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EVH? Let’s give it a go

I’m no EVH fan, but of course who doesn’t respect and think of Eddie as a guitar monster! The dude was incredible, just not my preferred music style.

But to pull all these “stunts” he must have had a very comfortable guitar, right? Plus… he was always looking for improvements and tweaked all his guitars until he actually created his own brand which is built by Fender.

So.. I bought an EVH Wolfgang Special, I really wanted the pro… which is made in Japan… but I found a flamed maple top under offer… and I couldn’t resist.

This isn’t my first “shredder” guitar… but it’s the first time o by an expensive shredder guitar. I’ve had Ibanez and I still have an old Shecter.

This EVH is awesome, first of all… whatever Fender is doing with Frets lately…. is just incredible and much better than any other brand! Definitely better than Gibson, are they stainless steel? I don’t know, but the strings just glide on them… the ends… are just so well rounded off. Impeccable work here.

The neck is roasted maple, which is a first for me, and it also feels really good, it offers zero resistance to your hand cause I believe there is no finish on them and it has this tanned color that looks very cool.

The headstock… I know it’s minor, but lately I’ve been looking at headstocks more and more and in occasions..: it has put me off from buying certain brands… some look just too big, too crazy, too similar to other brands. The EVH headstock looks great, good size and “original” shape (very similar to a musicman also owned by fender?)

So… Playability? 10… definitely a 10, not just for shredding, which isn’t something I do great… but for general stuff and of course mainly soloing, this combination of features are unbeatable.

The body… on the smaller side… quite comfy with good curves and cutouts. It has a floyd rose system, but… it bonoy goes one way… down… which means changing strings isn’t a pain in the neck. It does have nut locks and the micro tuning on the floyd rose too. It also a d-tuner which took me a few attempts to understand the best way to use it (mechanically speaking) and I can say… it is very well designed.

Pickups! Boy these are hot! But still very articulate and they clean up nice when volume is rolled down… which brings me to another feature, the volume pot… slightly different to your regular pots, these have very little mechanical resistance yet they are firm (they won’t move on their own) very cool for volume sweeps.

All in all, an outstanding instrument and very well built, made in Mexico.

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Richie Kotzen Telecaster

This is my…. third telecaster. But I currently own one.

I’m a Gibson SG person… for me… it is the most comfortable guitar in the world. But… I always had a thing for teles… similar to an SG… it’s a “no bells or whistles” kind of guitar. The simplicity of its design and oh god, can they take a beating!

My first tele was an American Standard… back in 2003, which I loved… it was white ivory finish, stunning. I sold it to buy an SG… and 10 SGs later.. I bought the Tele Elite, this was a sweet guitar, the finish… the fretwork.. all stunning. But I never bonded with it, that bridge pickup… I struggle to like it.

I then found the Richie Kotzen model, I think as I was searching for “hum-bucker” type bridge pickup.. his model came up on google… then a few years later…. I went ahead and bought it.

Man…. this is an outstanding guitar! Made in Japan… comes in a box and a gig bag… but… is it full of goodies or what!

The fretwork… is immaculate, the maple neck and fretboard… are so easy to play… your hand just glides. The Frets! (Yes I already mentioned them…) but man.. the frets! The string just dances on top of them. The finish! Never been a sunburst person…. in fact the back of the guitar is nicer than the front… but still… sunburst with gold hardware… hard not to like.

The inlays! Holy moly, abalone inlays which have little variations of colours, it’s like looking into a beautiful sunset.

The pickups! Yup… two of them. the Chopper T bridge pickup… what an angry pickup! This is what a rocking tele has been missing! Full of balls and body, an amazing sound but still true to the tele twang.. (somewhere in the back of the sound) that adds to the spectrum of the sound wave which probably covers every single hertz out there.

The neck pickup! Always my favourite tele pickup, you kinda get straty sounds out of it, I love SRV but I can’t play Strats… i find them uncomfortable, this pickup delivers that tone! And it can get to the breaking up point where you get a bit of distortion going on.

