Lunch Report - Tuesday March 8th

Hi all and welcome to Tuesdays lunch report. Thanks to all that responded to yesterdays LR and a reminder that the poll will be open until Saturday.

Lunch:

Well todays lunch was definitely not in the "healthy" department ! I had some of our local butchers sausages and made myself some lovely sausage sambos with cheese slices and a nice big dollop of ketchup and some excellent white loaf bread from the local bakery, it has a thick black crust .. awesome ! Very tasty, and probably very fattening and full of everything I shouldn't be having, but if I can't have a gut buster every once in a while then why bother dieting in the first place Not that I'm on a diet at the moment,( well obviously ) , I've never really had a problem with my weight. Mind you I don't drink or smoke so that might also be a factor. I do usually keep an eye on what I'm eating but I let myself go every now and again ... and today was it !

G&L Question:

Pickups. Or more specifically "boutique" pickups. How do G&L fans feel about the current non MFD offerings from G&L ? Now I like a Duncan JB as much as the next guy, I have them in several G&L guitars , plus a Jackson and a Kramer, but there are some things they don't do well, like country for example, or funk. Would you like to have the option for say some Jason Lollar or Lindy Fralin pickups installed in your G&L from the factory ? Would an ASAT Deluxe with some low wind Lollar Imperials float your boat ? At the moment I'm thinking humbucker pickups. As for single coils I really like the G&L Alnico Vs in my Legacy, but would a Legacy with some Fralin Blues Specials be up your alley ?

The poll will be open until Saturday.

Non G&L Question:

Overdrive / Distortion pedals. As mentioned lately in a thread the array of these pedals is staggering, do G&L guys, and gals, have a particular favourite ? I have quite a few pedals and the od pedal that I consistently go to is the Zendrive. At first I didn't really "get" that pedal at all, it didn't make me sound at all like Robben Ford ! Over time though I've found it to work great with every other pedal that I've combined it with, plus it works with low and high output pickups. I use it with a Blues Jnr or a Vox AC30CCII. One thing I've noticed is that it sounds best for lead, chunky power chords are not it's forte. For that I find the Catalinbread DLS to be the business. Even at low volumes with the Blues Jnr it is touch sensitive and responds well to a hard or soft attack. And when combined with the Zendrive it is fantastic. Please discuss.

G&L pic for today .... Invader Plus in clear forest green.



Thanks for any input.

Paul

Sounds like your lunch is the kind that I LOVE. I grew up on hungarian sausages, one of my favourite things to eat, sausages of any kind, yummm!

Pickups: I have wondered myself why G&L would introduce other pickups like SD. The G&L ones are so nice, I would have thought that they would just make all their own, like John Suhr does. Keep it all in the family and make a special version of all types. Yes, I agree, more options would be great!

Pedals: Can't comment, since I am just getting into them and my head is buzzing just looking at all the pedals available.

Great topics, thanks!

Sounds like your lunch is the kind that I LOVE. I grew up on hungarian sausages, one of my favourite things to eat, sausages of any kind, yummm!

Pickups: I have wondered myself why G&L would introduce other pickups like SD. The G&L ones are so nice, I would have thought that they would just make all their own, like John Suhr does. Keep it all in the family and make a special version of all types. Yes, I agree, more options would be great!

Pedals: Can't comment, since I am just getting into them and my head is buzzing just looking at all the pedals available.

Great topics, thanks!

Our butcher has his own recipe, he adds some spices and flavourings to make them extra yummy, and a little spicy also.

Lunch sounds tasty, Paul!


Pickups: I've tried a whole bunch of aftermarket pickups from a bunch of manufacturers and to my ears and taste the MFD's are better than most of them. I've gone back to standard on all my G&Ls now, leaving me with hundreds of dollars of boutique pickups without homes..... The best pickups I've heard are the Bill Lawrence ones in my parts guitar. They're fantastic. Incredibly full sounding and very articulate. I haven't tried their humbuckers, but I would like to one day.

I think the Seth Lover pickup on the Bluesboy is fantastic, and haven't tried replacing it with anything else. It pairs up very well with the MFD.


Overdrive Pedals: I love my MI Audio Tube Zone. It's incredibly versatile, does low and (ludicrously) high gain equally well, and you can tailor it to any amp. I use it set for low/medium gain lead sounds and ZZ Top style rhythm - it's a very thick feeling pedal, making it very good for lead. For low gain rhythm sounds I'm using my Durham Sex Drive, with the gain wound right up. It gives me a sort of 'jangly' crunch sound with very good definition.

I've ordered a Menatone 'Foxy Brown' for fun. It's an "18 watt Marshall-in-a-box" pedal which I'm hoping will fill the holes between the two pedals I'm currently using. I wasn't able to try it before I bought it, so I'm hoping it sounds good!

I also have a fuzz pedal, a Mojo Hand Huckleberry, which I barely use. It sounds best when I run the Sex Drive into it, it removes a lot of the sag from the pedal enabling me to play chords. Without the boost it's a muddy mess.

