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1976 Gibson Explorer – On the Bucket List

1976 Gibson Explorer – A Coveted Classic

Scott Grove is an accomplished rock guitarist who generously shares his knowledge and opinions about guitars like the 1976 Gibson Gibson Explorer Limited Edition. The Gibson Explorer is a legendary guitar, but as Scott points out, it might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

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Hello all! Scott Grove here from Groovy Music Lessons. I’m going to do another review on another old axe that I just got in. This one is the, well, let’s call it what it’s meant to be, first, one of the Holy Grails of guitars that people generally look for. But it’s not old. It’s a 1976 Gibson Explorer. Okay, there you go, the limited edition version. They always had a thing. It’s no big, huge deal, but some people just want to see this. Not all of them say limited edition on the back of it.

A Classic Gibson Explorer in Mint Condition

I’ll go ahead and actually this unplug this so I can show you around with a little bit. But on the back of the headstock, you’ll get this. Now the thing about this guitar is, it was bought and it was played for just a couple months and then, honestly, put in the case for all these years until I just bought it. OK, so I got it from the original owner. It’s perfect as perfect as can possibly be and this was actually made and purchased, yes, I’ve got the purchase order and the receipt, in 1975. So it was not made or sold in 76. It was made and sold to the guy I just bought it from in 1975.

So everything on here is as perfect as it can get. I’ve got the lights here showing you the nitro finish, which of course on plain old mahogany with no wood filler, is going to look like that. Okay, here’s the lights on the ceiling, the same lights I use over there. But just shows you what it is. Nothing had ever been opened before. These have never been opened. The pickguard had never been off. it was told to me that it never was, and it never had, just the wood from the screws when I took them off was just, you know, showing for the first time that it was finally taken off. But everything’s dated 1975 inside. I wanted to get the toggle switch, here, to actually just go straight up and down, but you can’t (and it kind of goes at an angle) so if I do it with the guitars hanging straight and show it to you, it kind of goes off to the side and comes off to that side because the hole in there is cut so narrow that you cannot move the toggle switch. The main body of it in there anyway you want a set at this angle. Okay?

The pickups are the, you know, what are supposed to be there and they are potted extremely with the epoxy. Gibson gives them, with their typical, horrible building ways, they’ve always been one of the worst guitar builders as far as I’ve always been concerned and this one was no exception. The bridge, of course, is in the wrong place and you cannot quite intonate it. I had to take the three saddles off the bottom here and turn them around the other way so I could get them shoved all the way up this way and I still could not get the D string quite intonated because on the, you see the D string there, and of course it’s got the wire that went across all living back then. So everything’s still here, but I had to pop everything as far as I could because the bridge is not located in the right place which is normal for Gibson.

But these are just one of those bucket-list guitars for me. I’m now trying to get some of these guitars, just you know, the staples, you know. This and the 52 tele and then the actual 59 Les Paul Standard and 62 and 57 Stratocasters, even though I don’t like them. I’m just out to get them just because they’re going to be easier for my wife to sell once I croak. That’s honestly the honest truth.

So it is what it is. It’s just a big huge hunk of mahogany the entire thing is except for of course the rosewood fretboard and then the overlay here on the top. Let me get it in for people who like to see this kind of thing in light and let the reflections tell you what they will. Okay and so anyway everything is what it is. The frets are perfect. There’s no no signs of even having ever been played before. So people are like how do you come up with this stuff man? I searched. That’s all I do with my life. I search for guitars. So that’s what I do and it was like right the $6,000 range is what I gave for it and it just came in today, so I gave it the good once-over, and twice over, and three times over. I got it to play the best as it can. I wanted the action lower than it is, but the truss rod will not allow for it.

So, again another thing. Ibanez actually built the Destroyer. Back about this same time, and it’s actually probably 10 times the guitar that these are. The Ibanez original Destroyer that was made at the same time, so if you’re ever looking for one, they’ll cost you about the same amount to get a good one in perfect condition like this one. But like I said, everybody has to have a 76 Explorer. But I ended up with a 75. But it does have the 76 decal on the back. Okay, so again, it was made in 75. You get your little pointers for your knobs. What else can I tell you. It is simply just an Explorer. If you look at the gold, there’s not one bit of tarnish there. It is exactly as you would expect to see it in the history books. So, a cleaner one they do not make. Of course, you’ll see other ones that are tinted, more of the amber color, which brings it to mind the Albert Collins thing. There’s still speculation to this day if they actually use corina or mahogany and I don’t know. I have no clue. I would not guess to say. So don’t care.

The necks on these things are like ball bats. Okay? So it is a very abundant it’s like definitely a 50s style neck. So it’s a big, huge chunk of guitar. Okay? So take it all in. I’m going to love just seeing it hanging here and I’ll go use it on a few gigs and I mean, does it sound good? It sounds fine. You know. It’s just the Gibson build is never as good as people make it out to be. The people that really know Gibson know better.

The Explorer Sound

Okay? So here it is on the cleanest setting I could possibly turn it on, both pickups on, everything dimed on the guitar. The pickup on that low E string is slightly out. Okay, I just want you to hear the guitar with zero processing other than my typical reverb. That’s always there. We all know what it sounds like with dirt on it and I will put dirt on it. And yes, I will play a couple Leonard Skynyrd licks just because people are going to be asking for it and think it’s a sin not to play some. The bridge pickup. Neck. You go get country licks from me because that’s who I am. I’m not changing my style just because, well, because. I want to hear all the sounds. I’m – I don’t get to hear it the rest of the night. Gotta go pick the little lady up at the airport. Okay, now let’s get it to a sound that actually allows me to use the tubes in the amp. Okay and we’ll stay on the neck. Let’s put a little more volume on it so we can actually get what’s going on inside there. So there’s your natural tube thing. Let’s go in the middle, same sound. And the neck. That would give you probably the most legitimate sound for like on, let’s just concentrate like on like Free Bird, just because. I’ll go ahead and be the guinea pig. The guy that does it. That will give you the actual rhythm sound for the fast part of the tune giving just a regular… pardon me while I do this. I just slammed my hand against the tuners. Very natural overdrive, okay. That’s just that. There’s no overdrive on the amp. That’s just the tubes. The 12ax7s doing their job. Two of them in there. Again, that it’s just the bridge pickup, so that will kind of give you that if you wanted to see what the lead tone would sound like. Maybe like, let’s stay there, see if it’s even close. It was done with the exact same sound, but (err) you’ve got that. Okay, now if we were to go to the actual, put some distortion on this monkey, on the bridge pickup still, and get that low string tuned in. Let me turn off all the noise here. I’ve actually got a tuner over there. I don’t know why I didn’t just use the dang thing.

And again, for those people who want to know the facts on this, yes this is a 1975. Okay? And a few were made in 75. Not many, so this, of course, I lucked out once again, is one of the first reissues that Gibson did. So being a 75 is ultra cool, okay? So I don’t know how to ever advertise it. I guess I would always just say that. You know, the serial number (sticker) says 76, but it was actually purchased in late75 and I can, of course, prove each and every bit of this. So it’s just cool. Kind of a neat little thing to know, which I did not know until I bought this. Okay, back to the distortion in the neck. I’m sorry, the bridge. We got to back to the neck for lead. You got to be able to have that fun there.

Okay, so now, if we were to actually do… here you got it. This part, the old slide part. I would actually stay with like the distortion and use both pickups and you would get this. As close as I’m going to come to it anyway, or as close as I remember after so many years of refusing to play that song. You know, basically along those lines. I’m not looking for perfection. But as you know, those who are studying it, it was all over the place, just like I was.

So there’s the ax. Cooler sounds coming from some of my favorite places would be… come over here, hit the compressor for the rest of these. Turn on just the sound, neck position. Pretty cool. Let’s see, Romeo Void. Anybody remember Romeo Void. There was a song, what was it called? Can’t remember the real name of it… I might like you better if we slept together. Ah, you guys have to help me once again remember the name of that song. Never Say Never, that’s the name of it. Never mind. Can’t remember the song I’m trying to think of. I’m trying to think of it. Can’t remember what it is. Oh well. Too bad for me. Nice sound. What do I have here? Oh, there’s something nice and pretty for me to show you what I can do. This kind of stuff I like. Very cool stuff. Um, and of course, just the bridge position playing with fingers with a little slight bit of delay and again, the compressor. So nothing really too bright on the top end that would allow me to actually play it on the country and except for the fact that I have a cool little hidden button over there. Oh, okay, everybody’s been asking me what that button was. But hey, some things are secret. No, that was actually just a tone control on the boss cs3 compressor. Fire it up and any Gibson will sound like a Fender or as close as it can, that quick. So once again, I am me you are you.

Explorer Alternatives

Again, Scott Grove Groovy Music Lessons. You can always click below, get tons of free lessons. Check out all my different guitar reviews. There’s links there for both and again the 1975-1976 Gibson Explorer Limited Edition and also in 76. Yes, they did have the ones that just said Explorer on the back, the Limited Edition. Is there any difference? No probably. Just the fact that they made it a couple of months later when they saw that these were actually going to hit because the Ibanez was hitting hard and doing well and playing amazing. I think Gibson was trying to copy what Ibanez was doing so well and Hamer, with their standards coming out at the same time, were ultra high quality. So these honestly did not keep up, okay. But the value is what it is. Like I said, it was like a six thousand dollar guitar for me to purchase which is about in the normal range for just being twenty thirteen you know. They might go back up once, if the economy ever goes up.

So there it is kids. As cool as they get. So hope you enjoyed that and got to learn that, yes, they did make the 76s and 75. That’s the most important thing I think here to know and that is actually proven. It is very cool.

So again, until the next guitar comes in or the next lesson comes out, whatever it is, I’ll see you guys soon. Hope you enjoyed it.

Take care!

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Source: https://electricguitardigest.com/gibson-explorer/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/1976-gibson-explorer-on-the-bucket-list/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Guitar World Review: Mitchell Guitars HD400 and TD400

By Mitchell Guitars

Guitar World Review: Mitchell Guitars HD400 and TD400

Posted 05/22/2017 by Chris Gill

GOLD AWARD

Since 1986, Mitchell Guitars has built high-quality acoustic guitars that offer incredible value to beginning and experienced guitarists alike.

Last August Mitchell announced its first line of electric solidbody instruments, and like the acoustics they’ve built for the last 30 years these new electrics also deliver mind-boggling bang for the buck. Mitchell’s new electric venture made its debut in a big way, offering seven different series of guitars, which include the mini MM100 that sells for less than $100 and the single cutaway MS400.

Coolest of all is that, unlike most low-cost guitars on the market, there’s nothing generic or run-of-the-mill about these guitars, which boast excellent craftsmanship, high-quality parts, and custom design aesthetics normally found on much more expensive instruments.

The HD400 and TD400 guitars that Mitchell sent us to review, which represent the upper echelon of Mitchell’s offerings (models with the 100, 200 and 300 suffix are even more affordable), are impressively equipped with quality tonewoods with names that guitarists recognize and can pronounce and name-brand hardware that doesn’t require replacement after a few weeks of playing. A lot of know-how obviously went into these guitars, and Mitchell’s 30-year history of building quality affordable guitars clearly is on display here.

FEATURES

The HD400 and TD400 represent two different approaches to the time-honored asymmetrical double cutaway solidbody design, with the HD400 being a hot-rodded modern “super Strat” while the TD400 has more traditional and classic design features. Our HD400 has a basswood body with a transparent blue finish that reveals the figured quilted maple laminate top and a rock maple bolt-on neck with maple fretboard, slim “C” profile, 24 extra jumbo frets, 25 1/2–inch scale, and two-way adjustable truss rod.

Pickups consist of high-output, paraffin-dipped, high-output neck and bridge ceramic magnet humbuckers and a ceramic magnet center single-coil. Rounding out the main features are master volume and master tone controls, a five-way blade pickup selector switch, and a licensed double-locking Floyd Rose Special tremolo system. The TD400 comes with an alder body and a rock maple bolt-on neck with Indian rosewood fingerboard, shallow “D” profile, 22 jumbo frets, 25 1/2–inch scale, and two-way adjustable truss rod.

This model features a bridge humbucker and center and neck single-coil pickup configuration, and the pickups have Alnico V magnets. Controls also consist of a five-way pickup selector and master volume and master tone knobs, but the tone knob can be pulled up to engage coil splitting on the bridge humbucker. Hardware includes 18:1 diecast tuners with staggered-height posts, a Graph Tech Tusq XL reduced-friction nut, and a Wilkinson VS50-II dual-point fulcrum tremolo with nickel finish.

PERFORMANCE

Whoever it was that designed these Mitchell models, they certainly are very familiar with what players need and want. The HD400 boasts generously sculpted belly and forearm contours as well as inner cutaway contours that facilitate access to the uppermost frets. The TD400 has more traditional belly and forearm contours, and both models have a modern rounded neck heel with offset mounting bolts that also provide easier access up the neck. Both models are light, comfortable and well-balanced in both seated and standing playing positions. While the necks on each model have different profiles, both provide outstanding playability and immaculate fretwork.

The TD400’s neck may be slightly beefier, but it still plays quite fast and comfortably, while the HD400’s neck has the slim, fast feel that modern shredders prefer.

Plugged in, the tone of both models impress as well, with the HD400 having a more aggressive growl thanks to its high-output humbuckers and ceramic magnets as well as the lightning fast attack and dynamically responsive resonance of its basswood body. The TD400 delivers classic triple single-coil tones that are in a class well beyond its brethren in its price range, and the added punch from the bridge humbucker is welcome for guitarists who want to rock even harder.

In a blindfold test, most guitarists would guess that these instruments probably sell for three to four times more. Even more impressive is that those opinions likely wouldn’t change when the blindfolds were taken off. These Mitchell models offer incredible value, and beginning players who start with one will likely become players for life.

• The HD400 features neck and bridge humbucking pickups and a center single-coil pickup with a high-output, ceramic magnet design.

• The TD400 features a bridge humbucker (with coil tap switch) and center and neck single-coil pickups featuring a vintage-voiced Alnico V magnet design.

• Hardware on the HD400 includes a licensed Floyd Rose Special double-locking tremolo system set up in a floating configuration.

• The TD400’s hardware includes a Wilkinson VS50-II dual-point fulcrum tremolo and a Graph Tech Tusq XL reduced-friciton nut.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Whether you’re a beginner looking for an affordable guitar or an experienced player looking for a new ax, Mitchell’s HD400 and TD400 offer incredible value for players searching for high-quality construction and professional performance at an outrageously affordable price point.

The post Guitar World Review: Mitchell Guitars HD400 and TD400 appeared first on Mitchell Electric Guitars.

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Source: https://electricguitardigest.com/guitar-world-review-mitchell-guitars-hd400-and-td400/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/guitar-world-review-mitchell-guitars-hd400-and-td400/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Mitchell HD Series a Shredder’s Delight

By Mitchell Guitars

Thousand Oaks, CA – February 2017…

Mitchell’s new HD400 Hardrock Double-Cutaway electric guitars are a shredder’s delight. A great choice for hard-rock, heavy-metal, and fusion virtuosos, they feature a resonant basswood body and lightning fast, slim-taper, C-shaped, hard rock maple neck with real abalone inlays. The wide, flat, maple or Indian rosewood fretboard with 24 wide/tall jumbo frets composed of high-tensile-strength fretwire makes bending and legato phrasing a breeze. A deep bevel double cutaway enables complete fretboard access, while a Floyd Rose™ double locking, floating tremolo provides superior tuning stability.

Paraffin-dipped, high-output, custom-voiced, ceramic humbucker/single-coil/humbucker (H/S/H) pickups minimize microphonics and unwanted feedback while delivering killer tone. The five-position pickup switch combines with master volume and tone controls to let you shift instantly from a low growl to a powerful roar. A back-angled jack helps eliminate accidental unplugging.

