Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => Time Out => Topic started by: Ian Price on July 01, 2010, 10:57:42 AM
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I really do feel like just quitting sometimes! I 'played' last night and sounded awful. I should have stopped but carried on playing very badly. It soon developed into 'it's the guitars fault' and before I knew it I was thinking of getting rid of the tele (that I haven't had for too long) and trying to find 'the one'. Sadly I think I already had 'the one' and sold it to Dave (sell it back you swine!). I think the issue with the tele is that is sounds relatively weedy and doesn't give me the natural drive I would like from the deluxe. Perhaps a HB guitar is the way to go (or get a piledriver or BG1400 to beef up the tele)
I have come to realise that I am not a great guitarist and never will be but still love playing (and buying). I won't be giving it up any time soon!
Anyone else every feel this way or is it just me?
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No.
I'm certain we all have better and worse days, for whatever reasons, but its not a big deal surely?
If my playing's sucking balls I just keep playing and trying to do whatever I'm doing till it doesnt suck balls. As much.
Its a little philosophy or mini-rule, guideline sort of thing I have - Never put the guitar down while annoyed with bad playing, only stop when its at least OK and I'm basically happy with it. I dont adhere to it religiously or anything, but the vast majority of the time I do.
Maybe try that. Its just a bit of tenacity and pushing yourself to be better. Its good for you, honest.
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It's a Baja isn't it?
"I think the issue with the tele is that is sounds relatively weedy and doesn't give me the natural drive I would like..."
That's exactly how I felt about my Baja for the first 3-4 months.
It's not you, some people love the stock tone/behaviour, some people don't. I didn't, it was ok on a "Andrew's playing very well day", but on an average day it was very disheartening. I had the luxury of picking up a different guitar that suited my mood. But it meant I rarely played the thing.
But I fixed it...
First thing (cheap), lift the control panel and look for the treble bleed capacitor across the volume pot. Get rid of it!!
Treble bleed cap = don't lose top when you roll down = weedy tone
Second thing (cheap), fiddle with pickup heights a lot. Nearer the strings = thicker tone. Note, however, this didn't do it for me with the Baja pups (even when I tried them in another tele). I improved it, but not enough.
Third thing - get a set of Blackguard Flat 50s. The basic yummy-baja that you do like is still there, but it's thicker, more responsive and all round yeah...
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it's not just you ian :(
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Cheers for the advice guys - maybe I need to stop being such a wuss!!!
Andy - thanks for the pointers, it is a Baja. I'll be taking that bleed cap off tonight. I had already changed the height of the pickups but still wasn't impressed. Sterile is the word I would use to describe them! Perhaps some BKPs are in order.
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Welome to my world, Ian! :lol:
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Maybe wire in some new CTS pots?
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Don't worry Ian. We all go through this.
About a fortnight ago I was playing and had the exact same issue, and as yourself, hung up my guitar in shame (blaming the amp though :P). But when I played a week later, everything that was wrong the previous week was corrected.
Sometimes you just need to put the guitar down for a bit, then go back refreshed later on.
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Maybe wire in some new CTS pots?
That's one thing I haven't done on my Baja.
I have swapped out the tone capacitor for various types/values. I've reached the conclusion that I like .047 in a tele (I've tried .022 and .033, they're ok, but not the range I'm used to on Fenders).
At the moment it has a Vitamin-Q paper-in-oil .047 - not sure that works in this guitar for me though, mellows it out a bit too much, I'll probably switch back to ceramic next time. (The Vitamin-Qs work a treat in several other of my guitars though)
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I tend to wanna blame picks and string, because knowing me they'll be knackered and need changing but I won't get round to ordering some new ones, would probably help if I checked the tuning too.
When my playing sucks what I mean to do and don't do often enough is get the metronome and practice each hand separately, then put them together and hopefully they are in perfect sync. If not my brain will go "AHHHH stop bloody slurring!!!"
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Each time i buy a guitar i'm tweaking it to max (pots, bkp pickups) and so on, sometimes even until i forget to play it. Lately i decided to burn my custom' les paul lacquer with my DNA till hell arrives. Best guitar times I get in those 3 years noodling around. As time passes I'm happy with my gear that became more simple but tastier.
Happy gas makes you an happy six string scr@per :D.
I feel like this sometimes too but some other times I'm like turning back and looking who's playing to get that huge sound. It happens, the most difficult is indeed not to give up and strap it back on and play some tasty riffs till it sounds the way it should ;).
