EdwardMarlowe

The guitar industry certainly had worked hard over the decades to convince us all that some new add-on or other is the newer rather than looking to the set-up! I can't criticise anyone else who might fall for that. I'm quite minimal with my pedals now (a decent overdrive, tremolo, and a reverb or echo pedal, don't much mind which, if there's no reverb in the amp itself), but the problem is I keep wanting to buy *more* of those limited range of effects, ffs.... Honestly, this is where being left handed is a bonus. If Fender, Squier, and a few others weren't so utterly crap at providing left handed models, I'd be bankrupt by now!

Useful to know! I love my Harley Benton JA25th sufficiently that I'm a little tempted to look into a Fender, or more likely a Squier Classic Vibe (if they still do the lefty version) of a JM for the distinct tonal variants (the JA is a slightly different beast that way - two p90s and a three way switch, more conventional than the JM wiring). This might be a good upgrade to that. Never seen a Gold Trem other than the Les Trem type, which I really like as a viable alternative to the Bigsby, particular as a lefthander (Bigsby don't licence a lefty version, so only the $$$$ US made version available, and that's before the expense, and irreversible marking, of installment...).

I was keen to try one of the tweed Session blues amps at a time, though they wound up the business before that became an option for me. With the arrival of Fender's Tonemaster series (a direction I had hoped modellers would go for a long time), it starts to seem to me that maybe Session's approach was somewhat before its time. If they could get as close in sound as Fender's Tonemaster take on a Twin Reverb does to the tube original, there's a lot to like about the relative simplicity of solid state over digital...

They're obviously playing the "persuasive precedent" game, though my point really was as a default win it doesn't even carry any clout within its own jurisdiction. Total smoke and mirrors on Fender's part here. Yes, likely. It's got to be a much easier case to defend for him than the Gibson case which revolved around TM. Fender's only real strategy is to scare those who can't afford to fight court case into backing off; PRS won't. I can't abide PRS's main line - humbuckers, fancy wood tops, yuck. The Silver Sky, though, feels like a refinement of the EG series from the 90s (PRS's first attempt at an "affordable" line - they were c£900 when a Custom 10 Top was £2K). I'd never mistake one for a Strat, it's very much someone else's take on a Strat, which is why I like it. I do hope that after PRS wins the case, they stick two fingers up at FMIC by putting out a version with dots on the board instead of birds. The one thing putting me off buying a maple board silver Sky is the birds, never liked the look of them. I kinda wish that Fender losing this in dues course would also give the current owners of Burns the kick up the ass they need to get their guitars out and sorted, but given they were supposed to be out in 2020, then the holding page was updated to 2021, then 2022 (title only - they left 2021 in the text), I think we have to consider that project well dead. A shame.... I was hoping they'd finally do a mid-price range that were closer a 'real' Burns and not just a bit of a Strat knock-off (ironic in this context, I know, but...). They've certainly been hit with a lot of backlash. In my case, it won't stop med buying a Player II Strat when I have the money, though it's very much a compromise choice. Fender's refusal or inability to do anything other than the merest, pathetic token gesture of a left handed range is the reason I've not bought somewhere around a dozen Squier CV / Paranormal / Fender MiM guitars I really wanted in the last couple of decades.

