The Guitar Thread • Page 76

Oh no way. I can't do flake finishes. Sorry, I should've clarified this. I got an unfinished Warmoth body. Warmoth ended up being out of Fuchsia as a finish option, so I had a local person do it. You need a flake gun for it to turn out decent. I didn't want to spend the money on that for a one or two time thing.

 

Sickk, I love metal flake. I was convinced I wouldn’t get a jazz master until I could find a good option for a black glitter body, but alas I got impatient. At some point I want to look into like a sparkle version of daphne or sonic blue and do a mustang in it but it’ll be a long time before I have any reason to look at a new guitar again.

love compensated tele saddles too, really helpful

 

a sparkle mustang would be so cool

 

got to play a 60s pre-CBS Jazzmaster today and good lord I about melted lol. priced at a cool $18k. literally right after I had them put it back on display, a guy came to the shop and traded (I think) a model T or A Ford for it lol

anyway, I played a 70s Mustang shortly after and actually preferred it. still way out of my price range tho

 

i think the most expensive guitar i ever touched was a $2400 les paul standard. i was so nervous i wasnt really able to be into it haha. ever since i broke a stores squier tele when i was a kid my first thought is how much it would hurt having to pay for this if i dropped it

 

lmao I played one of those at Chicago music exchange in 2018. easily the best guitar I've ever played. it seems they've sold it but it was a sick "white" one that had yellowed over the years and looked rad

 

i don't want to say how much my Dunable is bc it still pains me that I actually dropped that on a guitar but it's also the next best after that Jazzmaster I've ever played and is so versatile

 

I appreciate the love for vintage guitars, but they’re just not for me. I have one “vintage” guitar but even that is spec’ed out with modern playability lol.

I HATE the vintage 7.5” neck radius and super fat/baseball neck profiles. 9.5”-12” radius’ are my sweet spots and a nice deep C or modern C shape is where it’s at for me profile wise.

I also love medium jumbo and jumbo frets.

 

i tend to agree, and it's why I ultimately went with new vs. vintage, but the pickups are pretty undeniably better.

 

Very true. I do typically like vintage pickups, especially in a modern spec guitar.

 

yeah I think I played it for like 5 minutes tops before I was like “yeah I better put this down before I fuck it up somehow or hurt my own feelings by falling in love with it or something”. sounded great and played just as well, and I can’t deny it had a mojo about it that’s different from any modern Fender I have played. however, I could never fathom thinking it was worth 20 grand lol, then again I will likely never be in a position where that’s chump change for me and I’m sure that changes things.

this one had to have been babied or kept in the case for most of its life. it was ridiculously clean, and if I hadn’t already seen the listing for it on FB I wouldn’t have known from looking at it even that it was vintage. it was a sunburst and it even had one of those clear plastic back guards on it. to be honest tho, as much as I like how Jazzmasters look and sound I just haven’t seemed to vibe with them like I vibe with other Fender guitars. I’m sure I’ll get used to it whenever I inevitably get one down the line. I still haven’t met a guitar I feel as at home on as my rosewood neck strat.

fair enough. I own a few vintage guitars and a few modern ones, and I like them all for different reasons. I still sound like myself on all of them but they will each inspire me to lean into different aspects of my playing and I find that helps me creatively a ton. I’m mostly on the opposite end from you though in terms of preferences, not necessarily in that I prefer vintage but I tend to prefer bigger necks and more curved radiuses, but my hands are on the bigger side and really thin necks tend to fatigue them quicker.

 

theres really nothing special about vintage pickups. I vastly prefer that sound too but all you really have to do is match resistance values and maybe wire guage. the alnico magnets are still dominant in the industry. it really is that simple theres no intangibles or magic to it.

 

i mean, in theory yes, and maybe it’s my brain playing tricks on me, but no recently manufactured PAF-styled pickup sounds remotely close to the real thing, to me

 

tbf I actually know nothing about the makeup of PAFs although all of the same physical concepts should apply. I thought we were talking vintage singles with the Fender talk. Perhaps vintage PAFs were just speced differently or used some material that arent used today or something?

 

Don't the magnets lose charge over time as well? I can imagine they sound different, but it's hard to imagine that that makes them universally better. Same as a lot of the magical tone elements boil down to.

 

apparently that is an extremely slow process

and all of the guitar lines on the vintage albums we love were recorded with instruments that were new at the time

even still you could just get lower resistance underwound pickups from the get go

people often dont fully realize high output pickups sound undesirable for clean music to most and thats the problem most the time when someone wants vintage and doesnt like the tone of their pickups

 

Slightly overwound vintage style/PAF pickups are where its at for me. Like the Seymour Duncan Duncan Custom, Bareknuckle Black Dogs, and the Fender Custom Shop Loaded 51 Nocaster pickups I have in my Tele (my absolute favorite pickups).

They all have the character of the vintage pickups, but with the bite of something more modern.

The post above this one is correct too. Even The Beatles used brand new Fender gear back in the day because "vintage" wasn't really a thing. People wanted the new stuff for many years.

 

What's the character of a vintage pickup?

I've got the SD Duncan Custom in my LTD and it's a bit of a beast. It's way harder edged than the Gibson take on hot PAFs which were in an SG special I had.

 

this is what I got at the shop the other day, just now getting a chance to post a decent pic of it. also picked my Ampeg V2 up which had to have a bunch of work done for it to be playable but to say it was worth it is an understatement. ridiculously versatile amp and the clean tone is to die for.

 

Refinished my Chris Aiken signature Pbass. Sea Foam Green and a gold anodized pickguard for the win. Took about 4 weeks to do. The original white finish wasn’t doing it for me anymore.

 

To me, they sound a little bit tighter, ‘woodier’ and like there’s room for them to breathe. They also break up nicely when driven/played harder too. Overall, there’s just a really nice clarity to them that many modern day pickups lack.

 

this is sexy as hell

 

Refinishing a Jackson Dinky Minion in fluorescent pink. It’ll go to my daughter. Super fun mini guitar. Was going to splatter paint it with electric blue, electric yellow, and white, but my wife convinced me to keep it bold fluorescent pink lol. I’m going to trick it out with upgraded black parts. It didn’t stay in tune for shit. Also filled the pickup ring mounting holes in an attempt to mount pickups to body. Gonna have to find a way to fill the pickup cavity wells. I’m excited. It’s super bright in person.

 

come to utah and make my guitars look gorgeous like yours haha

 

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