Guitar Gear

After work this evening, I went directly to my local Guitar Center and bought some strings (for me, they’re Ernie Ball Slinky Cobalts). After I wrote my previous article on the guitar yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking about the guitar. I spent the entire day today dreaming of working on it when I got home! I just had to get it cleaned and set up.

So as soon as I finished dinner, I set a blanket down on my kitchen table, and with my computer in front of me, played a couple of tech videos on changing strings on a Floyd Rose. Contrary to the negative feedback these get, though it’s a little laborious, it’s EASY!

Once I got the strings removed, I did thorough wipe-down of the entire guitar, removing smudge marks and dust and grime from the body and the neck. It was clear that this guitar got a lot of use in its heyday.

After cleaning it up to my satisfaction, I took some light linseed oil and massaged it into the fretboard. Talk about a difference. That oil added so much life back into the fretboard! Here are some pictures I took after I was done:

The grain of the rosewood is absolutely spectacular! The linseed oil helped renew its natural luster, the feel – oh the feel of that fretboard is nothing short of amazing!

Even after the fifteen years the guitar sat in a storage shed and the year and a half it spent in its case in my house, after I got it cleaned, I was blown away at the mirror-like finish of the top.

I need to break in the strings over the next few days with some regular playing. EB Slinky Cobalts are notoriously bright right out of the package and need a bit of time to break in. But here’s what I can tell you about the sound of this guitar.

• Right off the bat, it has a real Telecaster quality to it replete with that subtle quack you get with a Tele.
• I mentioned that the middle switch position was probably where I’d mostly play, and thus far, I haven’t changed my tune on that – yet.
• The bridge humbucker has absolute BALLS! I set up my Katana 50 to about 2pm on the Gain with the Volume at 3pm and played some lead lines. The guitar absolutely sings with a glorious tone! It is definitely a rock machine in this setting.
• Coil tapping the bridge amazingly doesn’t result in a huge volume drop. I have other guitars with this and going to single coil results in a significant drop in volume. With this guitar, the result is a thinner tone as expected, but a very little drop in volume. I’ll be using this a lot!
• For clean tones, the neck pickup is definitely like a Tele’s lipstick character, and the bridge clean is like a Les Paul bridge clean (even with an LP, it ain’t my cup of tea). But using both pickups clean is very nice.

Once I break in the strings, I’ll post some sound samples! I definitely will be gigging this guitar this weekend!