Ran across these demos on YouTube, and thought I’d share them here. This first one is from VOX at the NAMM show, and sound quality stinks, but the dude’s explanation of the differences between the two different voices (British or American):
This next clip comes from someone apparently in Japan, where the pedal was recently released. The sound quality is much better, and he inserted little conversation bubbles to show his settings. Picture quality isn’t that great but the quality of the sound makes up for it. Plus, it’s kind of amazing that this dude has such clever and articulate feet that he can make all the adjustments with his toes! HA! He’s not bad at guitar either! Check it out!
Especially after viewing the second clip (despite Mr. Clever Toes), this is definitely my next pedal – at least until after I try it out for myself. š
Summary: With seven (7) licensed Lexicon reverb models, this is one bad-ass reverb pedal, and a great value proposition given the relatively inexpensive price of $149.99 for a true bypass pedal. With the Hardwire series, Digitech has really hit a home run!
Pros: Just about the best-sounding spring and plate reverbs I’ve ever heard in a digital reverb. Capable of subtle reverb, to thick, rich and wet surf.
Cons: None. I dig this pedal!
Price: $149.99 street
Features (from Digitech):
Reverb Types
Room ā Fast decaying reverb; great for a touch of ambience
Plate ā Renowned studio reverb heard on classic recordings
Reverse ā Reverb in reverse; gradually crescendos to full volume
Modulated ā Lush, modulating, reverb ideal for chords
Gated ā Unique reverb with abrupt decay; good for percussive playing
Hall ā Large, encompassing reverb with warm decay
Spring ā Classic āsurfā reverb; great for Rockabilly too!
Tails On/Off Switch ā When on, reverb tails are not cut off in bypass
True Bypass circuitry preserves your tone in bypass
Constant high-voltage operation for tonal quality and noise reduction
HardWire Pedals include the following stage accessories
Stomplockā¢ knob guards lock your tone in place and prevent tampering or accidental knob adjustments onstage
Green gaffer tape helps you locate the pedal in adverse stage lighting
Custom-cut VelcroĀ® pads attach and lock your pedals to your pedalboard
Tone Bone Rating: 5.0 – I did a review of this awhile back, but I finally bought one, and I am oh so pleased with how it sounds!
Yeah, yeah, say what you will about Digitech being known for “consumer” grade pedals, and I’m as much of a boutique pedal snob as the next guy, but there’s no denying the quality workmanship that has gone into the Digitech Hardwire series of pedals. And yes, I know, I reviewed this pedal before, but that review was based upon a test at my local Guitar Center, while competing against the flailing of a wanker sitting next to me, trying to look cool and and trying to play metal licks and failing horribly. Okay, enough of the ranting… Y’all know how I feel about wankers… (search GG for “wankers”).
And say what you will about a digital effect box, but the fact the RV-7 has seven licensed Lexicon reverb voices inside give this pedal LOTS of credibility in my book. As I mentioned in my previous review, I’ve used a Lexicon rackmount for vocals at my Church, and have absolutely loved the reverb effects it contains. Though digital, Lexicon has figured it out, so it’s no surprise that they’re pretty much the standard for digital reverb.
In any case, despite the conditions I had to play within during my initial test, the RV-7 blew me away. Honestly, at the time, I didn’t think Digitech was capable of making a truly great-sounding pedal. Make no mistake, I’ve had Digitech pedals in the past, and they’re all quite functional, but I would never give them a “best in class” rating. They tend to offer great value for the money you pay – which isn’t much for their standard stuff; at least until I discovered the Hardwire series – especially the RV-7!
Since I reviewed the RV-7, I’ve tried several, and even came close to buying an EH Holy Grail. It too is a great sounding reverb, but there was something about its room reverb model which just didn’t do it for me. It’s a great pedal though, but I still liked the RV-7 better.
