Jinder

Beautiful Dove!! I love them. I've owned two but both had uncharacteristic problems. I think I just got unlucky. One day I'll track down a Dove I can keep forever.

It's the M1A for me, if I had to pick between them. Awesome sound! What did you do EQ wise?

He has excellent taste in pickups...

Did you buy it new or secondhand? It's a very pretty guitar. I found that the Fishman Aura Ellipse (different unit but same manufacturer and same rattle) in my SJ200 drove me MAD with rattles and buzzes, eventually I removed it and put a different pickup in...obviously this isn't an option for you with the "barn door" style side mounted preamp, but perhaps worth speaking to Gibson Customer Service and seeing what they can do to help.

The Aura system won't work well with the K&K-it's intended for Fishman's proprietary undersaddle pups and won't be a good impedance or processing match with the K&K's output. The best solution for the K&K is either a Fire-Eye Red-Eye preamp or K&K's Pure XLR pre. The former has a boost function which is useful, but the K&K pre has three band EQ which is also very useful...both will sound very good. In my experience the Lyric certainly wasn't lacking in brilliance, but I wasn't able to dial in any low end to speak of without inducing hellish woofing feedback, even at relatively low volumes and in a small bodied instrument. The K&K is a much more musical sounding pickup and in a real-world situation is much more versatile and reliable. I've used the K&Ks in my J45 and Hummingbird 12 on all manner of stages and they sound very good indeed with little EQ beyond a mid scoop. The Lyric was a constant fiddle and fuss. One thing I do think the Lyric might be interesting for is a second source with a magnetic pickup, run in stereo with the bass and mids scooped out of the Lyric and the top cut out of the magnetic.

You are very unlikely to be happy with the Lyric. I had one in a Martin 00DB (I bought the guitar secondhand and the pickup was already in it) and it was sort of okay, but not particularly nice. When I bought the guitar, the shop staff actually said "this is a great guitar but the pickup is horrible, we would recommend changing it", which took me aback and made me determined to get to the bottom of the Lyric and make it work, but it always sounded clicky and nasal, and when the nasal frequency was notched out there wasn't a lot left. A very narrow frequency pickup and HORRIBLY feedback prone. I have a K&K in my Hummingbird 12 string, and it's wonderful. Really suits the guitar and sounds gorgeous. However, for most of my 6 strings I use soundhole pickups. Mainly Sunrises, but I also have a Seymour Duncan MagMic which I like very much and a Fishman Rare Earth Single Coil which is not quite as nice as the others but is a reasonable spare. Personally, in your case I'd recommend the K&K if you want a permanent install, or a Sunrise/Baggs M1A or M80 if not.

Love this, Jason! I spied the Frank Turner tee too, Frank's a great guy. I opened for his former band Million Dead many years ago and caught up with him at a festival in Croatia a couple of years ago that we were both playing. Had a coffee with him in his bus and nerded out about Hummingbirds together!

No judgement here, we're all going to have different approaches to transporting our instruments and what I choose for the purpose is no reflection on your FRANKLY INSANE CHOICE TO PUT A SUPER 400 IN A DAMN BAG! (I'm joking by the way 🤪) I have used POD style semi-hard cases for my resonators for years as the weight of a reso combined with a HSC is just too much for my problem shoulder to cope with. The only one I haven't trusted to a soft case is my 1930s (pre-Regal) fiddle-edge Dobro M32. There are so few left in the world that I couldn't bear the idea of it getting broken, so it stays in its Hiscox Liteflite Artist case, which is light enough for me to tote. The M32 is the lightest reso I've ever owned too, which helps. I've spent the last half an hour googling 18" soft cases and I think you're going to have to go down the custom build route. Not cheap I would imagine, but worth it.

You absolutely should. Don't worry about keeping it perfect, play it and enjoy it, let it's life begin in earnest. In my opinion guitars aren't meant to be perfect...I've never once listened to a classic record and thought "jeez, that acoustic sounds unmarked!" All my guitars have bruises and battlescars, between them they have been in and out of planes, trains and automobiles more times than most people do in a lifetime. They work for me and I work for them. I never treat them disrespectfully, always keep them clean and well maintained, but they're out on the road with me between four and six nights a week and have inevitable playwear. The upside is, of course, that the more they're played the more they open up and really start to sing.

I've had zero problems whatsoever with my AJ wearing 13s-quite the opposite if anything. It feels like the most robust guitar I own, and I didn't even need to tweak the truss rod when going up to 13s. I use 12s on everything normally, but the AJ just seems to call for 13s, and responds magnificently with D'Addario EXPs in particular.

Welcome to the club!! You'll love it...hope you get the chance to have more of a play with it soon!

There are a couple of approaches you can try here...to come up with the melody first and build the chord structure around it, or try to find chord melody within the existing structure. Mother Maybelle Carter was brilliant at chord melody, and would often shadow the vocal melody with arpeggiated melody within the chords she played. I often do this in reverse, and find a vocal melody within the music. Songwriting is an absolute enigma. Nobody actually really knows what they're doing. I've been writing songs for 25yrs, am a former staff writer for Universal Records, have written and recorded ten albums for five different labels and a load of songs for other acts...I still have no idea where the songs come from, how to write a song with intent or what the formula is. Ask anyone from Carole King to a newbie and they'll all tell you the same thing. Magic can't be mapped. I'm just glad and grateful when a new one comes along.