The bridge and neck pickup combined… series or parallel switch… i haven’t really explored it much, but this option makes it much more useful than a regular combined position.

This is the Tele for you if you want to rock out! If you feel that the regular bridge tele pickup holds you back.. then this guitar is for you

Now.. the Neck! Everyone says it’s massive! And… it’s definitely not small… but coming from Gibsons SG.. i say it’s pretty decently sized neck… it is a baseball neck for sure. But i’m starting to believe that bigger necks are faster and more comfortable to play… they fill your hand better… more ergonomic for sure.

The Frets! (Yup… 3rd time mentioning them) jumbo frets… bending… is as easy as abc. The size of them makes this neck very easy to play….

The Tuners! You can tell this guitar was designed by someone that actually uses his signature guitar… the tuners are a pleasure to use, just the perfect amount of “stiffness”. And they look incredible.

If you are in the market for a Tele… please do try one of these… I feel that this is what a Tele should be, this has to be the new standard.

And… made in Japan. Which… is great! Japanese gear has always been very high quality and it always feels a bit more “exclusive”.

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Gibson SG Special faded

2nd special SG in my collection, the first one was the ebony board one and this one.. was an accident.

I tend to place bids and then forget about them, 99% of the times I usually lose the bid… but this time it was collection only and the guitar was filthy

Look at that fretboard… filthy!

So based on those factors, no one really placed any bids and to my surprise… mine won :).

I went to pick it up not being too excited as I really didn’t want it, having so many standards and custom shops… I wasn’t excited about just a special faded.

But you know how it goes… when you least expected is when you are surprised the most (not always!). So I pick it up… take it home… and the next day I went for a cleanup, man… the amount of sweat on this fretboard, i had to scrape it off, then do lemon oil, then scrape a bit more…. Even the back of the neck had to be scraped! Being unsealed wood… they seem to pip up a lot of dirt.

Once the fretboard was clean

So once I finished with the neck… I did a good clean to the body, and then…. i used the instrument food from Monty’s guitar, again… as being unsealed wood… I was excited to try the clear instrument food.

It really made the grain stand out

I also used the coffee one on the fretboard because it give it a nice shade and males the pattern stand out.

After like 2 hours of cleaning and changing strings… I plugged it in, I loved it instantly. The neck is chunky just like the ebony special, the frets are well defined and on the big side, the pickups… Alnico II 490/498. i love these, much better than Alnico V which I believe the SG Standard comes with.

These specials are becoming my favourite! They do rock, you can beat them up a bit more , they are just a rocking machine with nothing fancy on them.

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Are Mods worth it?

Debatable! Of course… probably the most debatable subject on guitars, us musicians are weird people, we love one thing today and hate the same thing tomorrow and we start tweaking things until we go “oh man.. I loved how this thing sounded yesterday “ we are almost never happy with what we have for more than a week.

Well… sort of, we get used to a sound and this will sometimes stop causing an impression on us… when something blows your mind out it’s because it’s new… fresh… different. But we often just get bored and our brain sort of fills in the blanks and the sound just becomes “standard”.

I’ve experienced this many many times. Now… I’m in a different mind set… I have enough guitars and amps that I can just switch stuff around when it’s just not working… this made me understand that sometimes one thing sounds better than the other, it could be us… could be placebo… could be voltage, humidity.. who knows! But… I try not to tweak things (apart from volume, treble, mids, etc) I’ll just swap guitars… and try again.

I stopped modding guitars (as much as I can) the guitar has to feel right… if it doesn’t… there is no mod that will make it “better” or more suitable for you, and once you break that “mod seal” there is no going back… and there is no end on the amount of mods you can do!

One of my Custom Shops sounded just slightly darker than others and there was something about the volume pot that I didn’t like… but I love the guitar… it feels like home… but that volume pot…just.. was weird. So I changed it with a vintage spec 550k ohms, and boom! There it was… missing piece.. feels perfect.. never touched it again and I play it a lot!

