The New Tone Thread

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minerman said:
I know you haven't had it very long, but how does it compare to your Goldtop dude???
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The Custom is about a pound heavier. 11.8 pounds according to the super scientific bathroom scale. And the Custom's archtop is flatter than the Goldtop. The heavier weight, flatter arch, and rear binding make it feel like it's considerably heftier than the Goldtop, but the necks play and feel about the same. The frets and fretboard are the main difference in feel as far as I can tell so far. The Goldtop's neck is pretty standard for a Les Paul - Medium jumbo frets, bound rosewood, acrylic trapezoid inlays. The Custom has flattened jumbo frets, bound ebony fretboard, and block mother of pearl inlays. But I'm not so sensitive a player that any of this matters. I can suck on any guitar. I've never met a guitar that makes my Goldtop feel light though.

JDOD said:
I really want a Les Paul now :(
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Sell all those wanky shred guitars and get you one!

miroslav said:
Nice score! :thumbs up:

I think it looks good with or without the pick guard.
Are you going to want to have it go back to original stock look with pick guard and adding gold covers?

Sometimes on certain guitars, the gold hardware actually works...and I think it does on this one.
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Thanks miro. The pickguard is already back on it. I like it okay without, but the last thing I wanna do is lose the screws or the whole damn thing. Plus it looks more Ace Frehley with it on. :D

The pickups will either stay open, or get replaced with other open coil pickups. There's no way I'm putting gold covered pickups in this guitar. I usually hate gold hardware, but this one's hardware is worn in to a dull gold, so it's tolerable, and it looks pretty good with the cherryburst finish. The gold hardware is what keeps me away from black, white, and wine red Customs. I think the Silverburst is the only regular production Custom that came with chrome hardware. All other Customs got the gold shit. Yuck. The LP Classic Customs had chrome hardware, but they're not full Customs. No rear binding and no ebony fretboard.

So anyway, no gold covers. If I replace these pickups, I will probably go with zebra pickups or all white.
 
I think I'm gonna give the Washburn a bit of love. It's a very Les Paul style guitar.
 
Lol. Okay, no tones yet. But I just spent about an hour going back and forth between the Goldtop and Custom through the Plexi set to destroy. Good lord these are some rock and roll machines. Anyway, right off the bat, these T-Tops are brighter and "quackier" than the Bustbucker in the Goldtop. The biggest thing to me is the Custom does actually sound more "vintage". Through the Plexi it sounds punchy and crunchy like....any 70s rock tone. The Goldtop has a smoother, more balanced sound. The Custom barks and bites and has a very tight low end. These fucking T-Tops almost sound like P-90s! It's gonna be a fantastic punk rock fury guitar. :thumbs up:
 
Greg_L said:
Lol. Okay, no tones yet. But I just spent about an hour going back and forth between the Goldtop and Custom through the Plexi set to destroy. Good lord these are some rock and roll machines. Anyway, right off the bat, these T-Tops are brighter and "quackier" than the Bustbucker in the Goldtop. The biggest thing to me is the Custom does actually sound more "vintage". Through the Plexi it sounds punchy and crunchy like....any 70s rock tone. The Goldtop has a smoother, more balanced sound. The Custom barks and bites and has a very tight low end. These fucking T-Tops almost sound like P-90s! It's gonna be a fantastic punk rock fury guitar. :thumbs up:
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Thanks for the heads-up dude, this is more of what I was wondering about, although it is nice you spec'd it all out... Like you, I'm not a sensitive guitar player at all, although some little things matter to me. Up until you guys here got me into buying pretty nice gear, I've always tried do the best with what I had, or like my old bass player used to say "In tune & on time, what else do you need???"....You really have to know this guy to understand what I'm talking about, he's a real space cadet, & I'm not sure, but think he was used as a guinea pig for a batch of home-made acid in the 70's...:eek:.

Looking forward to some clips with the new Lester....

Oh yeah, on the pickup thing, I'm not gonna tear into any of my guitars just for that, although I do like how open coils look way better than the covered...That's purely cosmetic, & amounts to the pickguard vs. no pickguard IMO...

Jdude: If you want a LP, you're just gonna have to bite the bullet & get one man. I drooled over 'em for quite a while, & if you end up hanging here for any amount of time, you'll get one eventually....May not be the appropriate place to say this, but some retailers offer a monthly payment plan, that's how I got my LP & SG....Not 100% sure since you're across the pond, but just sayin' you could check into it & see....
 