@ blargfromouterspace ...

Which version of the Tube Zone do you have ? I was very tempted to buy one a while back, they seem to have several versions of it now, it does seem like a very versatile pedal.

I LOVE sausages, and so do the kids so we have them a lot at our house. Scraping all the fat off the barbeque afterwards makes me wonder about their health benefits, but only for 10 seconds or so.

Experimenting with pickups is one of my favourite pastimes. I'm always surprised that a pickup that sounds meh in one guitar can sound fantastic in another. For that reason I would find it hard to universally recommend a pickup. It all depends how it responds to the guitar's natural characteristics. I agree with Jamie that the G&L MFD's are hard to beat, and the soapbars in my ASAT Special are outstanding. I like the Fender Custom Shop sets too. They've sounded superb in all the guitars I've installed them in, both tele style and strat style. I'd like to try some of the low noise offerings out there such as the Duncan Classic Stacks and the Bill Lawrence models. I gather that noiseless technology has come a long way in the last 10 years.

I fall into the 'overwhelmed by overdrive pedals' camp. There are so many out there, and I've only tried a small subsection of them from Boss, BBE, Danelectro, Yamaha etc. I don't like OD pedals that screw with tone by cutting lows, boosting mids etc etc. The perfect OD pedal for me would progressively add dirt/grunge and that's about all. I've got about 6 OD pedals now, the latest being the BBE Green Screamer from LR duty, but the only one that doesn't screw with the tone is my Boss OD-3. I find myself using that about 99% of the time. I really should EBay the others. A friend of mine has a Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Classic and I occasionally get GAS for one of those.

Paul, my kind of lunch. I don't smoke, never have and will not comment on the rest

I am easy to please on pickups. I have most kinds including p90s in Hamer, EB, and Fender, SDs in the Parker Southern, different Lace Sensors, PRS Hilands and G&Ls of different sorts, Filtertrons and I have left out a few. I must be easy as I like every guitar I own and the pickups that are in them. My middle name is not sophisticated.

I am not a pedal guy as such. I own a Vox Tonelab which I use for recording, a Harmony Man which I have had for 3 months and not tried, and Sonic Maximizers. I can program what I like into my Cyber Twin SE and that is about as creative as I get.

Beautiful wood and color on the Invader. -- Darwin

@ blargfromouterspace ...

Which version of the Tube Zone do you have ? I was very tempted to buy one a while back, they seem to have several versions of it now, it does seem like a very versatile pedal.

I have version 3, the one with the chrome knobs. I'm not sure if there were any revisions in the latest version, like he's done with the fuzz. If anything the only difference would be better quality components. It's a great pedal.

Pretty Invader! Invaders are pretty rare on the board, but I think they are great guitars.

Pickups are such a crap shoot. You never really know what you're going to get until they are in the guitar--and on the stage, or in the studio. What works in one guitar might not work in another. What works for one SONG might not be suitable for the rest of the music you play.

I contribute to the Seymour Duncan Forum. I like many of the Duncan pickups--I think the Seth Lover, Pearly Gates, Brobucker and Antiquity pickups are as good as any boutique pickups on the market. Remember, Duncan is probably the most knowledgeable guy in the business. Of course he has his production line--but the Duncan Custom Shop can build you ANYTHING you want. Seymour was very successful, and his company grew into being (and I'm assuming here) a multi-million dollar business. What,...he got stupid and incompetent because he got to be successful? I don't think so. Same goes for Larry DiMarzio.

I've met Jason Lollar, and he's pretty smart, too. I really like his P-90 pickups, better than his humbuckers. I've not had much experience with Fralin's creations, but I know he's well respected...as are Peter Florence's Voodoo pickups, Bill Lawrence, Bare Knuckles, Tom Holmes, Skatterbranes, Wolftone, etc., etc, etc. They all have their supporters and detractors. So, I don't think it's going to work very well for a guitar manufacturer to offer pickup options from other companies--they'd have to carry 38,436 pickups in stock--only to hear someone whine about, "Well why don't you have XYZ pickups, too?"

Funny thing about pickups...Leo was without a doubt one of the greatest pickup designers ever. Yet, a lot of guys HATE MFD's. ???? How many times have we heard someone on the board complain about their Comanche's Z-Coils, because they don't sound like a vintage Strat. Edgy, bright, brittle, sterile...those are the words often used to describe Leo's family of MFD pickups; yet many of us here LOVE them. Are they BAD? Or GREAT? Depends on who's using them, I guess. I try not to think of things as BAD or GOOD when it's really a subjective value.

You can spend a lot of time chasing tone,...and whole bunch of money. It's part of out hot-rodding American culture: we over-clock our computers, customize our 1911 pistols for one inch accuracy, and soup up our cars to get every last tenth of a second off our quarter-mile time. If you REALLY need a faster computer, take typing lessons!!! And that full-race $4,000 ISPC .45 with the compensated barrel and 2.5 pound trigger pull and Aim-point red-dot optical sight probably won't do you much good in a bang-bang gunfight. (And lots of luck trying to find a concealment holster for it! It REALLY won't help you in a gunfight if it is at home in your gun safe!)

