Quickie Update - Bass Vi D'Addario XLB095

Dear readers,

You may recall that I (and others on the wide wide world of web) were not entirely satisfied with the stock strings that ship with the Bass VI.

The 6th string is just a tad under nourished to play without buzzing like a march fly when playing with anything more than gentle plucking.

After a fruitless search locally (nobody wanted to sell me singles) I ended up purchasing a fatter low E from far across the Pacific.
Thanks to the modern age (fast shipping and being too busy to scratch myself) they seemed to have arrived swiftly.

It took a couple of minutes to get sorted and ready to play.
Going from an .084 to a .095 improved the tone on open chords considerably. Previously playing an open E was not a pleasant experience. Flabby and toneless.

Some folks on the forum mentioned that the .095 was the bare minimum required to have this instrument sounding the way it should.

From playing it a bit with the heavier string, I think I might have to agree.

The tone has definitely improved, and the buzzing on the frets has lessened significantly. I no longer hear the fret buzz through an amplifier or DI as I did with the .084

The difference between the A & E is slight, though noticeable.
Maybe the A could be fattened up too?

The A string's tone is fine in my pinion, so I think I'm done experimenting with strings for the time being.

I did read on a forum post (don't remember which one) by an apparent staff member that D'Addario were considering issuing a heavier set late last year. Unfortunately I can't find the post to follow up.

I'd really like to try some flat wounds, but since I'm not a professional musician, or even a weekend warrior I'll stick with what I have until they go dead or I break a string.

Fender Pawn Shop Bass VI - Review 2013

I've had this instrument for about 6 months now, and overall am very happy with the purchase. Though it isn't without its issues.

Its been so long since I purchased a box-fresh instrument that I can't really compare to my previous (twice?) experiences.

I was prepared for a couple of issues by the multitude of forum posts around the web.

Namely these:

• String Gauge
• Intonation
• Setup
• Crackling electronics
• Aesthetics

The first three points are all related, so I'll tackle them together.

I opened the carton in store, so it was about as fresh as one could get.

The guitar was more or less in tune, but a little lower than standard pitch which I imagine was intentional for shipping purchases. 

As far as setup goes, the guitar was assembled with the neck straight enough to play. The action was fairly low, but as expected (and experienced on the floor model) the low E buzzed like a nest of bees living in the chimney (true story from my childhood).

The vibrato was not setup. I suspect the same issue was the source of one uneducated complaint on the internet that I saw regarding the height of the vibrato bar from the body. Indeed it was too low to play. But easily corrected with a couple of turns of a screwdriver.

Once I got the Bass VI home I attended to the intonation. For the stock action it was pretty close already, but as forewarned by the elders of the internet, the low E would not intonate  without modification to the bridge.

One extreme I saw, was drilling a hole from the neck side of the bridge and inserting the screw that way. My solution was simpler.

Remove the long saddle screw & spring and use a short screw with no spring.

The saddle needed to be right up against the tail side of the bridge, but did indeed intonate spot on, but the string still buzzed.

I did manage to get the buzzing to stop by raising the action a bit, but that meant intonation was not going to happen. Simply because the bridge (not the saddles) is far too narrow for the scale length.

Surely Fender could make a stamped metal bridge cheaply for this instrument?!?!?

Anyway it is likely that I'll be upgrading to a Staytrem as they make a 1" version which is suitable for the Bass VI and apparently without any major surgery. That will have to wait a bit though as I have other expenses at the moment.

This brings us to the crackling.

It seems that a corner was cut in production. There is no foil backing on the pick guard. This causes the pickguard to act like a capacitor which discharges slightly as the instrument is played.
The foil tape is so cheap. I find it absurd that it was left off the instrument. I'll be adding it to mine once I get around to changing the strings.

I get that the idea behind the pawn shop series is that they're meant to be different to what has come before. The instruments in this range look great, but a lot of people are ticked off that this instrument has a distinct lack of chrome.

I don't mind that its pickguard is a little different. For me its like the difference between a Jaguar & Jazzmaster. For that matter I don't mind that it has a Jazzmaster shaped pickup in the bridge (or that its really a humbucker).

What I don't really like is the blade switch.
Especially the knob. It just doesn't look right.