Recently, I had the chance to go to the local music shop near my work (B Street Music in San Mateo, CA) to perform an A/B test between the Holy Grail and the RV-7. Head-to-head the pedals were pretty close in performance, but the RV-7 beat the Holy Grail with the types of reverb voices it offered, plus the room reverb model on the RV-7 was superb! While the Holy Grail just edged out the RV-7 with the spring reverb, I found I could dial in a great sounding spring reverb with the RV-7 just the same, so that, combined with the awesome room reverb was what sold me. But let’s get into some specifics…
Fit and Finish
All the Hardwire pedals are solidly built with a cool, flat metallic finish. These pedals are very well-built, and surprisingly heavy – definitely gig-worthy. The RV-7 has a purplish, flat metallic finish on the body with a flat silver switch plate that has a nice rubber pad with the Hardwire logo. The pedal featurs a cool, light-blue LED indicator light. The RV-7 has four control knobs: Level, Liveliness, Delay, and a Voice selector knob. The first three knobs are not smooth sweep knobs. They have – for lack of a better term – micro-notches that really add to the whole industrial vibe that the Hardwire pedals have going on. When you look at the pedal, what’s not to like? š Of course, how it sounds is where it’s at, isn’t it?
Controls
Level – Controls the Wet/Dry amount. Fully clockwise is 100% wet.
Liveliness – This is actually hi-cut filter to add or reduce the amount of high-end freqs that come through
Delay – Controls how long the reverb effect decays after striking a note or chord
Voice Selector – pretty self-explanatory
How It Sounds
In a word, AWESOME! I used it in my weekly acoustic gig this evening, and was thanking the heavens for such a great pedal. My guitar maintained its clarity, no matter how much I upped the level knob. It must have a slight pre-delay built in; whatever, the fact that I could clearly hear the notes and chords I was playing and not having them washed out by the effect was truly an inspiring experience. Add to the fact that it is true bypass, so when it’s off, it’s really off, is yet another reason to love this pedal; no hum, no buzz.
To be fair, I have no idea what to do with the reverse reverb other than to add some interesting effect with single notes in a song. But other than that, I’m really digging this pedal!
Sound Samples
Here are some sound samples I quickly created… Please excuse the recording quality. I just recorded in an open room with no filtering. BTW, I used a Strat with a prototype Aracom RoxBox 18 Watt Amp with a Jensen 1 X10 speaker. In almost every case, all the dials were at 12 o’clock, except for the Hall and Spring, where I set Level and Decay to about 2pm. I prefer a more subtle reverb effect, but as you’ll hear, the RV-7 is crystal clear, and produces a very nice reverb effect.
I’ve always associated Orange Amps with metal until I actually played a Tiny Terror. What a great amp! It’s got nice, bright EL-84 tone, and for $550 new, it’s a great little amp! Hmmm…. looks like I should do a review of it… š
But Orange is taking the amp a step further and has just announced the Dual Terror, which is a 30 Watt, dual channel amp that is switchable down to 15 and 7 Watts! Oooo… From the announcement I read, it looks like this will be a real versatile amp! Can’t wait to test one out. FYI, here’s a copy of the press release I just got from Orange….
Orange Amplification launches āDual Terrorā
British amplifier manufacturer, Orange Amps launched the Tiny Terror amp in 2006 and has already sold over 30,000 units, making it one of the most in-demand amps in the world. The concept of the Tiny Terror was simple: squeeze every drop of Orangeās unique signature tone into a lunch-box sized amp to create 15 watts of unmistakable Orange Class A Tone weighing only a few kilos – and at a price every guitarist can afford.
Orange can now announce the next generation of the Tiny Terror concept – the āDual Terrorā: a twin channel, 30-watt head, switchable from 30 to 15 or 7 watts giving more choice and options shrunk into a size that belies its power!
The 30 watt Class A dual channel amp incorporates the unique Tiny Terror channel and a new āFat Channelā bringing a new āfatterā chunkier sound, whilst keeping the classic Tiny Terror sound.
