Seymour Duncan YJM (Yngwie Malmsteen) fury

[Deleted]

Hello,
it seems that Yngwie has turned to Seymour Duncan to make his signature pickups. I am thinking of buying one for the bridge and one for the neck. Does anybody here has any info/experience on those?

[cynical1]

We had a small discussion on the subject a while back. No personal experience detailed, but a few clips and discussion. You can follow it here if you're interested.

I've got the DiMarzio YJM set to go in project #1...if I ever get it finished I'll post some sound samples...but I don't know if you're prepared to wait that long...

The DiMarzio is a low output pickup, which is why I grabbed it. It's allegedly patterned after the 50's staggered Strat pickup and claims to offer more clarity and definition along with the hum canceling. Honestly, the main reason I have it set to go into Project #1 is that I got it for $30.00 with shipping on eBay...

I can't imagine the Seymour Duncan is going to be significantly hotter. I would imagine the sound will be similar, but just enough of a difference to keep the lawyers at bay.

For reference, the old DiMarzio YJM is now called the HS-4™ DP217.

Hope this helps a little.

Happy Trails

Cynical One

[Deleted]

thanx, i might search for a used dimarzio as well.

[cynical1]

IMHO, I would recommend that. I bought all 6 pickups for my two eternal projects on eBay and never spent more then $35.00 for any of them individually (the Rio Grande Halfbreed was a real score at $25.00)...and they all list between $65.00 and $90.00 new... 3 of them were new in the original box with the seals unbroken (including the YJM)...the previous owners either sold the project of gave up on it... Why pay retail when you can get 2 for 1 used?

HTC1

[Deleted]

one guy sells the whole hs3/hs4/hs4 set in greece 180 euros. Thats a robbery!!

[cynical1]

I noticed that both SD and DiMarzio tend to be a bit pricey on eBay over there.

Unless you're really hung on the YJM pickup, there are quite a few very good pickup manufacturers over there.

Kloppmann comes to mind. Bare Knuckle would be another one. Kent Armstrong is a very under-rated pickup. WD Music UK distributes Armstrong pickups over there, to my knowledge.

This would be a good time for anyone across the pond to chime in with some recommendations...I'm tapped...no pun intended...

Happy Trails

Cynical One

[Deleted]

Sure why not! Thanx for the links! Lets give a chance to small makers as well.

[Yew]

axesrus stock some artec pickups (same company that makes lots of GFS pups)

I cna reccomend irongear pickups, I have one of their classic PAF humbuckers, and in all honesty, it soudns better than the Gibson 90 quid a pop 57 classics (im comparing an overwound to a standardwould though, More cream from more winds

[Deleted]

thanx, irongear rails sound ok.. 13Kohm.

[Deleted]

Hello!! i just got my dimarzio hs-3 !!! yupppie!! just tested and its about 10.5 kohm and 12.5 kohm for the 2 coils.!
However it has 5 !!! wires!!! what do i do with the additional ground?, should is connect this to the negatives?

[JohnH]

The extra bare wire will be a ground for the case, not connected to the coils, but used for shielding. So for a normal wiring there will be two wires to ground.

[sumgai]

pyrros,

John's answer was kind of terse. In fact, for him, it's a little weird how he left out his favorite part.....

In any pickup that has an odd number of wires, one of them is meant to be the ground for the casing, and/or the internal structure of the pickup assembly. The remaining wires are hooked to the coil itself (or coils themselves). This allows an installer to connect the pickups in series, if they should wish to do so, as well as installing them in parallel. (Parallel being what John considered "normal".)

HTH




sumgai

[4real]

Congrats on your new pups...

It had me having a bit of a search around the YouTube for demos and such this morning...there's some good ones on there.

I'm a bit of a convert to noiseless single coils. Noise has always bothered me a bit...I played gibsons for years...but the Stacked pups like these and others have come a long way in recent times.

The older stacks were pretty bad I have to say though.

Be aware that the "resistance" measurement is misleading completely and a high resistance isn't necessarily going mean more power...and certainly not "more tone".

thanx, irongear rails sound ok.. 13Kohm.

You know...kind of meaningless.

