After the winter, we're starting to gig again. So it's time to tune up my rig.
Sold off some amps and pedals that I've collected.
Settled on an amp rig and new streamlined pedalboard arrangement.
Went through, re-setup all of my guitars, fresh strings, tweaks and tested all of my guitars.
My favorite guitar is my Hofner VeryThin semi-hollow. It plays, feels and sounds perfect to me.
Sadly, being a semi-hollow, and using some pretty high gain distortion and fuzz.......it's an uncontrollable feedback machine.
I've stuffed the chambers with old t-shirts, it helped, but with the level of gain and volume......I just can't get the thing under control.
Sucks.
So, I moved on.
Into the minutiae!
First, the CIJ Jazzmaster.
I enjoy this guitar, I've gigged with it before.......I put 11s on it recently. replaced the pickups with Antiquities. (I in the bridge(darker), II in the neck (brighter))
I understand that no one would probably care or notice, but I find the tone a bit too twangy and thin for what we do. A lot of attack, and not much body.
Probably should have gotten higher gain JM pickups if I wanted to use it for the heavier stuff.
The Iceman.
I typically don't like these types of guitars, but I had one early on.....sold it, and recently picked up another. I actually like it.
I replaced the shitty stock pickups with some vintage super distortions I picked up cheap, but hadn't really used before.
Problem is, they're microphonic. Squeal real bad. I'm hoping I can pot the pickups myself....but I doubt I can before the gigs.
The First Act Custom Delia.
Similar situation to the Jazzmaster.
It's a sweet guitar, gigged with it before but is pretty cutting and twangy....lots of attack.
Now, I really wanted my Gibson SG Standard to work.
I spent the most time on it.
The nut was cut too low. The E string was fretting out on the first fret.
so I had to shim the nut.....and spend time getting the neck relief set properly.
This at least made it playable again. :o
I carefully opened up the nut slots too....since I was having tuning stability issues and string binding problems.
Had previously replaced the 300k pots with 500k pots to remove some of the blanket tone.
Even with proper intonation.....chords never really seem to ring out clearly.......I'm not quite sure why? It sounds like one string in the chord is slightly out of tune. check the tuning and it's dead on.
Single notes seem fine.
I just can't figure it out.
Not surprisingly, the guitar I had previously been playing the most at gigs.....is da best.
The Agile LP 3100 spalted.
Picked it up on ebay randomly, after my search for a Gibson LP Traditional went bust. I couldn't find one out of 7 that I liked. wtf
Cleaned the gig gunk off of the ebony fretboard. Threw some thicker strings on it. did a full set up.
I say got damn, this guitar is just da best.
No weird setup issues, no buzzing, straight neck..........everything is just right.
It just sounds "right" no matter what I do with it. stock pickups even.
thick, but not flubby. cutting but not brittle.
Plays easily.
Toggle switch is in the right spot. hehe
so in summary, well........actually, I'm not sure........I just needed to vent.
smaller body = less feedback and they can be pretty awesome!