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No sorry Ian, I always sound great :D
Joking aside, what were you playing Ian, just noodling around or have you got something you are working through?
Perhaps lessons would help you get back on track rather than another guitar, I'm thinking of getting back on them soon, the last lot really helped. Might continue with my grades to get some focus back.
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Its all part of the love of guitars. You'll be ok Ian.
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yeah i never think of giving up. i've been playing music for so long on one instrument or another that's it's not really even a possibility.
I definitely play worse some days than others, too. having the right gear is helpful, too, if you're not getting enough gain out of the deluxe, how about something more modern? or as a stopgap, even a b00st?
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if you're not getting enough gain out of the deluxe, how about something more modern? or as a stopgap, even a b00st?
I can see your point but I'm really not keen on losing the deluxe (I can't afford a new amp and keep the deluxe). I think the issue is more to do with the pickups though as other guitars I have played through the deluxe have sounded great. I do have a bad monkey that I use occasionally and whilst it does give more gain it still doesn't sound how I would like it to.
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How about a proper guitar?
Couldn't resist :)
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How about a proper guitar?
Couldn't resist :)
:D
I was waiting for that!
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One thing that may more of a dfifference than you'd expect is the tone capacitor (as well as losing the treble bleed)
Swap it out for an oil and paper one - will make a nice difference
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Ian, "the one" had these BG 1400, right? I think it's a nice idea to have it again... if it worked once, it's supposed it will again...
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One thing that may more of a dfifference than you'd expect is the tone capacitor (as well as losing the treble bleed)
Swap it out for an oil and paper one - will make a nice difference
+1
I actually came back in here to post this :lol:
Like I said earlier, my Baja has PIO at the moment, and with my Blackguard Flat 50s, it kinda mellows things out a bit in a way I'm not sure I want...
But thinking about it, the same effect on the Baja's original pups might be a good thing for chaps like you and me, Ian (chaps who find the original pups a bit wanting in the "body department") :D
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I haven't bothered to read any threads about paper in oil capacitors - where are you guys buying them?
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Cheers Philly - that was my next question!
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You've got the S1 switch on the Baja Ian, so if you switch to CTS pots you'll lose that option. If you want a more traditional Tele switching arrangement, you'd be better off selling the Baja and getting something else?
That Deluxe has a TRUCKLOAD of gain, so try setting the Power Scaling much lower to bring in the power amp distortion. It works a treat!
I got some old PIO caps from AxesRUs as they were quite cheap. I've still got some 0.022s if you want one Ian? Let me know :)
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Get them from ME! (you can often take it as given that if I'm hot about a product like this that I will stock it and fit it in my own guitars too)
Or ring Tim if you must ..............
The Baja tele is a good guitar - if you were chopping stuff around on it I would just swap out the whole wiring harness for a straightforward 2 x 250k ohm CTS and an oil and paper cap and a switch - that way you can easily replace the old harness if you choose to sell later
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I can see your point but I'm really not keen on losing the deluxe (I can't afford a new amp and keep the deluxe). I think the issue is more to do with the pickups though as other guitars I have played through the deluxe have sounded great. I do have a bad monkey that I use occasionally and whilst it does give more gain it still doesn't sound how I would like it to.
fair enough, if you're sure it's the guitar, then that's fair enough.
bear in mind that removing the treble bleed isn't necessarily a panacea. IME, while guitars with treble bleeds can sound thin with the volume down, guitars without them sound way too muddy/dark etc. :lol: If i could be arsed, I'd try a whole bunch of different options for all the ways you can wire a treble bleed (you can put a resistor in there too, various different values of caps and/or resistor, wiring the resistor in series/parallel, i think, etc. etc.) to see how close to perfect you can get. i think there's some info on it on the duncan site, but i could be wrong.
or even put one on a push-pull pot, so you can select whether it's in the circuit or not (that's what i'd do if i weren't lazy- i like the extra sparkle for when i'm rolling back to clean, but like the extra darkness for when i'm rolling back to a bit less overdriven, but still overdriven).
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I hate being addicted to biking. My bikes always got something wrong with it - now it needs a new rear wheel as the current one's nackered. At least £90 for a new one. Bloody money drain - worse than guitar at the minute!