In fact, from my looking around and hearing demos, Malsteen is a vintage fender collector and likes his pickups more towards the traditional fender sound...taking that hendrix kind of approach perhaps, and using the amp for power and drive. With those kinds of things that Malsteen plays, you want high note definition and this is the kind of thing you get from a lower vintage kind of sound.

With a stacked pup, with two coils in exactly the same place as opposed to side by side, there are special design characteristics...so this throws off the whole "risistance" thing completely.

In a design like Kinmans or my Fender Noiseless or SCn pups and newer stack designs...the lower coil is separated a fair bit from the upper coil by magnets and sunk well into the guitar. Mine have both internal core rod mags, extra cores in the lower coil, I think a different wire gauge of winding, and powerful side magnets to pull the magnetic field in and magnetically isolate the lower coil. Taking a resistance measurement you will read something very high perhaps as you are reading both coils, but the lower one is not sensing very much of the string, it's purpose is largely to eliminate hum and noise. The whole design is tended towards making a more convincing single coil type sound, without the noise.

Regardless...they all tend to be pretty good these days and new designs seem to be coming out all the time.

As good SC fender type sounds, they would be a good all rounder...listen to this great blues player with the YJM pups...



for a more malsteen-alike...check out this review perhaps...



As you can here here, clean they sound like quite nice vintage fenders, with perhaps a bit more "cream" to them. Some true SC fans don't like this kind of thing, but it is just a small detail...there is a loss of that SC graininess...this is similar to my JB pups, but they are designed to sound like that as well. Kinmans sound like extremely good traditional SC pups with a similar technology, huge costs...but listen to Hank Marvin's pups to see how far this kind of thing has gone to sound like great SC pups if they want to...and no noise.

By the way, there is no real reason or goodness to be gained from splitting the things. Possibly you could attempt to use the lower coil to noise cancel another true single coil if you wanted to get tricky with that 4 conductor wiring. If you wanted to experiment with how little that lower coil contributes to the sound of the things...just connect up the lower coil and see how little comes out

This last guy has a few malsteen tips...like lowering the middle pup to the floor if you are a super fan. Oh...and YJM disconnects his tone controls apparently for more bite as other threads have discussed

...

The interesting thing when comparing a lot of these clips...I compared a bunch of clips comparing the pups that I use. Clean, you can hear the details...but if you are using distortion, and if you go anywhere near digital modellling...a huge amount of the character of any pup is lost in the sound of the amp/distortion/model...and of course the playing technique and guitar itself.

For instance, I looked at this guy...



Sure different guitars and pups...comparing the Hot JB's like I have in the neck middle of my guitar...with the SCn's (my tele's neck pup is this design) but with a maple neck strat...with an epi HB SG...so a completely different kind of guitar, wood, pups and neck join...same riff, same amp settings...

What is interesting is not so much the pups but really, how similar all of these things sound alike and equally serviceable when you have that much crunch...how much the amp/distortion plays a role and the player to the resulting sound.

...

Anyway...high "powered" overwound pups will often sound muddy...but these new stacked designs will have a lot of resistance but come out with a sound and output a lot more vintage than you might think. Through a clean amp, they are likely to sound fairly similar to any strat (dire straits, etc) generally, perhaps a bit warmer if hot versions. So, not many bragging rights in the resistance measurement, especially with these kinds of stacked pup designs.

All the same, I am sure they are a good high quality pup, but if they sound bright....work on those amp and distortion settings and technique to get closer to YJM's sound.

...

By the way, not a big YJM fan, pups sound good...but he did make one of the funniest instructional vids and he sure can play guitar in his style...virtually defined that neo-classical harmonic minor thing didn't he!






(EDITed to make the YouTube videos show up directly. Man, that first one has some mighty tasty playing!)

[Deleted]

4real, thanx for all the info.

just a question, besides the stack design, are there out there any *hot* yet quiet true single coils?

Overall i think that humbuckers are like a silver bullet to kill any tone-related demon, but the weaker and cleaner single coil pickups provide more clarity, at the expense of demanding greater technical ability and strength from the side of the player.

i remember about late 80s when i bought a kramer 210 with the seymour duncun live wire active pickups! They were so loud
i could just plug the earphones to the guitar directly and listen to its sound!!! Anything i played there sounded "fast", cause the guitar was touch-screen type of thing. Still is a veru good guitar and pups but it has this massive industrial feeling (even the neck more quiet pup) and always sounds heavy metal.
The dimarzio hs-3 sound some times, even distorted like ... classical guitar or even violin, which is great.

