Wed, April 24 2013 - Always on the Run

[gitman001]

Good Day fellow GbLers!

Today is one of the first days in a long time that i can sit down and catch my breath! Both kids in school, wife at work and the college teaching has wrapped up for the year. I swear even having 8 days a week would not be enough.

Love/Hate relationship - My G&L Legacy

I have had the legacy for a little over a year now, and it still has not made it to a gig with me! Let me preface this by saying it is a stunning guitar - build quality is there, the fullerton red is an outstanding finish and it plays like a dream. To my ears (while i am playing it) it seems to be lacking the spark that the other 9 G&L's have….. which are all MFD equipped. So i took it to rehearsal again last night and while playing it with the band it still seemed to be missing something….. However….. I recorded the rehearsal and listen to the playback this morning. Let me tell you it immediately put a big smile on my face! It fit right in the pocket, filled up all the space it need to and sounded (to me) really good. I think it is the plight of every guitar player… Micro managing tone, so much so that sometimes we don't take any chances on something and just play! So as of today the Legacy is back in the Love column waiting for her chance to get up on stage.

Do you have a Love/Hate relationship with one of your guitars?

Speaking of stages, i will keep with the on going theme of the past few weeks with some band content. Many of you have seen a bunch of videos I have posted in these reports throughout the years…. The videos to follow will certainly have a new look! A few weeks ago we had to fire our singer of nearly 5 years (a long story for a different time and place). Anyway there was a female singer in town who had been in a few other projects who was ready for a change as well. It is the first time that i have ever had a female on lead vocals, and must say have been nothing but ecstatic with the results. She is a hard worker and has some pretty good chops - what more could you ask for? Well…. This past Saturday we had a gig and had a chance to talk with some regular patrons about the new girl. It went over really well, everyone had a blast.. dance floor was packed and the bar made some $. But there were those few dudes that seemed to have an issue with a female singing male tunes! I had never really thought much about it I guess. Too me a good player/singer is a good player/singer be it male or female. So the other question, Do you have an opinion on a female singer playing "male" tunes? Please be honest, i am really curious what my G&L peers have to say.

Here is a quick vid of us doing an early Lenny Kravitz tune called "Always on the Run". Great tune. (Not perfect by any means, but we have only played the tune a couple of times!) Enjoy!
[youtube]BI7bvTOL1Vs[/youtube]

Have a great day everyone
Scott

[darwinohm]

Scott, the subjects today are close to my heart!

I was a Strat guy and have completely gravitated to the Asat type. I have several Fender Strats and never pick them up anymore. I also have a couple of Legacys and they do not get any play time either. I'm not sure why. I love the Asat with the DF, to me it is the perfect guitar. None of this is about tone and I can't began to explain it. I do use my Suhr if I do a S-type and it is because of the feel of the neck. As for tone, I am not a tone freak and like them all for what they are. They all do well what they are intended to do. None of them are a love/hate for me but some are really special.

Interesting band story and it is hard to keep things together at times. As for the lady singer, forget the comments from the dudes. Our band concentrates on the ladies in our band and the ladies in the crowd and it has paid off. If you win the gals in the crowd over, they will bring their dude with them. The dudes usually stand around and watch the guitar players anyway. We experienced that last weekend as many musicians showed up and they are used to sitting in with the band on Sundays at this place. We don't do that and none of them even asked. They just watched. For the age group we play to, the ladies rule!!! If the ladies don't like the band, no one shows up. My grand daughters did a song with us on Sunday and the crowd was on their feet. It was a blast. They always want to do Suds In The Bucket.

Very tasty guitar work in your video Scott, you are a pro!-- Darwin

[Kit]

Love/hate relationship with one of my guitars. Actually, I occasionally get this with any of my guitars. Certain days I pick up a guitar and it just doesn't seem to play right. Discounting season or weather affecting how a guitar plays I would have to conclude that it is me who is the issue. When that happens I put the guitar away, and the problem typically disappears the next time I pick the same guitar up.

I have thought about the male song by a female vocalist, and vice versa, perception. Since we've had a female vocalist now for about 2 years we do run into this quite a bit. The people who object, are they saying that any song originally done by a male singer shouldn't be sung by a female? Or are they objecting to songs with more overt male perspective being sung by a female.

In our case we don't care. We do many songs with male vocals originally like "Creep" by Radiohead, "Don't Dream It's Over," "Mother Mary" by Greenday, etc, with our female singer. We do alter the song key on some songs; although changing the key too far can make a song sound totally different. Recording artist sing songs with no regard to gender all the time and make it sound great. Try listening to the song "Dangerous Type" by the Cars and then listen to the version by Letters To Cleo. Great song either way. We play the Letters To Cleo version.

