Category: Guitar

11 Days

It has been 11 days since I played the guitar. That’s a week and a half or so.

The desperation is intensifying. I need to get some playing in this weekend. I don’t know if I’ll be able to, but I feel like I have to find a way.

My mental state demands it. My playing chops demand it too, but it’s more impressive to mention how it’s important to me not going crazy and stuff.

I need to play the guitar! I also need a shave, badly, but that’s not what this post is talking about. I need to play the guitar!

Les Paul Mods: A Fantasy

If I were to mod my 1978 Les Paul Custom to make it act more like a late ’50’s Les Paul Standard, this is probably what I would do.

Brandonwould 1959 clones. The question would be do I get nickel pickup covers, which would be correct for a Les Paul Standard, or gold pickup covers, which would be correct for a Les Paul Custom. Gold is more appropriate for my guitar, but they are also super expensive.

For changing out the pots and the switches and the wiring (my ES-335 needs this more than my Les Paul does, but I’m fantasizing here so leave me alone) I would get a wiring harness. The question then becomes, do I get a 50’s wiring harness or do I get a 50’s wiring harness that includes the Peter Green out-of-phase mod? I think I’d do the Peter Green thing. If so, I’d probably go with Gunstreet Wiring Shop- Les Paul Standard – 50S Out Of Phase – Wiring Harness.

Obviously I am way too much of a wuss to even daydream about installing any of this stuff myself. If I do it, I’m getting an experienced tech to do it. That goes without saying.

On a similar topic, when I bought my Les Paul in 1990 it was 12 years old and it was seriously modded already. Both of the original pickups were gone, and it had a Bigsby vibrato. The pickups bothered me. The neck was a DiMarzio which sounded nice. The bridge was a Jackson that was crap, although it had a seriously high output that I liked. I removed the Bigsby within about 10 minutes of bringing the guitar home, but it was years before I did anything about the pickups. I had always thought about trying to bring the guitar back to stock, or at least as close as I could get them. In 2006 (I think) I had Larry replace both pickups with Gibson Classic ’57s. Again, the Neck was nice but the bridge wasn’t. A few years ago I had Guitar Center swap the bridge for a Gibson Dirty Fingers reissue. Again, a really high output.

Now, after doing some research I know that the correct pickups I would need to get back to 1978 stock would be TTops. I can get clones of those too, even with the gold covers. I think I might have a good chance of getting actual 70’s TTops on ebay rather than clones, but if I am going to do this I am going for some really sweet PAF clones. Screw period correct, I want 50’s everything. I wonder how much it would cost to get the body refinished and painted gold like a 1957 Goldtop Standard. I bet that would cost a small fortune. Then again, if I wanted to be Les Paul Custom accurate I would have to paint it black, not gold. Prior to 1958 standards were gold and customs were black. Black Les Pauls look awesome, but nothing beats the old Goldtops.

Suffice to say, if I ever hit the lottery for hundreds of millions of dollars, the first thing I’m buying is a 1957 Les Paul standard. The second thing I’m buying is a 1959 sunburst Les Paul Standard. A ’57 would be insanely expensive. A ’59 would cost me pretty much all of my lottery winnings. Totally worth it though.

ADDENDUM: I tried to write about the Peter Green “out of phase mod” and typo’d it to “out of phrase mod”. I am clearly mentally defective. I fixed it though.

Guitar Maintenance Day

My Les Paul had a maintenance day. I cleaned it up a smidge and put on new strings. I also plugged in the headphone amp I got for Christmas. It really does sound like a Vox AC30. It’s such a groovy little gadget.

Every time I look at either of my 40+ year old guitars I start to think of the work they need to do and I get scared. This guitar needs fret work, and I think one of the inlays might be coming out. Yikes!

I’m also thinking of maybe changing the pick ups again. Maybe get a couple of boutique PAF clones and a 50’s style wiring harness and try to make my 70’s Les Paul feel a little more like a 50’s Les Paul. Maybe that could be my 50th birthday present to myself? Assuming we are post-Covid, of course.

