EdwardMarlowe

(FWIW, I think a pedal amp that can go into the PA is also a good idea for a back-up when gigging. A decent one with which you are familiar will always be useful in case of an amp letting you down. Either plug into the PA, or a borrowed amp (on which you can just swt it up flat and let your familiar pedal do the work...).

Interesting thread. It's been a long time since I played out so I don't currently have any call for this, BUT if ever I did gig for fun, I'd be seriously looking into a pedal-based amp solution that would let me hop on the tube with a guitar case or two and an amp in my pocket. I've long suspected this sort of thing will come to replace the big amps on stage; these days (and it's been the case since the 90s, really) there's just no technical need to have a bunch of amps on stage. Of course, I'm sure there'll still be a lot of acts will switch to a non-trad amp solution while maintaining a bunch of empty cabs on-stage for the look.... FWIW, I remember reading somewhere that the guitar players in several West End shows, most notably the Buddy Holly story and I think, from memory, also the guys imitating the Shadows in Summer Holiday when it was around back when, had empty cabs on stage for the look, but were using Line6 Pods hidden out of sight for the actual sound. My feeling is we'll see more and more of this live, with "the real thing" relegated to the studio. What will be interesting to see will be how it affects the market, big amps like 100w tube stacks having originated in the days when that's how you got heard in a big venue. Now the PA can do all the work....

There will be pictures! All being well, it will arrive at my office on Tuesday; I'll see it the week after at some point. No amp there yet so it might be a bit before plug in.... unless I can turn up my old Squier 10w SS amp, and I'll take that in to stay there.... After that, the project will be to clear out my spare-room office properly, and sell enough of the current collection that I can take this one home without trouble. The sticking point remains my old Epiphone Les Paul.... I'm over Les Pauls, but this one is just a bit too nice to see for what it would go for. Id the 1998 era MIK LP Standards (with "collectable" original Epiphone headstock! ) ever start selling for enough to buy a Player Strat or Gretsch 5420, though....

After months of holding out in hope Thomann would come round and do their MR Classic Mosritealike in a solid colour, I happened to notice today they've dropped the price on the existing model to £165. Today being payday, I jumped on paypal in three and.... I'm having it delivered to the office til I can convincingly say "bigger boys made me do it"... Off on a work trip Friday, so I won't see it til earliest 5 June, but excited. All the MR Classics are markedly cheaper than they were; I hope this is them making way for new stock rather than cancelling the model. Still hoping they do a white one patterned after the Johnny Ramone Ventures II... and the blue and red ones lefty.... at this price, if I get on well with the first, I would buy one of each of those.

The connector might give some information too; East Block / Soviet guitars had a totally different jack socket arrangement than our Western norm.

Yes, my guess would be some sort of c. 1960-1977 budget guitar,possibly made in Japan, quite possibly altered in shape. One of the Buzzcocks boys played a Woolworths guitar cut up not unlike that in the early days. Looks like it could be a lot of fun if it works.

Nice. Never had a chance to playa Reverend, but they always look great. I'm a fan of that mix of design cues that look like the guitar belongs in the fifties, but isn't styled after any one specific model or even brand.

If I ever got seriously into playing country, I'd do it on one of these, just to be 'different' than the herd. Similarly, if I ever went hardcore Blues, I promised myself I'd buy a Dean ML (get rid of the FR, though!)

May be wrong - no expert, as this was never my style - but of all the Jacksons and Charvels I've seen over the years, sharkfins seemed to be a fancier trim for the more expensive options, with others in the line being more cosmetically stripped back . utilitarian. c/f Gibson.

I've not had a chance to try one as of yet. The US models are well out of my priceband. The MIM appeals a bit, but they don't do lefties (so far, the only lefty is the US made Tele shaped one). The MIM IMO has one clear winning feature over the US version, which is that it takes a 9V battery instead of an internal cell. This does mean you need to buy a couple of rechargables BUT OTOH, they are switchable so you're only ever the time it takes to switch a battery over before playing resumes, rather than having to charge the guitar. This would matter to me. Good rundown on the differences MIA v MIM here: https://blog.andertons.co.uk/labs/fender-american-vs-player-acoustasonic-telecaster Personally, I'd like to see a high end Squier version which was like the MIM without the traditional "electric" pickup. The bigger appeal for me would be its capability as an electro-acoustic; I don't have any use for the "does both acoustic and electric sounds!" option. Can see that being helpful for someone who wanted an all-singing, all-dancing guitar for covers band type work, though. I'd love to see a version with a bigsby and the magnetic pickup replaced with the sort of neck pickup you see on a traditional Jazz archtop.... Sorry, I know this isn't exactly the sort of answer you were hoping for, but might be of some value if you're looking at whether to buy one...

