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paradox in a box |
Aloha. So I've had guitars since I was a teen, now I'm 48. I never really learned to play all that well. Typical 80s metal head that learned the intro to tons of songs, but nothing all the way through. I just happened to be fiddling around with my old guitar. It's Gibson Invader from 86. Basically Les Paul shape, all mahogany, bolt on neck, ebony fingerboard. It's a bit buzzy and could probably use a tech to set it up again. I did put Seymour Duncan pickups in it back when I bought it. It still sounds good with this little Fender Mustang amp. Anyhow I decided to learn a solo and learned the first solo to Comfortably Numb and about a third way through the second solo (youtube is great for this). I decided I want to maybe pick this up again for fun. I'm considering buying a new guitar. The Gibson sound is a bit different from what I hear from David Gilmore. I'm thinking a strat would be a good choice. How are the MIM strats? I would like something with good low action as I'm also interested in learning to play fast stuff like Metallica. This is all for fun. Another choice that seems like a good option is the PRS SE24. It has a maple top and hum buckers but the pickups can be be split with a switch. I'm guessing this makes the sound very versatile on this guitar. Other than that are there any online, digital guitar lessons that you guys recommend? I can't really afford weekly lessons but maybe I can find something online that will get me moving a bit. I'm not in a hurry as this is only a hobby. I may just keep using my Gibson until I get a more solid core of learning. Any advice I'm open. I'm thinking I could spend between 500 and 800 bucks for a guitar. That seems to be the range for a good guitar for the not so serious player. These go to eleven. | ||
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| Member |
Reading your post and thinking that I could have written with the only exception of being a couple of years older. I prefer Les Paul's for their sound. I like the Strat's playability. I had a MIM HSS Strat that had a Duncan Invader in the bridge and one of their Hot Rail in the neck position with a standard single in the middle. Those pickups sounded great together. I neve like the single coil sound. I know that Fender had. David Gilmour model out but I don't know if there was a MIM version of it. I have seen his Signature pickups for sale once in a while. My MIM Strat had the body crack at the neck socket. Never could hear it when it was played, but man did it kill the resale on it. MIM strats are cheaper to buy especially used ones. I would look around for a nice used one to save a bunch of cash over buying a new one. I have not taken any, but I have seen lessons available on line. I have learned more on you tube than I ever did sitting in my room as a kid listening to old Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Ozzy's Speak of the Devil albums. Rock on. Yeah, I used to have a couple of guns. | |||
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Peripheral Visionary |
I have a MIM Lonestar Strat. It is an HSS. Very good build quality and very versatile in the range of tones available.   | |||
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| Member |
I used to play. Turns out I'm a better luthier than musician. That being said, you could always get a used guitar and change out the pickups to get a tone that you like. You could also look into modeling amps. They used digital technology to change the tone of your guitar. Line 6 is one brand of them. Good luck with you hobby. Every time I try to get bad into playing something always derails me. | |||
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Facts are stubborn things |
Budget is always the concern. The PRS SE is a great guitar if made in Korea works for you. And it is budget friendly. Ibanez would be a great choice as well for a foreign made guitar. If you want something Made in USA, Fender Strats can be had for a little over $1,000 but that is pretty much the price of entry for a Made in the USA guitar. If price is really not a concern, I would go for a Paul Reed Smith Custom 24. Do, Or do not. There is no try. | |||
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Frangas non Flectes |
