Feeling minorly Hendrixy...

[picker]

So, I ordered THIS as my Christmas present to me...

[KuruPrionz]

Carl Martin makes some nice stuff. I like that the jacks are on the far end instead of the sides. I don't understand why everybody doesn't do that.

 

Love me some Hendrix, have been thinking it's time to finish a whammy bar guitar project. I haven't used a whammy in a long time but it would be a nice addition to the studio rig.

[picker]

I can dig that. Somehow, I unintentionally moved away from whammy bar guitars some years back. I did go more for Gibson-ish humbucker type guitars, but it wasn't intentional that I stopped using whammys. I loved the locking tuner type setups, like the PRS's, Strat Pluses, and the one Tom Anderson I had. I had a bit of a vocabulary of techniques I liked, admittedly limited, but fun and useful to me.

 

I've thought about getting a Stetsbar or something like that for my Hamer or ES-340, but they are SOOOOO expensive, and slack storage issues seem likely with the strings breaking on the nut at an angle.

 

I've recently put together some partscaster strats with locking tuners, and I bought a Mexican Hendrix Strat, but the bars don't seem to go as far down as I used to get strats to. Believe it or not, I had really good results with a Jazzmaster vibrato tailpiece I had a long time ago. It didn't go as extremely low down as a strat, etc., but it stayed in tune and worked quite easily.

 

I was too poor to afford a Floyd or Kahler, or any of the other designs. So, I much lack experience with locking nut vibrato systems, and I gather that's more a blessing than a curse. Seems like a lot of folks didn't like the tone the got out of them.

[Winston Psmith]

That Purple Moon looks like fun, but it's showing as "Currently Unavailable"? I say run a Reverse Delay into it, and go wild!

 

Re: Trems & Whammy Bars - Guitar Fetish has a line of Floyd-licensed Trems that are very affordable, and where your strings run THROUGH the Tailpiece section, so you don't have to cut off your ball ends anymore. Not my thing, really, but definitely an improvement over the old system.

[Larryz]

Have fun with the new pedal Picker! Purple haze all in my brain...

[Danzilla]

I almost bought one of those a few years ago. Enjoy it, Picker!

[KuruPrionz]

I can dig that. Somehow, I unintentionally moved away from whammy bar guitars some years back. I did go more for Gibson-ish humbucker type guitars, but it wasn't intentional that I stopped using whammys. I loved the locking tuner type setups, like the PRS's, Strat Pluses, and the one Tom Anderson I had. I had a bit of a vocabulary of techniques I liked, admittedly limited, but fun and useful to me.

 

I've thought about getting a Stetsbar or something like that for my Hamer or ES-340, but they are SOOOOO expensive, and slack storage issues seem likely with the strings breaking on the nut at an angle.

 

I've recently put together some partscaster strats with locking tuners, and I bought a Mexican Hendrix Strat, but the bars don't seem to go as far down as I used to get strats to. Believe it or not, I had really good results with a Jazzmaster vibrato tailpiece I had a long time ago. It didn't go as extremely low down as a strat, etc., but it stayed in tune and worked quite easily.

 

I was too poor to afford a Floyd or Kahler, or any of the other designs. So, I much lack experience with locking nut vibrato systems, and I gather that's more a blessing than a curse. Seems like a lot of folks didn't like the tone the got out of them.

 

Before the Floyd Rose system was available in a guitar and had to be installed, I was the only authorized Floyd Rose installation station in the Central Vally of California. The manager at one of the local stores (remember those?) bought the installation kit, let me borrow it and I made jigs from that set that I still have. Of course, now it is easy to get a guitar with the Floyd installed and that's nice but on the other hand, my experience with many different Floyds is that NOTHING comes close to the Original Floyd Rose made by Schaller in Germany. The steel of the base plate is incredibly hard and the knife edges last forever. The overall level of precision and quality is just simply superior in all ways to anything else I've installed or set up.

 

I've got one of the "pre-fine tuner" Floyds from way back when and a guitar that is ready to wire up, set up and play. I need to pluck my noggin from my arse and get it done. I used to use it and once the strings were settled in it stayed in tune better than just about any guitar I've ever owned. The fatal flow with all Floyds is that breaking a string at a gig means you MUST have a backup guitar. At least that is true with the floating setup, which I hugely prefer.

It takes too long to put a new string on, stretch it out and get the whole thing back in tune again. I find the same is true for the Bigsby vibrato bars, that is probably the most tedious and annoying method of "securing" the end of the string that I've ever seen. I have no idea why they didn't modernize that, "cork sniffers vs reality check" and the cork sniffers won.

 

I have a Hoyer sort of Bigsby copy and it has a plate with small holes to put the strings through. Once they are in place, they are not going to pop off like the ball ends do on those little posts on the Bigsby. Ugh.

