i said something tonight i thought i would never say. " after last weekend, i may end up playing my fender this friday." though i had an idea i might mention this someday, i never thought it would be so soon. there are 2 things any long time readers of this blog may recall, (both of you)(well, one, now that unk died. and i do miss you, ya country lovin' doink) those 2 things?
mr brians wicks is a stallion guitar builder, and fenders suck. i have no hate for any one or anything in this world, but i really do not like fender guitar necks. they are fat and round, and i have these little carny-midget hands that fit so much better on a skinny gibson neck than any fender i've picked up. in fact, my favorite saying is that a fender guitar is a waste of perfectly good fire wood. even funnier is the fact that one of my friends from college, who i remember as a les paul and nothing but peavey 5150 and crate tube amp lover, switched to the fender dark side, and just today, mentioned something about that in
this post. (
here is his myspace page)
anyways, the reason for this rant: to answer a question emailed to me recently about what guitars i use, to announce that i would actually play my fender strat now that the above mentioned guitar builder reshaped the neck into something besides a fence post with strings on it, and to whine and cry about having really good stuff, set up professionally, and yet i still manage to break them without even trying. some days you just have to be good.
to answer the question, the guitars i use 99.9 percent of the time are Epiphone
G400 SG's made from korina mahogany wood. i have 2 of them set up exactly the same, the only way i can tell them apart is the serial numbers, and even that i would have to look up to see which one i bought first, though one does have a different sticker on it right now. gibson only made a korina sg one year, they look funny, and are very hard to find, so my only choice was to go with the supposed "gibson authorized" epiphone g4oo. as they are now, the only thing left of the original guitars are the wood bodies, all the electronics, wiring, volume/tone pots, and tuners have all been changed out to what i found i liked from trial and error during the first 2 years i played with
premonition. gotoh tuners, the pickups are gibson's: '57 classics in the neck position, and '57 burst buckers in the bridge position. the whining and crying part of this post, and the reason i said i may play my fender this friday night, is that BOTH the sg's are at brians being worked on. one seems to have caught a cold and the intonation is out on one string for some reason. and the other, well, i think it's mad at me. it's the one i bought second, and is the one i had all the custom work done to first, so it was my primary guitar the first 2 years in the band. then while experimenting with different pickups on the bridge of the first guitar, that's when i i tried the burst bucker and decided i like it alot better than '57 classic plus that was in the second one i had been using up until then, so i switched which one i primarily used. and i think that made it mad, as i've had constant problems with it since. if we were playing a laid back gig, i just grabbed whichever guitar case was close without even looking to see which one it was, but if it was a more rock gig i wanted the one with the burst bucker, as the other hadn't been changed to that yet. so first, the selector switch died, then a few weeks later a volume pot died. and these had already been updated to gibson hardware. next, it suddenly became very susceptable to changes in humidity, which would make the b string fret out on the first fret. then, the bridge pickup developed a short inside it, so that had to be changed. and now, it's back to the humidity causing it to fret out again, which is why it's back at brians. so i don't know, maybe it's time to build a third one just like the other 2, so that i won't have to fall back on the fender.
now, about the fender. i've hated that thing for years. it's one of the early "american standard" models that i bought new in 97 or 98, before they all came with humbuckers at the bridge. so i put a seymor duncan hotrail in the single coil spot, and i do like the sound of it. there is a really big tone difference switching from the fender lace's at the neck and middle postion to that hot rail, which is nice to have that diversity, i just hated the "feel" of how the thing played. so it has only been played live once, and that was for a birthday party that it was requested just becasue of the way it looks. it's a realy deep blue/purple, and when i first bought it i had a polished aluminum diamondplate pick guard cut for it. (not that i was the first to do this, but it wasn't until the last couple years before this became popular) so in general it was a sweet looking, sweet sounding guitar, that i totally hated playing. in fact, last year when the guys that run the drag strip here in town wanted me to record the star spangled banner "jimi hendrix style" for them to use before each race, i tried using it since that is what he played, but that only lasted one take before going back to the sg. now though, my perspective of the guitar has changed drastically. and no, my fingers didn't grow longer, that stallion guitar builder i mentioned reshaped the neck into something that has a very good feel to it. so while i still don't like the way the control knobs are so close to the strings, and the string height of the body is taller where i plant my little pinkie occasionally, it is now a very playable guitar.
but i'd still rather play my sg's, so my whole point of this epic tale is that i really hope he gets one of my korina baby's feeling better by friday!