As best as I can make out no change of ownership, but could be a new management, or a new legal team (the royals suddenly played a lot more hardball with the press over privacy about twenty years ago when they switched to Harbottle and Lewis representing them, so it does happen). I think it's also quite likely a response to prevailing market conditions. Guitars have simply become much more niche that once they were - even since the 90s. I'd say, roughly, since about 2007ish, around abut the time the White Stripes went on their first hiatus, synth music came up big and guitar bands haven't been the dominant force they were the twenty odd years before that. I suppose we'll see if it cycles round again... Of course, FMIC also finally took ownership of G&L last year. They've killed off the G&L brand, because the sale included what they really wanted: control of Leo Fender's likeness and name (beyond just the "Fender" brand), so this may be an effort to really consolidated control of the Strat and all the details. We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of Leo's death in 2031, and the 80th anniversary of the Strat in 2034; in 2046 there's Fender's centenary, so I wouldn't doubt they're already planning ahead for all sort of branding and promotions for those... He has gone on record claiming he wanted certain hardware - a bridge in particular, and Fender were very dogmatic that it had to be all-Fender parts and they didn't make the bits he wanted, so... Who knows? His story seems plausible enough, though. TBh, I kinda liked that PRS took the Strat and did their own thing with it. It's not a million miles away from Leo having taken the Strat and run with it at G&L, imo. I don't credibly see anyone who really wants a Fender suddenly buying a SS instead. Ironically, I'm keen on a SS SE, but I'm looking first to a Player II.... I think ultimately it comes back to guitar being a shrinking market, and Fender looking to shore up their position in that shrinking market. My selfish interest in this is that the primary reason I go elsewhere than Fender for a Fender-inspired design is Fender's own pisspoor provision for left handed players, which I don't see improving. Yeah, the P bass debuted in 1951, based off the Telecaster (and with a very Tele headstock). The body was a slab, like the tele, with the upper horn added to balance the full-scale bass neck. ('Precision' because the frets could allow guitar players to double on bass and be more precise about their notes than a fretless double bass neck.) In 54, the body was given the comfort curves we also see on the Strat, then in, if memory serves, 57 the split coil p bass pickup arrived. From my cursory reading of the details, the claims Fender are making in this case are wild enough that it wouldn't surprise me if it came out somebody in the legal offices had chat GPt'ed their briefs. Ha, who knows. Yeah, there's been a lot of backpedalling with Fender. They also now claim they didn't threaten anyone with a demand to destroy stock or face legal consequences, though many of the recipients of the C&D letters seem to believe otherwise. I suspect Fender's biggest mistake has been to go for PRS. If they'd stuck to gonig after smaller brands that can't afford to take the risk of defending themselves in court, they might have been able to play the chilling effect to their advantage. PRS has however already shown they're unafraid not only of going to court, but ifghting back at the appellate stage if needsbe. I expect Fender feel thedy can't create a worse situation than now with no control over bodies, but I bet the current board are fuming Leo and the rest of them weren't as vigilant as Rickenbacker back in the day!

So the latest episode in the ongoing saga of Fender's Lawfare Department's declaration of war on Strat-inspired guitars has just made things really interesting, and we're likely to see this come to a head sooner rather than later. They've sent a C&D letter to PRS over the Silver Sky. https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/electric-guitars/prs-fender-cease-and-desist This all kicked off over a default judgment in a regional German court. Fender had sued a Chinese brand selling Strat copies (*not* counterfeits) on AliExpress. It's a well established legal fact now that Fender left it too long to protect the Stratocaster and Telecaster body shapes in trade mark, so here they turned to a (franklyh spurious) argument based on copyright. The defendant didn't turn up for the court case, so Fender were awarded the win by default, and have now proceeded to try and claim this as a confirmation they can claim an artistic copyright in the body design of the Stratocaster. Leo died in 1991, so this would give then several decades yet of ownership of the Strat design if that were legally accepted. They started sending out all sort of cease and desist letters to a lot of smaller builders. Fender must know their argument here is shaky. It should also be noted that the default judgment they are trying to base this on has no precedential value, even within the limited jurisdiction of the regional court that granted it. Really, it seems to me to be a classic example of Lawfare - basically big company with lost of money threatens smaller company that can't afford to take the risk of losing a court case; smaller company complies with big company's demands as path of least resistance to avoid risk. Now, however, they've taken on PRS, who won't be afraid to fight it. PRS already won on Appeal against Gibson some years ago when Gibson tried to claim the PRS single cut was too like a Les Paul in an argument based on trade mark. Fender can't reopen the trademark issue, so this will all hinge on their copyright claims. If Fender did win this would be huge, though my instinct is they're not going to. Especially not once a judge actually reviews the accuracy and otherwise of some of the claims they made in their submission to the German court that kicked this all off.

TBh, I doubt she or the other teachers there remembered it the next morning. They were all pretty well hammered as I recall! More innocent times, of course - these days I expect a party like that would be a firing offence.

Shit, yes... She was at our formal. We sat beside her in Peter Bell's house at his after party. Interesting conversation, if you recall. Walked past there a few years ago. Remember a bunch of us still in black tie descending on the Circular Garage for a microwave burger at 6am the next morning, headed to the first train out of Larne? Quite the night. I'd not twigged that was a song.... I remember it being the nickname of the headmistress in Grange Hill (you wouldn't get away with that nowadays...).

Hard to know. Though given how long ago they made the original "winding down if can't sell" announcement and them still seemingly being in business, either they had an insane level of stuff in stocks (which seems unlikely), or they're still hopeful of a new buyer. I'm still tempted by the idea of ordering a proshop Strat type, but only after I get my Player II.... and I'm also waiting to see what Harley Benton do next. If they were to bring out a vintage-specced model to the same standard and price point of the ST Modern Plus, that would seduce me away from the Vintage.

I'm on a memory roll now.... The first time I ever experienced a Walkman was one that belonged to a friend in primary school. It was on the Larne to Stranraer boat on a school trip, and the song he played me was the Ghostbusters theme. Which I loved, but he'd recorded it himself off the 7", and he'd left it set to 33 instead of 45....

