Check the obvious stuff first, bonehead!

I've been away from the blog for a while so I thought I'd share a recent boneheaded move with you all:

I pulled up to a gig recently after being hit just a day and a half earlier with the worst sinus infection of my life. Wondering if I'll even be upright after the gig, I unload my truck and setup my stuff. Keep in mind that in addition to my guitar rig, I've recently added a keyboard and just days prior had finished wiring up a rolling rack that holds a combination of mixer/monitor gear for in ear monitoring as well as my acoustic processing. In other words, my portion of the load in and setup is always a little more involved than the rest of the band and I'm already feeling crappy.

I'm there early and, though feeling pretty terrible physically, am looking forward to playing. This is a relatively new venue for us, so its kind of exciting and I knew our little following would be there so I really wanted to make a good showing. This would soon prove to be a chellenge.

Immediately upon making the initial connections and testing out my various signals, I realized how terrible my guitar sounded. I've put more time and money into this rig than I care to admit, but it has always served me well and I take great pride in my tone and the frequent comments I receive from complete strangers about it. I did make some recent guitar and pickup changes and even halved the output power of my beloved Pure64 amp, so I'm immediately thinking it was one of those things that I did that was causing this terrible, thin, high-endy, honky, quacky sound to come out of my rig. Maybe my new Parker DF524 really was thin sounding as I had feared or that I really needed my recently ordered Manlius pickups to arrive. Maybe those TV Jones pickups in my Gretsch Pro Jet were adjusted improperly. But the SG sounded crappy too, and that's always been consistently wonderful. Maybe I had lost a tube or had a funky cord somewhere in my chain. Or maybe it was that occasionally temperamental switch on one of my drive pedals acting up again. The point is that I probably could have gotten better tone out of a 1984 Peavey Decade (remember those?) than I was hearing right now. All I kept thinking is that this sound guy - who kind of had a chip on his shoulder already - thinks I am a complete id10t with too much money to spend on gear I didn't have any clue how to use.

Still having a lot of sinus pressure and with show time coming closer and closer, I had to do whatever necessary to move on. So I played with the EQ on the amp, tried to dial out the badness and dial in some goodness in ways that I've never ran the EQ with only little success and went on with the show. Probably should have just brought in my backup amp, a very cool little Fender Super Champ XD and played the gig with that. Mic'd up it would have been just fine.

So we start the set, and the band's a little rough anyway. I'm sick, my tone sucks, its only our second gig with IEMs, we're at a new club and I'm just trying to get through the night. Set 1 done and over with. OK - got through it. What the h-ll is wrong with my stuff?!

Second set starts and we're starting to cook and finally get into our groove. The people are into it, I'm feeling worse and my tone still sucks. Some of the new songs we introduced tonight also sucked, but we move on. Maybe its just the pressure in my ears causing me to hear things in a degraded state, but everything else sounds great in the IEMs including the pristine clarity of my sinus pressure induced ultra nasaly voice through an all too accurate Shure Beta 87. My God what a great mic, but I digress...

The second set is nearing a close, thank God, and it turns out the elusive problem is about to be revealed. We approach what would normally be one of my favorite times in the night where I strap on (yeah, I chuckled too) my beloved Gibson Custom VOS SG in preparation to cover a couple of G&R songs that I usually nail and a great sing along by Journey to close the set. Knowing I'll be using my wah soon (the awesome Fulltone Clyde Deluxe), I look down to ensure the chicken head knobs on the side are in the proper position and I NOTICE THAT THE FREAKIN' WAH LED INDICATOR WAS ALREADY ON! It had been the entire night.

I spent nearly two thirds of the night playing through a half-cocked wah pedal and didn't even know it. My God I am so stupid and should probably just give up playing let along my quest for ultimate tone!

OK, so maybe I can legitimately blame this oversight on some extreme head congestion, but COME ON! I guess the moral of this longer than necessary story is: check the obvious stuff first, bonehead!

God Bless,

J.Vincent

Quick update on the PRS DGT

Well, its has been a while since my initial post on the Paul Reed Smith DGT, and I promised a more complete sonic evaluation after a live gig. I've had a few live shows since then, and the DGT delivered overall, but with some important points of note:

The DGT Pickups
These are really interesting and took some getting used to. As expected, the split humbucker tones are decent, but still sound like split humbuckers. These are credible for some stratty or even more tele-like tones, but definitely usable, but come with the predictable considerable drop in output level when operating in single coil mode.

