Notify My Next Of Kin

I have never NEVER had good luck with neck pickups.  It’s so hard to find a good tone.  And when you do finally find a pickup that should be right you have to decide if it will be good for your guitar’s body.  And then you have to deal with the fact that there are a gazillion bridge pickups sitting around the local Guitarget but the neck version you want is on backorder and should arrive just in time for your next of kin to read about it in your will.  All of this leads me to believe that people generally don’t pay attention to their neck tone as much as they do their bridge tone.  Too bad.  There's a lot of tone up there people!
This is one area where Fender has always had the advantage.  Fender, in my opinion, is King of the neck tone – second only to my beloved Les Paul standard loaded with a PAF.  But if you want a good crisp responsive single coil tone even my beloved Les Paul will not get you there; close but not quite there.
Then there is also the issue that even if you have a Strat the pickups could be cheap, like in a Mexi-Strat (which always makes me think of Mexi-Fries).  But let’s face it. Even in a Mexi-Strat that neck tone is giving you a lot of bang for your minimal buck.  Fender FTW.
The place that Fender can’t help you is if you want something in between: something that has that clear bell-like pounce like a fender but has the deep tone of a humbucker.  For that you pay Uncle Seymour or Rio Grande for something hot.  But you still never get over the fact that that thin winding of copper just never gets any wider in relationship to the sound field of the strings.  And that, THAT my friend, is why Gibson invented the P-90. 
The P-90 has a wider footprint and bar mags running across adjustable posts so you get the fat roll of a humbucker but it’s still a single coil so you get that attack of the single coil and the clarity of a Fender-type sound.
But they are noisy, and they are an odd size for a guitar that takes humbuckers.  And just when your head starts to hurt from all the hurdles there are to getting a good tone, Uncle Seymour steps in with the Phat Cat SPH90-1.  True, it’s not an exact p-90 replica but it’s pretty friggin’ close!  And the Phat Cat solves all the noise issues.  PLUS! They put the Phat Cat in a humbucker form factor so it can drop right into my superstrat!  Happy happy joy joy!
That is … after it gets in … because it’s on back order … waiting for Uncle Seymour to make one … because no one keeps them in stock for the neck position … because no one pays attention to their neck tone.
Sigh.

1943

The second world war is starting to wind to it’s inevitable conclusion.  While FDR, Stalin, and Churchill meet for the tenth major conference of WWII, Hitler decides that the key to victory is Nazi superiority in the air.  As a result Hitler orders the increased production of jet powered aircraft in particular fighter bombers.  Many great jet propelled vehicles were fashioned that year in Germany, including the Me 262, the Blohm & Voss BV 222 Wiking “Flying Boat”, and rocket powered bicycles.

Wait.  What!?

If we made a list of the great German inventors that came from the “rocket boom” of 1943, the list would have to include names like Hellmuth Walter, Dr. Hans von Ohain, and a twelve-year-old boy named Willi Lorenz Stich.  As near as I can tell Willi didn’t give a rip or even know about what Hitler was asking.  He only knew two things: one, rockets were awesome, and two, he didn’t really like to play the violin his mother made him play.

So on that day in 1943 when he finally hooked up his home made rockets to his bicycle and did his first test run I am willing to bet that he had dreams of grandeur running through his head.  Perhaps, those dreams distracted him – and that’s what caused him to crash and break his left hand in seven places. 
I am also willing to bet that when the initial shock wore off his first thought was “YES!  No more violin!”

Willi had limited movement in his hand after it healed so the violin was too difficult to play.  Willi, however, came from a musical family and so his parents insisted that he must play an instrument.  So, after a short stint with the trumpet he discovered that what was limited movement on the violin was perfectly workable for the guitar.  So Willi became a guitarist.  As he grew and post-war Germany started to find time for entertainment Willi started to become a well-known guitarist in jazz clubs.  He made such a name for himself he got an endorsement from a local guitar luthier and changed his name to Bill Lorenzo.  He was continually reshaping his sound by creating new pickups and new ways to make his guitar be heard over the horns in the bands he played in.

One night he went to the Castel bar to see a friend who was playing there and he struck up a conversation with the owner; a man by the name of EZ Wajcman.  They began talking about pickups and the things that Bill née WIlli, had done to get closer to that elusive Charlie Christian sound that all guitarists were trying to emulate back then.

Turns out EZ was a tinkerer as well.  They decided to build a pickup together and the spent the weekend working on it and by Monday they had what they considered a very fine pickup.

Now.

From here the story takes a turn.  Bill and EZ had a falling out at some point in the following years.  As a result each of their stories are very different and focus largely on discrediting the other.  The facts as far as I can tell are that EZ Wajman owns the name “Bill Lawrence” and the man who has now legally changed his name to Bill Lawrence has nothing to do with the Bill Lawrence company.

HOWEVER!

