Tag: Guitar

My Guitar is Home

Finally, after almost five whole weeks, my guitar has come home. More importantly, it’s in one piece!


It has a new bridge pickup. I can’t wait to plug in and play it. Gibson Dirty Fingers pickups are really high output. It’s going to make that tube amp I bought last March scream!


Check this out. For the first time since I bought the guitar back in 1990, the pickup switch actually sticks in the neck pickup position! It’s a Christmas miracle!


As for that huge hole in the finish that was all the way down to bare wood? The tech told me he’d make it so it wouldn’t get worse, but it wasn’t going to look good. He was right about both things. It’s so weird to run my finger across that spot and feel nothing but the glossy finish. It’s amazing!


It’s not a good time to actually plug her in and test drive the changes, but at some point tomorrow I will. My Marshall amp is just itching to make some noise with it’s old friend. Then there is a band practice Sunday when this sucker is going to get some tube amp and fuzz box time! Bring it on!

My Les Paul Custom is home!

It’s Done, It’s Done!

I came out of a meeting today and there was a voicemail on my cell phone. It was Guitar Center. My Les Paul is ready to be picked up! WOOOHOOO!

Of course I can’t get up to the store until Friday… Booooo. But it’s all finished so again, WOOHOO!

Come Sunday’s rehearsal I will have a Les Paul with a high output bridge pickup and the ability to use the neck pickup by itself. Next up is bringing the ES-335 into the shop for some routine maintenance. I just need to get the pots cleaned and some of the connections re-soldered. After that… a Floyd Rose tremolo bar on the Stratocaster? Maybe.

Still Waiting

Do you realize that my Les Paul is still in the shop? The two week job will hit four weeks on Saturday.

I hope that tech realizes that I didn’t have my binkie with me on the night the USA elected a fascist president. I could have used my Les Paul binkie to make myself feel better, but no… that damn tech kept it away from me.

I want my guitar back.

Wah-Wah

I got my first electric guitar in 1986, I think. It was a Christmas present. A Hondo strat copy with one humbucker. It was a starter kit and it came with a little 5 watt (I think) Peavy amp.

The first pedal I bought was a Dod overdrive. The second pedal was the game changer. It was a Dunlop Cry-Baby Wah-Wah. Let’s just say that when it came to playing lead guitar, Hendrix and Trower and any other wah-loving soloist you can think of had nothing on me. I was out of control.

In 1990 that pedal, as well as every other piece of guitar gear I owned (except for that Dod overdrive pedal), including a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe, was stolen out of my car. I replaced the guitar with a Les Paul Custom, my great big Peavy Chorus amp with a Fender Stage, and the Cry-Baby with another Cry-Baby. Exact same model. I still have it. It’s on my board at the band’s rehearsal space. It was relegated to the back up setup for a while, but I’ll get to that in the next paragraph.

In 2003 I bought my Marshall amp on ebay. The seller sweetened the deal by throwing a few pedals into the shipping box. I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t want them. I actually sold them all save for one, a Dunlop Cry-Baby Wah-Wah. I didn’t use it. I just kept it in the box. then in 2011 I tried to start a band. My 1990 Wah pedal was starting to sound a little worse for wear so I swapped them. The ebay wah was on stage with me for my first show with Lizardfish, but sadly not the second. During one of the last practices before the most recent show it fell apart. Did I write a post about that? I think so. the 1990 pedal went back into regular use, and the ebay pedal is being prepared for a Viking funeral.

Everything changes today though. The UPS man brought me a brand spanking new wah-wah pedal. For the first time in 29 years I won’t be playing a Cry-Baby. I bought a Fulltone Clyde Deluxe and it has way more bells and whistles than anything as simple as a wah deserves. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to be two days before I can actually play the sucker. There’s too much to do!

I expect it will make it’s debut on whatever passes for this years National Solo Album Month failure, and then it will be moved to the rehearsal space when our drummer comes home from his business trip. It’s going to be weird. I think I might feel like I’m cheating on the Cry-Babys…

For a second, at least. Then I’ll be over it and getting all acid rocky all over the place with my swanky new Clyde Deluxe Wah-Wah pedal.

Rock on, brothers and sisters.

We Were Okay Tonight

Band practice tonight. We did the gig on 10/8, then took two weeks off. Last week was the first practice back, but we were short a singer. Tonight was the first practice with all of us. It wasn’t bad. We hacked our way through a few songs that we’re hoping to add to the set for the next show. Nothing was good, but nothing was disastrous either. I’m using the Fender amp now at rehearsals. That’s a big change gear wise for me, but I’m okay with it so far. The Big Muff with Tone Wicker doesn’t play nicely with the Fender. I need to figure out an alternative. It might be time to try out a clone, who knows. Other than that, all is pretty well right now. Part of me is thinking that maybe it’s time to dial back on the all out fuzz box attack and move back into the overdrive world. Not sure. Maybe.

The next practice should be next Sunday, but we’ll probably be off for a couple of weeks after that. I need to practice more this week, and I am really hoping my Les Paul comes home from the shop. Fingers crossed on that one.

Six Days, Far Away

I put my Les Paul in the shop six days ago. I miss that little sucker. I hope it’s being treated well, and I hope it’s behaving like a good 38 year old guitar.

Hopefully the estimate of “about two weeks” will turn into “come pick ‘er up” by the end of this weekend.

Here’s a pic from 2005, before Larry swapped out the pickups for me, as well as replacing the machine heads and fixing some of the wiring.