I would have made one of two changes if I were on the design team. Either A: Slider switches in the plastic pickguard or B: a chrome plate for the 5 way switch like on the Johnny Marr Jaguar.
I'd also add in a 3 way toggle like on the Kurt Cobain Jaguar (though having photoshopped it from stock images, I'd go with option A) .

Although there are a couple of things that could have been done better, they re really quite minor.

The neck, though big and chunky actually feels really nice in the hand and is very comfortable to play (have smallish hands). The finish is superb. Its pretty tough too as I've bumped it on my concrete floor a few times and it didn't leave even the slightest scratch.

The pickups are supposed to be wound hot, but seem like they're actually rather low in output. That's fine with me as I prefer lower gain in general. The sound from Neck and Middle is excellent, but like most people seem to be, I'm not too keen on the bridge.

That said, I usually play all of my guitars on the neck pickup so maybe I'm just biased?

I really like this guitar/bass thing.
The only problem I have with it, is that all of my other guitars now feel like toys.  I'm having trouble going back to the Mosrite the most, because the necks and string spacing are vastly different.

Actually this goes for all of my other guitars.

Six months on and I'm still pleased as punch.

Fender Pawn Shop Bass VI

Like many before (and after) me, I have coveted the Fender Bass VI Ever since I laid eyes on it way back in 1997.

I'd finished high school in 96 and had spent all of my inheritance on living & instruments. This is definitely one of my big regrets.

Had I invested the cash more wisely, I'd be a lot better off now.

(sigh) 

You can't tell teenagers anything. Ever.

Lessons have to be learned the hard way some times.

Anyway, when I saw it in the music store in pride of place, it blew my fragile little mind. 

We didn't have "cool" guitars in my town.

There were Stratocasters of course and there were plenty of metal super-strat type guitars (No thank you Anne). 

Gibson's were out of reach no matter how much cash I had.

The Telecaster was about as alternative as you could get.

I never had a chance to even look at a Jazzmaster or Jaguar.

The price tag was something ridiculous and was our of reach to me at any age since.

Mind you, I did have one of those Wayne's World "oh yes it will be mine" moments and guess what? It's finally paid off.

Ok so it's not a vintage spec instrument, but its as close as I'll ever get with a big fat mortgage hanging over my head.

My only disappointment is that the chrome hardware isn't on the current unit. No big deal, it can be modded easily enough.

A couple of weeks ago I wandered into one of the guitar stores in town, where everyone knows my name (Dropping the pop culture references today eh?) and saw a black PSVI hanging on the wall.

They kindly/cruelly let me play it.

Uh oh.

Now I have to have one.

Problem is, I've got a big fat mortgage & renovations to pay for.

Where to find the cash?

You, loyal reader, know where I am going with this.

I've had to say goodbye to two trusty instruments.

My Jackson SC1 and my Guyatone LG-127T.

Now, you might say, but you've had one so long and the other is awesome. Well, yeah. It is true on both counts.

I finally got the Surfcaster sounding good and playing nicely. The Guyatone sounds every bit as awesome as it did in the shop.

They were the only candidates hanging on my wall that are worth anything significant and that I would be willing to let go (sentimentality etc).

Oh right, back to the story.

The PSVI that I played felt great, though my technique needs some serious adjustment to make the most of it. 

I got to play it at moderate volume through a Fender Deluxe (no Princeton in stock) and each of the pickups had something good to offer.

The lower E & A strings were pretty floppy. This has been widely reported on forums all over the place. In those same forums however, there is a cure. I hear the name La Bella bandied about a bit and have read several independent posts confirming that .026 - .095 gauge fits without modification.

I didn't notice any intonation issues whilst playing, but the store was fairly noisy at the time.

The Bass VI Pawn Shop edition impressed me enough to order one in Sunburst. 

I really want arctic white, but they're not available in the PS range and ordering a Crafted in Japan model would set me back the price of two PSVI's locally (plus import duty). 

From the performance of my isolation booth with the Princeton at about half way (the whole shed rattles), I anticipate the need for an external strangle circuit (high pass filter) and a signal splitter to direct the low end to my Sansamp VT Bass pedal.

It'll be a few weeks before it arrives, so in the meantime, enjoy these two really good demos by a chap on youtube.

2011 Nashville Banjo

Around 2004 or 2005 I bought a Fender Banjo and played it a little bit in a band, mostly for the novelty factor, but I was the fifth wheel playing the extra bits like the occasional guitar line or synth bit. Honestly I wasn't very good at any of them.

