Loopocalypse Day 8 (of 17): “Disco Plato”

Plato credited the invention of disco to his mentor, Socrates. However, most modern historians and classics scholars believe the style originated with an earlier, unknown Athenian proto-philosopher.

The guitar is a Steelcaster built by my pal James Trussart. If you’re not familiar with his breathtaking work, stop now and visit his site. (If […]

Loopocalypse Day 6 (of 17): “Monospace”

Are you old enough to identify the sampled sound that starts at 01:25?

Here’s where my title comes from.

I’m playing my Resistocaster, a DIY instrument with Warmoth parts and Lollar Gold Foil pickups.

Here’s an explanation of my live looping rig.

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Fishman Fluence Strat Pickups

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 […]

Ten Unusual Strat Pickups Tested

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 […]

How to Install Pickups

“I always forget — which end gets hot?”

Somewhat embarrassingly, I never got around to changing one of my own pickups until I was knocking on senility’s door recently. I owe part of the inspiration to that fabulous DIY Fest known as the Maker Fair, where each year hundreds of little kids learn […]

New Audio Player: Loud & Cloud!

Hi folks — I’m experimenting with a switch to the SoundCloud audio player. I’ve been eyeing it for a long time, but until now it’s been entirely Flash-based, which meant you couldn’t access SoundCloud clips from mobile devices. But they’ve just introduced HTML5 support, so I’m ready to make the plunge.

The clip is an […]