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Guitar talk: acoustic, bass, classical, twelve string? You name it! Pt II

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Lovely thing. I find once you/one starts to become aware of the subtleties of the grain-patterns and finish - you can tend to get very particular altogether. Too much time over on the Tokai forum with some of those guys obsessing with one-piece/two-piece backs, solid maple cap/veneer over solid nearly has me at the point where I couldn't buy a guitar without whipping the pickups out to see what it's made of.

Seems reasonable to me: to the buyer having some randomner show up and ask them if they mind if I take the strings off and set about their P&J with a multi-tool - sometimes not so much :)
 
Beautiful Summer evening in North London and I have the balcony doors and windows open and my Brexit Fan on full blast. So I cracked open a beer (Brewdog Dead Pony Club which is their best beer because session beers are ace) and grabbed the acoustic.

Lets start with Em, add a couple of extra fingers, that's a nice chord! Some kind of A probably comes next so drop the first two fingers down. Hmm, that rings a bell. Wait a minute...

"Today is gonna be the day..."

OH NO! THE WINDOWS ARE OPEN! PEOPLE CAN HEAR!

<rings shame bell>
 
Nothing to be ashamed of loving that song. A Stairway to Heaven for the Noughties?

TBH the vinyl mofi version of this is just about the finest record I own. Quality wise.

Would just love to see/hear Robert Plant sing this with the Page on guitar though.

Manna.
 
gavreid said:
This week's JHS is a must watch, but not if you don't want to spend!

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Damn I want them all. I was 10 years old in 1966, I have a 1966 Telecaster and a 1966 Rolex Datejust watch, my first car was a 1966 Ford Fairlane. I do have an Italian Vox Tone Bender, but I don't know when it was made.
 
gavreid said:
I bet the amp's a bit tasty too
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It is remarkably cool, but no spring reverb is a huge omission IMHO, though Josh never sounds anything less than excellent through it.

PS I went through the JHS archives a bit last week, the one on pedal steel guitar is staggeringly good. I had absolutely no idea that thing could do what they get out of it!
 
If you like the old Fuzz's Rett Shull's trip to London was good. He goes to Macari's at about 7 mins in, but I liked the Trini Lopez myself

 
Josh does of course have an episode on reverb pedals and, one suspects, would argue for something beyond a classic amp spring.

 
matthewr said:
Josh does of course have an episode on reverb pedals and, one suspects, would argue for something beyond a classic amp spring.
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For me there is something very special about a proper valve-driven spring reverb that digital doesn’t ever quite get to. Exactly the same ‘thing’ where TPS can line up every fancy boutique delay pedal on the planet, then switch over to the proper Roland Space Echo and it just kills them all stone dead. The proper spring reverb was a major factor in my dropping that £2k on a Rift amp (that and the PR6 being so home practice-friendly volume-wise). By saying that Josh always sounds better than I could ever hope to if I practiced many hours a day forever, so what do I know?!

PS I so, so want a Space Echo!
 
Tony L said:
For me there is something very special about a proper valve-driven spring reverb that digital doesn’t ever quite get to. Exactly the same ‘thing’ where TPS can line up every fancy boutique delay pedal on the planet, then switch over to the proper Roland Space Echo and it just kills them all stone dead. The proper spring reverb was a major factor in my dropping that £2k on a Rift amp (that and the PR6 being so home practice-friendly volume-wise). By saying that Josh always sounds better than I could ever hope to if I practiced many hours a day forever, so what do I know?!

PS I so, so want a Space Echo!
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I think we are basically the opposite -- my delay pedal is only ever on "one short repeat tape sound" and my reverb on a bit of 65 Blackface style spring. Gain pedals and preamps though I could fiddle with for hours...
 
matthewr said:
I think we are basically the opposite -- my delay pedal is only ever on "one short repeat tape sound" and my reverb on a bit of 65 Blackface style spring. Gain pedals and preamps though I could fiddle with for hours...
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Possibly. I certainly don’t seem to get all the subtle nuance between all the differed overdrives these days. I suspect my ideal FX rig would be something like my BD-2 Blues Driver for a bit of crunch, either a Rat or Big Muff for the crazy distorted stuff and a Roland Space Echo, ideally one of the ones with chorus too.

Back in the 80s I had a Fender Bronco guitar, Rat, Wem Copycat (a late solid state one with badly worn heads) and a little solid state Peavey combo with a spring reverb. I could get pretty much anything I wanted out of that. My clean amp sound is far better now, but I think I miss the Rat and tape echo.

Do try playing with longer delay times; go for an analogue (i.e. slightly treble rolled-off) sound on your delay pedal, stomp on the Big Muff (set on full, obviously) and you should be off into classic ‘80s shoegaze territory. Even try sticking the delay in the ‘wrong’ place, i.e. ahead of the distortion, as that can be fun too, though 90% of the time I use it the ‘proper’ way. With the right sound/balance on the delay there is no need for it to be in time, it just creates amazing layering and texture. I’m the opposite in that I never use short slap-back times at all as for me one needs to be able to play C&W or old-school rock ‘n’ roll for that!
 
What I have got from TPS is to think of it as preamp and gain pedals as two separate things.

So I have a few preamp pedals to give overall tone (clean sound, driven tweed, marshall) which you dial in to get a the sound you like into a clean amp (or increasingly in my case an interface) and you pick one and never stack. And then before that pick one of either a full bandwidth distortion (Rat, OCD, etc.), an EQ shaping overdrive (Tubescreamer, etc) or a low gain mild overdrive (any one of the dirty boosts, Greer Lightspeed, blues breakers, etc). I suppose there are also the class of "always on" tone shaping pedals as well (Klons, treble boosters, etc.).

Having said that if I had my time again I would probably buy a much better amp (Princeton or Deluxe or something boutiquey like your Rift) and fewer pedals. Also getting the acoustic has improved my practising a lot as I don't end up ****ing about with pedals all morning :)
 
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