Lunch Report - Tuesday 9 July

London again today. It’s Morrocan day in the company cafe, so took the chef's special: lamb shish on flatbread and, as ever, plenty of strong coffee.

Following on from yesterday’s vintage SC-2 chat, for a long time I’ve been mulling over the idea of getting an 80s F-100. Never played one, but something about them keeps catching my eye.

My only concern is that I owned a ‘77 Musicman Stingray 1 for a while (another indulgence of fanboyism, Barkmarket this time) and didn’t get along with it. So maybe I’d struggle to get on with the F-100 too? How similar are they? On the other hand, this was long before I got my SC-2, so maybe I’ve changed.

Old stuff

You’ll have noticed I like old stuff. Last year I bought a 1950s Omega Seamaster watch - which needs a little work, so not as expensive as it sounds - and one of these days I’d love to get myself one of the great, thirsty old American muscle cars. Late 60s Camaro, that kind of thing... much as running it on UK fuel prices would be crippling. I also badly want a collection of early blues and jazz on 78s, with an appropriately primitive record player to play them on.

Those of you with a penchant for vintage guitars, does your interest in old classics extend to other things? Watches, cars, amplifiers, audio gear?

Not much to add to todays post, I have no experience with either guitar mentioned and only have a recent F-100 which is stellar. I am not into anything old as that is all I ever owned as a kid and everything I grew up around was old. I am the only old thing that I have. Looking forward and my news for today is that I had a great Reuben sandwich with some friends for lunch! My life can be boring in some ways! -- Darwin

I'm not putting down the F-100 but you would be best to switch your attention to an early 80's S-500. . They might just be the best G&L ' s ever but amongst the best guitars anyone has ever made.
Anthony

I personally prefer the Music Man Sabre over the F-100 and the StingRay. The StingRay has some issues for me--the rotary switch for one. I think the Sabre is by far the high-water mark for Leo Fender, certainly his most advanced design. Most of the players I knew back in the day who owned Sabres felt this way, and most of the F-100 owners did too. The biggest asset of the F-100 was the vibrato.

There is certainly some appeal to me in older watches and cars, and antique firearms. The tube powered high-fi gear by companies like Marantz and Fisher are classics.

I love old Fender tweeds and BF amps, and vintage guitars...BUT...when push came to shove, I got rid of my vintage amps and kept the Mesas since they fit my style better. When I HAD to sell my 1960 Strat, I eventually replaced it with a G&L Legacy, and never looked back. My oldest guitar is my 1975 Martin D-28 which I bought new.

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By the way, I missed yesterday's report so here is a pic of my pedal board.






This is a Furman board. Three AC jacks and eight DC power supply jacks for pedals, and a really nice patch bay.

From my guitar....

DOD FX10 Preamp
Boss Compressor
Boss TU-3 Tuner
Real Tube 901
Thomas Organ Crybaby Wah, c. 1971
Boss CE-3 Chorus
Boss PH-1r Phasor

...to the amp input.

The Furman's patch bay has my Rocktron Short-Timer and a Line 6 Echo Park in series. With this arrangement, I can run a cord from my amp's EFX SEND into the patch bay IN, through the delays, and then a cord from the OUT to my amp's EFX RETURN. Makes setup pretty fast and easy.

After several years of status quo, my board is in a state of flux as I'm trying out some new pedals. The Echo Park is currently in a drawer, replaced by a Boss Pitch Shifter/Harmonizer PS-6. I have some BBE pedals to try out, and the Real Tube may get swapped out for a Carl Martin Plexitone to give me a Marshall-y tone from my Mesa amps.

Both the Carl Martin and the Rocktron are big pedals, so I have an eye on using smaller boxes. I'd like to run the PS-6 and two delays and possibly my Soul Vibe through the loop, so the board could get crowded very quickly. We'll see how it works out.

My philosophy on pedals is to have a lot of them and use them very sparingly, unlike Ellen's guitarist. I use the PS-6 on two songs. I use the PH-1r on three. I use the wah and chorus on six. Two separate delay tones, also used sparingly. I don't play with a crunch tone all the time; my cleans are clean. The Real Tube overdrive gives me as many as six different combinations from clean to dirty as I move through the three channels of my Mark IV or Mark V amps.

I try to think like an artist...my pedals the colors on my pallette. I suppose I could just slap some solid blue paint on the canvas and call it "SKY", or some green and and call it "GRASS LAWN", but that wouldn't be very good art, would it?

Our eyes are thrilled by sunsets...as the sun sets, the sky changes from a thin sliver of blue along the horizon, deepening as you look higher in the twilight as the sky overhead turns to ebony black. The white clouds may appear silver, rimmed with the golden sunlight. And it is the pollutants in the sky that refract the light into the purples and reds and pinks and tangerines that take our breath away in wondrous awe as we view the Earth's closing symphony of color at each day's end.

