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

Yes that's the one.
Working on Nivram at the moment!
Not as easy at it sounds though.
 
And then there's the one that looks like a Jazzmaster that melted:

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Reminds me of a young flatfish that is still in the process of transitioning.

That looks like a jazz master that's transitioning from left-handed to right-handed. No disrespect to all the trans-guitars out there..but no, really just no :)
 
That looks like a jazz master that's transitioning from left-handed to right-handed. No disrespect to all the trans-guitars out there..but no, really just no :)

Maybe that was the idea behind it; a two-handed, all-weather, all-things-to-all-persons geetar. The fact that it looks shit was clearly of no consequence. But, you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. . . ;)

John
 

Rhett Shull’s new band looks good; superb keyboard player and drummer, quite a jazz groove to it all.
 
Having had an evening to cogitate. I reckon the reverse firebirds are pretty nasty too.

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It looks like what a 5 year old would draw if you gave them a crayon and asked them to draw a Jazzmaster.

That's the non reverse Firebird the original that fender sued over and hence, the more usually sighted reverse firebird. It was actually "invented" by someone who designed cars and had no knowledge of the Jazzmaster. In terms of all round playability and actual tone, the best guitar I have ever played was a 3 P90 loaded non reverse Firebird from about 65.
 
That's the non reverse Firebird the original that fender sued over and hence, the more usually sighted reverse firebird. It was actually "invented" by someone who designed cars and had no knowledge of the Jazzmaster. In terms of all round playability and actual tone, the best guitar I have ever played was a 3 P90 loaded non reverse Firebird from about 65.

You've got the chronology backwards. The "reverse" Firebird came first, in 1963, and that's the one that was done by an auto stylist and had neck-through-body construction. They didn't sell well, and were replaced by the non-reverse models in mid-1965. The non-reverse Firebirds were considerably less expensive to manufacture, and all four used the same body and neck and the same routs under the pickguard. On the reverse Firebirds, the I had a single pickup, dot inlays, and no binding. The Firebird III had two pickups, a vibrato, and a bound fingerboard with dots. The Firebird V had a fancier vibrato, a Tune-O-Matic, and a bound board with rectangle markers. The VII had three pickups and gold plating. With the non-reverse models, all had the same unbound neck with dot markers, and the main difference was that the I and III had P-90 pickups and stop-bar bridges, the V and VII had mini-hum pickups, Tune-O-Matics, and the fancy Vibrola.

The non-reverse Firebird may look like Gumby when it's hanging on the wall, but it looks cool when Keith Richards plays it:

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The non-reverse Firebird may look like Gumby when it's hanging on the wall, but it looks cool when Keith Richards plays it:

Anne Clark’s Musicman St Vincent design seems to take something from it too. Kind if similar, but far sharper lines (aside from the standard MM headstock, which doesn’t really fit to my eyes!).
 
Has to be a cheapie as it was going to get covered in foam.

Superb guitar though, light, alive, simple, one pickup in exactly the right place and a great whammy bar! Short scale too, but I never really noticed that. Mine was a ‘70s one in black and it really did the ‘surf twang’/‘Twin Peaks’ thing clean and then with the RAT was right out there in Sonic Youth/Dinosaur Jr/MBV territory. Basically it just did those two things, but did them both great! I was in a band called ‘Cosmic Love Bubble’ with three comic book artists and the guy who produced the first HMHB album at the time. We made a pretty decent racket, though never recorded anything.
 
Adrian's latest video is about Shoegaze (although annoyingly he chose a Ride song). But he does talk about tone (from about 15:10 in the video) and apparently the secret is to put your big muff (or RAT) after your reverb and hold onto your whammy bar (preferable on a Jazzmaster) as you strum the chords. I might have to try this tomorrow.

 
And if you can't afford a full rig to do 'cathedrals of sound'

Although this is on the dreamier side of the sound.
 


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