My new Studio Guitar

[DwaneHollands]

Just got back from Sydney on holidays. What a rat race! I could barely keep up!

I went to Jackson's Rare Guitars in Armadale I think and tried a lot of guitars. I was looking for a nice vintage tone and something I'd keep in the studio only. So sick of new wood. Lol.

First time I've really had to try so many quality vintage instruments! I was looking for something that would really jump out at me. Not only did I find it, I found inspiration from playing it! I would get the most excited, the most comfortable and the mist creative when I played it. It 'pulled' the creativeness out of me!

So I found a soul mate! Ha ha.

Got it into my little project studio and booted reaper with amplitube 2. Warning: it's raw playing.

Http://www.hollands.com.au/R21Studios/A ... litube.mp3

It's an 1988 reissue of a 57 fender strat. I started playing 1st pickup position and then go to 2,3,4,5 etc finishing on the neck (my favourite)[/img]

[Sheer Noise]

I went to Jackson's Rare Guitars in Armadale [/img]

Annandale. :)

Sounds cool... despite the mp3 squash. Congratulations... I love finding an instrument that's inspiring to play... I have always bought guitars on that "instinctual" response... even some brands I thought I'd never like...

I bought a beautiful Musicman Stingray 5 once.... had never liked them, didn't really like the whole musicman sound, but when I played it, I felt so musical... I started coming up with some really interesting parts... just love it... still have it.

Dave

[DwaneHollands]

Lol. Annandale! Sorry. Haha.

Yeah ultimately its the best to play it I think. Even sounds Samples of the instruments are not as good as making music with the instrument in your hands. I fully expected that the '79 would be the one I loved. But after comparisons I preferred the '57 reissue.

[Chris H]

Good on you Dwane. It's great getting a new guit that inspires your playing. That' s exactly what happened to me when i got my little goldentone amp home for the first time.

[DwaneHollands]

Hey Chris!

Yeah I took the guitar to Church last night and played through one of the 'very ordinary' be!@#$%^& amps. lol. The amp is pretty good for clean tones. About it. But the strat was very 'glassy' which I was very impressed with. Even better than i remembered in the shop. In fact, the bass player said straight away, "man that sounds good." I didn't even tell him it was a new guitar. (it looks like my old mex strat so he probably thought it was the same guitar)

And....it's back safely in the studio again. haha. Came with original case which was really cool too! Irridescent yellow velour inside. Case is in very good condition. I was expecting a new boring case. But to get the original with the original manual too was a nice finishing touch!

[Gian]

That is cool.

I pulled a stevie ray vaughan sound at church last week...suited the song really well and made me play differently. Was awsome.

How much did you pay for the reissue?

[DwaneHollands]

Hey Gian,

I paltry $3950....ok, not so cheap : )

[Chris H]

Hey Dwayne, this is the instrumental i played the night i got the goldentone home. It's fairly raw playing too and the amp was crackling because there was moisture in the caps. I have seen they have a plugin for this effect!!! Tracked the chords first and then played the solo overdub . The guitar was my 63 skyhooks strat. Tracked dry but added rev and delay in the mixdown.
It's the 2nd track on this myspace. http://www.myspace.com/christopherhallam

[lonearranger]

By Jacksons standards $4k is a pretty cheap guitar :-)

I remember deciding not to buy a real 57 strat in the 80s (anyone remember rock repairs?) because it was a) too expensive ($3.5K), and b) the finish was a green and a little bit warn. Man I wish I bought it now.

I did end up buying a 57 reissue strat with charvelle neck (fender style), bridge humbucker and khaller for considerably less, questionable 80s modifications perhaps, but it is a mighty fine solid guitar that I still use now and stays in tune longer than some pianos.

The 80s reissues are great guitars, as were the japanese fenders at the time.

Cheers

[DwaneHollands]

Hey Chris!

Nice. Love the tone. Really bell-tone like! Really clean sounding recording! How did you record? Close miked on the cab, front on?

Oh loved Caseys song too! That accoustic sounds amazing. Was it the instrument pictured in your Myspace page? When you start strumming chords it almost sounds like the 'springy-ness' of a 12 string accoustic. How did you track the accoustic? What was your signal/recording chain?

[DwaneHollands]

Hey Michael,

Yeah they had some really expensive guitars in there! lol. I played a $99,000 original '56. Actually my mate video'd me playing it. I'll have to upload it to Utube and post the link! (attempted the other day but youtube was under maintenance)

[DwaneHollands]

Finally got the video uploaded today!