I had another custom shop.. that came with 57 plus humbuckers.. which I hated.. too nasal and bright.. I went ahead and purchased some custom buckers and installed them… got rid of the 57s. It sounded better… but I still wasn’t getting along with the guitar… it felt “stiff”. I ended up selling it because when I kept “rotating” guitars… that one never ended up pleasing me.

I’m a true believer of “magic dust” inside the guitar… the good ol’ mojo… if it has it… then maybe some minor tweaks will be acceptable.. if it doesn’t have any “magic” or mojo… then I think no mod will make it much better.

I even try not to open the control cavity if I feel that the guitar is perfect… because you know what? “Ignorance is bliss” if you open that up and you notice something that you don’t visually like… you’ll want to change that.

Just today.. I bought an SG Special that I just love how it sounds! But the pots where a bit stiff because the guitar was filthy!! I did a whole clean up… but pots were still stiff… I opened the control cavity to put some contact cleaner… and guess what… there’s a PCB controlling the pots… I just put the contact cleaner to loose them up and close it quickly before I convinced myself of “upgrading” to one of those fancy wiring kits.

To mod or not to mod… that’s the question… go for the small upgrades… maybe a pot… maybe a bit of a clean… but you know what the best upgrade is? a new set of strings :). And a guitar that feels just right. If it doesn’t feel right.. it is not for you… sell it and buy another one

Most recent purchase
Another underdog
An unbeatable custom shop
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Pushing 2 Amps with one guitar

So… when you see AC/DC live… you see tons of guitar cabs, and you have to wonder… how are these people pushing all these cabs??

Well… That I don’t know… however… you can do this at home pretty easily, given that you have more than one cab.

My recent OR15 purchase was because I wanted to use 4 cabs for a specific gig, and I either had to carry my mesa boogie which is a 295… meaning 2 amps.. 95Watts. Or… I have to buy a new amp to go with my SV20h

Well.. I bought the OR15 and then I remembered I had this Y cable which splits one signal into two different 1/4 inch jacks.

Pretty basic, right?
Worked like a charm!

I can now push 4 cabs with these two amps, they also sound pretty similar.

I had one hiccup with the Orange as the cabs are 8ohms each and the OR15 has a minimum of 8ohms load… so.. Palmer sells a device that allows you to connect cabs in series or in parallel, meaning that 2 x 8ohm cabs can turn into a 4 or 16ohm load.

It’s tiny!

I attached it to the back of the Orange with zip toes tot the grill and I plugged everything in, neat and tidy.

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Gibson SG 1964 Reissue Custom Shop

The late part of 1963 was an important year for the SG, this is when the SG earned its own identity, they stopped calling it “les paul” and it also lost the “les paul” branded truss rod cover.

Some say that this is when the SG really took off, I’m actually not sure what was holding it back… but when you look at a 61 and a 64, the differences are obvious.

First, let me state that the 61 Reissue that we all know (and love) it is not period correct, the vibrola was a sideways one… the one that is used on the 61 Reissue actually came about on 63/64, this was a considerable change in design, the vibrola became more useful and stable.

So, what are the differences? Well… apart from the vibrola change, the neck is also different, the scale and amount of frets are the same, however it is no longer a 60s slim taper neck, it is much more C shaped, making it more like a “baseball bat” type of grip, this is similar to a regular production standard that you can grab off the shelves today.

The playability is great, I also own a 61 Custom shop and it also plays great… but the changes on the neck of the 64 certainly fit the SG well, in fact, the black SG that Angus uses almost exclusively on live shows is a 1964 which he removed the vibrola and painted black.

The finish is also quite different, the 61 has a much lighter cherry tone whereas the 64 is darker, which looks great with the vibrola.

In this particular example that I own, the pickups are also quite different, they are the same type… Custombuckers alnico III however the resistance is much larger, the 61’s bridge pickup reads around 6.9 whereas the 64 reads 7.8! It is much hotter and you can tell the difference when playing it, the neck pickup of the 1964 is also 7.8 and the 61 is 7.86, so much closer. Even though the bridge pickup is hotter, it still cleans up very nicely when the volume is turned down.