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The Baja tele is a good guitar - if you were chopping stuff around on it I would just swap out the whole wiring harness for a straightforward 2 x 250k ohm CTS and an oil and paper cap and a switch - that way you can easily replace the old harness if you choose to sell later
Quick question Jonathan:
I was looking at swapping the pots for CTS a few months back (I had some spare ones from you at the time) - but they won't go through the metal plate... I put the idea on the back-burner, and used the pots for something else.
How would you usually get round that? Is it a "drill the wholes bigger"? Or "get a different plate"?
Or by "harness" did you mean the plate as well?
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I was looking at swapping the pots for CTS a few months back (I had some spare ones from you at the time) - but they won't go through the metal plate... I put the idea on the back-burner, and used the pots for something else.
How would you usually get round that? Is it a "drill the wholes bigger"? Or "get a different plate"?
Is that on the Baja or one of your MIJs? I thought the MIM Teles had US pots already.
It's dead easy to make the holes bigger - a 10mm bit is quick but leaves them a bit oversized, so I use my countersinking bit and work from both sides of the plate, to get the holes just right for a snug fit.
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The Baja tele is a good guitar - if you were chopping stuff around on it I would just swap out the whole wiring harness for a straightforward 2 x 250k ohm CTS and an oil and paper cap and a switch - that way you can easily replace the old harness if you choose to sell later
Quick question Jonathan:
I was looking at swapping the pots for CTS a few months back (I had some spare ones from you at the time) - but they won't go through the metal plate... I put the idea on the back-burner, and used the pots for something else.
How would you usually get round that? Is it a "drill the wholes bigger"? Or "get a different plate"?
Or by "harness" did you mean the plate as well?
Either way
Get a new plate or drill out the old one as Philly said
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great tip with the countersink bit from Philly - I like that one :)
i drilled out the plate on my Cyclone - no regrets there
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I don't think the Blackguards or messing wth the treble bleed cap is the answer, to the original question.
I can very well make my Blackguards sound pretty bad, when I'm playing bad.
On the subject of treble bleeds, none of my guitars have them and I find the muddyness really annoying when I turn down, I really need to get some installed. Some people say well yeah, you can use it as a tone control as well but I've already got a tone controll, treble roll off when you turn down is just annoying!
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I don't think the Blackguards or messing wth the treble bleed cap is the answer, to the original question.
On the subject of treble bleeds, none of my guitars have them and I find the muddyness really annoying when I turn down, I really need to get some installed. Some people say well yeah, you can use it as a tone control as well but I've already got a tone controll, treble roll off when you turn down is just annoying!
yeah, that's what i thought, unless you're playing at less than full volume an awful lot, whether there's a tb cap isn't going to make any difference (as far as i'm aware).
and agreed about the tone control thing.
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Thinking about it even more, I think a 335 would be the best solution Ian
The Tokai ones are really nice and sound great at any volume level, through any amp, even when you play badly.
Keep an eye on seconds out!
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Thinking about it even more, I think a 335 would be the best solution Ian
The Tokai ones are really nice and sound great at any volume level, through any amp, even when you play badly.
Hmmm, I dunno, I manage to make my 339 sound shite.
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I don't think the Blackguards or messing wth the treble bleed cap is the answer, to the original question.
On the subject of treble bleeds, none of my guitars have them and I find the muddyness really annoying when I turn down, I really need to get some installed. Some people say well yeah, you can use it as a tone control as well but I've already got a tone controll, treble roll off when you turn down is just annoying!
yeah, that's what i thought, unless you're playing at less than full volume an awful lot, whether there's a tb cap isn't going to make any difference (as far as i'm aware).
and agreed about the tone control thing.
Yeah, I think it's all down to how you use the thing...
Me personally, I run guitar volume and tone controls at around 6-8 for my "stock" sound, pretty much on all types of guitar. So yeah, the treble-bleed has never been a particular friend to me :lol:
And although the treble roll-off is there, it's what I'm used to (and, er, that's what the extra play in the tone control is for, if I want it!).
Because I'm used to it, I do expect to lose top-end as I turn down. But I don't expect to lose "meat" as I turn down - which is what it feels like to me if there is a treble bleed in there. On both my Baja and my CIJ 52 I thought the pickups were "weedy" because of it - snip the bugger out, and they didn't feel so weedy.