What you’re hearing in that solo is about the best example of a good medium-output Strat neck pickup through mild overdrive that I can think of. That’s THE Strat neck pickup example I give. That sound is easy enough to get close to, but it starts with a Strat, and a decent medium-output pickup. I know Gilmore used all kinds of hot pickups over the years. This isn’t that. That said, I would look for a used Strat, they’ve made bazillions of them over the years. I paid $180 for a 1985 Japanese Squier, ripped out every last piece of electronics or hardware exact the sustain block on the trem because it was solid milled steel and rang when tapped, and I put all top-shelf American stuff in it, topped off with a set of Lollar Blackface pickups. I could easily get that tone with that guitar. The sound you’re looking for, you want medium output. It’s worth saying again. So many players who like rock or heavy music have been sold into the mindset that they need overwound stuff with hot ceramic magnets or blade pole pieces to “drive the amp” or get the saturation they want, myself included for many years, and it just isn’t the case. You can add gain for days, but you can’t add clarity to the base signal. Going back after my epiphany, so many of the really heavy, brutal tones players have gotten over the years has been with really low output stuff. This isn’t widely known, but the guitar Eddie Van Halen recorded “Eruption” with had a broken pickup, the thing was microphonic and the output was reading significantly lower than it should have been. What you’re hearing as a result is really low output run through a shit-ton of gain, and it holds up well because the definition is there. Modern metal players in-the-know who aren’t trying to sell a brand that’s endorsing them have shifted towards using low wind, low-output humbuckers. ______________________________________________ Carthago delenda est | |||
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| I Am The Walrus |
New MIM Strats are around $550 while used are about $350. The upper end of your budget could get you a used MIA Strat with some searching. Try Gear Page. _____________ | |||
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| Peripheral Visionary |
P220 Smudge knows his stuff. | |||
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Legalize the Constitution |
pretty sure that Gilmour and Vince Gill both share an affinity for EMG pups in (at least some of) their Strats. I knew a guy who worked in Fender’s Custom Shop. He once told me that MIM Fenders are made by relatives of those who build them in Corona. He was only kind of kidding. I’ve got a 2013 Amercan Deluxe that I got used from GC. It replaced an American Special HSS that I just couldn’t form an attachment to. It’s a great guitar. _______________________________________________________ despite them | |||
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| I Am The Walrus |
I think that's more of Gilmour's modern setup. Was he using EMG during The Wall time period? _____________ | |||
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| Legalize the Constitution |
I thought of reviewing a video or two and decided not to. You’re probably right in suspecting he didn’t have them at that time—I don’t know how long EMG has been making pups _______________________________________________________ despite them | |||
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Go Vols! |
Newer MIM Fenders are excellent base guitars now. Pickups are a bit sterile but that's an easy upgrade. The necks are very nice. The bodies however can be extremely heavy. Definitely check them in person. Some are heavier than Les Pauls | |||
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| I Am The Walrus |
According to this: https://tonereport.com/blogs/t...rtably-numb-from-the
The Wall came out in 1979 while EMG was founded in 1976. _____________ | |||
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W07VH5 |
This is truth. A good man with good knowledge. | |||
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Member |
TrueFire ( http://truefire.com ) is very good for online lessons. The production quality is high and they have very good musicians doing quality lessons at a lot of different skill levels in a lot of different genres. | |||
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| Frangas non Flectes |
/waves Now you also know a guy who made custom pickups ordered by Fender’s Custom Shop, one set at a time for artists they wouldn’t tell us about. Gibson, too.  I kinda danced around it in my previous post, but avoid anything with active electronics if you’re looking for pure tone. It’s just... yeah. I’ll stop there. ______________________________________________ Carthago delenda est | |||
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| Legalize the Constitution |
This time—I’ll remember that! I knew somebody here did, but I didn’t make note of it the last time there was a thread like this. _______________________________________________________ despite them | |||
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| Peripheral Visionary |
Any chance you could shoot me an email to the one in my profile? I have a question about a potential future project guitar (Partscaster). | |||
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| Frangas non Flectes |
