Mean 90s and 1x12

I just ordered some new pickups for the Maple Strat. GFS Mean 90's reproduce the sound of a Vintage P-90 pickup in a humbucker form factor.

If you're wondering what P-90's sound like, it's like a Strat pickup on steroids. Think Pete Townshend, The Beatles on Revolver, Leslie West (Mississippi Queen), and of course, Santana's first three albums. Needless to say, this should be a very toneful addition to the family.

At the same time, I've been digging my Tech 21 to no end. There are two things that bug me though. One is the controls. Being that it shapes my tone so much, I have to make lots of adjustments to it. Well the controls for the amp are situated in the back of the amp, facing upward. So they're kind of hard to access, especially with my pedals sitting in front of the amp.

Second, the 8" speaker really doesn't have the bass response I liked from my Princeton 112. It sounds good, but I think it would sound better out of a 12" speaker.

So, I started drawing amp designs, and I came up with what you see to the right. It's going to be a tweed-covered 1x12 amp cabinet that will house my Tech 21 chassis (or any other chassis I want to put in there). It angles the controls upward toward me, and angles the speaker back so it's pointed more at my head, so I can hear it better. More updates on this as it develops.

Another cool development with the Tech 21 was that I ordered the reverb from Accutronics and installed it. I asked for Fender type reverb, and I got it. Absolutely the sweetest reverb I've ever heard. I am loving it. My tone is the best its ever been.

Tech 21 > *

This beat-up little gem comes to us from Sam Ash. So I was in Sam Ash the other day, doing my usual perusal, looking for an amp to test a guitar on. So of course I have to wade through the shredders and old guys trying to impress their daughters (who are checking their watches every 27.3 seconds and looking furtively in the direction of the mall). So I decide to loop back to the back of the amp section.

Lo and behold, they had a bevy of used amps. My interest was piqued.

First I saw a Hughes & Kettner Edition Blue 30, which I had been dying to try. So I tried it first. Verdict: Very decent cleans and semi-crappy reverb, and the overdrive was nothing like the smoothness I get from my tubes. Really not what I was looking for, but a decently loud amp.

Just to the right was a Tech 21 Trademark 10. I peeked at the controls and was surprised to recognize them. It seems that the Tech 21 Trademark 10 and 30 are based around Tech 21's GT2 pedal, which features modeling:

Which looks awful similar to the Behringer GDI21, which I used to have.

Behringer, as usual, had ripped off Tech 21 with a cheaper alternative. I had the behringer version, and I really liked the sound, but it was plastic, noisy, and lacked bass response.

Anyway, enough him-hawing and I plugged in to the amp.

The modeling is EXCELLENT. The controls were familiar and it wasn't long before I had dialed in a really convincing Fender tweed tone, a Crunchy Marshall impression, and a surprisingly saturated, and just baby's-bottom-smooth Mesa Boogie tone.

The major selling point was the reverb, so I dial up some to see how it sounded.

Nothing.

Hmmm. The reverb's broken. Well, it's priced at $199, so I figure I can get about 50 bucks off, and maybe fix it.

I go back to Sam Ash a couple of days later, after doing my research, play it again, and get a salesman to tell me the best deal he can do for me. I tell him the Reverb is broken. He tests it, and indeed there's no reverb, and he says "Well since it's broken, I can give it to you for half off. Good thing I didn't offer him the $150 first!

So of course I take it. I'm really loving this little amp. The best part is, with the Sansamp guts, I can DI for recording (not that I have anything to DI into), or I can run it into a PA or an external speaker cab.

So I took my new toy to my dad's house, to test the reverb. He has an old Crate solid-state amp with reverb, so I put the amps back-to-back and plugged in my reverb leads into his tank. Voila! The reverb worked perfectly with his tank!

So I called Accutronics, the company who supplies about 60% of all reverbs past and present, and they're going to build me a reverb tank similar to what they put in a Fender Deluxe reverb to fit my amp, for $26.

I'm extremely happy with the amp, it's the absolute best and most versatile solid-state amp I've ever played.

2006 Project Wrap-up

This post is a little delayed. I was on winter break and wasn't spending too much time at the computer. Now I'm back at work and bored in front of the screen once again. Over break, I wrapped up my two strat projects, the Blackie relicing and rewiring, and the Maple Strat's new pickups and wiring.

After un-relicing the maple fretboard, I went about leveling Blackie's frets. It went very well, as I expected. I had gotten a real cheap crowning file, and that didn't work so good. But they eventually were all crowned and polished. I implemented Deaf Eddie's wiring scheme, and I love the tone. The Vintage noiseless in the Neck and Middle sound great when ganged together. But the real surprise was the Neck + Bridge series combination. The ceramic bridge pickup from the predator positively howls when fed through the neck. Amazing. It's quickly making moves at being my #1.

The Maple Strat's latest upgrade was a USA Fender Neck pickup, and an EMG Select in the middle. I did something similar to Blackie with the wiring. Interestingly, when I set it back up, the action was too low, even though the truss rod relief was correct. The wiring worked pretty well, but I suspect something's wrong with the Hot Rails. It sounds thin and way too bright. As does the EMG. I'm not very happy about it. I'm already thinking about some other way to make the Maple Strat unique. And I think I've found it.

Mini-Humbuckers! The latest offering from GuitarFetish looks really attractive to me. Fat, but crunchy, with coil-splitting capabilities. It'll be yet another $100 upgrade to the Maple Strat. But at least then it'll be unique.