Come home soon, Les Paul. We miss you.

Poor Sick Little Baby

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with my step kids, niece, nephews, family, or any actual people. Don’t let the next sentence or the title fool you.

My poor baby is in the hospital!

Translated from guitar nerd to English, I put one of my guitars in the shop today. I have used a soldering iron in the past, but I have no confidence in my abilities so when I want work done I have to outsource it.


I took a ride over to Guitar Center in Nashua, NH today and dropped my Les Paul off at the repair desk. I was nervous, but the repair guy put me at ease by telling me my guitar looked exactly like his. Hopefully he will treat it with the same respect.

*Robert wipes away a tear*

I took it in for two things. One repair and one modification.


(Why did this picture bring out every spec of dust?)

First, see the little switch in the bottom left? The one labeled Rhythm on one side and Treble on the other? That switch selects which pickup is active. The pickups are the two gold rectangular things with the six flat head screws. When the switch is on the Treble side it’s the pickup on the right, next to the bridge (commonly known as the bridge pickup). When it’s on the Rhythm side it’s the pickup on the left, close to the neck (commonly known as the neck pickup). When the switch is in the middle, both pickups are on. I bought this guitar in 1990 and through all that time the switch has never gone into the Rhythm position. You can push it there, but it doesn’t catch. I am getting the switch either fixed or replaced. Whichever gets the job done.

The second thing they will do is just a modification. I am getting the bridge pickup replaced. When I bought the guitar in 1990 it had two after market pickups. From day one I had wanted to replace them with the closest I could get to the stock pickups that would have come with the guitar when it was made in 1978. That would be Gibson Classic ‘57’s. I think it was 2006 or so that I finally did it. Larry installed them for me (he also fixed the bridge pickup’s tone pot which had never worked. He tried to fix the pickup switch but was unable to. That’s why when I dropped if off at the shop today I had a new switch in the case). The pickups sound okay, but they were a little disappointing. The tone is a little on the trebly side, and the output level is pretty low. The stock pickups on my ES 335 Pro are Gibson Dirty Fingers models. Those suckers sound incredible. I am replacing the Classic ’57 Plus pickup in the bridge position with a Dirty Fingers.

Those are the two reasons I brought the guitar to Guitar Center today. While I was there and talking to the repair tech, I added a third job. This one is a repair.


See the hole in the finish there? That’s been there since the day I bought the guitar. As I was looking at the guitar sitting on the counter while the tech was filling out the work order, I couldn’t take my eyes off the hole. I am 100% positive that it is much worse than it was in 1990. What I am not 100% sure of, but what my gut feeling is telling me, is that it is worse than it was three weeks ago at the last Lizardfish gig. I feel like the pace with which that hack in the finish is growing is accelerating rapidly. The tech is going to do a repair on it. It won’t look the same as the finish surrounding it, but it will stop it from getting worse. That’s all I care about. That repair is going to take a couple of weeks and it will cost about as much as the other two combined. It will be worth it though. For some reason it jumped out at me today as something that needs to be taken care of right now. No more waiting.

So my poor baby Les Paul is going to be at the doctor’s for two weeks or so while it gets all fixed up. I am going to miss her, and I am going to worry about her. I wish she had a cell phone so I could call her and check in on her every couple of days.

Please please please please please let my baby come home in one fully functioning piece.

Full Blast

Tonight I did something I’ve never done before.

I had always wanted to do it, but prior to last March I didn’t have the means. Since last March I just didn’t have the guts.

I played guitar through a tube amp at full blast.

It was Glorious.

I have been reading up on overdrive pedals lately. Specifically the Klon Centaur. To me, the point of overdrive was always to make my guitar sound distorted without sounding like a heavy metal wanna be. I think I was sort of missing the point. Maybe an overdrive pedal isn’t meant to make you sound like a rock god, but instead maybe it’s just supposed to make your low volume amp sound like a loud, broken up tube amp. That made sense to me.

That was all well and good for a solid state amp, but what about a tube amp? I bought a Fender Deluxe Reverb last March, knowing that if I cranked it I would be able to overdrive the tubes and thus distort the sound. Of course that would require a huge amount of volume which even with my little 22 watt sucker would be more than I want to deal with. I read an article that suggested using an overdrive pedal with the volume knob up all the way, and the gain knob down all the way. The pedal isn’t going to distort your sound (much), but it might push your tubes up to the point of distorting for you.

The other day while I was getting my stuff together for the Lizardfish gig I tried it out with my Fulltone OCD pedal. It sounded pretty good. Not exactly broken up, but not exactly clean either. I planned to start using that setting after the gig. (no changes like that will ever be made without being used in rehearsal for a while at least)

Tonight I decided to try it with my Joyo Ultimate Drive pedal, which is an OCD clone. I wanted to see if the clone sounded as good as the real thing. It did. I was pleased, and spent about 45 minutes just noodling.

Then I just did it. I looked at my amp. I looked at the volume knob. How high do I have to turn that sucker before the sound starts breaking up? I had no idea at the time, but now I do. You start getting some nice overdrive at about 7. When you’re up to 10 it’s pretty sweet. It doesn’t sound heavy by any stretch, but when I kicked on the overdrive (volume at 10, gain at 0) it sounded really cool.

As for the volume level, when I got to 3 it was loud enough for me to want to turn it down. 10 was significantly louder, but the volume level seemed to stop going up around 6. Extrapolate… volume ceases to increase when the tubes are over saturated? Sound logical.

When the volume knob hit 10 though… oh it was glorious.