Recommend me a guitar

[Lunch Money]

There's scads, more but I'm lazy:

Regarding the pickup:

"This pickup was originaly designed for Billy Gibbons of ZZ Tops to duplicate the tone of his fantastic sounding 50's Les Paul. Duncan hit it on the head with this one. One of the absolute best sounding PAF style pickups there is. you can't go wrong with the Pearly Gates

Regarding both the pickup and the Les Paul (his main guitar)

Billy Gibbons '59 Les Paul "Pearly Gates" The.Gibson Les Paul that completes BG's signature sound is called the Pearly Gates. Seymour Duncan (mfgs of guitar pickups) duplicated the pickups from Pearly after analyzing the originals. They are marketed by Seymour Duncan as Pearly Gates Pickups. You can buy one for about $90 discounted. When BG started using the Fender Esquires, aka Bones, he once again went to Seymour Duncan to duplicate the sound. They came up with a Billy Gibbons stacked bridge humbucker which you can purchase direct from the custom shop of Seymour Duncan for $150. Add an Expandora fuzzbox (or six) through tube amps (Marshalls or Fenders, take your pick) and you can more or less duplicate the sound. Or play it clean and duplicate the opening licks on Fool for your Stockings or I Thank You.

BG has never abandoned his signature sound. He has done a great deal to preserve it. Even though the equipment has changed. It would be too much to ask of one quitar like the 59 Les Paul to make the scene every night of the year. When needing the Pearly Gates at concerts he plays a close copy. When it is time to record...break out Pearly.

[Lunch Money]

mr. money: did you try lifting all the grounds (on your audio rig) to one common, and earthing it?

I forgot to mention that my apartment has no true grounds. I called the super as soon as I noticed (discovered by using an outlet-checker), and he sent an electrician over. The electrician installed GFCI outlets, which do not contain a true earth, but rather break the outlet's power supply (like a localized circuit breaker) if the current load produces a fault.

So, my splitter box has a ground-lift, my DI box has a ground lift... but there's nowhere to actually earth the rig.

I've been trying to find a solution for 2 years and the only thing I can really do (that I'm aware of) is install my own ground spike or send it to the copper plumbing... I don't have access to either of those options in this stupid place.

Thanks for the idea, though. If you have any others, I'm all ears.

Greg

[bullshark]

If the place is old enough to only have 2 wires wiring with no ground then I'd move as it's a fire waiting to happen. Don't tell me it's aluminum wiring too?

[guitarzan]

Greg,
Have you tried the EH Hum Debugger yet? There are a couple threads on KVR that say it works miracles...I've heard that elsewhere, too.

I always thought Billy Gibbons was more of a P90 guy...I know I saw him using something with a P90 at the bridge. Anyway, the other guys on my list - Blackmore (Strat), Malmsteen (Strat), and Young (LP w/P90s) - all use single coils with fairly high gain most of the time.

[Chuck E. Jesus]

mr. money: did you try lifting all the grounds (on your audio rig) to one common, and earthing it?

I forgot to mention that my apartment has no true grounds. I called the super as soon as I noticed (discovered by using an outlet-checker), and he sent an electrician over. The electrician installed GFCI outlets, which do not contain a true earth, but rather break the outlet's power supply (like a localized circuit breaker) if the current load produces a fault.

So, my splitter box has a ground-lift, my DI box has a ground lift... but there's nowhere to actually earth the rig.

I've been trying to find a solution for 2 years and the only thing I can really do (that I'm aware of) is install my own ground spike or send it to the copper plumbing... I don't have access to either of those options in this stupid place.

Thanks for the idea, though. If you have any others, I'm all ears.

Greg

i really think that's your problem...i've never tried, but i've heard if you have no other option, run your ground to any cold water pipe...not sure how you are setup, but if you can get a heavy wire to your bath or kitchen sink, just clamp it on underneath...ground lifts on di's are kind of a cheat, they are really preventing a ground loop, when a good earth ground will actually work better...i'm no EE, but i had a similar problem running off the power in the old house i live in...i was able to run a dedicated ac line and i drilled a hole in the wall, ran a wire to a poll stuck in the ground, and tied all audio gear to one common gound tied to the wire, and it cleaned eveything up noticably-my Yammy bass (single coil) was really noisey, now it's quiet...but if run my computer audio over to my stereo, horrible buzzing! i'm changing that around someday...