Moving away from the split aspects of these pickups, the DGT pups in general are incredibly warm. I might even go so far as to say they approach dark. They are still fairly articulate, but not as tight in the low end as I had hoped. When playing the guitar alone/without band through my live rig, the guitar is noticeably warm. My rig is already very warm, so this level of warmth/bordering on darkness was considerable and immediately noticeable. The interesting thing is that when playing with the band, that seemingly overly warm tone still managed to cut through the mix but in an incredibly smooth way; especially in the lower mids. I attribute this primarily to the quality and sonic characteristics of my Pure Sixty-Four based rig, but the pickups remained articulate though some muddiness did enter the picture with higher drive settings on the lower strings when palm-muting. This guitar sticks out among all of my others as clearly the warmest, but there's something still desirable about that; so much so that I haven't went running for new pickups just yet. I'll have to give it some more time before I make a final determination. You should also know that I replaced the stock PRS 11s with D'Addario XL 10.5s.

A couple of final sonic notes: 1) PRS, probably due to DG's preferences, installed a treble retention circuit on the bridge volume, but not on the neck. This is easily added, but kind of a bummer it didn't come that way. 2) The impact of the volume pots when operating both pickups together is dramatic; you go from full volume to almost off within a very short rotation. This makes intricate on-the-fly adjustments while playing live a little dicey. I've never really like that LP-like dual volume thing anyway and may end up wiring the guitar for master volume.

The PRS Bridge
Another piece of information that I feel compelled to report on is the bridge, and even right out of the case and eventually with new strings I have experienced some issues with the bridge not returning to perfect tuning even after just subtle vibrato. I took some advice from PRS and oiled the knife edges on the tremolo, and while there was some improvement, its not what I would expect it to be. Because I have need for occasional drop tuning and because I wasn't ready to block the tremolo permanently or semi-permanently, I removed a Tremol-No from my Charvel and installed it on the PRS (note: if you will be doing the same, then get the large clamp type; the pin will work with some persuasion, but its probably not worth the effort - I just happened to have the pin version available). The Tremol-No allows me to play as if the tremolo is blocked, free or 'dive bomb' only (which isn't really practical in the true sense with the PRS trem), which is nice, but the trem is still not returning perfectly, resulting in some tuning instability. The Tremol-No may be further complicating the issue, but I haven't yet taken the time to bring the issue to final resolution. I'm not big on actually playing with tremolos that aren't of the Floyd Rose variety, so I may just end up blocking this one like I have done with my Strats.

Conclusions
The PRS DGT is a special guitar for sure. Its neck (read below) is in my opinion the perfect neck in profile and scale length, the unique DGT electronics/switching are overall versatile and useful, and the pickups, while incredibly warm, are pleasant to play through and listen to. This guitar is a really neat flavoring to the modern PRS and in my opinion is a very versatile, work-horse of an instrument with possibly the most unique neck (and my personal favorite) available on a PRS today.

A drink from the top shelf: the Paul Reed Smith DGT

For anyone who has actually been reading this blog, you might recall from earlier posts that I've acquired a high end amp and use high end pedals. You also have seen my general disdain for overly priced guitars and the enjoyment I get out of making relatively cheap guitars sound really good. While I have generally succeeded in the endeavor, I've never really got any of these guitars to play spectacularly. Luthiery is not in my list of skills, so my setup work is generally limited to truss rod and bridge tweaks. What I've been finding at our recent gigs is that, while I love the tone coming from my amp, I am usually fighting with my guitar, and that has been diminishing some of the joy I get from playing live. As a result, I returned to gear obsession mode (as my wife puts it anyway, I call it 'focus'), and had been contemplating what high end guitar I could treat myself to; preferably one that felt and played as great as the rest of my rig sounds. Turns out I found precisely the instrument.

