My new axe

[Tele Master]

Well, I never thought I'd see the day, but I did it, I bought a Les Paul. Brand new, right out of the box(I saw the guy take it out) Black Epiphone Standard Les Paul with vintage white trim and pickgaurd, Gibson USA Humbuckers. What a sweet playing guitar. It is much easier to solo on this guitar than on my Tele, but the Tele has a tighter string setting so its easier to fret chords at a quick speed. Now I finally have two of my all time favorite guitars.

[chucklivesoninmyheart]

While Epiphone is the cheaper brand under Gibson,Few people realize that Epiphone has been around longer than Gibson.Just a thought.

[spanky10940]

Sounds like a sweet axe bro, good luck with it. Quick question for you tho. I think I'm in the same boat as you except with a Strat. I love my guitar but I want to kind of "widen" what I play and what I use... Did you try an actual Gibson Les Paul before you bought the Epiphone and was there a big difference. I just don't want to save (and save and save and save) for a $3000+ Gibson when I can get what I want out of the Epi. I've seen them before and they do look schweet..

thanks!

[Tele Master]

Yes I did try the Gibson first, just to see the difference. I noiticed a difference in feel on the fingerboard, either was better, they both felt good to me and while playing on the clean channel I noticed the Gibson had a slightly "brighter" sound to it. Other than that I couldn't tell any differences. I say go for the Epiphone, and then work your way up to a Gibson.

Also, save up a couple extra bucks and buy the Standard, not the Studio. The difference between the Epi Studio and Standard was like a Strat and a Tele. Totally different.

[Incidents Happen]

I'm a very discriminating guitarist when it comes to my sound, and will not play an Epiphone for more than 20 minutes. I play (as most of you know) a Gibson Les Paul Double CutAway +, which is the best guitar I've played yet.


Note!
I will be having a custom guitar built in about one year from now, I called/emailed my luthier in New York, and the price will be $6,000 instead of my expected $8,000. There are complex wirings and loops and coil splitters, etc, along with Cocobolo wood, etc. It's hard to explain, but I will definitely post pictures when I get it (in a long time from now).

[Tele Master]

It's all about your preference.


And the size of your wallet.

[chucklivesoninmyheart]

I want a double cut+!Dont have $1500 laying around though...

Incidents...
You should check out HEX Custom Instruments(formerly known as Gothic Custom Instruments).That dude Tommy can make one mean axe.Give him ANY shape and inlay ideas e.c.t.It would run you less than $6000 I can tell you that much(unless its solid gold hardware and such...which wouldnt be the best considering its a soft metal).Anyway...check him out
You might also want to check out Moser Custom Instruments...another great luthier.

[Incidents Happen]

Originally posted by chucklivesoninmyheart
I want a double cut+!Dont have $1500 laying around though...

Incidents...
You should check out HEX Custom Instruments(formerly known as Gothic Custom Instruments).That dude Tommy can make one mean axe.Give him ANY shape and inlay ideas e.c.t.It would run you less than $6000 I can tell you that much(unless its solid gold hardware and such...which wouldnt be the best considering its a soft metal).Anyway...check him out
You might also want to check out Moser Custom Instruments...another great luthier.

Chuck, you are missing the point; This is beyond rare woods, this has to do with electronics as well. Neither of those two companies can fulfill what I'm asking, Matt Moriarty with http://www.moriartyguitars.com can.

Thanks anyways.

~Incidents

[hairbndrckr]

I don't know how complex your wiring is, but unless it is something short of the equivalent of a hard wired Ripley Stereo setup, I don't know how complex you can really get with the wiring...

[Incidents Happen]

It's not that other people can't do it, its the fact that my luthier does this style of wiring all the time. The signal is basically sent from the guitar to my effects chain, back into a Unity Gain Buffer, sent to the amp, then sent back to the guitar's volume and tone pots. This requires Dual TRS outputs, one being sent to the effects, one being sent to the amplifier.

~Incidents

[PonyOne]

I work selling cars made by Lexus. Lexus puts more navigation/GPS systems in their cars than any other manufacturer in the world. The way that the system works is you either say your destination, or enter it in on the screen (this works especially well if you have an accent or speak in some dialect, like me, with my Swedish/surfer/southern twang). There is a locating beacon in the car, which sends a signal to a satellite, and then cross checks your location and the destination with a DVD loaded into your car, and figures out the quickest route. It can even alter its course if you accidentally miss a turn; it only takes about one second to alter direction.

