I hereby call to order the first meeting of the Tonefiend DIY Club! Our mission: To attain tonal mastery over our guitars, amps, and effects with the least possible damage to our gear, bodies, homes, and pets. When the smoke has cleared (and all the smoke alarms have been reset) you’ll be able to install […] 
UPDATE, Friday, September 23th: Attend the first Tonefiend DIY Club meeting here. ____________ Can if I make like a zombie and eat pick your collective brain? One of my key goals for this blog is to promote do-it-yourself experimentation. It’s a topic I approach with the passion of a recent […] 
Compare the honkin' magnets on the installed Quarter Pound to those of the factory pickup. The original P-Bass is a fascinating instrument. It’s wasn’t the first electric bass guitar—inventor and owner Paul Tutmarc claimed that title with the instruments he created and sold through his Seattle, Washington, music shop in the 1930s and […] 
The story so far: In Part 1 of this post, I snatched a pair of Seth Lover pickups in an attempt to improve my unlovable ’81 Les Paul. Will they transform the guitar from a pig to a prince? Or am I just casting pearls before swine? I’m sharing some comparative recordings I made […] 
Makes you sound pretty as a picture! When it comes to seriously messed-up guitar effects, few can rival the Uglyface. And, as they say on infomercials, “It’s not available in any stores!” In fact, as of this writing, the only way to unleash this particular brand of brutality is to build the box […] 
Some guitars are hard to love . . . Did you ever come across one of those magical guitars? The kind that just seems to cast everything you play in the best possible light? A guitar you never want to stop playing because it sounds so darn good? Well, this story isn’t […] 
Long bonsai tweezers for all those hard-to-reach places. I found it in my local Goth gardening emporium, tucked between the carnivorous plants and taxidermy mice: a long pair of tweezers with a spatula on one end, designed for manicuring bonsai plants. Voilá—the perfect tool for fiddling around inside a hollowbody guitar. You can […] 
The capacitor value matters. But for guitar tone controls, the type of capacitor does not. Many players know you can change the voicing of your tone pot by substituting capacitors of different values. I’ve seen many explanations online, though I’ve never come across side-by-side audio comparisons. This post is designed to fill the […] |
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