Fenders or Gibsons?

Certif1ed wrote: The best thing I ever discovered for my Westie is the Pod XT. The more I hear it, the more I like it. I do think it's good etc, etc, etc.

Yeah, the Pod XT is a great little box and can really help to even out some of the weaker sonic areas that my guitars exhibit. However, you can't beat a good amp, cranked up loud for that sweet responsive touch.

Speaking as a complete guitar non-player, but officianado of the sounds made thereby, I would have to say overall I prefer the Gibson - 335s, Les Pauls, SGs (especially the 6/12 double neck).

Just my humble opinion, you understand, but can anyone resist melting when Carlos Santana (I know, I know, not prog) belts out a solo on the ol' SG? Can anyone defy the old tear in the eye when Hackett plays Firth Of Fifth on the Les Paul?

However, would a Gilmour solo sound as perfect if played on anything other than a Stratocaster(the other side of the coin being would any Status Quo sound any better if not played on Telecasters ).

Personally, I can only think of one guitarist who switched alleigance from Gibson to Fender - Frank Zappa; late 60's through to the end of the 70's, he was never seen with anything other than the trusty SG or Les Paul - then he switches to the Strat.....curious (mind you, all his guitars were so full of electronics, that the body shape was the only original part to survive).

All the above may seem ignorant twaddle to all you plank spankers out there (personally, I feel an instrument should be the size of a small sideboard & weigh the same as Danbo, and the same goes for the amp - or 'cabinet' as us Hammond types prefer), but I thought the input of a non guitarist may add a certain je ne sais quoi - ie, give you guys something to laugh about, and point with derision.

Pray continue......

I always liked seeing Hendrix with his Gibson Flying V, Clapton with his Cream-era SG and Jimmy Page with his Tele...as they're all so synonymous with the exact opposite guitars.

sigod wrote: Certif1ed wrote: The best thing I ever discovered for my Westie is the Pod XT. The more I hear it, the more I like it. I do think it's good etc, etc, etc. Yeah, the Pod XT is a great little box and can really help to even out some of the weaker sonic areas that my guitars exhibit. However, you can't beat a good amp, cranked up loud for that sweet responsive touch.

Too true - especially an amp laden with glowing valves...

However, in my little studio the Pod XT Pro just sits in the rack pretending to be a Mesa Boogie MkII, a JCM 800, an AC30, and so forth... it's quite hard to tell once you've recorded that you've cheated

^ run, don't walk towards the guitar! A bottomless well of the rewarding mysteries of the universe await you! Women will want you and men will want to BE you

I only had one lesson...the rest of my bad habits I picked up on my own. But if maladroit James can learn to play, anyone can...

One of the Gibson's typical characteristics is a relatively flat frequency response rising only slightly around the lower midrange- this, plus the inherent noiselessness of humbuckers, makes it better suited for jazz's clean, well-rounded tones than the brighter, thinner single coils found in strats and telecasters. I'd say at least 85% of jazz is recorded with humbucker guitars. If you're really into jazz guitars, a hollowbody archtop is the essential instrument.

On the other hand, the more hollow bell-like tones of the single coil (especially when cleaned up with active/ low impedance pickups) have been popular among specfic jazz players...Charlie Christian, Django (my fav 'classic' jazz player), Wes Montgomery, and of course good ol' Jeff Beck.

I don't have a PodXT...or even a Pod 2.0...I have the very first model, and it does almost everything I need it to do (except let me control the decay time on the delays, grrr...). Even the fuzz voice has a nice analog sound to it, once you roll off the midrange and crank the treble a bit. The rotary is surprisingly good too...not quite a leslie, but as good as most simulations. And running it into a proper amp and speakers sounds better than most amps under a grand.

Edited by James Lee

Never liked active guitars myself. Having nabbed my
old Hohner ST57 and having fallen in love with it, I
went out an bought it's successor the ST 59, which
has a semi-active system which blends the tone
pots and pick-ups, supposedly giving multiple tones
with which you can emulate a number of guitar
sounds - the book that came with it offered settings
for tele, strat, gretsch - etc.
I never really liked this feature and didn't use the
guitar much live (even tho' it has the most beautiful)
forest green finish and gold hardware).
These days being a studio-bound old guy I ramped
up the action and use it solely for slide where with a
bit of tweaking through a korg ax1000 it does a
passable Gilmour.
Actually I wonder is this Honher system the world's
first example of physical modelling! hahahah!

As for bass, again I'm pretty old school. I like things
to be plug and play. My rattly old passive Cimar
(Ibanez by another name) does just fine and is a
cool growly old warhorse.

Question: where do people stand on hardware
synths v soft synths. Is M-Tron up to it? is the Arturia
Cs80 a good model of the original. B4 or Begone?
What about the impOSCAR, imp or limp?

Start a new one... eh?

For basses, there's one brand: CORT!

i own one, it's CHEAP and REALLY GOOD. In my experience it's a really good jazz instrument, and the range of my passive elements is really wild!

James Lee wrote: What are the cheapest (cheaply-made rather than good bargains) instruments you've enjoyed playing? I had an Aria Pro 2 strat copy that I loved...it had a slightly shorter scale so I wasn't straining so much to do those wide 9th chords...I also had a Peavey guitar that was heavier than the amp...

I suppose it has to be my crappy Squire Strat. I got it rigged as a guitar synth recently which has given it a whole new lease of life.

There are stories of workers in the Fender factory in china who break the boredom of their day by creating what are called 'Dogs' and 'Angels'. The Dogs are deliberately built to pass the quality test but are otherwise unplayable whereas the Angels are designed to be well above the benchmark for such a cheap guitar. Apparently there are many more dogs than angels (surprise, surprise) but if you get lucky, oh boy...

I understand Frank Dunnery had a similar model to my Squire but trust me when I say, it's coincidence

Edited by sigod

James Lee wrote: I never heard that about the dogs and angels though- good story!

Well I can't prove that it's true but it sounds plausable

I begin to wonder that, with so much, modelling technology out there now, if the standards of guitar making these days have increased (due to the competition) or decreased (due to the concept of 'fixing' the sound after it's left the guitar).