Re: Help Designing a Homebuilt With P90s or Similar

In article <78edndD3-M-iunjVnZ2dnUVZ_r7inZ2d@xxxxxxxxxx>,
mbetts@xxxxxxxxxxx says...


That is reassuring.

When I'm "bolting" a guitar, even from new parts, I go with the wood that
pleases my eye if it's to be a transparent finish, otherwise, I go for light
like swamp ask, although all SA is not that light. Never been a big believer
in electrics after pickups, amp, effects, all that jazz having wood type
make much of a difference, except when playing unplugged and feeling th
resonance through your body when strumming...but who plays an electric that
way anyway? Just my observations and I have and have had a ton of guitars.
That said, as many will attest to, I've played identical production models
in a GC or such place of a given instrument, and it's common for them all to
feel and sound a bit diff from one another. What makes a magic piece for me
may not for you.



IMO all the little things matter, but in 2 different ways depending on
what you're after. When a lot of people talk about swamp ash Teles,
bridges, saddles, they're usually after clean country twang. The classic
Don Rich Bakersfield sound would be a Tele through a Twin Reverb with
JBL speakers. Brian Setzer's rockabilly Gretsch sound or a Rickenbacker
through either a Fender or Vox is also clean and small changes can make
a significant difference in the sound of each, but what you can't do is
get any of those to sound like any of the others.

There's a second school of thought that probably got started in the 80s
with the massive use of rack FX, the HM hair bands, etc. Since most of
the sound was being generated by the FX, a guitar with maximum sustain
and as little coloration as possible was considered desirable, in
essence a pure tone generator. Dense wood, heavy brass parts, active
electronics became popular. Another way to get there which many modern
basses use, is butcher block construction, often in conjunction with a
neck through design. The different wood densities cancel out any
resonance or dead frequencies.

Since then it seems many players have come back quite a ways to using
more vintage-style guitars for rock music, but usually with hotter
pickups and a fair amount of distortion, more like what a lot of blues
players have been doing all along. How long can you sustain a note in a
3 minute song? With a typical tube screamer type overdrive into a fairly
dry tube amp I can still hear the difference between a Tele and a Strat
or a Les Paul and an ES335 with the same pickups, but start adding
distortion, chorus, phasers, etc, and it gets more and more difficult.
So can you make a Strat with P90's sound like an SG? It Depends.
.

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