The Guitar Thread

[Andrew 7456]

The Music Man was tempting until I found out how much the guy wanted for it

 

If you take the buy now of the Tele which I've set at a (admittedly fairly high) $6500 he wants to give me $500 plus the music man.

 

So hes valuing that at about £3000, reverbs price history on right handers of these hasn't got one selling for over $2750nz in over two years.

 

The white one is a Schecter Keith Merrow signature, which I am also pretty tempted by, of course that and the ibanez were the ones that particular person was least wanting to lose so hes having a think.

[Andrew 7456]

33 minutes ago, Gemmill said:

I met that Ben fucker, the main lad, as well cos he came around interviewing everyone for their YouTube channel. Which was fucking awkward.

 

 

I've watched a fair few of their videos and there is something about him that just feels awkward, like he is not particularly natural or comfortable in front of a camera.

 

[Tom 15508]

Is this every left handed guitar in New Zealand?  
 

Id agree with the Music Man or the white shredd looking thing with the open wood belly & one pick up.

[Blastronaut 1475]

1 hour ago, Andrew said:

 

I've watched a fair few of their videos and there is something about him that just feels awkward, like he is not particularly natural or comfortable in front of a camera.

 

 

It's ages since I watched any of his videos but aye there's something a bit off about his whole manner. Gemmill's experience makes me think he's probably more interested in shilling his products and services than actually trying to educate anyone and share his knowledge, which would be fine if he wasn't selling educational courses.

 

I'd be fucking raging if I was in Gemmill's boat. That almost akin to an apprentice mechanic getting told to strip and rebuild his own cars engine on his first day. 

 

19 minutes ago, Tom said:

Is this every left handed guitar in New Zealand?  
 

 

 

I was thinking less about NZ but genuinely baffled at how many lefties are on this thread.

[Andrew 7456]

29 minutes ago, Tom said:

Is this every left handed guitar in New Zealand?  
 

Id agree with the Music Man or the white shredd looking thing with the open wood belly & one pick up.

 

It may well be, the guy with all the kiesels, schecter and ibanez is someone I've actually bought a guitar off before  starting to think I now know every left hander in the country.

[Blastronaut 1475]

40 minutes ago, Tom said:

Or the white shredd looking thing with the open wood belly & one pick up.

 

You're not seriously trading a custom shop Tele for another Tele shaped thing with less hardware and half a paintjob?

 

 

[Andrew 7456]

If there was some cash involved I'd consider it tbh, don't get me wrong the CS tele is great but its not really very...me.

 

I've contrived to assemble a blues rock rig when I really just like playing metal for the most part.

[Blastronaut 1475]

12 minutes ago, Andrew said:

 

I've contrived to assemble a blues rock rig when I really just like playing metal for the most part.

 

Thats me in a nutshell tbh. What's interesting is that I think out "metal" tastes are polar opposites.

 

Edit: I only say that to counter the  notion that "metal" is some sort of musical dead-end. Not a dig at your tastes at all.

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by Blastronaut

[Tom 15508]

Tbh I like the look of Andrew’s tele but on a personal level feel like I couldn’t get much more out of a custom shop job than a high end Squier tele, that’s just me. 
 

They are nice guitars mind.

[Andrew 7456]

13 minutes ago, Blastronaut said:

 

Thats me in a nutshell tbh. What's interesting is that I think out "metal" tastes are polar opposites.

 

Edit: I only say that to counter the  notion that "metal" is some sort of musical dead-end. Not a dig at your tastes at all.

 

 

TBF I do play a fairly wide range (or try to anyway) so I get what you mean, theres some stuff that has never done it for me under the "metal" umbrella

[Tom 15508]

Btw - @Gemmill

 

How did those Waza headphones work out? I can’t imagine headphones ever replacing an amp so I’m interested! 

[Andrew 7456]

I am wheeler dealing like nobodies business.

Sold my highway one strat for double what I paid for it 18 months ago.

Just picked up a Katana mk2 Head and the footswitch thing for £300, about half its new value.