I won't share all of the details of the madness that goes through my mind when deciding even what type of guitar I should look for, but in short, I wanted something more like a Les Paul, without being a Les Paul. I've had spotty experience with the quality of even their USA instruments, and I need better upper fret access and overall more versatility. I never liked the looks of an SG, which is too bad because its actually a really usable configuration and at a far more acceptable price point. So as I started coming down from the delusion that I'd actually pay $4,000 plus for a truly custom built McNaught or similar small-builder instrument, I found myself reminiscing about the PRS guitars I've owned in the past: an original late 80's Custom 24 10 top with birds, which I was too young and dumb to have owned and then sold (yeah, its worth a LOT now), a 90's Standard which I was smart enough to love but dumb enough to sell and most recently a single cut, which I just didn't like. So zeroing in on possibly getting a PRS again, I remembered how I preferred their wide thin neck to the wide fat, but that both necks seemed just a little too wide for my liking. I also wanted something at least a little more versatile than a typical hum-hum/3-way pickup config and remembered that, while PRS has a neat 5-way rotary knob, that config didn't really get me what I wanted, which is essentially occasional access to some decent, basic single coil tones. Then I stumbled upon the PRS DGT (David Grissom Tremolo) signature model. Whoa, what a find!

After some initial research on the specs of the PRS DGT and a great deal of feedback on some of the more 'credible' forum posters, like the good folks over on The Gear Page and some compelling YouTube videos, some feature David G. himself, I sought out to find a DGT Gold Top. I actually had a hard time finding one, but eventually did at Magdon Music, who had very competitive pricing, and setup the guitar to my specs. Upon receiving the guitar and conducting an initial inspection, unplugged in my office, I immediately realized this was a special instrument. And kudos needs to go to Magdon Music for very fast shipping and a spot-on setup; the best I've experienced to date.

Aside from the classy look of the guitar, which is superb cosmetically, the neck just felt right. Its ever so slightly narrower than the standard PRS neck carve, and just a little deeper than the wide thin, but not nearly as baseball bat like as the wide fat. This model has higher frets on it too, which contributed to an extremely smooth and buttery feel. The guitar is a 25" scale, and I wanted something closer to the LP scale than a Strat and this is a great compromise between the two; ideal in my opinion. Unplugged, the guitar just rings out loudly and the playability is amazing. Never have I played a neck so comfortable; even with action a little higher than I might normally like, it seems to play faster than I would have expected. I believe the fretboard radius is only 10", so the strings have to ride a little higher to avoid fretting out when executing severe bending on the higher strings.

The guitar was strung from the factory with 11s, and even though I tune down a half-step, I quickly opted to replace with 10.5s (the GHS Gilmour Red Set, which has a .50 low E). I often need drop-D tuning, so I pillaged the Tremol-No (best trem stabilizer out there) from my Charvel San Dimas and with some complication got it installed on the PRS so I could run full floating or either dive only or full lock so I can do the drop-D stuff.

Plugged in, I haven't been able to give the guitar a fair shake. I love my little Fender Super Champ XD, but its still an inexpensive production amp, and I won't really know how the guitar truly sounds until I crank it through the Pure 64 this weekend. Even if the pickups need to be changed, the DGT delivers in every other way (and changing pickups is easy). My impression of the pickups so far even through the little Fender is that they'll probably be very acceptable. No humbucker sounds perfect when split, but I sense these will be passable, especially in a live situation, though I have no expectation this guitar would ever replace a Strat for that definitive Strat tone. Its definitely closer to an LP-style replacement, but really has its own identity and character.

I'll update this blog with a tone evaluation after this weekend's gig. Can't wait to let her rip!

Play good, live well and may God Bless!

- JV

$200 guitar project, Part III: Complete

Its been a while, and I'm still not 'used' to having a blog, but I figured I'd follow-up on the Xaviere XV-500 project. Cutting to the chase, I still consider the guitar an amazing value, but I did run into a few things that gave me some pause soon after a wrote about Part II.

As I mentioned before, the setup of the guitar - after a few tweaks - remains decent, even pretty good. While adjusting the truss rod however, I got a big scare in that I ended up feeling some play in the truss rod nut. I thought that perhaps it was stripped or that I was using the wrong size wrench, but upon further inspection I realized that there;s about a quarter-turn of play before the nut engages the rod. The rod does seem to be moving, but I honestly wonder if the nut will cease to bight one day, rendering the neck un-adjustable. The frets are not perfectly level, so I do get some odd buzzing here and there, but the guitar remains to be very playable and frankly very enjoyable to play.