Just a little fantasy.

Recording

I did some recording. I changed things up and used the Les Paul instead of the ES-335. I used the extension speaker instead of the built in speakers and I stuck to the 18 watt channel. I used the Ryra Klon clone and the Wampler Plexi Drive Mini and it wasn’t an over compressed mess the way it was last month. It sounded okay.

I put rhythm parts onto the only two songs I have going for March, and a lead part onto one of the remaining songs from the last round of re-recordings. I still have one song that needs leads but my hands were really tired and I was pretty well done so I didn’t even attempt it. That project has two songs ready to mix now.

Really looking forward to getting my mitts on that little attenuator. It is cheap and overly simple but when I used one with my Deluxe Reverb it worked really well. Hoping for similar results this time. I really want to make that 30 watt channel happen. Fingers emphatically crossed.

What did This Teach Me

Now that I have done a little experimenting with using an extension speaker cabinet in place of the built in speakers on my Bassbreaker 18/30, what did I learn?

I don’t know.

First, as expected there wasn’t a ton of difference in volume. The 18 watt channel, with the volume as low as it could go and actually produce sound, through the two built in speakers was peaking at around 103 decibels. Surprisingly, the 30 watt channel, under the same circumstances, was peaking at about 101 decibels. Through the 1×12 extension cab the 18 watt channel was peaking at about 98 decibels and the 30 watt channel at about 97. So quieter, but not enough to make a difference.

Both channels sounded really nice while plugging in direct and going through the extension speaker. Maybe not quite as nice as through the two 12 inch speakers, but it was good.

When I started pushing with pedals everything changed. The Ryra Klon clone into both channels sounded pretty good, though super trebly through the 30 watt side. I have made that complaint about this amp before. The 30 watt channel is SUPER toppy. With the Ryra it was noteworthy but I tend to keep the treble high on that pedal anyway. I turned it down some and it was a smidge better.

The Ryra was set with the overdrive very low so it was mostly a clean signal. When I kicked on the Malaise Forever Black Lives Matter on the 18 watt I had a pretty rockin’ distortion level but it wasn’t all that great. When I switched back to the 30 watt channel it sounded like garbage. It was fizzy and thin and it sounded like I had all of the bass and mids off and the treble cranked. I didn’t. I had the treble set to about 1, the mids set to about 7, and the bass at about 9. I turned the Ryra off so it was just the Malaise Forever and it was a little better, but not much. I ended up turning the treble on the amp to 0 and diming the bass and mid, and then turning the tone on both overdrive pedals to about 9:00. I switched back to the 18 watt channel and fudged with the tone pots on the pedals and found something decent, but the whole idea of using this amp was to have the 30 watts worth of headroom.

I then switched out the Malaise Forever for the Wampler Plexi Drive Mini and it still made the high pitched hum that it had when it was going through the two 15 watt amps, but that is due to the shitty power supply I’m using. Playing it with the Ryra and through the 18 watt channel was much better than it had been through the 15 watt amps. That little increase in headroom helped a lot. If I played power chords down low on the neck I still had some of that over compressed mushiness I was bitching about during RPM, but for the most part it was better. I switched to the 30 watt channel and all of that compression was gone. Granted, it still sounded like toppy dog shit. Ugh.

So what did I learn. I learned that if I want to record with the 1×12 extension cab bypassing the built in 2×12 then I will probably have to rely on the 18 watt channel. Once the little speaker soak attenuator arrives I will hopefully be able to crank up the 30 watt channel a ton and maybe get a less shitty tone without blowing the roof off of the house. I know I sounded very trebly when I was using this amp with Lizardfish, but it wasn’t this bad, was it?

I think the final lesson may be that I just miss my Deluxe Reverb even more than I already knew. Oh for the end of the ‘rona.