The Banjo was cool and all, but the damn thing wouldn't stay in tune for more than a couple of minutes.

Pretty annoying when it goes out of tune on stage waiting for the bit where it's needed.

I had it for a couple of years, but never played much, simply because tuning it was such a pain that it didn't inspire practice. Also, since it had a resonator it was very loud and emphasised:

 a: how crap I was

 b: how out of tune it was.

So I sold it (didn't see that coming did ya).

Anyway, a couple of months ago I got the banjo bug again after digging up an old demo that I'd recorded with the banjo. Didn't think I'd be able to afford one, so I detuned a couple of my electrics and practiced banjo chords that way. Not great, but adequate. I was able to re learn that old song and started window shopping for banjos. A few six stringers popped up at the local 2nd hand shop, but they weren't very nice to play, so I passed on them and went on my merry way.

A couple of weeks later I had some time to kill while I waited for people to get organised and head out for the afternoon. I popped into the local acoustic instrument shop and had a chat to the owner about banjo's and my unhappy experience with the Fender. 

In the six or so years since I owned it, he informed me that the world of banjo's had changed for the better.

This meant that we now have low priced high quality instruments available to us. He happened to have a few budget models in stock and I proceeded to play. One of them had been on display in the window. It was a five string open back Nashville branded banjo. The store owner told me that it was made in the same factory as Oakridge, and that they were identical apart from the headstock shape and logo. The rest of the components are the same.

I played the Nashville and was suitably impressed. Impressed enough to go home and obsess about how to fund it. After going over my parts inventory, it was evident that I could finance the project and got the approval from a certain lady, to go ahead and purchase it.

The next day the banjo was mine!

It's all maple, with a brass tone ring which seems to really help sustain and gives that classic high frequency sound (I compared one without a tone ring too and there was a marked difference in high end). Being open backed it's not too loud and I've only had to tune it up twice in the last three weeks. I'm quite chuffed with this little banjo. I've been driving my family crazy with twang twang twang every chance I get.

My old Fender banjo

2011 - Weber Z-Matcher

Weber Z-Matcher 50W version

I've had this red box for a few months now, and have used it exclusively with my Fender Princeton Reverb RI and Epiphone 12" cab, which resided in my isolation cab.

The Princeton is engineered for a nominal load of 8 Ohms, but the Epiphone cab is 16 ohms. Everything I've read about the subject is that the amp down't handle the higher load very well, and that it would be better to run two 8 om speakers in parralell(gets you 4 ohms), rather than an 8 and 16. It's all to do with math and ratio's and running mismatched loads is a no no. Sure it's going to get you a load of 6 ohms or so, but since one speaker has less resistance, most of the power will go through there and will naturally be louder than the other as a matter of course. Also this doesn't fit the ratio that the amp requires.
First I tried using a resistive dummy load to match everything up, but since a speaker doesn't have a fixed resistance (due to the combination of frequency and inductance of the voice coil), the results weren't exactly pleasing.

I'd read all about inductive loads being the way to go, and pretty much the only one that I could find with any reviews, was the one from Weber. The manufacturers of fine speakers for guitar amps.
After a lot of deliberation and indecision, I decided that having a variable inductive load would be the way to go. so I bought the 50w Z-Matcher.

The purchasing process is a little odd, it's all via email and can take some time to get your quote back, but the staff were helpful when arranging the postage. But the transaction itself was done via Paypal and they were happy to send it Via USPS when asked. Weber build all of their stuff to order, so there's a bit of a waiting period, but being in Australia, I've gotten used to waiting for my stuff to arrive. Hey, if I can't get what I want locally (or locally at a competitive rate), then I have to go offshore for the products I want/need.

They estimated up to six weeks for assembly, but it was at my door in less than a month (not bad in my opinion). Anyway, back to the box. It came in a simple postage container wrapped in paper and bubble wrap. It's quite a heavy unit, so I delayed taking it home for a few days.
There's no manual to speak of, but there's no need if you're familiar with the basics of speaker matching (all us amplified guitars and bassists should be!).

Front Panel:
amp in
amp impedance (2-16 ohms)
speaker impedance (2-16 ohms
speaker out

Rear Panel
Line Volume
Line out - Balance
Line out - unbalanced
Parallel Speaker out

It was put to work matching the Epiphone Cab in the isolation box.
The first test I ran it through was the line out. Honestly I wasn't really impressed. Clean guitar was fine, but overdriven just sounded fizzy (pretty much like any amp with line out ever).
But hey, I wasn't exactly expecting a miracle there.

