behind the bench

we’ve all read stories about some guitar god coming into some [store/talent show/recording session] and ripping it up on some [cardboard piece of junk guitar/kazoo/wildly different piece of gear than they normally use] and just laying everyone flat, and the amazing thing is he sounded just like he does with his regular gear!

shock and awe! oh noes! my money that i have saved up for to purchase elder scrolls of riffdom and +3 magic battle axes of squank and owning the note are all for naught!

well. interestingly enough i never hear any continuation of these urban legends/stock beerside truism: “he sounded great” “his tone was even better than on the record”. hey picasso used black and blue oils just like in my paint by numbers set that i got when i was 3. i still cannot paint guernica.

sometimes that last mile is under the sofa, or that little thing that you might think is inconsequential.

take connector cleanliness. think about every single mechanical or electrical interface that your sound travels through. when was the last time it got cleaned? i’m talking you, wiper arm inside potentiometers, and contacts inside pickup selector switches, and you, effects loop relays. and what about those input jacks. pop some contact cleaner on the end of a swab and swirl it around those jacks. sometimes what you find can be.. well.. barftastic. your sound was trying to pass through that.

what about the ends of your cables? pull them outta that dusty, beer soaked bag, and take a close look at their condition. especially where the ‘finger’ of the connector touches, as well as the base of the connector where your nut and jackplate touch. i’ve seen rings of black gunk on those that would turn any tone monster into a feeble wheezing mosquito fart if you tried to put sound through it.

this wonderful pandoras box gets even better when you dive into things like amps and pedals and racks. reverb tanks. yeah, they have press fit connectors on them. who was president when those things were put on? maybe time for a clean and a helpful twist of the connector just to re-seat some fresh metal. check the connectors and the wire condition, too. tubes. your signal passes through the little pins in the ceramic sockets. i’ve seen some amazing crust in there. pedals and rack gear have true bypass, or relays that have small contacts that conduct 100% of your sound through them. ever been in a pig sweaty room filled with people smoking and drinkin and hootin n hollering.. generally ripping things up? well some of that moisture and schmutz made it into your electronics, even supposedly ’sealed’ contacts still have an amazing capacity to leak moisture into their supposedly impenetrable fiefdoms of fun.

oh and for some really sleepless nights. what kind of wire does all that stuff have in it?

pleasant dreams!

boutique takes the hit or miss out of vintage gear.

i wrote those words down about 6 years ago, and every now and then i bump into them in some form or another.

my basic premise is this: all vintage gear is not created equal. right off the bat, older electronic gear was made with 10% and some times as high as 20% tolerance parts. that kind of variance in parts values can pretty much turn any good schematic straight into batshit. this has been known about for ages, and is one of the dirty secrets of vintage gear: most of it is poo. or at least is was until someone got in under the hood and either set it up properly, or modded or fixed things that might have been hinkey from the get go. i’m looking at you, carbon comp resistors, and paper insulation transformers and oil filled capacitors. and over at you, scatter wound pickups. the sad thing is, virgin, unmessed-with vintage gear is worth a premium. warts and all. which side of that fence do you sit on? sounds good/plays good? or all original, tone be damned?

the second dirty secret is this: the best stuff is out of circulation. you probably will never get your hands on it, or even more, be able to buy it. if its stellar piece, its already got buyers on short list for it, and if it was ever celebrity owned? fuh-gedda-bowdit. who does get this cream of the crop? known collectors, and people with the bucks or connections to get in on some of this stuff. oh, sure blackie came up for sale at sothebys, but have you got the coin to party with the likes of those guys vying for a piece of that guitar?? my point is this: anything that is a holy grail example and is vintage already has enough suitors to keep you at bay.

so with these factors in mind: quality control, market forces, and the evolution of musical instrument designs and materials science, my point is this: i do believe that ’boutique’ gear offers a superior experience for most people at a lower premium than any vintage gear can possibly deliver.