The power options make this a truly versatile amp, capable of dominating at bigger venues and subtle enough to be perfect for recording, studio work and home playing. Switchable between 30, 15 and 7 watts and switchable between 4 and 2 output valves, the combinations of options provide for unmatched levels of performance and flexibility.
The Dual Terror OS-DT30-H is built to the usual Orange high quality standards, using top quality components and its roadworthy rugged construction (supplied with padded gig bag ) is everything youād expect from an Orange amp. The proven āOrange Terrorā concept of combining portability, versatility and delivering most importantly a great sound, is all here.
The original Tiny Terror has legions of fans, with users including Gary Moore, Mark Knopfler, Steve Jones, Eddie Van Halen, Andy Dunlop, Kaiser Chiefs and Eddie Kramer. The new Dual Terror will have even wider appeal to professional users and enthusiasts alike.
For further information contact:
USA info@orangeusa.com or outside USA info@omec.com
…but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel… At least I hope so. š
For the past few weeks, I’ve been in kind of a rut with writing music. I’ve got eight songs for my new record, which I recorded pretty regularly over the course of about three months. And it wasn’t just eight songs I wrote. I wrote and recorded about 20 other songs before deciding on the ones that made the final cut. The process was incredible! A song would come to me, I’d grab my guitar or sit at the piano, and in a relatively short amount of time, I’d have a song. Then I’d spark up my DAW, and record a raw piece to make sure I captured it. No sweat.
But as soon as Christmas season hit, it seems that the stress of getting stuff done at work before taking a vacaction, then Christmas itself just sucked the creative juices out of me. Okay, I’ve written some jam tracks and recorded some short snippets of songs, but to date, I really haven’t gotten the inspiration to write a full song. But in spite of that, I’m feeling really positive as there is a bright side to this lack of creative energy.
As you know, I’ve lately been driven to be more academic about what I’m playing; partly because I want to be able to effectively teach what I’m learning, but also because I just want to be a better player. So in lieu of writing music, I’ve been working on my improv skills, and I’ve been really happy with the progress I’ve been making! All this practice is just making me a better player, and that is inspiring in and of itself!
For instance, as many may know, one of my regular gigs is to play at church. Before any naysayers start ripping me about playing at church, understand this: Do a worship service of ANY kind poses particular challenges. For instance, you can’t just rock out all your songs or pick music that is always up-tempo. Worship services need to take people through an emotion journey with respect to the music. Typically, the beginning and the ending songs are pretty upbeat, while the middle songs are much more subdued or, if you do have a more upbeat song, you don’t go all out and rock. The idea is that the music is not the focus, the worship experience is, and the music you play needs to enhance that. Furthermore, because it’s in a church, you can’t play at real loud volumes the entire time. As I mentioned above, you can get away with it at the beginning and the end, but even in those spots, you can’t really play at club or concert levels.
Sounds a bit constraining, doesn’t it? I’ve been gigging for years, and each type of venue poses its own particular limitations. The trick is to work around those limitations so that you can be as expressive as you can be.
All that said, considering the constraints, last night’s service was awesome! To add to our normal volume constraints though, I was missing both a drummer and a bassist, and all we had were two other guitarists besides me, one of which just started playing with us that day. So it was particularly challenging because being the most experienced guitarist put holding down the rhythm to the songs on me. But that was the cool thing. All the work I’ve been doing on my technique has allowed me to so much more than just strumming chords, adding little runs or double adorning some chords with arpeggios or arpeggiated double-stops. This is stuff that I couldn’t do six months ago! And despite not really being able to do any leads, it didn’t matter, I felt totally inspired!