“The HD400 was designed by players who understand the emotional rush we all feel when we play and how we love to lose ourselves in our art,” offers Mitchell VP John Larabee. “Mitchell has honored traditional, time-tested motifs but reimagined them for the current generation of expressive, high-performance guitarists. If you have a passion for playing and appreciate an instrument that lets you stretch out, you really need to check out these special instruments.”

The HD400 is available in black or transparent red with a rosewood fretboard; or in lime green metallic with a maple fretboard; or in optional ocean blue with a AAA quilt maple veneer top and maple fretboard. Street prices range from $399 to $449. Get your hands on the new Mitchell HD400 at Guitar Center or Musician’s Friend or visit http://www.mitchellelectricguitars.com for more information.

The post Mitchell HD Series a Shredder’s Delight appeared first on Mitchell Electric Guitars.

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Source: https://electricguitardigest.com/mitchell-hd-series-a-shredders-delight/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/mitchell-hd-series-a-shredders-delight/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Guitar Player Review: Mitchell Guitars MD400 and MS400

Posted 06/29/2017 by Dave Hunter

A pair of sub-$500 imports exclusive to the country’s largest guitar chain might not whet the average reviewer’s appetite, but the Mitchell MS400 and MD400 models available from Guitar Center and Musician’s Friend offered some pleasant surprises right out of the box.

For instance, with its glued-in neck, mahogany/maple/rosewood construction, single cutaway, 24.75″ scale length, and dual humbucker configuration, the MS400 ticks all the boxes for one of today’s major archetypes. Mitchell has also thrown some tasty design touches into the formula: The deep cutaway is beveled front and back, the Tune-o-matic bridge is partnered with through-body stringing, control knobs are recessed into the top, and the locking tuners feel solid and boast an efficient 18:1 ratio.

Beyond all this, there’s an impressive coherence of aesthetics too. The way, for example, the double-slash fingerboard inlays are echoed in the swoop of the string ferrules, the headstock tip, and the cover of the dual-action trussrod; while flame maple binding and a quilted-maple top veneer further dress up the package. The slim-C neck feels great, the fretwork is good, and the guitar played extremely well after a slight tweak of the trussrod. One note on both guitars: the positioning of the output jack does keep the cord wrapped out of the way, as intended, but makes it impossible to set the guitars on their butt-ends to lean against the amp. And if you step on the cord, you’re likely to tear a chunk of wood from the side of the guitar’s body rather than just pull out the plug.

I tested the MS400 through a plexi-style head and 2×12 cab and an AC15-inspired 1×12 combo. No surprise that at 13.28kΩ the bridge pickup is predisposed toward serious rock. There’s not a lot of sweetness or chime here, even at cleaner amp settings, but a barking, slightly nasal squawk that drives the amp hard for aggressive rhythm. It really shined, though, with a JHS Angry Charlie distortion pedal applied for hairy, squealing lead tones. The neck pickup (7.94kΩ) achieves some rich, bluesy semi-clean tones and sings beautifully through overdrive, while both pickups’ split-coil sounds are admirably bright and jangly.

While the MS400 oozes modern design, its double-cutaway sibling, the MD400, has an even more contemporary appearance, and is significantly more “rawk” besides—or so it would seem at first glance. Not only do the long body horns lean toward a shred-certified look, but the pickup selection—a full-size dual-blade humbucker in the bridge position and a single-coil-sized humbucker in the neck—imply more incendiary potential, although the bridge unit’s reading of 10.86kΩ (less than that of the MS400’s) might run counter to that assessment. Other than noting the body shape, the tasteful multi-ply binding, the offset abalone-dot fingerboard inlays, and the 25.5″ scale length with 24 medium-jumbo frets and a flatter radius, there’s less to say here because body and neck woods, hardware, and control layout all echo that of the MS400. Likewise, construction and playability were similarly good after a very slight trussrod adjustment.

Perhaps surprisingly given the optics here, the MD400’s bridge pickup displayed more nuanced musicality and greater harmonic sparkle than that of its single-cut sibling, but the slightly gentler output and more overtone-laden 25.5″ template likely had something to do with that. Via distortion, this translated to a little extra sting in the upper mids and highs, with an eviscerating bite when hit hard, which really helped the guitar cut through the mud.

The neck pickup was rich and open, with just a little grit amid the airy warmth to lend texture to arpeggiated balladry or bluesy riffing. Tasty stuff. Ultimately, both guitars offer a lot in all essential departments for looks, playability, and tone, and provide excellent bang for the buck—again impressing me with what our friends offshore can achieve at this price point.

MS400 SPECIFICATIONS

PRICE $449 street, with trans-finish quilt top; $399 in solid colors NUT WIDTH 1.65″, Graph Tech Tusq XL NECK Mahogany with scarf joint, 24.75″ scale FRETBOARD Rosewood, 11.8″ radius FRETS 22 jumbo TUNERS Die-cast locking BODY Mahogany with quilted-maple veneer BRIDGE Tune-o-matic style with through-body stringing PICKUPS Two Alnico V humbuckers CONTROLS Individual Volume and master Tone controls, 3-way switch, push-pull switch on Tone pot for coil-splitting FACTORY STRINGS D’Addario, .009-.042 WEIGHT 6.8 lbs BUILT China KUDOS Good build quality and impressive looks for its price. Confident playing feel. Entirely usable set of tones. CONCERNS Jack positioning not ideal.

MD400 SPECIFICATIONS

PRICE $449 street with trans-finish quilt top; $399 in solid colors NUT WIDTH 1.65″, Graph Tech Tusq XL NECK Mahogany with scarf joint, 24.75″ scale FRETBOARD Rosewood, 15.75″ radius FRETS 24 medium-jumbo TUNERS Die-cast locking BODY Mahogany with quilted-maple veneer BRIDGE Tune-o-matic style with through-body stringing PICKUPS Full-size Alnico V dual-blade humbucker (bridge), single-coilsized humbucker (neck) CONTROLS Individual Volume and master Tone controls, 3-way switch, push-pull switch on Tone pot for coil-splitting FACTORY STRINGS D’Addario, .009-.042 WEIGHT 6.9 lbs BUILT China KUDOS An elegant and easy playing electric for the money. Able rock tones aplenty. CONCERNS Jack positioning not ideal.

Guitar Player Review: Mitchell Guitars MD400 and MS400

Posted 06/29/2017 by Dave Hunter

MS400 SPECIFICATIONS

MD400 SPECIFICATIONS

The post Guitar Player Review: Mitchell Guitars MD400 and MS400 appeared first on Mitchell Electric Guitars.

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from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/guitar-player-review-mitchell-guitars-md400-and-ms400/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Fender Jaguar – Surf’s Up

Fender Jaguar – A Classic Guitar Renewed

The Fender Jaguar has played a significant role in rock n’ roll music since Leo Fender first introduced this guitar more than six decades ago. With its off-set body, short scale, and enough switches and knobs to confuse even the most technically inclined, the jaguar has always been unique in the realm of electric guitars. It’s also been enormously popular and older models have become extremely collectable.

While the early adopters of this somewhat unusual guitar were surf bands, the versatility of the guitar eventually landed it in the hands of great guitarists in many genres. Perhaps the individual who is most associated was Kurt Kobain. That said, because of the great versatility and the wonderful tone of this guitar, Bob Dylan, Johhny Marr, Elvis Costello, Al Kooper, Jim Root, and Joe Pass have all played Jaguars.

Below you’ll find a couple of video reviews that will provide you with a lot of technical insights about the current Jaguar models. These are well worth the time spent if you are seriously considering a new Fender Jaguar. Enjoy!

American Professional or American Vintage Series Jaguar

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Hello Internet! This is Chris McKee with Alamo Music Center. You can find us online at Alamomusic.com. We’re coming at you today with a pair of Jaguar guitars to show you some of the latest and greatest from Fender guitars that were just released at the NAMM show last week.

So without any further ado the handsome guitar sitting on my lap right here to the right is a new 2017 American Professional Series Jaguar. Now to my left is the previous only available American built Jaguar prior to today which was the American Vintage Series Jaguar. Now this is a 65 reissue Jaguar that Fender is handing their lineup for a bit and it’s a great guitar. It’s been, like I said, until this year the only American built Jaguar that you could purchase from Fender. This year they’ve added the Jaguar and the JazzMaster to the lineup of the American Professional Series which has replaced the American Standard Series in their lineup. So joining the Stratocaster and Telecaster is the Jaguar and Jazzmaster finally. Now in doing so Fender has changed the recipe a little bit. It’s still trying to feature Jaguar, but they simplified things and really made these some rock machines.

Fender Jaguar – Modernized for Today’s Guitarist

So today we’re going to talk a little bit about the changes so that you can understand what’s going on with these new guitars. Now first off, you might notice a change in color. Some new colors are available in all of these guitars in the American Professional Series. We will throw up on the screen here some of the colors offered. This particular one is called Sonic gray because the gray is sonically stupendous I suppose. There are also some sunburst options with maple neck and rosewood fingerboard as well. So straight off the bat you look at these of course they’re still the tried and true offset Jaguar shape. The pickups are still Jaguar pickups; still got a tremolo that is basically functions the same way as it did before. Nonetheless, it had some refinements and some simplification. One thing you might notice is that the top horn, the switches are very simplified. On the American Vintage series you have the whole rhythm circuit controls up there. The on/off switch as well as the two knobs for adjusting the volume of the tone for the rhythm circuit and we’ll go a little bit more in depth on what that is. We’ve done full reviews of this as well. So if you’re curious about what all the changes are or the differences between some of those main Fender models, go check out that video where we compare a Fender a Tele, a Jaguar, and a Jazzmaster. You can see that there’s a lot more going on on this guitar between the switches in the upper horn and also on the lower side where you have three toggle switches to toggle the pickups on and off and to engage particular circuit. On the new American Professional Series that’s not the case. You have a four-way switch on the bottom horn and a single switch on the top one which gives you a out-of-phase sound which we’ll check out in a moment. So that’s part of the simplification and then from there a lot of things depart because, well frankly, it’s not a vintage guitar, so it’s not following vintage spec. It doesn’t have the mute that’s on the 65 that was not very popular to begin with. The radius is different. The frets are different and so on so.

From this point, we’re going to talk about the features of this guitar and you can check out the full in depth review of the Jaguar on our other video. We’re also going to compare both of these so you can hear the differences in the pickups. So for the American Professional Series, it’s like I said, simplify tone and controls. You have a single tone and you have a single volume. The volume has a treble bleed switch. So as you turn it down, you don’t lose your high end. You have a four-way switch that gives you first position bridge, second position bridge and neck in parallel, third position neck alone, and fourth position bridge and neck in series, where they basically gain stage one another for a fat kind of wide range humbucking sound; very wide range in this particular case. Up here, you have an out-of-phase switch which works in either position 2 or 4 to give you a skinny Peter Green-esk out of phase sound with these single coil pickups. The pickups are Jaguar style pickups. Now what that means is that they are single coil but they are not exactly like what you’d find on a Strat. They are not staggered pole piece. It’s all flattened. They’ve got some additional shielding around them and they’re only a little bit bigger than a typical Strat single coil pickup would be. These are the new Vmod pickups. New for the American Professional Series. They have a great vintage tone to them, but they have a little bit more drive when you really lay into them a bit. The tremolo hasn’t really changed. One of the benefits of the tremolo that comes on a Jaguar and Jazzmaster, if you aren’t aware, is that you can set these up to lock them in place. So you can kind of get the best of both worlds. You can have a tremolo system, slide the lock, lock it in place, drop tune, play and drop D if you want to and then return back to your normal tuning, unlock it, and everything should be pretty much right as rain. A huge improvement on this is the bridge. Now if you’re familiar with Jaguars and Jazzmasters there have been aftermarket bridges available for a number of years that people have bought in order to help stabilize the bridge. In essence on a Jaguar and Jazzmaster, particularly vintage style ones and the ones available up until now. It hasn’t been completely set. It’s kind of wobbled a bit where it sets into the body. This has been rectified with this new series. It is very stable. You cannot get it to move at all. There’s no buzz whatsoever. There’s no movement whatsoever. Your intonation is going to be spot-on and it’s got nice brass saddles on the top of it to really help give you that wonderful tone.

Neck, Frets, and Nut

Moving on to the neck, the neck has been fattened up a little bit. Previous necks on a say an American Standard Strat or Tele was a modern D shape and the Jaguars that they make in their Mexico plant, those have also been modern Cs. These new American Professional Series are utilizing a shape called a deep C and it’s basically still a C curve, but you get a little bit more meat in the hand, so to speak which I’ve always been comfortable with myself. It’s really nice. It’s comfortable. It’s playable. It fits in the palm of your hand really, really well and it’s complemented by these new frets. These are narrow, tall frets that are available for all of the American Professional Series, Jaguar included. So they are not medium jumbos. They are tall, but they are skinny, so to speak and so they’ve got a nice feel, great for bending, not overly tall though, so it’s a really good compromise that Fenders worked out. And finally, up here at the top of the neck, you get a bone nut on each and every one of the guitars in that series. So there really are going for that professional feature. So it’s great as far as intonation; doesn’t bind like a plastic nut would. It’s going to be kind of self lubricating since its bone and so forth and so on. So it’s a cool color. This maple neck feels great. One thing that they are continuing to do that they did on the American Standards that I’ve always thought is a great compromise, is if you get it with a maple neck one like this, the fret board’s gloss. So it’s nice and glassy particularly when you’re bending. The back of the neck, however, is satin which means it’s nice and fast and your hands not trying to get cut up caught up on it.

The New Jaguars – Can’t Miss Guitars

So really great guitars from Fender and I’m glad to finally see the Jazzmaster and Jaguar make it into the American fold without having to go to the vintage spec model. You get a more modern interpretation here and that’s what it is. It’s a modern interpretation of a classic guitar that many have come to love over the years. So we’re going to put these through their paces. We’re going to start with the American Professional Series so you can hear all the sounds that you’re able to get out of this and then we’ll compare it with the features on the Vintage so you can really hear the differences and where this guitar sits in Fenders lineup. Okay.

We hope you enjoyed the video. We hope that this helped explain some of the differences with a new American Professional Series Jaguar. It’s a great guitar and it’s available in store now. If you have any questions about this, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. Go to our website, send us an email, drop us a link, or come in and see us so that we can help you find the perfect guitar to suit your needs, help you discover music in your life.

As always thanks for watching and don’t forget to subscribe.

American Vintage 62 Reissue Jaguar

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This is one of my favorite models of guitar. It’s a Fender Jaguar. This particular model is an American Vintage 62 Reissue. I think this is a 2005 ice blue talent, one of my personal favorite models. This guitar was introduced in 1962. Leo Fender was obviously still operating the company at that time and it’s really similar to the Jazzmaster. Bodies shaped just a little bit different. It’s on a 24 inch scale which is an inch and a half shorter than the standard Fender scale. It shares a vibrato or Tremolo, as Fender calls it, with the JazzMaster as well as the bridge. This particular guitar, I put a Mustang bridge on it mainly for ease of use. But the stock bridge has worked really well and I have them on some of my other guitars.