He may have been more right than he knew. One of my former bosses owned four music stores in Nashville in the 80's and 90's, his own chain. He was Fender's #1 dealer for a long time, got invited to a lot of important events, etc. Guy's got stories for decades. Anyways, he got invited to visit the factory in Corona, CA at some point right after they had opened the new plant in Mexico and the first Mexican Fenders were hitting the market. When he went through the neck department, they were sending the fretted, but unfinished necks down this one conveyor belt, and for each type, there was a Mexican lady snagging random ones off the belt to pack into a container. It didn't look like a QC thing going on, so he asked what the deal was with those necks. Turns out, they were packing them up and shipping them straight to Mexico to finish the Mexican guitars since they didn't have a neck building operation up and running at the time, and there was zero indicator of the necks being made in the US, as he asked about and was able to confirm by looking at a random sampling of necks pulled out of one of those cartons. No decals applied, the necks were finished to the point of being fretted and no further. Fender was proud to say at the time that their quality level was comparable, that once the other line was up and running that there should be no discernible difference as it was a mirrored operation. As for them being family, I have little or no doubt. A surprising degree of this part of the industry is very hard to break into unless you know the right people. I can easily see how a floor supervisor in Corona had a whole list of names to hire from when they went to open the Mexican plant. Having owned for a brief time, one of those very early Mexican Strats, I can say the neck was solid and dead-true, but was polished to a somewhat lesser degree than any of the American guitars I've handled, or even the Japanese of the period, but I didn't mind that. It would have been a great guitar to hang onto, but in the time I owned it, it wasn't the kind of guitar I was interested in, as I also owned an American-made Ibanez USRG-30 quilt-top, and at the time, I was apprenticing at Custom Pearl Inlay out of Whippleville, NY, and replaced the factory plastic inlays with mother of pearl. So yeah, that's how that went, lol. The Mexican Strat turned into Other Gear.
Sure thing! I don't don't how much help I'll be but, I love a tone "what if?" Email sent.
Cheers, Mark! You've been on my mind lately, man. I haven't forgotten that book. That's still happening. Things have been kinda nutty this year. OP: Upon further reflection, there's a couple other important parts of the formula that others have touched on that I haven't. The amp, and the strings. Simply put, you want vacuum tubes in your amp, and you want nickel strings - nickel strings will give you more bell-like tones and harmonics than plain steel. DR Pure Blues is a good choice. GHS burnished nickel roundwounds were my absolute favorite when I was still playing a lot, somewhere halfway between roundwound and flatwound. Just try them, you'll see what I mean. Smooth, blooming highs, less string talk. Tube amps are essential to the kind of tone you're pursuing. They just are, full-stop. You can do like I did and get a 5 watt Super-Champ XD with modeling tech built in, put an Eminence speaker in it, use good (Whirlwind not Monster) (short!) cables with one really transparent gain pedal (likely leave the gain dailed down and the output cranked), with a guitar like I described earlier, and just dig in, and you'll be more than close enough to dial in that sound. Back in the day, people used to say "13's and high action!" to replicate the SRV sound. Part of that is that Strats with maple necks respond nicely to a heavy pick attack with some special midrange bloom. That's part of Gilmour's sound, so I would recommend probably at least 10's over 9's. I eventually settled on a custom gauged 9.5-46 set of GHS burnished nickel roundwounds that everyone in the shop who was a Strat player agreed were the perfect balance in all regards of tone and feel (especially with those Gilmour bends), but we never did order enough of them to become anything other than an annoyance of custom-gauged sets for them, lol. ______________________________________________ Carthago delenda est | |||
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| paradox in a box |
Wow. Thanks for all this info. It’s a lot to digest. Some of it I get, like strings and the tube amp. As far as a guitar with pickups you described earlier I will have to do some research. Is it something I can find off the shelf or do I need to have work done. I think I may be in over my head and budget very quickly. It’s probabl more important for me to start practicing and learning more before I just move into huge money. I think I could soon put in about $1000 but maybe it’s better to wait and put in more money later than to blow some now and not get a good setup. In any case if there are specific guitars off the shelf you’d recommend I’d love a link. I’ve been looking on Sweetwater. These go to eleven. | |||
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