It’s a great source of backing tracks. I’ve subscribed to him for a couple of years.
Between him and Sped Spedding I’m pretty much sorted.

Winter weather = more guitar playing so entertaining myself learning new stuff…..

Possibly the most understated lead part j mascis ever committed to tape &( huge fuzz sounds from the excellent soundlad Hungry Beaver fuzz )

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkgJX4oLJ3B/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

And some easy killers play along so my band can cover it at upcoming gigs…,

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkOxkFjLoaR/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Nice Jag & Jazzmaster 🙂

Well, I don’t know if anyone remembers that “musicians classifieds” that someone posted a link to a few pages back?

I’ve been browsing the Greater Manchester one on and off and am now off for a try out with an actual honest-to-God band on Tuesday.

I’m very excited and slightly nervous 🤣 but more pressingly the band plays in drop Bb. Tuning my Squier Strat with 11-50 strings to drop Bb unsurprisingly results in string tension reminiscent of rubber bands and fret buzz like the death rattle of some doomed robot. Which is maybe the point.

So I have some chunkier strings on the way, and can probably fettle with the truss rod etc to set it up better, but aside from that does anyone have any insights into guitar setup for playing tuned this low?

Having lost my guitar playing mojo, there always seems to be something else to do instead of practice and lack of progress is demotivating me does anyone have a way of motivating themselves to play when you get like this?

@rOcKeTdOg personally I’ve had times when I’ve played a lot, and other times where I barely play at all. It doesn’t especially bother me, although I’m long past the point where I think I’ll always be a guitarist, so no real worries about coming back to it later.

That said, I find the following help me play more:

* Recording. If you have to capture a good take you play a lot by default and sharpen up a lot.

* Play with (new) people. Tends to be inspirational and generally fun.

* New bits of kit (pedals, etc). Happy hours noodling through settings and variations.

Drop Bb blimey….

truss rod will definitely need tweaking, you may have to widen the nut slots for the bass strings as well

@rOcKeTdOg

I find having a deadline motivates me no end. I will no practice bass unless I’m going to be playing with other people.

I organised a wee jam one a week with a couple of mates to get me to play guitar.

Then one of the was freaked out by the pressure of practicing when I organised a drummer.

Now it’s turned into a cover band. Still practicing together one a week with the aim to gig. The horror of turning up having said I’d practice something and not being able to play it motivates me massively!

A few years back I tried to learn don’t speak by no doubt. I could play it a bit. Now I can mostly nail it all, except the 3rd 1/4 of the solo. I would have given up long ago if I didn’t have to play it in front of people 😃

Rocksmith on the pc also helped me practice for a while, I got fed up after 6 months. I’d got much better, this lead into the jamming once a week

@tomparkin I tune my baritone to B or drop A. That has a 28″ scale and I still use 14 to 68 strings.
To get a 25.5″ scale that low you’ll probably need some work on the nut to get the right string gauge to work as well as the truss rod and action adjust.

Thanks folks

For whatever reason I was lucky with Andertons delivery so now have some 12-60 strings on there. I did have to widen the low E nut slot a bit but otherwise went ok. It’s still fairly buzzy at times so although I fiddled with the action I think maybe some truss rod adjustment might also help.

Weirdly I think the overall string tension is probably lower than standard E with 11-50 strings. What you gain in string gauge you lose in dropping many semitones 🤣

On the downside, if it doesn’t work out with this band I’m going to now have a fair job returning to E standard. Hey ho.

Thanks for all the advice, still not picked it up yet though 😄

OK. I need some help. My son has accidentally ripped out most of the wiring in his Pevey raptor plus exp (an Ebay bargain that got him started).

Can anyone point me towards a simple standard/generic wiring guide?

It currently looks like this..

Thanks for all the advice, still not picked it up yet though 😄

Buy a new guitar or book some lessons 🙂

@bubs there are plenty out there so maybe have a search about for one that makes sense to you, but that said I did some research on the topic recently and this guide seemed reasonably easy to follow to me:

Stratocaster Wiring – Tips, Mods & More!

Five way switches require a bit of thinking to get your head round IMO but if you just need to figure out how to connect things up in a standard configuration the above should be a good starting point.

P.S. that picture looks like a good learning opportunity for a beginner guitarist 🤣

Thank you. I bought a cheap soldering iron and spent the afternoon clumsily connecting up wires and somehow got it all to work, result! It’s not pretty but at least it sounds ok.

I spend too much time on youtube looking at guitar build videos but this one is pretty different.

Mark Gutierrez’s AVANC build for the GGBO22
This is a decidedly non-traditional build but i found it fascinating to watch. The elliptical fanned frets and heavy use of CNC has certainly brought something different to the game. 
Whether its a game you’d want to play I don’t know but the end result is pretty special in my eyes.
This is the compilation full build video. More detail focussed ones are on his channel.

Have you picked your guitar up yet @rocketdog ?

I’ve decided to try and learn Layla Unplugged. My acoustic guitar is upstairs though so I’m going to learn it plugged in 😅

Want a free Les Paul?
Crimson Guitars are giving one away to promote their Guitar Giveways comps to help fund their Guitar Museum.

Here’s the link to the site https://www.greatguitargiveaway.com/

And here is the very guitar you could win being set up by Josh.

No point anybody else entering, I’ve just “bought” the winning ticket 😅

Beat ya to it feller. Sorry.

PRS has been doing the rounds on the UK YouTube channels over the past couple of weeks. His session with Andertons is chaotically joyous.