[4real]

I just wrote a bit about the installation and performance of your pups in your guitars thread...

guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=wiring&thread=5471&page=2

just a question, besides the stack design, are there out there any *hot* yet quiet true single coils?

First, a strat with rwrp middle pickup is humbucking in positions 2 and 4 combinations...you new pickup may have problems in position 4 now.

Leo Fender also came up with alternatives...like the Z-coil pups...used in a few of his G&L designs, and the fender 12 from memory...but most famous in the precision bass. It has two shorter coils, rwrp to be noise canceling, one under the top three strings, the other under the bottom three...these are noisefree while still being single coil.

...

There have been many attempts at this 'problem'...adding in a noise canceling "dummy coil" to real single coils for instance.

A lot of Lace pickups...such as Lace sensors, had quite elaborate shielding strategies...but were SC's and could pickup noise...they also have quite a different sound to traditional SC's.

There are mini Humbuckers like seymour duncans JB jnr and similar, or many rail designs...but these often sound more HB-ish than SC...but they will fit in the same slot.

Some though can sound very SC-ish...Danny Gatton's Barden (HB rail types) in his telecaster scream in that telecaster way.

GFS has a new noiseless SC sized pickup that looks like a stack...but in fact a side by side with "fake" poles of sorts...look interesting and cheap too...Neovins.

There have been a bunch of active solutions as well...like EMGs.

...

The "revolution" in more recent times has been to improve the older bad reputation of the stacked Pup idea.

Kinmans are probably the best at this kind of thing, sounding extremely authentic and noise free.

Fender have had a couple of similar designs lately...I use both of them. Bill Lawrence had a hand in some of these designs and I think he has his own version.

The idea is to have a 'true' single coil above...then a reverse wound, reverse polarity coil below. Often, the lower coil is wound with a different gauge of wire and with added core material (kinman's and fenders) to change the inductance...plus, a central powerful magnet structure to magnetically isolate the two coils and to shape the magnetic field much like a true single coil (something that no side by side HB style can do)...

Here is one of my Fender Noiseless Jeff Beck Hot Pups...



It comes prewired with the series connection and two wires plus a ground.



It is hard to see from this (A picture of it being prepared for a wafer coil mod)...but there is the top coil, a 1/4" black area...these are powerful side magnets...the mounting part with the side screw mounts....below that, there is the smaller noise cancelling coil. So the end result is very deep...there is so much wire in the thing (hence a big resistance, which means little) that they couldn't even put on protective tape and the covers are a special design to fit it all in.

I also have the same model in the more traditional "vintage' less hot version...it is a slightly different design and not as successful...had some bad reviews. It contains a much smaller upper coil, no side magnets, a closer lower coil which is even smaller, and two extra poles in the lower coil...the whole things is roughly the same size as a traditional Single coil and even has staggered poles.

My tele neck pickup is an SCn and very similar to teh JB noiseless, but with extremely powerful solarium colbolt side magnets between the coils. Best tele neck pup I've played...these things are very narrow but have a lovely mellow warm tone compared to a strat.

Kinmans are similar but also have a magnetic cage around the coil to keep the effect of the noise canceling coil quite separate.

...

All pickup designs have various qulities, but you can not generalize.

I have a vintage Fender "wide range" humbucker in my tele...it is Huge. Two big wide shallow coils, six poles up, six down...and it has an incredibly bright sound and unique clang to it (think Keith Richards)...nothing like the recent 'fakes' being made today. With generalizations, one might suspect that such a design might have a deeper mellow midrange sound much like a PAF but more so (same designer, Seth Lover).

Gretsch filtertrons and many other HB pups have their own sound, firebird and mini HB's yet another sound...

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Many strat/tele players and single coil fans consider the "noise" to be a part of the actual sound. It really is only a big problem when you are not playing after all. Using noise reduction, even this can be cut out to some extent...most digital models include this.

There is not really a pickup that is best for a certain kind of technique I don't think. There are some 'classic' sounds and some techniques need the percussive edge of single coils...such as a lot of what a hendrix or SRV rhythm style...or guys like Knophler or marvin.

