This was a bit of an experiment, and a bunch of dad-rock noodling over a repeating loop. And I tossed in some ebow guitars just for the heck of it. The main thing that kept me repeating attempts at this improv was the brief magic that happens when I turned down my guitar volume and used my fingers to pick over the neck pickup area. The harmonic overtones just captivated me, and I couldn't stop. There are a bunch of missed notes and searching for a theme, but that's how I roll when I've barely played guitar for the last several months. Also the mix sucks, but that wasn't the focus...too much bass, not enough lead, guitars are too dark, etc.
The important parts about the lead guitar:
- Gibson LP Classic (with those darned BB Pro pickups), bridge position
- JCM800, hi channel
- TS9 at 2:00, 2:00, 9:00
- JHS Panther Cub delay set to fastest time, 1 repeat
- Guitar volume knob was at 4 the whole time
- Picking the quieter parts with my thumb, louder parts with a pick
- Two Notes Torpedo Reload, Wall of Sound III, and a little bit of reverb added in post
The non-descript guitar on the left was the Jazzmaster on the "mud" position thru the JCM800 on the lo input with a little TS9 in there.
This is cool Tad, you just need to buckle down & work out the lead lines dude, FWIW I do a lot of this as a placeholder sorta thing too, until I "learn" the lead parts...I love guitar that has articulation like the neck p'up thing you mentioned, good stuff...
In all the time I've played guitar, I've never tried an e-bow...I've read about 'em, & they've been out for years, but again, I've never tried one...Pretty cool man, I may splurge for one of those...
As far as the tone, it just needs a little sparkle on the top end IMO, but nothing wrong with it at all...Good job dude...
Gibson, Fender, Ibanez, Jackson
Ceriatone, Marshall, EVH
TC Electronic, MXR, Yamaha
My music @ Reverbnation
Thanks man, I think I might develop this a little further and put the Jazzmaster through the Deluxe Reverb instead of the super-dark lo channel on the JCM800.
Miner
Thanks dude, agreed that I need to learn the part! I do these improv things all the time...just start playing and see what happens. This was maybe the 3rd go-around for this one so I was still searching for some of the notes. I'll develop further, add a little structure to it, maybe even some vocals!
Ray
Thanks Ray, I really do like the ebow. It's not something that I can use all the time because it's not all that versatile. But when it works, it works!
If you're not sick of this modded plexi yet, maybe you will be now. Here's 5 minutes of me being an asshole. A clean asshole.
One thing yall haven't heard yet from this thing is it's clean sound. This is from what would be the low input on a JCM 800 2204. It's the top input on my amp, but I flipped the jacks and pot, so it's the low input which lives in the top input. Got all that? Never mind. This is the clean sound going through the range of the gain pot and using all sorts of stupid pickup and coil splitting combinations. Tube screamer at the end for the slightly crunchy "pedal platform" kind of thing.
Gibson Les Paul Custom - Bare Knuckles Mule neck and Riff Raff bridge pickups
Marshall JCM1987 - low sensitivity input 2204 mode
All tone controls on 5
Master vol 5
PPIMV cranked
Marshall 1960B 4x12 - Celestion G1265s
Senn MD421 dead center + Shure SM57 middle of cone
Both mics on axis on grill
50/50 blend
No FX or EQ in DAW
Greg_L wrote: ↑Mon Mar 12, 2018 8:19 pm
If you're not sick of this modded plexi yet, maybe you will be now. Here's 5 minutes of me being an asshole. A clean asshole.
One thing yall haven't heard yet from this thing is it's clean sound. This is from what would be the low input on a JCM 800 2204. It's the top input on my amp, but I flipped the jacks and pot, so it's the low input which lives in the top input. Got all that? Never mind. This is the clean sound going through the range of the gain pot and using all sorts of stupid pickup and coil splitting combinations. Tube screamer at the end for the slightly crunchy "pedal platform" kind of thing.
Gibson Les Paul Custom - Bare Knuckles Mule neck and Riff Raff bridge pickups
Marshall JCM1987 - low sensitivity input 2204 mode
All tone controls on 5
Master vol 5
PPIMV cranked
Marshall 1960B 4x12 - Celestion G1265s
Senn MD421 dead center + Shure SM57 middle of cone
Both mics on axis on grill
50/50 blend
No FX or EQ in DAW
Minerman wrote: ↑Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:05 pm
I'm actually impressed with the clean sound dude, the dirt sound of that amp is such an iconic bad-ass, but the cleans are good too...
I assume you got everything sorted with your switchable mod??? Pretty cool man...
The clean sounds are good, but of course I like the crunchy end part most...
Thanks man. Yeah the amp seems to be all sorted out. No complaints. I can't think of anything else I wanna do or tweak right now. It sounds great, good to go!
Actually I think this sounds very good. Not a huge fan of the middle pickup position or the split coil sounds, but everything else sounds great to me. I'm impressed as much by the taper of your guitar volume pot as anything. It really stayed clear and detailed even when dialed way way back. And when it's on full tilt, the amp sounds pleasantly overdriven. Definitely darker than the hi inputs, whis is my experience on my own amp as well. Strange that it sounded so crisp at low input volume, but darkened right up at higher input volume. Is that my problem with my JCM800's lo-input, am I driving it too hard and into its "dark place"?
