pippy Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Found this cracker of an interview purely by chance. Ever wondered who / where changed the neck p'up? Ever wondered why two knobs are different? Answers to these questions and many more...... Even just in this wee demo it sounds amazing. The Lazy-J amp doesn't sound too shabby, either....... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHOdXWLrxPk P. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RowdyMoon Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 That was great find thank you....and the absolute best part is when he mentions the headstock break specially for all the people who think headstock repair ruins a guitar for tone... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daveinspain Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Thanks for posting that… Loved it! Really love the way that guy plays too. I thing the owner of the guitar found it a good guardian... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pin Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 And my thanks also Pippy. A really informative piece about a great guitar and its previous great owners. And what a lovely bloke in charge of that guitar today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
68blues Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 63 quid for a 59 Les Paul, oh how times have changed. Great piece of film, loved it. 👍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyK Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Great find, Pippy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrorod Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Very informative and entertaining video ! Thanks for sharing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 I saw that when it first hit YouTube... It did clear up some misconceptions I had... But I still have my doubts about the whole neck pickup thing... It seems more purposeful to me. T-Bone Walker was getting that out-of-phase tone from his hollow-bodies, heck I think BB King even was doing it either purposely or by happenstance in the late 50's & early 60's too... Some surf guys were experimenting with it too, but I have no idea if it was Strat single-coils they were using or maybe some axes w/P90's... It's my understanding that by the shape of the pickup adjusting screw anchors and the angle of the brackets it would be nearly impossible to simply install it upside down. I've been led to believe that there is an angle on the ears and those bracket ears are mounted to the cover and since the poles are offset to one side one would have to painstakingly modify the bracket ears to have the opposite angle than they come with to mount at the proper level. That would take purposely bending or otherwise modifying those bracket ears in some manner to be able to put the pickup in with the poles facing the opposite side... Unless I'm wrong and those ears were perfectly flat on the neck position pickups, but from all the replacement PAF's I've seen in pictures they appear to be angled so that the pickup top surface can remain parallel to the strings due to the neck/string plane angle... Again I could be completely wrong and have looked at pickups from models other than vintage Les Pauls, so it could also be completely possible... Peter was egotistical and he was just arrogant and crafty enough to want to have a sound nobody else was playing at the time too, and a singularly distinctive and unique sound other than the Blues Breakers tone he was laying down just prior... My Vintage V100PGM, that will be arriving in a week or so, (yes I know, a {very} poor-mans Gibson CC#1) has the mismatched pickup control knobs too, yet it's not marketed as a Peter Green/Gary Moore model, yet it was Gary Moore that installed the taller foil tops on the lower/rear/bridge pickup control pots so he could reach them more easily across the arch-top... It is, after all, The Holy Grail!!! Larry Corsa was actually Demo-ing that guitar at the Dallas Guitar Show, when it was originally selling at auction, in reasearch for his own CV/Corsa/Manalishi custom guitars! He not only makes just about the very best Peter Green mod custom guitars, but also modifies Gibsons to be about as close as you can get to The Peter Green Lemon Drop Burst... I just loves me some Peter Green out-of-phase quack! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krock Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Is this the guitar Bonamassa now owns? Edit: Just googled it, seems he just borrowed it for the RAH gig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Is this the guitar Bonamassa now owns? Edit: Just googled it, seems he just borrowed it for the RAH gig Correct, he was gifted the opportunity to play The Holy Grail for that engagement. He was also presented with Bernie Marsden's The Beast and Rory Gallagher's Strat on yet other occasions while across the pond in their Respective homelands... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan H Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 It's my understanding that by the shape of the pickup adjusting screw anchors and the angle of the brackets it would be nearly impossible to simply install it upside down. I've been led to believe that there is an angle on the ears and those bracket ears are mounted to the cover and since the poles are offset to one side one would have to painstakingly modify the bracket ears to have the opposite angle than they come with to mount at the proper level. That would take purposely bending or otherwise modifying those bracket ears in some manner to be able to put the pickup in with the poles facing the opposite side... I'm not sure where you got the idea the neck pickup was mounted upside down...it's just oriented the same way as the bridge pickup. There's no trickery going on here... -Ryan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 I'm not sure where you got the idea the