When I got my first turntable at home, I was sixteen. The only LP I owned at that point was the Pistols' No Future UK (decent album; it was essentially a more or less legit version of the Spunk bootleg that Malcom Maclaren was behind to booster the coming release of NMTB back in 77; Speeding produced demos and a couple of early tracks, including Satellite, a b-sided that didn't make the album but was always a favourite of mine). At 45rpm it sounded less like the Pistols, more like Mickey Mouse fronting the Ramones. Did you ever hear Dolly Parton's Jolene 45 played at 33? Totally different song - so, so sinister!

Everyone's a critic, huh? The last time I was back there must have been about 1995, when little brother was in Oliver. I gather it's changed a lot since then.... I think all the staff that taught us are long retired. Kieran Mulvenna took early retirement after a few years as head (I think he directly succeeded Buddha), he was probably the last one to go?

Jinkies, aye - I remember that. Must be..... forty years ago this coming September? Brian Lynas retired in 2005; last saw him at my grandmother's funeral in August 05, after he'd left the school, but with it still being Summer he did say it wouldn't feel real til September. I hear he's still doing well (probably living long for not having to deal with the likes of us doing show and playing the Department's Glen Miller LPs at 78... ).

Could be... When I saw the Cavern Beatles their Paul was right handed, but that was back in the 90s...

I imagined it's especially fun if you've reversed the left / right mouse buttons! I played piano before guitar. Sadly I didn't keep it up and I've lost what little I had... back in those days, it was something I was encouraged into, really, having been raised culturally middle class: piano was "respectable" and would look good on my university application (on the other side of that fence, I now know how laughable 99% of what kids get told about what matters, or is even looked at, on those applications really is). Alas, I just wasn't really into anything at the timed that made piano or keys appeal. (That came later - both classical and Jerry Lee Lewis). For me, funnily enough, the actions of the two hands felt very natural in the transfer to guitar. Interesting what transfers and what doesn't. I often wonder whether there's anyone plays both drums and organ - with both of those involving coordinating the hands and the feet...

You.... you... you Quisling! I kid. I kid. Sorta. Do you wear the bass on your chest a la Mark King? I gauge all bass-wearing heights on a scale of Mark King to DeeDee Ramone. I'm a solid Paul Simonon / Glen Matlock (though I play it a lot more like DeeDee/Lemmy: Bass as rhythm guitar!). I can see a lot of sense in playing drums "right handed" (didn't Ringo do that as a lefty?), given drummers more often than anyone end up using somebody else's / house kit. In terms of people playing against their natural orientation, a fun one I heard of was a right handed player who was working on relearning bass left handed, because he was Paul in a Beatles tribute act and wanted to improve the visual illusion. That was some dedication! Reckon you might be a bit ambidextrous? I'm very hardwired as a left hander, but honestly I think there are more people out there who vary other hands for different tasks than normally gets credited. It's more a spectrum than a binary, I think. Funnily enough, I've always used a mouse in my right hand, which makes perfect sense to me for that sort of movement as it's my fretting hand. One day I'd love to have a house where I had room for a kit. It's not affording the kit that holds med back from trying the drums, it's having somewhere I can both set up and play the damn thing... Sounds like your brother went the Dick Dale approach to learning.

Ha, I her you (I'd love a non-cutaway Fifth Avenue Kingpin), but I doubt that.... I'd expect Godin will just find a new distributor. Eyes peel for a bargain on a Vintage, though.... That said, I'm still hoping they find a new buyer. Even if someone took over their "Proshop" outlet that does customised versions of their line for about half the price of a Fender Modshop guitar...

On the subject of Fuzz, Behringer recently put this out, and I am well tempted:

Saw this a while back. IIRC, one of his favourites was the Soundtank one. I remember those Soundtanks from the 90s. Budget range of pedals with a plastic body, but the quality of the sound was well above what I'd have expected. I could be tempted if they released a new version of that pedal in a metal housing. As to the general point, well... it's the same old cycle. Something gets hyped up for a while, then there's a backlash. TS9s, Klon Klones, the Bad Monkey.... Funnily enough, for all the Bad Monkey got hyped for a while after someone did a youtube about it being a Klon Centaur soundalike, it was always (quite obviously - come on, *that* green??) a TS9 clone. Funnily enough, the hype around the original Bad Monkey has now led to the DOD 'Badder Monkey', a sequel / reissue of sorts: Bit more flexible / variable than the original. More expensive, too - I see this selling at over a ton, whereas the original was about £40 back in the day. Adjusted for inflation, that £40 would be +/-£70 today. I've lost interest in a lot of effects over the years myself. I have a decent phaser and a few others (like the Boss BF3) I probably won't use again but hang onto just in case. All I really feel the need of these days is a decent tube-sounding edge of break-up overdrive, tremolo, reverb, slap-back echo. Maybe a Fuzz. Though that said, I've amassed a few variations on each of these. The collector impulse is to blame. But truth be told, all I look for in a pedal these days is durability plus reliability. Everything beyond that is purely subjective. I enjoy finding than in a £30 pedal probably more than in one at four or five times the price.