The next test I did was mic (Shure SM57) up the speaker and A/B that with the line out. Guess what? The mic even carelessly placed, sounded a lot nicer than the line out. I left it like this for a few months, and just playing with it when I had a couple of spare hours. After a while I noticed a bit of a weird distortion when using reverb on the Princeton. Especially if I was driving the reverb hard. I figured it was either a dodgy cable or maybe a quirk of the speaker cab inside a fairly small volume of air (there's a lot going on in an iso cab with a large speaker. Standing waves and other funky things can send voltage back to the transformer of the amp if you're unlucky). Also my headphones are a little rattly in some frequencies.

Upon further investigation, it turned out not to be a problem with anything mentioned above, and I haven't got definitive proof yet, but I have a hypothesis which makes sense (need to find an engineer wiling to experiment).

I decided to test the whole rig outside of the cabinet and directly with my ears, reducing the variables where interference could occur(cab, mic, lead, mixer, earphones). First up, I tested the amp by itself on a rubber mat to damp vibrations into the floor. Aside from making the house rattle when it was barely past two on the dial, the amp sounded as it should with the reverb cranked).

The next thing I did was to put the Z-Matcher between the amp and it's stock 10" speaker and set for 8 ohms per side. The distortion came back. Next I plugged in the 16 ohm cab. Again, fine on straight guitar signal, weird distortion with reverb. Last up I placed the speakers in parallel. The 16 ohm cab directly into the amp, and the 8 ohm stock speaker via the Z-Matcher (the amp side of the Z-Matcher was set to 16 ohms in order to present and 8 ohm overall load to the amp). As I'd already had a suspicion that the distortion was happening inside the Z-Matcher, it was no surprise to find that I had the distortion coming through the 10" speaker and not the 12".

The Z-Matcher works flawlessly with any signal presented to it as long as there is no reverb in the mix.
What I think is happening is that there are weird things happening inside the inductors of the Z-Matcher, due to the complex reflections generated by the reverb.

Reverb adds to those complexities and since the coils of the Z-Matcher aren't on the move as they would be with a speaker/magnet combination, there is a bit of a inductive choke effect going on and the result is the distortion that I'm hearing. It's subtle and I don't think that it would matter much in a band setting. The sound does stand out for me now as I'm aware of it. But I don't think it's a deal breaker on the Z-Matcher. It's just a quirk of electromagnetism and I can live with it as the unit serves it's purpose.

2011 - DIY Isolation Cabinet

Anyone who lives in an apartment, townhouse or just generally close to their neighbours and plays guitar (or any other instrument) knows that noise can be a point of contention for those who don't appreciate your style or tones. My home is old, and pretty much everything that can rattle, does rattle when my amps are turned up to the sweet spot for tone.

Actually, the house starts to rattle a lot lower than that.
To give you an idea of what that equates to on the dial, it's about 30% on an Epiphone Valve Jr, position 2 on a Fender Princeton and about 10% on a Delta Blues. What might sound great for recording, doesn't translate to a good relationship with one's neigbours.

To get the maximum tone out of my amps and to keep things friendly, I decided to build an isolation cabinet to place a speaker cabinet and microphone inside. Simple enough idea, go get some plywood or mdf and something to dampen the sound waves. I totally over-engineered the box in terms of my level of skills.
I'm no carpenter, and it's fairly obvious by the end product, that maybe I should have gone down a much simpler path. But I've made my bed so to speak, and must lay in it!

The materials cost around $120 Australian all up.

Had I just built it out of 18mm ply or MDF it would have cost around 30% less, and taken about 80% less time too!

Anyway, the bill of materials is as follows.
5 x lengths of  19x70x1800mm cut into 600mm sections x 12
1 sheet 9x1200x2400mm Plywood cut into 8 equal panels (leaves two spare to make a pedal board from).
45 x12mm screws
Wood glue
One bag of R3 "Sound Screen" Rockwool

I wanted to get some skills with making joins, rather than using a bunch of brackets to hold the frame together.
My plan was to make a finger joint for the front and back frame, connected by the side frames which were made as lap joints to the front and back. This arrangement in theory would create a perfect 600mm cube.

