Guitars... what you've got / what you want

new squier paranormal series looks pretty fun
https://www.fender.com/en-US/squier-series/paranormal/
loving that thinline tele with the jazzmaster pickups. first one in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLLPZUa04Mo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czj-hp0v5kI

I think an offset telecaster with the aesthetics of a PRS would be the ugliest guitar that I can imagine that wasn't specifically designed with ugliness in mind.

O__o

https://reverb.com/item/44583264-wayne-charvel-hydra-tax-cab-yellow

This is what I am working on now.

http://www.ysw-tct.com/temp/img/20210922003720_2495138204_8698_1.png

(xp) Uhhh... I occasionally GIS 'weird guitar' just to see what comes up and that's a regular.

ah, that was my first time seeing it. whacky as hell.

current wishlist:

– 70s guild s-100 (would take one of the 90s re-issues too)
– ~70s Tele Deluxe natural
– SG standard, any year really, any color but cherry
– Jazzmaster - would love a j mascis or troy van luween sig model

― Spottie, Friday, May 28, 2021 3:18 PM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

i made a purchase and knocked one off my wish list (kinda):
https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--lsLcB6Yq--/f_auto,t_supersize/v1631256350/fvnk2fdsulqvjpnccvw8.jpg
https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--PMRyhsM3--/f_auto,t_supersize/v1631256350/yh4wjshf7oebg6sjqpdv.jpg

the 70s tele deluxes are going for 4k+ at the moment but i found this 1990 MIJ '75 vintage reissue for much less.

DAAAAAMMMMMMMMNNNNNN
what a PEACH

Beautiful

v. nice!!

These Julian Lage Collings guitars are awesome looking. Good lord they cost nearly 7 grand...but they are cool.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net%2FfCnsRvQXGGPzBJT8QoGRDN-1200-80.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

Thought it was cool that Bill Collings was giving Kristin Hersh her acoustics until he died. All that dentist money was being put to good use.

check this out, very interesting les paul

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/msg/d/minneapolis-gibson-les-paul-recording/7383648190.html

I used to be in a band with someone who used a Les Paul Recording bass. It sounded insane, like combining the best aspects of a Thunderbird and a Rickenbacker.

You see clips of Les Paul playing his old weekly gig, those particular models are generally what he used.

thats a sweet looking guitar

I watched a video on the history of the LP Recording, and the original models had an XLR jack on the upper edge so he could plug in a microphone on a flexible microphone into it

7. [not shown] early-00s CIJ JM-66 Jazzmaster. Currently disassembled but will eventually become a "72 Jazzmaster Deluxe" with the CuNiFe WRHB pickup reissues.

I finished this! Tell Me about the Fender Jazzmaster (MOD: Also Jaguar, etc.)

Sick. Weird seeing a jazz w chrome buckers but it looms really slick!

*looks

It’s the classic Sonic Youth “Jazzblaster” config

Ah cool, not a fan of SY so that would explain my ignorance on it.

here's a real boomer fever dream, custom guitar "inspired" by classic muscle cars

https://www.schellingercustomguitars.com/custom-guitars/car-themed/

well, I guess Fender stole all their finishes from auto makers so ...

My latest (and oldest) project - I rebuilt a short scale bass neck for 6 strings and I've just bought a used Squier Mustang Bass body, so I can make a Mustang VI. I did the neck in 2009 and the body arrived this week ...
https://i.imgur.com/EcQiHjA.jpg

The Bilt Relevator with built in delay/fuzz/etc. seems cool as hell... if only it wasn't $4k.

what exactly is good about built-in effects?

Nothing special that you can't do with pedals but having them built into the guitar is fun, like the old Vox guitars that had a distortion/treble boost built in.

Intriguing - I like short-scale basses a lot. One of my longtime / frequent collaborators* has a weird frankenhybrid bass with a Telecaster body and a snakeskin finish.

* with whomst I have been playing with for thirty-mumble years, like, since high school

I started out building it at a time when there were no current Bass VI models in the Fender lineup, but since that they've had 3 Fender models and a Squier. And I bought one of the Fenders in Tokyo for, like, $600, so the point of making my own one faded. But I always wanted to finish it. The neck is really narrow (Jazz width) like the original VIs, and that makes playing it a whole different experience (I had it strung up on a different body one time).

I just picked up an old black on black Hondo Deluxe 830 P bass ripoff for $150. It's interest, there's a chip on the side and you can see it's a plywood body, but the neck is really solid for being obviously beat to shit and not set up for like 20 years. it's a string through bridge that's surprisingly heavy and well made (some people on talkbass.com say it's a Kramer bridge) and the pickups are supposedly early DiMarzios, tuners are also really good and some say are unbranded Gotoh (who knows if it's true). The pickguard is warped by the jack, but overall I think this could be a fun bass if I take it to my friend's shop and get it worked on a bit

it's this model except black

https://reverb.com/item/41520314-hondo-deluxe-series-830-bass-1980s-metallic-blue

I don't know if this was "lawsuit" bass but it really couldn't be more of a clone

Laura Lee from Khruangbin plays a $150 SX bass (although contrary to myth it's not all stock, it has upgraded pickups).