Heh. I've actually fancied one for years..... but not the regular kind. One of those Brandoni 12-stringers, which is basically like playing a 12 string guitar with a capo on the 12th fret. Close enough to the sound for me, without a whole different chordal structure. Cheating, I know, but...

Just watch someone doesn't start an ugly rumour about you...

My best guess would be that it's one of the guitars built in the 60s / 70s / 80s in the East Block (most likely, if it's spent its life in Ukraine, the old Soviet Union) for the local market. Somebody has put a Fender logo on it at some point presumably in a nod to Western rock heroes / imagery. The saving on materials is interesting: note the metal saved on the jack socket, and the pick-ups using the scratchplate itself instead of separate covers, which is quite a neat design touch imo. Be interesting to hear it. The other possibility, thinking about it, is that this was made in Japan in the 60s / 70s. It's not entirely out of whack with some of the stuff made there then. The jack socket looks like it would take a "standard" 3/4" jack? Doesn't *look* like it's been retrofitted. Notable simply because so many of the Soviet era, domestic market guitars I've seen had completely different connections than what has long been standard in the West.

Yip. Big fan of Tanglewood here. I've got two of their guitars. One is my old TM07NC bowlback from the early 90s, which lives at my parents' place back in Ireland (I really need to sell it eventually). That's an electro acoustic. My other one is one of the all-solid, TW15NS dreadnoughts. Cracking guitar. Would definitely consider them again in future. IMO, acoustics and electro acoustics are a bit of a rabbit hole in that you can always spend more.... The Tanglewoods, though, imo are as good as a hobby player will ever actually *need*, and plenty of working musicians out there use them too. As to the electro or no question.... Personally I would start off with a pure acoustic, and add a pick-up at a later stage. That way you can spend the full of your budget on the guitar itself (rather than some of the cost going into the electric gubbins - as a rule of thumb, I think you get a better acoustic for the money at £200 than you do when that £200 also has to cover the pickup system...). Also, though, worth thinking about the playing experience. You don't, in my experience, tend to get a pure acoustic that has a cutaway. That works for me, of course as I don't like a cutaway on an acoustic, but worth bearing in mind if that sort of thing (also some acoustics have a more electric-style neck - some folks will prefer that as a matter of course) will matter to your playing. Brand-wise, I'd look to Tanglewood, also Vintage. Worth trying a few different shapes as well, in case you find you prefer a smaller body to the dreadnought style of that Tanglewood pictured in the OP. There's a great range of choice in the sub £300 bracket these days, really impressive compared to how it was in my day, when you weren't allowed to buy a guitar until you'd licked the road clean with your tongue ("and you try and tell that to the young people of today..."). Worth bearing in mind too that if you really like your acoustic, it is always possible to fit a pickup system later on, including a range of options that won't require any irreversible modifications to the instrument, so you're not cutting off that option or committing yourself to having to buy a whole nother guitar in future if you do decide you want to be able to amp it.

Yip. If at all possible I'd head somewhere that has both in stock and get them in your hands. High chance one of them will just speak to you immediately and that's the decision made. If there really is nothing in it playing wise, then pick whichever you think looks nicer.

Certainly looks like it would have been something expensive originally - the figured wood, and especially the lack of fingerboard markers. Occasionally you see something cheaper where a very nice piece of wood turned up by coinkydink, but I've never seen anything that flash on something that wasn't big money. Equally, you don't tend to see fully plain fingerboards on a cheap neck, as a rule...

Eastman do impressive stuff. I rather fancy one of their big jazzy archtops. They're a real middle finger to the idea Chinese makers can't do high end, imo.

Sorry, ignore the bit about Strats, I just realised I misread your post and it is a Les Paul type you have. Vintage originally launched the "Boulevard black" on a Strat type; the name is a Clapton reference... I'd missed they now use it as a generic name for all their black finishes. So the conventional way to set it up would be as per the LP type I referred to above. I'll leave the Strat bits up in case anyone else is looking ideas in that vein!! With the LP style, you might also consider either adding another toggle or a push/pull pot that would switch the middle pup in and out of the loop so you could also get the neck and bridge, neck and middle, and all three on options. I have in the past wondered about the idea of something like a jangly, Gretsch type neck hb and two p90 types in this sort of set up. HB sized p90s are an wasy alternative here as they are, obvs, designed to drop straight into a HB hole, and ime don't sound any different than a trad p90. Always another option!