What I forgot to account for was the thickness of the plywood and my crappy skills getting in the way.

I'd bought a book on woodworking and gone out and bought a cheap set of chisels.
Only one of the chisels was sharp enough to do any cutting, and by the time I got through making one pocket for the finger joint, it was immediately apparent that I was not going to finish the project in a short amount of time. I'd recently bought a plunge router attachment for my Dremel, and wanted to use it, but had never actually played with a router before. So I put together a jig and fooled about until I had a working setup.

The jig worked ok, but wasn't exactly at the right height to work effectively. Also I think the Dremel itself isn't quite up to the task of making the depth of cuts required for an accurate join. I experienced a bit of shuddering in the slot which caused uneven fingers and pockets as well as at one point, the depth guide failed and I plunged too far into one pocket. After all of this I was getting the hang of the tool. Close to completing the routing and having a set of fingers that would work ok, the Dremel stopped dead in it's tracks.

I ended up reverting to a saw and chisel arrangement that was less than ideal. I lacked to tools to do the job accurately, and often I lacked the patience and just rushed the cutting, only to have very uneven joints at the end of the day. Somehow I managed to get the front and rear frames glued square. But at some later point, I forgot to do this when trying to get the cube assembled. I'm a family man and have responsibilities, so I was often called away from the job. Due to my impatience to get on with it when I returned to the task, errors began to creep in. The final product means that it's mostly square, but not quite. Front, back, sides and bottom are all ok, but for whatever reason, the lid is not.

It was all glued up in a day, and while that set, I put the panels on. Everything seemed fine, and after letting the wood glue set for an hour or so, I began to implement the rockwool. This is an itchy business. The insulation is quite thick and difficult to compress via hand. I'd also run out of timber, so that I couldn't add any mechanical force to press the rockwool against the sides of the box.

Out of desperation to complete the job before the daylight faded (I have to work outside) I placed my Epiphone Valve Jr cabinet within the frame, inside the exposed rockwool. It was obvious right away that this had the potential to tear the insulation on insertion and removal. Since the shops were closed, I decided to cut up the tarpaulin that covers my work bench. I'd cut it in roughly 700mm sections that I could place over the rockwool and  stapled it around the opening in the cabinet. The tarp is plastic and made the cabinet slide in and out of the box easy and reduced the amount of particles that would be kicked up, reducing the skin irritation caused by handling the stuff.

After sitting about for a week, due to weather and having to work my day job, I decided to change out the tarp for a rough hessian weave. This isn't completely impervious to the dust and itchiness from the Rockwool, but it doesn't make a crinkling sound when moved about, nor is it reflective like the plastic of the tarp.

I tested the cabinet early in the afternoon, with my Epiphone 12" extension speaker driven by the matching 5w head. It did ok, but there was a lot of bass being let out at maximum volume, which was a little dissapointing to say the least. If it didn't cope with five watts, what chance did it have when three times the power was put to the test? As it turned out, I needn't have worried. Insulation in the lid, wasn't a perfect fit, so I augmented it with a picnic blanket! (Simply because I didn't want to mess around with the leftover Rockwool at this point). I'd adjusted this and then plugged in my Fender Princeton Reverb, the results were more in line with what I expected.

The bass trap absorption in the cabinet isn't great, but even when the amp is at full volume, you can have a conversation at a pretty normal level. The house does vibrate a bit, and I'd done the initial test in the kitchen which has a tiled floor. I spoke with one of my neighbours about it and he told me that he could only just hear it whenhe opened his front door. A good sign! The tone from the speaker and microphone is good too, not boxy compressed sound, it just sounds like the mix is up against the grille cloth(which it is). The box isn't air tight, which might actually be a good thing from what I have read.

Were I to do this over, I'd just get a 1200 x 2400 slab of 18mm thick ply cut to size and glue that together, rather than messing about with crazy joinery that I clearly wasn't up to doing well.

Sound samples and more pics to come.

2011 - Fender Princeton Reverb

The year is 2011.

Things have changed.
Gone are the days when a Fender Amp would command a few months wages. Thanks to the GFC and the peculiarities of the stock market, the Australian dollar became strong against the greenback, and the price of owning a new Fender amp dropped to something achievable to mortal men and women. I've owned many nice amps over the years, but for some reason, I've never been 100% satisfied in my sound. The amps I've owned have generally been very nice bits of gear. OK, maybe with the exception of that valvestate I had way back when. By and large, they've had their merits. The Marshall's had the the classic rock crunch, Peavey produced many good amps, similar to Marshall in tone, but generally way more power than I could ever need. My Epiphone's are sweet and simple low power amps, but still loud enough to make the windows rattle in my house.