Understanding the Jaguar Switching

So I’ll go through some of the various switching options that we have on this guitar. I know it can be a little daunting when you look at and see all the switches and knobs everywhere, but really pretty simple. Generally you have the lead circuit down here which you have the three switches that control the front one would be for the neck pickup, the middle ones for the bridge pickup, and the last switch is for a low-cut which makes it a strangle switch, which is kind of slang. It takes off some of the lows and makes it a little thinner sounding. I do not know why they did that, but it makes for some interesting tonal possibilities. These knobs control the lead circuit. You have volume and tone pretty, standard stuff. So if you leave this switch down on the rhythm circuit, it pretty much functions like a normal, any other guitar switches instead of a toggle. Up here you have the rhythm circuit which is, you switch that up and it activates only the neck pickup. They use separate pop values here. This is a volume, at a tone to achieve a little darker, more mellow sounds, maybe jazzy or whatever, which is the same way they do on the Jazzmasters. The pickups are single coils kind of similar to a Strat in the way they’re round and built, but they have these claws around them that are supposed to, I guess, shield them from noise or hum and also they have a mute on and it meets the strings which I guess was for the surf players back in the day. But I don’t know, most people I think refer to palm mute and most of the vintage examples a lot of people just take them off, you know, store them in the case or lose them which is a shame because they kind of look cool. But anyway, I’ll demonstrate how the mute works. It’s kind of cool. It’s just a piece of foam. A thing it rocks back and forth on a spring. Anyway, we’ll try the different switching on the lead circuit. Here you have the… I’ll start off with the bridge pickup which is the middle switch and kind of do something, kind of twangy. Whoops, I still have the rhythm section on. Anyway, lead circuit bridge pickup, kind of twangy. You have to trip the strangles switch will kind of thin it out a little bit. But it’s kind of hard to hear on YouTube because audio’s shit. Anyway, so that’s the bridge pickup. We’ll activate both pickups now, but the front switch and the middle switch, which are both pickups on. Kind of gives you more of a little, little more surfy kind of sound or kind of similar two pick up sound like a Telecaster. Pretty cool! The strangles switch works on this setting – obviously. Pretty subtle change but, like once again, you’ll probably be able to hear it. Now we’ll go for the neck pickup, just the front switch on here. It’s kind of nice sounding. That’s the lead section. You turn on the rhythm circuit here. It’s also the neck pickup, but a lot of highs are removed from the tone that way. So we’ll go from the lead circuit neck pickup to the rhythm circuit neck pickup with a volume, the toner, all the way open here. That’s a rhythm lead. You can really tell the difference. So that’s some of the switching, different switching options you have.

Kind of just explain the vibrato a little here. It’s exactly like the Jazzmaster. They’re interchangeable, of course, and their vibrato, it floats, so you can go up or down with them. Not a whole lot of travel, kind of pretty comparable to a Bigsby in the pitch change, but I’ll kind of demonstrate how it works. Not for dive-bombing, that’s for sure. This locks, this little slider here, locks the tremolo down. Once you have that on it can’t go up, so if you break a string it won’t go out of tune is the how that’s supposed to work. It will go up It’ll go down still and you’re supposed to adjust this screw. You can adjust the spring tension which it’s pretty simple. You just, there’s many websites that will explain how to adjust that. I won’t go into detail. It takes a while to discuss it.

Fender Jaguar 62 American Vintage – Worth Owning

However, this is it, the Fender Jaguar 62 American Vintage reissue. You’ll pardon my stumbling over my speech and stuff; this is one of my first demos. So there are plenty of good resources out there on the web about these guitars. Don’t discount them until you try them. They’re truly a great instrument and they sound great. Check out offset guitars dot com. It’s a great forum and lots of nice folks there that’ll be glad to help you out setting these up and maybe point you toward trying one out that you might like. Short Scale dot org is pretty good one as well; a lot of good folks out there. Check out Jim Shine site; a lot of useful stuff on there and Web Rocker. Just Google Jazz Master or Jaguar and it will come up with some pretty good sites on how to set these things up and how to choose the one for you.

So give it a shot. You might like it.

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Source: https://electricguitardigest.com/fender-jaguar-surfs-up/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/fender-jaguar-surfs-up/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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How to Set Up a Guitar

Guitar Set Up – A Comprehensive Guide

Setting up a guitar is a seriously daunting task. So much so that most of us would rather opt to open up our wallets and pay a qualified luthier a very tidy sum rather than even attempt this task. For people like me who tend to buy cheap guitars (like my Squire Affinity Stratocaster), the cost of a set up can be as much or more than what I spent on the guitar in the first place, so learning how to do this is pretty much a necessity.

Fortunately, there are a number of very good videos that very thoroughly explain how to set up a guitar. One of the best is the video you’ll find below. Will does an outstanding job of presenting the process in a step by step manner. I’m sure the first few times doing this will be time consuming, but it is a skill that will certainly save hundreds or thousands of dollars over a lifetime.

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Thought You Couldn’t Set Up a Guitar – Wrong!

Okay, so right now we got an Ibanez right here and this is already pretty much set up the way that it’s supposed to be, but I’m going to show you how to go ahead and set all of your things up without having fancy tools or anything. Where you can just do it, hey you know, on the fly. All you need is your allen wrench for your truss rod and your allen wrench for a trem system if you have it or if you have like an old vintage tremolo like a Phillips screwdriver or even a hardtail like a Phillips screwdriver.

How to Set Up a Guitar the Right Way

The first thing, like I said, the first thing we have to do is verify that the height of everything is correct as far as the action. Now when you’re dealing with the a Floyd Rose or a locking trem, like we’re like we’re doing here, there’s really nothing that we can do to cut into this because this is usually hardened steel and if it’s too low, we can shim it up, but we can’t really cut a notch into this any further than it’s already there. We can file down a little bit if required to get this to set a little bit lower and sometimes, more often than not, that’s what you have to do unless you’re getting fret buzz. If you’re getting fret buzz playing an open string and you have a decent action up here, you’re gonna have to shim this. But we’ll get into that here in a little second. But if it’s a plastic nut, a bone nut, any other type of nut, tusk, it doesn’t make a difference what it is, those you those you can use a file to go ahead and kind of get a little bit deeper inside there to put the string where it belongs.

Start with the Truss Rod

So the very first thing, how do you know if you’re, because before we do the nut, I’m gonna do the truss rod because this, more than likely, truss rod is your biggest problem. Then it’s going to be the nut, and then we’re going to go to the bridge. So how do we know that the truss rod and everything are straight? How do we know that it is straight? Well, the first thing you can do is an old-school eyeball. Alright, and that’s holding the guitar up at a slight angle, kind of like this, and then looking down at this direction and then just looking at the very edge right here and by doing that, if it’s perfectly flat and you’ll be able to tell. If it’s got a bow you can usually tell either way and it’s very difficult, what you would see (it’s so hard to do this with a camera) is by, you’re kind of looking down the edge of this right here (and it’s so hard to do this with a camera), but by doing that you can tell if it’s if it’s got a big bow or not. That’ll be the first way and you can adjust a truss rod like that until it looks like it’s kind of gone away. A second method, which is a better method, is hold the guitar up like this, get one finger put it on your first fret and clamp, and then come up here on the 24th or 21st or whatever and clamp and then what you want to do is you want to look at the string position compared to the frets and look at the action from here and when doing this right around you know the 11th fret or so, the 12th fret, somewhere in the 11th or 12th fret area, you don’t want to really have much more than a gap, tops, tops, like the thickness of a dime, tops, and anything more than that is just really too much relief in there. Typically, I like something a little bit thicker than a credit card. However, if during the time that you’re pushing these two down, if it’s actually touching the fret, that means you don’t have enough relief in it. I would say minimum, bare minimum, and this is if you have a very light touch and you keep very, very low action, bare minimum, business card. There should be some type of relief; very, very slight. Nonetheless, if you’re just a normal player, a shredder and stuff like that, I would say something maybe along the lines of like a credit card distance between the bottom of the string and the top of the fret, okay, but never ever any more than the thickness of a dime. The thickness of a dime is like really pushing it. That just tells you how much relief you should have. But if you’re sitting here and you’re pushing this thing down and you see a huge gap, that tells you, you have a forward bow. If you’re pushing this thing down and you don’t see any gap at all and the strings touching, you could have a back bow. More than likely you do. So then you’re going to have to loosen your truss rod to kind of get that going. Now as soon as you know that you have your truss rod in the position that needs to be, where if these two are clamped down and you we’re looking at it, could you slip a business card in there or could you slip a credit card in there. Okay? And only if you’re an absolute maniac would you have something a thickness of a dime. Nevertheless, I’d go no higher than that. Sometimes people have the action a little high. They have the relief a little high just because that’s how they like playing and they do a lot of bends and most people don’t really care for the way that that guitar feels. But for, you know, for this particular player they just love that to death and, so that’s the only time I’d ever say like a dime, because that’s excessive to me, but credit card, business card.

Setting Up the Nut

After we have that we can go ahead and look at the nut and make sure that the nut is at the proper height and what you’d want to do is hold down the third fret right here, and we’re going to be doing the exact same thing that we kind of did with looking at the truss rod. We’re seeing how far away is the string from the top of the very first fret? How far away is that, you know? It should not be touching. It should not be touching. But, you would want no more than a business card. If you can get if you can fit a business card in there, great! If you can put a credit card that means that there’s too big of a gap. This is if you really want to fine-tune your stuff. So, if there is a huge gap that means that this has to come down in some with respect. So you could take this off, sand it or file it, until this could go down the distance that you needed to do where you could put a business card. If it’s a bone nut, or something along those lines, you would actually not file, you could file the whole nut. If you notice that it was the same all the way across, like when you measured, because you want to do that for each string, right? And what I’m doing there is when I push this down, I go up and down to see if the string will actually move and touch the top of the fret and that kind of, I can do it without having to actually look. I can kind of tell. But if it’s the same distance all the way across, you can actually, you know, remove the whole nut and then either sand the nut down or file underneath it and put it back down or you can if it’s just individual strings, you can do the individual strings. You’ll notice this, a lot of a lot of the plastic nuts and, like stuff on Fenders and things. Oh my God, this is so, and it also happens with Floyd Rose nuts and stuff too. You’re going to notice a lot in these upper strings right here on the B the G and the E. Oh my God. Especially when you’re doing like a D chord and there’s always that one, it doesn’t matter how in tune you get everything, there’s always that one that wants to go sharp and it’s usually because it’s a little high back here, So then you could just kind of cut into that file it down and then that will fix that.

The Bridge – String Height and Intonation

So after we have this set up, we’re business card, business card, business card, business card, business card, business card, then we can start working on the bridge. Okay? And what you want to do, the very first, is you tune it to pitch. Tune it to the pitch that you want to tune it to. Because, you know, during the time that, you know, when you’re adjusting your truss rod and things like that, it should be to pitch. Because if you’re sitting there and it’s like you’re planning on like really tuning it up a few steps less, putting more tension on the strings. That’s going to be pulling the truss rod in one direction. If you’re planning on going, like playing maybe like a half step down, that’s taking string tension away. So whatever you’re planning on playing it at, that’s what you should be at when you’re adjusting your truss rod. That’s because any other time as soon as you as you change things up it’s going to go ahead and pull up and knock it out of whack. So keep that in mind. But we have all this done and the first thing we want to do is we want to adjust the height of the Floyd or any type of bridge for that matter. If it’s a hardtail, you’re just adjusting the saddle heights because the hardtail itself doesn’t move up and down unless it’s like a Tuneomatic like this on a Gibson or something. Every other time you’re going to be dealing with some type of, like, whether it’s like a Fender or, you know, like a Floyd or something like that, you’re going to be adjusting the height with the bolts of the screws upfront. What you want to do is you want to bring these things down. You want to bring them down until the distance from the height of the string, the bottom of it, to the top of the fret, just you know normal action, on the first fret is about the same as a 24th fret or 21st or whatever. It doesn’t matter if you have fret buzz right now. That’s irrelevant. We don’t care about that right now. The only thing we care about is trying to get it as a good starting point. After you do that, what you want to do, and it’s not completely important yet about intonation, it’s not, right now we’re working on, and right now we’re working on action, so we’re not worried about the intonation yet. But from there, you want to start playing up and you want to go through every string. Play each one. Okay, and any time that you hear a fret buzz, okay, if you hear fret buzz throughout the whole string, we know that this, the lower side, like for instance, if you hear it on the E, and the B, and the D, or, I’m sorry, either the B and the G. If you hear that a lot of fret buzz on those but nothing on these, we know that that the lower side of the Floyd has to be raised. That’s common sense. If we hear it on the low side that means that the low side has to be raised. Then what you want to do is you want to get it where you’re down to only about, maybe there’s only a few frets that are that are giving you buzz. Those ones that are giving you buzz; typically what I do with those frets is I mark them with a Mark’s-A-Lot marker. Where in a hell did I put that? Like these, like these dry race. I’ll mark it because that tells me that that frets a little high and, like usually, I can just sand it just a little bit and leaving it out and then that gives me even much lower action. Because your action can only be as low as, you know, as level as your frets are is probably the best way to put it. So if your frets are all screwed up, you’re going to have high action all the time. You have no choice. Because if not, you’re gonna have fret buzz. So go through and you start raising it and lowering it until basically, you don’t get any fret buzz anymore and if you have to raise that thing really, really high, that’s telling you that your frets are out. That’s telling you that either your truss rod needs to be adjusted again or your frets are out and if your frets are out, then you’re going to have to get those things dressed because if not, you’ll never be able to lower your action to the height that it should be. I mean my action right now I can hardly get a pick in there without touching the string and I don’t really have any fret buzz on this thing. But, so anyway, after you end up getting the Floyd to that that height, a thing that you need to kind of keep an eye on, by the way, this is for people that don’t know anything about Floyd’s (they’re not good with them), you have to keep an eye out that this bridge is pretty parallel to the body. If this thing is leaning forward, if it looks like this during the time that you’re tightening it, the springs and the rear need to be tightened until when this is in tune, its bit parallel. That’s how you know that the spring tension is correct and then you hit this a few times and if it keeps going back to parallel that means you have an equilibrium between the tension up here and the tension back here. If you tuned down a half a step, there’s a good chance that this might be pulling back a little bit too much because it’s a little bit stronger than the strings, right? So if that’s the case, it’s gonna be like, “Man I can never keep my guitar in tune”. Adjust the springs. That’s what those spring adjusters are for and it doesn’t take a lot; quarter turn here, quarter turn there. So don’t overdo it. However, you want to make sure that this is tuned to pitch, or as close as you can get it, and keep looking at that. Keep looking at that. Make sure that’s parallel and then adjust a spring tension each time. What you want to do, is if you’re tightening the springs in the rear, you don’t want to tighten it until it’s parallel, because as you start tightening it, it’s going to start pulling on these strings and making them go sharp. So after you do a quarter turn or so, go ahead and tune it to pitch, see if it’s doing the same thing. Do a quarter turn or so. The first time you do it, it might take a while. You know, keep doing it until this is in pitch and it’s parallel. Then you know you got it, right? So, and that’s also true with any type of trem system that’s got springs in it. That’s just how you do it.