why do i think this? there are several factors:
time- how much time do you want to spend chasing down that rare plexi head thats got IT? how much money do you want to spend driving to music shops, vintage shows, how many ebay deals gone good or bad, complete with nail-biting scenes culminating in moments of intense disappointment in realising that deal of a lifetime is actually a flabby tone turd that simply looks good but only adheres to one of the gear nirvana trifecta: tone, playability, and looks?

boutique gear these days is a cornucopia of ‘best possible’ designs using materials that have much tighter tolerances put together and designed by guys that have (hopefully) a better understanding of what makes great tones. think of it as TONE 2.0. yes there are certain nuances to certain materials that aren’t made any more, but hey, if you can acknowledge there is an elephant in the room, at least you dont have to do the old “big, smelly and wrinkly” routine while trying to get there.

my take on great gear made today: it takes the guesswork and hit or miss out of vintage gear.

today i read about a software developer who is confronting the people who pirate his work. and one of the comments i read was “why would you trust a pirate to do a better job than the guy that wrote the software?” and i was instantly reminded of the argument of open source software vs. paid software. the key things that pop into my head are:

motivation
passion
ideology

a couple of years ago, i read another article about a frenchman that wrote drivers for every single web cam in existence so that they will work on linux. let me state that again. every single webcam. thats from every manufacturer. ever. as someone that has worked in the software industry for a long time. that borders on insane. but he did it. one guy.

a lot of these things are simply the 2nd tier of motivators, the first being food, water, shelter, etc. but i thought it was an interesting spark of conversation in my own head. my personal answer is that i trust the frenchman.

i’m sure this has been dropped somewhere before, but i think it goes something similar to the timeline of a business, or the form of consumer adoption of new technologies.

1. the groundbreakers. they are a little wild, and a little maverick. they have the vision and the chops to pull off something insane. and they can get to about 80% of the way there. they are the multi disciplinaries that can recite obscure poetry, school you on proper burmese cooking, and write an insanely great application, as well as bust out some really mean riffs on about 4 different instruments.

2. the midline. they probably do some interesting stuff, and have respectable chops. they probably didnt have the idea, but have the stability and stick-to-it-ness to get that last 20% done and help get what you are doing D O N E! cue the exit of one or two groundbreakers.

3. the long termers. they might have a VCR that blinks 12:00 and think that the internet is still a fad. or possibly just got an ipod. when these guys get hired, the groundbreakers are starting to move on to the next thing. sometimes this is a work cultural thing, but sometimes its a short attention span.

when the long termers start appearing, there is a danger of entropy taking over, and you losing serious momentum. you gain long term stability, but you might lose some innovation potential.

where are you in your startup mode? who are you missing?

i have this theory.

it goes like this.

when you are good enough with the tools, they disappear.

when your proficiency with something has achieved a certain level, you
dont think about using the tools, you are thinking about what you are
doing with the tools.

“whats that key combination?” or “whats the next part in the song?” stop
happening in your brain, and you can get in the moment and stay there.

I believe that there are fundamentally 3 things involved within “doing something”. doing something could be a day job, or a band you play in,
or a project you get involved in. or it could be your lifes work. it is
what you do, not who you think you are..

*Art - *

doing something for the art of it is great. you make something, or
participate in something bigger than yourself. you get to do something
that nurtures your inner artist, as a creative person, you need that.
its your fuel that keeps you alive and excited and switched ON.

*Fun- *

AKA doing it for the laugh of it. you could be putting doughnut holes
into doughnuts, looking for a left handed screwdriver, but dang it, you
are having a good time, and you are around people that LOVE to laugh,
and make a party of going to the grocery store. does that make sense?