Other guys like Beck and gilmour like that edge that they can give...but many HB's can do a similar job with the right amp...some tracks on records were using an HB guitar...such as beck's "cause we ended as lovers" Hb tele guitar. The HB in my strat is designed to this guitars pup specs and it has a rich harmonic filled sound that has become classic and the most popular pup replacement for bridge HB pups...

The reverse is true of famous HB players like Jimmy Page, the stairway solo is a tele...and many LZ tracks used cheap low powered danelectros and tiny amps.

...

I personally, prefer not to have the noise. I like the SC sound as a rule, particularly the articulation, range of sounds with different techniques and their classic tone.

However, there are millions of strat players and 'vintage strat' hounds around...I want a guitar to have it's own voice that works for what I play on it.

Criticisms of the fenders like the JB's have been that they are a bit creamier than real single coils...but that is the whole point. With 500K pots, the SC edge comes through, they do all those great notched strat sounds. They were not designed to be "vintage replicas" (thats what kinmans do well) but have their own sound that works well for JB and others who want a more contemporary fuller strat like tone.

I use some overpowered no name cheap pups in my LP...but these work well with the 22-dual wiring scheme in parallel or split even if not remarkable in their normal series mode (a bit muddy)...but even that can be altered by turning the guitar down with the treble bleeds on the volume controls...

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Some styles of play, like YJM's super speedy licks require quite a bit of 'articulation'.

You don't want the "mud" of high powered overwound pups or the midrange of a traditional HB, he probably like the character that is missing from EMG's whcih excess at these kinds of things and distortion (metal players favorites)...and more of a vintage hendrix like approach...he is a vintage strat collector after all.

So much though is in the technique, you can play such things cleanly with an HB guitar with a different tone if you want...Alan Holdsworth or EVH as examples...plenty of articulation there.

To me, the overwound HBs are really only "good" at that 'thrash' noise metal thing...a blur of fuzzy indistinct sound. But, people have this thing about "power" and measure it in the completely pointless "resistance" so they can compare and say mine is "hotter" than yours. If you want louder, turn up the amp! If you want to push an amp, stick a preamp or a distortion in front of it!

The only thing that the resistance is really telling you is that the pickup isn't broken!

In a stacked coil, you could get a big resistance from two coils...but one is not sensing the strings at all! Even though a conventional HB has a lot more wire in it, it is not louder than a single coil...the magnets are canceling the field out a fair bit...they need to be "hotter" quite often.

What people really need to do is ignore the hype and think about how they want to sound. Check out that blues player using the YJM pups...perhaps not the obvious choice and association there, but what a fantastic sound he gets from them and his equipment for his style. Maybe he is also a YJM fan, or maybe he just recognized that the qualities of this pup plus noise canceling would do the job for him.


All the same, the mojo thing can affect all of us, I am a JB fan and like his guitars sound...my new guitar has JB pups...so none of us are immune I guess I even have his picture laser engraved on the neck plate (I bet you can get YJM too)...kind of tragic rally...LOL

[Deleted]

nice stuff, i'll have to study it, at a later time today thnx!
i agree 100% with you about the resistance. Even the top (north) coil from the hs-3 measures 12Kohm, but it is as loud as an old aria strat-copy pup i have from 1984, measuring only 5kohm.
Anyways, i was deeply in the thrash "movement" so pls watch your words.. HA HA Kidding!!!

It is amazing to see that the lead guitarist from Exodus (one of the oldest-best thrash players, and very talented) played with a stratocaster!!! (oh and slayer played with les-paul!!)

In an era when Krammer and Bc Rich and ESP and Jackson were dominating the scene, some guys were playing with fenders and gibsons!!

I was never deeply into Jeff Beck, some time i must listen to some of his stuff.

[Deleted]

Interesting what you say about the solo in Stairway to heaven played on a tele! I would not recognize it just by ear. I guess the choice of amp, effects dominates the final result, rather than the guitar/pickups.
Anyways, since you are a tele fan, you could check out Ritchie Kotzen. The guy was(/is?) a premium telecaster super shreder!

Also, thanx a lot for the input on the pickups, and all your info about them.

Do the Fender SCN fall in the same category like the newer SC designs you described?

