I recorded a new demo of the Stulce with the new 12AT7 tube in V1. I did this recording with my tele straight into the amp, SM57 in front of the greenback speaker through a PreSonus Bluetube preamp into a PreSonus Firebox interface into my MacBook.

Lots of noodling and I talk you through the different gain settings, so feel free to wade through it or not.

My new JJ/Tesla 12AT7 tube from Tubedepot came in today (really fast shipping FTW) and I installed it in my amp a little while ago. The Stulce cabinet is kind of a pain to open up, but I got it done. I replaced the Sovtek 12AX7 in V1 and left the JJ 12AU7 in V2. The amp uses a single EL84 power tube and I think there’s an Electro Harmonix in there right now.

Anyway, I only had time to make sure that it worked, but I can tell you that it has made a world of difference in the amount of headroom that this amp has on tap. With my strat, I was able to turn both gains up to around noon and only get some very slight breakup. Of course, it’ll be a lot different with humbuckers, but it’s a pretty sizable gain in clean tone. Beyond that, the amp sounds much more sparkly and crisp. I need to give it a thorough workout will all of my guitars, but I think that I’m going to stick with this preamp configuration for a while. I’ll probably try some different power tubes, since EHX tubes are supposedly pretty gainy, but I’m pretty set as far as tube types.

First of all, I am not talking about this guy.

I have a question about amp headroom. Specifically, I want more of it. In a nutshell, headroom deals with how loud your amp will get before it starts to distort. In general, higher wattage amps have more headroom than lower wattage amps.

Many people buy low wattage (less than 15-20 watts) amps so that they can take advantage of power tube distortion at lower volume levels. I was one of those guys. One drawback to having a small amp is that you can’t turn it up very loud before it starts distorting. This is not necessarily a bad thing, unless you want a good clean tone.

I haven’t been able to dial in a pristine clean tone with my Stulce (~10 watts) and it’s driving me crazy. I would prefer to fix the problem rather than replace the amp. My first inclination is that the speakers are the culprit. I have a 2×12 cabinet loaded with a Celestion G12M “Greenback” and a Weber ceramic Blue Dog. I’m pretty sure that the Greenback is the problem.

According to the spec sheet, the Greenback is a 25 watt speaker with 96dB sensitivity. (The higher the sensitivity, the more efficient the speaker is. This is usually perceived as loudness.) The Greenback is known as a somewhat inefficient speaker, and is probably contributing to the lack of cleanness in my tone.

By contrast, the Weber is a 50 watt speaker with ~100dB sensitivity. On paper, the Weber should be much cleaner at similar volume levels than the Greenback. I think a little experiment is in order. I currently have the speakers in series. They’re both 8 ohms speakers and when you run them in series you add the impedance (16 ohms). I’m planning on disconnecting the speakers and running them at 8 ohms. I will switch between the speakers to see if one breaks up earlier than the other. If I remember to do it, I will try to record the results.

Before I do this, would anyone care to chime in with any tips or recommendations? What are some good high-efficiency speakers that will help me to retain a good clean tone at lower volumes? I know that the Celestion V30s have really high sensitivity, but they get a pretty bad rap from what I’ve read.

I just saw this over on the gear page and thought I’d share it here. You have to know a little about music theory to really follow it.

The bartender says, “I’m sorry, but we don’t serve minors.” So E-flat leaves, and C and G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished, and G is out flat. F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough.

D comes in and heads for the bathroom saying, “Excuse me. I’ll just be a second.” Then A comes in, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor. Then the bartender notices B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and says, “Get out! You’re the seventh minor I’ve found in this bar tonight.”

E-Flat comes back the next night in a three-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender says, “You’re looking sharp tonight. Come on in, this could be a major development.” Sure enough, E-flat soon takes off his suit and everything else, and is au natural.

Eventually, C sobers up and realizes in horror that he’s under a rest. C is brought to trial, found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. On appeal, however, C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental. The judge rules that all contrary motions are bassless.