$99,000 Fender Stratocastor 1956 original. (no this isn't the guitar I bought. lol.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol44wOficxA

[Chris H]

Hey Chris!

Nice. Love the tone. Really bell-tone like! Really clean sounding recording! How did you record? Close miked on the cab, front on?

Oh loved Caseys song too! That acoustic sounds amazing. Was it the instrument pictured in your Myspace page? When you start strumming chords it almost sounds like the 'springy-ness' of a 12 string accoustic. How did you track the accoustic? What was your signal/recording chain?

Both those tracks where recorded in the mid 90's when i had hardly any recording gear, but the room sounded great as it was my mud brick home with cathedral ceilings and wood paneling etc. The mic was a shure sm56 into a mackie 1202 VLZ into a digidesign audiomedia 3 card. I put the sm 56 pointing on an angle towards the edge of the speaker cone about 5 inches back. There was no comp on the guit and the compression sound in the solo was from playing with the fingers and thumb rather than a pick. The fx were in cubase using a multi tap delay and a bit of reverb. The mix was mastered through my avalon 747 a few years later and was included in the sample CD for the Frankston Guitar Festival that came with with an Oz Guitar Magazine... i forget which mag it was.
Casey's Song was recorded at the foot of the bed the first night he came home from hospital after he was born. He knew the tune very well as i played it often during the pregnancy and also at the hospital during the birth. The mic was again the sm56 into the mackie and into a panasonic dat at 16 bit 88.2. I had no mic stand , so propped up the mic with a cushion and moved it around, monitoring on my headphones till it sounded full and warm, just under the F hole and quite close. The guitar is my old 1955 Maton Premier and it's quite different from later premiers. The carved spruce top is a bit thinner, the neck is queensland maple, the frettboard blackbean, sides are honduras mahogany and the back is a pressed ply. The string tension is quite high on this guitar and tuning is open D tuned down an octave. Again i played with the thumb. That guitar really has a great tone and the harmonic overtones take off like an inbuilt reverb when soloing. I think that's the 'springy-ness' you're referring to. Later in a mates studio i ran the recording through his DDA console with the guitar panned center and using a lexicon reverb panned left and right to give a bit of stereo immage to the tune as it was a mono recording. I found with the lexicon you could tune the reverb to sound very similar the the original dry sound of the guitar and i still haven't found a software reverb that does this well.
So in both cases i think the sound is really in the instruments and playing rather than the gear used. I was thinking at the time that the SM 56 was a better mic to record with when going to hard disk as it was a softer mellower sounding mic than the condensers i had at the time. Maybe too it was a better combination with the mackie pre amps. I found it interesting when i read in AT a few issues ago that Neil Young uses an sm 56 in combo with another mic on his guitar amps.

[DwaneHollands]

That's cool that you played it to your son during the pregnancy and after aswell so that he knew it! I like that.

That Maton 1955 premier must be worth a bit now yeah? And I meant to ask about the 1963 Skyhooks strat. What do you mean by Skyhooks? As in previous owned by one of the guys in the Aussie band?

[Chris H]

The strat used to belong to Bob "Bongo" Starkie and before that it belonged to Mike Rudd. Bongo reshaped the body and headstock so unfortunatley it's not in original condition but it plays and sounds great.

[DwaneHollands]

Ahhh. What is with people and taking power tools to their guitars? I knew a guy who had this beautiful '80's strat that when I played it, it was the most beautiful strat I had ever played (not any more with my new baby ; ). I came back a couple of years later and he had decided to use a jigsaw and cut the lower horn deeper. (in the cup of the bottom horn). I mean, no sanding the body back or anything! No rounding corners. It looks like someone maliciously vandalised it.

Then he decided to scallop that fretboard a bit. I was like, "What possesed you to do that?"...he was like, "Dunno got bored"

Practice playing the thing then! lol. Don't hack your instrument apart. sigh.

I take it though, Bongo probably did a more 'refined' modification. Not like my friend "Sir-Hacks-a-lot". lol.

[Chris H]

Here is a pic of the strat being played by Darryl Thompson. I think the reshaping bug was started by John Mayall and Lobby Loyd was the most well known of those infected by the strat reshaping bug here in Melbourne. When people used to see my strat they were convinced it was a Lobby Loyd job but Bongo admitted to me that he was responsible for the crime. The guitar featured in the Skyhooks photo shoot in the centerfold spread of the Cleo magazine, the 100th episode of countdown and numerous publicity shots of the band. I found the copy of Cleo, must have been a good 15 years old, in the Noodle Cafe in Carlton a few years ago when i was ordering singapore noodles.