2021 Fall Philly Guitar Show

 It was glorious, just getting that little reminder card, that the GUITAR SHOW was coming back. Back from being a victim of the Flying AIDS, just like everything else.

If you were a lefty, you had your choice of exactly one guitar - an old Guild electric that looked like an SG. I forget its designation. Oh, and a 67 Tele, for only $17,500.

But I didn't let that bother me - I was among equipment! Amps. Guitars. Goodies.

There were a few 50s Strats, some for exorbitant amounts. Going by memory (never a good idea), there was an early 54 Strat for $150,000. Lots of expensive vintage Les Pauls too.

Not a lot of real surprises. We missed the t-shirt lady. Many of my monies have gone to her. Mrs. lefty adored her and her collection. I found a booth with ancient Marshalls that were for p.a., plus an empty p.a. speaker cabinet, complete with horn (see below). Can you imagine a 20-50w Marshall p.a.? Over your 100w stacks?

If you only see one booth, Jim's Guitars (Ohio) is the Wow Booth. They always feature certain guitars, this time being very old Les Paul jrs. If you don't like LP Jrs, you could see all sorts of beautiful guitars and very old amps. In the past they had Marshalls that were never made for the US. Old Fender piggybacks, and whatever else you wanted. 

People looked happy and there were a lot of them. There weren't as many vendors, but still a lot. There were women. Normally there are about 3, but there were many more. All were spouses except the one with blue hair. Although I like blue, I do not like it on hair. Mrs. lefty felt otherwise.  It's a good place to go if you're a female, looking for attention: there's almost zero competition. It's a much better place to go to get gear. Not only were the vendors helpful, so were the other players.

What I learned: the Yngwie Malmsteen pickups don't come with any attitude (or hair) and the Tom DeLonge Gibson doesn't come with a ufo.

I got a rock, Charlie Brown.

A blue DOD FX55 chorus. It was my choice because it's the only chorus with a delay time knob. Chorus sounds interesting when you push the delay time a little.  Around 30ms, it becomes flanging. A long time ago, in another guitarverse, I tried out a Deltalab rack delay. It had modulation, so set about building The Ultimate Chorus. It was really delightful at longer delays settings. Eventually I'll get another one, but rack gear is a PITA for me in general. If you crank the speed on a chorus, you can (very cheaply) approximate a Leslie at high speed. It's a trick.

Further out there: last band did Heart's Barracuda. I've never had a flanger pedal, so I made due with a rack box that did chorus, delay, flanger. It sat up against my amp. It made the right noise, but a pedal would have been much better. A different band would have been much better.

If you haven't been to a show, or you have been to a show, make sure to get to one. All that gear....

Type 'guitar show' into a search engine (duckduckgo.com) and find one near you.

Out of Phase with my Guitar

WIRING

 Ever since I got a guitar, I've operated on them, putting switches in to do things like phase, coil drop (aka coil splitting), and whatever else I could find. Even tried the Superstrat switch. For a while I replaced the blade switch on my Strats with 3 individual toggle switches. 

After all this time, I went back to the blade switch, and occasionally use coil splitting. On the rear pickup of a Strat, I use JBjrs or a JB, and have a coil split switch. I use it to get more authentic single coil tones. It's not a bad compromise at all, and blends well with the middle pickup. If you wire it right, it's humbucking. I found it also sounds pretty good to keep both coils and use it with the middle - there's more 'girth' to the tone.

The jury is still out on adding the rear and front pickups together. It was initially done with a pot instead of a switch, so I could vary the amount of the front pickup added. This will probably move to a push-pull pot.

The G&L Legacy, their Strat, has an incredible 'bass' control, that I will probably put on my other guitars. It's very effective, and can drop all the low end from the guitar, if turned down. The treble control is normal. I figure I'll add the treble bleed network across the volume pot that keeps the highs when I turn the volume down. My highly flawed memory tells me it's a 150k resistor paralleled with an .001 capacitor. Values can be messed with.

imo, the Jimmy Page wiring is silly and most people won't use most of the settings.

If you're anal and must have every possible combination, it's a great system. 

I grew out of needing everything because I wasn't finding most of it useful.

BOSS CAPS, MAN

Many companies are selling replacement assemblies and tone control caps with 'orange drop' or 'bumblebee' capacitors, stating this gives the best tone. I'm calling BS. When the tone is on 10, the tone cap is out of the circuit, so it could be made of concrete and won't affect the tone. There's a funny story about bumblebee caps... guys who repair ancient tube radios tell me the first thing they do is open them and replace all the bumblebee caps because they're crap and probably gone. The tone control works from the factory. If you wanna experiment, try changing the value-you'll hear more difference from this. If you're really desperate, change the cap. Just don't spend too much money... it's snake oil for audiophools. At one show, I saw an LP replacement drop in set for $75. It's four pots, two caps, and wire.

You'll also get a noticeable change through what Fender refers to as a Blower switch, which wires a pickup directly to the output jack, bypassing the pickup selector switch, tone, and volume controls.

Your call.

• If non-tube amps poo poo tube amps, why do they all advertise tube tone?

Didja ever pick up a different guitar and it almost feels like a different instrument? Or you're using someone else's fingers?

This happens to me sometimes when I pick up my Les Paul. Growing up with Strats, it's not hard to guess why. But sometimes it's ok... maybe it's the weather.  Then there's the guitarist joke that the LP has 4 knobs instead of 3, so that confuses us.

Jeff Beck said he liked Strats because you pick up a Les Paul and it's all right there. The Strat makes you work for it. If this is true, I guess I got used to playing the hard way.

Speaking of Les Pauls....

There has been a lot of talk of quality variance over the years and between models.

They're not kidding.

My LP Studio is .... well...   not quite the guitar my 58 Historic Reissue is. I was highly advised to pick up the 58 by a bunch of friends who had one and were over the moon. It was well worth it. It's a dream to play, with a baseball bat neck. The Studio... it's in perfect condition.. it's just not the 58. Strangely, the Studio is up for sale/trade. The easiest LP ever is the Ibanez 'lawsuit' LP copy. It feels cheaper, but plays really well.

I bought replacement pickups for it but was advised to use the originals. The replacements are Seymour Duncan's favorite set: the JB and the Jazz. I already love the JB. The Jazz works really well for me because I find LP neck pickups too loud and overdriven. The Jazz has less output and more tone. My favorite set too, Seymour.

I want this. Left handed, of course.