*Money*

that 2 ton elephant that sits in the room and nobody wants to
acknowledge. “yeah but the money is good”.. “it allows me to do what i
want in my off hours”

“doing it to get paid” has got a good and a bad side to it. money is one
of the easiest ways to measure success. its immediate, its easily
transformed into other things that we find captivating (ferraris, houses
in paris, that pair of yellow nike dunks that you just have to have..
etc.) and its concept is pretty much understood by everyone.

the three legs are like many things in life, if you have too much of one
thing, or subsist on only one of these pinnacles of existence, disease
and illness follows. i think that the existence of one of these in “what
you do” is easy to find, two is difficult, and three is the hardest to
achieve.

i’m not going to offer any roadmaps to finding the three, as i’m on that
road myself and frankly i am a bad mapmaker, but do keep an eye out for
the signs of these situations:

“wow this album is great but we arent going to make dime one”

“i havent had this much fun in”

“yeah, but it pays the bills”

that dumb grin you cant wipe off your face.

those things you do that cause you to forget the time, or forget to eat.. when no one else is watching, and you have some free time to yourself..

for those using the venerable ABR-1 bridge on your gibson or gibson
style guitars, this mod makes a big improvement in guitars that need a
little more ‘oomph’ in the tone department.

there are a couple of hints that i also thought would be useful to throw
in. i’m sure most techs would think of them, but i’m a bit all thumbs
and no steering wheel when it come to some of this stuff.

so, without further ado:

materials:
1. - dremel moto tool with cutoff wheel
2. - protective goggles!
3. - philips head screwdriver (#2?) the middle sized one
4. - candle wax
5. - small piece of 400 grit ‘wet and dry’ sandpaper.
6. - 2x #6 1 1/2″ stainless steel philips head screws
7. - 2x hex nuts to fit above
8. - 2x adjustable wrenches
9. - socket wrench with socket to fit #7 above

Notes:
1. my local true value hardware carried the screws, and i’m sure there
are other places. my screws cost about 32 cents, and the nuts were 40
cents each. to test if metal is stainless, find a magnet, and if the
(new) screws dont stick, they are stainless.

2. taking your time with the finish sanding is important if you want to
get a nice even looking pro job after the screw heads are cut off.

the guitar before starting the procedure
i measured the top height of the ABR-1 on bass and treble sides and
wrote it down so i could bring the guitar back to its old setup height
quickly.

measuring the stock stud height, (will post height when i can look at my
notes)

protect the surrounding area of the stud with plastic/towel/blue tape.
thread one nut about 1/2″ down the nut and then put the other nut on top
of it. with one wrench, hold the bottom nut steady, and then with the
other wrench, tighten down the top nut onto the bottom nut. it might be
1/8 turn to snug them up. you dont want crushing power tight, just ’snug’

then put your socket on to the ‘locked’ nuts, and unscrew
(counterclockwise) mine came out with just finger pressure!

pic of the extracted posts (note the aging on the exposed metal in the
center area)

once the old screws are out, then screw in the replacement screws.
thread the new ones in by hand, and then tighten with the screwdriver.
if the screw encounters too much resistance, back it out and rub a
little bit of candle wax on the tip of the screw. remember to use a
towel or tape or plastic to protect your top from an errant screwdriver.
but if you are pushing down hard enough to mar the top from a tool, you
are probably tightening too hard, make sure and wax the threads!

tighten the new screw til you feel it hit bottom. it will go in very
easily, and then the resistance will increase. i gave the screwdriver an
additional 1/8 turn to ’snug’ it in the bottom of the hole. photo is of
checking the final height. yep. i gained an additional 1/4 to 1/2 inch
of thread into the body, and i felt an immediate ‘connected’ feeling
with the body of the guitar. not so much that the pre-existing pole
piece was just floating loosely in the thread holes in the guitars top,
but that this new screw ‘WAS IT’ as far as a nice snug fit.

checking both screws for symmetry in height. they both went in almost
the exact same amount (less than 1/32 discrepancy between them”

pic of the type of dremel cutoff wheel that i used. there are several in
the multikit, i chose the thinnest one (about 1/32″ thick?) paper has
copious notes that i took when disassembling, so i could put the old
girl back together quickly.

safety first!

