the crap out of 44AWG and basically fill a bobbin for the bridge but underwind 42AWG at the neck. But supposedly, the actual wire for the prototype JB in Beck's tele is thinner than 44AWG and the pickup isn't as dark as a JB, less compressed, raspier, more textured, and punchier. So... a thinner gauge than 44AWG wouldn't fill a bobbin and you'd have a lower inductance than the 44AWG wire. That lower inductance is going to impart more articulation and touch sensitivity to the pickup's tone... more harmonics and allow the texture of your guitar's natural comb filtering that the wood imparts to actually become audible. This is the texture of the pickup's midrange that I mentioned a few times in the video... it will be different for every guitar more or less. It's subtle but like lifting a layer of skin off of your tone...the RAW quality of your guitar's wood and bridge will be exposed. All this RAW quality takes away power a bit... I learned these riffs on a '78 Model and when I installed the Super V... just absolutely couldn't play them worth a crap. I actually had to practice my ass off to get a bit more strength in me hands and fingers in order to tackle the Lynch stuff (and I was playing Lynch's easier more straight forward solos. lolz!). I could have raised the pickup or raised the gain... I don't actually play with a lot of gain... my Line 6 stuff is a modeled Plexi and the Weehbo JMP Drive is a medium gain overdrive... I simply didn't have anymore gain on tap. It's actually a great pickup for a boost pedal and those who like to cascade gain stages with various preamps and whatnot. I could have used a little more power but usually play with an underpowered rig so I just sucked it up and practiced heavily between April and June (I'm a slow learner). This. TOTALLY THIS. Great job Zen. A coupla Super V orders coming SD's way from the UK Wow Kevin, that is waaay cool. Just to let you know... it is a vintage output pickup... has a good bit less power than a JB or DD (sort of on the level of a Seth Lover or '59). I probably could have raised the height of the pickup to give it a little more power but I just kept it at a decent distance from the strings anyway. The Super V (despite it's many unique and excellent qualities), is low output sort of like his Screamin' Demon... not what a lot of people expect attached to a name like George Lynch, but it's just the reality. It's like crossing a Seth Lover with the easy pinch harmonics of a JB and the tightness of a Distortion. There does seem to be a notch in the lower frequencies which allows the midrange texture to be so detailed and sort of high resolution. Man, I can honestly say that I didn't even think of that... Gold would look soooo sweet and it could have matched my guitar which has gold hardware. F**k, I should have asked for gold!!! That's the main reason why so much of the video is in B&W. I didn't want the chrome to clash visually with the gold hardware. Hey Jim, If you don't have an X3 Live, I don't think the download will work... I'm not really sure of that but I am going to assume that the CustomTone patches aren't interchangeable, backwards or forwards compatible. Patch is a 1968 Plexi Jump Lead: Bass -27% Mids-100% Treble-66% Presence-87% Gain-100% Cabinet is 4x12 Greenbacks & Microphone is 57 (off axis) backed off of the cone with 35% room tone EQ is -12db @50Hz +3.8db @500Hz +5.2db @ 900Hz +5.2db @2kHz Delay is 400ms with a pretty heavy modulation (speed 68% depth 72%) and pretty decent feedback at 46%. The mix is set low at 24% where you don't actually hear an audible repeat but it blends in with the reverb. Reverb is a vintage plate with a big Pre Delay of 56% Decay at 43% Tone at 100% and mix pretty high at 74% Of course, that is only in the RIGHT channel submixed to mono. The Princeton Reverb + pedals is what's in the LEFT channel... the blend of the two is what makes the "phantom center". I did a batch of recordings as sort of a preparation for the video review. These recordings have no modeling and is just my Princeton Reverb with SM57 in the left channel and the AKG 414EB in the right channel. It's most of the stuff I did for the video except for "The Hunter" I think. Gives a great insight into how much the modeler adds. I did process the finish result of the video through Ozone 5 and Slate FG-X Mastering plug-ins but the Princeton only tracks off of Soundcloud are unmastered and not as loud. I LOOOOOVE the sound I get from my pedalboard + Princeton and 2 microphones... highly addictive tone for sure... makes me not turn on my modeler much unless I am recording. http://soundcloud.com/zenmindbeginner/sets/seymour-duncan-custom-shop-1 Badgerplex? Wha . . . ? Must google immediately But first, absofrigginglutely decimating playing, ZMB. Damn! Thank you sir! The Badgerplex AC pedal is a faithful recreation of the Maestro EP-3 preamp circuit. It's a FET based preamp with a 180 degree phase shift that imparts a sort of 3D character to the signal. The preamp also leans out my sound a tick while providing some extra grit to my tone. Makes harmonics just JUMP off of the fretboard and gives single notes a "life" and vibrance to them. I like a nice upper midrange edge with an accentuated pick attack and midrange "bloom" with the plain strings. The Badgerplex preamps are just right up my alley. And since it's AC... it doesn't utilize a charge pump to boost the internal voltage up to 22 or 23 volts which is what the original Maestro EP-3 preamp section used. Of course, I am describing a subtle effect and not some overwhelming change to my tone... I am not planning on looking for another magic box though, the Badgerplex AC is the real deal. ClinchFX makes an almost identical product although utilizes a charge pump to boost the voltage from 9 volts to 22 volts like the other non AC versions of the Badgerplex PRE pedals.

It's JULY 28th or the first week or so in August already? I missed a whole month?