I strongly suspect that might be how Ian uses his volume as well - in which case disconnect the tb cap and see what happens, it could be a revelation. If you don't like it, put it back :D
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yeah, that's true, it depends on how you use it. for most of the stuff i play the volume and tone is on 10, lol. and i like overdriven tones on the warm side, so i can't really afford to be losing any sparkle when rolling back.
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Thinking about it even more, I think a 335 would be the best solution Ian
The Tokai ones are really nice and sound great at any volume level, through any amp, even when you play badly.
Keep an eye on seconds out!
For a second I thought the man's got a point. And then I remembered that I had promised myself to not weaken and just get on with playing with whatever I've got.
I'm in a much better mood at the moment and am in a happier guitar place!
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Good philosophy!
One that I strongly advocate but seldom follow :?
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It's a great philosophy and one that I find very difficult sticking to! I'm determined this time.
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:lol: Be strong!
Good to hear it's better.
I don't often get the guitar doldrums anymore. I think it's because I gave it up altogether for a few years when I woke up one day and realised I was a slave to this thing (music) that wasn't actually giving me anything back at the time. I was going through a bad patch in general, and cutting out things that were "hurting me" and finding new things to do is really what got me back out to where I am now.
Anyway, when I picked up the guitar again, I made a tacit "agreement" with the thing that it was for my enjoyment, not for music's nor for anyone else's enjoyment. Somehow that approach has worked. It's one of the reasons I don't feel any problem with owning all this stuff without using it in public (and without using some of it at all for months on end!).
When I pick up a guitar and it's not happening, I put it down, mebbe try another one, probably do something else.
Also, different than many on here, I tend not to want to get rid of guitars that I've acquired. If it's not working out, I tend to try and concentrate on what attracted me to it in the first place, and to figure out what there is about it that might be stopping me.
If I was a "move the thing on" kind of guy, I wouldn't have my Baja now. I found that one really disappointing after what I'd been expecting. You can find posts from me on here asking if anyone had swapped out their stock pickups (I wasn't brave enough at the time to go "I think these Baja's are cr@p actually, what are you lot on about??" :lol:) - and most of the answers were coming back "no, the stock ones are really good". Luckily, I decided that, for me, they weren't what I was after. Getting the Blackguards turned the guitar into a go-er for me (and, incidentally helped me to finally understand what teles are about for me - I bought several more after that). That guitar is now one of favourites.
I've been into strats a lot recently, and renovating an Explorer (another one that was a big disappoint and is now a big favourite), the teles have been in their cases. But I'm just getting the stuff out to clean up and restring the Baja, and I know that in a few hours I'm gonna be going "why didn't I keep this one up-and-ready-to-rock all the time?!..." (I broke a string when I didn't have spares, I had a load of other geetars ready to roll, so I put the Baja away and forgot it for months...)
My gut feeling (based on the guitar-ownership journey that you've been through over the last couple of years) is that, in an ideal world, like me, you probably ought to have several guitars. At the least you need to have some sort of humbucker guitar and some sort of fender-type guitar. They play differently, they sound different, and they fit different moods. Some people can stick to one guitar. I could if I had to, but I'm a lot happier with options...
The main thing is do it for yourself, not for anyone else... and enjoy it! :D
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i agree, andy.
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Thanks for that post Andy, really appreciate the time it took you to type that up - some very true AND relevant stuff in there for me. I will stick to it and will more than likely swap the pups out, probably starting with the bridge as I'm pretty happy with the stock neck. It's either a reduced output piledriver or a BGF50. The BGF50 is ahead for me at the moment.
If I had the money I would absolutely be looking at a few other guitars - sadly I'm both pretty impatient and skint in equal measures and am probe to buy a guitar because it suits what I want at that moment. It only takes a listen to a few different guitarists and all of a sudden I am making plans of selling what I have to fill that short term need. Very short sighted thinking that has caused me to sell many guitars that I now regret. This is what is driving me to stick to it with the Baja.
Over the next few years (5 or 6 being realistic) I hope to be in a position to acquire a few more (no more than 2) guitars - certainly a HB equipped one and maybe a strat. I've got a loooong time to consider all of the options and will no doubt come close to wanting to sell the Baja in that time.
Will post some pics if I do get an upgrade to the bridge!
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No problem :D
Are you coming to the meet? I'm almost certain to bring the Baja now. She's had her overhaul and it took me a while to get going with her (and I did take the PIO capacitor out and put a ceramic back in - works better for me in this guitar), but I've only just put her down... :D