Yeah, the only option I'm aware of here would be to block the trem, same as Clapton did with his regular Strats. It's a very easy (and highly reversible - you don't need to stick the block down, just size it right to wedge it in there and the tension will hold it in place). I once blocked the trem on a Squier Std Strat just by lowering the trem against the body (screw the spring claw in as far as possible), then shoving in the block. Improbable as this sounds, what I used was a synthetic wine cork, and the difference in tone and sustain on that particular guitar was immense. This won't work for your desired outcome, though. The traditional trem-blocking approach with a Strat was for players who didn't want to use the vibrato and desired the added tuning stability of a fixed bridge. If you block your Floyd, though, you'll just have a fixed bridge with all the other properties of the Floyd Rose, which is clearly an issue here. To the best of my knowledge, there's no drop-in replacement solution for a Floyd, so the solutions are much more drastic, and would involve either filling in a lot of the body cavity to enable a more traditional fixed bridge to be fitted, or having a whole new body made. A whole new body is probably a much cheaper option there... I'm sure you could get something fully finished to your preference for under £300. And then there's another question that comes up here... whatever you change at the body end, you'll still have the locking nut on the neck that will be superfluous to requirements with a fixed bridge. If you're happy to still work with that (or, I suppose, just leave it not locked down?) no worries, AFAIK you just have to remove the locking pads and you're good. If you want to replace it with a traditional nut, a luthier can do that, adding a bit of wood to fill the gap (iirc, a FR locking nut is wider than the traditional nut). TL/DR: your options to get away from the hassle of the FR are: fill in the body cavity, buy a new body, or buy a new guitar. For the latter, there are lots of superstrat styles around these days with fixed bridges, so it won't be hard to find something that works for you.

Quality stuff, Godin, and you don't see so many of them around. I think this is A Godin Artisan TC - either a I or a II. Don't know about the wiring. 90s era models, no longer in production. The Artisan line were superstrat and supertele types. The Ts came with sc-size, dual rail humbuckers as standard, but I have no idea how they were wired. Seems likely there was some kind of tap option at the time. (I remember a lot of guitars back then in this sort of genre came with tapped buckers, the marketing blurb being they could sound like either buckers or scs.) Is the selector a 3 or 5 way?

To be fair, I can see how that would be an advantage for recording purposes. For just playing, I like a bit of imperfection - I'm not so keen on my middle Strat pickup being RWRP. There is just a small possibility Fender are saving me from myself, of course....

What stuck with me from many years ago was an editorial in UK Guitarist magazine (I think now long gone; the last time I went looking, only "Guitar Techniques" still seems to exist). The essence of it was that these things are a trade off. As I recall, the exact phrase was "sure, that super-powered deathbucker in your lignium vitae plank will tear your brain out, but in term of following your every slap and tickle like a good Strat, forget it." A lot of it is, of course, horses for courses. The guitar a guy in a covers band who does whatever the equivalent of the top forty is now every weekend for paying punters likely has need of somewhat more versatile gear than a guy in an original metal band who has highly specialised stuff for his specific niche. The big revelation for me, though in the "sometimes less really is more" vein was back in the 90s when I first got my Sovtek Big Muff (one of the green ones, branded "Sovtek-Electro Harmonix" and made in Russia. Still got it in mint condition in the wooden box, I gather they're quite the collectible now. I suspect the only bit of gear I've ever bought that, adjusted for inflation, is worth more now that it was when I bought it!). I was initially horrified, thinking it was unusable, sounded nothing like the Hendrix sound and the rest of it. Then I turn it way down so it was basically a clean boost (which it does surprisingly well), and upped the gain just enough to suddenly find the magic. That's when I also started listening more closely to the guitar tracks on a lot of my favourite stuff, and realised that there's a whole lot less distortion gonig on there than I'd always assumed.

Bugger, hope you get that back. Would you mind giving an outline of how this app scam works? Were they targeting the guitar?

I've never cared for the "noiseless" pickups as to my ear the ones I've tried just felt somehow sterile. The idea of vintage noiseless seems odd to me.... I suppose the idea is the compromise of the earlier sound without the hum, but the real joy of a vintage style pickup for me is stuff like the hum. Unless you're going for full on hard metal, I think a lot of folks overemphasise hot-winding in pickups, but it's definitely true there's quite the wide range in singled coils - especially the early, hand-wound stuff where more variation happened.