And that is the kind of color I want to use in my musical performances. I want to use my effects appropriately...so delicately and so finely...that my listeners are treated and awed by the "sunset" I have created.

Bill

I haven't played a Stingray or Sabre, but I do have a pair of early F-100s. One is an '80 with a swamp ash body and DFV, and the other is an '80/'81 'hog hard-tail. They are as different to my ears as any two guitars could be. The ash one is just what George and Leo set out to design - something fairly bright that could cover a lot of ground in rock, blues and country. The 'hog is my favorite of the two - it may not cut through a mix as well, but it has beautifully dark tone.

Despite having a pile of old G&Ls and a couple of other instruments from the 70s and 80s that I've picked up over the years, I'm not much into old equipment of any sort. I do appreciate old furniture - about half of what we use around the house is at least a hundred years old. My faves are a dresser made of flamed ash that we found at a barn sale in Maine, and an end table I found for $5 at a Goodwill in Cincinnati. I'm 99% certain that the end table was made by Shakers from that area in the mid-1800s. I also love using old hand tools for woodworking projects.

Ken

Classics of all things get the thumbs up from me. The cars might not be as reliable as new ones, the guitars perhaps a bit delicate and unstable and the amps limited in their application, but I love them and always get a kick out of looking at them. Owning them, particularly collectible stuff, is IMO best left to someone else.

bill, you don't have an issue with so many poor quality buffers interacting?

what's the difference between the real tube overdrive and the tube driver from bk butler? most people i know use the tube driver. i have not tried the real tube overdrive.

I do want a Leo era guitar but I'm not obessed with it , My personel opinion is that new G & L's are not lacking anything , quality or finish , so Leo did a good job passing the torch to BBE and set them up for succes ..... I would like to play a F100 Leo or BBE era , I think a F 100 or a ASAT deluxe would make a nice fit with my current collection of G & L's and will be my next purchase although the F 100 could possibly be a Leo era guitar

I do like old stuff , cars in particular , grew up as a kid in the "Muscle car era" and have owned my 1963 Ford fairlane over 17 years , smokin tires and grabbing gears is still fun at 51 years old

Thanks all. On the F-100, looks like I should really book myself a nice, long vintage guitar testing tour around the US this year. It's the only way. Hope there's enough down the back of the sofa to pay for it.

First edition books... that's an addiction I've actively resisted acquiring. I know I'd get too hooked on that, and I have plenty expensive obsessions as it is. Antique firearms is an interesting one. I could see myself being into that, too, if our gun laws didn't make that sort of thing such a PITA.

There is certainly some appeal to me in older watches and cars, and antique firearms. The tube powered high-fi gear by companies like Marantz and Fisher are classics.

This is a Furman board. Three AC jacks and eight DC power supply jacks for pedals, and a really nice patch bay.

From my guitar....

DOD FX10 Preamp
Boss Compressor
Boss TU-3 Tuner
Real Tube 901
Thomas Organ Crybaby Wah, c. 1971
Boss CE-3 Chorus
Boss PH-1r Phasor

...to the amp input.

The Furman's patch bay has my Rocktron Short-Timer and a Line 6 Echo Park in series. With this arrangement, I can run a cord from my amp's EFX SEND into the patch bay IN, through the delays, and then a cord from the OUT to my amp's EFX RETURN. Makes setup pretty fast and easy.

Marantz did (and do) make some wonderful gear.

And that's one heck of a board, Bill. I liked the look of those Furman boards, but they're not too widely distributed over here. In terms of effects, mine's real bread and butter stuff in comparison. Actually, I guess I could bung in a photo with today's report.

here is a pic of my small board. a little outdated, i squeezed more pedals onto it.

Nice board Louis. How do you like the Flashback?

Here’s a photo of my board. There’s a gap (where the SIX is visible) that will have my home-made chorus in it when I get around to assembling it, and possibly a TC Ditto, too.



Very simple, but it’s all I need. I have a funky old Yamaha GEP-50 rack unit, too, but she’s about ready for retirement.

i love the flashback. i would not get the hall of fame though, i'd get the wet reverb. (have the hermidia reverb now). i'd also get the neunaber echelon today instead of the flashback. i never got along with the boss noise suppressor, i have the isp g-string on the board (bottom right).

That's gotta hurt a bit hasn't it big guy? How's your signal strength & the timber & tube vibe through that? You picking it back up anywhere in the chain bud?

That's what I'm talkin about!

What board is that phooey? You build it yourself mate or can you buy them like that? Minimal yet very practical for something like a MK IV et al..
Cheers..

blackage, the signal is not hurt. everything is true bypass, and all george l's cables, capacitance is minimal, total cable length including the pedals themselves is less than 10 feet. but the ep booster in the front and the sonic stomp in the end pick up whatever slack there may be. i don't use it anymore, since i got my amp in february. just guitar>cable>amp.