I've been trying over the last few years to get over the tone chasing, even though I have as much G.A.S. as anybody else. I have a huge guitar collection at 47 guitars, but there's a lot of duplicates in there (like nine Legacys and ten Les Pauls!), and some guitars that will hopefully become moderately successful investments. But at some point it has to stop. I just don't have the means, the time, or the patience to buy and install all 4,234 alnico Strat pickups on the market in my guitars. That time and money would be much better spent on lessons. Without a doubt.

Chasing tone, over the long term, will never make you happy or truly satisfy you. It's a short term and fleeting pleasure. Like the kid who gets a new toy and two hours later--he's bored with nothing to do. The real joy has to come from within. I know who I am, and I've learned over the years what I like; but now the rest has to come from inside of me. I love my guitars, and I am so thankful and so blessed to have such wonderful instruments. And I find that the more I love them, they better they sound. And the better they sound, the better I play. And the better they play, the more I love them.

That's the merry-go-round you want to to be on, and not just chasing your tail. 'Cause once you get on it, you won't want to get off!

++++++++++++++++++++++

I find myself in a similar situation with pedals, and especially overdrives. I've NEVER heard a dirt pedal that sounded as good to me as the LEAD Channel of one of my Mesa amps. NEVER! Most of the transistor pedals get the whole envelope sequence of the distortion all wrong. Attack, distortion, compression, release and decay--the sequence gets mixed up and it sounds all backwards to me coming out of a transistor pedal. My ancient Real Tube 901, modded with its low gain 12AU7 tube, is about the best I've heard; but most of the time I just use the amp's distortion.

If I have a secret weapon on my board, it's my also-ancient DOD FX10 Bi-fet Preamp. It's the first pedal on the board, and I run just a moderate boost all the time. Buffered and very low noise, it just seems to help get the signal through the other pedals on the board a little bit better.

The one pedal I would like to have though, is a "Marshall" pedal that would give me the KRANG and CRUNCH of an old Marshall. It's a very different tonality than the smooth, singing Mesa tones. A pedal like that might be a good addition on my board; and if I knew who made such a pedal, I would probably investigate it.

Guitar World magazine recently did a sketch of Slash's complete rig, and his whole pedalboard was basically by Dunlop--not a single boutique pedal on it. I thought it was interesting. Imagine, a player of his caliber having to suffer like that with pedals designed for "mere mortals".

Oh, the humanity!

Good job on the LR!

Bill

Sausages. Yum. That's what I take Lipitor (and Tricor) for. Yippie! They're also why God made onions and peppers, or so I figure...

Pickups: Just as with yesterday's discussion of finish types and coated strings, my playing is such crap that the pickups really don't matter a damn. That said, I've grown to love all things MFD, and I like the G&L alnico singles in the Legacy model a bunch, and the Seth in the neck of my Bluesboy. That said, I too have tried a few pups in my time, and I have to say that the only ones that really have blown me away are Lindy Frailn's P-90s, and DiMarzio's Virtual PAF humbuckers. (of course there are many hundreds I haven't tried).

As for the pedal question, I agree with Bill on the DOD bi-fet thing. I sold mine, stupidly (as I did with my original AD-80 analog delay, regrettably.). I usually prefer just to drive the amp, though I like the Green Screamer as much as any TS-Anything.

Another beautiful G&L you featured today. Thanks! - ed

ah yes, Sausage. I love sausage of all types. I make an Italian sausage out of ground turkey that my family loves, and it is quite a bit lower in fat and salt than a lot of prepackaged stuff. But sometimes, you have have to go with the real deal.

Pickups. I am all about MFD in G&L's. To me that kinda IS G&L. Having said that, I have an ASAT deluxe with SD as my only 'traditional' HH config guitar. I really like it. However, the neck pickup is not as good as the bridge. I have thought that someday some experimentation on that might be in order.

That's why I selected stick the SD's...

Pedals I know nothing...but I am in the market so I am anxious to read what everyone says...

I like sausage. Esp after it is grilled and put into my wife's spaghetti sauce. Yum!

Pedals- the only one I use regularly is a Dean Markley tuner.

I like my Sonic Stomp and Green Screamer on guitar.

I don't have a pedal board. I play bass. I don't need one.

I don't have a pedal board. I play bass. I don't need one.

I'm constantly jealous of bass players for this reason. They rock up with a solid state amp, a guitar and a cable. Bastards!!!!

I don't have a pedal board. I play bass. I don't need one.

I'm constantly jealous of bass players for this reason. They rock up with a solid state amp, a guitar and a cable. Bastards!!!!

Agreed.

Although I think the term is "bastids"

Right (or left?) you are, Southpaw! - ed

btw, I know Bassman and he's one of the finest bastids I've ever met! ;+)

Right (or left?) you are, Southpaw! - ed

btw, I know Bassman and he's one of the finest bastids I've ever met! ;+)

Truly a compliment from one of originals !