Pitch Perfect Tuning

So now we’re at a point where we have everything to pitch. We have the action set to the height that we want, but that doesn’t matter, because as soon as you reset your action your intonation is going to go out. That’s just the way that it is. So we have to adjust the intonation. As I’ve talked about before in some of my other videos, the way that you do this is you go ahead and you fret to 12. You hit it. You’ll get one note and hit it open and you’ll get it. You’re going to be getting the same note, except an octave difference. Now obviously during at the time that you’re doing this, you want to have this plugged into a tuner and you tune the open string first. That’s the most one. Soon as that’s dead nuts, and that’s got to be dead nuts, right on the money tune, that’s when you hold down the twelfth and you hit it. Okay? Now when you hit that, if it shows up with the exact same note, it’s just like Dead Money, E and E, your intonation is correct. Okay? But if it goes E and just a hair sharp that means that the saddle is just a little too far forward, right? If it goes flat, it means that it’s a little bit too far back and so what you want to do is you have to move this back and forth until it actually becomes E there and you do that through all of them. You know, it’s like, then it’d be time for A and then from there, same thing. Does this give you an A? And if so, great! As soon as you end up changing your strings, if you change a different gauge, you’re going to have to change your intonation. If you change the gauge, you’re going to have to change your action height. This is just the rules of the game folks. I didn’t make them, but you have to play by them if you want to do it right. Keep in mind that when you’re dealing with a Floyd and you’re doing your intonation and you do your E and then this says, “Okay, well this is a little bit sharp, or it’s a little bit flat”, you want to actually reduce the tension on the string. You actually kind of want to get it down to nothing. Nonetheless, just remember how far out it was, so when you loosen this, you can kind of control exactly how much this saddle moves. If you try to do it when there’s tension on here, this thing it’s going to get sucked forward every single time and it’s going to be frustrating as hell. So bear that in mind. This string has to have no tension on it, or this string, whatever, should have no tension on it while you’re adjusting it. As soon as you’re finished with that, go ahead and tighten it. Go ahead tune it back to pitch and see if you were correct. Then, they do have little devices that you can buy that you hook up to here and you just kind of turn it and it’ll adjust so you don’t have to keep, you know, playing with it and, you know, doing like ten tries before you get everything just right. But most people don’t have that, so you can just do it the old-fashioned way. But you’ll get pretty good at telling how far you have to move something forward or how far have to move something back. Then on the Floyd Roses you’ll also notice that these nuts up here on the top, these little bolts, when you loosen them and you move the thing back and forth, you might run out of room and say, “Well there’s just no more room”. But if you look underneath the saddles, there’s actually more than one screw hole. So you can actually change it, there’s usually three, and so you can go all the way to the front, you know, middle, or the rear. Ideally middle is better. Nevertheless, after all that is done, check your action again. Okay? Because everything that you do with the truss rod affects everything else and everything you do to bridge affects everything else and whatnot. However, after you’re done with all that, come back up, look at it. Does it play well? Does it have any fret buzz when you’re pushing here and here? Are you getting that nice straight line? Are you getting that banana in it? Are you getting that back bow? You know, this is what you want to do and then just keep in mind when it comes to action, here are a few things. The lower the action, sometimes the more comfortable it is to play and it’s definitely easier to do a lot of hammer-ons, and pull-offs, and things like that. It’s much more fluid, but you cannot really play as aggressively. The closer you get to those frets, the more you have to start picking a little different because if not, you’re going to get fret buzz just because it’s a law of physics. You can’t hit the string with a hundred pounds of pressure and expect to just to move back. Just, you know, it’s not going to happen. So you might have to raise the action a little bit if you’re an aggressive player. Also, some people have a hard time doing artificial harmonics on a guitar that’s got low action. Okay? Some people have trouble doing bends on a guitar that has low action, so they’ll increase the action so it’s easier for their fingers to kind of get up and underneath there to do that bend.

So that’s just a few things to kind of go by, and hopefully this, I mean I know that this is long-winded and drawn-out and everything, but I’m really hoping that this video answered a lot of questions and helped you kind of get where you can set your guitar up where you’re not, you know, sitting like, “I don’t understand why I can’t get my guitar in tune. I do not see why it’s so hard to play. I don’t understand why while I’m down here it’s in tune, but when I’m up here, it isn’t. I don’t know why, you know, it’s I always have fret buzz only in this one register. I don’t, you know…” Hopefully this helps and then this will answer 99% of all your questions and it’ll also make it where you don’t have to take the guitar anywhere to have somebody set it up. Because when you take a guitar down to have somebody set it up, that’s pretty much all they do. That’s pretty much all they do. Exactly what I just told you and they might adjust the pickup height. But the pickup height is really one of those things that are. That’s kind of a no-brainer. You just adjust it till it sounds right. I know, that sounds so basic it’s like what? Yeah you just adjust it until sounds right. There’s really no given, there’s really no given formula of what is correct. Like, “Oh, it should be 1/8 of an inch. It should be 3/16, it should be 2 nickels. That’s horseshit because each pickup has a different type of pool on it. Each one has a different type of output. Each one has a different type of magnetic field and stuff. So you have to kind of play each one and typically what I do is I go about a couple of nickels thickness away from it, the strings, and I start playing and I’ll play and then I’ll take a screwdriver move it up a little bit and I’ll keep doing that until I get the sound that I’m looking for. If it gets too high, it’ll be kind of brittle and nasty and distorted and shitty and muddy. But if it’s too low it’ll be too thin and quiet and it’s not so fantastic. So you’re trying to find that happy medium. As soon as you find that one there, you switch over to the neck, you do the same. After you’re done with that, you move them back and forth until the volume of these two is the same. In other words, if I’m playing on the bridge then I flip this up and it goes over to the neck, is there a huge difference in volume? Because if there is, one of these has to move either up or down in order so that way the people that are listening can’t tell a difference between the volumes. Because there’s nothing worse than somebody playing and it’s like duh no, no, no, no, no, and they flip over it’s like its horrible and then that’s all about adjusting the height.

Guitar Set Up – You Just Saved a Bundle

So anyway, if you have any questions, do not be afraid to post them or whatnot. I can’t always answer in, you know, a timely matter anymore, but I’m trying to still throw you guys a bone whenever I can and, like I said, this is precisely what they do when they do guitar setups. So I just saved you 50, 75 bucks, or maybe a hundred dollars. I don’t know how much those bastards charge.

But there you go. That’s it until next time.

Source

Source: https://electricguitardigest.com/how-to-set-up-a-guitar/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/how-to-set-up-a-guitar/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Squire Affinity Stratocaster

Squire Affinity Stratocaster – Great Value in a Starter Guitar

The Squire Affinity Stratocaster has been one of the most popular entry level electric guitars for the past several years and for good reason. Given it’s price point, it offers and very decent level of quality, play-ability, and tone. New models go for less than $200 and you can always find them used on Craigslist for $100 or less. So if you have an itch to find out if you have the desire and work ethic to become the next Clapton or Hendrix, the Affinity Strat gives you a way to do so without breaking the bank. Of course you’ll be needing an amp and a few other accessories, but they sell these in kits at very reasonable prices. Of course you can always pick up a budget priced amp on Craigslist and you won’t be out much money at all.

Affinity Stratocaster Video Reiews

So below you will find two videos featuring the Squire Affinity Stratocaster. The first video should quell any doubts you might have about the kind of sound this guitar is capable of producing. In the hands of an accomplished guitarist, this is a surprising guitar. It sounds wonderful. The second video is an in depth review of the physical makeup and characteristics of the guitar. In the end, I think you’ll agree that this is a guitar that is very worthy of your consideration if you are shopping for your first electric guitar.

Squire Affinity Sound Demo

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Squire Affinity Stratocaster Review

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Hi. My name is Matt Wolf and today we’ll review the Squire Affinity Stratocaster.

So, this is among those cheaper guitars. So I bought this one from eBay just for $100. So that not a lot in comparison with other guitars is like the Vintage SG, for example, you can check it out on my channel. Also like a custom shop, so they are, this is like the low end of the guitars. So let’s check and see if it’s a good guitar.

The Affinity Strat from Top to Bottom

So, let’s review all of the components and let’s see how it sounds. Like, so here we go. So first, like, let’s look at the headstock. So this is a late 60 kind of headstock. It’s like a bigger headstock. So the Fender Strat copies of the 50s and early 60s, they had a smaller headstock. But then from 65 or something, the headstocks got bigger. So if you think of Jimi Hendrix, for example, he also had these bigger headstock. So that’s cool and it has the bigger head stock.

So let’s talk about the tuners. If we tune a guitar for instance, the tuners, they are very sturdy, so it’s very easy to tune the guitar. There are not any loose ends. They are very robust, so everything sounds excellent here.

Let’s go to the nut. So normal Fenders of the 50s or 60s they had like a bone nut so it’s really hard material that also effects, too. This is not bone. It’s some kind of plastic. It actually sounds pretty good as well and it’s also very well adjusted so the strings are not too high like you see on some new Gibsons. They file the nut very high so it’s hard to play and you have to file it yourself. However, this is actually, it’s good from the box, so it is very low, very well adjusted. So actually you can have a very low action without any fret buzz. So the nut is very well adjusted from the beginning. So that’s very good.

Standard Stratocaster Neck and Fretboard

So let’s talk about the neck. So this is, it’s a maple neck. It’s a c-shape neck it’s fairly thin, but it’s, I think, it’s standard on all Fender Stratocasters, especially the lower end Fender Stratocaster. It’s a very thin neck, so it’s… I had an SG as well and the neck was thin and it was kind of unstable, but this is thin and it’s not so unstable. So, it’s still a sturdy, good neck, I think. It also fits well on your hands. If you like bigger necks then maybe this is not something for you. Nonetheless, I think it’s a good shape. It’s a standard C shape, so everybody should like it I guess.

Let’s go to the fretboard. So, it’s a rosewood fretboard. So it’s is…It kind of has some grain in it as well which I like. I can show you here on the screen as well. It also, you can see here, below you can see, it’s also a slab board, fretboard. So that means that in the early 50s the fretboards they also had some girth. But then they make them thicker and some say is made the Stratocaster warmer. So maybe that’s the case here or so. So it has a slat board fretboard. So, I think that’s good as well and let’s talk about the frets. These are not all that big they aren’t jumbo frets. I don’t know which frets are on it, but they seem good, they work well. There are no… Also, the fret board is very well leveled. There are no… notes come out very well. Right! Also, the net joint, sometimes it can be an issue. It’s cheaper and sometimes they don’t fit well. But this one, there’s a very nice fit. I don’t, I don’t see any problems with it so that looks good.

All right then, let’s go to the body. So this is… it even looks like one piece, one piece body. It is, you have a lot of, you have a lot of Stratocasters that they make two pieces together. But this is like one piece body of alder. So I also… it’s a sunburst, three tone sunburst, with black at the end and then red, a little bit of red, I do not know whether you can see it very well. A little bit of red there, so and then the normal, the normal finish. So I like it, kind of like a grain of salt. So it looks good. It’s also not too heavy. So I like it.

Alright, so let’s talk about the bridge then. So this is like the standard Stratocaster bridge where you can adjust every bridge piece separately. So, that’s good. You can adjust everything separately. You can also adjust intonation. So that’s kind of standard in any bridge and it’s necessary as well to set up your guitar correctly. But I didn’t. The intonation is quite good actually.

Electronics and Pickups

So right. All the electronics they also seem very simple and working like expect from a Strat. So, all of those, they work quite well. It also cleans up very nicely. So I’m at volume 4 now, volume 8. Right. Then all the tone knobs as well. Tone number five really makes it a little bit thicker, so I like it. So with the tone knob all the way down, they still are usable sounds. I like tone knobs as well. So if you want to jazzy tones you can take your neck pick up to throw down a tone and you get instant jazz. So it sounds very warm and very usable, so I think that’s good. Right. Also, the other tone knob, so this is the treble pickup. So, the last tone knob, so it only works for the middle pickup and not for the treble pickup. So this is the middle pickup, tone up all the way up. Tone knob all the way down. And then, tone knob at five.

The pickups, I think they also sound quite good, especially for a guitar in this price range. They’re not the best pickups, of course, but you can always switch them with aftermarket pickups, then you can make your guitar maybe a little bit better. But let’s see how they sound. So this is a neck pickup. So this is making between position. In between position and on the treble pickup, the bridge pickup. So these are all usable sounds and not too drastically, not too abrupt, so they are very usable I think. So on some cheaper guitars there’s one pickup it really doesn’t sound good. So you never use it. However, I think these ones you can use them all. They are also in between position. That’s typical for a Strat.

A Lot to Like for a Little Cash

I really can’t say anything negative about this guitar, right. I like it and for this price you get a lot of guitar and it’s good there are not things I don’t like. So I think it’s a very good guitar given the price. So let’s now just do some sounds examples then let’s see how it sounds. I hope that you enjoyed it. But, so… Tone knob rolled down. The middle pickup. And the bridge pickup. So there you have it. I think I cannot say anything negative about the guitar. I like it. I hope you like it as well. There you have it.

So I hope that you enjoyed it and I hope it helped you to make a choice, to go for the guitar or not. So do not forget to comment below and I see you next time.

Source

Source: https://electricguitardigest.com/squire-affinity-stratocaster/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/07/18/squire-affinity-stratocaster/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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How To Choose Your First Guitar

Buying Your First Guitar

Given the fact that there are thousands of inexpensive, beginner level guitars to choose from, buying your first guitar can be an overwhelming task. You really need a blueprint or a checklist that will show you how to choose your first guitar. Fortunately, there are several YouTube videos that provide pretty solid information on how to go about it the right way. Below is a video that was done by Andy Guitar that might help. I’d suggest watching several videos on this topic. By doing so, you will have a much better chance of making a good choice.

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How to Choose Your First Guitar – The Process

Hi guys! In this lesson, we’re going to look at how to choose your first guitar. We’re going to look at both the electric and acoustic and what you want to watch out for when you’re buying them. I’m going to give advice to people who are very much on a budget and not wanting to spend a lot of money at all, still trying to figure out whether guitars for you or not. But I’m also going to give some advice to people who maybe have a cheap guitar at the moment and I wanting to, thinking about, upgrading what to look out for.

An Acoustic Guitar – Historically, the First Guitar

I’m going to start off on the acoustic guitar because I primarily do beginners lessons and therefore a lot of people, for one reason or another, tend to start off on acoustic guitar like myself. I started on for an acoustic guitar and kind of had the mentality of maybe I got my acoustic guitar first, when I was like 12 years old, and reward myself with an electric guitar later. And I’ll tell you what I think about towards the end of the lesson because I have a new theory on this now. But on the face of it acoustic guitars kind of all look the same. An acoustic guitar has a hollow, hollowed out body and it has a sound hole somewhere near here. They are sold in all different colors, so you know those sorts of things don’t really matter as such. They do start from about 50 or 60 pounds, so about 80 or 90 dollars and some of those guitars, if you’re still not sure whether guitars for you and you just want to have a go and try it out and that’s all the money that you have, there’s nothing wrong with them. Now it’s it’s kind of like you know cars these days. Even the the absolute cheap budget ones, they’re still gonna go. They’re even going to make a noise. They’ll still be alright for you. You’ve gotta, you should kind of be in the mindset that guitar might not really last more than kind of six months to a year if you really are practicing then you know that you’re going to outgrow that guitar, definitely.

As for size of guitars, they do come in full-size which would be this length and 3/4 sizes about here, and for any child below the age of about 9, I’d probably say maybe get a 3/4 size acoustic guitar, but above nine or ten, just go all out and get them the full size guitar. In my opinion, they will get used to it and there’s no, it just kind of future-proofs it a little bit and I that’s when I started picking up the full size guitar and it was absolutely fine for me. Seeing it be fine for other people as well. With the strings, this is a steel strung guitar so the top couple of strings kind of look like cheese wire and their headstock looks like this. So it doesn’t have holes in it basically and the strings are wound round this way. If you can see that the top has holes in on any videos that you look at online (I should put a picture up really of the type of guitar). I’m on about that. It is a classical style, or a nylon string style of guitar. The pop and rock songs that I teach on on my YouTube channel here aren’t really appropriate for this sort of style of guitar and unless you, to be honest, even if your kids really young or you know you’re an adult kind of wanting to just get started and you’re concerned about your fingers kind of hurting and you’ve maybe think this is the guitar to go for, if you want to do rock and pop music, it’s just not going to sound right on one of those guitars. I highly suggest you get a steel string guitar and the strings basically look bronzy at this side and the top look like cheese wire. Nylon string guitars sound very different and the strings are a little bit more forgiving but personally in my opinion, I don’t recommend them for the type of music that you want to play if you’re here watching this video from me and you like the sound that I get from my guitar.

