I
have 3 main electric guitars I use. None was exhorbitantly expensive -
I am a believer in good setup and good pickups with decent wood giving
a great sound and I spend a lot of time setting them up and choosing
the pickups I want to get the tone I want. Maybe for a few thousand
more, I could get a vintage or boutique guitar that would play and
sound even better, but I don't have the money, and I have been happy
with the playability and tone of these instruments.
The Strat: I built this instrument from new parts I bought off e-bay, and then installed Lindy Fralin
vintage pickups in the neck and middle positioin and a Fralin
"Unbucker" in the bridge. The Unbucker is an unbalanced humbucker,
where one coil is wound stronger than the other. When you split the
coils, the sound is supposed to be more single coil-like, but you can
still beat most of the hum when you are in humbucker mode. However, I
am not sure I would get the Unbucker again (tone wise) and may someday replace it,
but it is decent enough and I like the sound of the other two pickups a
lot. The neck was a Mighty Mite replacement Strat neck that I recut the
headstock on so it didn't look Fender. I also sanded the matte finish
off, stained it antuque maple and refinished it gloss with my own
little "3 cross" logo. Tuners are Sperzel locking tuners which I like a
lot - quick string changes and the stay in tune well.
The Agile: I wanted a P-90 guitar and was interested in the GFS
Mean 90 pickups, which are a P-90 pickup in a humbucker size format. So
I bought one of the mid priced Agiles that I liked the look of from Rondo Music and
replaced the pickups. I have been very happy with this guitar - gives
that "Live at Leeds" vibe when overdriven. The clean tone is slightly
dark (which may be why it distorts so well) so I usually use a Boss
EH-2 enhancer to give a bit more sparkle on clean tones. I call this
the "tuxedo guitar" because the white-black-gold combo reminds me of a
white tuxedo.
The Epi Les Paul:
My main humbucker guitar is an Epiphone Les Paul blue flametop.
Recently I put on the Sperzel locking tuners because I broke one of the
plastic tuning keys and I've liked the locking tuners on the Strat. I
played around with a number of pickups including the Duncan JB and Jazz
combo that some folks like, but I ended up with an unusual
combination. I didn't want quite as much edge as a lot of bridge
humbuckers have and I found the GFS
VEH Vintage Extra Hot fit the bill nicely. It is very balanced sounding
to me and overdrives really well without getting harsh. For the neck I
was even more unusual. I have always found most neck humbuckers to be
too muddy sounding for my preferences (but maybe that's just me) so again I played around and ended up selecting the
GFS Hot Nashville Retrotron pickup - more of a Gretsch / DeArmond kinda sound I
guess. I love the combination of these two pickups! Yeah, I'm weird ...