March Music

Well I guess I’m going to write some music in March. I’ve got one song underway and, much more important from the nerd point of view, I created a Trello board.

I think I’ll go Les Paul this month, and hopefully go with the monstrously loud 30 watt amp. We will see.

Another Music Challenge

The folks at RPM Challenge headquarters announced their annual post-Challenge listening party. Normally it’s an actual social gathering in Portsmouth but with the ol’ ‘rona a-ragin’ it’s going to be online. I don’t know if I’ll join in. They have a system setup where there will be six chat rooms setup with different music playing in each room. Turns out so many people participated this year that if they played one song from each submitted album it would take over a day to get through it all. Nice.

They also announced a new challenge. Oh boy, hold on kids, here comes the pain. This one is to record an original song each month from now through next year’s RPM Challenge. I did that 10 times over for 11 out of 12 months last year. I guess I could do it again. The goal will be one song per month. The attempt will likely be 10, at least for now, but maybe just five. I don’t know. One I can do. I need to scape together $45 for an 8ohm attenuator so I can try recording with my huge amp at a non-gig volume.

We’ll see.

Main Speaker Output

I dug up the owners manual for my Bassbreaker 18/30 and I think plugging out to my 1×12 cabinet from the Main speaker out will work. I’ll need to set the resistance at 8 ohms and put an attenuator in the speaker path. That might let me play this amp at home without deafening everyone.

We will see.

Amp Nerd Post

Okay… bear with me on this one. It’s going to be a guitar amp nerd thing.

I’ve been running two amps together for most of the last year and it’s awesome. I’m thinking about changing things though. Why? I don’t know, leave me alone. What I want to do is play through my Fender Deluxe Reverb, but that’s still at the band’s rehearsal space. It’s been there for 13 months. Missing me. My Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 is here though, and that’s sort of a Deluxe Reverb just with the wrong tubes (at least that’s how Fender sort of described it). Unfortunately, when I was using that amp a year ago it was too loud and my family complained. Is there a way that I can get around that now?

My first thought was to get an attenuator. I have one for my Deluxe. I place it between the amp and the built in speaker. There’s a 1/4 inch cable that standardly connects the speaker to the amp so I can just use that. The 18/30 can’t do that for a bunch of reasons. First, it’s a closed cabinet so I would have to take it apart to get to the plug and I ain’t doin’ that. Second, it’s not a plug, it’s hardwired… at least as far as I can tell it is. Again, I ain’t takin’ it apart. Third, where the Deluxe has one speaker, the 18/30 has two. What does that mean? Would I have to get two attenuators?

I think I still have options though. First, let’s look at what we’re dealing with:

I do have an extension cabinet. It’s one 12 inch speaker. It’s currently plugged into the little Vox MV30 which is plugged into the electric keyboard in the living room. Harry hasn’t used it in ages though, he usually wears headphones when he practices. I have an impedance select so I should be able to use it without worry. I think it’s eight ohms but it should say on the back of the cab. Now if I use the Main Speaker output it will bypass the two built in speakers. What does that mean for volume? Will going from two speakers to one speaker give me the volume reduction I need? I don’t think so. It might be a little lower volume but it will probably just mean the speaker will distort at a lower volume than the combo speakers do. I don’t know. I’ve never done this.

Assuming the Main Speaker into my 1×12 cab works, and assuming it doesn’t reduce the volume the way I need, I should be able to get a cheap attenuator, similar to the one I bought for my Deluxe. I bought it on Reverb.com from a guy in Tyngsboro, MA who builds them (I think) in his house. Unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the seller or the company. So… I bet I can find it on my Reverb history. It’s the only thing I ever bought there. If that fails then I am positive I have a picture of it somewhere. Give me a minute…

There it is! Carl’s Custom Guitars Speaker Soak. He makes them at different resistance levels. I’d have to get the right one.

So there you have it. The next recording project, whenever or whatever that may be, might be a one amp setup. Stay tuned.