Budget Acoustic Guitars that I Dig

If you have, you know, next to no money and you don’t want to go all out and you know, blow 200 pounds or or 200 dollars on it on an acoustic guitar, East Coast Guitars are fairly good for next to no money. You know, we’re talking about 60 pounds, 70 pounds, or about 80 or 90 dollars. East Coast guitars are pretty good. The stag ones are all right. I’d try them out first of all if you can, in a music shop somewhere new, but they’re rather good. If you’re always wanting to spend a little bit more than that I’d really recommend that you get something called a solid top acoustic guitar. With the acoustic guitars there’s not a lot else on them that makes the sound other than the actual wood it’s made from and on cheaper less expensive guitars the wood that you see on the front is not the wood that it’s actually made from. They’re basically made from a type of MDF or plywood that gets laminated and it will say on the specification of the guitar whether it’s laminated or not and which part of the guitar is laminated. Now the guitar that I’ve used for all my beginners acoustic videos has a laminated back and sides. They are thus important to the sound but not as important as the top. The top is the one that vibrates more. It’s where the sound comes out of and it’s the first bit that gets upgraded when you spend a little bit more money. So this is a solid top acoustic guitar which means that the wood that you see here with the grain and everything is the wood that it’s actually made from and they start, they go from about 150 up to about 300 pounds or so with these solid top acoustic guitars. Above about 300 pounds 350 dollars, the back and sides start to become solid wood as well. If you’re wanting to keep the cost down, just make sure that you get a solid top and it will sound pretty damn good. The neck and all the other parts of wood in it, don’t worry too much about it. Again to keep the cost down. If you’re an absolute beginner, I would not get an electro-acoustic. An electro-acoustic means that you can plug your acoustic in to either record or play live. But to be honest, when you’re recording you don’t really want to plug in your acoustic because it will sound a lot better with a microphone in front of it and if you’re an absolute beginner probably not going to be playing on stage anytime soon and if you jump that fence when you come to it, you’re probably going to want a new guitar anyway. So keep the cost down, just get an acoustic guitar. Absolutely standard. If you really like your acoustic guitar, like I do, and you want it to be able to plug it in, you can buy a pickup kit. I’ve got an EAR AK13 plus pickup system in this one. They cost about 150 pounds and I got a friend of mine to install it and that means I can now plug this in even though it didn’t come with a pickup system in it, The ones with a pre-installed system are really good, they just wipe the price up a little bit so there’s no need to go for those otherwise. If you want a better sounding acoustic guitar, no matter what the make, make sure you get a solid top, solid back and sides, but you’re going to push the price up a little bit. For the cheaper brands, that kind of offer that, and I’m not endorsed by Yamaha or anything, they’re just, it’s the guitar that I have because it sounds great and I’ve got another more expensive Yamaha guitar that I’ve found really does what I want it to. There are a few of them around, Takamine and things that. Generally, the Japanese made ones will be be highly speced out and they’ll sound really good without paying kind of top dollar for them and save the two thousand pounds Gibson Super Jumbo for a little later on when you’re a rock star, okay. Let the record company pay for it.

Why an Electric Guitar Makes a Great First Guitar

Let’s move on to electric guitars. They tend to come in two styles. This is the one style that I have. This is a Les Paul type guitar. It’s an Epiphone, which is the budget brand of Gibson basically. So I have this Kasai at the moment. I cannot afford a Gibson Les Paul, which would be my dream guitar, but they cost more than my car. So I’m not going to and invest just yet in one of those though it’s on my list. The other style of electric guitar kinda looks like this. It’s a Fender Stratocaster which tends to give a bit more of a cleaner, twangier tone to it, though still does rock guitar absolutely fantastically. The main difference in the sound, the bodies a little bit thicker so these things are quite heavy and the Stratocasters are a little bit thinner, a little bit lighter. The pickups, which is the bit that actually gives you the sound of the guitar more slightly are humbuckers in this one which means there are two strips of these pickups here and on the Stratocaster they’re just single which is why they are slightly twangier, give it a slightly brighter tone than these meaty, rocky, midi kind of pickups. So for one of these type guitars, you’re talking Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and like Slash of Guns and Roses, that sort of rock, heavy rock tones which the Stratocaster will still do if you put it through a big old amplifier, but these tend to sound a little bit sweeter for the cleaner or bluesier tones of your Eric Clapton’s and Jimi Hendrix, for example. In between those two, sort of a bit rockier, but still kind of clean and twangy, is your Telecaster, which is this one. These come with either the two pickups like like this one, the humbuckers or single coil ones of the Stratocaster and they kind of seen if you’re working man’s guitar, I guess you know. Indie bands use them a lot, but Bruce Springsteen plays one of these bad boys, Keith Richards you know, salt-of-the-earth kind of man guitars and the the Les Paul types tend to be for the flashy guys kind of seventies rock people and you Stratocasters tend to be that little bit cleaner and they possibly do a little bit more a bit more of everything whereas the Les Paul tends to be quite specialized for rock guitar. And then there’s a whole host of other guitars that you can get. The guitar states like and X’s and stars Flying Vs, Explorers and there’s there’s, there’s so many on the market. To a certain extent, the electric guitar, the one that you like, it kind of chooses you. I went into a guitar shop when I was approximately 12 years old. Actually, I think I saw a guy play one of these on Top of the Pops and went, that, that’s the one for me. That’s obviously the guitar that I like. It was kind of self-explanatory, only transpired later that it suited my kind of style of music and things like that. Just that you can get a guitar whatever you want. In in my opinion, whichever guitar makes you want to play it, that’s the one to buy. Simple as that.

If you’re buying the guitar is a present for someone else and you’re spending any amount of money on it, I wouldn’t keep it as a surprise. Ask the person first. Let them have some input into what guitar you get because they are kind of personal things and hopefully, it’s something that you’re going to be spending an awful lot of time with. With electric guitars, they do come in packs which can be very handy as your first kind of guitar to get. The amplifier, and cables, and the straps, and a few picks and a tuner, those things all tend to come together. The packs that I recommend are definitely the Squier ones, which is kind of a budget brand of Fender or as the kind of traditional kind of, not the cheapest, but certainly one of the best budget electric guitars is a Yamaha Pacifica and it has been for donkey’s years. They are really good. My brother’s got one of these guitars. It served him well for so many years and they are really fine. If you fancy more of this sort of style, I’ve got myself an Epiphone. If you think your guitar kind of plays pretty, pretty well, but you just it’s not quite getting the sound that you want, then what you can do is upgrade the pick ups, which is exactly what I’ve done on this Epiphone Les Paul which costs, well brand new that about 350 pounds. I got this one secondhand from a friend for 200 pounds, which is an absolute bargain, to be honest with you because he barely played it at all and what I did was upgrade the pickups. These particular ones are Seymour Duncan’s. We’ve got an SH1 and a 59 at the neck and they give me a PAF kind of Jimmy Page type sound is what I was going for through my Orange and Marshall cab. So yes, that’s really where 90 percent or 95 percent of the sound kind of comes from. All the rest of it is play ability which a lot of that can be tweaked or adjusted or kind of perfected with a set up. A guitar setup is where you will get, even I would would not set up my own guitars. I pay for them for a guy to do them for me, a guitar tech and they are just the height of your strings, they’re just the height of your bridge, and even out all your frets, make sure you saddle heights right, and generally just make sure that your guitar has all the right adjustments for it to play as well as it can. Guitars out of the shop, off the shelf, they are put together generally by people who know how to cut a piece of wood and make it, polish it, and make it the best. They’re not always done by players and the set up cannot be perfectly straight out of the shop. So even if you’re spending like two or three thousand pounds on a guitar, actually it might not be set up correctly and you still have to spend about 30 pound or 40 pound on a setup which is something that I highly advise that you do just, just the once. If you’re guitar costs over kind of 150 200 pounds and you can tell that, you know, the strings are a little high and things like that I wouldn’t do it yourself. I just definitely get a get a guy to do it. Find out who you local guitar luthier is.

So yes, that’s kind of my advice on electric guitars and acoustic guitars. If you’re wondering, hmm, kind of like acoustic, but kind of like rock music as well. Which one is for you. Remember that they do kind of make awfully good birthday and Christmas presents, so if you get one for now you can always get the other one a little later on, but you’re going to be kind of focusing more on pop, or folk, or maybe blues music if you get an acoustic guitar for now, though you can do rock stuff as well and you’re probably going to be focused on kind of rock and more band type songs if you get an electric guitar. Beginners tend to sway towards acoustic, probably because like, in my opinion, like from my perspective, you want to get good first before you start playing guitar so you get yourself an acoustic. It’s kind of a simpler instrument. However, electric guitar is probably easier. In fact, quite a lot of people find it an awful lot easier and get an awful lot better much quicker when you get an electric guitar first. It is a bit more of a palaver with having to get an amp as well. But as I say, if you get one of the guitar packs, you can’t really go wrong. The fuzz that you get on an amplifier can make your mistakes less noticeable in the beginning, so that it doesn’t kind of cover up bad playing or anything, but it just makes everything sound a little bit nicer and when you first start playing, you’ve got that as an option, kind of dial it up to the Eddie Van Halen preset and just kind of rock out a little bit, kind of one chord or one a chord on it electric guitar kind of sounds awesome. It still does to me. You’ve got a clean channel on your amplifier and an overdrive channel as well, so you get kind of two sounds for the price of one on electric, whereas when you have acoustic, you’re kind of stuck with the one sound that you have and you’re limited in styles of musically you can do.

So that’s my advice to you. If you are unsure, get an electric guitar. If you have your heart set on an acoustic guitar, and make sure it’s got a solid top and I’d definitely spend a little bit more in the beginning than you may feel kind of 100% too. It can also kind of make you play it and if you spend a little bit more on it. Nonetheless, you don’t have to spend the earth, because I haven’t. I use these two guitars professionally and they are my workhorses and, as I say, I don’t like my guitars to cost more than my car.

Thanks for checking out this video. I hope that you are happy with the electric guitar that you buy. If you can at all, please pick it up and try it before you buy it. Even possibly be cheeky and go into a guitar shop, try out the guitar and then find it somewhere else cheaper online. It’s terrible to do it, but that is the world we live in these days I’m afraid.

I hope see you when you get your new electric guitar or your secondhand electric guitar. There’s nothing wrong with those and I will hopefully see you for some more fun easy beginner songs.

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Source: http://electricguitardigest.com/how-to-choose-your-first-guitar/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/how-to-choose-your-first-guitar/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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envato

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Source: http://electricguitardigest.com/envato-store/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/envato/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Epiphone – Liam Gallagher Turns Out Glastonbury

Liam Gallagher put on a terrific show in Glastonbury last weekend in what NME called “a swaggering emotional moment…worth the hype.” We’d expect nothing else.

Gallagher recently announced U.S. fall tour dates in San Francisco, Denver, Boston, New York, Washington, and Philadelphia. And his new album, As You Were, will be out October 6 with artwork by Beatles pal and Revolver album cover designer, Klaus Voorman. Check out sneak preview of “Chinatown” and look for more good news on the new album soon.

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http://www.epiphone.com/News/Features/News/2017/Liam-Gallagher-Turns-Out-Glastonbury.aspx?RSSName=News-Features

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Source: http://www.epiphone.com/News/Features/News/2017/Liam-Gallagher-Turns-Out-Glastonbury.aspx?RSSName=News-Features

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/07/04/epiphone-liam-gallagher-turns-out-glastonbury/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Epiphone – Leanne Pearson Visits Epiphone Headquarters

Country artist Leanne Pearson dropped by Epiphone Headquarters recently to perform a song from her ever-growing catalog. Originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Leanne is now living in Nashville and spends a large amount of her time writing. So much so that she will be releasing a project of all-new material this week.

“I’m very excited to be releasing a new project,” said Pearson. “It’s a collection of songs that I’ve written over the last couple of years and I can’t wait for people to hear them.” Leanne started performing at the age of 4 and soon thereafter knew that music was her calling. Fast forward a few years and after graduating from the University of Manitoba with a Psychology Degree (and making the Dean’s Honour List), Leanne found herself on a skyrocketing path with two singles off of her debut album, Serendipity: “Get Outta My Heart” and “The Only Thing.”

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Fortunately for us, Epiphone has been part of Leanne’s rising career from the start. “One of my first guitars was an Epiphone,” she said. “Epiphone guitars are my favorite and I love working with Epiphone.” We feel the same way. Not only is Leanne one of the brightest new stars in country music, she is also one of the most fun people we know! Catch the very end of the video and you’ll see what we mean. And while you’re at it… be sure to follow Leanne on Instagram and Twitter!

http://www.epiphone.com/News/Features/Features/2017/Leanne-Pearson-Visits-Epiphone-Headquarters.aspx?RSSName=News-Features

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Source: http://www.epiphone.com/News/Features/Features/2017/Leanne-Pearson-Visits-Epiphone-Headquarters.aspx?RSSName=News-Features

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/epiphone-leanne-pearson-visits-epiphone-headquarters/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Xotic Wah

Background

Xotic Wah is modeled based on the Holy Grail wah, 1967-1968 Italian-built Clyde McCoy Wahs. With the Xotic Wah you don’t get one or three sounds in one pedal, you get unlimited sounds with unique controls that shape and contour your sound the way you hear it! The adjustability and flexibility of the Xotic Wah makes this one of the most versatile wah pedals available today!

External Controls

BIAS CONTROL — Changing the bias warmer will lead the Xotic Wah to having slightly more output & firm up bass frequencies along with a more pronounced wah through the sweep. A cold bias is common with vintage wah pedals for a very clear voice that is more transparent in tone and smoother in operation.

WAH Q CONTROL — This knob adjusts the Q (the width of the filter peak) and in basic terms, adjusts the amount of the wah effect for precise filter shaping to achieve vocal-like effects.

TREBLE & BASS CONTROL — A two-band EQ with +/-15 dB center-detent potentiometers optimize the voicing for different playing styles and gear.

ADJUSTABLE RUBBER STOPPER — Located on the backside bottom of the treadle this rubber bumper can be shimmed to adjust the travel range of the pedal.

ADJUSTABLE PEDAL TORSION — Fully-adjustable rocker pedal torsion by adjusting Hex nut on the treadle.

LED INDICATOR — The LED indicator is located at the top of the Xotic Wah and lights up when the pedal is on. One unique feature of the Xotic Wah is the LED will flash if the battery power falls below 50% and indicates that it is time to change the battery.

DC JACK — 2.1mm x 5.5mm 9VDC — Negative Center. When an external power supply is used, the battery is disconnected from the circuit. When using a battery, the life of the battery can be extended if you unplug the input when the effect is not in use for long periods of time. Battery access is through the removal of bottom plate (4 screws).

Internal Controls

INPUT GAIN — Controls wah input gain– by turning clockwise it adds up to +6dB of Wah Boost.

RELAY BYPASS SWITCHING — Xotic Wah uses a relay bypass switching for true bypass switching.

INTERNAL DIP SWITCHES — Controls wah resonance frequency range.

http://xotic.us/xotic-wah

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Source: http://xotic.us/xotic-wah

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/xotic-wah/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Neil Young and Promise of the Real Premiere “Children of Destiny” Music Video

Neil Young and Promise of the Real—Lukas Nelson’s band—recently recorded a new Young composition, “Children of Destiny.” Today, Young issued a music video to accompany the tune, and you can check it out below.

The song kicks off with “Stand up for what you believe / resist the powers that be / preserve the land and save the seas for the children of destiny.”

The clip, which is packed with American flags, smiling faces and beautiful natural scenery, is a Shakey Pictures/DHNY production. “Children of Destiny” was recorded and mixed at Capitol Studios in Hollywood and produced by the Volume Dealers (Young and Niko Bolas).

Besides Young and Promise of the Real, the recording features a 56-piece orchestra. Opinions?

