Guitarists of Singletrack…

Cheers plumber, time for some internet rabbit holing 🙂

NGD! Nothing fancy, but a few firsts for me:

• Never had single coils
• Never had an offset
• Never had a wiggle stick

As such, I have questions. Typically, how hummy/buzzy are Jag/SC pickups? These seem quite buzzy, although it could just be that I’m used to (active) humbuckers.

Nice!

Singlecoils are quite buzzy & jag pickups can be quite microphonic so it’s probably “normal”
those CV jag pickups are pretty good though. Not quite as bright as the fender reissue jag pups but not quite as noisy IME.
nice guitars, I play mine lots!

Ps, this is the fount of all knowledge for offsets….. 

https://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/

Super helpful friendly forum 

nice guitars, I play mine lots

It’s seems pretty nice. Second hand, and badly set up, so spent some time faffing with the neck/bridge and put some fatter strings on. There’s a couple of sharp frets, and the nut wasn’t glued in, but nothing significant. Pretty pleased for a couple of hundred quid.

I suspect the buzzing is normal, it subsides when I touch the strings or hardware, so the shielding is probably ok. I’m just used to sitting in silence when not actively playing 🙄

That sounds pretty normal tbh. Offsets generally like at least 11s string wise although the CV has a better bridge and a pre installed neck shim that helps with some of the common jag problems.

The one thing I’ve found gigging with mine is that the bridge shifts around and messes with the intonation/ tuning  if  I get too excited & unleash my inner Pete Townsend 😂. So I’ve put some plastic inserts in the bridge thimbles to limit the movement. Not quite proper “jag”  spec but easier for gigs. I have another Squier jag (vintage modified one) that I’ve refinished ( from whit to CAR)  and put Fender RI pups in. That one also has a mustang style bridge but still floats properly.R

“ kinman “ make really good noiseless jag pickups if you need quiet!

https://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=118272

Good point about the intonation. I pushed the bridge all the way back for set up, so I’d at least have zero point that’s easy to quickly reset to if needed….not that I’ve gigged since we moved 🙄

Need to find a new low commitment, low ego ensemble to fool about with.

Something I never thought I’d say

I played 2 lefty vintage strats yesterday, irrespective of cost I’d take my current customs shop strats

Just put my Fender Jaguar up for sale in the classifieds if anyone is on the lookout for an offset.

I have too many guitars at present and I’m in a Telecaster phase so Mr Orange has to go.

In the past few weeks I’ve picked up the guitar again in the hope that it’s going to be more than a nice ornament in the living room.  It’s an electric and I tend to have to practice unplugged due to noise. I noticed that there are options for headphone amps which plug direct into the guitar which enable both phone input and headphone output.  I’ve seen Fender Micro and Vox Amplug are options, the Fender being quite a bit more expensive, but more feature laden.  Any advice or recommendations?

For the money the Vox is all you need as a starter. I have the bass version and it does all I need to do when out of the house. The aux in means you can plug it into a phone or tablet for backing tracks etc, and while it doesn’t have much by way of tonal variety you can dial in a bit of dirt if you need it.  

It’s flimsy though, as you’d kind of expect for the money but for thirty odd quid …….

Yeah, same here, I’ve used a Vox Amplug a few times since I got it in August. It does the job – my wife can’t complain when I turn the volume up to 11 when she’s gone to bed! 😀

The bloke in PMT laughed at me on the weekend when I asked if anyone did anything similar with a looper incorporated. ‘That’s a lot to ask for something so little’, he said. Well, I know that, but cleverer people than me put these things together, so I thought it was worth asking. 😀

Thanks, Vox ordered.

@idlejon just buy a regular looper pedal and plug the amplug into  the “out” jack and your guitar into the “in” of the pedal. Probably obvious but I do this all the time if I want to experiment with my pedal board but use headphones to keep the noise down/my wife happy!

@idlejon just buy a regular looper pedal and plug the amplug into  the “out” jack and your guitar into the “in” of the pedal. Probably obvious but I do this all the time if I want to experiment with my pedal board but use headphones to keep the noise down/my wife happy!

