Update: New Guitar

[dwenius]

Good call. This one will keep me pretty happy, as guitars go, for quite some time. It doesn't replace the Peavey, but it gives me scads of new sounds to explore. The serial coil setup is interesting, the serial and out-of-phase setup is weird, half the volume and quackier than anything. The pure humbucking sounds are marvelous, but not overwhelming; these are not the hottest pickups on the planet. The pre-amp is gritty in a good way, and has enough gain to drive a professional set of headphones! The 3 band eq I am just beginning to explore.

Two complaints, so far: First, I am having some difficulty adjusting to the 24.75" scale and the whole 24 fret thing. I keep grabbing for the octave and getting the 15th fret. Oops. Second, It is kinda heavy. I have a stretchy padded strap on it now, that is helping a lot,

All in all, a nice last self-gift before the house-poverty.

Comments

[damienw]

What do you recommend for headphones?

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

I have two classes of recommendation. If you are working in a studio environment, or you don't mind the "adorkable" look of big cans on your head, the Sennheiser HD-280 Pro is a much, much better headphone than it should be for $100. They are my mixing headphone of choice right now, have very good bass extension, comfy on the head, and they don't leak, meaning I can hear backing tracks in them while working with a microphone.

For ear-bud styles, the Etymotic line of in-ear are pretty much the state of the art. Even the "low" end, the ER-6P, have 30+ dB of noise reduction (they plug the ear canal fully), and you can get those for that same $100. If your budget can stand it, the top of the line ER-4P are about 3x that price but are a reference-class audiophile golden-eared snob kind of headphone.

One more comment

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Replacement parts for this guitar, if I wanted to keep it "original", are wholly unobtanium. For example, the gold plated bridge, a model called the "Gibraltar" that Ibanez used in the late 70s, is currently up on Ebay, and people have bid it up to $200. Oy. I shall have to remember to play carefully, and nooooo Pete Townsend impersonations.

Re: One more comment

[gen9.livejournal.com]

Well, some Pete Townsend impersonations are fine, even encouraged, just none of the smashing guitars into amps category.

Not yet anyway, after you've moved into the house you can do that. Ohohoh, that could be the entertainment highlight for your house warming party! :p

[damienw]

Thanks for that. Etys are at the top of my shopping list for the next time I need to spend more than an hour on a plane, but at the moment I am mostly interested in a set of cans for hiding away in my "study", adjacent to the music room where the pianist works. Also I am modding a theremin at the moment, and as I start to learn to play that I figure no-one else needs to hear it...