I received the Manlius Hot Rod 59 set and upon replacing pots and the toggle switch, I came upon the utter hack of a routing job. They just butcher the insides of these things and you end up with inconsistencies thickness of the top; some pots sit higher or lower than others, requiring some creativity with washers to get everything even. I opted to abandon the traditional Les Paul-like vol-vol/tone-tone config and went with a master vol and tone, disconnecting the others and leaving them there as dummies and then installing a cap and resistor across the volume to retain treble. Regarding the new pickups, the Manlius set is wonderful; better than the mass produced PAF clones. Its difficult to explain, but they seem to have more dimension than their machine wound cousins.

Soon after receiving this guitar, I was reminded of how poor access is to the upper frets on this type of guitar (any LP style instrument with a traditional neck joint for that matter). As such, I abandoned my plan to add a piezo bridge to make this one ultra versatile and just left it as is with the new pickups and electronics. I have since gigged with it with very good results; feels and sounds like any Les Paul I've ever played, and with a total investment of less than $400.

One thing that remains to be modified, and something that I read about on the forums and can confirm for anyone interested is with regard to the tuning machines. The tuners aren't the worst out there, but they do sometimes slip and allow strings to go flat. I'm a seasoned player and well versed in re-stringing techniques, stretching and seating and all that, and while tuning stability is generally good, every once in a while something will go out of whack on a string or two. For true gigability, you really do need new tuners.

So all in all, I really like this guitar, and it serves the need which was to give me access to Les Paul playability and sound, and it does exactly that at a bargain basement price. And another kudos should go out to Manlius guitar pickups for their excellent design and incredibly reasonable pricing! If you're looking for a hand-wound, cost effective alternative to the usual pickups manufacturers, give these guys a chance!

Play good, live well and my God bless!

$200 Guitar Project, Part II: Reciept of the Xaviere XV-500

I received the Xaviere XV-500 via UPS and promptly unpacked it for initial inspection. The guitar was nicely double-boxed, appropriately wrapped and adequately protected during shipment. This is important because I did not order the optional hard shell case. What I noticed immediately was the striking Lemon Drop finish on flame veneer (yes, this is a Flame veneer but on top of a 3/4" thick maple cap). The color just pops, the flame is adequately deep and is very attractive. More importantly, the second thing I noticed upon handling the guitar was that it feels VERY much like the Les Paul Standards I am familiar with. This guitar feels in heft, balance and neck very close to the real thing. Even the finish has a high quality feel to it. The guitar in no way feels cheap at all, and if you dislike the headstock shape as much as I did in the pictures, you'll be relieved to hear it looks much better in person.

The neck has a contour that feels very similar to the Gibson 60s slim taper, but perhaps a little more substantial, but my no means overly chunky and not quite to the rounded 50s contour which I never liked. This neck feels nice and fits naturally in the hand. When strummed unplugged, the guitar continued to surprise with a lot of volume, resonance and sustain even with the factory strings, which are nothing special.

Fit and finish wise, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the ends of the frets were finished, but the frets themselves are not polished. Not unexpected in this class yet something I'll need to correct. I noticed some kind of blemish in the back of the neck (looks more like a manufacturing process oops and is under the finish) and a little knot in the fretboard wood, though it was still smooth, just a little unsightly in that area. The fretboard is also very light in color as compared to higher end rosewood fretboards, but I suspect a cleaning and oiling will improve this. I suppose the only somewhat off putting thing I noticed was some kind of finish issue on the tip of the horn running the whole length of that edge from top to back. It looks/feels like something wore off the finish along that edge and I can't think of what would have caused that. Thankfully however it really isn't noticeable and looks more like wear. There's a tiny finish chip on the treble side of the nut and a strange little finish flaw on the headstock next to the G tuner. Lastly, I noticed a little bit of a clear finish run along a section of the body binding. Aside from these flaws, which really are quite minor and to most people wouldn't even be visible, the finish seems to be nicely applied. The top looks great and the back and neck are the expected reddish stain over mahogany.