[Lunch Money]

Heh, guitarzan's gonna think I'm an asshole following this... Sorry man! I gotz mad love for ya!

Malmsteen uses rails and stacks in most of his guitars. The guitar that's the love of his life has stock single-coils, but he certainly uses humbuckers. On his signature guitar: "For sound the guitar houses two DiMarzio YJM Signature Pickups in the neck and middle positions and 1 DiMarzio HS-3 Stack at the bridge." Those are humbuckers. He has also had models with dual HS-3's. All of his signature pickups are humbuckers.

Which Young? Angus Young uses SGs with PAF Humbuckers... Malcolm Young uses a Gretch with Filtertron humbuckers.



Blackmore certainly used single-coils. However, he fell in love with the Gold Lace line of pickups, and his current signature line contains the Laces. Why? No noise.

I partially agree, in that he should get a strat if he wants a strat. Many a rock tone has been had with strat-style single coils. But it's undeniable that single-coil + high gain = suboptimal. Also, the output of a standard single-coil won't drive an amp in nearly the same way. So while you might get Blackmore-style gain (classic rock), you're not likely to get any Meshuggah going on.

---

The EH Hum Debugger sounds great. I haven't actually tried it, no. The best I have is when I go through my TonePort + Gearbox, and enable the hum-cancelling option. It's actually the best realtime noise suppressor that I've tried, though I don't know how they do it without introducing severe latencies. The Revalver method is good, too (multi-band gating), but I like spectral-based noise redux rather than gate-based. I hate gates.

If I see the EH on the cheap, I could always grab one anyhow, whether it works for this infernal apartment or not-- it looks like a good piece of kit!

--

bullshark: I dunno if it's aluminum wiring, tbh. I've always assumed copper. I'd have to pull open an outlet and have a peek. We ARE planning to move at some point in time, but the money's not there yet. Almost this entire area has the same "building style" (it was some sort of cookie-cutter apartment style back in 1940 or whenever) and I haven't heard of any burning down yet. I hope to move before ours becomes the first. The good news is that the building as a whole isn't particularly combustible... the whole thing is made of concrete, brick, and steel. But I'll count myself as warned, and I appreciate the concern.

Greg

[Lunch Money]

i really think that's your problem...i've never tried, but i've heard if you have no other option, run your ground to any cold water pipe...not sure how you are setup, but if you can get a heavy wire to your bath or kitchen sink, just clamp it on underneath...ground lifts on di's are kind of a cheat, they are really preventing a ground loop, when a good earth ground will actually work better...i'm no EE, but i had a similar problem running off the power in the old house i live in...i was able to run a dedicated ac line and i drilled a hole in the wall, ran a wire to a poll stuck in the ground, and tied all audio gear to one common gound tied to the wire, and it cleaned eveything up noticably-my Yammy bass (single coil) was really noisey, now it's quiet...but if run my computer audio over to my stereo, horrible buzzing! i'm changing that around someday...

It is absolutely at least half the problem. You're right about that. The humbuckers are probably taking care of the EFI/RFI generated by the "telephone and mains junctions + concrete box" effect, which is why they work "somewhat". But I'm still left with the non-earthed equipment.

I don't have a way of easily running a wire to a cold water pipe from where I'm located. I would have to get a *REALLY* long copper wire into the bathroom, along the bottom moulding along the perimeter of 2 different rooms and a hallway just to get to the bathroom, and I'm not sure how I'd be able to rout it from there. Maybe stapled down across the bottom of the doorway's lip..? Seems dodgy. It would be impossible to send it to the actual utilities room which is outside my apartment.

The pole in the ground idea sounds more feasible. I'm right next to the outdoors here... but since the wall is concrete, I'd have to find some way of sending it through the window or window frame. I'm sure my landlord would also have a freak-out if he knew.

Greg

[Chuck E. Jesus]

yeah, that's rough... for the record, i agree about the single coils vs. buckers, only saying the grounding will help a lot

[PaulG]

Forget your friend's comment about the bell tone crap with single coils. If you ever want to play ANYTHING pop-rock with ANY sort of gain, you'll need a humbucker or else you'll have noise up the yin-yang and not that much gain.

