The Whatever Thread .. For Gear!!

[Gone Fission]

It is indeed that 3/4” shorter. Though I believe there have been Squier Mustang models with the Gibson scale where the classics are 24” or occasionally the shorter one, which is what, 22.5”?

[dubkitty]

yeah. i have a 22.5” Duo Sonic someone cobbled together from a Squier DS body and a Mini Strat neck which coincidentally is 22.5 i.e. three-quarter sized. you can see where the hole in the headstock for the second string tree was filled. the Squier CVDS’s bridge pickup is about 3/4” too far from the bridge, and the neck pickup is rotated slightly; i got a 62 spec replacement pickguard which didn’t fit but allowed me to transfer the correct positions to a template which i sent to Pickguardian, who made a great pickguard. i routed the pickup cavities in the body so they’d fit and there you go.

[dubkitty]

Epiphone has just rolled out a new batch of "Inspired by Gibson Custom" models including an ES-335, ES-355, doublecut Les Paul Special with the combo bridge/tailpiece like a Junior, '64 SG with vibrola, and the inevitable '59 Les Paul. they all sound surprisingly good here, but IMO the 335 and Special are exceptional. that 335 is one of the few modern ones i've heard that sounds much like my '68 which is louder and toppier than most, and the Special barks pretty much like my Tokai singlecut. if you like any of these models--and who doesn't?--check it out. if i wasn't already replete with PAF and P-90 guitars i'd be tempted, and if i was a touring guitarist i'd get the 335 to use on the road instead of my '68.

https://youtu.be/ed2D69rzSD0?si=oOi37r6pWcYjM5ze

[dubkitty]

it was wild...i was looking at different examples of the LPS on Sweetwater and one got bought while i was looking at its photos. i expect these will sell out the first shipment immediately.

[dubkitty]

is this the right place to talk about tubes and the effect of retubing amps? it’s gotten back on my radar recently. i recall talking about this on the site before, but i’m too tired to search.

this started when one of the 12AX7s in the Princeton Reverb went wonky and i subbed in an old RCA. it changed the character so much that i decided to have the whole lot of Groove Tubes out and replace them with better ones. my favorites for 12AX7s are GE and Amperex, the latter of which has less tone coloration. they’re like if Telefunkens were allowed to have a personality. i stick with Telefunkens for phase inverters and reverb drivers, though. i like those squeaky-clean.

i’ve never really been a power tube snob because i figured their relative degree of influence over the total sound is proportionately less than the three or four preamp tubes. V1 is the most important to the overall character of the sound. however, when researching recommended 6V6s i found that modern Tung-Sols were reputed to be “less gainy.” since the Princeton was really loud and shouty i got a pair and by golly they actually did take away more of the harshness. i used a Telefunken to replace the 12AT7 which made the reverb a bit cleaner and audibly changed the reverb gain level. it sounds so much better that it no longer sounds too harsh through the onboard 8” alnico Jensen i replaced the stock Celestion-in-name-only with and is glorious through the Jensen combined with the 12” cab with one Weber California JBL clone with the aluminum cap.

having seen such a result my thoughts turned next to my AC15. i had been dissatisfied with it and considered selling it because i had a hard time finding good sounds. i had never seen a manual or anything explaining the peculiarities—and there sure are some—of the circuit design. it only has three 12AX7s and 2 EL84s, so how complicated could it be?

turns out that V1 drives the Normal channel while V2 drives the Top Boost channel. however, the volume setting on the Normal channel (its only control) affects the behavior of the Top Boost channel even when there’s nothing plugged into the Normal channel. which makes sense cos the signal has to go through V1 on the way to V2. i think the Vox needs a bit of sweetening so i ordered a GE 12AX7 for V1. on the advice of boffins on TGP and the Telecaster forum i’m substituting a Telefunken 12AT7 for V3, the phase inverter. general belief is that EL84s don’t differ that much, so i ordered a pair of Soviet NOS with a weird alphanumeric designator rendered in English as 6P14P-EV, which were apparently USSR milspec and take a beating better than just about any other extant EL84. since the Vox eats power tubes every 18 months at the least i figured this would be best. for V2, which as a second gain stage needs a little more hair, i’m going to try an old RCA, which are “hotter”-sounding than the milder Amperex and GE, and a modern Mullard and see which one feels better.

eventually i’ll also want to go through the Hammond AO-35 reverb unit converted into a head, which is an even more inscrutable circuit with two 12AX7s, 2 EL84s, and a 5E3 rectifier tube i replaced with a Yellowjacket solid-state converter which calmed it down considerably. ijist checked and it currently has one GE and one Amperex 12AX7 and two modern Tung-Sol EL84s so i suspect its issues are more from the conversion, which added a tone control that leaves much to be desired and a mysterious chicken-head knob on the back labeled “WHOOPASS” which takes the amp the full gamut from nice and reasonable to Wall Of Death. at some point i’m going to have a tech look at it, but not before the Laney VC30 and Electar Tube 10 are done. i also have a Kalamazoo Bass 30 that desperately needs to be recapped at the very least.