Very interesting!! Yours should be a 2016 build if it's from the same run as mine, and will be listed as an Advanced Jumbo Flame Deluxe. You'll love it!!

Hey Guth! Great to see you back here. I remember you mentioning your maple AJ, excellent to hear it's still in the nest. I searched for one for a long time, I played one in Glasgow in 2016, missed out on it, tracked another one down in Paris but it sold before I could land it, then found a secondhand example in Ireland which also sold more rapidly than I could move on it. Mine came from Wildwood in Colorado, the last of that run (the Custom Shop run of 64 AJ Flame Deluxe guitars) that I could find anywhere on the planet...I was asked to play a wedding in CO and was given a budget to buy a guitar as payment, so was thrilled to find the AJ in the right place at the right time. The stars aligned, as you said! It's an endlessly great guitar. Huge dynamic range, warm and punchy, never shrill in the way that Maple can sometimes be. Love it!

Thanks all! New music with the AJ in tow will be coming soon, I don't have anything online yet with it, but it won't be long. I've really had fun with guitar tracking on the new record, my Hummingbird 12 string has starred on most of it, with the SJ200, AJ and J180 close behind. The '41 Reissue SJ100 and '67 J45 are in there too, but it's largely been a Maplefest as far as the 6 strings go. I'm endlessly surprised by how well the J180 records, it just goes down to tape (and the digital version of!) Like butter onto warm toast, no EQ, no compression, perhaps a little sprinkle of reverb and it's a done deal. Amazingly balanced guitar!

This guitar just DOES IT. So powerful yet never harsh, capable of cutting rhythm, delicate fingerstyle, throaty lead or absolutely on-the-money flatpicking. It's a guitar I never get tired of. My only guitar which wears 13s, but the action is spot on and it plays beautifully evenly all over the neck. It's an astonishingly good combination with the Sunrise pickup I have in it (formerly the property of Buc McMaster of this very forum, of course!), and coupled with my Boss AD10 the plugged in tone is just wonderful. Very dynamic and adaptable to changes in right hand attack. I was playing an instrumental set at a friend's wedding this afternoon and took the AJ and my '30s round neck fiddle edge Dobro (with which I use a magnificent Krivo mag pickup, very sensitive and microphonic...sounds EXACTLY like the Dobro itself), and the palette of sounds available to me from those two guitars was outstanding. The AJ took me from biting blues all the way out to buttery jazz, and the Dobro, with some delay and reverb, took me way, way out into the waters of shimmering, keening, almost mystical experimental music. My new album (nearly 2/3rds done) is an absolute playground of Gibson goodness, but the AJ made the cut more than most. Such an honour to own and play an instrument of that calibre.

Great work! The Bird sounds wonderful, exactly like my identical one, unsurprisingly! Love this song, and Supertramp in general. Terrific band!

I've always been militantly anti-cutaway...until I pick up my old Takamine EAN20C and remember how convenient a cutaway is for anything up at the dusty end. I wouldn't spend my money on a cutaway SJ200 but I don't think they look horrendous, I rather like the natty little foreshortening of the pickguard.

Great sounding guitar, Leonard! Sounds just like my cherry J180. I love mine, it's a real sleeper guitar. It doesn't holler like my AJ, whisper like my J45, boom like my SJ200 and 100 or chime like my Bird 12, but it just sits in the sonic pocket so perfectly and is beautifully balanced as an all-rounder. Wonderful live guitar too, I have a Rare Earth Single Coil in mine and it's a great match for the guitar.

I liked the J35 and had planned on owning one, but then along came my Maple AJ, and between that and my '67 J45 the slope side of things is sewn up. I like the J35 a lot...very direct, dry and punchy. Less rich and dark than a J45. Rather like milk chocolate Vs dark chocolate. Both are delicious, but discernably different.

So beautiful...thrilled that the story ended so well!! Worth the wait methinks. My J180 has grown on me more than any guitar I've ever owned, I liked it originally but LOVE it now. Ditched the undersaddle pickup and went with a soundhole pickup which made it even better. Glorious guitars and so iconic!

I really like the Adj bridge Gibsons. They sound DIFFERENT to a fixed bridge instrument, but not worse, or at least to my ears. I spent a lot of time and effort converting my 1967 J45 from Adj to fixed bridge, and in many ways I wish I hadn't bothered, it sounded great before and still does, it just lost a bit of the brightness and chime that Adj guitars have. Re adjustments, just slacken the strings and turn the screws clockwise to lower the action and counterclockwise to raise it. Small increments are the way to go here-less than two full turns can take you from "unplayably high" to "unplayably low", so go steady...enjoy your guitar, those Ebony '60s reissues are beautiful!

I love a natural Dove, but the tobacco burst Doves are-to my eyes-some of the sexiest guitars in the world.

Woah, what a beautiful guitar! That finish combined with the glorious headstock is heart-leapingly gorgeous. Congrats on the new baby!

He’s one of the best of the current crop, that’s for sure. I love this style of writing, and I mean no slight to Colter here, but can’t help but feel that Townes really wrote the book on it close to 50yrs ago. There is always room in the world for more minor key country laments about love, death, hell and trains though, and I’m no stranger to that way of writing myself.