The Peavey Delta Blues came really close to nailing the sound that I wanted.
A killer amp for a clean tone at high volume with a nice, but somewhat tame reverb.
There's only so much saturation an integrated circuit can provide an inductor.
The Tremolo is a bonus for the Delta Blues too. So from the control panel it would appear that I'v traded down in features, since the Princeton doesn't have a second channel, middle EQ and a boost switch. Also it's rated at half the power.

I'd originally thought about getting an external tank to add to the Delta Blues in order to gain that super drippy surf sound. The Delta is more than up to delivering the goods on the clean channel with this supplement. It performed superbly with the Line 6 Verbzilla pedal. So why not stick with what I had?

Any rational person would have been happy with that setup, and indeed I was. Until the day I was bored on my lunch break and decided to go an harass the guitar stores in town. First I tried the Fender '63 Reverb Reissue through an Orange Tiny Terror. It was nice and I would have bought one on the spot, if it wasn't for the asking price of $1400 in Australia. After that I sought out a Fender Deluxe Reverb at another store. Boy oh boy was that thing nice. Super long drippy dark reverb and the clean tone which had a bottom end that seemed to ring out, threatening to break up if the strings were struck just that little bit harder. I was happy as could be, playing in an isolation booth. I even turned it up as far as it would go. The overdrive was beautiful. And the price was pretty tempting. If I had the cash, I probably would have bought it on the spot.

A week or so went by, I'd been reading up on my amps and thought I'd give the Princeton Reverb a try.
Finding one was easy. At first it seemed just all right. Nice, but not the killer tone that I'd heard from the Deluxe at another store. I went on a mission to try and find a store with both in stock. There isn't much between them in regard to pricing, but I'd read so much about the Princeton being a favourite for recording. Since I do more recording than I do playing with a band, it was definitely an appealing idea.

I finally managed to try them out side by side. And this time I was torn between the amps.
The Deluxe has a slightly bigger sounding reverb and larger speaker, but the Pricneton was pretty nice.
I left the store leaning toward the Deluxe. I still had that magic sound in my head, from the store where I played in the iso-booth. The place I was trying to A/B test the amps was noisy and I am very self conscious about my arthritic playing style.  I left empty handed. But I'd decided to sell some of my gear to purchase an all in one, wonder box.

Mostly I play clean with verb and occasionally tremolo.

A week later, I had raised 2/3 of the cash required to make a purchase. With my lovely ladies' approval I made my way back to the store with a fist full of dollars and a gold card.

This was a tough choice. I walked in there with a 70% leaning toward the Deluxe Reverb.
I A/B'd them back and forth, feature for feature, for an hour or so. Even to the point of plugging the Princeton Reverb into a 12" cabinet. The cabinet wasn't impedance balanced for use with the Fender, and was a little quieter than the on board speaker. In the noisy store, it was hard to tell much more in the bottom end.

I felt that the Deluxe Reverb was stronger in the Bass and Reverb area, but the Princeton Reverb had a nicer tremolo. Both amps have Valve Rectifiers and Tube driven reverb tanks, but the Deluxe uses an opto-coupler on it's tremolo circuit, where the Princeton has a valve biased tremolo. And that was the deciding factor.
The Fender Deluxe Reverb has a Tremolo(Vibrato) that is more of a Square wave and the Fender Princeton Reverb has a smoother more Triangle shaped Tremolo.

It was the throbbing Tremolo, rather than the chopp chop chop that won me over.
The reverb sound was so close that I'd be happy with either. Just to be sure I cranked them both up. The deluxe is slightly louder, but the difference between 15 and 22 watts is pretty negligible when it comes down to measuring output by decibels. All it really means is that the Deluxe would stay cleaner, longer.

I'd brought a little trolley with me, and as it turned out, my choice of the Princeton was a better choice for carting it home, as my octopus straps were barely adequate to keep the thing upright. Anyway I walked home with it rather than get on a packed tram. It wasn't too bad actually. The amp is only 12kg and I walk to and from work every day anyway. Getting it through our non standard doorways was a little tricky. But I managed it. The night I got it home I was only able to play for a short time. But the amp did sound very nice. Actually it exceeded my expectations with the Mosrite. Lots and lots of bottom end, with far more volume than could be used in my home.