I recall Guitar Fetish claims they set these up before shipment, and while the guitar was pretty close to being in tune, they hadn't stretched the strings or attempted to improve the very high action. After a couple of minutes I was able to seat the strings and lower the bridge for much better playability, but I'm still going to do some more work later on. Even with the bridge cranked all the way down it seems the action could and should be lower thought its perfectly playable at the moment. The neck seems true and I ran into no immediate issues with bending notes all over the neck. Maybe a slightly high fret here or there, but really very good and better than many guitars priced two to three times as much.

Overall I am pleasantly surprised with the substantial specs and decent quality of this $209 guitar. Its surprising for this price range and it easily compares if not surpasses what I've seen from Epiphones costing three times as much. I bought this guitar for a platform and intend to replace all electronics and hardware, and for that I can already tell this is a GREAT platform and would be even at twice the price. Even if left stock, this is no toy. I just can't comprehend how they can actually sell this thing for $209. Unbelievable.

Stay tuned for the transformation...

Can a $200 guitar sound great? Part I

I've spent a great deal of time and money building up my guitar rig. I have an amp that will never need to be replaced (maybe just augmented with others) and a near complete pedal board that gives me everything tonally I need currently and for the forseeable future. You can see this rig in one of my earliest posts. Guitar-wise, I'm very pleased with my current arsenal, but I'm still lacking a couple of fundamental instruments; the gap I'm currently working on filling is that which is left by the absence of a Les Paul type guitar. Having played the real deal in the past, I am well aware of what a Les Paul should be, so I started out on an endeavor to choose which Gibson I'd be saving for. I quickly realized however, that these guitars have become grossly and in my opinion unjustifiably over-priced, so I started contemplating the alternative approach; find a good LP type platform, and replace all of the electronics and hardware. As you'll read below, this approach worked wonders on my Dave Murray-inspired Highway One project, so why not do this with an LP? Now all I need to do is find a suitable platform.



I had hoped to go with a lower end USA Gibson until I realized that the faded series is chambered, has the 50s neck (I prefer something more 60s like) and lacked a maple top. After all, the thick maple cap is in my opinion what a real LP type guitar is all about, so on went my search. Virtually all of the other mainstream manufacturers, including Epiphone, lacked a thick maple cap. It turns out Agile guitars offers one on their $650 instrument, which looked like it would fill the bill until I stumbled upon this brand called Xaviere and their $209 XV-500. I did a lot of research, and I kept coming up with a solid guitar that lacked decent hardware and electronics. Bingo! And some how, this company manages to sell this guitar for $209 yet provides a long neck tenon, a 3/4" maple cap and mahogany back and neck with a rosewood fret board. The base ingredients of that legendary Les Paul tone.



This is only Part I of at least another posting or two to come. At this point I've ordered the guitar and have yet to receive it. I also ordered a set of Manlius Hot Rod 59 pickups, which are hand wound in Syracuse, NY and somehow sell for less than half some of the other boutique makers. I own pickups from the top shelf makers such as WCR and Harmonic Design, so I'm very curious to see how Manlius stacks up. I expect to replace hardware as well but have not made any decisions other than the bridge will have to be of the piezo variety as I intend for this guitar to be nearly as versatile as my main axe, which is currently the Highway One described below. Even if total investment approaches $1,000, if this guitar can compete with a USA Standard or Traditional in playability and tone, then I've really stumbled on to something. Even if I had sprang for the $2,300 plus real thing, I'd still be replacing the pickups and installing a piezo bridge adding hundreds more.



So stay tuned for receipt of the new guitar and a report on my progress. I've had success in making middle of the road guitars in the $600 range sound and play great, but I've never tried to do so with a guitar as inexpensive as the Xaviere. Does it really have it where it counts? Check back and see!

Play often, play well, and may God bless!

Breaking Barriers: the Fender Super Champ XD

You might have read in earlier posts about my main guitar rig, which is centered around a Pure Sixty-Four Mean Street Classic 6V6 with matching 1x12 cabinet loaded with an Austin Speaker Works KTS-70. This rig is a monster tone and volume wise, and even though it is by many standards very portable, it along with my pedal board is still more than I prefer to transport back and forth to rehearsals each week. So for quite some time now I've been doing some research on (or as my wife would put it, obsessing over) an acceptable practice amp.