[dubkitty]

while getting strings for the DeArmond M-75 i got in the other day i was at first perplexed because they were out of Regular Slinkies. how the hell do you run a guitar shop and not have enough Regular Slinkies, probably the most-used strings in the US? then i was a bit boggled by the almost-Regular-Slinkies sets. there was some John Mayer signature set which i leapt to avoid, and another set similar in that they used half-values e.g. an E string at .0095 and a B of .0115. i instinctively don’t trust that, but found a set that would do: Turbo Slinky .010/.013/.017/.027/.037/.047. the extra hundredth on the wound strings makes a better tonal balance with the bare strings than the low end of the Regular Slinky set and are a bit less pingy under pick attack. i’ll experiment on another couple of guitars before i do a wholesale policy change, but it was a nice discovery.

[dubkitty]

finally got around to changing the tubes in the AC15 and boy howdy. i know i changed power tubes at some point but don't remember doing preamp tubes, so imagine my surprise when V1 which should be a 12AX7 was actually a British-made Mullard 12AT7! that explains a lot about why the Normal channel sound was so relatively dull...it was only getting 70% power. so i put a GE in V1 and a GE-made Amperex 12AT7 in the V3 phase inverter spot. for V2 i went with an old GE. the Soviet EL84s are awesome. with the revamped preamp section, the overdriven sound with Normal and Top Boost volume cranked and the master rolled back is downright nasty in a very British, pre-heavy metal kind of way. even calmed down it has that SNAP that they got on the first Beatles singles, when George was using the Dyna Duo Jet. i was ready to sell it because i found it rather dull and limited, but now it's got a whole new life and usefulness. now i'll keep it at least until i get my Laney VC30 fixed down the road, but it could be handy as half of a dual amp setup with the Princeton that could give me way more sound and gain options. i'm glad i got the version with the Greenback because i think an alnico blue would be too barky for my taste.

as long as i was about it i also sprayed the exterior down with tolex cleaner and got as much accumulated yutz off as possible. i may get a cover for it...i've always kind of disdained amp covers but with the up-facing control panel it gets crap in the pots way too easily. i had a lovely time cleaning the pots when i first started rehabilitating the amp, and would love to not do that again any time soon. so now i have two LOUD smallish amps that i feel like i can depend on. which is nice. with the Laney fixed i'd really start to have options.

[dubkitty]

i tell you what, when you dime the Normal and Top Boost channels and back down the master volume this thing gets NASTY. it's a different kind of breakup than the Hammond which is your more typical linear EL84 dirt. there's something weird going on with the lower midrange. probably able to be dialed out with judicious use of the tone controls (such as they are). it's really cool when you discover that a piece of equipment you thought of as boring and somewhat useless suddenly turns into a new star.

getting the Guild Aristocrat sorted was a bit like that. i finally figured out how to adjust the truss rod, readjusted the pickups, and it's a wild thing now. these Guilds will bite.

[dubkitty]

the weird shit in the lower mids turned into weird shit in the upper mids as i tried tweaking it. finally i decided to be simple. i needed a sound that i know well, so i got out the Tokai Les Paul Standard and, not to put too fine a point on it, worked the amp settings until they sounded like a Les Paul was being played through it. the interaction of the Treble knob on the Top Boost channel and the master Tone Cut is very hard to perfect. i wound up turning the Tone Cut all the way off, getting a somewhat OK sound with the Treble and Bass knobs, and then inching the Tone Cut up and the Treble back and forth. if i don't get it exactly right the upper mids have this weird phased effect which i suppose some people would like up around maybe 2000 Hz. it's also got the channel volumes backed well down and the master handling the level. i still don't love it in the same way i love the Princeton or my Laney which will get fixed soon, but it works as an alternative clean-ish toob amp sound for when the Fender's too American. if i have to track rhythm guitars it could be very handy, and that odd phasiness could be an advantage.

i got this idea after doing the same thing with the Princeton...i realized that my usual tone settings of treble = 10/bass = 8 were making the amp snappier and more distorted than ideal for my clean sound, so i started by taking everything down to 6 which was around what i used on the vintage Princeton in the 80s and then tweaking from there. i wound up with treble = 7.75/bass = 4.5 and the amp was a lot happier handling transients and high-pitched notes and no longer sounds like it's going to cough up a frog when i hit a Big Low Note. i also used the Les Paul as the test module for this, and it worked even better than on the AC15. i guess the next thing is to check the tubes in the Hammond and dial it in as well. it probably wouldn't hurt to put two of those Soviet super-EL84s in because they sound great in the AC15. i already have an Amperex and a GE in the preamp tube slots so there's not a lot to do with it. i've decided to accept that its "clean sound" is fuzzy and gritty with gain down low; when i was testing pedals for my sale list i found that the clean amp sound wasn't that much cleaner than a low-gain setting on the Distortion+. at some point i need to jury-rig a way to play the Hammond through a Greenback, either the one in the AC15 or the Laney's pair. i'd cable from the speaker out to the Hammond head. i suspect it'd be much happier with a Greenback, and am a bit terrified by what it would probably sound like through Jensens.