I got this Custom on my Guitar Center card. Two years no interest. That's easy. No interest was the key. Fuck paying interest.

I need to do a setup on it. The action is too low! The Goldtop's action is a little higher and I'm more used to that.
 
Greg_L said:
I got this Custom on my Guitar Center card. Two years no interest. That's easy. No interest was the key. Fuck paying interest.
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Almost all of my gear I've bought online, unseen, unplayed on payment plans. I've had to fork over retail (no haggling), & there's usually a fee added onto the first/initial payment (usually less than $20), but IMO it's a decent way to get something you can't pay for all at once...

Greg_L said:
I need to do a setup on it. The action is too low! The Goldtop's action is a little higher and I'm more used to that.
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I lowered the action on my LP pretty much as soon as I got it, but I haven't touched the SG's action. Not sure I will really, it's actually about right...

Pretty interested in some clips from the new LP dude...
 
miroslav said:
Are you doing this holding the pup...or do you put it in some sort of clamp?
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I did it once, on the floor with a pair of gloves when I was twenty years old. Took about twenty minutes. Didn't even disconnect the pups, just flipped them over on the body with a towel underneath. It was a 20th anny LPC Black Beauty and the gold was all corroded to shit. Don't think I'd bother again.
 
Bubba po said:
Ok, so I made a video. Seeing as we're all hanging out in here, I thought I'd share it with you guys first. It's not finished yet, I'm waiting for some clips from Armistice doing the vocal and I want to get our lass on doing the other vocals.

The vid was done using the 30-day trial version of Sony Movie studio. This is my absolute first try at video editing; if I can do it, anyone can. :D

The editing interface is kind of like a cross between Reaper and photoshop. You have as many video and audio tracks as your processor can manage. You can place and edit the clips any way you want, but the clips higher up in the list have priority over the ones lower down unless you make them more transparent, kind of like Photoshop layers.

Anyway, what do you think of it so far? Watch in HD, it's much better.

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I agree with the other dudes, the one static drum shot gets tiresome. I think that I'd rather see the underwater footage be the prominent feature rather than the drummer shot. The guitar bits are out of sync with the video by a bit. It's hard to remember to clap or do something that makes it easy to sync up every video shot with the audio. Nice drumming by Po Jr. The track sounds great to me. And very nice Jag :) that sounds thick for a Jag, not jangly and spanky. What pickups are in it?

Sony Movie Studio is awesome. I got a copy a while back, but got sick for a month right after then, so I haven't fired it up for a while now. I love how easy to use it is, and I agree that it's very Reaper-ish in its basic functions. It's a great program.
 
Greg_L said:
I got this Custom on my Guitar Center card. Two years no interest. That's easy. No interest was the key. Fuck paying interest.

I need to do a setup on it. The action is too low! The Goldtop's action is a little higher and I'm more used to that.
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Oof, I hate low action. I play too ham-fisted and hard to deal with low action. It just buzzes and frets out on me.

Right before I got sick, I went from .011 to .012 NYXL on my Jazzmaster. Then I went a month without playing, and I picked it up the other day and it was like playing freaking bridge suspension cables. Ouch! It's gonna take the ol' fingers a while to build back up to those heavy strings.

Oh, and I didn't mean to be derogatory about the clownburst thing...that's just what immediately comes to mind when I see a '70s cherry burst. I do like that guitar quite a bit. Good call on avoiding the gold pickup covers. Man, the gold hardware has always been the main deterrent to Customs for me. But without that super-conspicuous gold pickup cover (x2), it looks a lot more tasteful.
 
miroslav said:
:thumbs up:

Yeah...most of my stuff involved adding covers...though I did have to remove some messed up existing covers to add new covers.
I just prefer a covered pup for my taste...and the only open pups are a pair of cream colored DiMarzio Super Distortion pups from the late '70s that I think would be a sin to put covers on.
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I way agree ..... and some people think the covers make the p'ups duller sounding but I don't really hear much of any difference.
 
Greg_L said:
I need to do a setup on it. The action is too low! The Goldtop's action is a little higher and I'm more used to that.
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send it me!!! :P looks great,never heard of "clownburst" before,seems a corksniffer derogatory term .. looks nice,congrats :)
 
Tadpui said:
Oh, and I didn't mean to be derogatory about the clownburst thing...that's just what immediately comes to mind when I see a '70s cherry burst.
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Man, no worries. I honestly don't consider it to be a bad thing. It's only "derogatory" to the cork sniffers and purists.