Actually I think this sounds very good. Not a huge fan of the middle pickup position or the split coil sounds, but everything else sounds great to me. I'm impressed as much by the taper of your guitar volume pot as anything. It really stayed clear and detailed even when dialed way way back. And when it's on full tilt, the amp sounds pleasantly overdriven. Definitely darker than the hi inputs, whis is my experience on my own amp as well. Strange that it sounded so crisp at low input volume, but darkened right up at higher input volume. Is that my problem with my JCM800's lo-input, am I driving it too hard and into its "dark place"?
Thanks man. The guitar is wired up for "50s wiring" with 500k audio pots which helps retain a good bunch of the balance and clarity when rolling the volume or tone knobs around. It drops the output without mangling the tone.
One thing you have to keep in mind on the low input is the signal still goes through the gain pot. And what's across that gain pot? A bright cap. The bright cap becomes more and more "invisible" as you turn the gain up, but with lower gain settings the bright cap is very much in play and shelves off the muck.
That's a really nice clean tone, Greg. I think I can tell when you're splitting pickups and you get a pretty Fenderish twang to it in places. When you stick the humbuckers back in they really make it sound more "marshally".
Its a nice clean tone, and you've got it surprisingly spanky - got me thinking though about how completely unfamiliar I am with a Marshall clean tone.
I don't really like the sound of the TS over a clean amp, I think they sound great over a crunchy amp - not so much over a clean tone.
You've done a great job with the amp though - it sounds really quite versatile. Have you got it footswitchable between clean and your different gain sounds.
These Gordon Smith GS1000 guitars just came up in my YouTube feed and they look pretty nice to me, quite basic but not totally stupidly priced.
Was just thinking though - does anyone know of a LP Jr/Special style guitar that's available with a Fender scale length?
JD01 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 13, 2018 11:11 am
That's a really nice clean tone, Greg. I think I can tell when you're splitting pickups and you get a pretty Fenderish twang to it in places. When you stick the humbuckers back in they really make it sound more "marshally".
Its a nice clean tone, and you've got it surprisingly spanky - got me thinking though about how completely unfamiliar I am with a Marshall clean tone.
I don't really like the sound of the TS over a clean amp, I think they sound great over a crunchy amp - not so much over a clean tone.
You've done a great job with the amp though - it sounds really quite versatile. Have you got it footswitchable between clean and your different gain sounds.
Thanks man. No it's not footswitchable. I don't know where to even begin with something like that. That would introduce relays and transistors that I don't want to mess with or put in there. I think I might add an fx loop though. That could make this little monster pretty super bad ass. I don't like the Tube Screamer over clean-ish either. Sounds pretty crappy to me, but I tried it anyway. A better pedal like an OCD or some other amp-in-a-box would sound better.
JD01 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 13, 2018 12:20 pm
1000 quid, handmade in the UK. Can't see it offering anything that those Yamaha Revstars don't though.
What does "handmade" really mean though? Often on guitars at that price point, the bodies and necks are mass produced in Asia somewhere and shipped back to the homeland to be assembled. The hardware is mediocre. That's not a bad thing at all, but it's kind of misleading in some cases.
JD01 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 13, 2018 12:20 pm
1000 quid, handmade in the UK. Can't see it offering anything that those Yamaha Revstars don't though.
What does "handmade" really mean though? Often on guitars at that price point, the bodies and necks are mass produced in Asia somewhere and shipped back to the homeland to be assembled. The hardware is mediocre. That's not a bad thing at all, but it's kind of misleading in some cases.
Gordon Smith has been doing them for quite a while. They are good solid functional instruments not unlike the build I'm finishing up in the other thread. Last I heard almost everything is made on site same as aree mine and are customizable. I would go with one of mine though...
What does "handmade" really mean though? Often on guitars at that price point, the bodies and necks are mass produced in Asia somewhere and shipped back to the homeland to be assembled. The hardware is mediocre. That's not a bad thing at all, but it's kind of misleading in some cases.
Gordon Smith has been doing them for quite a while. They are good solid functional instruments not unlike the build I'm finishing up in the other thread. Last I heard almost everything is made on site same as aree mine and are customizable. I would go with one of mine though...
A couple of my guitar "idols" both play Gordon Smith guitars. Dickie Hammond and Frankie Stubbs of Leatherface both play double cut GS Les Paul Junior clones. they sound and look fantastic. I love the tones they get. I think i read an article somewhere they credit the GS guitars pushing an overdriven Marshall as being the main ingredient to their flavor. Nothing in between. I think Stubbs liked to add a hint of compression which might be what i liked when i was younger. It sort of grabbed me as being "huge" on their earlier records but that was before they made migrated from Gibson to GS. Now it is simple and sounds awesome. mature, deceptively simple and articulate.
here is a clip of the GS / Marshall combo era of their work. This was pretty much the last going off for them. Hammond passed away a year or two ago. YouTube sucks the life out of the tones but this is the best representation of it i could find. Kind of sucks you can't see the rest of the band. makes it Weird.