So yes, there is a bright side to this rut. At least I can still play… š
I just dig it when I find a great guitar and amp combo! Featured in this Jam Track are the Saint Guitar Company Messenger Baritone and the Aracom Amps Custom 45R, both of which I’ve reviewed previously. (Messenger Review | Custom 45R Review). The Custom 45 has a really beefy low-end and a slight scooped tone, and the Messenger, while a baritone, has this incredibly bright-sounding voice. The two complement each other particularly well! Here’s the Jam Track:
You have just over 6 minutes to play around with this one. For the rhythm part, I used a fairly basic rock beat, but I also added some Latin drums underneath to take the edge off the heavy downbeat. And by the way, there’s no bass in this track at all. All of that is provided by the Messenger!
Ever since I tried out the VOX Satchurator a few months ago, I’ve been waiting for the this wah pedal to arrive. If it is anything close to the quality of sound that the Satchurator produces, I know that this is going to be a great pedal. The pedal features two modes: Mode 1 is classic VOX wah; while Mode 2 features the ability to variably adjust the gain and voicing profiles of the wah to dial in a variety of tonal possibilities.
One thing I take note of when evaluating pedals is if I can reproduce the manufacturer’s or endorser’s claims about a particular feature. For instance, when Satch touted the “More” switch on the Satchurator, during my tests, I was expecting more volume when my amp was clean, and more balls when my tubes were saturated. The pedal definitely lived up to that claim.
With the Big Bad Wah, VOX states, “Designed to Joe Satrianiās custom specs is the design of the pedal pot itself, delivering a smooth, musical tone throughout the entire sweep of the pedal.” This is huge, because I’ve found in my evaluations of different kinds of wah pedals that when you back off the pedal, your output becomes a bit muddy, so you end up never fully backing off because the wah will just suck your tone. Or seemingly to protect against this, manufacturers will narrow the sweep range, so the wah becomes much less dramatic. I found this to be the case with Morley Steve Vai Bad Horsie, which was very musical throughout its sweep range, but overall, didn’t have that dramatic of a sweep as compared to others I tried. So I ended up just getting a Dunlop Cry Baby, and despite its shortcomings, I’ve come to love it.
But I’ve always loved Satch’s wah tone, not because I want to necessarily sound like him, but because it’s just a killer tone, and highly expressive. And as with the Satchurator, Joe was involved in every aspect of the design process, so the Big Bad Wah promises to be of the exacting standards for which Professor Satchifunkilus is known. Once the Big Bad Wah is available in stores, which should be soon, considering the announcement of its release was made at NAMM, you can be assured I’ll be running down to the local shop to try one out!
Some online retailers like Sweetwater, are doing pre-orders for $219. That’s not a bad price to pay, especially for a signature pedal. And I dig the fact that Joe really wanted all his signature pedals to be affordable and within the reach of a wide range of people. In any case, all this combined makes for me taking a serious look at the Big Bad Wah
I’ve actually been thinking about writing this article for almost a year and a half. The back story behind it is that I was having a discussion with my eldest son about why I didn’t like the music he listened to. He was arguing that if I make the claim that I like all kinds of music, I shouldn’t contradict myself by saying I didn’t like his kind of (he was really into hardcore punk at the time). My response was that I actually liked the songs, but hated the vomit screaming vocals, and hated the total lack of regard for dynamic range in the music – it was all one volume from start to finish! I shared with him that I didn’t believe it was a function of the song, but a function of the mastering, and an endemic problem in music being produced these days.
To demonstrate, I grabbed an old Cars CD from my collection, and played a couple of songs for him. There were perceptibly distinct swells and dips in volume in all the songs – very dynamic. Then we put on one of his CD’s and listened to a couple of songs. After we finished, my son couldn’t believe the difference in recording technique used 20 years ago. Even he said the performances on my old CD seemed so much more alive, where the songs from his CD didn’t have nearly the amount of dynamicism, and they seemed almost muffled compared to the clarity of the Cars’ recordings.
I told him that it was due to the heavy compression that producers are using these days, and gave him a simple explanation of what a compressor does. I also shared that I believed that producers were just being lazy and using compression as a shortcut so they didn’t have to teach their musicians and singers proper mic and recording control. Heavy compression and limiting means you don’t have to fix the recordings as much, saving studio time, and thus getting a production out faster. I did say that compression is not bad, but it is overused. Correctly and judiciously applied, compression can really have a positive effect on a production.