the new posts after being cutoff using the dremel. when doing the cuts,
i measured the height and marked on the screw itself using a sharpie
marker. i went 1 thread higher than the measurement just to be safe. ‘ya
cant put back what ya cut!’
i then took the 400 grit wet n dry sand paper and burnished the top of
the cut screw head. it quickly took off the cutting marks, and also the
small bits of metal flashing from the cutting process. i then took the
paper and at an angle rounded the very top outer edge of the cut off
screw head. i was mentally picturing sharpening a pencil when i did it.
this took off any rough edges on the screw, and finished taking off any
metal from the threads. if you get crap stuck in your threads, try
cleaning the individual thread with a piece of sandpaper.

i then took the stock thumbwheels and started them on the posts, being
very careful to keep them parallel to the top of the guitar when
starting them. i didnt have any problems and they started and went down
perfectly.

i then adjusted the ABR-1 height to the old stock height (using the
measurements i wrote down at the beginning) i put on the strings and hit
an e chord

the guitar is much louder acoustically, and sounds clearer. it sounds a
bit ‘deeper’. this guitar used to be nothing special, but now its loud
and focused sounding. before it was a bit ’scooped mids’ and really
indistinct. notes didnt jump, or have any boldness to them. now the
guitar vibrates a lot more in my hands when you strum it. all good signs
of a positive tone improvment in my books.

i havent tried it through an amp yet. i have another guitar that is 3
numbers off from this one that i use for comparison, i should know more
from trying this guitar through an amp and with a band tonight.

i hope this was useful, it was the best $2 on tone improvement i have
ever spent!

ever had fresh cracked pepper over food? ever had the same dish, but
with pre-ground pepper from a jar? why is there such a taste difference?
one word: *oxidation. *

when copper is exposed to air, it tends to oxidise very rapidly.

production facilities typically strip and tin large amounts of wire and
leave it exposed to oxygen and moisture. the longer the copper is
exposed, the bigger the toehold oxidization has.

oxidised copper has a thin layer that doesnt conduct signal very well
compared to ‘pure’ copper. it is also an additonal barrier when
soldering that hinders a solid bond between wire and adjoining conductors.

that is why oxygen free copper is so important when you are conducting
signal. not only are there no impurities or trapped oxygen molecules in
the metal, the potential to form oxidization is reduced dramatically.

that is why each cable we make is built in such a way that the copper
conductor is exposed to air for less than a minute. it is stripped,
twisted, tinned and soldered to its connector in less than a few minutes.

remember kids: *fresh, clean copper = a happy signal path. *

When things are made cheaply, there are two losses at stake. one is the
treatment of the people involved in the chain of production, and the
satisfaction involved with the people who used the product:

*the designer* of the product had to cut corners, materials, design,
execution. all to keep costs down. they ended up putting out a product
that they were not proud of, or might even end up looking like they had
nothing in the design by the time it hits the production floor.
dissatisfaction, lack of ownership of the product. how does one maintain
passion, and thus, do their best work?

*the workers* have to work hard, possibly at jobs they hate. for little
or no money. dissatisfaction, lack of ownership. possibly for a
manufacturer that ignores responsibility to people and environment.

*the supplier* has to supply MORE and CHEAPLY in order to make a low
margin profitable.

*the salespeople* have to push the sale of MORE in order to make their
nut each month.

then there is the purchaser, the customer, the enduser, the ultimate
owner of the finished goods.

they might have a picture of what it is they want, or maybe they dont,
but would like to be excited about their purchase. at least thats what
the company that makes the ’stuff’ they buy owes them in the retail
portion of the relationship. when confronted with a choice, one usually
purchases the cheapest thing. unless you can educate, or the person has
an evolved sense of rationale. i would liken it to seeing in black and
white for most of your life, and then suddenly being able to see colors.

when you have the choice of something that delights you, inspires you,
makes you think, and gives back every day in its existence in your life.
that is something special. or just getting the bog standard cheapest
thing available.

when i experience something that give me that spark, i really do
treasure it, and i value it, and i will go out of my way to ensure that
it stays with me for a long time. when i had to earn something, and it
gives and gives, i can appreciate it.

keeping things out of landfills, and making sure that the production
process is as low impact as possible on the earth.. those are things
that can help save the planet, and make more people feel good about
their daily lives.