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Labor Day Thoughts circa 2014
Labor Day Thoughts circa 2014
Hi fellow guitar tone geeks, great to be with you all on yet another LABOR
DAY weekend!
I’ve been fighting a bit of a cold this weekend, and I feel soooo
blessed! Say that doesn’t make sense,
well, let me explain! You see, when I
get sick, I get to be sick in a nice snug home with heat and air-conditioning,
and running hot cold water, and plenty of readily available food (with
pop-tarts and chicken noodle soup as highlights), plus I have a nice comfy bed
with big fluffy pillows … like I said, I’m blessed; and grateful. Even on my most miserable days, I’ve got it...
The Crazy Crap We Do to Our Guitars
The Crazy Crap We Do to Our Guitars
Hidey-Ho friendly friends! Confession:
yesterday I committed a guitar atrocity … and it’s far from the first time,
too! And … it was awesome! Yea, I know, I’m sick, right? Well … let’s talk about that.
Here’s the way I look at it. Some
folks who ride motorcycles are perfectly happy to ride a stock bike, while
others love to hack, weld, and chrome-plate their bike into a one-of-a-kind
ride … same goes for cars … and, I contend, guitars. Needless to say, I fall into the camp of the “self-modifiers”;
take, for instance, my 5-pickup
FrankenStrat (ie,...
Why The Pickups In Your Guitar May Suck
Why The Pickups In Your Guitar May Suck
Les Paul's "The Log" circa 1946Hello my tone-addicted buddies! As
some of you know, I’ve been in development on my own pickups for about the last
two years. I’m not QUITE ready to
announce anything of a terribly official nature yet … but soon! So … I’ve been spending hundreds and hundreds
of hours dissecting pickups. Carefully measuring
values, painfully unwinding coils, comparing the most minute of details, and I
have come to an overwhelming conclusion: Most current production pickups SUCK. Let’s talk about that.
I’m not quite sure just EXACTLY what’s...
Announcing the Long Awaited Ten-Inch Green Beret!
Announcing the Long Awaited Ten-Inch Green Beret!
Wooo-hooo! What an awesome day to be
alive and playing electric guitar! Yep …
it’s happened again; that’s exactly how I began my LAST blog. Guess what?
Yep, we’re announcing ANOTHER new (and massively requested) speaker: The
first of our “British” 10’s, the 10” Green Beret. Yea, great day, huh?
By the time you read this, the new Green Beret 10 should either be available
… or will be within days. For quite some
time now folks have been clamoring for a Britt voiced ten that actually sounds
as totally kickin’ as the Green Beret, well wait no longer....
Announcing the WGS12L!
Announcing the WGS12L!
Wooo-hooo! What an awesome day to be alive and playing electric guitar! I’m so jazzed to announce the formal release of a speaker that has been in the rumor-mill for quite some time: The WGS12L. Yes, this is the WGS take on the fabled Electro-Voice WEVM12L. Rreleased way back in 1973, this was the speaker that allowed folks like Randall Smith to build amps like his Mesa-Boogie 1x12 100-watt combos. Before this time, that amount of power was strictly the domain of multi-speaker rigs. In its day, the EVM12L was a real game-changer. The 12L was a direct descendant...
Music, Moving Backwards?
Music, Moving Backwards?
Okay friends, I’ve gotta let y’all in on a closely kept secret … even though
I still look 19 ;-) … I’m a bit of an old-timer in the music biz. I began performing at age 13 in the late 1970s,
playing through a brown Fender
Deluxe and singing through a Shure
Vocal-Master PA with two big, tall, skinny speakers out front, and no
monitors what so ever. For the youngins
reading this with astonishment, what follows is sure to be on the verge of
simply un-believable … but I promise, every word is TRUE! Our drummer played a 100% acoustic and
un-miced drum set; our keyboard...
The Difference the CABINET Can Make in Your Guitar Rig
The Difference the CABINET Can Make in Your Guitar Rig
Hi friendly friends! This blog could, to a certain extent, be considered a sequel to my blog entitled “The Difference A Speaker Can Make in Your Amp” from a year or so back; you might want to go back & read that one to get up to speed. This story has, I believe, a VERY happy ending … and I don’t know about you, but I LOVE happy endings! So as a quick recap, in part one of our little saga, dude is seriously bummed when he gets together with his old bandmates with his new Egnater tube head & Bugera 2x12 cab … only to get smoked by the other guitar player’s little Peavey open...
WGS Blackhawk HP vs ET-90
WGS Blackhawk HP vs ET-90
Hi-diddly-ho above-average tone seekers! Today I make good on a promise I made over on the Q&A forum … I was asked to do a shootout between the WGS big-dog Alnico Blackhawk HP and the Ceramic ET-90. Wow! What a cool idea. In essence the idea is this: “Hey they are both big juicy warm speakers that can handle big-wattage tube amps … so, what can I expect to gain with a couple hundred dollars’ worth of highly sought-after Alnico? Good Question! So good that the idea just hit me … I need to make my next blog a detailed expose’ on the merits of Alnico...
Warehouse Guitar Speakers Moving Forward – To Infinity and Beyond!
Warehouse Guitar Speakers Moving Forward – To Infinity and Beyond!
WGS has been a secret weapon in the arsenal
of many top-shelf boutique amp builders and in-the-know amp gurus for quite
some time now. The WGS “family” has
always been a fairly tightly knit fabric composed of like-minded tone aficionados
who run the gambit from players to record producers and engineers to
manufacturers. Now, it seems as though
the WGS secret is out. Warehouse Guitar
Speakers, once solely available “factory direct” (or as the stock speaker in a boutique
amp), are now available to mere mortals through big-name retailers like
Musicians Friend and...
ET65 vs ET90 Is There a New King?
ET65 vs ET90 Is There a New King?
Holy cow has this one been coming for a LONG TIME! Yep, that’s EXACTLY the opening sentence from my last blog (Blackhawk vs Blackhawk HP) … but, well, it rings just as true. The ET65 has been a favorite of mine since day one, and it’s new big-brother the ET90 has also really caught my attention, so I’m not quite sure how it is that this particular shootout slipped by me, but it did. Sure, I’d done some side-by-side listening myself, but just never got around to filming it for public consumption. Until now! It’s a done deal, and here it is. SPOILER ALERT! If...