The feel of the volume control is also different, you don’t loose that much treble when rolling down the volume and the tone control is also quite nice to experiment with. I found myself for the first time being able to tame some of the brightness by just rolling the tone down, I believe this model has “black beauty” caps as opposed to bumblebee caps on the 61.

You can hear the 1964 in action here: https://youtu.be/J8UK_X6VTDA

The grain is beautiful and again.. the colour is not like any other SG I’ve seen.
The vibrola is probably one of the most luxurious additions to the SG, even if you don’t really use it, it dresses up the guitar quite nicely.
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The Fender Telecaster Elite

I’ve never been a Fender fan…. I love many players that play fender… but I never got used to the scale Fender uses compared to a Gibson, it always took me too long to get used to it when switching guitars.. but that’s mainly on a Stratocaster, also the middle pickup always gets in the way of picking.

However the Telecaster is a whole different beast, for someone like me who likes good old rock and hard rock, a Tele is not a very desirable guitar, but they are very sexy and let’s not forget that Jimmy Page uses one every now and then. I’m aware that Keith Richards also is a tele man but I’ve never been a fan of him, also SRV has been seen with a tele a few times.

Anyway… I had a tele many years ago but I sold it to buy my first SG. and I haven’t played a Telecaster until 2 years ago when I went to the Birmingham Guitar Show and I saw an Elite hanging on the Fender area…. it was calling at me…. gorgeous finish, shiny frets, body binding… it was really beautiful, but that was not it… I plugged it in and it played phenomenally well, the fret finish was impeccable and the neck felt like part of my hand.

I went out of that guitar show impressed with that Tele.. 2 years went by and I convinced the boss to let me  buy one :), I went with the budget to buy anything up to a Custom Shop, I drove 2 hours up to Birmingham because that’s where PMT had a gorgeous custom shop I wanted, I went in.. sat down and started playing it… it felt really bad.. sticky neck, the neck was also huge and not comfortable… so I asked for an Elite.. and all those feelings I had came back, it was like playing a guitar you’ve had for ages, everything felt right, so I went ahead and purchased it!

I still have it but I rarely use it.. mainly because the music I play needs a humbucker and not a single coil but everytime I feel like SRV blues style I pickup that Tele and have a great time, if you are in the market for a Tele… do yourself a favour and go try an Elite, it is by far the best Fender I’ve played and possibly the most comfortable guitar out there.

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Playing with tone

Don’t be a knob snob, that is my advice and second advice is… follow suggestions to prove them wrong or right.

I don’t have much patience when it comes to trying things out, usually I just try to plug in and play, I have little time to play during the week and I sort of think that I waste time when I find myself fiddling with gear for hours.

However I’ve decided to start locking some time in and try to record a few things (I also don’t like recording) just to see if I could come at peace with this tedious and boring task. To my surprise… I still found it tedious and boring… but… it helped me re-discover my amp controls and equalization, I know this sounds obvious and most of the amps have had those 3 basic eq controls since the beginning of time, but I’m sure that most of you keep everything in the middle… (noon).

We all know what they do… but we often play with treble or bass controls and leave the mids in the middle right? I learnt what the mids does when I started playing heavy metal… I had one of those valvestate marshalls that had the “contour” control which scoops the mids, scooping the mids means taking out mids, remember that U shaped eq on your dad’s hi-fi system? Well it’s the same thing.

What does this does to my tone? Well… it adds “tightness” it changes the way distortion sounds, it’s an awesome thing to play with, suddenly everything sort of sounds better, the problem is that if you scoop them too much your sound will not cut through the mix, but a little bit of it can get you to that sweet spot you’ve been waiting for.