Now what this means for us, is that you get these people in who are looking for a 2001 Lexus GS430 with navigation. It's GOT TO BE silver with a black intereor, and again, to reiterate, it HAS TO HAVE NAV. Luck would have it you have a GS430 on sale for about $2000 lower than it should be going for. It's silver on black. It even has a scant 12,000 miles on it. Your customer is nearly salivating through their pants in anticipation of FINALLY getting the car that they have searched so earnestly for.

Then they see that in place of the little touchscreen that will plan a route from their home in Redondo Beach to Hyannisport on the other side of the country, it just has a stereo and climate controls. They get all dejected and go "damn, I guess I'll just wait another six months..."

So being a salesman, needing to make money, and of course gonig of my "do it your own damn self" personal ethos, I ask "well, what have you been doing for the past fifteen years you've been driving?" That's right, I confront them with the implication that on-board, satellite-to-DVD GPS navigation systems that cost $5,000 are really no more valid than using a map. Hell if you really want to get fancy, use mapquest. Plus, what? do you think so highly of the vehicle, that now you're going to suddenly make new friends every day because you are now so sophisticated, that you're gonig to HAVE TO HAVE NAV to get yourself through the maze of streets that make up the Hollywood Hills? Now you can figure out which route between your house and the Safeway three blocks away is the SHORTEST, MOST SCENIC, or FASTEST. Your life is now complete. You may proceed to die.

Usually they get really pissy and make some remark about how I probably don't have friends or a nice car, or the ability to afford one. NEWS FLASH ASSHOLES: I work for Lexus, I could get a $65,000 SC430 for about $40,000, which I could finance quite easily. BOO YAH!

Okay anyway, back to my original point...

Personally I think that all these fancy effect routing/cancelling switches, etc etc are utterly useless and extravagant. I have the same problem: I want to go from heavy distortion and flange, chorus and wah to clean. That's what an A/B switcher is for. My A channel has no effects, and my B channel does. How do I do this? Run cable from guitar to box. Run cable from A straight to amp, run cable from B to my first pedal (my Metal Zone), then have that connected through the other pedals and out. From there, on my Roland JC120, I run A to my clean channel and B to my effect channel (within the amp, A and B). A lot of amps require you to select channels; on the JC120, both are on all the time, so you just plug into each channel. This is what the amp was intended for.

In the case of my Vox, I just run the A and B cables into a 2 in/1 out 1/4 inch adaptor ($1.99 at RadioShack). This achieves all my needs and it's pretty simple. Just leave it on your pedal board with everything pre-daisy chained.

I know that you have this big issue with floor pedals; I hate using footwork too, which is why I don't switch effects during songs unless I need to. I use the A/B box, I use one of two distortions, I have chorus and flange and reverb, and I usually only use one or two combinations per song. As long as you remember your songs you're cool, and you don't have a nearly incomprehensible wiring diagram.

Remember: the more mouths a message has to pass through to get to the final source, the further it is going to be from its original. The same goes for putting your sound through pot switches, selectors and, also, pedals: the more your tone has to go through the less pure it is. That's why I DELETED 3 of the switches on my Gretsch and instead routed them to a single concentric knob. With the 30 or so solder points you'll have, you'll have to spend an hour figuring out what's wrong when your guitar starts getting crackly.

I second hairband: pretty much any luthier should be able to do it; in fact I'm pretty sure any lutheir could, so could most first year electronics students at a vocational school provided that they look at the whole picture long enough and have a pen and paper handy. The only time guitar wiring becomes truly complex is when you're trying to make your own digital powered preamp/mixer/effect processor, and you have to make a circuit board with the right chips that have been programmed properly (if you need someone to do that, contact me :))

I also personally know a few luthiers who make incomprehensibly amazing instruments. Have you ever heard of Alex Valdez? He repaired my Aria for me. He also repaired John Lennon's acoustic when it broke en route from London to LA, made the Kiss Axe Bass, and has worked on or made instruments for John Denver, Phish, BB King, Les Claypool, and hundereds of other well known stars. I'm pretty sure he also did some stuff for the Dead. I can put you in contact with him. He'll give you a good deal, he'll make the thing for you for probably around $4,000 or so, and it will probably be the best instrument you'll ever play. I tried one of his spare time creations, just a basic semihollow electric... it was amazing. His mandolins, banjos, upright basses, violins, and guitarras are also extraordinary.