But despite that, I didn’t write the article. I can’t explain why… Looking back, I suppose it may have been in large part due to wanting to focus more on getting gear reviews out, and focusing a lot on my own recordings. But I recently read an article in the new issue of Guitar World that covered compression: What it is, what it’s used for, and how to apply compression to vocals and various instruments. It was very instructive. As I eluded above, compression can be a very useful tool in the studio to tame wide swings in volume in a vocal or an instrument, and can add presence, and because of how it works, in many cases, a compressor is used to add sustain. At its most basic level, a compressor reduces the amount of dynamic range by reducing sounds that exceed a predetermined volume threshold; but because this also reduces the overall volume of the signal, makeup gain is added to bring up the volume of the quieter sounds. The end result is that you get a “fatter” signal.
I’m not going to go into any technical detail about compression. For that you can read this excellent reference. In fact, I’m going to assume you already know a bit about compression.
And while compression is very useful, as with anything you can have too much of a good thing. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t use it, but I am going to make an appeal: Don’t get sucked into the trend of creating a less dynamic recording. I can understand the need for compression over radio, but this trend is simply making for much lower audio quality and less dynamically expressive recordings.
Good Mic Technique
I was once speaking with this old timer named Patrick who, at 72, is still gigging and recording. I was talking to him about recording, and he said that young people don’t know good mic technique, and complained about the overuse of compression. His words, “Boy, back in the day, we didn’t have compression. So when a singer like Sinatra got to a phrase where he needed to pick up his volume, he just moved away from the mic. It ain’t goddamn rocket science. But compression made people lazy.”
Wow! What a statement, and it really is easy to do for a singer. But what about guitars? This is a bit tougher, but at least what I strive for is to make sure I’ve got a lot of dynamic range in my recordings by either tweaking the input or output gain so my waveforms have as much vertical travel variation on the track as possible. I will sacrifice volume for dynamics. After the fact, I may add a touch of compression, but only very limited, and to keep true to the natural output of the amp, use fairly short release times. This is approach can be a lot of work because it requires that I play fairly consistently, but that’s also good training. It’s also a lot of work to get a good mix, but in the end it’s totally worth it!
I believe if you just start with good mic technique, and use compression sparingly, your recordings will come alive.
Ever since Fender announced the new Roadworn Series of guitars, Iāve been lurking the gear forums and googling for information about them and trying to get a feel for what people think about them. Itās still early in the game, but not surprisingly, opinions are fairly evenly split. Lots of people like them, lots of people donāt. Iām part of the latter crowd.
From my point of view, if I was going to play a beat-up-looking, āroadwornā guitar thatās broken in, Iād rather have done the breaking in myself, or have had it done by someone else ā like my first electric guitar that my little brother gave me. It was an Ibanez Strat copy and it looked like a piece of shit! The paint was cracked and flaking in areas, the electronics were completely screwed up due to the jury-rigged wiring jobs my brother did on it. But when I had it working, that little bad boy could sing! Even my brother inherited from one his band mates. In other words, this guitar has a history, and it plays and feels like it has a history.
My problem with the Fender Roadworn series is that these are brand new guitars that are made to look like they have a history, but theyāre fresh off a frigginā production line! They have no history! Oh yeah, I can hear a Fender rep saying, āWe āwore outā some of the most common areas where guitars get worn, and added some other cosmetic blemishes to produce a guitar that looks and feels like its been played for 20 years.āā What a crock of shit! Sorry, not buying the rationale, nor the guitars. Besides, to me, itās how the guitar sounds and plays whether itās new or used that counts.
I suppose if you have to have a replica of a famous guitarists axe, hey! More power to you! But in the end, youāre the one playing it, and you aināt gonna sound like the guitarist whom which the guitar was modeled.
