BoSoxBiker

Wonderful as always. Stay safe!

This was very well done, David. I like the overall sound of the recording, too. Chord progression made for a nice ride for the listener as well. Lots of good things I can say about this one.

I keep forgetting about eBay. Good point. I do enjoy some of GF's offerings. Especially the humbucker sized P90s. I put those on a Floyd Rose Discovery Series quite some time ago and they will quack with the best of anything I have. Superb for that "Midnight Rambler" tone. I've long forgotten which of the two tones I bought. Advance Middle age and memory ...sigh. Anyhow, those are an option. Why do I get the feeling that their bridges and tailpieces are no better than what went on my Epi to begin with? Especially when their best features brass saddles, which is supposedly not the best material for energy transfer. This might be one of those get what you pay for moments. I may even replace the nut, too, though I did get the grooves down to size. It does not appear that this one was fit in perfectly.

I've got 3 Boss products for sale right now. I've heard good things about the VE8, though. I just got a Kemper Profiler. The two guitar processors are history as soon meeting someone to sell it is possible. It takes a lot of work to get a realistic amp sound. The Kemper never NOT sounds like a guitar amp. Rare piece of gear that does what the hype says. The acoustic AD-10 is listed too, but I understand folks have profiled acoustic guitar amps.

I have an '04 MIK LP Custom. Heavy as heck, but as with yours, the build quality is great. This 335 was not even in the same ball-park, 'fraid to say. I agree with you on the better amps thing for the most part. As long as the pickup and signal has any sort of bite and clarity. At least to get through a mix, I mean.

I just completed my first ever fret leveling, crowning and polishing on my 6(ish) year old Epi ES-335 Pro Limited. This thing was a buzz factory at 6/64th @12th fret and .010 neck relief. I won't even get into how much the frets did not match the radius. If I knew then what I think I know now..... but I have it and it's not going anywhere now. I can now set neck relief anywhere from .010 to .007 land on 3/64ths on both sides of the fret board. I left a little bit in the nut grooves for wear, though I still have to knock the top of it off. So this is not intended to be an investment. Just a player. The original plan was to get used to a 335 shape until I bought a Gibson. I've decided to keep this and see how far I can get with it. It's very useful now. So what's next? This is not a money is no object situation, but I am not one to spend $50 on something when $100 would leave me infinitely satisfied. The first thing that has to go are the tuners. I hate them. I am not the type to replace tuners as a matter of course. They really have to stink. These are that. Any suggestions? I do like the locking ones on my Gibson LP from that era. (2013?) I am not sold on the green ones, but whatever. I just want tthem to work well. I need my 3rd toggle switch. Yeah, I know. I go through them even with playing it. Pickups are split coils. Unlike my LP, thise guitar does not have that active circuit. Essecially, these single coils are useless for me. Kind of boring and I have a Tele, Strat and two guitars with P90s. I saw someone mention filter-trons to someone else on a Casino thread. Those good for this? (I play lots of stuff from Rock to almost Country to almost Jazz to whatever I feel like. Never much in the way of metal. And fianlly, bridge and tailpiece. I have a suspision that what I have is on the cheapo end. I suspect that getting something of better quality might help with the lack of resonant feeling I can get out of some cheaper guitars. In other words, Roller would be nice, but not the big priority. Any big favorite around these parts for 335s and tone transfer? I'd love to hear any thoughts, advice and direction on this little venture of mine.

Interesting. I see the thought process on this for the under-powered problem. Simple gain staging in the very least. Starting a signal with better tone is a nice bonus, with caution to the inherent signal cooking possibilities. I do currently have at least 2 ways to do simple gain staging with XLR converted to TS(and TRS) as a source. Well, more than that once I've converted the signal. And ways to get it back to XLR should I want to go into the Unison (UAD digital preamp emulations encoded into the mic-pre and AD conversion stage)

I'm supposed to have good pre-amps in my UAD X6. Very low noise, too. Much better than I had with the UAD USB Twin. I do have a way to sent a miked signal into a Session SI/PreAmp. I can go line-in on the UAD Apollo. Perhaps I'll try that sometime soon.

Not sure why you felt compelled to dive down that path again, but I'm glad it's out of the way and we can move on. The MP5s I mentioned were an effort to see if that style would work in my old room acoustics and otherwise dip my toes into that side of things. I've read some positive things about the Warm Audio offerings, too, for around 1/2 the price. That small condenser type design (with the cardoid pattern?) I've got a SM57. Not sure why. I barely remember doing it. I think it was something I let a salesman talk me into 6-8 years ago. A few years earlier, for my first non USB mic ever, I waltzed into a store one time to get an SM58, but they offered me a Beta 87A for the same $$. Small shop - I figured they needed the money. Long story short, it is not right for me on acoustics because I have to bump the signal up so high that the noise floor caused by noisy home electrical system gets in the way. That part is better than it was since replacing the interface, but not good enough. I didn't know about that stuff 10+ years ago when I got it. It is decent for vocals, though, as long as I am right on top of it. You've heard my vocals. Not a good thing to be on top of a mic. It might be better now. For now, most things I do, I use the ETL Myrtle. I don't think it cancels out enough when it's getting a solid signal, like a dynamic mic would, but it does sound very nice. Especially with a little dip at 3.2kHz exactly where I need it. If you've got good headphones on, you can hear it in action on their website, complete with the residual noise/sound I'm talking about. You're probably right on the SM58. My only hesitation is I see too many folks say you got one, you don't need the other. No idea if they know what they are talking about or just repeating mantra. I think more than one salesman has said that to me as well. I mean, crap. It's only $100, right? Why not get it? Sell the 57 when the used market re-opens.