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http://www.guitarworld.com/artist-news/neil-young-and-promise-real-premiere-children-destiny-music-video/31343

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Source: http://www.guitarworld.com/artist-news/neil-young-and-promise-real-premiere-children-destiny-music-video/31343

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/neil-young-and-promise-of-the-real-premiere-children-of-destiny-music-video/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Fender Elite Guitars

Fender Elite Guitars – Do Noiseless Pickups Finally Measure Up

In this video, we have Damon from Fender introducing and promoting the Fender Elite Series of Teles, Strats, and Thinlines. It’s obvious that Fender put a lot of thought and engineering prowess into these guitars. Even with all the well thought out improvements, the ultimate question remains, do their new generation of noiseless pickups deliver on the promise of tone that measure up to their finest vintage instruments. Well, you’ll really never know without playing one of the Fender Elites, but Damon puts forth some convincing arguments.

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Hey, everybody, it’s Damon here from Fender at Gear4music here to show you the amazing new 2016 Elite guitars.

Fender Elite Guitars – A Push for Modern Design and Technology

When we think about Fender, we have a very proud history going right back to the 1950s and a lot of people love the vintage thing. A lot of people love a vintage reissue instruments and the Custom Shop Time Machine guitars. But also, there’s a huge swath of us who want absolutely the most bang up-to-date, latest evolution of the classic designs whether that be a Tele, or a Strat, or P Bass, or Jazz Bass. So this year, we have completely revamped our top-end American guitars and we’ve come out with the brand new Elite Series. So, what you see here are all the things that Fender have learned since the 50s about making these iconic marks, whether it be, as I say, a Strat or a Tele. So I’m going to have a chat with you about all the features what makes these guitars So great, and So playable, and so very useful as well. All these great player-centric upgrades that people asked for through the years.

Fender Elite Telecaster – Improvements Beyond the Pickups

So, this obviously is a Telecaster. So, this is the 2016 Elite. So, I’ll run through the features first of all. I’m going to turn this around. You can see here we have the belly cut. Okay, one of the things that people always said about Teles, if you play them for a long period of time, because it’s a very slab body, it maybe isn’t as comfortable as it might be. So this here sits right in there; very, very comfortable, especially if you’re playing long sets, playing for a long time. We have the latest generation of noiseless pickups. This is something that we at Fender have been working on for a long time. So if you play anywhere where there’s any kind of electronic interference, you’ll always get that buzz, that hum. We’ve been searching for many, many years for that elusive tonal Nirvana which is essentially a vintage sounding single call pickup that has no hum, no buzz. We’re sitting here, obviously in a studio with cameras, and lights, and screens and it’s completely silent, which is fabulous. So, wherever you’re playing or recording in the studio, you get none of that 60 cycle hum and they sound killer as well. They sound like proper vintage pickups. Milled stainless steel bridge saddles there, great tone, great sustain. At the other end, we have locking tuners. Obviously, very important when we get to the Strat. One thing about these guitars, which you can’t actually feel, but you can if you come into Gear4Music and try them out, is the necks on these guitars feel absolutely incredible. So, what we’ve done is we’ve gone for a compound radius. All that means is it gets wider and flatter as we go from the bottom into the top end. So, a standard nine and a half inch here, like you get on an American Standard guitar, right up to 14 inches at the top here. So, it gets really wide, really flat. So, if you do your shreddy stuff, really easy to do, really easy to bend as well. There we go, a little bit of Gilmore there for you. Now, the other thing that we’ve also done is we’ve changed the feel of the neck at the back. So just as the radius gets wider and flatter, the neck actually gets slightly deeper as well, as you get to the top end. So we go from like a standard modern C shape here, to a much deeper, I won’t say much deeper, but you know, you can feel it in your hand here, almost like kind of mid-60s D-profile neck. So, a lot of meat when you get up past the 12th fret. Again, it feels super comfortable and it adds to the sound. You know, the more actual mass there is in the neck, generally, the better a guitar will sound. The other thing, once again I’m going to flip it over for you very quickly, fully cut off all access heel joint here. So, we’ve done this before with it slightly curved off at the edge, started with the Jeff Beck guitars. But as you can see here, it’s completely rounded off, so, as I like to say, for pure, unfettered access to the dusty end. So, if you’ve always fancied to Tele, but you’ve always thought, “I can’t quite get right up to the top of the neck”, it’s absolutely perfect and it’s obviously the same on the Strat as well. Also, you can adjust your truss rod here, at this end of the neck, which is very simple, very easy to use and that’s something evolution from like the Charvel Guitars and the EVH Guitars, so it makes the guitar very easy to set up. Finally, the other thing, they all have is the S1 switch which you probably can’t see and it’s called the S1 switch. S stands for stealth, so you can’t see it. So, there’s not lots and lots of, you know, little switches and stuff all over your guitar, but essentially, it’s on the volume control there. You push it in and it gives you other more tonal options which you will hear in a second. On a Tele it just works in the middle position puts the two middle pickups in series as a humbucker. So, it’s big, and it’s fat, and it’s humbucking. OK, so that’s an overview. These features are common to the Strat as well; so, locking tuners, the neck profiles, jumbo frets, all of that stuff. So what it does is it adds up to a guitar that looks modern, feels modern, stays beautifully in tune, but tonally, you’d still get some of that Classic Vintage Fender style tone. It’s the ultimate evolution of this particular type of guitar. So if you’re looking for something that sounds great, it’s quiet, it doesn’t buzz and it stays in tune, the Elites are exactly the guitar for you.

So we’ll have a little play now; clean first, then dirty, and then, I think, very dirty, again, so you can hear how fantastic these pickups are. So, it’s the real vintage kind of tone. Bridge, OK, that’s the bridge. We love that. Okay, two together, a killer for funk. Obviously, Teles aren’t just for country. You can use them for anything, anywhere, any time you need a clean guitar sound. I just think Tele’s brilliant. And then the neck pickup – imbued with that lovely, classic, pluminess of the neck pickup. So it’s all there, all the spank, or the jangle, or the clarity that we know and associate and love from a Tele. So, what I’m going to do now is go to a kind of a medium gain thing, just crank it a little bit more so you can hear how these latest generation N4 noiseless pickups sound with no hum and no buzz. So that’s the middle pickup. So, that’s the two pickups together, middle position, normal. Now if I press the S1 switch, you can hear much fatter, much broader, more mid-range, still retaining that inherent tonality that we love from the Tele. So, now let’s go all out. Let’s really drive it and see how it sounds. We found you know, traditionally, people always think of Teles as being country guitars. You know, clean guitars. But a guitar like this will do everything from jazz to blues, to funk, to country. We have a lot of modern metal bands, a lot of punk bands, that kind of stuff, that use Teles. Super versatile! Now, that’s pretty cranked. So, there we go, fantastic. Right from spanky, sparkly cleans, all those things that we associate a Tele with, right through to much heavier modern sounds. The new 26 Elites really will do it all. So, what going to do now is we’re going to move over to a Strat and let you have a look and listen to that as well.

Fender Elite Stratocaster – Would Jimi Play One

So all the things that I talked about with the Telecaster are the same with the Strat. So, we’ve got stuff like really high quality woods for the bodies as well. Don’t forget, it’s probably the most important thing is the quality of the wood. So, these are all two piece bodies as well, just like the Tele. Let’s talk about the neck because one of the things about these is they’re so playable. There so easy to play. They feel fantastic. So, we have the compound radius neck. Again, 9.5 down at the bottom. So, great for playing chords. Then as we go up, it gets wider, and wider, and wider, and flatter, and flatter, and flatter. Eric Johnson was one of the first people that we worked with to put compound radius fretboards on Strats because he loves him when he’s up here. So, it gets really, really wide, 14 inches by the time you get to the top; really wide, really flat, great for bending. Okay, and also, just the same as with the Tele at the back, the neck kind of gets deeper and chunkier as we go up as well. I’m kind of hoping you guys can see here it’s got absolutely amazing flame on the back of this neck here. It’s a thing of beauty. So, once again we have locking tuners which is more important, obviously, on a Strat because we have the tremolo bridge. We have the proper milled stainless steel bridge saddles. So, really hard, loads of sustain, just sounds really good. Now, other things. We have the noiseless pickups. I spoke about this before, but these are the N4 4th generation of our new noiseless pickups. So, we’ve been looking, we’ve been trying, and trying, and trying and develop, continue developing, these pickups. So, they are more noiseless, they create less noise, but they retain the tonality of a vintage style guitar. We’ll have a play with it in a minute and you’ll be able to hear that. Jumbo frets, mother-of-pearl inlays, laser-cut silver leaf logo, we’ve got their brand new design string tree.

So, every single part of these new Elite guitars has been worked on. The R&D guys have just thought, “How can we make it better? How can we develop it? How can we make it sound better? How can we make it play better? Stay in tune more?” All these things are what exactly, what goes into these guitars. We have the truss rod adjuster at this end of the neck – really, really easy. We just done it. Just gave the neck a little tweak rather than having to take the neck off. You know, it just makes it very, very simple to set up. Again, I’m going to flip it over. You can see the all access heel joint. You know, we at Fender are very aware of what everybody everybody’s doing, so the compound radius necks, the all access heel joint, these are all things that modern players have asked us to do, that they wanted us to do, and that’s exactly what you see now on the Elites. We also have, I find this quite exciting, these are actually new knobs, would you believe? So, you can’t see it, but I’m telling you, these are new cut speed knobs. So around the outside, it’s actually kind of squishy rubber. So, when you’re playing in the heat of battle and you’re on stage, and you’re hot, and you’re sweaty, and you’re trying to grab your tone controls, or your volume controls, yeah, you won’t slip because it’s actually a little bit of rubber around the outside. That might sound like a small thing, but that’s the whole point of the Elites. It’s every tiny little detail has been worked on to give you the ultimate playing experience. Again, we have, which you won’t be able to see is the S1 switch, the stealth switch in the volume control. When we move on in a second to do some playing examples, I’ll show you how that works because, essentially, you have your normal 5 way switch, which is all single coil tones, obviously, and then when you push the S1 switch which combines the Strat pickups together in series to create humbuckers. So essentially, you know from a bridge single coil to a bridge humbucker. And again, this one has a beautiful flame top. I’m hoping you can see that. So, you know the Elite Series strap is the ultimate modern development of the classic Stratocaster guitar, and also, locking strap locks as well. Strap locks so it won’t fall off when you’re playing. All of these things, you know, all these things are the stuff that players, pros, over the years have asked Fender to do. So we’ve had a good look at it. I guess what we better do now is have a little listen. So, just remember these are the brand new, latest generation of the noiseless pickups. So, we’re hoping we’re going to get no buzz, no harm, no extraneous noise, just classic, pure, Fender tone. So, I’ll have a little play clean, and you can have a listen.

Straight away you can hear it. Sounds like a proper Fender Stratocaster. What I’ve done there is engage the S1 switch, put these two in series as a humbucker. So, suddenly we can go from classic Fender Strat tone to much fatter, much more mid-range, which I’m going to change the settings on the amp now and go for some kind of medium gain sort of stuff where this will become even more apparent. So, let’s crank it. Let’s get a kind of a medium, grainy kind of classic rock blues sound I guess. So, that’s the bridge on its own which you can hear loads of, cartloads of bite. Now, if I push the S1 switch, much fatter, much warmer. Okay, neck pickup. That’s great instantly. You’re into kind of classic, medium gain, blues stuff – no hum, no buzz. So all the classic tones are there. The amazing thing about these pickups is they respond to your picking dynamics, which before noiseless pickups, didn’t tend to do that. So, I play gently. Yeah, and it’s completely silent. So, I hope you can hear, you know, to me, having played thousands of Strats, that absolutely nails the tone completely, and again, in a studio with lights, and monitors, and cameras there’s no noise at all. So now, let’s go even more heavy, more gain, and see how that sounds. It’s remarkable! Killer tone, absolutely no hum, no buzz. Okay, I’m gonna put the S1 switch in. If we roll a little bit the top end off as well, it’s a very, almost an unoffending light sound. But that’s what the S1 switch does, allows you to combine your single coils into like big, mid-range, gnarly humbucking tones as well. So, if you’re looking for a guitar that will cover every possible tonal base. if you work in the studio. if you gig. you do loads of different stuff. and you need everything from spanky clean funk things, country things, any beautiful clean sounds, right through to what we heard there, you know then, one of these 2016 Elites will do exactly that.

So, you’ve seen and heard the Elite Strat. This is obviously three single coils with the S1 switch, but these are also available HSS with a humbucker in the bridge, and it’s not just any humbucker, it’s Fenders brand-new Shawbucker. So those of you who know who Tim Shaw is, legendary American pickup guru who designed that humbucker specifically for us and that’s what you’ll find on the HSS version. It sounds killer, like a slightly overwhelmed path, but still loads of clarity loads of definition. So three single coils also available HSS. The two single coiled Tele which we’ve looked at.

Fender Elite Thinline Telecaster – Clear and Great Sustain

There is also the fantastic Elite Thinline Telecaster which has got to be one of the best looking guitars that I have seen for a very long time. So the only difference there, it’s got a brand-new decoupled bridge the R&D guys have created. So, to my mind, you get a little bit more sustain, but still with all that classic jangle and top-end. The fact that it, that it’s a Thinline, it has an F hole. It just gives it just a little bit more top-end, almost acoustic using the top end of it. So, if your normal Telecaster is not giving you quite enough clarity or you want more cut, more bite, more jangle, then the Thinline will do that for you.

Elite Series Guitars – Meeting the Historical Standard

So there you have it. That is the overview of the brand-new 2016 Fender Elite series guitars. The Strats, and the Teles, the Thinline, and HSS available. If there’s anything else that you want to know any information if you want to see some great photos make sure you go along to the gear4music website where there’s everything that you could possibly need.

So my name is Damon from Fender. Thank you very much for watching. Now, I’m gonna play us out on the Elite Thinline Tele.

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Source: http://electricguitardigest.com/fender-elite-guitars/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/fender-elite-guitars/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Gibson ES Memphis Les Paul Review

Gibson ES Memphis Les Paul – An Honest & Extensive Review

This excellent video provides a very exhaustive and refreshingly honest review of the Gibson ES Memphis Les Paul. It’s a very nice guitar, but… Well, I’ll let you see for yourself. Seriously, this is a must watch video if you are considering this guitar.

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2015 Gibson ES Les Paul Reviewed by a Pro

Hey everyone, Nick Palazzo, hopeless guitar enthusiast here again. Now, if you want a guy to do demos and reviews on last year’s model, not cutting edge, older gear, well I’ll tell you what, I’m your guy.

I have here with me a 2015 Gibson ES Les Paul made in Memphis, in historic light burst. Now, there’s dozens, if not hundreds, of videos blog posts reviews articles, forum threads, about this guitar, as with any Gibson model. So why do another video demo of this guitar? Well, I thought that it was a lot of regurgitated information, some of it incorrect, Gibson sales pitch and some of the features are just kind of blown over and I kind of wanted to, as always, get into the details, go under the hood, and show you some stuff that I think gets left out in a lot of other posts and reviews. Also, for the sounds, I play this guitar with both d’addario gauge 11 flatwounds and Ernie Ball Slinky 10 round wound. You get to hear both a mellow, warmer, jazzier tone and the more typical, brighter rock tone.