Summary: Thick, meaty hand-made pick from Red Bear Trading. You might think a pick doesn’t really matter until you play one of these picks. They’re totally awesome!
Pros: Thick and tactile, this heavy pick gives you instance response as soon as you strike a string. Chords seem to ring out better. Don’t be fooled by the thickness – the beveling makes this pick glide across the strings!
Cons: None
Price: $20
Okay, I admit it, I am now a true believer in hand-made picks! I wrote a review about Red Bear picks a few weeks ago. In the article I asked, “Does a pick really make that much of a difference?” After nearly a month playing with a Style B Medium, and now a Style B Heavy, I can undeniably say that it makes all the difference in the world! In this short span of time, I’ve become a better player, and while I attribute that to quite a bit of practice, I have to attribute a lot of my recent improvements in both tone and attack to the pick I’ve been using. I don’t say this lightly: These picks have totally changed my life with respect to my guitar playing!
When you first hold one of these picks, your first reaction is: Damn! This thing is thick! And while its smooth texture kind of sticks to your skin, it absolutely glides over your strings. And because of its thickness, it produces sound much faster than conventional nylon picks that need to be before they make a sound. The sound the picks produce is also much more crisp.
For instance, playing my Ovation acoustic/electric, I’ve never heard it ring the way it rings – and it’s because of the pick. I’ve had that guitar for over 15 years now, and it quite frankly has never sounded this good! It always sounded awesome to me because of its thick tone. But when I strum it with one of these picks, it now has a gorgeous chime! F-in’ A!
At first blush, you might think that paying $20 for a pick is just way too much. But how much would you pay for good tone? We guitarists spend literally thousands on guitars and amps and racks and pedals and other accessories every year! But most of us tend to play them with inferior plectrums, never knowing what we’re missing by making a relatively small investment compared to the vast sums we spend on other gear. Sure, our standard picks are cheap, and it’s okay to lose them, but there is absolutely NOTHING that compares to the tone you can produce with a hand-made pick. And once you play with a great pick, you’ll never go back to the cheapo picks again.
To be honest and fair, Red Bear is not the only one who makes handmade picks. But Dave is the only plectrum maker who uses TortisTM, a polymer made from animal protein that looks and feels EXACTLY like tortoise shell. Dave has mastered cutting and shaping of the material, something no one else who has tried to work with it has been able to do.
What’s so special about this material? If you speak with people who have played with tortoise shell picks, they’ll tell you about how good it feels to play with one. But by the same token, to play with tortoise shell means that a sea turtle had to be sacrificed to create the pick. On the other hand, Tortis feels like real tortoise shell. In fact, when Dave first sent out his first prototypes, people told him he was full of shit when he said the picks weren’t tortoise shell! That’s how natural these feel!
As I mentioned in the previous article, Dweezil Zappa swears by these! And for good reason. The sound they produce, and how they make your playing much more precise is an absolute inspiration! For more info, and to order them, go to Red Bear Trading!
If you live in the SF Bay Area, and especially near Palo Alto, you can also get them at Gryphon Stringed Instruments.
Imagine, if you will, that guitar to the left, in a glossy, goldtop finish. That will be the guitar that Adam Hernandez of Saint Guitars will be building for me. It was by no means an easy decision to make. As a tester for Saint Guitars, and ostensibly a rep for Saint Guitars (I’ve been careful about keeping that separate from this site – though news about it will be out within the next few weeks), I love every single guitar I’ve gotten my hands on. I dig Adam’s approach to guitar-building, and of course, I simply love his designs.
But despite the relationship, I was a little wary of actually purchasing one. Why? There are lots of factors, which I’m going to share here. But first, the juicy back story…
As some of you may know, I’m a huge fan of G & L Guitars, especially the Comanche line. Yngwie Malmsteen calls the Strat a perfect guitar, but I believe the Comanche improves on it even further, especially with its Z-coil pickups that still offer that gorgeous single-coil feel, but with much more output.