On one hand, one probably shouldn't expect a lot out of an inexpensive amp whose purpose in life is to simply make enough noise to allow you to hear yourself at band rehearsal. It has to have a clean and dirty sound and not completely suck, but surely you'd never gig with such an amp, right? Well, when you spend as much time, money and energy in your guitar tone as I have over the years, its really hard to settle for just any old practice amp. The conundrum I faced however is that I was not going to spend a lot of money on this amp, so I figured I'd never find anything suitable for so little cash. So on went my research...

I quickly found no shortage of options. I focused on 10" combos of around 30 watts or so. I figured anything less just wouldn't be heard at rehearsal volumes and wondered if even a 30 watts would be enough. After looking at all of the major manufacturers, and thinking I'd end up with some run of the mill solid state or modeling combo, I stumbled upon what struck me as an almost unbelievable amount of positive reviews gushing over the Fender Super Champ XD. Most of the amps I was looking at ran about $200, with the Roland Cube 30X considerably higher at $260. I kept thinking to myself that for another $40 I could at least get some tube-influenced tone and ultimately decided on the little SCXD. What I didn't anticipate is what a monster this little amp really is.

As I stated above, I needed at least a clean sound and a dirty sound - without the need to carry around drive pedals - and the amp needed to sound at least decent and be loud enough to cut through at rehearsal. Since the little Fender does have a full tube power section (a pair of 6V6 tubes, a tube I have always liked and currently run in my big rig), I figured it's 15 watts would be far more powerful than a 15-30 watt solid state counterpart, and I was right. This amp is incredibly loud and easily cuts through at rehearsal. Furthermore, it sounded really good! Interestingly, there's also a 12AX7 in there, so that no doubt has something to do with warming up the - yes, digital modeling - preamp.

Its actually kind of interesting to see all of the reviews and to read about how surprised people are about how good this amp sounds. In my opinion, there really isn't anything surprising about it other than Fender happened to correctly exploit the true secret behind getting modeling technology to actually sound good: warm it up with tubes! Fender wasn't the first manufacturer to do this as I believe Line 6 did this first with their larger Spyder Tube tube-powered amp, but to be honest with you, a number of us have been essentially doing the same thing for years and well before many of the major industry manufacturers caught on or accepted that tubes needed to be a part of the signal chain (Atomic amps figured this out long ago). Vox figured this out too by using a 12AX7 years ago to make their modeling technology more authentic. The point is, for anyone reading this and wondering what I'm talking about, take the modeler of your choice and run it into the effects return of almost any tube amp and presto, you now have a modeling rig that sounds exponentially better than it did on its own. I've done this with Digitech, Boss and Line6 modelers with very good results.

So getting back on topic, there was another surprise I found in the Super Champ XD, and one that exposed its potential for greatness (and at the same time its greatest weakness). Just for giggles I plugged this little amp into the 1x12 from my main rig, and this little beast really came to life! I could not believe the volume and depth of this amp through that speaker. So my conclusion is that, while no 10" speaker can compare with the 1x12 I had connected to the SCXD, a better, more efficient 10" would do this amp wonders. The stocker just can't stay clean at full volume and the overdrives lose their character and definition when overwhelming the very inefficient little stock speaker. So, true to my form, I did more, uh...research and ordered an Eminence Ramrod. I'll be reporting back on that shortly!

While I've spoken a lot about how the amp performs when played loud and how it could use some help achieving better tone at volume, I can't leave out the important observation that at night time/home office low volume levels, there may be no better amp out there other than maybe some of the really low power 5 watt and under options. This amp sounds just great at very low volumes.

Since this amp's preamp tone does come from digital modeling, which at times is still hard for me to believe, I should at least mention how incredible most of the models are. Channel one is clean only, but my understanding is that it is in fact fixed on a clean blackface model, and going through the 12AX7 and power tubes, it does sound great. Channel 2 has 16 models from clean to screamin, and I have to admit once I found #8 which is very Marshall like, I didn't really go any further. This amp's outstanding tone comes close enough to the core tones I get from my main rig that I can easily rehearse with this each week. Furthermore, since its got tube umph, I can use it with my pedal board as a backup rig and if I really wanted to, I could actually do a gig with just my guitar, cable and amp (as long as I put a mic in front as it would never fill the room unassisted, but would be plenty to hear on stage). This amp is really that good.

So in an attempt to wrap up this already overly verbose post, I'll simply say that $299 has never bought so much guitar amplifier. Period.