A couple of weeks ago, I was recruited by a couple of buddies to join them in a new band project. I have been playing with these guys at church for quite a while, but we have all been wanting to play something other than praise and worship music. At least, I know that I have. There’s nothing wrong with P&W music, but the songs are all very similar in structure and it gets pretty repetitive.

We’re going to start out by learning a bunch of covers, and we’re looking to do a pretty eclectic mix. We were all learning our instruments in the ’90s, so we’re planning on doing some Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots. We have pretty diverse musical interests, so it should be pretty interesting what we come up with. I’m into bands like Radiohead, Wilco, Sigur Ros, Animal Collective – a lot of modern indie/experimental stuff. Maury’s (guitar/vocals) interests are pretty diverse – from acoustic folk to metal. Greg (Bass/vocals) is into bands like Rush and Dream Theater, so he’ll probably want to do a bunch of 20 minute multi-movement songs that change meter every few seconds =). Ben (drums) – I’m not really sure what he’s into, but I think he mentioned King’s X. Anyway, we’re all rock guys, so it’s not that diverse, but it should be cool.

I think my current setup should work for me. I’ll probably mic my Stulce, run it squeaky clean and use pedals for drive. I may need to add another distortion if I need some heavy crunch. It seems like there’s no real reason to use massive amps anymore. I would love to use a cranked JTM45 or a Bassman, but they are so loud.

Anyway, we’re just doing this to have fun. We’ll probably write some tunes, but we have no delusions of grandeur, like we’re going to “make it big” or something. It’s just a way for us to hang out and make some music that we love.

It seems like I have only been blogging like once a month lately, and every one of those posts has been an update on what has been going on lately. Well, here we go again with the monthly update. Hopefully, things will slow down over the summer.

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I haven’t been playing much lately. Things have been pretty busy around here, so I have taken several weeks off from playing in church. I miss it. I’ll be on this weekend again, and hopefyllu

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A friend of mine (who also happens to be a middle school orchestra director) asked me to play with his group on a couple of tunes for their end of the year concert. The concert is tonight, and we’re playing Smoke on the Water and a medley of Beach Boys tunes. Smoke on the Water is one of the first riffs that I learned (along with everyone else), but I never really learned the whole song. I have been working on the solo a lot, and while it won’t be exactly like the recording, it will be pretty close. I don’t really have time to learn every nuance, but I’m getting most of the main licks.

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This past weekend, Jenny and I drove to Dallas to photograph a wedding. Jenny has done several weddings, but this is the first one that I have been involved with. It was a long weekend, but we got some good stuff. Here’s a link to Jenny’s blog post about it, just in case you’re interested.

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Several months ago, I ordered some recording equipment for the music department at my school. I ordered a Presonus Firebox and a pair of Shure SM81 mics. I also ordered some other stuff, but it hasn’t come in yet. I did some preliminary recordings with the Firebox/SM81 combo and it sounds great. I’m not sure if the SM81s are more sensitive or if the Firebox has more gain than my Tascam, but the new setup works great for acoustic guitars. The Tascam/SM57 combo wouldn’t even capture fingerstyle playing, but it sounds great with the new stuff.

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Upgrading the electronics in my G&L has made me want to get my strat tweaked out. Something about it is just kind of lifeless. I think that the body may be a big part of the problem. It’s an alder body with the dreaded “swimming pool route” for the electronics, and I would like to get a new body with better wood (probably ash) and less severe pickup routing. I want to put some new pickups in it (I’ll probably stick with Lollars) and I want to try a different bridge/trem. I was thinking about going with a hardtail bridge, but the tremolo is such an integral part of the strat sound. I’ve heard good things about Callaham bridges, anyone have experience with them?

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Well, that’s it for now. I’ll try to get on a more regular schedule.

Just thought I’d let you know that Wilco is streaming the upcoming album on their site. Check it out.

“Wilco will love you, baby.”