For the last few months, I had been saving my pennies to purchase a Comanche from my local G & L dealer. I’ve been skrimping and scraping every extra buck I could because I just had to have one. It’s an incredible guitar that just speaks to my soul. And about a month ago, I had enough to get my beloved guitar. Then Adam contacted me via e-mail a few days before I was all set to buy the guitar and said he wanted to construct a guitar for me based upon this “dream” goldtop I had described to him a month before that when he asked me what I think would be my dream guitar.
Now you might think I just up and dropped all my plans to get a Comanche. I didn’t. I’ve been very drawn to the Comanche for a long time, but as I’ve shared, I also love Saint guitars. In fact, though I received the e-mail early in the morning, I sat on it for the whole day, and didn’t reply until late that night. In short, I was seriously conflicted, and for several good reasons, which is why I’m sharing this experience. And perhaps by sharing this experience, I can shed some light on helping you make your own choice in whether or not to go with a custom-made boutique guitar.
Most people who come to GuitarGear.org have a serious and virtually incurable case of GAS. Several have custom guitars – a few even have a few Saint guitars to their name. So there is no doubt that what you ultimately get is high-quality, and tailored to your specific tonal requirements. But the conflict in my mind was something entirely different than cost, quality, build, tone, etc.. I know what Saint Guitars sound like, and they’re some of the most gorgeous-sound guitars I’ve ever played; cost would be an issue, but if I made the decision, I’d make it happen; rather, it was dealing with the “known” versus the “unknown.”
So, to boutique or not to boutique? That is the question I posed as the title of this article. If it wasn’t cost or quality or tone that was the issue, what do I mean by the “known” versus the “unknown.” I’m going to bullet-point the known issues first:
First off, the Comanche was a known quantity to me. I have played several over the last couple of years, and while each is slightly different – after all you’re dealing with wood which is by no means uniform from instrument to instrument – they’ve all generally fallen within the same range of playability and tone.
And because I’ve spent a lot of time playing that model of guitar, I knew how I’d fit it into my stable and what it could do for my tone, and how I’d use it in my compositions and performances.
The Z-coil pickup is what I believe to be Leo Fender’s finest achievement. Even though Leo was known for creating the Strat, what a lot of people don’t know is that he didn’t play guitar – at all. He didn’t even tune them until late in life! He was all about the pickup, and he built the Strat around his pickup invention. So there’s a bit of history behind the Comanche.
So what about the “unknowns?”
Being that a custom-made is a unique creation, I don’t have a precedent from which to follow. There aren’t any previous guitars made with the EXACT specs my guitar would have. In other words, I don’t have any similar models from which to reference.
I suppose there are reasonable facsimiles, and since I’ve had the fortune to test Saint guitars, I know how well they’re made, but the guitar I have in mind isn’t made of walnut, which is Adam’s choice of wood. It’s a solid mahogany body with a maple neck – similar to a Charvelle I played a few days ago – very nice playing guitar.
Also, with a custom guitar, what I found was that I really had to think and on top of that do research on tone woods and pickups and hardware. That’s something that I wouldn’t have to do with a Comanche. I’ve just had to play a bunch to find the one that I like. That kind of leads back to the first point that there are no previous guitars with my exact specs from which to reference.
But despite all that, I’m still going to have Adam build me my guitar. The uniqueness certainly plays into it, but I’ve been playing long enough now that I have a good idea of how a guitar sounds with a particular type of tone wood, so tone is not quite as unknown as I might have originally thought. But I think the thing that probably was the scariest thing for me was having to specify the different pieces. In other words, all the effort I’d have to put into getting the guitar created. And even though it’s a bit of a moving target, here are the specs I so far:
Finish: Glossy Goldtop
Body: Double-cut Mahogany
Neck: Maple
Fretboard: Ebony
Headstock: Maple
Guitar Gear 