Memphis Les Paul Hardware and Specifications

Standard features found on any Gibson model; twenty-four and three-quarter inch scale length, Tune-O-Matic bridge, stop bar tail piece, two humbuckers, individual volume and tone, 3-way toggle. It’s got a one-piece, non-laminated, dark Indian rosewood fretboard with a one-piece mahogany back, one point seven inch bone nut, F hole and grade truss rod cover (who cares), Les Paul model on the center, Gibson logo in mother-of-pearl, Kluson vintage style tuners with a sort of translucent Keystone with white marble plastic and it kind of looks cool. Now the frets they advertised as a lower profile. But they don’t give you any specs. I measured them with my digital calipers. They are approximately, I think, forty-seven thousands is what they were going for on the height and about ninety-five thousands width. So a more medium, vintage style fret. I do want to note that in line with many of the Gibson models nowadays, is they’re not doing the binding edge. The fret work goes all the way over the binding. Guitar joint has a four-degree angle. Cream plastic on the whole guitar, including the neck and top and bottom of the body, and the rings, and, of course, it does come with a pick guard I took off to display the beautiful top. The Tune-O-Matic bridge is basically a vintage style with the smaller, thinner threaded rod going straight into the body, but they do add that modern feature of the allen heads on each post so you can lock down once you set your height, which is kind of cool. This guitar features the MHS Memphis Historic Spec humbuckers, which according to Gibson, is their most accurate PAF replica to date. Boy, I’ve heard that one before. Now, pretty much every humbucker nowadays is a PAF replica. I’ll let my playing display the tones of the guitar. It’s very subjective. According to Gibson’s website, they’re wound with 42 gauge enamel wire with Alnico 2 magnets in the bridge and alnico three in the neck. Now, most reviews have that flip-flop, but according to the site, it is alnico 2 and alnico 3.

A Les Paul with a Neck You Will Love

One feature, I think, that gets blown over and every single review is the neck profile, which I believe is one of the most important features of the guitar. I really love the profile on this guitar. It’s pretty unique to this model as far as I know. A lot of people are familiar with the slim taper profile. It’s been on the Les Paul Traditional and the Classics, the 61 SG reissue, for all those years that they made that guitar. This one’s definitely thicker. It’s not as big, as say, the RH, the 58 Custom Shop reissues which have like one inch deep and big shoulders. This one has 85 thousandths depth at the first fret, about ninety-five thousand at the twelfth. It’s a rounded C profile, but there’s definitely more meat in the taper so it fills your hand a lot more, plus the 1.7 inch with nut versus like a one point six five. It definitely feels a bit chunkier. Again, not huge, but definitely more than a slim taper. Also, a unique feature to this guitar is that they add a little bit beefier taper at the joint here. On a lot of the guitars, this is the weakest point of that neck. A lot of headstock snaps here where you have the truss rod cavity butting up against the back heel. So there’s a little bit wider taper at the end of that. The truss rod is what they call a historic construction where it’s a larger diameter rod, single-action, with the anchor here in the body, and standard acorn nut coated with Teflon, so it’s not encased in the tubing.

A Hollowbody Les Paul with Great Tone

Now, the thing that sets this guitar apart from any other Les Paul, of course, is the hollow construction. The top, back, and the sides all use a three-ply laminated maple, poplar, maple laminate and there’s a mahogany center strip. Mahogany is pretty sparse. They call it weight relief. It has a little strip here at the bottom and narrows down and then there’s a block for the tail piece and the stop bar and then it goes back up to another strip and then it widens out again for the neck. When I change the strings, I took the time to take the humbuckers out and look at the thickness of the three-ply laminated top. Now the F holes have the sides painted black, so you can’t tell the thicknesses, but you can when you take those pickups out. The overall thickness of that top, I measured there, is about thirteen sixty-fourths, so a little shy of seven thirty seconds. But if you notice, that top veneer, it is a veneer, is basically a sheet of triple a maple. I measured it to be about 3/64s of an inch, so it’s very, extremely thin. The middle ply of poplar is about three thirty-seconds thick and that bottom section of maple is about 1/16. Now, that might vary a bit throughout the guitar of course. I can’t measure the back and I can’t measure the sides too accurately. But you’ll notice some of the kind of machine routing, the splintering of the wood in there. It’s a mass-produced guitar. I mean that stuff happens.

Now, the story that I purchased this from displayed this guitar as a Historic Light Burst. There are many different versions. It’s essentially the same model, but there’s a lot of special runs that were made for certain stores, or limited editions, so I see a light burst in there with a VOS. This is a standard finish, it’s not aged in any way. They say it’s a Historic Light Burst. Maybe it’s just called a light burst. It’s kind of like a 59 Les Paul with the red faded a little bit. The back and sides, of course, have that plain maple, stained walnut brown, very beautiful. Kind of like an ES 330, sort of. The neck has got the same stain, but it’s kind of interesting. If you look at the filler, the filler almost has like this metallic look to it that pokes through. It’s not that it looks bad, it’s just kind of a unique look to it. It’s kind of unusual. But if there’s a contrast of the mahogany versus the maple that uses that same brown stain.

Fit and Finish a Bit Disappointing

As far as the finishing details of this guitar, there’s a lot of imperfections that I found. The person who scraped this had a bad scraping day. There’s almost like an inch long gouge into the walnut stain here on the side, and there are plenty on the back butt-end of the guitar where you just see the lines where they just didn’t have it in line with the binding and scraped right into that brown stain. At the neck joint, it looks like the brown is cracking. I don’t think it’s going through the clear coat, but it’s almost like it shipped up and bubbled at the joint and you look down at it, and there’s a lot of, it looks, it just looks like it’s cracking and bubbling. It’s kind of annoying and it’s not the only model, ES model that I saw this on. I saw it on an ES Les Paul Custom and I saw it on a few other burst tops. It looks like it’s safe. It’s clear coated over, but it is kind of nasty looking. Now I’ve never been to the Memphis factory, but I’ve had several friends that have been there and I guess there’s a part of the tour where they’ve got a whole row of guitars lined up that are just waiting to meet the bandsaw because there was an imperfection or some little defect. As far as I know, Gibson doesn’t do factory seconds anymore. They don’t do like a B stock thing. Granted, yeah for a new guitar, it’s kind of a drag to see these little imperfections, but overall, this was a pick of the litter. I played many ES Les Paul’s and this one was a standout. And so if overlooking these little imperfections in there kept it from being destroyed, I’m happy because overall, it’s an awesome guitar.

Now, let’s take a look at the case. In my opinion, I think that this is one of the more top-of-the-line hard shell cases that Gibson has. It features of brown Tolex covering, a nice beefy padded leather handle, black or dark gray plush interior. In the pocket, you have the Gibson Memphis warranty with a checklist and a certificate of authenticity. Now, if I had one complaint about the case, it’s just that it was actually almost too tight of a fit. I remember when I purchased the guitar I felt like I had to almost crunch the thing to get it to fit in the case. But now that it’s lived inside there a bit, I think it fits pretty well and I don’t have to crunch it anymore.

Now I’m fortunate to live in the Chicagoland area, so I can trip over music stores, especially Gibson dealers, and get my hands on pretty much any model that I want. I made this video because I know not everyone is that fortunate to be able to just go to the store and try out a Gibson. So I hope that this review went over a lot of the details that may have been omitted in previous demos and reviews, and if there’s something that I wasn’t too clear on or maybe missed, make a comment below so I can go over that and display some of the features that I might have missed out on.

In conclusion, I’m not going to say that it’s a great guitar. It’s a, you know, it’s a mass-produced assembly line guitar like all Gibson’s are, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Most guitars are. I like this particular one. This is, again, a pick of the litter. I went and played a lot of different ES’s and this one was a standout. That’s why I purchased it. But if this helps maybe distinguish some of the unique features of this guitar, that’s all I wanted to do. I’m not saying you should go out and buy it, or it’s the right value or the right one for you. I just wanted you to make an educated decision when you’re going and looking at Les Pauls.

Now, there’s many different ES Les Pauls in the line. Don’t let that confuse you with the special rods and limited editions. Every guitar nowadays is a limited edition. It’s basically the same guitar that I displayed here, maybe with a with a different finish and certain specs which should be highlighted. But overall, it’s the same guitar.

So thank you very, very much for watching. Please purchase this guitar for me so that I can afford to buy new gear and do some more reviews, and if there’s a certain product that you want me to review, please let me know. I’d love to hear some feedback and any excuse to go out and feed my addiction would be nice.

Okay, sorry about that. Went brain dead for a second.

Source

Source: http://electricguitardigest.com/gibson-es-memphis-les-paul-review/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/06/14/gibson-es-memphis-les-paul-review/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster Unboxing

Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster – A Stratified Telecaster

Well, if you are really torn between picking up a Fender Telecaster or a Fender Stratocaster, the Fender Deluxe Series Nashville Telecaster might be just the ticket for you. While it’s certainly more Tele than Strat, a middle single coil Strat pickup certainly provides you with the opportunity to sneak in some Strat licks when needed.

The video below is not just the unboxing of this fine guitar. Jeff also does a very thorough and unbiased review of the features and general overall condition of the guitar as it came from Chicago Music Exchange.

For those of you who might also want to read or revisit what Jeff had to say about the Deluxe Nashville Telecater, you will find a transcript right below the video.

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There in No Compromise in the Nashville Deluxe Tele

What’s up, guys? Jeff from Starr Guitar Works, back with an exclusive unboxing video for you, and the reason I say that this is exclusive is because it’s the first one here on YouTube. As a matter of fact, this particular guitar is probably one of the first ones that have been manufactured. These literally just came out. They’re pretty much sold out everywhere. There’s just a few out there here and there. I purchased this particular one from Chicago Music Exchange. As you can see on the box, hopefully, we’re going to get some great service and a great quality guitar from them. So far, everything’s been great, but I’ll give you a brief overview of this series of guitars before we get started with the unboxing. I’ll just to give you some knowledge of what type of guitar it is and where the Deluxe line came from.

Now Fender has always had a Deluxe line, essentially within their Mexican series. But they also had a Deluxe line within the American series. Well, they discontinued the American Deluxe series this past year and came up with the American League and what they did, is essentially rolled some of those American Deluxe features into the new Mexican Deluxe line. Now, of course, they’re not called the Mexican Deluxe line, but it’s just the Fender Deluxe. They’re great features all in all. You’ve got locking tuners, you got noiseless pickups, you got a contoured heel at the neck joint, and these features are standard across the board with the new Mexican Deluxe line. So, as you can see from the title down here, in the box over here we have got the 2016 Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster in Daphne blue. So instead of wasting any more time, let’s just get right to the unboxing. We’re going to keep the camera rolling here no matter what. We’re not going to do any takes. This is just a total free-for-all, fly by the seat of our pants.

The Nashville Stratocaster Arrived in Great Shape

Now, as always mentioned in my unboxing videos, I prefer when retailers double box their guitars and as you can see here, Chicago Music Exchange knows how to do it right because they have double boxed this guitar. I actually recently purchased a guitar and I did film an unboxing video for it, but I haven’t posted it yet, on an EVH Wolfgang that was not double boxed and showed up here damaged. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t posted the video is because it was a unboxing fail. So anyway, here we are. Standard paper packing material, and inside you probably can’t see it, but maybe you can. There’s our Fender box. It’s got styrofoam all the way around in there, which is pretty cool, and there’s a little sticker on here that says photo and it’s crossed out. So, maybe this is the one that was used for the webpage ad. I don’t know. We’ll find out. Now, this is an interesting concept. What they’ve done to make sure this guitar is safe inside the other boxes, they’ve actually glued styrofoam. So what does that tell you about how Chicago Exchange cares? Chicago Music Exchange, excuse me, cares about how a guitar arrives at its customer. Like I mentioned, I recently purchased a Wolfgang and it showed up pretty much destroyed because it was just shipped in this little box. So kudos to Chicago Music Exchange. They pack them right.

All right, here we go. This is the good stuff. Now, this guitar does come with a gig bag. I know that and actually back there, in that box, we’ve got a tweed case that we’re going to look at too. So we got here your typical Fender case candy. You know, the manual, sticker, truss rod adjustment tool, allen key. So nice to see that that’s in there. So, we’ve got the straps for the gig bag. Set those aside. Pull out this gig bag. It’s pretty interesting because right off the bat, I can tell that Fender, it’s like they’re using a new material for a gig bag. It’s a little bit softer and it feels a little bit more padded than some of the Fender gig bags that I felt in the past. Cool. Deep bag, nice pocket. It’s actually, like I said, a little softer and more padded than some of the other gig bags that I’ve had from Fender. So, let’s see what we got here, and of course, we’re going to try and squeeze in a little demo of this baby through the Hot Rod Deluxe here when we get done. So, I guess this will be an unboxing, slash mini review, slash demo, and hopefully, you’re as excited as I am to see this new lineup of guitars because I think it’s really cool. Nothing else really in the bag there. We’ve got the plastic on here. Boy that Daphne blue shows right through the bag. It’s not like sonic blue which is almost white. This Daphne blue is definitely blue. So let’s see if we can get this out of here without too much hassle, without destroying the bag. All right, there you go. So there she is and I gotta tell you, the Daphne blue looks simply beautiful.

So let’s run some close-ups here for you. There’s the headstock that has a little bit of a redesigned logo there, which is pretty interesting. There are the locking tuners and these aren’t really like staggered or short post, so it does have, as you can see, the American Standard string tree, which is nice, and looks like they’ve essentially upgraded the bridge to the American Standard style bridge. These look like stainless saddles, so of course, you know you’ve got five ways switching because you’ve essentially got a Telecaster strap, Telecaster pickup configuration, which emulates a Strat setup.

Remarkable Fit and Finish

So, I’m just going to take a second here while we’re together and look over the guitar from a fit and finish standpoint because I know a lot of you guys are curious about how well the guitar is put together. So, just have to bear with me here. I’m a little bit quiet. It just means that I’m looking at every detail of the guitar very closely, and so fit and finish looks excellent. I don’t I don’t see any issues from that standpoint; neck pocket is nice and clean. I actually really like, you know, it’s got a satin finish on, it’s got a satin finish on the neck. Cool! Obviously rosewood fretboard, Pearloid inlays, which is cool. It’s a nice look, better than just cheap plastic. These look really nice. But also, the face of the headstock is basically satin. Now typically, when they did these satin finishes, they would be just on the back of the neck and then the face of the headstock would be gloss, and if it was a maple neck, it would be gloss, but on this particular guitar, it basically looks like a satin finish on the headstock as well. So, here you can see the contoured neck heel. Now, this is something that previously was only available on the American Deluxe series and holding this is the first time I’ve held a Fender that has this contoured neck heel and it feels good, but it certainly does help you get down there in the dusty area fairly easily. Still kind of looking over the guitar. Here from a fit and finish standpoint, it looks really good weight-wise. It’s like your typical Telecaster weight, probably around 8 pounds. It’s not super light and it’s not super heavy. Almost in tune, sounds a little flat. But all in all, it looks really great.

So, what have we got here? Mint pit guard, like I said, noiseless pickups, Tele pickup, Strat pickup, Tele pickup, five ways switching, got the block saddles, modern bridge, standard strap buttons, obviously string through, got the contoured neck heel here, satin finish neck, Pearloid fret markers, these are tall narrow frets. This is something that I’ve never seen on a Mexican guitar before. Right now I’m feeling the fret ends and they feel excellent. There is zero – it’s really, really nice. I’m actually pleasantly surprised because I know Fender, I’ve played a lot of Fender, you know, Mexican guitars in the store. I haven’t owned a lot of them, mostly Americans, and it’s not uncommon for them to have fret sprout and these frets feel really good. The frets look nicely polished, probably can’t pick that up in the video, but they’re nice and glassy looking which is cool, and all in all, it looks great. Like I mentioned, it’s got the Fender locking tuners, but what they did on this line is that they went to the vintage button instead of the large button, so kind of has a little bit of that vintage look, but with the locking tuners, which is awesome. I’m trying to think if there are any other details that we could cover here.