The 184 ends up in focus every time I look into mics. The next mic purchase might be this year, actually. It was on a very short list of things I had left for the home project studio. I went with the MP5 a couple years back just for something along the lines of the smaller, focused signal. It fit a budget that had been demolished by 2 Gibson and 1 Martin purchases and a studio room gear upgrade and eventual room rebuild. I did get a Kemper Profiler amp last week, to sort out some really bad electric guitar tones. (and boy oh boy, does it impress) The next mic is probably the next thing in line. I need to sell off some older stuff first, which is not happening right now due to the current situation.

You've described that KM184 before. I guess that's the hazard of small room recording is the sensitivity of some mics pick up everything that might have otherwise dispersed into bigger spaces. I agree about the smaller bodies being easier to record, generally speaking. In the past, I could not even play a Les Paul unplugged without getting modal ringing. More my latest, which had a whole different sonic goal, I close miked both the HB and SJ-200 with a mic from my Rodes MP5 - similar shape to your 184, but much cheaper and less sonically pleasing. It was the exact opposite of what I needed for a mix, but the mission was to play with warm tones after the past decade of shrill.

Thanks! It is fun, but the added factor of learning a bunch of this stuff all over again all, and at once, was head spinning. Just putting some thoughts together as a little test for my next song earlier this week was much smoother, though, now that this one was under my belt.

Wow! Yeah, one side going on the mixing front cannot be fun at all.

Nicely done again, BK! Your recordings are usually done well, but I especially liked the tone of this guitar. Got a nice glimpse of it ringing out right around 3:20 that sound quite rich.

That was nice, EA! Very well done and sounded great.

OK, the final posting of this for this thread. This is the "Mastered" version of the song I posted last week. It was all new to me just like the mix-down phase was. I added some more reflective material to the panels/gobos in order to hear more of what was going on. The room itself has got some more life to it than it did back in January. Going through this whole process taught me a great deal. Some of it even goes back to tracking my acoustics on day-1. I don't think there is anything that I would not change if I were going to start this song today. To that end, it served it's purpose. I do think this song deserves the less is more treatment, so when I do get around to doing it again, it will be largely an acoustic offering instead of the bigger mix I had in place. The mastering process is basically a series of gentle moves, with needles barely moving on compressor gauges and EQ changes small and subtle. I added a small bit of harmonic enhancement directly and indirectly. All of the modifications I did were things I could hear in real time with my monitors - even the dithering. While that may seem like a small thing, it was big progress for me. So, to mercifully end this drawn out production, Pawn Shop Guitars 3, all Mastered up.

Very nice job with both efforts. I especially liked the first one, but my ears are tired from this morning's other music activities. That 935 mic's signal sounds very workable, too. Did you notice a big tonal change from your DAW to the uploaded YouTube video sound?

I've tried the Retros only one time. It was on my SJ. I did not leave them on. All's I remember from it was not so much a tone thing, but a feeling I got from them. A strange combination of being taken just past my action comfort zone and the feeling like my guitar was angry due to small extra bit of tension. I wish I could remember for sure if I thought they were too bright or not. I landed on the NBs, but not directly. I had a set of Elixer PBs on it in between the two. The NBs have been good with the one exception of being a little bright on certain plectrum materials - and not in a good way. 3 of 4 have the d'add NBs on it right now, fwiw. The 4th, my Hummingbird, just got an experimental set of DR Sunbeams. Perhaps I will try Retros again. I've replaced extremely loose bridge pins, changed out the saddle and files my nut slots down close to specs on that guitar.

Another update as I learn and re-learn this room and what I hear. I did to that Mastering effort on the previous one, but had a quasi-senior moment toasted it. This mix was nearly a re-mix. This is all still a new experience for me. This one was an effort to open it up and have it sound like something one might hear should they want to listen to an Urban Cowboy Soundtrack CD. The Johnny Lee, "Looking For Love..." song, to be specific. I used it as a reference song as well as a few Garth Brooks numbers from No Fences album. I'm going to work on a mastering version today and maybe tomorrow. I'll post that for comparison in case anyone is interested, along with some notes on the results. The volumes are going to be close as part of much broader gain staging and volume management efforts I began with this version.

Thanks for getting the images. I was going to ask how you did it, but the thought just occurred to me that it could be screen shots and I was overthinking things. Anyhow, I see two faces. The top one is an angry tribal-clown, complete with big hair on the sides and top. The second one is directly underneath it, which looks like a sharp-chinned devil face. A third one appeared, too. A shrunken head on top of the clown in place of it's top tuft of hair. It helps to have astigmatism.

Wonderful! Tough one to sing. Nicely done on both counts. (sing and play..)

Thanks for posting this. I've been watching it off and on while playing my SJ. I sometimes settle down into smoother sounding picking/strumming hand technique after watching other guitar players. I just learned that he is one of them.

I am a sucker for the quilt Maple thing. Sam Ash site - scroll along to get to the full size pick of the back. https://www.samash.com/electric-and-acoustic-guitars/guitars-of-distinction/gibson-ltd-ed-parlor-chroma-ag-acoustic-electric-guitar-bourbon-burst-g13239008-p Sweet!

That was a very nice video. Thanks for posting! I wish he had more videos. I am one of them. On a related note, do you have a favorite video that does a good job showing how to file the contact point and angle of the nut when nut filing?

I'm with you. I wanted no part of that "repair" for at least two reasons.