Thanks, that’s what I assumed. I already have a looper pedal but I haven’t set up the electric guitar since I started thinking about it. I hate cables and plugging this bit into that, and rearranging myself close enough to a power socket to plug in my looper and with headphone leads long enough to reach… much easier just to pick up the acoustic and lie on the sofa! Where guitars are concerned, I’m the laziest person in the world. 😀

“Where guitars are concerned, I’m the laziest person in the world.”

At home I play either an acoustic bass guitar, or a big body hollowbody guitar, unplugged. I write literally everything unplugged and then use the electric bass and huge pedalboard and amp rig once I’m with the band!

If you really want to play around after everyone has gone to bed then a Positive Grid Riff into a laptop with Bias FX 2 installed and some wired headphones gives you a huge range of tones, loopers and in fact pretty much every pedal ever made. It also works into an ipad or iphone if you have the right cable. I did put up a PSA a couple of months ago when they did a flash sale and gave away Bias FX2 for free for 48hrs – not sure anyone noticed though!    Its an amazing bit of software and can mimic any guitar so you can even change your strat to a Les Paul or whatever.

I used to have a vox plug but found it a bit fragile and buzzy – obviously it was only 30 quid so build quality wasn’t the best!

Don’t NUX make a nice little headphone amp thing, with all the bells and whistles? Might have a loop feature.

I have a Line6 Pocket POD, which is alright, but ultimately quite clunky to use.

I have the NUX mighty plug pro which goes for <£100 and is awesome for what it is, but it doesn’t have a looper

I have a zoom b3 pedal on my pedal board wired up to my laptop for silent practice.

If I/ when I join another band it will come off.

Don’t NUX make a nice little headphone amp thing, with all the bells and whistles?

Word of warning. I bought one last week and returned it after 3 days. It emitted a constant high pitched whine. It’s what I imagine tinnitus is like. After a bit of digging online it appears this is a common known problem. Some times a firmware update sorts it, but it didn’t sort mine. Other suggested turning the internal mic off, but that didn’t solve mine. i tried it with multiple headphones and a set of monitor speakers and it was the same with all of them. The only thing that solved it was engaging the EQ effects block and cutting the 6k frequency completely which removed the whine but also muddied the sound.

@eddiebaby did you ever get that cigar box guitar? I finally finished building mine over xmas, just the ten months of on/off mostly-off labouring 🙂

I was surprised how much I enjoyed some of the woodworking; spent some time regretting going for f-holes but got them done eventually; managed to get the soldering working first go albeit not pretty if you could see it, and it sounds …good! Or it would, if someone good played it. There’s loads of volume and sustain even unplugged, the humbucker and tone pot are fun, but it turns out that it isn’t a miracle solution to being a novice guitarist and I’ll have to do things like practice. Tsk.

With my Amplug I have a jack to jack connector so I can have the Amplug next to me at the end of a guitar lead which makes it easier to deal with the fiddly controls. So it would be easy to add a looper in that chain.
I’ve also plugged the guitar straight into my Minirig speaker using a 6mm to 3.5mm converter and it worked to an extent.

Something different today…
I have an audition (of sorts…) for a localish band at the end of the month. I’m on a Bandmix/Joinmyband kind of website here in France and someone got in touch, looking for a guitarist. They play mostly French language, rock-y stuff (none of which I’ve ever heard before – even the covers) but I was able to work out a couple of tunes by ear, which is a good sign. Singer, keyboards, bass, drummer – and looking for a guitarist… Sounds like it might be fun and I’m keen just to play with other folk again, having had a couple of years of office noodling…

The biggest question is, obviously, going to be… what guitar and amp do I take along? It’s a casual ‘Hey, we’re rehearsing on this date, come along! And if you’d like to bring a guitar, that’d be great’ – no pressure. Right.
I’d like to make a competent impression, but I’m thinking nothing too flash, as I’m not as good a player as my nicest guitar gear suggests, but obviously something I like to play, that sounds good (and doesn’t take an hour to set up. (‘I’ll need the wifi code to download my Quad Cortex presets’ etc…). I reckon I’ll only need a clean and crunch tone, so I’ll leave my four pedalboards behind… And yes, I’ll take a tuner. 🙂

My current fave options are:

Guitars: Tobacco sunburst PRS Vela – nice in that it doesn’t say rock, metal or country.
Fender Strat – black, white pickups, very Gilmour. Might struggle on getting bigger rock tones. Might take the Custom Shop strap off though…
Strandberg – A little out there, but great to play. Might be a little visually divisive.
‘Floyd’ – my home made, hand painted super Strat H/H/S with Floyd Rose. Again, a little visually challenging 🙂
I’ll be leaving behind the semi hollow, the purple sparkle Tele, the homemade Cabronita, Kramer Nightswan and the PRS McCarty – far too statement-y…

Amps:
Tonemaster Deluxe – probably loud enough. Might need a pedal to be truly crunchy.
Blackstar Amped 1 into Barefaced 1×10 – loud and simple. Two tones (preset and WYSIWYG) – probably enough. By contrast, a little visually underwhelming, but massively loud and sounds great.
EVH Lunchbox head into my Barefaced 1×10 – definitely loud enough. Too ‘I’m fully Spandex rock, me!’?
Epiphone Valve Jr in a Fender 1×12 cab. ‘Only’ 5W, but probably loud enough, still might struggle.

I’d ask how they rehearse. I go and see cover bands at my local pub regularly and it’s rare to see an actual amp nowadays. 90% are straight into the PA from a modeller etc and are using in ears. I’m assuming they rehearse the same way

Sounds fun!

personally I’d take the prs or the strat and the tone master plus some kind of distortion/ OD pedal (+• a delay?) 

Just middle of the road classic and ready to be moulded into whatever tone they need. 

From a couple of pics I’ve seen of the band, the previous guitarist had a Marshall head and 4×12… so I don’t reckon I could over-amp. 🙂

I’m not sure I could ever look that French… 🙂
4×12, bass stack, wedges over in-ears. I reckon it’s a loud band. I’ll be taking earplugs…

I dunno, stripey top, a beret, arrive on a bike and maybe an optional string of onions? You’ll be fine!!!🤣🤣🤣

maybe the black star then? Will probably get close to the Marshall sound they had

as pointed out above, they might well practice with smaller combos

Let’s hope it’s not full bass stacks and massive volume. I had to wear earplugs all the time with my last band, which makes trying to work out your own relative volume really hard. And I previously tried out for another band, but had to leave after two rehearsals as they were soooooo loud. If the other guitarist didn’t turn off all his pedals right after a song ended, there’d be massive, instant feedback.
And the band before that, once we’d persuaded our drummer to use those chopstick drumsticks (just for rehearsals) was a pleasant volume all evening.

All you need is here! 😀 ( Flight of the Conchords ‘Foux Da Fa Fa’)

Awesome! @idlejon – not seen that one before.

Strat and Tone master I think on this one Chipps

Its weird that I only over think on guitar and amps to bring to an audition, nothing else concerns me

Just ordered my next Ivison Guitar

Dakota One

I’ll expect it in 2027 given how popular they have become

That’s a pretty stunning guitar, @plumber. Spendy though! But I guess anything handmade it, these days…
I still want a Gordon Smith No Cut, single pickup job before people realise they shouldn’t be that money…

@chipps – bear in mind that the French sometimes use do ray mi instead of A B C. This lead to much hilarity when I played in a half French, half English blues band in Tarascon several years back…

“This one’s in B”

”ah oui, Si” 🤦🏻‍♂️

So I’ve discovered. I reckon I’ll just have to stare at the bass player a lot 😊

@chipps: personally I’d probably go for the PRS Vela plus EVH lunchbox head / barefaced cab.

The latter as it’s probably going to be loud enough, the former because it’s something a bit different. And I reckon as an overall setup it says something like “I’m quite versatile”. Hopefully.

Then ofc a modest pedalboard of some kind. Tuner, drive/boost, delay or reverb. Something along those lines.

If you want to be accepted into the band don’t worry too much about which guitar you take just turn up with a pack of beer et un bédo dans ta poche. I don’t drink, smoke or do any kind of drugs and have accepted that I will never feel at home in a rock band in these parts. 😉 Then consider the type of public you’ll be playing to and where, I’m too old for all that shit, I’ll stick with the MTB and horsey clubs. 🙂

Out of idle interest what are the French covers on the set list, it’ll give me an idea of what they’re about?