The Lenny Kravitz song sounds great. I can see how you can bring people onto the dance floor doing that.

Kit

[glvourot]

First off, great playing ! If your singer sounds good , it doesn't matter on the male/female issue. She's good ! I could hardly hear the bass though...

No love hate with my guitars but my SC-2 seems to be the only guitar i play these days, it stays out on a chair in the living room ready to be picked up. I haven't taken my S-500 out of its case for months. So I can say the SC-2 is my favorite style G&L. I definitely see a Fallout in my future as well. Again, great playing and keep posting those videos.. ( turn the bass up )

[y2kc]

Scott,

It sounds great.

As far as girls singing guys songs, it depends on the song. If you want to hear an odd song sung by a guy it would be John Prine singing "Angel From Montgomery". He wrote it but it it is from a girls perspective. It is a great song but sounds weird from a guy.

Your Legacy sounded perfect for that song,

y2kc

[Philby]

Hi Scott,

There's nothing wrong with the tone from that Legacy! I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the song as a whole. Have you thought of transposing the song up a tone or 2 to get your singer's pipes working a bit more, like Lenny does in the original? She's got a great voice but it seems to be 'coasting' whereas the rest of you guys are rocking right out.

In my experience the MFD pickups cover far more of the audio spectrum (especially the bottom and mids) than my Legacy pickups. I tend to gravitate towards the MFD's at home because they produce a fuller tone for playing solo. But there's no doubting that the Legacy tone spectrum fits perfectly into a band situation and leaves more room for the other instruments to slot in.

On the love/hate thing, the MFD's in my ASAT semi hollow have never really done it for me, though the rest of the guitar is fantastic. There's something about the top end that is tinny and metallic and I can't make it go away. I've been ready to spring for some alnico pickups for almost a year, but it would be the first G&L I've had to swap pickups on and I can't bring myself to do it.

[blargfromouterspace]

I used to have a love hate relationship with my blonde Classic, the sound felt a bit 'hard', if that makes sense . I don't know if I've just got used to it now or what but I love it.

EDIT: MOST Songs don't have a sex, let her sing what she wants. Same goes for guys singing songs originally sung by ladies. Try and do that and not have some d*ckhead in the audience yell out "transvestite".

y2kc - I love that song!

[Fumble fingers]

sounds good to me !! .... I like all my guitars , but my ASAT is my favorite right now

[KenC]

$#$*ing timeouts!!! As I was writing before everything went away:

Love/Hate: I don't have this experience, but I do sometimes have a "Love/It Used to Sound Better" relationship with several of my G&Ls. I think that's more a function of my ears (after a bad airline experience a few years ago left me with eustachian tube problems and a bit of ringing) more than the guitars though. In general, this never happens with the student models (SC-1 and 2, SB-1 and Lynx), 'Hawks and the L-1000, and rarely happens with the ASATs. Last night I was playing the L-2000E and started experimenting with control settings. I never did get it quite back to the roundness and depth that I swear it did before I flipped the first switch. I am definitely more attuned to the sound of basses than guitars - whether due to my ears or to bass being my first instrument, I'm not sure.

I do find that some of my G&Ls are more affected by seasonal changes than others. The maple bodies seem to fare the best and require little or no tweaking after an initial setup. I don't know whether this is a function of the maple bodies, or pure chance.

Gender and vocals: I'm not quite clear on what a "male" song is, but in general I wouldn't see any problem with a woman singing any song as long as it fits her voice. I guess there are some genres (like reggae) that just don't have any prominent female vocalists and may sound strange in a higher register. General rock/blues/pop should be fine IMO, except for a couple of truly unique artists whose work just doesn't cross over easily (for example, I have yet to hear any good female vocal cover of a Tom Waits song, even though I may love her other work). I don't think it necessarily works in reverse, though. Some "female" songs may work with the right male singer, but I just couldn't see a guy pulling off a decent rendition of many Billie Holiday songs.

Ken

[louis cyfer]

scott, do you have other vids with the new singer, on this one i can't get a real good idea about her voice and ability, this song doesn't really show case it. also, get her to drop about 20-30lbs and you'll have a hottie singer.

[blargfromouterspace]

scott, do you have other vids with the new singer, on this one i can't get a real good idea about her voice and ability, this song doesn't really show case it. also, get her to drop about 20-30lbs and you'll have a hottie singer.

Nah, stick figure chick singers all sound and look the same.

[gitman001]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for taking the time out to reply! It is always appreciated. Just don't have much time today to get back to everyone..... except

also, get her to drop about 20-30lbs and you'll have a hottie singer.

Hey Louis, that may fly in your line of work... but certainly would not work for me!! Besides up here in the great white north it is a hell of a lot colder than down in SoCal, we all need to keep a few extra lb.'s on to stay warm!!!