[4real]

No Problem...lazy sunday...

Oh...and thrash, whatever...it is all music, all good!

The thing with these kinds of "movements" is that they tend towards a certain 'ideology'...such as "louder' Heavier' "more powerful' "overwound' "faster" "detuned lower" etc... without really thinking about the consequences.

A lot of the "metal" guys seem to be thinking along the same lines but more attuned to 'clarity'...so there is tendency towards a very neutral sounding clear low impedance pup like and EMG with a lot of preamping.

Regardless, once you put a heap of "power" out of the guitar and run that through effects and amps and volume...the pickups contribute very little to the "sound" and you will need to be more conscious of things like "noise"...

...

SCn's are much like the older noiseless...basically like your new pup...they are 'stacked' pickups. The lower coil is mainly for the noise canceling effect. They have strong side magnets though to further isolate the lower coil and keep the magnetic field 'smaller' so it is sensing a similar part of the strings length to a typical single coil.

Basically the idea with all these 'stacked pups' is that the upper coil is sensing the string like a normal SC while the lower coil senses like the top coil, RF and magnetic 'noise' and cancels it out by being wound backwards and the magnetics being opposite. The thing is that you don't want the lower coil canceling out frequencies from the strings are making. And, making a pup this small with double the wire or more and magnetics isn't easy. Use thinner wire to get more turns and you radically change the frequency response.

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I'm 'sensitive' to the noise thing for a bunch of reasons, and applaud new technology...after all, all these guitar types and pup designs are pretty much the same as the originals that are 60+ years old!

In this day and age, we are surrounded by noise creating devices...fluro tubes, compact fluros, halogen light transformers, computers, guitar amp transformers, mobile phones, radio and TV signals...and of course if you do recording these days,there is all that computer equipment that you are likely to have right in front of you...or playing along while I type this kind of thing.

The potential to pickup noise from the environment is pretty much a sure thing...so if you like the single coil sound, you are looking at producing a lot of "buzz". If you play "loud" you will produce a really loud buzz.

The other thing for me is kind of philosophical I guess.

If you make music, the 'silence' is a part of it. If you have a noisy guitar or signal change, you can never be really quiet. It does seem to make an impression and a difference.

Ideally, for me, a guitar that is quiet has a better 'impression' with an audience or fellow players.

There are a bunch of things like that that seem to make more of an impression than the ability to play fast or loud or whatever. It's only really 'guitar geeks' that appreciate the mojo aspects in the end.

Most people would not care or know what guitar you are playing, let alone pickup...they will know a "look" of a strat, tele, LP or pointy guitar and make associations...classic guitar designs adopt some of this, but something like a strat could be associated with everything from surf to country to rock to hendrix to YJM to...anything...so it is pretty 'safe' for whatever you might want to play. Generally, people like my tele because they like it's "blue" colour...seriously!

And, I don't play that loud generally and could get away with true SC pups...most of my guitars have options that will pick up some noise...but the guitars are all wired with shielded wire and the signal is quiet all the way to the amp.

I have a similar thing with tuning...it's hard to sound 'good' if your guitar is out of tune...so set up, intonation and trem systems and just being in and staying in tune...and knowing where the guitar has problems with such things and avoiding them.

Same with technique, damping and such are as important as picking technique.

The thing though with volume, but even more so any kind of 'distortion'...you are raising up all the signal and with it noise to a constant level...so if you play with this kind of sound, you will have a huge amount of noise potential. Plus, a lot of the subtleties of a pup or a guitars wood and such become insignificant.

An example of this is that a lot of people can't recognize the difference between a LP or a tele, two very different guitar sounds...but this is the sound of 'stairway' and the entire first two LZ albums...they only see the 'image' of such players and guitars.

If modding or creating your own guitar, it's probably a good idea to think in terms of creating your own "signature" instrument. If you had the opportunity, what would you ask to have in a guitar for you? If SD asked you to 'design' a pup...what are the qualities you would request. The chance are that someone has already made something pretty close to that...maybe YJM.

I chose the JB types in my strat because I wanted no noise, a classic strat tone but something a bit warmer. The HB in the bridge, able to be split convincingly, great harmonics and a classic HB tone that can work well clean (something that we don't often associate with HB's). I need them to have a fair amount of harmonic content as I use them a lot, and I don't want something so bright they are going to hurt peoples ears like an ice pick!

