ezbass

22 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

Proper nut files are extraordinarily expensive,

They really are, especially for an only one or two time use. However, if the nut is already cut to the right height, you could simply wrap a piece of light grit paper (1000 should be abrasive enough) around a string (best to use the adjacent, thinner string for this - for instance, the A string for the E slot) and give it a straight pull through. This should remove any snags and then you can add some graphite as Dad suggests.

8 hours ago, Goldilocks33 said:

She's so keen to get this guitar and lessons rather than school ski trip based on ourfinancial circumstances. 

Given the lack of snow in some parts, this is no bad thing.

Fit and finish of the HB won’t be as good as the Cort, but any playability issues can be addressed by having it set up by a guitar tech. It’ll be money well spent.

For me, as a general gigging board:

'Dumble' homemade overdrive* - MXR blue box octave fuzz - Marshall ED1 compressor - TC Electronics skysurfer reverb

@Musical Mystery Tour that goldtop with P90s .

It's always Tele time in my book.

If you're tightening the claw screws all the way so that the trem block moves towards the claw side of the cavity and the base plate is flush with the body, I'm thinking that this would potentially lower the action a fraction and make the speaking length longer, possibly requiring an intonation adjustment. Whatever you do may require a tweak to your set up.

When you say enormous neck, width, depth, both? I’ve recently rediscovered classical guitars and I’m loving the super wide fretboard and spacing, who knew?

9 hours ago, stevierayvaughan said:

However, the bridge pickup seemed a bit lifeless to me

It occurs to me that the Epiphone ES335 probably has coil taps, as do a good number of their humbucker equipped guitars. Could it be that the tap was engaged resulting in a thinner sound?

As a general idea, yeah, do it. As to which one, we’ll that’s way too personal. I’ve had a love affair with DiMarzio for decades, great range of products, with great tone and a fantastic level of customer service (I once emailed them an enquiry and it was answered by Steve Blucher, his usual level of contact are the Vais, Satrianis and Johnsons of this world, I was blown away that a top guy wasn’t above dealing with Joe Public), they’ve never steered me wrong. Seymour Duncan have great products too and I have used them, with good results, I just never found they customer service to be anywhere near as good. The best thing is to go on their sites and use their pickup selector tools, then find some YT videos of those products that give examples.

Go and see your doctor, neuropathy is weird and different for everyone.

Running the risk of muddying the waters even further, the Boss Katana range get an awful lot of love and have a number of models to suit different scenarios in terms of output, size, etc.

Oh yeah, 

2 quite different guitars physically. One is a grand auditorium with a cutaway, whilst the other is a big old, non cutaway dreadnought. I have a dreadnought and a g/a and from a comfort POV the g/a gets picked up way more and is very articulate and very suited to fingerstyle. However, you can’t beat the dread for that big, sonorous strummed sound and is still good for fingerstyle. I think I’d approach it from the playability angle first, with the sound coming in second. The sapele should give you that warmth that you’re looking for, but with a little more top end presence, coupled with a more directness associated with the body shape. The Fender should be big and warm sounding. 
 

Try them both first if you can, what suits me might not suit you.

Always good to see a Tele in my opinion.

If your Casino is anything like mine, the nut should be OK, awful, sideways break angle notwithstanding (why Gibson, why?). 

1 hour ago, Stebaz said:

Yeah they’re not cheap. If you look around you can get a deal. 212 or 112 that’s the question

Depends on whether headroom/volume or weight is most important. I tend to feel that most 2x12 cabs aren’t really big enough to be efficient.

48 minutes ago, Stebaz said:

I’ve also been thinking about the Blackstar St James el34.

Just looked them up, man alive they’re light! Quite pricey though.

19 hours ago, Stebaz said:

on Friday, every other guitarist played through a Boss Katana. They sounded great.

I’ve not used one, but from what I’ve read of others’ experiences and the quote above, I reckon you won’t go too far wrong with one. However, the one thing that might be missing is the on stage ‘feel’ of a valve rig that many speak of. For my part, it’s always been about the sound. I’ve used a number of all solid state, hybrid and all valve rigs. The best sounding was an all valve one, but that was closely followed by an all solid state, I interacted with the sound not feel. YMMV.

I received very few (hardly any in fact) Christmas presents and certainly no musical related ones. TBH, I’d rather folks didn’t try to buy these kinds of things as anything I need/want would be a very personal acquisition.

Welcome, Guthrie. Great to have such a virtuoso in our midst.