13th gig for our covers band on Saturday but first one in the village three of us work in.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck9DElmDXf5/

Pretty raucous night and the bar nearly got drunk dry. Call it a mid life crisis but we are having a lot of fun! Huge motivator to practice and push your ur self too as noted above!

That sounds like an epic night with everyone having a great time.
Is that Braunton near Saunton?

Apologies if already posted but what do we consider the greatest foot pedal of all time ? Cry Baby ? Big Muff ?

I’m going for the Ibanez Tube Screamer in all of it’s incarnations. I have the current mini version. Love it, it’s virtually always on.

@eddiebaby yep that’s the one, biggest “village” in the country and getting bigger by the second!

@trailmonkey now that’s a question with a million answers that depends on what genre you’re playing and what era too.

The tubescreamer is very widely used but you could easily argue that the Klon centaur is much rarer and highly sought after.

The big muff is a hugely important fuzz pedal but you could easily argue that Hendrix using a fuzzface (& the stones using a maestro fuzz on satisfaction before that) was the spark that started things in that department.

Proco Rat has gotta be the “best” distortion

It’s endless!

If your amp has a good sound and master volume then I’d go for a delay pedal.
Echoplex is good, I prefer the Echorec but despite owning good copies of those I love the Fashback2 as it candy most things.
I prefer overdrive to fuzz and the new amp in a box pedals have changed things around across the board.

Klon centaur is much rarer and highly sought after

It’s only existed since 1994 though. It hasn’t had the overall impact of stuff like a fuzz face, wah, tube screamer, memory man etc.

Of course it’s not a stomp box but can we include the Roland RE-201 ? The finest piece of sonic hardware ever produced surely?

I have the Boss stomp box copy which is pretty darn good it has to be said. I have a really good plug in sim too that has the wow and flutter of the original.

Greatest pedal to me is the strymon dig

Can anyone recommend a loud cheapish head?

Since my last posts about ridiculous drop tunings I’ve been for a couple of rehearsals with the doom band and it’s clear that my Orange Micro Dark, although impressively loud for its size, isn’t keeping up with the other guitarist’s amp (an Orange tube head of some description through a 4×12 marshall cab). It does sound good to my ears though: a similar sound in a bigger package would do me.

I’m musing on how better to keep up. I can’t afford to drop large sums on a nice new 100w tube head, so I’m scouring ebay and the like, but I’m not all that sure what I actually want since my experience of amps is quite limited.

Any suggestions? I’m mainly after loudness: the amp would be used as a pedal platform, so I’m not overly fussed about amp drive tones or inbuilt effects. An effects loop would be nice. The rehearsal space has a 4×12 so head only required.

Thanks in advance for your sagely words of wisdom 😊

I have the Marshall Origin combo which also comes as a head. 20w or 50w.

Ridiculously good amp and takes pedals well either into the front or via the effects loop.

It’s not a high gain amp and has loads of headroom

@tomparkin

Sure there’s a million answers but if you look at something solid state rather than valve you will get something loud without spending a huge amount. If you’re relying on pedals for your overdrive anyway, the “valve ness” of it is less important?

The new-ish Orange supercrush 100w solid state head is £370 new so less secondhand. It’s loud and gets good reviews as sounding close to oranges valve tones which I would have thought is right up the street of the music you’re talking about?

Thanks folks.

I will check out the Origin and Supercrush. I do like the sound of the Micro Dark so would be happy enough sticking with Orange.

Any views on older SS stuff? I had a Marshall Valvestate BITD which I quite liked… There is currently an H&K Vortex Black on eBay for a reasonable price. A Peavey XXL too 🤔

BOSS Katana 100 head has a power amp in socket plus of course all the BOSS amp modelling goodness.
£375 new but a few on the secondhand market.

EDIT: Here’s one for £250

https://reverb.com/uk/item/63298666-boss-katana-head-mkii-100-watt-digital-modeling-guitar-amp-head

I’ve yet to hear anything bad about the Boss Katana so good call ( although the orange looks cooler 😉)

I think if you are using it as basically a cleanish tone to stack pedals on, the basic tone of the amp doesn’t matter too much anyway

Plenty of classic 80s/90s metal was recorded with the “older” solid state stuff. Peavey was big in that era

Katana is a good shout too, thanks. I have actually played through one of those with another band, but it was hard to hear much of the details of it (spent most of the time trying to work out how to drive it, so once I was at least audible I just left it alone! 😂)

I agree @ceepers so long as it’s loud and has headroom I can probably just stack fuzz pedals until the appropriate doom tone has been achieved…

Hey guys…gotta show you this labour of love…19 77 stratocaster I got off ebay for my kids 16th birthday…it was a bit battered but with a bit of love….my kid did the artwork ( pyro art with a solder iron) and I took care of the rest…
https://i.postimg.cc/KvmsQZMD/20220822-133057.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/7Zf9QbY0/20220822-133107.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/vZg7tj3v/20220822-133145.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/hjp7Bb2j/20220822-133141.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/Wpx0bS2F/20221118-190452.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/Z54BCMXR/20221118-190439.jpg

Fender’s 150W Mustang 5 V2 head is worth a try. The amp models are pretty close and there are all the common effect pedals and cab emulators built in. Junior has one, it sounds better than the genuine valve amps it models at non painful volume levels. It works very well with a cab loaded with Vintage 30s with its Vintage 30 cab emulator in addition.