With the tele, I wanted something very bright but distinctive and not as 'sharp' as the traditional tele bridge pup thing. The LP was really just to cover the more 'rock guitar' look and HB sound...lots of "body" and midrange. All three were designed to compliment each other but work for the same thing...I only travel with one guitar when jamming so they need to be versatile.

...

But really, a lot of this kind of thing is just a fetish...most of the sound of a player is in the hands and ideas. The EVH story is another great example...his iconic DIY strat thing came about because the band hated the look of him playing his 335...so he ripped the pup out of it for the frankenstrat thing. He also played Lp's and other guitars like strats...always sounded like EVH and most of his technique was developed on these old guitars.

I like the idea of things like scalloped fretboards, I have a fretless bass...but in practical ways, not sure that that kind of thing would work for me. I have pretty good finger independence and control, but I am not sure I could consistently play that light to stay in tune!

Still, it might develop your ear...a lot of my technique was developed on my old LP which I had refretted with big jumbo frets...I immediately discovered that I had to really watch finger pressure and not push notes down the the board to sound good.

These days I have a fairly high action, stiff strings and play with a bit more 'force'...so it's near impossible to do any "shredding" as such in that 80's style...but hey, that was 30 years ago now!

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Jeff Beck was and still is a hugely influential player...few though sound like him. I just take a bit from all kinds of players and music though and a bit wary of getting to hung up on any one player or style. I just admire any player that develops a really distinctive tone and contributes to the guitar lore.

It's worth checking out all the players that set the ground work for all the players coming up. YJM takes a lot form that Hendrix tradition but obviously really sweat over that baroque music and picked up a fair bit of 'theory' along the way...well, at least he knows his harmonic minor scale!

Kotzen really has a great sweeping thing down...but joining poison was probably a career killer...and these days, hard to work that into his newer 'pop'/blues kind of thing he's been attempting. You have to watch that I guess if you get so caught up in just one technique.

There are a lot of young guys that sound amazing with some particular technique or lead style but get completely lost playing some fairly basic songs...and in general, that's what most people are going to judge you by (parents. girlfriends, non-guitar players, decent guitar players, etc)...if you can just play one note really well, that will be good enough to convince most people that you can play!

[Deleted]

vey interesting stuff!! i'll have to read it more carefully later!
About scalloped fretboard, i can tell you with 100% certainty that is is BETTER in EVERYTHING than traditional non-scalloped. 1st off, i never experienced problems with intonation, the problem *might* appear only in the first 5 frets (where the gap between the frets) is large, and only if you play with 0.008 strings. With the 0.009 i am playing i never ever had a problem with that. Not only this but i even have to apply a great deal of pressure to even make the vibrato thing towards the inner area of the fret, instead the classic up-down vibrato technique. Now the real reason why it is better IMO is because the fretboard needs no maintenance in order to have good "slip" and smooth properties like the traditional fretboards. The traditional fretboard when unmaintained can pose a real obstacle in the free movement of the string during a bend or vibrato. The scalloped never. The fingers touch only the strings. Overall, the fingers are free to do their job without energy-leaks due to lost energy spent to beat the resistance of the fretboard. In anything i play, traditional rock, thrash, shred, even in the new balkan-ethno-jazz-fusion type of thing which happens here in the balkans, the guitar performs better than my other guitars. I have this new strat-project i am describing here, an old Aria strat-clone, a Carvin DC128, a Kramer 210 and an acoustic Yahama (which is really nice and very well put guitar).

[4real]

That's cool...I used to be wanting to try this kind of thing...even considering 'defretting' a cheap guitar to try the opposite.

Back in the day, everyone was getting super jumbo frets...my old LP is like that with a slippery ebony board...if you push to the fret board everything would go out of tune...but good for the technique.

These days, I do a few strange voicings of chords that include open strings and oblique bend things and I think it would be difficult to fret evenly without some trouble.

Chords like this have been coming up...
8-x-10-9-0-12 (nice C maj 7) and this one 1-x-x-5-5-5 (F maj7 I got from a Bach prelude I used to play) or this 0-9-9-0-8-7 (an interesting Em add2)...

