Jim85IROC

All these shootouts where they sound different are from people who insist on putting the knobs in the same spot. There's a 20% tolerance on most pots, and way more on the super cheap ones used in low budget products, and that's just with respect to max values. The taper profiles vary wildly, so the resistance value at noon on one pot can be wildly different than another. Once you adjust the pots, you will ultimately end up with exactly the same sound from all of these circuits. A couple years ago when everyone on HFC was buying the Klones, I jumped on too. I bought a Klone, and also a Joyo Tauren. With everything at noon they sounded different, but as soon as you dial the pots a bit, they got identical. I kept the Joyo because it was smaller and I liked the cool light. That Tauren into my Supersonic 22 is the setup I use 99% of the time for my humbucker guitars. I absolutely love the tone.

yeah, but it's back to their normal Stupid Deal Of The Day, not the Stupid Deal Of The Hour that they had on Friday.

I need to dig a little deeper into what he's doing. If I'm understanding what he's doing properly, he's taking samples in the frequency domain and running a fourier transform to convert that into impulse responses, then sending each of those to the most "appropriate" speaker. Then I assume he's using a whole bunch more DSP to manipulate the phases of the individual IRs so that they sum properly at some distance from the speaker. It's an interesting approach for sure, but ultimately I'm not sure I see the value. I'm paraphrasing here, but his biggest justification for this is that a driver can't produce the sum of multiple sine waves accurately, but that's easily proven false. distortion measurements of some well designed speakers clearly show that THD and individual order distortions can be (and are) very low across the audible range on many well designed speakers, typically well below 1% aside from bass frequencies. The biggest audible differences in speakers tends to be how well the individual driver signals sum across the horizontal and vertical spectrum (i.e. the polar response). It seems that right now this new design is falling pretty short in that regard, but what I don't understand is if this has the potential to improve on the overall polar response compared to a conventional speaker. My gut says no for the simple fact that the physical spacing between the drivers is going to create a summing nightmare that even DSP will only be able to "fix" at one point in space, which means that all of the reflected content whose energy plays heavily into the polar response is going to have major phase issues across the frequency spectrum, resulting in all kinds of problems. It'll be real interesting to see where this goes over time. While I remain highly skeptical, I'm still very intrigued by it.

By far the biggest difference I found was that the artist, at least the one I had, is extremely bass shy and is focused on upper mids. The long story is that I have a 93 Special with Lollar p90s that I absolutely love the sound of, but I wanted something a little "nicer" with a fuller neck profile, so I bought an Artist to swap the lollars into. I didn't like how the Artist sounded, but I attributed it to the hot ceramic Duncans. I swapped the Lollars in and it sounded much, much better, but also much different from the Special. The lollars helped tame the ice-pick highs and the screeching upper mids, but were still very bass shy. It probably would have sat really well in a mix, but it wasn't the full range, very PAF-ish sound that I loved in the Special. Lollars went back into the Special and the Artist went down the road. I just recently picked up a p90 Studio, and I haven't swapped the Lollars in yet, but even with the stock Duncans the difference is night and day. This guitar sounds fantastic. Very full range, just like the Special. No pokey upper mids, no ice-pick highs. I have high hopes that this one will give me the sound that I'm after with the Lollars. (Seller's pic - I haven't really photographed this one yet)

I have a 594 SE doublecut and it's pretty impressive. Lightweight, fantastic upper fret access, great ergonomics and I love how the pickups sound. I especially like the fat neck and the 10" fretboard radius. It's a fantastic combo. So... why do I always pick up my Les Pauls instead? I need to spend more time with the PRS.

I'm going to go against the grain here and try to provide some more technical information. BLUF: Capacitors matter way less than you think. Details: The tone circuit in a guitar is an RC network (Resistor & Capacitor), and for approximately the first half of the sweep of the tone knob, the "R" value is so large that it is by far the dominant factor in the high frequency rolloff. It's not until you get to about 1/2 way or more into the rolloff of the knob that the capacitor has virtually any influence. From that point on, the capacitor's value will impact the frequency response, with a larger capacitor impacting the rolloff frequency. Some heavier reading here: https://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/7166/effect-tone-capacitors As for capacitor type impacting sound, absolutely not. None. At all. Golden ears can sniff all the corks they want, but there's no measurable evidence in the history of anything audio related to support that. There is, however, a substantial amount of measured and repeatable data to prove otherwise. 2 caps of the same value will provide exactly the same rolloff, with absolutely no change to the sinewave at any of the audible frequencies.

My Studio Custom has an ebony board and it spoils me every time I play it.

Well that's certainly encouraging!

Interesting. I wonder if it's a copy & paste from an older Ovation site or if it's legit. It seems really odd that a german company would buy the name, then start production in the US for European sales. I guess we'll see.

A quick search revealed that Ovation is owned by Gewa now, who apparently manufactures guitars in Germany. Seems very unlikely that we'll see US models. https://gewaguitars.com/en Hamer is still owned by KMC, so even less chance of those coming back to the US.

Good to know!

I haven't played the new one for more than a couple minutes, and not at all since I tightened the truss rod and set the action, but in the couple minutes that I played it, it felt very similar to the Studio Custom. Similar neck profile, similar weight. The goldtop is surprisingly bright unplugged (like... plinky bright. No lows at all) but seems to be very much full range plugged in. The import goldtop has a wonderful creamy, full tone unplugged.

Guitar is here. It's got a couple issues, but overall I'm very happy with it. I assume he was one of the builders in New Hartford?

His name is Gibson. I had to take that picture because it was very similar to a picture I took a few years ago with our OG tuxedo, Ozzy. Sadly we said goodbye to him a couole years ago.

Guitar is here! It's got a couple minor issues, but overall I'm quite happy. First, the bad: The tone pot is an on/off switch at about 3 on the knob. It's the factory pot, so it must just be worn. The output jack feels sloppy. There's a lot of play in the plug and I have to hold it in a certain spot for it to work. Lastly, and most minimal, I noticed that the neck has a ton of relief, but I can take care of that when I give it a setup. It also has that chip at the bottom, but I knew that, so it doesn't count. On the plus side, the guitar is otherwise fantastic. The neck feels similar to the neck on my Studio Custom; not as thick as I prefer, but still nice. Definitely thicker than on my Special. Weight seems quite reasonable, I'd say mid 8lb range. Frets seem to show no wear. Plugged in, it seems to have a nice full range sound, not lacking bass like my Artist was. I'm anxious to get my Lollars into it so I can determine whether it will replace my Special or not. It's interesting to hang it next to my import. I didn't expect the color to be so different. The US model has a much more subdued gold hue. The import has a thicker neck (which I prefer). The top carves are noticably different, especially at the horns. Speaking of which, the horn shape is different too. Frets and board look nice. I opened up the cavity to see if the tone pot was original (it is) and got a couple surprises. Anybody recognize the signature? Whoever it was was a happy fella!