 

[Gemmill 62978]

7 hours ago, Tom said:

Btw - @Gemmill

 

How did those Waza headphones work out? I can’t imagine headphones ever replacing an amp so I’m interested! 

 

Aye they're great. The difference between these and other headphone type amps (or just plugging headphones into something) is night and day. 

 

They've got this weird thing where you can position the amp in the room, so when you turn your head, the amp stays where it is and the sound shifts round in your head. 

 

Also there's stage or studio setting which basically reflects the size of the room you're in - reverb comes as an effect, this is entirely just to mirror the feeling of being in an actual physical space. 

 

You can pipe backing tracks in, and the volume is managed independently so you can set your levels. You can also position the track (think, the band) in the room too, so you can put the band and your amp behind you and pretend you're at the Albert Hall.

 

As a practice tool, they're fucking incredible, you can get lost for hours, and you're bothering nobody with the noise. 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Gemmill

[Tom 15508]

That sounds class tbh  

I just watched the Andertons review on the back of this post and the lads look genuinely blown away.

Im after some kind of purchase and I’m tempted to wait for a Manson special edition or something, as they’ve closed the custom shop for now. So may put that on the long term list and play Wembley with some blues backing tracks  

Also I noticed the andertons lads used it with a pedal board which is a great feature!

[Gemmill 62978]

Aye I've not tried the pedal board thing but theoretically it absolutely should work. 

Get it! Like I say, from a practice point of view you can fuck about all night with backing tracks on. If you did use it with a pedal board, I don't see why you couldn't use a looper in the signal chain too. 

The That Pedal Show blokes did a video on practice tools and one of them was saying it's completely changed the way he practices. And those are fuddy duddy corksniffers who won't play with anything if the tech came after the 60s.

[Tom 15508]

Tbh it’s very rare I get any stick from the neighbours but taking that out of the equation altogether without sacrificing any quality sounds very appealing. 
 

Aye if the pedal Show wankers like it, it must be good  

[Blastronaut 1475]

4 hours ago, Gemmill said:

...fuddy duddy corksniffers who won't play with anything if the tech came after the 60s.

Oi! I feel attacked. In my case its not really a choice though and more just being a bit slow to adapt and a proper tight bastard when it comes to buying guitar gear. If I absolutely have to buy something I'll usually look for something that I can either fix myself when it inevitably breaks or is cheap enough to replace without completely fucking the family budget. I wasn't always this way like.

I can't fucking stand Dan and Mick but will admit to occasionally watching their videos just to see what rebranded pedal from 50 years ago they're shilling. The Tonebender episode with Josh Scott was actually really good though, but I'm fairly convinced they have some sort of contract with Macaris that would also explain how much they hyped up the Dope Priest (the D.A.M / Emanating Fist pedal guy now builds for Macaris).

4 hours ago, Gemmill said:

If you did use it with a pedal board, I don't see why you couldn't use a looper

I really need to practice more with my looper, can't use it for shit unless I'm playing really fucking slow. Always just miss the click by a fraction so the loop is always off, end up just using it to record like a few minutes of something and then work out a second part over it without having to get out the laptop and load up cubase.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Blastronaut

[Tom 15508]

What kind of looper have you got?

The TC Electronic ones are absolutely rapid and pretty cheap.

[Gemmill 62978]

18 minutes ago, Blastronaut said:

Oi! I feel attacked. In my case its not really a choice though and more just being a bit slow to adapt and a proper tight bastard when it comes to buying guitar gear. If I absolutely have to buy something I'll usually look for something that I can either fix myself when it inevitably breaks or is cheap enough to replace without completely fucking the family budget. I wasn't always this way like.

I can't fucking stand Dan and Mick but will admit to occasionally watching their videos just to see what rebranded pedal from 50 years ago they're shilling. The Tonebender episode with Josh Scott was actually really good though, but I'm fairly convinced they have some sort of contract with Macaris that would also explain how much they hyped up the Dope Priest (the D.A.M / Emanating Fist pedal guy now builds for Macaris).