[PonyOne]

real quick... two points....

-on the moriarty guitars webpage, first off, those are damn beautiful guitars, they're a lot more simplistic looking than i thought you'd go for :), but.... they all have the same body shape... what gives?

-forgot to mention, i know of Gothic guitars, they'll do whatever you want. They are showcased at http://www.worldclassguitars.com. You can find a plethora of info on rare and custom guitars there.

[Incidents Happen]

Your message is really long, so I'll reply to the 2nd one first.

Matt is still in the process of getting his shop set up in New York, and within the next two months or so, should have everything updated.

Those guitars are in the "Wolf" shape, which is one of the guitars that Jerry Garcia used in the 70's. He sells the ones on his page for $3500 or less.

I'm making a 2nd post to this;

~Incidents

[Incidents Happen]

On paper, the wiring looks complex; On the guitar, it is not. On the surface of the guitar, are these knobs;

1 Master Volume
1 Master Tone
1 Five-Way Selector Switch
3 Coil Splitters
1 Effects Bypass

You say "3 Coil Splitters, Effect Bypass, you don't need those on the guitar", well I'll tell you that this is NOT a complex guitar setup (btw: I've dropped the MIDI; I will be getting a 2nd guitar for MIDI). Master Vol/Master Tone/5 Way Switch are the only three that NEED to be used; In cases where I want to get a country sound, I simply hit the 2-way toggle for the humbucker I want to turn single coil (3 humbucker'd guitar). As far as my "Effects Bypass", it is simple. I have two TRS outputs instead of one, One goes to the Amp, the other goes to the Effects (or multi effects processor. or effects switcher unit) Pony, this is the same as your A/B selector, except I don't need to send it to a footcontroller, it's right on my guitar. That is what I'll be using, and that's how it goes on the surface.

--------on the inside--------

The guitar is wired in a way that will allow no change in tone due to volume, rather change from my tone knob. This may not make sense, but it allows stability in my sounds, because the signal is always constant. In heavy distortion, I dare you to turn the Tone Control down and tell me you hear a significant differance. The truth is that on a normal guitar, you don't. With this, VOLUME DOESN'T CHANGE YOUR "SOUND". The Tone Knob is much more essential for the effects with this setup; since everything is 'constant', it is wired so i won't have to adjust my effect settings from my rig, rather just change the tone knob for variance in sound.


Remember: the more mouths a message has to pass through to get to the final source, the further it is going to be from its original. The same goes for putting your sound through pot switches, selectors and, also, pedals: the more your tone has to go through the less pure it is. That's why I DELETED 3 of the switches on my Gretsch and instead routed them to a single concentric knob. With the 30 or so solder points you'll have, you'll have to spend an hour figuring out what's wrong when your guitar starts getting crackly.

Pony, this is changed. my older versions had alot more solder points than my newer version. My new version has no more knobs than a Carvin guitar, in fact, LESS knobs than many carvin guitars. The idea is simplicity, and ease of use (although that may seem a bit ironic). Dropping MIDI saved alot of space;

Okay, lets go through this one more time.

3 Humbuckers
-------
1 Master Volume
1 Master Tone
1 Five-Way Selector Switch
3 Coil Splitters
1 Effect Bypass Switch

these are the only switches on the guitar, count em, 7. Now, I could do it your way, Pony, and take off the effect bypass switch, and use an A/B switch, but I ask "why?". I'm pretty sure I hate footcontrollers as much or more than you do, I will not add another thing for my feet to play around with, when it can be put on the guitar as a SIMPLE 2-way switch. As far as coil splitters, they are very common, so that doesn't seem to be the point of argument.

It's 2 AM and I'm getting tired, maybe I'll continue tomorrow.

~Incidents

[PonyOne]

Oh, okay, I guess I haven't thoroughly read your new methodology... my bad...

but do a search for Valdez Guitars, see what you find. I have to go to work or I'd post a link.

Brian Moore makes a fine MIDI-equipped guitar.

[Incidents Happen]

Originally posted by PonyOne
Oh, okay, I guess I haven't thoroughly read your new methodology... my bad...

but do a search for Valdez Guitars, see what you find. I have to go to work or I'd post a link.

Brian Moore makes a fine MIDI-equipped guitar.

I'll see if I can find Valdez guitars, I think I've heard of him before.

yes, for the price, you can't beat a BM MIDI guitar.

~Incidents