Okay, I had time to do a real quick recording this morning while Mikey was in the high chair eating breakfast. I just turned the amp on to whatever setting it was on (no pedals or effects), checked the levels in Garageband and hit record. There are two different riff things that I play on each setting (neck, middle, bridge). Once again, the pickups being used are the Lollar Imperial (low wind) in the neck and the Special T in the bridge.

Hopefully, you can hear that the neck pickup is much brighter and more balanced than the stock Seth Lover. I think that the Lollar Imperial low wind pickup might be too bright in a solid body guitar (especially if it’s a hard, bright wood), but it’s a great match for my semi-hollowbody.

I spent some time balancing the pickups yesterday, and I think that they’re pretty close to where they need to be. The low E is too quiet on the neck pickup, but if I move it too close to the strings, it makes the whole pickup too loud. Adjusting the individual pole pieces doesn’t seem to have a significant impact. The action is too low on the E string, and you can really hear it on this recording. However, I don’t have the right allen wrench to adjust the saddle pieces right now. I hope that raising the action a little will also give me a little more output on that string.

So what do you think? Does anything jump out at you that I need to fix? I’m not an expert guitar tech, so feel free to tell me what you hear.

I mentioned it last week in my little UPS rant, but my new pickups from Lollar arrived this week. I considered a lot of brands (Fralin, WCR, Wolfetone, etc) but the Lollar pickups sounded like what I wanted.

I decided on the Imperial humbucker for the neck. I got the low-wind option, which gives it an overall brighter tone than the standard Imperial. I got a Special T for the bridge. It’s basically a hot-rodded, high output pickup that sounds almost like a P-90. Both of these pickups use Alnico 5 magnets, which contribute to an overall brighter tone than the Alnico 2 magnets used in the stock G&L pickups.

I installed the new pickups on Monday, but I haven’t really had a chance to play the guitar through a real amp yet. Things have been a little busy at home lately. However, I have played the guitar through the school’s solid state Peavey keyboard amp. That amp is actually surprisingly okay if you set the EQ right. Anyway, my initial impressions are pretty good. The neck humbucker is a lot louder than the bridge pickup, so I still need to tweak the height of the neck pickup a little bit. I also need to mess with the tone cap values a little bit. I currently have a .022 uF cap, but I want to try a couple of other values (Jason Lollar recommends .015 for teles).

Anyway, I don’t have a lot to say about the tone since I haven’t played them through a tube amp, but I think that I’m going to be pretty happy with them. I had two complaints about the the stock pickups. My main problem was that they were too dark. The Lollars are clearly brighter without being icepicky. The other problem is that they were unpotted, so they tended to get microphonic and would squeal whenever you added much gain. I haven’t played with distortion yet, but the Lollars are wax potted so they shouldn’t have the squealing issues.

I’ll post again (with clips) when I have a chance to really play through the new pickups. In the meantime, does anyone need some gently used pickups? I’ve got a Seymour Duncan Seth Lover (PAF-style) and a G&L MFD tele bridge pickup. Both pickups are actually really nice, but they didn’t really agree with the guitar. I think that the semi-hollow body makes the guitar darker or something. Anyway, feel free to send me trade offers or whatever if you’re interested.

Ever since I got my tele, I have been feeling the urge to learn some country licks. I have resisted so far, but whenever I switch to the bridge pickup, I just want to do some chicken pickin’ or banjo rolls or something.

To state what may already be obvious: I dislike country music. All the “tear in my beer” stuff generally makes me want to puke. Even though country guitarists are some of the fastest, most technically proficient musicians that you’re likely to find in popular music, the twangy, nasal vocals kill it for me. That, and the extremely predictable harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and lyrical content. So yeah, I don’t like country.

Regardless, I would like to open up my tonal palette a little bit. What country tinged (or maybe alt-country) recordings should I look into for country-flavored guitar stuff. As a rule of thumb, if the lead singer wears a hat (cowboy or trucker) or a big belt buckle, then you probably shouldn’t make the recommendation.