Even though I knew about mids (of course… I’m not a rookie… right? :p) when I finished my recording tests I found that the guitar was too much in my face… like a gritty sound, I tried mic placement (another art) which it changed the sound but I still wasn’t happy, so I went to the Eq section and started moving things around until I remembered that U shape!!, so now even though I mainly play AC/DC I still scoop the mids a bit… if listen to “Shoot to Thrill” you’ll see that mids are heavily scooped.

Long story short…. spend time playing with the knobs, try recording and playing with the eq on the computer/ipad, you’ll be surprised how closer you’ll get to the sound you are after and then you can try yo mimic those settings in your amp. Remember that all the records or live concerts you hear have a myriad of experts sorting out every detail of the sound until it’s perfect. Remember that old story “guitar straight to amp”? Well… it is true… but remember there’s a team between the amp and the sound you finally hear.

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A day in NYC…(support the locals!!)

So I recently went on holiday to the Big City, did the typical touristy stuff but I wanted to do something special with the music stores… of course we can go to Guitar Center and fool around with pretty much anything they have there… but I wanted a “true” NYC experience…
I woke up that day and added to my google maps all the music stores up to Central Park, after 30 minutes of research, my itinerary looked like this:

guitar-stores-nyc

 

I’ll go into more detail later… but it took me around 2 days to do the whole thing , it was a tremendously rewarding experience, I used to skip local stores and go to big chains like Guitar Center or Samash, mainly because I used to find it a bit uncomfortable asking to play a specific guitar to the owner in a small store where “everyone” is watching you or expecting to buy something or “get the hell outta my store”, but this was just my perception of being just a kid and not realizing how annoying big stores are… filled up with kids treating instruments like toys or people shredding away at high volume disturbing everyone else at the store.

So I packed up by bag put some comfortable shoes and headed to the streets.

From South to North.. these are the stores I went into:

Rudy’s Music  Shop(461 Broome Street): had an extremely luxurious selection of guitars, it was just breathtaking seeing not only custom shop guitars but also guitars owned by famous artists and some limited runs. A great place to visit and admire some gems they have there…

 

 

Rivington Guitars 73 East 4th Street: As the owner describes it “Little guitar store” it is little but packed with some gorgeous SGs, most of them vintage and at a great price! he had a 68 for like 3 grand or something, so you can tell the guy is not trying to pull one on you by selling you overpriced vintage stuff! I wish I had gone back to that store because my visit didn’t make it any justice,

 

 

Chelsea Guitars (224 West 23rd Street): This is the one that will steal all my good memories from New York, I went into the store presenting my self as a “blogger” I’m sure that’s what every store owner wants to hear… I almost wanted to tell him… “I have a blog.. but I’m still cool”, anyway… I think I spent 2 to 3 hours in total ( I visited the place twice) Danny had so many cool stories and he dedicated time to each one of them, he had some exquisite and beautiful guitars there… some old and some newer ones (he did take the time to explain what really is an Old guitar!, thanks Danny). This is a must visit and please dedicate time to it and of course buy something! although he won’t force it on you, if you don’t have much cash on you (we musicians never do!) just buy a t-shirt they are very cool.

 

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30th Street Guitars (27th between 6th and 7th ave) : This store reminded me of Rudy’s but it’s “friendlier” you can browse around without any guilt, they had some beautiful guitars, I spoke to the technician or the owner.. (who knows) and he confessed that he had spent time fixing Angus’ guitar for the show of the 14th of September at the Madison Square Garden, (my whole purpose of the trip). again… great place to visit

Rogue Music (30th between 6th and 7th ave): Another cool store this one, I don’t think they had any of my particular interest… I mainly care about SGs, but the owner was exceptionally nice.

I won’t comment on Samash or  Guitar Center… you probably already now what a chain store looks like :).

That’s my list… those where my best 2 days in NYC, I loved every minute of it, everyone was exceptionally nice and now I understand the concept of supporting local business… I’m sure they have plenty of customers in NYC… but if you have local stores in your area that you haven’t been to, please do… go there talk to people and get involved, they’ll surely appreciate your custom.

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