Getting the Darkness ready to tour

[FELINEGUITARS]

The Darkness are back with a new album ....and a new drummer too (who hits like a girl)
They have a tour coming up too and I've been helping with som preparations for that.

This time it was Dan's guitars - his two main stage Les Pauls - both in for some much needed fretwork

This one is called June and is Dan's main stage guitar
She needed the first five frets replacing due to lots of wear, and we had to fit them within the binding nibs, which is a bit fiddly and time consuming. All went very smoothly and she is back to peak playing condition.
She does exhibit some road wear though!


This is Terry - Dan's backup to June
Yes fans of cheesy 70's UK TV shows will spot the reference (and the fact that the show was set in Croydon isn't lost to me either)
Again - some fretwork , although not as much as June needed and she's ready for the tour



Dan plays with regular tuning but uses 11-54 (beefy slinky) and a fairly high-ish action.



New video here too!
http://youtu.be/GR35pRz7JQ8

[CommonCourtesy]

Nice axes! 11-54's  in standard though? Imagine how mushy his low end must be!

What pickups are in his Les Paul's?

[FELINEGUITARS]

Think using a nice bright sounding Marshall Plexi/JTM45 or a Wizard one tends to keep things tight.

The pickups on these may be stock , although Dan was an early tester of the Cold Sweat in another guitar and we did fit a Black Dog in one of Justin's guitars a few years ago

[bucketshred]

I bet the plain 22 G string on those sets is like a rod of steel when strung up - it was bad enough when I used 11-54 and tuned down half a step on my SG!

Lovely looking axes though!

[blue]

Good stuff Jonathon :) 

I'll be seeing these guitars in the flesh (again) next week at the very first show of the tour.  I've seen the band live about a dozen times, and they really do put on a great show.  High energy rock'n'roll, with a very charismatic frontman.

Their new song, barbarian, is up on facebook, and it's pretty good.  The guitar sounds are fantastic!

[AndyR]

What a pair of cuties!

He seems a bit short on bell knobs and pointers though...

So from your "a bit fiddly and time consuming" - am I right in assuming that you're actually replacing frets without disturbing the existing binding? Wow... I'd never really wondered about this, not having had too many bound neck guitars.

Would another option be to cut the nibs off and put your legendary fret ends over the binding? I think that would be my preference if it were possible (and looking at your Lions the other day, it certainly looks possible) - obviously that would be a bit odd if you were only replacing 5, not the whole lot.

But anyway... I'd always assumed, for a refret, that the binding needed to come off and... well... nightmare!!

[38thBeatle]

Nice job. My Brother has worked with Justin on odd occasions. I'll show him this post.

[gwEm]

June looks great.

Nice work to get Jonathan!

[nkay]

Would love to know what pickups they are using on the new album. The new songs Barbarians and Open Fire are just awesome. It would be amazing if it's the Cold Sweat as it really sounds like it.
Someone find out!