But I can see for some things it would be easier and if you can control it...you are doing well. I don't notice the board really, I have this policy of trying only to push down just enough...so even on fairly low standard frets....I am never really touching the board anyway...so perhaps I could play such a guitar ok...

I admire your attention to technique and the mechanics of it...a light touch would be essential for a lot of that style of play...

[Deleted]

I think someone maybe touches the fretboard (in non-scalloped guitars) when he does this "bar" thing, pressing with one finger (like the 1st) more than 3-4 strings together.

Anyways, thanx for those cords, i'll have to try this melodic way of playing some time, my wife complains i play without emotions like a machine

[4real]

No problem, it's a skill unto itself...never got the hang of it though I try to do a bit here and there to get some speed...but I cheat like that...

The chord thing is because I try to do arrangements these days and cover a couple of guitar parts...these ones just arose from something where the melody is played on the top string...

It can actually be harder to play a whole note than 8th and 16ths...or 32nds in YJM's case. You can only 'think' so fast...mixing things up and stretching the time a little can help a lot...

"Wives" or non-guitar playing women or significant others are my target audience these days. In my view, you have to be able to impress them (or they will cut back on your guitar time and budget). So, if possible, work out a way of playing something convincing on your own, preferably some song they really like...and play it nicely, easy on the chops, high on the melody. Also, good to try and demonstrate that the electric guitar is an valid instrument in itself...I used to date an acoustic guitar snob...but my clean tone fender won her over in the end...

[Deleted]

Ha ha, wife is not the problem, my daughter is jealous cause she cant play the piano that fast!! LOL!!
Kids, (girls) these days are freaked out with this "Patti" tv-show from Argentina. Daughter only came to respect me when i played that lick from

lol!!

[ijustwannastrat]

Feb 6, 2011 4:48:49 GMT -5 @pyrros said:

Interesting what you say about the solo in Stairway to heaven played on a tele! I would not recognize it just by ear. I guess the choice of amp, effects dominates the final result, rather than the guitar/pickups.

I feel as if I can hear the timbre of the Tele being played during the solo. Also, I mildly disagree with the comment about amp and effects. I think that even with the distortion of the Stairway solo, you can hear the subtleties of the pickups and the wood of the guitar, hell, even the strings. Of course, I only mildly disagree because alot of this newer metal could be played on Hello Kitty guitars, and still sound the same VIA processors and amps.

[Deleted]

^^^
I am sure some guys back in 1930 would strongly criticize the emerge of electric amplification and claim that this is killing the "real" sound.

[4real]

Way to bring the thread vaguely back on subject

I think the 30's amplification really helped all guitar players...certainly brought the guitar out as a lead instrument for large audiences and the big band contexts of the time.

It is interesting to consider that the Les Paul was originally designed as a jazz instrument and that Gibson had stopped making them when Clapton made his Beeno album in his "is god" days and started the trend of an LP into a flat out 50 watt marshall!

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I was kind of being contentious though...stimulating a bit of discussion. It is not all effects or volume that kill off the tone of a particular guitar...and some guitars work better with different effects and styles of music than others.

You tend to hear the whole 'chain' for one thing, the guitar and pups are just one part...though the first after the hitting of the strings...technique though is hugely important in the 'sound' created.

The amplifier is of course important to the sound, how it take the input and responds to the dynamics and frequencies fed into it.

Effects like distortion have a compression effect, lifting everything up and squeezing the sound, smoothing out dynamics especially with harmonics. The harmonic content of a note is boosted up along side the fundamental...there can be a lot of dissonance in them and forces a wider range of frequencies for the amp to cope with. This of course changes the 'shape' of the guitars sound...it's envelope and decay (you know how people like to go on about sustain)...

A guitar with a cutting single coil sound is going to be starting out with a certain narrow range of frequencies...you can hear the tele on 'stairway' and all those classics like 'whole lotta love', etc. But LZ were not as distorted/saturated as the 80's processed distorted sound or what guys use these days...

Now a lot of people are using digital modeling amps or effects or even recorders direct. The idea of "Hot" pups was largely to drive valve amps by overloading the input. Digital effects can't take an overloaded input so have limiters in it anyway to control the signal...then it terns it into digital confetti, then reconstructs it with modifications up to a fairly fundamental level. Now, they don't have to....if you edit out a bunch of parameters like noise reduction and compression which tend always to be overdone...then you start to hear more of the guitar again..problem is many people don't alter the presets, or even the tone controls on their amps.