 

Yes, the tone is different on a Floyd. It is a "string tone" since everything on the bridge is locked down and it does not transfer energy from the strings to anywhere else. Very even, tons of sustain and BRIGHT. But, amps have treble controls, guitars usually have treble rolloff (mudrange) knobs . I think it's more a "reptile brain" thing that some guitarists have - they set their knobs and that's that. Having gigged 9 Mesa amps over the years, I am used to the fact that I WILL need to tweak my knobs a bit at just about every gig and certainly with every guitar change unless I brought duplicates. So I agree that Floyd equipped guitars sound different, I profoundly disagree that they sound "bad."

I will argue that impenetrable and unchangeable "Comfort Zones" are bad. Foof.

 

I've had 3 Jazzmasters over the years, they DO stay in tune well, so do Mustangs. A bit of pencil lead (graphite) in the nut slots and you can get pretty crazy with them without much of a shift in tuning - provided the strings aren't new.

It's not my favorite tone or neck but they are great guitars.

 

I had my whammy tricks too, the usual ones plus "The Kitten in The Blender" and the ever popular "Motorcycle Crash". Having seen Jeff Beck live and watching his videos makes me want to try one again, truly a master of the electric guitar and he does some beautiful stuff with that whammy bar.

[desertbluesman]

So, I ordered THIS as my Christmas present to me...

 

Looks real cool have fun with it....

[Caevan O’Shite]

So, I ordered THIS as my Christmas present to me...

 

Sounds great! One-stop shop- ehr, stomp- for set-it-and-forget-it Hendrix, Trower, Gilmour- and [YOUR NAME HERE] 'vibe 'n' fuzz tones. Throw a li'l echo after that... !

 

 

[video:youtube]

 

 

 

I say run a Reverse Delay into it, and go wild!

Mission accepted- that is, something like that, simulated backwards-recording sounds, would be EXACTLY what I would be throwin' into that Carl Martin Purple Moon before long, using my guitars volume-knob, my VFE BumbleBee "Slow Gear"/"volume-swell" type pedal, or my volume-pedal. Sometimes I'm all about that!

[picker]

So, I ordered THIS as my Christmas present to me...

 

Sounds great! One-stop shop- ehr, stomp- for set-it-and-forget-it Hendrix, Trower, Gilmour- and [YOUR NAME HERE] 'vibe 'n' fuzz tones. Throw a li'l echo after that... !

I say run a Reverse Delay into it, and go wild!

Mission accepted- that is, something like that, simulated backwards-recording sounds, would be EXACTLY what I would be throwin' into that Carl Martin Purple Moon before long, using my guitars volume-knob, my VFE BumbleBee "Slow Gear"/"volume-swell" type pedal, or my volume-pedal. Sometimes I'm all about that!

 

I hadn't thought of the "reverse echo" thing, great idea! I used to have a Morley Attack Control pedal, one of the ones that had an "electric pick". When it toughed the strings, it would clamp the volume down to nothing, then bring it back up at a rate controlled by the treadle. Way back was slow, down was fast. I did some reverse echo tricks with it. Like all the Morley pedals back then, it was a huge, clunky, chrome plated monstrosity that took up waaaaay to much real estate on my pedal board, but I sometimes wish I had it back.

[Caevan O’Shite]

So, I ordered THIS as my Christmas present to me...

 

Sounds great! One-stop shop- ehr, stomp- for set-it-and-forget-it Hendrix, Trower, Gilmour- and [YOUR NAME HERE] 'vibe 'n' fuzz tones. Throw a li'l echo after that... !

I say run a Reverse Delay into it, and go wild!

Mission accepted- that is, something like that, simulated backwards-recording sounds, would be EXACTLY what I would be throwin' into that Carl Martin Purple Moon before long, using my guitars volume-knob, my VFE BumbleBee "Slow Gear"/"volume-swell" type pedal, or my volume-pedal. Sometimes I'm all about that!

 

I hadn't thought of the "reverse echo" thing, great idea! I used to have a Morley Attack Control pedal, one of the ones that had an "electric pick". When it toughed the strings, it would clamp the volume down to nothing, then bring it back up at a rate controlled by the treadle. Way back was slow, down was fast. I did some reverse echo tricks with it. Like all the Morley pedals back then, it was a huge, clunky, chrome plated monstrosity that took up waaaaay to much real estate on my pedal board, but I sometimes wish I had it back.

My favorite way of imitating "backwards" recorded guitar is to use volume-swells and then abruptly end the note(s) by rudely muting the string(s) in a noisy way, simulating the reversed envelope-fade and initial attack put on the end of the note(s). While that's not exactly reverse delay, it still sounds cool with reverb and echo, and some delays allow you to have repeats or multi-taps get increasingly louder, also kinda-sorta copping that...