Bill Lawrence (formerly Willi the rocket boy) has made a career of improving the guitar.  He has worked for Gibson and many many other companies and has literally changed the face of technology for the guitar.  He is probably second only to Les Paul in that regard.  He does have his own business still and he makes pickups that are custom to a player’s needs and they are by all accounts amazing.

EZ Wajcman has been no slouch either.  He has taken the original designs and made pickup history with the Dimebag Darrel L-500 that Dimebag himself used in his "Cowboy From Hell" Dean custom guitar as well as other guitar luminaries like Nuno Bettencourt and Kim Thayil.

There is much dispute about who is the real genius but there seems to be a large amount of agreement that the pickups you get from either gentlemen are nearly identical except that Bill and his wife Becky will customize the pickups to suit you perfectly.

And with a history like THAT how could I not use these pickups!

The Tragedies of the 80's

OK.  I'm waddin' deep into snobby waters here.  I really am not trying to be snobby it's just that I feel strongly about this subject.
My friend and I have a great affinity for some 80's music.  There are a lot of good memories there and there were some good things that came from the 80's - but there are so very many bad things.
One of them was the idea that you had to paint every guitar.
I give you exhibit A:

This piece of wood was MADE to be stained and lacquered and then played.  Admittedly, it's not curly maple but it's gonna take a stain so nice and it's probably going to be more resonant too!
This guitar is gonna actually be pretty cool I think.
On the sad front I totally biffed the little area where the angle changes.  Sigh.  I might have to putty it - or maybe do a little black paint over that part.  I admit it.  I goofed up.  Do what I say not what I do.

Some definitions

A friend of mine just informed me that my snobby ways have tripped me up again and that I should give some definitions.

First off: I know I come off as a snob. I really struggle with that. I don’t really try to be a snob but I think that there is a difference between good and the marketed impression of good. And it’s not based on bias but on what is actually going on. For instance the combination of what naturally comes from the wood of a guitar and what your ear naturally hears is the measure of quality that I use for a good guitar sound.

But for each person a lot of that is based on what you like. So if you like the high-endie bright guitar sounds of like a Warrant type band or the muddy thickness of Nickleback I’m not saying you are wrong or that that’s a bad tone. I’m just into a different tone that’s all. I like really balanced tones that are expressive even when loaded with distortion. I think a guitar should be clear and precise across all 6 (or 7) strings. And each tonality from the highest note to the lowest note should be equal and just as clear as the last. And these qualities should be the same from no effects to when you have a metric tone of effects layered on like ice cream on pie.

There you go. Not trying to be a snob or elitist just looking for the best a guitar can give.

So some definitions:

Super Strat. Kind of a fuzzy term. Some people call them evolved strats. Basically the term just means that style of guitar that started happening in the 80’s when people wanted a strat because it’s the gold standard but they wanted something that would annoy their parents. We also wanted something that looked tough because we were beginning to realize that big hair and spandex was NOT masculine after all ;) . So it’s a guitar that has the general look of a strat but is elongated and “Rock-n-Rolled” out.

Floyd Rose. A Floyd Rose is the floating bridge system that Floyd Rose designed and built for a long time and Eddie Van Halen made famous. It was designed to overcome a lot of issues with the stock Fender floating bridge. In the 80’s and early 90’s it was considered standard. Basically you take a bar attached to the bridge and push down on it and it creates slack on the strings which effectively makes them longer which in turn makes the note of that string lower. On a standard floating bridge that would throw the guitar out of tune unless you were really really careful. Eddie (and the rest of the world of guitar) wanted to be able to get nuts with the bridge and make it dive bomb all the way until the strings were slack and then back up again and not have the tuning go out. So Floyd saved the day. There are a lot of other types of floating bridges out there but one thing that Floyd did that others didn’t was that he made his bridge really sensitive. So it’s very very expressive. You can use it to make the guitar more like the human voice instead of just yanking it around like a crazy person. I’ve used it on jazz gigs before even.

Tone woods. Hmm. This is tough. Basically, in my opinion there is no pickup in the world that can give you a sound that is not already in the wood of the guitar. Well, let’s change that. A pickup can either enhance the natural tone of the wood of your guitar or it can totally ignore it and make it sound like hell. There have been many popular guitarists who go the route of not paying attention to tone wood. Basically their sound comes from the pickup. I’m not into that. I want a good tone wood because, again, balance is the goal. And it isn’t even a factor of the type of music you play. There are a lot of examples of pickup oriented tone in the same genre as tone wood balanced with pickup oriented tones.

So basically what I’m saying is that pickups should be matched with the tone of the wood they are going into no matter the style of music you are playing.

So there you go. Some definitions for you. Next time I hope to talk about my pickup selection since it goes with these definitions so well. Might be interesting to talk a little about different sounds that come from different tone woods too.

Paint stripper is a fools tool, and I might be the fool.