To the best of my understanding, the original three humbucker guitars Gibson did in Les Paul and SG format had very low output mid-pups. Gibson used the same three way switches on those guitars as they did on the regular HH Les Pauls, though, so the order was: neck, mid and bridge, bridge. The middle pickup was never used on its own; instead, it was alongside the bridge to give a different sonic flavour than the bridge alone (and obviously different again from the neck and bridge middle position on other Les Pauls). If memory serves, the middle pickups on those were also wired differently - out of phase maybe? - to give them a very bright tone which would have been too much on its own, but in tandem with the bridge HB the way they were wired, it gave it a fuller sound with a better mid-range than the bridge alone, if my recollection is correct. I remember way back in the olden days seeing John Squire wield a pair of those 3HB Les Paul Customs with The Seahorses. Cracking sound - pity they never hit their stride with all the internal problems in that band. Anyhow... What you've got is (obviously) a modified version of the Strat format with - I presume - still the standard, five-way Strat wiring system. The convention option there would be to go with the same pattern the "normal" SSS Strat does, i.e. the hottest pup in the bridge, a slightly lower output in the neck, and one in between those two in the middle. If your guitar is a factory-spec model that came originally HHH I'd assume it to be done like that, otherwise if it's an aftermarket alteration it could be anything. I've not seen a HHH Vintage like that, but that doesn't mean they didn't do it! The theory with a Fender approach as I recall was that the neck could be lower output because where the string vibrates over it is pretty strong, but the closer the bridge you go the less the vibration, so the pup needs to be stronger to, well, pick it up. That's my crude understanding of it anyhow. Plenty of room for you to experiment, though. The only think I can see limiting you really (budget aside!) is routing. If the body is HHH routed, you're in set positions without major work. If, on the other hand, it's a swimming pool rout (the whole point of which was to facilitate any pickup arrangement Fender fancied with a standard production line body), you can have a lot of fun playing around with positioning - you just need to have a plate cut with the positions you want. I think it would be pretty cool to take inspiration from the "Contemporary Stratocaster Special HT" model Fender / Squier do, and switch up the positions, thus: Imagine that with three HBs, wired up like those 3HB Les Pauls.... that could be fun. Otherwise, you've got a lot of freedom to play around with different pickup styles. I think three Gretsch-type humbuckers could be fun in a Strat format, for example. Alternatively, what about three HB-sized p90s - like three GFS Surf 90s would sound great imo. (Vintage, fwiw, at one point did do a Strat type model with three actual p90s in it; I'd have jumped on one, but no left handers alas.) When it comes to pickups, I've had good experiences in the past with Guitar Fetish - https://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Guitar-Pickups_c_7.html They're not crazy money and very nice, so if you're wanting to experiment and try a couple of ideas, one option you might consider is something from their 'kwikplug' range, which would let you wire up your plate to quickly slip between different pup combinations and types in different orders with just a screwdriver. They've got quite a range of quirky, Teisco-style pups as well, so you could come up with something pretty unique looking, and sounding. Do please post a photo of your guitar - and keep us up to date with what you do with it.

Ah, now... define 'forum'.... I was thinking we were speaking of a specific area within this page rather than a whole different forum, as such? Right handed stuff, it depends. There's a huge amount of commonality, obvs, though when any new guitar is discussed, experience has taught me to check whether it's available left handed or not before I absorb the details. Been disappointed once too often on that score. I've yet to see anything left handed that isn't a left handed rendering of a standard right handed guitar, though. It'd be interesting to see something that was exclusively left handed, even a unique color or something of that nature, but I can't imagine there being a business case for it. I've always had half a notion, though, of tracking down one of those Strats Fender did back when, was it the Voodoo model? Basically a left hander set up right handed, with a mirror-image decal. If it wasn't crazy money, I'd love to pick up one of those and set it up as a left hander.

Ha! Thissort of thing is voodoo, and I shall have no truck with it! Actually, my own solution has long been careful placement of amp and/or pedals, and increasingly not using pedals much if at all!

It'd also clear us out of all yer threads with our "but it's not available for ussssssss!" chorus. Which I'd have thought a bonus...

Having all yer leads going the wrong way is a good start. Positioning pedals when you play so the lead isn't across your body all the time and tripping you. The design of so many products and playing spaces that assume a right-handed norm - it goes way further than simply a choice of limited models in the crap colours.

I've heard a lot of people say that. All of them were right handed.

How could there be! Captain George Brackett USN reporting in - you know it's nearly thirty years since we did South Pacific, Emile? Folks sent me some photos recently from our cast photo shoot. We were so young. And I had hair...