Before we get started with a little demo on the Deluxe, it looks really good. The action looks a tad high, but that’s all a matter of preference. I would definitely say that it needs, probably the reason that the action is high, is that it needs a truss rod adjustment. There’s a little bit too much relief in the neck. One thing you gotta remember is that it has been in the back of a humid and hot UPS truck for a couple of days, so probably once it gets a little acclimated here in the house that will get better. It’s not that major. It’s not like it’s a major bow. It’s just, it definitely needs a little, maybe a quarter-turn tweak of the truss rod and that will probably bring the action down a little bit lower.

So anyway, let’s do this – let’s plug this into the Hot Rod Deluxe, tune her up real quick, and see how she sounds. So, hopefully, you get the most bang for your buck out of this unboxing video here because a lot of the review videos that you see on new guitars are mostly done by retailers that have to sell the product. So if fit and finish is crappy, or if it sounds like crap, whatever, they’re not going to tell you that. Now, I’ve watched a lot of review videos on Anderton’s with Chappers and The Captain and I think they’re fairly honest sometimes, but not completely. Because it’s like I said, they have to sell the merchandise that they’re reviewing. I don’t have to so. If you’ve watched my videos you know that I’m always very honest so everything that I’m telling you right here today is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The guitar really does, from a finish standpoint, look excellent. So, obviously tuning up now, using the tuners, tuners feel good. Don’t hear any pinging of the nut as we tune up. So, hopefully, that means that we’re not going to get any nut binding and tuning stability issues. Acoustically, it rings out nice. You can feel it resonating right up here in the chest through the body, which is nice. Now, obviously I’m going to give this guitar full set up because everyone likes their guitar set up to their own specifications, but we’ll get right to what we’re all waiting for here. That would be the neck pickup. So, we’ll go neck-middle, middle and bridge, and then to the bridge. Very Tele-like. So most of you that have watched my videos know that I suck at guitar, so don’t use my playing as a fair example of how the guitar sounds or how it performs. I think it sounds pretty good. Obviously, I need to run it through its paces, do my full setup on it, put my preferred brand of strings on, mess with the amp settings a little bit. I should note that it’s also new amp day for me, in addition to new guitar day. So I literally just got this Fender. I can’t even remember the name, go figure. I mean, I know it’s a Hot Rod Deluxe, but it slipped my mind for a moment there. Anyway, I just picked up the Hot Rod Deluxe today, so I haven’t even had a chance to really mess with that and tweak that. But, obviously still having a little bit of a hard time staying in tune because, like I said, it’s been stuck on a UPS truck for a couple of days and the temperatures here in the Midwest in general, this came from Chicago to Michigan, it’s been extremely hot, extremely humid, so I’m not going to fault it for being a little bit unstable being out in 90 almost 100 degree weather and then coming into my nice cool living room where it’s about 72 degrees. But I dig it. I dig the feel of the neck. I think the neck feels great it’s a C profile which is very common on most Fenders. You know what you’re going to end up with. It’s actually pretty nice. It’s not too skinny. It’s got a little bit of girth to it and the satin finish feels excellent. And like I said, the fret work is really good, which is nice. It just feels really good in the hand.

The Deluxe Nashville Telecaster is the Whole Package

So anyway, so there you go. What else can I say? It’s the 2016 Fender Deluxe Series Nashville Telecaster in Daphne Blue with a rosewood fretboard, noiseless pickups, locking tuners. It feels really nice in the hand, it looks nice. I think it sounds pretty damn good. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do a full review from an amp playing demo standpoint, but I just want to put something together for you guys really quick because I know a lot of you guys are probably curious about this particular guitar. I’ll give you another little shot there of the guitar. It’s nice man. I dig the color. I dig the feel. Who doesn’t love Telecasters and I think that the Nashville setup is pretty cool because you’re kind of getting two guitars in one. You’re getting the Strat pickup configuration will give you that Strat middle position tone. I got to tell you too, I just woke up man so if it wasn’t bad enough that I totally suck at guitar, I stuck even worse right now. But, so anyway, I like this configuration and here’s the deal. What’s cool about this guitar is that if you’re not vibing on having a middle pickup Strat pick up on your Telecaster, but you like the styling, you like the features, like the contoured heel, locking tuners, all you’re going to do is get a new pickguard, take the Strat pickup out of the mix, and you’ll have a standard Telecaster. So anyway, I dig it. I think it’s pretty cool.

But before we go, let’s do another really quick unboxing, and I promise this one will be really quick because there’s not a lot to tell here. This is the tweed case from Musicians Friend. The brand name is Musicians Gear and compared to even the Fender Pro Series tweed case that’s made in China like this is, this is considerably cheaper. This was on sale for $59.99. The Fender Pro tweed case that’s made in China is $120, so it’s half the price and it’s certainly much more affordable than a G&G made in the USA case. So, even though the guitar came with a gig bag, I prefer to keep my guitars in cases. I ordered this at the same time. It showed up on the same day. How perfect is that? So, let’s take a look at this tweed case. Now here’s some difference in packaging from Chicago Music Exchange to Musicians Friend. This showed up this way. To where, literally, it’s ripped open already. My wife said that one’s already open when it showed up. So kudos to Chicago Music Exchange again for packing their shipments correctly. It means a lot when it shows up and it’s not damaged. You can enjoy it and the excuse that I got from the other retailer on the previous guitar was “We can’t afford the double box everything”, which they’re a pretty big retailer. Trust me, they can afford it and I probably won’t buy from them again. So anyway, let’s tear into this thing. It won’t take much since the box is already half open. I will say that the case is securely packed in there. There was plenty of packing material, so no issues there and it is enclosed in a bag, which I guess protects it, which is cool and for $59.99 to get a hardshell case for your Strat or your Telecaster, I don’t see how you can go wrong. So, here we are. Nice looking case. It is a plywood construction. Please shut up Aggie. That’s my Bulldog, Aggie. Be quiet. So, there you go. Nice plush liner and it’s a nice guitar case. Certainly, wouldn’t have any complaints with that whatsoever.

So anyway, I’m gonna go convince my dog to be quiet or at least try to and I want to thank you guys for joining me. So please, if you dig it, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe. We’ve got, hopefully, more videos coming your way and if you got any questions about this particular guitar, let me know. Leave comments down below and I’ll do my best to answer your question as quickly as possible.

Take it easy guys.

Source

Source: http://electricguitardigest.com/fender-deluxe-nashville-telecaster-unboxing/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/06/14/fender-deluxe-nashville-telecaster-unboxing/

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christopherthomas8 · 8 years ago

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Squier Deluxe Stratocaster

Squire Deluxe Stratocaster – Better Than You Thought

The Squire Deluxe Stratocaster is a shining example of the kind of quality and value that Squire brings to market today. To say that Squire has upped their game over the past decade is an understatement. In fact, they have been one of the leading forces in the dramatic rise in quality of electric guitars being manufactured offshore. Today, relatively inexpensive guitars, like Squire, possess the kind of quality found in instruments costing many times more. While companies like Fender, who enjoy tremendous brand recognition, can still sell their US manufactured products at premium prices, buyers lacking a fat wallet can purchase guitars like this Squire with only a small drop off in quality and features.

Squire Deluxe Stratocaster Video Review

This excellent video is a very comprehensive and unbiased review of the Squire Deluxe Stratocaster. It’s well worth watching if you have an interest in picking up a really good Strat on the cheap.

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Hey, welcome back everybody! Thank you for joining me for another great video.

Today I’m going to be talking to you about another great guitar that I picked up recently that I’m quite impressed with. For those of you who’ve been following my videos, you know how much I like the Squire Classic Vibe Telecasters. Well, I came across this guitar recently which is a Stratocaster made from Squire again, but it’s the Deluxe version and I want to talk to you a little bit about this guitar because I’m so impressed by it. But I wanted to share this with you.

Save Money, Buy a Great Cheap Guitar

As you know, I like good guitars and I like cheap good guitars even more and this particular guitar is exactly that. It’s a cheap inexpensive, good quality guitar. Squire has been impressing me lately with the quality that they’ve been producing. The guitars are made in Indonesia, but I honestly feel that they’re up to par with a lot of the more expensive American or Mexican made guitars out there. This guitar, in particular, caught my eye on KGG. It was being sold at a local store, used, for 250 bucks. So I decided to do some research quickly on the Squire Deluxe because I didn’t know much about it. So I read up on it and I decided to go and check it out. And lo and behold, the guitar was in mint condition; not one blemish, scratch, ding, or anything like that and it’s got a beautiful pearl finish which gives it a little bit of a vintage vibe because it’s off-white. But at the same time, when you look at it closely, because it’s pearl it reflects the light a little differently and it gives it more of a modern vibe which I liked a lot. I actually had a guitar that was very similar to this one, especially in color, and I missed that one a lot. I sold it, so I was really looking forward to getting another pearl guitar like this.

Quality Hardware on the Squire Stratocaster

When I checked it, out I noticed that the guitar has a lot of appointments that are in common with the American made version. The bridge, in particular, has the block style saddles and it has a two pivot point bridge and some people like that. My other guitars are six screw-type guitars which give you a little bit less stability when you’re using the whammy bar. The two post type bridge is a little bit more stable and people prefer that. The block type bridge saddles, some people don’t like that. They like the bent metal types, the vintage types. Other people claim that these ones are better. To be honest with you, I think they’re both good. I think you’d be hard-pressed to actually hear the difference between the bent metal type and the block type. If you can hear the difference man, my hat is off to you because it’s very, I think, it’s almost impossible to hear the difference, honestly. So if you’re going to spend your money upgrading a guitar, you might want to spend it on the saddles if you’re having tuning issues. But for tone, you might feel a little bit of a difference there, but will you hear it, I think once the drummer kicks in, what’s the difference. That’s what I like to say.

The guitar, besides the bridge, is quite unique. It has Alnico 5 pickups and these pickups are single coils, but they’re Duncan designed Anilco 5 pickups, so they’re, I guess, a little bit higher quality than the budget pickups that you would normally find on lower end guitars. I haven’t had a guitar with Anilco fives before. My pickups in my Strats are more vintage style, sort of lower output type pickups because I like the quack of that type of a pickup. This one is a little bit more on the modern side, and what I mean by that is, that it’s got a little bit more punchy output. The lower mids are a little bit boosted, but not in a bad way. You can still get quack out of it, it’s just that you’ll hear that tonal difference when you’re playing at louder volumes. It’s definitely punchy. I think you’re going to definitely stand out in the mix a little bit more with this particular guitar, which is not a bad thing. I actually like that because my other guitars are different and they’re more vintage sounding. So it’s nice to have that tonal variation.

Modern Neck Profile

The neck of this guitar is also quite nice. I was actually looking for something that felt a little bit more modern and this one does actually feel a little bit more modern. Not in a bad way. The neck fits perfectly in my hand. It’s not extremely thin. I don’t really like thin necks, so the neck is has a nice balance in terms of thickness to it. The website says that the radius on this neck is 9.5 inches. To me, it feels a little bit flatter than that. I could be mistaken. Maybe it’s the medium jumbo frets that they put on there, which I actually prefer more than the thinner, vintage style frets. So, I guess that’s what gives a little bit more of a modern feel. It’s quite nice. It’s not finished in thick poly. It’s actually, it almost looks like it’s not finished. It’s very satin in terms of the front of the neck. The back of the neck is a little bit more glossy. I don’t know if you can make that out there, but it’s definitely a nice feel to it and it also feels like the frets, the edge of the fretboard, has been rolled. Really nice! There’s no sharp edges or anything like that. Quite nice for a guitar made overseas.

Serviceable Tuners and Pots

The tuners are standard tuners that you would probably find on any, you know, lower-cost guitar. I think they’re probably, they look like they’re may be made by Wilkinson or something. There’s no brand on them, but I kind of recognize the shape. They’re not bad. They’re good tuners. They’re maybe a little bit, for those of you who are a little bit more picky about your tuners, you might eventually want to upgrade them, maybe to locking tuners. But it’s really not necessary. It’s not like, you know, you play this guitar and you feel, “Oh man, I got to change the tuners right away”. Not at all. I think the tuners will do the job for most of you. If you’re not really picky like I am, maybe, eventually, I’ll upgrade them. But they don’t really need to be upgraded. The only thing that I think might eventually need to be upgraded, again, it’s not because it doesn’t work well, they do, it’s just that being used to having other guitars, the switch, for example, to me feels a little cheap. So I will probably change that, just add as matter-of-course. I’m in there, I’ll just pop that one out, for a couple of bucks put in a solid one, and while I’m there I usually check out the pots, and if they’re not CTS, I kind of like the CTS pots because of the taper. It’s a more gradual taper. It’s a nice feeling pot. So you’re in there anyways, for a couple of bucks change those and you’re good to go. Besides that, there’s really not much else you want to do with this guitar.

For those of you are brand snobs and really don’t like to be playing Squires because they’re made in Indonesia, and I know that some people are like, “Aw, it’s not a real guitar. I’d rather have the Fender logo on there”. I understand, but I honestly, if you put your fingers on this and you hide it, I’m telling you, to get the same kind of quality that you’re getting out of this guitar, you’re gonna have to spend probably a thousand bucks. Honestly, and is it worth it? I don’t know. I mean the body is basswood. Some people claim, okay, you know, I really want to guitar that’s made of ash or alder or something like that. The body is a little bit heavier than normal. It’s not heavy to the point where you’re gonna feel it like, you know, some guitars feel like bricks. No, it doesn’t feel like a brick. It is a little bit heavier than usual, then maybe an alder body, for example. But not in a bad way and a lot of guitars today are being made of basswood because it’s a good tone wood. I mean you can go with alder or ash, it’s more expensive, so obviously, you know, it’s going to cost you more in the long run. But a lot of guitars, like Ibanez, uses a lot of guitars that have bodies made of bass wood. Higher-end guitars as well. For example, Music Man makes a lot of their bodies out of bass wood with a maple top. Even Suhr Guitars do the same thing, right? They take a maple top and put it on a basswood body or a different type of top on a basswood body and they charge way more for it. So the body is the guitars resonance. It feels really nice. It resonates nicely. Like I said, I have other guitars. I have some guitars that are made in Mexico, some of them that are made in Japan, some that are made in the US, and honestly, even the workmanship on the neck pocket is flawless. I have no way of slipping even a piece of paper through the neck joint here, and I’ve had made in Mexico guitars that are that were pretty bad.

Quality for Anyone on a Budget

So honestly, I’d say this is an excellent buy. Again, you’re going to have to spend way more money on a guitar to get this kind of quality. It’s an excellent buy. For those of you who are just starting off, if this is your first guitar, or maybe even just you want to have a kick around guitar where you’re not necessarily worried about bringing it to a gig, or getting it dinged, or maybe you just want to have it as a project guitar You want to upgrade it, change pickups, use it as a modifying platform, this is a great guitar to start off with. I don’t think you’re going to be disappointed one bit. As I said, I’m very impressed with Squire. Lately, they’ve been coming out with some really good guitars and this is one of them. I think if you have an opportunity to try this one out in your local store, go ahead and give me some feedback. I’d love to hear what you think about the guitar. I think it’s great. I’m not being endorsed by Squire or Fender or anything like that at all. I wish I was, but I’m not.

So give me your feedback. Let me know what you feel about the guitar. I’d love to hear it, and at the same time, stay tuned and please subscribe to my channel because I have some other great videos coming your way. I promised you way back when I was modifying my Blues Jr. Well, I got that done. I got it into a cabinet with some speakers. I’m dying to make you hear what that sounds like. I have some other great guitars to review, and some pedals, and a whole bunch of other stuff. So, if you’re not already subscribed, please subscribe or you’re going to be missing a lot of great stuff.

Stay tuned.

Source

Source: http://electricguitardigest.com/squier-deluxe-stratocaster/

from Electric Guitar Digest https://electricguitardigest.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/squier-deluxe-stratocaster/

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