I have owned both guitars and still own two F-100s. My fav. of the two is the F-100. The only thing about the F-100s is I find that some sound great, some good, and have owned one that I didn't care for at all. I found the stingray "with active pickups" a bit much for me. Very aggressive.
LS

I can't answer about the Leo era G&Ls, other than that I started kicking myself a few years back, for not buying the Braodcaster I tried out back in 1992. Music Man guitars have never been common in my neck of the woods (Wisconsin). I did gig for a short time in the early 90s, with a 65 Reverb head. It was OK, but was either too loud, or too quiet. It was also a pain to get decent sounding dirt out of it, even with dirt pedals (at the time I was using a Chandler Tube Driver [a BK Butler Tube Driver, from the period before he went and formed his own company to market them]). It was kind kind of disappointing in a way for me. I knew a guy who ran 2, Music Man 65 heads (the non-reverb version of my old head), and by using a Boss distortion, and playing a parts-o-Strat with 3 hot rails, he sounded like WW3!!!! Way cool! I re-tubed mine, and even ran a graphic EQ, and it sounded kind of dull. Heck the Music Man 210 65, that I was given as a loaner back in 1984, when my crappy Peavey Encore 65 went into the shop for warranty repairs (for the first of 3 times - that thing wasn't very reliable), also kicked butt - it even snarled and had some grind, when I just cranked the volume/gain up, and used the master volume to keep things from getting too loud - despite me playing an MIJ Squier Strat through it, that didn't have the hottest pickups in the world. Go figure!

Tim - I used to collect coins years ago. My dad (who also collected coins) and I used to make road trips to coin shows, where we oftentimes spent several hundred dollars on coins. Some of the older (pre-1900) and rarer US coins are very pricey (and in hundreds or in some cases, costing thousands of dollars for a single coin). Both my dad and I got out of coin collecting years ago, due to the expense. I only do it in a very casual way nowadays (if a coin catches my eye that doesn't cost a bundle, I might buy it).

I do have an older guitar, but it's a player's instrument, due to it having been restored (its neck was screwed up and needed to be re-set, the finish was trashed, and the binding was shot). The guitar is a 1954 Gretsch Country Club. I never would have been able to afford it, if hadn't been restored. It plays great, and has the original early 50s DeArmond Dynasonic pickups (it does great jazz tones, while being quite the grind monster at high gain [as long as you pay attention to stopping the feedback from getting out of control], due to the pickups being very hot for single coils), and its original pickup selector switch, and pots. But the rest of the hardware is not original, and its previous owner refinished it in burgundy colors like a Country Gent (Country Clubs have never been made in that color). So, I got it for about 40 to 50% of what unrestored Country Clubs go for. As it was, I had to trade 3 guitars, and throw in several hundred dollars to boot. Here it is:



I also have some older tube-type (1950s-80s) ham radio gear (I've had a ham radio license since I was a teenager), that in some cases, I bought as non-working, and restored to working order. They aren't quite as flexible and capable as my modern radios, but, like an old car, they're fun to use, and have character. In some ways, they take me back to the 80s, when I was a poor college student, who couldn't afford the latest and the greatest, and as a result, had to operate with older, and cheaper, used tube radio gear.

Last edited by ellengtrgrl on Wed Jul 10, 2013 7:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.

i don't care much for old things, other than period weapons. i do have a 57 tweed deluxe and a 67 reverberocket, and i love both. i would take a 50's tele or strat, but only in beater condition.

Here it is:

What a beauty, Ellen. And so a propos in the context of today's LR.

- Jos

Thanks!

It plays and sounds like a million bucks. It has a nice, chunky neck, with a 25.5" scale length. The top should be solid spruce, since it is a model 6196 Country Club, but it is flamed, leading me to believe it is solid maple, like the natural finish 5193 Country Club's were. Gretsch occasionally did things over the years, that were inconsistent model-wise. Being a transitional model (it was made in Feb. 1954 - 3 or 4 months after its predecessor, the Electro II was discontinued), it has a deeper and wider body than the later model Country Clubs. The headstock logo is also slightly different.

It is the 3rd Country Club I've had since 2009 (the 1st was a caddy green NOS 2003 I had to sell due to a money crunch, and the 2nd was a bamboo yellow 2011, that I didn't like the sound of and ended up trading towards a 6119 Tenny Rose). I also have the original bile green case the guitar came with, but that's in rough shape. Sorry, it's not for sale!

That's what I'm talkin about!

What board is that phooey? You build it yourself mate or can you buy them like that? Minimal yet very practical for something like a MK IV et al..
Cheers..

It's a Pedaltrain 2. Widely available, comes in various sizes, optional flight case or soft case. I'm really happy with it so far. Being able to mount the power underneath (come supplied with brackets for Voodoo Labs bricks) and route the cable out of the way was a big selling point for me.

Here it is:

What a beauty, Ellen. And so a propos in the context of today's LR.

- Jos

That is a fine looking guitar. I've been hankering after a hollowbody too... I'm going to need a second job at this rate.