Those most likely are Dimarzios. They sold a bunch to Japan back in the 80s for import guitars, you would even see them on Ibanez. I had a late 70s 'fretless' pre-lawsuit P-bass that had old Dimarzios. Would not doubt on the Gotoh hardware either, there just wasn't as many people making this stuff back then.

Usually the headstock was the thing that Fender would sue upon as that is what the trademark is tied as I understand. I had an 80s Fernandes stock that had a 'pre-lawsuit' Fender style headstock. Same as that P-Bass, it was shaped just like a Fender. That Fernandes was nice but the neck was really crazy thin and I gave it to the guitarist in my old band. Sold the bass back in the summer.

Fernandes strat...

I kind of like the Oldsmobile Cutlass guitar fwiw
https://www.schellingercustomguitars.com/oldsmobile-cutlass-custom-car-themed-guitar/

Seeing this "Guitars ..." thread right under the "Cardiacs" thread briefly made me think someone had bumped a Dwight Yoakam thread.

Guitars, Cardiacs and l0u1s jagg3r music

lol

The plywood body of the bass I just bought made me think:

What is everyone's opinion on "tonewoods"

To me (for electric guitars) it just doesn't make sense that after it goes through a magnetic pickup, through the guitar circuit, through a few pedals, then through the amp circuit that you could tell any difference between plywood and alder or whatever

Acoustics I definitely think woods like mahogany vs spruce do have different characteristics

well for one thing the "classic tonewood combos" all have different electronics and construction choices associated with them, so yeah if you're talking a swamp ash telecaster with single coils, a bolt-on neck, and a longer scale length vs. a mahogany/maple set neck guitar with humbuckers and a shorter scale lengths there are so many differences that are all adding up to create distinctive tones. if you're talking a bunch of identical strats but one is ash, one is alder, one is poplar, etc. etc. maaaaybe you could hear something but functionality i don't think it matters a ton. the relative weight of the woods probably matters some. and yes the more you are shaping sound with amps and effects a lot of this is minimized.

plywood vs. solid wood i think is going to be noticeable on a guitar in terms of body resonance and sustain.

I'd say it depends on that particular guitar and the wood involved. I got a very light swamp ash two humbucker tele that has the pickups I once had in an Alder Mexican strat. Same type of wiring, but that telecaster has some serious zing in the sound it did not have in the strat. Is some of this having a cut ashtray bridge, probably a bit but I think the lightweight body is just more resonant too.

I do think there are some differences but it's part of a whole and just that each instrument is a bit unique. I think scale length probably makes a bigger difference like say going from a 32" or 34" bass to a short scale 30". I think that scale length is part of the difference in sound between Gibson and Fenders.

I'd say all mahogany guitars have a bit more bite to them than say a Les Paul with the maple cap on top, sometimes even with the same model pickups.

The ones to compare is guitars with a Duncan JB. You try one of those in those 80s style superstrats, which also usually puts a Floyd and Fender scale length into the equasion, it might sound like it was going to bite your head off. You hear a JB in a Les Paul, its often really smooth and even sounding. Same pickup some differences in wood most likely too.

Acrylic and metal bodied guitars sound pretty awesome. Whatever timbre differences there might be with different woods are going to be swamped by the slop in actual tone pot values.

The funniest subspecies of tonewood is "old wood" as explanation for the obvious superiority of $15k vintage guitars (when the albums that made them classics were made with... new wood).

ums omg that was my first bass! Except mine wasn’t string through. But otherwise a black Hondo P with that headstock, sadly stolen about 5 years after I got it.

I definitely think the wood on the fretboard makes a bit of a difference, body probably much less so.
To me, Indian laurel, rosewood etc. each have a different sort of sound, subtle maybe but still a difference.

I would be sceptical of any claims of magic tonewood though. Good build quality is obviously a far bigger factor.

ums omg that was my first bass! Except mine wasn’t string through. But otherwise a black Hondo P with that headstock, sadly stolen about 5 years after I got it.

― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, October 15, 2021 2:27 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

aww cool...seems like it should be a solid player with a little TLC.

it is weird i was digging around on them and that era of Japanese stuff there can be weird variance on things like bridges, etc from year to year, assuming it was based on supply/cost and they just went with whatever made the most economic sense

interesting comments on tonewoods all, thanks!

i've always wanted to have a tone attorney blues coverband band called the Exotic Tonewoods

yeah the thread consensus is right - wood can make a difference at the absolute margins but most people will not be able to hear the difference if everything else is held constant. Which, in real-world terms, it almost never is, so it's rarely worth getting fussed over unless you

I will admit to being VERY partial to maple fretboards on Strat- and Tele-style guitars but it is way more about the philosophy of it than anything related to tone or playability. By which I mean: the conceptual beauty of having the fretboard just be the topmost bit of the wood that already constitutes the neck. As opposed to a separate cap of rosewood or mahogany or whatever being imposed on the neck.

With a maple neck and maple fretboard, I can contemplate the notion that my fingers are pressing down on the same piece of tree that my thumb is pressing upward on ("down" and "up," here, are relative to the string tension, not to the physical position of my body or that of the guitar). I can imagine Leo in his workshop, thinking how to make a frugal and brutally simple machine. An engineer's practical, unfussy solution that somehow transmutes into a work of art. If I choose, I can think about that a lot. Or I can choose not to, and just play the frkn thing. My experience of interacting with an instrument is a layered one.