Still...while the original 'stairway' solo was done on a tele, general audiences don't care that it is played on an LP or 6/12 SG live.

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But yes, being a bit contentious, you can hear the qualities of specific guitars, pups, settings and yes even the wood and the difference between very light strings and slightly heavier ones.

A lot seems to be in the 'design' overall of course...the fender style bolt on maple neck seems to have a fairly big impact. I always wanted a maple neck guitar and my tele and similar strats have always been much brighter in the attack (probably due to neck stiffness perhaps). But once you start 'effecting it' dramatically you are hearing less of the guitar, and more of the effect...at least when if comes to distortions.

These will radically change the envelope of the sound...certainly evening out the decay. A LP will have a generally more 'singing' swell in the attack, generally...while a fender has a far more immediate attack, the tele more so...giving you that distinctive percussive edge and high harmonics that you mayhear through most distortions.

As Guitar Geeks and fans we are obviously more attuned to these things. without doing double blind tests it is hard to tell. A players sound is so distinctive from technique and phrasing that they will sound like 'them' regardless of the guitar...Knophler is known for his original DS 'sultans' sound...a very distinct strat sound. The production values and choice of guitars changed over the years...to the schecter (with lots of switching options...tunnel of love era) to his more recent Pensa Shurs (HSS Emg actives with a floyd rose bridge)...they all sound suitably straty and all distinctively MK...but here we have a player that is generally "clean". His warmer LP tones and now a range of guitars, are fairly distinctive LP sounds (money for nothing, brothers in arms)...

But there are countless famous records in rock where the instrument used may not be what you expect...once you know, perhaps you can hear it...but without knowing...hmmm....

In his early career with Pink Floyd, Gilmour played a multitude of Fender Stratocasters. One of his popular guitar solos ("Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2") was played on a Gibson Les Paul Gold Top guitar equipped with Bigsby tremolo bar and P-90 pick-ups.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gilmour

Knowing that, maybe now you can hear it...but these details are small compared to the other factors involved. When was the last time anyone really heard an LP clean other than from LP himself?

In the bigger scheme of things, such little details as Pups are for the guitar geeks like us to ponder. It becomes a form of trainspotting...only of interest to people like us!

As guitar 'geeks' we can generally tell the difference between an HB, p-90, strat, tele...more so in person, you might recognize the distinctive "clang' of a fender wide range (think keith richards 'start me up' type sound)...strats clean tend to have a distinctive straty sound, and not just in positions 2 and 4.

Image is increasingly important it seems. I've done some 'secret' tests in a way...if I take out my blue tele, women think it pretty, play wicked game and they associate it with that sound. Play the same thing to someone else with the strat, they think 'knophler'...shape of the guitar, iconic clean strat sound. Take out the LP, they are thinking page/slash et al. Same amp, same clean tone, same player...all just a matter of 'image' and all can play the thing perfectly well and convincingly.

So...it's things like this that have me changing my mind about a lot of things and moderating my 'guitar fetish' instincts. For instance, I don't mind so much that my guitars have 'squier' on them or no name at all...to most people they look like the "real thing". I do care how they feel and perform of course, I do care about noise, I notice the details as a player and guitar geek....but in the bigger scheme of things it is more the player and the 'look' of the things as well as amp tone that almost everyone is going to notice.

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But sure, once you realize that 'stairway' and all those classics are a tele overdriving a tiny supro amp and not an LP and a stack of marshalls...you can here it. It is more of a 'crunch' than the saturation that shredders use. You certainly can hear the 'attack' of the tele...it does have a distinctive envelope and perfect for those fast pull offs and screaming high bend there.

JB's iconic painting on blow by blow with his LP colours the perception though...I can hear the LP on some tracks, there is a lot of strat there, and even though the tele has HB pups like an LP, you can tell it is neither strat nor LP on 'cause we ended as lovers' and kind of pick up on that distinctive tele sound.

Maybe you guys could 'train-spot' some other guitars that might not be as expected from a player..but for most people, they just hear a train of course!