I really need to practice more with my looper, can't use it for shit unless I'm playing really fucking slow. Always just miss the click by a fraction so the loop is always off, end up just using it to record like a few minutes of something and then work out a second part over it without having to get out the laptop and load up cubase.

Wasn't attacking you, I can't stand those two bellends. 

 

[Blastronaut 1475]

33 minutes ago, Tom said:

What kind of looper have you got?

The TC Electronic ones are absolutely rapid and pretty cheap.

It's just some cheap off-brand Chinese Ditto clone I got for like £30. The problem is me rather than pedal. One of my closest friends is a drummer and it works fine when I let him set the in and out. If I'm playing a really slow tempo or really concentrating I can usually get it bang on at least half the time, I just a drunk clumsy prick that can't get my hands and feet to work in sync. Can't work a wah for shit either. I think my feet work on the on beat and my hand on the off beat (or vice versa) which is either a curse of the whole dominant hand/dominant eye mismatch or just a convenient excuse for being a lazy bastard and not practicing.

27 minutes ago, Gemmill said:

Wasn't attacking you, I can't stand those two bellends.

Nah I got that, just saw that description of them and thought "ah fuck. Is that me?". A bit like the time a mate of mine finally realised Neil Oliver was a bellend and I reacted by immediately going to get a haircut.

[Gemmill 62978]

The thing that made a massive difference for me with timing is fixing my alternate picking so that the on beat is ALWAYS a downstroke and the offbeat is ALWAYS an up stroke. It's what the country lads do apparently and it totally worked for me once I got over the fact that I was "pretending" to pick even when I was really just doing a pull off or hammer on, just to keep in time. 

It forces you to sort of keep your hand moving even when you're not playing a string. And it forces you to ALWAYS start the new bar with a downstroke. 

I used to try and learn things and the first battle was trying to work out how the picking should go. Now I don't have to cos this forces me to do it one way. 

Helps with looping just cos you're always super focused on the start of the new bar with your picking hand, and your foot just follows it. 

[Gemmill 62978]

I've just re read that and I'm a proper boring cunt. Sorry.

 

[Blastronaut 1475]

Probably good advice though tbf. I'm mostly fine with timing when there's a metronome or someone else setting the beat and all I have to do is worry about what my hands are doing.

It all just falls apart for me when I have to think about my technique or anything that's going on. Basically I can only play when my thoughts are occupied by "I quite like this Speyside malt, what's it called again?" and all I have to worry about is the possibility of it getting spilled. Everything else that goes wrong is the drummers fault.

[Tom 15508]

Ah tbh I don’t really worry too much about timing when I’m looping  

or picking or anything, I just lay the shred down. 
 

[Asprilla 96]

On 05/01/2022 at 10:49, Gemmill said:

The Music Man would be my pick. 

 

And yeah I did go to Crimson on a 2 day maintenance course. I've since moderated my thoughts on it slightly - I came away feeling I'd learned loads but then had quite a bit of bother with my tele. 

 

I turned up and they recommended a full refret on a guitar that was maybe 6 months old (Fender American Original tele). I was there for the final two days of one of their 3 month guitar building courses, so there were about 6-8 lads finishing up guitars who had established relationships with the 2 instructors on hand. 

 

This meant that me getting the help I needed was not great. And a refret isn't a straightforward job, especially when you'd turned up expecting to learn how to do a really good setup. 

 

Things seemed fine for a bit with the guitar but gradually frets became a bit unseated and it became unplayable - buzzing all over the shop. I took it to my main man Dave in North Shields who sorted it and was disgusted that they had told me to refret a basically brand new £1400 guitar, and then not provided minute by minute direction to make sure it got done correctly. 

 

I'm absolutely certain I just had a bad experience cos of the clash with the end of that 3 month course, but it was still bullshit. I remember they were closing up on the Friday and everyone was trying to leave and one of the lads came over to me with his backpack on his back, garbled some instructions at me, and then fucked off.

 

Wait.

 

you play guitar!? 😳😁👍🏼