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Inspired by the most sublime thing you can drop into a cocktail. Or maybe that and the cocktail. The guitar is a random collection of Fender Strat parts with Duncan lipstick tube pickups. They sound a zillion times better than modern Danelectro pickups. (Plus I boycott Dano on principle because their parent company is […] For Day 2 of Loopocalypse, here’s an angst-ridden original featuring brutal bit-crushed distortion and Tesla coil samples. Thunderbeast Park was an Oregon roadside tourist attraction with cheesy plaster dinosaurs. I think I visited here as a kid, though I’m not certain. At least I would have pleaded for us to stop on one […] Man, I’ve been wanting to do this experiment for ages — and largely because it’s been a black hole off ignorance for me. As mentioned in the video, I used to think they were the same pickup. But as you can hear, they’re quite distinct, and the differences are far from subtle. I’ve been following the story of Fishman Fluence pickups and their radical pickup design for a few years. From the beginning, I’ve thought Fluence pickups sounded great in the hands of some other guitarist, but this is the first chance I’ve had to experiment with my own set. Most of the tech details are […] Fender’s Telecaster Deluxe has had an interesting and checkered history. Once regarded as yet another mediocre product from the company’s era of CBS ownership, these turn-of-the-seventies instruments now fetch huge prices on the collector’s market. I’ve never owned own. But when singer/songwriter Greer Sinclair loaned me one of Fender’s 2010 reissues, it was time for […] Despite being obsessed with Charlie Christian for decades, I’ve never played a Gibson ES-150, the guitar he made famous. I’ve never even messed with a “Charlie Christian pickup,” even though it’s been a fairly common retrofit ever since the late Danny Gatton installed one in his Tele’s neck position. But I’ve always wondered: Could the […] Okay, the funky gold foil pickups found in cheapo Japanese and American gutiars in the 1950s and ’60s are popular again. And trend slut that I am, I’m smitten with them. But they do this one really weird thing …. It has to do with the capacitive relationship between the guitar volume knob, pickups, […] Here’s a new guitar I put together using Warmoth parts and Lollar Gold Foil pickups. Around the time I started assembling the Resistocaster, I reviewed the cool new Supro Westbury — another guitar with gold-foil pickups — for Premier Guitar. It was an interesting juxtaposition, because the Lollar pickups are cloned from the […] I should have been out buying nice presents for you all. Instead I sat around inhaling solder fumes. When the smoke cleared (mostly, anyway) I’d tested ten unusual Strat pickups in the same poor guitar. Tested pickups sets: • Jason Lollar Gold Foils • Lindy Fralin Big Singles • Seymour Duncan Antiquity II Mini-Humbuckers […] As threatened, here’s a closer look at Strat with PAF humbuckers used for my recent “God Only Knows” cover. Most parts are from the long-suffering guitar used for all the Mongrel Strat Project experiments. And this one is especially mongrel-ific, with its blend of vintage Fender and Gibson. Obviously, Gibson pickups is a Strat […] |
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