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i spend most of my time these days recording. i play on other local musician's projects. a lot of these are well outside of the metal paradigm...last week i played on an americana/folk rock album!! it was pretty cool stuff. i came in and added electric guitar parts and some lead fills to go around what the fiddle player was doing. anyway, because of this (along with my band band splitting up) i am finding myself playing "metal" guitars less and less. i need a variety of "tones"....
so i have been buying guitars that give me a "classic" vibe. my latest is a squire vintage modified jazzmaster!!! i only have one pic right now...i will take more later. this thing is SWEET!!!! it plays great, sounds pretty authentic, and is more practical than spending $1700 on a fender reissue. this one was $299. i have some seymour duncan antiquity jazzmaster pickups on order, though the duncan designed pickups in her aren't that bad....
this guitar obviously excels at clean tones, offering up jangle and dark jazz tones fairly quickly thanks to the rythym/lead circuit. that is a cool feature that gives you "preset" rythym and lead tones. the top of the pickguard has 2 little roller knobs and a 2 way slider switch. in the down position, the guitar uses the standard vol/tone/3 way combo. in the up position, the guitar uses the roller vol/tone which works only on the neck pickup. you can get a nice, round, dark, lower volume tone on the neck pickup for rythym, flip the slider and have any pickup combo in the lead position at a much louder volume. it is a very versatile system.
kicking in a bit of overdrive (think classic rock - marshall JMP style) and the guitar has a nice twang mixed with some girth. it SUCKS with modern high gain though. i tried in band practice with my rivera S120 in full skull-crusher mode, and even with my NR system it hummed like a bitch. the tone was also sloppy and thin. for "higher gain" applications, this guitar RULES with fuzz. i have a fuzz face, and i tried this guitar into a variety of old fender amps, and was rewarded with a BEAUTIFUL doom/psychadelic tone. add in a uni-vibe and a bit of echo, and it was awesome!!!
the build quality is beyond expectations. everything fits great, tight tolerances, wonderful feeling frets, the vintage style tuners work great...all the hardware is perfectly fine. like i said, even the pick ups are fine...i just want to put the antiquities in there.
now, having said that, i WILL admit that i played 4 and picked the best one. my local sam ash has these. they had mine, a j. mascis, a red one and a sunburst one. the red one and the sunburst were still good, they just didn't have the overall "feel" to me as the white one. it was a toss up between the white one and the j. mascis. i couldn't decide, so i brought my wife in when it came time to make the final decision. she noticed that the mascis sounded better "heavy" but pointed out to me that i was looking for a different sound, and that the white one had more tonal differences that the mascis. i also liked the way the neck felt better (thinner C) with the white one than the mascis (thicker D - or so it seemed). just for reference, all my testing with the guitars was using a PRS SE 50 half stack.
anyway, on to the one crappy pic i have:
so i have been buying guitars that give me a "classic" vibe. my latest is a squire vintage modified jazzmaster!!! i only have one pic right now...i will take more later. this thing is SWEET!!!! it plays great, sounds pretty authentic, and is more practical than spending $1700 on a fender reissue. this one was $299. i have some seymour duncan antiquity jazzmaster pickups on order, though the duncan designed pickups in her aren't that bad....
this guitar obviously excels at clean tones, offering up jangle and dark jazz tones fairly quickly thanks to the rythym/lead circuit. that is a cool feature that gives you "preset" rythym and lead tones. the top of the pickguard has 2 little roller knobs and a 2 way slider switch. in the down position, the guitar uses the standard vol/tone/3 way combo. in the up position, the guitar uses the roller vol/tone which works only on the neck pickup. you can get a nice, round, dark, lower volume tone on the neck pickup for rythym, flip the slider and have any pickup combo in the lead position at a much louder volume. it is a very versatile system.
kicking in a bit of overdrive (think classic rock - marshall JMP style) and the guitar has a nice twang mixed with some girth. it SUCKS with modern high gain though. i tried in band practice with my rivera S120 in full skull-crusher mode, and even with my NR system it hummed like a bitch. the tone was also sloppy and thin. for "higher gain" applications, this guitar RULES with fuzz. i have a fuzz face, and i tried this guitar into a variety of old fender amps, and was rewarded with a BEAUTIFUL doom/psychadelic tone. add in a uni-vibe and a bit of echo, and it was awesome!!!
the build quality is beyond expectations. everything fits great, tight tolerances, wonderful feeling frets, the vintage style tuners work great...all the hardware is perfectly fine. like i said, even the pick ups are fine...i just want to put the antiquities in there.
now, having said that, i WILL admit that i played 4 and picked the best one. my local sam ash has these. they had mine, a j. mascis, a red one and a sunburst one. the red one and the sunburst were still good, they just didn't have the overall "feel" to me as the white one. it was a toss up between the white one and the j. mascis. i couldn't decide, so i brought my wife in when it came time to make the final decision. she noticed that the mascis sounded better "heavy" but pointed out to me that i was looking for a different sound, and that the white one had more tonal differences that the mascis. i also liked the way the neck felt better (thinner C) with the white one than the mascis (thicker D - or so it seemed). just for reference, all my testing with the guitars was using a PRS SE 50 half stack.
anyway, on to the one crappy pic i have:
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