What's crazy is that Jack did that while juggling a serious career along with tending to his duties as a husband and a father... and dog walker to two burly bulldogs. lolz I have none of that and haven't managed to achieve a fraction of what Jack did on "The Goonch" It's truly a marvelous achievement considering he did almost everything himself...

I managed to get the mother of all brown sounds that I have been able to achieve without diming my Super Reverb. 1). 1st pedal in chain - BOSS CS-3 (level,tone and attack all @ max, sustain at 9:30) 2). Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret (MKII?) set to Super Lead and with Tone @ 2:00, Loudness and Gain @max 3). ISP Decimator (regular non G string) into my 1966 Princeton Reverb (treble-10, bass-4.5, reverb-4) I can get a good bedroom level with volume on 2 I couldn't get the DLS to work quite right without chaining up the CS-3 (my Tone Press was simply not up to the job). It was really weird that I got the tone and the feel with the sustain so damn low... I have none of the noticeable squish and sag of using a good amount of sustain but seem to have sustain for days. So, the Catalinbread DLS is supposed to be a "stackable" pedal and I can attest to it's glory when paired with the right pedal and a magic amp... by itself, it was irritatingly close to what I was looking for but just far enough away to make me think that the answer to the brown sound lay elsewhere. My soul is jumping up and down inside, this is truly some serious s**t that I am experiencing (I can't wait to try an EP-3 preamp clone in the chain too). I feel like this guy.

The CD is absolutely outstanding. I can't believe the drums are from someone who taught themselves just so they could lay down the beats in their head... some of my favorite songwriters play their own drums (Jeff Lynne, Maurice White, Dave Grohl etc.) Not only are the drums played professionally and were recorded expertly, but they are mixed perfectly. I love loud, punchy drums that anchor the mix and give it this rigid structure with which the melody and rhythms can live and breathe. Jack's drums on Goonch are exactly like that. AWESOME drums no doubt. 12 string bass tones out the ying yang... really sonically gorgeous representations of the absolute best that Hamer has to offer. When it's all said and done... nobody will remember most of the Hamer line, but what they will never forget are 12 and 8 string basses. Jack did his part in preserving their place in history. Jeeze a whole paragraph and I haven't even mentioned the music yet? Is the CD that good? Yes.

Muuuch better looking. White guys... they all look the same, I can't tell em' apart. lolz

Ibanez? I'm shaking my head back and forth in a style like "noooooooooo" Hamer fugged up not offering the jumbos... my Corpsman grandfather worked triage during the invasion of Iwo Jima just so you could ditch an American original for a Japanese one? I kid, I kid... excuse me while I go get in my Mazda to fetch breakfast. Chris are you proceeding to give the guitar a good KK style tongue job? All that picture needs is some horns on yerhead.

My Scarab's neck broke 6 weeks into owning it and I got a factory new neck and paintjob back in 1987. They put the serial number on the new neck and matched the paint perfectly. I don't consider that a "neck repair" since it's a new neck. Is the neck glued together or is it a new neck? If it's a factory new neck, it's not a repair even though Hamer "repaired" it.

Lolz

American Special neck - $300 Decent ash or alder body - $100-200 Hardtail bridge - $50 tuners and other hardware - $100-200 Pickups - $100-200 Electronics - $20-50 Without finishing supplies, this should cost under $900. You could theoretically get it down to $800 by getting good deals A used set of Fender CS '69, Texas Specials or Fat '50s shouldn't set you back more than $120. I've seen whole Fender CS harnesses go for $100. The hardware could easily be had for under $120 with room for premium Schaller locking tuners and a fancy Callaham neck plate. I've seen great painted ash or alder bodies for under $100 (FYI, perfectly routed three single coil bodies are more expensive that HSS HSH or swimming pool routed bodies) If it's all decent licensed Fender stuff, it should all come together pretty easily. Since you're building a hardtail, you won't even have to set-up your tremolo. Don't be afraid of Mighty Mite. Warmoth's prices are the absolute highest in the world. Warmoth's typical maple necks and bodies are no better than anybody else's but where they shine is in uber-expensive AAA to AAAAA figured wood and hard to find body designs. So, if you are not going for a flame neck or quilted body, I'd steer away from them 'cause you will pay a lot more at Warmoth. Personally, I'd buy all USA Fender parts with the cheapest high quality aftermarket licensed body that you can lay your hands on. Good luck

Pure Balls.

I can't speak for the restuvem, but I most certainly am.

Ash has uniform grain like oak... alder has KNOTS and chaotic grain. Like CMatthes said about wood... it varies a lot as far as density and weight (even within the same species). But Ash grown in two different climates and soils can vary greatly in density and weight. Northern Ash becomes much more dense than it's Southern counterparts. Ash found in the swamps of Louisiana and Mississippi can be extremely light and porous And yes, alder is a bit more consistent since it is distributed along more consistent climates and soil types.

Sure, I'll chime in, but I don't think it will end anything What I see in your picture is a Made in Germany by Schaller Hamer Floyd Rose bridge and a Made in Germany by Schaller Floyd Rose II bridge. And they look the same to me. If that was the point you were trying to make, well, point made. As far as I'm concerned. - Austin Yeah... I think I had the smugness coming to me 'cause I was a dick to someone in the last few days... Andrew was just dishing out my Instant Karma. You did a good deed Andrew despite my protestations. I feel better.