Either paint stripper is the biggest ripoff in the history of all things ... um ... paint, or I am an idiot. You make the call.
I have built 2 guitars form tree to playable. I have built two other bodies that never made it to guitar-ness. And I have stripped and refinished something like 4 guitars. NEVER EVER EVER have I used paint stripper and found it to be a good idea. Sanding a guitar should take you like an hour at the most. Maybe some guitars that have really really thick lacquer would take longer. But people always say, "Careful! You will change the shape of the guitar! Use a stripper."
OK.
You tell me.
What am I doing wrong!?
EVERY time I use stripper it takes DAYS to get any progress done. Multiple layers of stripper and the mess is horrendous. You have to set up a ton of garbage bags or something to make it easy to clean up. And I ALWAYS end up sanding the thing anyway! What am I doing wrong. Why do people think stripper is the way to go? I must be an idiot.
So this time I thought, "Ok. I'll try it again. I'm older and more patient. Everyone seems to think it's such a good idea." Well I followed the instructions to the letter and 24 hours later it's a goopy mess and hardly any paint was stripped off at all. Seriously. What am I doing wrong.
Anyway I decided to just sand the rest. The stripper did get the top layer of lacquer off. That, I have to admit, is nice because that’s the hard part to sand through. But even having said that it increased the time it takes to do a refinish project not made things faster. So where's the payoff.
You can see the little gouges in the paint where the stripper actually did work up something, but most of the guitar is still covered.
I am glad to finally confirm that it is alder underneath. I usually like “thicker” woods but I think for the type of playing I’m going to be doing in the near future it will be a good tone wood. I’m gonna have to get some non conductive paint for the p/u cavities too since the stripper leaked into the cavities. All the bare wood you see here is from me sanding. The sanding itself did go faster since the stripper took off the top layer of lacquer but I'm not suer it was worth the time and mess.

To be totally honest there is one place where my sanding got too aggressive and I fudged up a part where the cut of the wood changes. But that's more due to me being out of practice than anything inherent in the sanding process.

All in all I think my suggestion is to skip the stripper and just sand the thing down. It's faster and not that messy. Be careful o the corners and contours and you will be fine.

But again, If anybody knows what I’m doing wrong lemme know.

Thanks

Next time? Pickups!

Guitar Project!

So for years I have wanted to refinish this guitar I got for free from a family member. So I think that I'm actually gonna do it now.
So here's my disclaimers, or as it seems to be in the blogosphere, flame-war fodder.
First, I was a working musician in the 80's and 90's so I remember all too well that big hair and those big hair guitars. I was never really into either - thank GOD or Seattle. Long hair but not big and Les Pauls not shredders.
I would have lived my life happily only playing Les Pauls (God rest Lester's soul) if it weren't for 3 things: GOOD Les Pauls cost a lot of money, good woods in a super strat type body actually have some interesting tone possibilities, and I CAN'T help loving the Floyd Rose.
First. Don't even bother flaming me about your bargain basement Paul from Guitarget or your Epiphone. There are Les Pauls and there are Les Pauls. And if you talk to people who know and play them regularly the grade you get from Guitarget and the grade you get from the higher-end dealers are not the same. Epiphones are not even in the ballpark.
Second. As much as I really really really want to distance myself from the big hair movement there were a few super strat type guitars that used good wood and good p/u selection that actually got some good tone.
Third. I can't help it. When a Floyd is played as an expressive tool and not a metaphor for perceived masculinity there are some very almost saxophone things that can be done with a guitar. And I will NEVER put a Floyd on an LP. I know they are coming from the factory like that now but I'm still not entirely sure that wasn't what drove poor Mr. Polsfuss to his grave all-too-soon.
So outside of the one brief and glorious time in my life when I actually owned a '56 Les Paul Gold Top (NOT a reissue but an ACTUAL 56!) - which ended so sadly I can not even type about it - I have had strats and super strats. And, sadly, I might never have another Les Paul because the chances of me spending $3,000 on a work of art is pretty slim with 3 kids needing to go to college. Again, if you want to comment and say I can spend less see my point the first above.
So, back to the project at hand.
I have this super strat that I got from a family member. It's a Yamaha RGZ 621. It's incredibly difficult to find info about it. But it's alder body (Not mahogany as some have suggested - although that would be AWESOME!) has a pretty balanced tone and it has the Floyd that I swear I can't help liking! I guess that's proof that I'm just as goofy as the next guitarist.
The only problem with it is that I would like some more mature pickups in it and ... well ... it's pink. The pickups in it as well as the color make everything I play devolve into "Talk Dirty To Me" or "Here I Go Again". I know. Let's all pause for a collective shudder for our past listening mistakes.
So far the process has been interesting so I thought to myself, "Self! This is a good way to get you kick started into blogging again!" So I'm gonna write about it.
Read along if you are interested!