ezbass

I don’t think you’ll be sorry. I have an Area T hot on mine because I wanted something a bit more more P90ish, but it is still fundamentally a Tele sound. I love the guys at DiMarzio, always helpful and their products are great.

I grew up with Duane Eddy, Chet Atkins and Les Paul, my dad was a fan. My favourite guitar is a Gretsch 6120 (which both Duane and Chet used in their careers), there’s just something about a big old hollow bodied, single cutaway guitar with a Bigsby vibrato that makes me melt. I don’t own one any more sadly, although I did come very close to buying another one a few months ago, but common sense and ‘the look’ from Lady Ez stopped that happening (I stuck a Bigsby on my Epiphone Casino instead).

As Dad says above, what genre you want to play, who your influences/heroes are, budget, etc, will help with any recommendations folk might have. The good news is, the choice and quality of beginner instruments is fantastic these days and will be able to stay with you longer as you progress. However, I would initially suggest something with a cutaway as that’ll help you access the upper register when you start wanting to investigate the ‘dusty end’ of the fretboard, unless of course your influences use non-cutaway instruments and you want to emulate them.

DiMarzio do some very good hum cancelling Tele pickups, that still sound like a Tele, the Area T for instance.

You like what you like, nowt wrong with that.

Gosh, I like the sound (metaphorically speaking of course) of those P90s. I’ve had Filtertrons and they are great, with a very specific set of tones (Brian Setzer uses them all), but P90s (or p/ups voiced like P90s) are my favourite pickups. A ‘Tron in the bridge of your Strat might be an interesting addition, after all, Fender use them in Cabronitas.

Man alive that’s a tasty shopping list! I hear only good things from Kemper users and the one time I heard them knowingly live, I was very impressed. They don’t have the visual presence of a big old Marshall stack, but they can do so much more (and don’t need the services of an osteopath). LP wise, it’s nice to have one’s heroes guitar, but I feel it can get in the way of being yourself and people might tend to view you as a wannabe and judge you against Mr Hudson rather than on your own merits. Full disclosure - I’m a huge fan of Goldtop LPs (preferably with P90s for my own use) they just look so right and age wonderfully. Still, nice decision to have to make.

Eric Johnson Robben Ford Brian Setzer

We’d love to see some photos of your guitars.

Damn the Torpedoes!!!

Nice. You really don't see a lot of Ric trebles out in the wild.

Yeah, sounds like it’s bleeding voltage somewhere. As Kiwi says, the caps would be a good place to start. However, please exercise extreme caution around the power caps, they can hold deadly voltages and need to be discharged correctly before any maintenance is attempted. You may already know this, but it bears repeating.

Following on from Kiwi's trawl thread, here's mine for my guitar dirt box of choice. Having seen a pedalboard run down video with Dave Kilminster (I like him a lot), I was very taken with the sound of his Suhr Riot pedal. Then I found a video of my current fave guitarist, Lari Basilio, using the mini version and it still floated my boat. Thinking this might be the very pedal for me, I trotted off to my local guitar emporium and tried one out, even with me using it, it was very pleasing to my ears, but horribly expensive given my bedroom guitarist status these days. So some way of getting one at a lower cost was required, Google time - "Suhr Riot Clones". Select videos and, et voila, as they say over the Channel. I forget how much it was, but it wasn't expensive at all (£30ish give or take) and so this resides at Ez Towers and does the job very nicely.

DOH! And done.

Content removed for separate thread

The tone of that HRM in the intro section is lovely. J Rockett Audio are a new one on me, but I don’t follow guitar pedals the way I once did, but the Dumble tone does it for me (spot the Robben Ford/Eric Johnson fan). I made a Zendrive clone which does a pretty good emulation of Mad Alex’s Fender style amps. These days, I’m into the tone of the Suhr Riot (spot the Dave Kilminster/Lari Basilio fan) but, as a bedroom guitar player these days, buying an actual Riot seems excessive - step up the Joyo USdream!

It’s back! Top thread resurrection @backwater. My Tele has gone through some changes since I started this thread, no longer is it the turquoise, contoured beast, now it’s a more traditional sunburst, bound body affair.

I still say get in the ring, Rob is a fairly big unit and it’d make a change from keyboard/video warrior wars. Perhaps they could arm themselves with a guitar of their choice? I’d go Firebird (good reach) .

Never heard of KDH and, from the above, I’m in no rush to look him up. I know of Rob Chapman and seems like a nice guy, although I think he often struggles in front of the camera for sincerity (he’s an ace player, not a personality). Rob should’ve just called this internet turd out to go mano y mano in the ring (RC is bit a of a martial arts practitioner IIRC) and cleaned his clock. It’s not like there isn’t precedent for this.

I stripped an Ibanez GWB35 once and found that layer of whatever under the black. I ended up sanding it off as Nitromors didn’t seem to touch it. Perhaps our own build guru, @Andyjr1515 can help here.

Carlos doesn't do clean does he? My McCarty was a great all rounder, but the brand does seem to be favoured by the cascading distortion brigade.

PRS build quality is stunning and the McCarty was the best humbucker equipped guitar I’d ever heard. I bought the Swamp Ash Special to compliment it. However, after a while I found that the ergonomics didn’t suit me, anything from the 10th fret upwards made it feel like my left elbow was squashed against my side and felt cramped. The SE singlecut was better in that respect, but I had moved to bass by then and it didn’t get played that much (another stunner with pickups that were as good as Duncans and Bareknuckles, which I tried in it). The McCarty paid for my first ‘quality’ bass, a Fender USA Jazz, with change left over. I had a count up in bed last night as I couldn’t sleep, I got to 34 guitars over the years, both electric and acoustic, but I’m sure I must’ve forgotten one or two. I might have to make that list after all.

During these days of isolation, I wondered if a pictorial history of the guitars we have owned might not fill the time. Therefore, I opened up my photos app and was shocked to find so few in digital form. Undeterred, I made a collage of those I could find and leave it here for your perusal and, hopefully, additions of your own. Notable guitars missing from this selection are: my very first guitar, an Audition Strat-o-like; my PRS Swamp Ash Special; a Fender Fotoflame Strat (great playing guitar but heavy as a boat anchor); a Gibbo ES335 (one of the few guitars I made a profit on when I sold it); Tokai Love Rock and Breezysound (LP and Strat, fabulous instruments); there are many others too, but not really worthy of mention and when totalled up, a little embarrassing. I'm sure I have photos of them somewhere in the loft, but we'll see how the ennui progresses in the coming weeks before I feel the need to venture up there. And so, on with the show... Apologies for those 4 string things photobombing our hallowed, treble pages

I think we’re all about to become a bit Zen about small tasks, learning to take joy in little everyday things. For my part, I always enjoy tinkering with guitars, but I’m up to date with all of that at the moment, so I’ll have to find other things that need doing, although I draw the line at painting skirting boards - hateful task.