Today I've had the house to myself and managed to turn the amp up to the mighty level of two on the dial.
At this level, everything in the lounge room vibrated heavily, actually it was as if the house was having a guitar quake (My Epiphone Valve Jr gets half way before that happens).

My doubts on the quality of the tone were completely unfounded. The Fender Princeton Reverb has the same resonant clean tone as I experienced with it's bigger brother. Either amp would be an excellent choice, but for me the Princeton Reverb is the perfect choice.

I know this reissue has a PCB and isn't strictly to vintage spec, but I don't think that really matters. Fender has made an excellent product and it's supported by a generous warranty. Hopefully I'll never need it, but if I do, I've kept the receipt in a safe place (unlike my Dremel, which died today while making an isolation cabinet).

I don't even see the need to get it biased, change the speaker, or valves. The stock amp, or at least my stock amp sounds warm and recording ready.

Man I wish I was getting a kickback from Fender for the above review.....

2009 - J&D Luthiers Jagmaster - Modded to the max!

I picked this sucker up at the local pawn broker (can you see a pattern here?).
The electrics were shot, it wasn't in the best condition, but hey that is exactly what I was after.

You may have noticed that I sort of have an obsession for modifying things. Not everything I get, but things which need just a little bit of awesome added. That's what this guitar needed.
But it got a whole bunch of awesome poured all over it.

The first thing I did was replace the stock tremolo with a Stepmax tremolo, which allows full vibrato (both up and down) in the same place as a Fender style synchronised tremolo which only allows down and return to pitch.

This system works pretty well, but might not be to everyone's  taste. I will say that it's a lot easier to setup than a Floyd Rose style tremolo (I'll stick to my vintage style pivot tremolo thanks!).

After this I added in a Varitone capacitor bank, which allowed for 8 or 12 capacitors to be selected for different EQ curves. Fortunately the pickups that J&D used on this guitar were of the four wire variety and afforded the opportunity to add switched to split the coils and invert the phase of the humbuckers.

I also changed the neck to a reverse headstock Fender style, just for looks. It made tuning the damn thing a little harder though. Even so, it did look pretty sweet.

The coolest mod by far was the Sustainer.
I wrapped 8ohms of wire around one half of the neck pickup and hooked that up to a simple 386 based amplifier which was driven by the bridge pickup. The effect is similar to controlled feedback by standing in front of an amplifier and holding a note.

Sure Fernandes do it better, but I did it for about $12 in parts and a couple of hours labour.
If I've done my math right, it should be able to deliver 108 individual tones plus the sustainer function.

The guitar was sold so that I could get the Guyatone LG127t I posted about a few months back.
I have no idea who bought it, but I hope it's bringing them some far out sounds.

Infinite Sustain Project

DIY Sustainer Tutorial

2011 - Squier Affinity Jazz Bass V

Number two for the year is my spanking new (second hand) Squier Jazz Bass five string.
I picked this up for a little more than US retail, but significantly less that Australian retail.
For some reason everything costs twice as much in Australia than it does across the Pacific.

Growing up I had been led to believe that Squier products were inferior instruments and kind of an embarrassment to play one when you're past high school.

I was lied to.

Sure they're not full fledged Fender instruments, but when you find a good one, they come damn close!
In my case I think I got lucky. But I also believe that the manufacturing has become more consistent and of a higher quality over the last 10 years or so.

Mine is cream coloured with a white scratch plate.
The body is alder, maple neck and rosewood fretboard.

Even though I often complain that my fingers are on the stubby side, the wider neck doesn't really pose a problem (as long as I play sitting down anyway). The strings on the 5 string are a little closer together than on my Ibanez, and I find it so much easier to play because of it.

The neck is a satin finish, smooth and fast to play.

What I like most about this instrument is the tone. It sounds just like what I think a bass should sound like.
The pickups are stock, but they sound great. When both pickups are full, there is zero hum. This is a great advantage over the other bass I have as my home has severe problems with electromagnetic interference.
So while I love the sound of single coils, if I want a clean guitar sound, humbuckers are the only way to go.

