More Guitar Widdling
On Saturday morning I took a trip to Merchant City Music in Glasgow and tried out some Les Paul combos as mentioned in earlier entry; much credit to the patience of Gillian :-)
Got a hold of a G LP Studio, a G LP Standard (way out of price range) and a Epi LPC (such as I have at the moment)
First off, basically there is very little playing difference between the G LP Studio and the G LP Standard... okay the Standard has a slightly nicer feel to it and its certainly a 'prettier' beast with all the binding etc etc but it aint worth the difference to me (which is just as well as I cannot afford it or in fact justify the spend even if I could). So thats good inasmuch as the Studio is a good piece of kit..
The studio is certainly a heavier, asthetically 'more pure' and more 'it' instrument than the Epi.....
Unplugged they play the same however, with ones eyes shut (and not moving it, so as to negate the weight factor) they feel rather similar and sound pretty much the same. This confuses issues as I had hoped it would be more decisive even at this point. Acoustically the sustain and so on are much the same.
So, moving on to 'live' use..... the Epi is more 'muddy' than the Gibson.... this is what I was expecting however the difference was not as clear cut as I had been expecting. However, having tested them both out on 'live' and I got to talking to the 'shop guy' and explained what I was trying to acheive (re, pickup swap outs, upgrades, plunging for the 'new' guitar etc etc) due to the fact that I found the Epi to sound far nicer than on my home setup... the guy was pretty much up front about various guitar 'qualities' (and snobbery and the like) and we got to looking at the amps as a solution to the tone and clarity thing.. I should have thought about this but cos I've been after a real Gibson for so long, (cut long boring story about historically having to make do with 'copies') I think I'd just had some odd brain failure. Anyways, I gets to widdling with one of these....
Which was making the Epi sound far livelier than my own amp...
I'd oddly been fiddling with Sparky's Roland Cube Emulator Amp the night previous and had been quite amazed at the sound coming out of what was little more than a couple of PCBs and a 10inch cone..... digital modelling taking over the world I hear!!... anyways, my current amp (boom boom) is a first gen Marshall Valvestate 8020 and is not producing anything near the sound of the AVT.... so at present I am now considering buying the AVT100 or 150 (probably the 100) instead of doing any pickup malarky or new guitar malarky... also, there seems little sense in running a G LP Studio through my old not-so-hot amp... cost wise this is more expensive than the pickup swapout, but far far cheaper that the G LP Studio option so proabably a better idea on the wallet also.
Marshall Amp's page on the unit is here
Merchant City Music page on this amp (and thus the rest of their site) - here
Got a hold of a G LP Studio, a G LP Standard (way out of price range) and a Epi LPC (such as I have at the moment)
First off, basically there is very little playing difference between the G LP Studio and the G LP Standard... okay the Standard has a slightly nicer feel to it and its certainly a 'prettier' beast with all the binding etc etc but it aint worth the difference to me (which is just as well as I cannot afford it or in fact justify the spend even if I could). So thats good inasmuch as the Studio is a good piece of kit..
The studio is certainly a heavier, asthetically 'more pure' and more 'it' instrument than the Epi.....
Unplugged they play the same however, with ones eyes shut (and not moving it, so as to negate the weight factor) they feel rather similar and sound pretty much the same. This confuses issues as I had hoped it would be more decisive even at this point. Acoustically the sustain and so on are much the same.
So, moving on to 'live' use..... the Epi is more 'muddy' than the Gibson.... this is what I was expecting however the difference was not as clear cut as I had been expecting. However, having tested them both out on 'live' and I got to talking to the 'shop guy' and explained what I was trying to acheive (re, pickup swap outs, upgrades, plunging for the 'new' guitar etc etc) due to the fact that I found the Epi to sound far nicer than on my home setup... the guy was pretty much up front about various guitar 'qualities' (and snobbery and the like) and we got to looking at the amps as a solution to the tone and clarity thing.. I should have thought about this but cos I've been after a real Gibson for so long, (cut long boring story about historically having to make do with 'copies') I think I'd just had some odd brain failure. Anyways, I gets to widdling with one of these....
Which was making the Epi sound far livelier than my own amp...
I'd oddly been fiddling with Sparky's Roland Cube Emulator Amp the night previous and had been quite amazed at the sound coming out of what was little more than a couple of PCBs and a 10inch cone..... digital modelling taking over the world I hear!!... anyways, my current amp (boom boom) is a first gen Marshall Valvestate 8020 and is not producing anything near the sound of the AVT.... so at present I am now considering buying the AVT100 or 150 (probably the 100) instead of doing any pickup malarky or new guitar malarky... also, there seems little sense in running a G LP Studio through my old not-so-hot amp... cost wise this is more expensive than the pickup swapout, but far far cheaper that the G LP Studio option so proabably a better idea on the wallet also.
Marshall Amp's page on the unit is here
Merchant City Music page on this amp (and thus the rest of their site) - here