So, I take it you've never listened to Richie Blackmore, Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Neil Young, or Yngwie Malmsteen...those guys all use single coils with a bit of gain. Single coils definately DO have a more bell-like tone. I don't like humbuckers much at all myself, they get rid of the hum by cancelling out all the shimmering top end - they remind me of the old Dolby B noise reduction ... no hiss but no cymbals, no air etc. I'd rather manage the noise than have no sparkle left at all, myself. I like a lot of players who do use humbucker guitars, but for my own thing they just sound like the tone knob is cranked all the way down to me.

Oh, I obviously missed the big point that NONE of these single coil gain gods use distortion or overdrive pedals? Didn't Hendrix even use fuzz pedals? I think we are talking guitar-amp only here. You could put a Bozz Metal Zone on a Fisher Price toddler guitar and have it sound high-gain.

And WTF ARE you DOING with tone controls on your guitar? You haven't unwired them out, yet? Single volume pot only? Comon...don't turn your back on pure humbucking goodness by putting a damn FILTER on the signal before it even leaves the freaking guitar!

[Lunch Money]

*nod at Chuck* I think it would help tremendously. I was rather disappointed when I discovered the electrician was only able to install GFCIs.

[guitarzan]

Which Young? Angus Young uses SGs with PAF Humbuckers... Malcolm Young uses a Gretch with Filtertron humbuckers.

Neil Young...who the hell are those other guys? What kind of Canadian are you anyway?!

[Lunch Money]

Actually, I read "Shakey" Neil Young's biography, it just didn't occur to me that's who you would mean. I agree that he's a guitar icon, but for some reason I didn't see many others instantly picking him. His most famous guitar (Old Black) has a Firebird-style mini-humbucker in the bridge. I don't know how often he uses the P90 in the neck.

That said-- Neil Young is absolutely notorious for loving grit and noise on his recordings. He wouldn't just "not mind" single-coil hum, he would probably embrace it. Hardly a good spokesman for the noise issue. Er... which makes me suspect finally that you had tongue firmly in cheek the whole time.

Greg

[guitarzan]

Forget your friend's comment about the bell tone crap with single coils. If you ever want to play ANYTHING pop-rock with ANY sort of gain, you'll need a humbucker or else you'll have noise up the yin-yang and not that much gain.

So, I take it you've never listened to Richie Blackmore, Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Neil Young, or Yngwie Malmsteen...those guys all use single coils with a bit of gain. Single coils definately DO have a more bell-like tone. I don't like humbuckers much at all myself, they get rid of the hum by cancelling out all the shimmering top end - they remind me of the old Dolby B noise reduction ... no hiss but no cymbals, no air etc. I'd rather manage the noise than have no sparkle left at all, myself. I like a lot of players who do use humbucker guitars, but for my own thing they just sound like the tone knob is cranked all the way down to me.

Oh, I obviously missed the big point that NONE of these single coil gain gods use distortion or overdrive pedals? Didn't Hendrix even use fuzz pedals? I think we are talking guitar-amp only here. You could put a Bozz Metal Zone on a Fisher Price toddler guitar and have it sound high-gain.

And WTF ARE you DOING with tone controls on your guitar? You haven't unwired them out, yet? Single volume pot only? Comon...don't turn your back on pure humbucking goodness by putting a damn FILTER on the signal before it even leaves the freaking guitar!

Neil Young doesn't use any type of distortion pedal at all. I've heard a lot of tone that I like from humbuckers, but I always figured that they must just sound good in the mix because when I try them they always sound muffled ... I do think I would like those Billy Gibbons ones! I play a lot of clean(ish) stuff, though, and that's where the single coils really shine IMO.

[Lunch Money]

Besides his use of the mini-humbucker...

He doesn't generally use distortion pedals, but he has been known to cascade one entire amp into the next. LOL He's a madman.

And even when not, there's the aforementioned love of chaos and noise....

And finally... Young's sound, while raw and untamed and distorted as hell, still isn't high gain.

[robogone]

Besides his use of the mini-humbucker...

He doesn't generally use distortion pedals, but he has been known to cascade one entire amp into the next. LOL He's a madman.

And even when not, there's the aforementioned love of chaos and noise....

And finally... Young's sound, while raw and untamed and distorted as hell, still isn't high gain.

He's certainly the poster boy for the 'turn it up to 11' approach to getting your distortion.