I'd never really played a five string before and always thought they were a little showy. Once I spent some time noodling about, I discovered that the low B is a great substitute for playing lines otherwise reserved for the upper A string. It adds much meat to the mix and leaves those upper frequencies clear for other instruments.

On open notes the B does flap about quite a bit, but I've been told that it is a pretty common thing for five strings to do.

Prior to purchase, I went around to the various guitar stores in town and played both Squier and Fender basses to compare to this one. Quite honestly I think this is pretty damn close to the middle range Fender instruments as far as being comfortable to play. The tone is great and I doubt that I'd be more pleased if I bought a bass for $1000 more. This one is a bargain and a keeper.

1996 - Fender Telecaster - Made in Mexico

This one came along when in the summer after I turned 17.
It was dented and chipped on the back and had a Seymour Duncan Hot-Rail in the bridge.
Perfect!

I was playing in a death Metal Band at the time and had the obligatory  mid 90's long hair.
Old ladies would cross the street when they saw me coming!

This guitar was about to have a very hard life.
I still hadn't gotten over my customising phase and wanted the paint gone back to wood.
After seeing Jimi set fire to his strat, I figured setting fire to the paint with lighter fluid would cause it to bubble off. I didn't know much about physics at the time, but I could see that the paint wasn't doing anything!
When the flames went out, the paint was still in tact!

I must've got my hands on an orbital sander as the paint is quite thick and I'd never have had the patience to get through the lot by hand.

Eventually I got it back to the primer on most of the body, which let the wood show through, but protect the body from at least some of my sweat. The neck had all of the finish stripped off with a razor blade. Super smooth! Can't say the same for the edges of the body. As mentioned earlier, I was in a death metal band at the time and we played fast! Every show we did caused me great discomfort and actually caused me to blister and bleed on more than one occasion. I had a scar for years afterward.

This is what the guitar looked like when I bought it, again I never took a photo of it when new.

At some point I began hanging around with this hippie guy from Highschool.

HE was pretty good at painting, so I commissioned him to paint my guitar in a vista similar to the record cover of Amorphis' "Tales From The Thousand Lakes". It looked pretty cool, but he never finished the job and it didn't get sealed, so every time I played the thing I got oil paint on my clothes.

So back to wood it went. And I took out the neck pickup.

The cavity was too hard to sand out, so I cut up pieces from the comic book "The Maxx" and glued them in.

I used the characters Julie & Mr Gone as there were no suitable illustrations of The Maxx himself to place in the cavity.

Modded with a Teisco Style vibrato.

The Guitar stayed that way for years. I'd forgotten to hook up the ground wire from the bridge to the control plate, so I wedged a flat spanner across the gap. It looked so punk! Another thing I was obsessed with was removing the controls from my guitars. I bypassed everything and just wired one pickup to the output.

Some crazy idea about minimalism.

Around 2005 I drilled holes through the body for added sustain. They don't line up, but the guitar has less twang and more bang. Gives it a different tone. Suits the humbucker pickup.

Repaired the holes from the vibrato with a bit of wood filler and olive oil.

More recently I tried to install a Teisco style vibrato on the guitar abut couldn't get it to sit right and it just didn't want to stay in tune. The guitar just sat there waiting for me to bring it some love again.

A friend of mine had seen a photo of it with a bakelite scratch plate(as pictured above) and wanted to buy it straight away. He's a big fan of Springsteen and always wanted a guitar as seen on the cover of "Born to run".

We'd been drinking heavily at the time and I thought nothing of his offer afterward.

But sure enough, the next week he was still keen for it.

I told him the brief history and he was still keen for it.

At the time, I was in the middle of getting some cash together to buy a Mosrite so I agreed to it.

I spent the next week giving it some care, fixed the neck angle, filled the holes from the tremolo and setting up the action and intonation. The guitar was back in business. It actually plays and sounds quite nice.

Since there's only one pickup in there, I modified the selector switch to be a variable capacitor for the tone control, which works nicely.

I now kinda didn't want to let it go, but kept telling myself I did.

So I kept my side of the bargain and just yesterday have passed it on to my friend, who I know will look after it. In any case I suppose I could always get it back if I really wanted it.

The only thing I din't like about the guitar really was that it hurt my hand to play. The neck is just a little too wide for my stubby fingers. I have a feeling it'll come back to the family one day.

God Given by TheAwesomePowerOfRockets