I do like that guitar quite a bit. Good call on avoiding the gold pickup covers. Man, the gold hardware has always been the main deterrent to Customs for me. But without that super-conspicuous gold pickup cover (x2), it looks a lot more tasteful.
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Right, I agree. The gold on Customs is usually too much, unless it's faded and rotted to a dull finish. And my guitar will never have gold pickup covers.


Lt. Bob said:
I way agree ..... and some people think the covers make the p'ups duller sounding but I don't really hear much of any difference.
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I was toying with the idea of putting chrome covers on my Goldtop just to make it look more like a 57. Or just buy covered Busrtbuckers to replace the zebra ones in there now. Well, it would be one Burstbucker 3 and a 57 Classic in the neck. But I decided against it just for that reason. I don't know if covers do anything to the sound of the pickups, but I don't wanna do all that work and then not like it. I love the way that guitar sounds just the way it is, and it looks pretty cool to me with the zebra pickups, so it's gonna stay as-is.

cakewalkKaKed said:
send it me!!! :P looks great,never heard of "clownburst" before,seems a corksniffer derogatory term .. looks nice,congrats :)
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Thanks, I already fixed the action, so sorry, I will not be sending it to you. :D
 
Speaking of pickups and wax and stuff, I've been cycling my various electrics through a very highly recommended local set up guy, sort of a once-a-decade thing - get a professional set up - now as it turns out I've had to re-intonate all three of them, so I won't be going back - although the rest of what he did was top notch.

Anyway, I was discussing with him removing the nickel pickup covers from the PRS as the covers are a bit damaged and the nickel is wearing very badly, and I thought, aesthetically, it'd look better and save me worrying about the continuing deterioration of the covers.

He strongly advised against this because he said they were "double waxed" - now up until a few posts ago in this thread, I didn't even know pickups were "single waxed" - they not being a part of the guitar I play around with much - so I'm not quite sure what "double waxed" means, or whether he was just having a lend of me. I left them as they were, on his general advice, but I did wonder. He sort of explained it, but without a background of understanding pickups much, I sort of didn't really "get" it.

Any thoughts?
 
It's just a "double dip" thing...like whne the pups are wax potted without the covers...then you add the coves and wax pot them again to add more wax between the pup and the covers.

I mean...I don't know how that is any different than just adding the covers and wax potting them once. You move them around in the wax for a bit, up/down while submerged, and you see air bubble come out, and after awhile, the wax will saturate into all the open crevices and that's it.

There is vacuum wax potting, where the liquid wax is really drawn deep into the coils...but I don't know how much more wax gets in there.

Also...I don't find that the wax "dulls" the tone as some claim. IMO, it takes out that nasty edginess that so many uncovered, high-gain pups have...but that's my ears.
I'm sure some people want that edginess, especially the Metal heads, as it helps when you're playing all that "djent" style of Metal. It adds some presence to the real low/heavy chunk.
I don't play that stuff...so for Rock chords/Leads...I hate too much edginess...but again, that's my taste. :)
 
Cocking about with an interlude today - decided to go super spacey.
Guitar>OCD(Overdrive)>Summer Orange(Phaser)>Echolizer(quite a metalic delay)

Dunno why, but I think its just what I had in mind all along...

View attachment Floyd Grunge.mp3
 
Greg_L said:
Man, no worries. I honestly don't consider it to be a bad thing. It's only "derogatory" to the cork sniffers and purists.
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absolutely ..... the main thing about an ax is the sounds it makes anyway.
Having said that, and making the comment that your ax is gorgeous and I wish I had it (but I'd prefer your goldtop) I have to say that to my eyes I find that "perfectly executed cherry burst" to be mega-beautiful and more so than the ones with the abrupt fade. That one you posted was freakin' awesome looking!

JDOD said:
Cocking about with an interlude today - decided to go super spacey.
Guitar>OCD(Overdrive)>Summer Orange(Phaser)>Echolizer(quite a metalic delay)

Dunno why, but I think its just what I had in mind all along...
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well, personally I like the hell outta stuff like that so from my POV that's awesome!
 
Lt. Bob said:
well, personally I like the hell outta stuff like that so from my POV that's awesome!
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Cheers Bob, I'm pretty pleased with the bass tone on that too. Its just my shitty bass DI'd but with a "guitar room" reverb impulse added.
 
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