neck pickup was mounted upside down...it's just oriented the same way as the bridge pickup. There's no trickery going on here... -Ryan If you are looking at the guitar head-on oriented like it's sitting in a stand or hanging on a wall hanger - The position of the poles is "upside-down" from stock. You're saying the same thing as I am, differently... I'm referring to the brackets/ears where the pickup adjustment screws secure to the pickup: Due to the body slope & string plane angle those "ears," I believe are sloped/pitched so that the pickup will lie flat on the mounting ring and parallel to the strings even though the body slopes down and away from where the strings first come off the neck onto the body and get progressively further-away-from/higher-off-of the body as they go to the bridge. Often the pickup rings are thicker on one edge than the other to accommodate for this too... I've seen people try to achieve the same configuration as Peter Green and ended up having the pickup pitched at an awkward angle down into the body toward the bridge and were not parallel with the string plane. That was on a Byrdland, so possibly there's much more of a noticeable string-plane/neck-body angle on a semi-hollow or hollowbody arch-top possibly than the Les Paul, and possibly therefore the pickup mounting ears on pickups out of those models has a much more angled surface than on a Les Paul, I'm not certain... If it's flatter on the Les Paul then it would be a much simpler transition than on the ones I've seen... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pippy Posted January 29, 2014 Author Share Posted January 29, 2014 ...If it's flatter on the Les Paul then it would be a much simpler transition than on the ones I've seen... They are flat on a PAF, Jimi; P. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Very cool interview!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgm Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 I think what we all mean is that one bobbin on the neck pickup was turned round don't we...? Out of phase. Off topic a bit - Mr Harris bought my candy apple red Mustang bass with a sports stripe in about...1990? Very nice man, came to my studio in Guildford and had a good chat. He left me with his 'for-hire' catalog....something else, that lot. Regards! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 They are flat on a PAF, Jimi; P. Well that certainly dismisses my misconception on Peter's LP! So apparently it in fact would be quite easy to install it facing 180 degrees opposite if one wasn't paying close enough attention and not having a ton of history or experience in the mid 60's with pickups that hit the market in '57 and took who knows how long to hit The UK in sufficient quantity to start hitting guitar shops, such as Selmers in London... An interesting article in Premier Guitar on the subject of that guitar. I wish I had the pics of the humuckers in the Byrdland that led to my misconception, it clearly had the neck pickup turned and installed in the same orientation as the Peter Green LP and due to the angle of those ears it pitched steeply down into the body toward the bridge... I guess I assumed all humbuckers in Gibsons mounted the same so it would have the same effect on Peter's LP... My bad... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 So apparently it in fact would be quite easy to install it facing 180 degrees opposite Indeed. Or even on purpose. I do that on mine. It just moves the adjustable poles closer to the middle though. It will not alter the phase of the pickup - only flipping the magnets underneath will do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 I think what we all mean is that one bobbin on the neck pickup was turned round don't we...? Out of phase. Not exactly, but close. There are actually several ways to produce and out-of-phase condition either electronically with the wiring or magnetically with the magnets. Current makes or Peter Green modded pickups can have them installed normally with the poles oriented on opposite edges of the pickups wired out-of-phase and/or magnetically with the magnets turned and both pickups oriented with the poles on the same edge as was Peter's LP - which can be seen well in this vid: And boy if it don't look like that neck pickup ain't sittin' quite level but pitches down toward the bridge... (even if only slightly) I've done it with the magnets in one of my P90 style pickup clad guitars. In the pickup assembly under the bobbins & windings are magnets. If you remove the covers, and then disassemble the pickup by remove all the pole screws, if you slip the magnets out which are the length of the bobbin like rectangular shims approx. 1/8" thick or so, and you turn them 180 degress and re-orient them the long way back into the pickup, and you do this with both magnets; re-orienting both of them (not flipping them but keeping them the on the same plane and swapping the ends by turning the magnets 180 degrees like say the magnest are lying on a table and you are looking down at it and one end is at 12 o'clock and the other end is at the 6 o'clock position, and you leave it on the table and rotate it, like the hands on the clock, so the ends switch positions) out of magnetic phase from the other pickup... It achieves a significant out-of-phase tone in the middle position with both pickups selected, in P90 style pickups. So much so that some of the subtlety is lost in comparison to humbuckers, IMHO... The furthest out of phase is when both volumes are at the exact same level, you can actually turn down one volume control of either pickup and the overall volume of the output actually increases as the pickups to closer to being in-phase and away from their peak out-of-phase position... This gives you a whole array more of tonal choices and you can mix things up incredibly by rolling one volume control off and or mixing them both up making the output a little more or a little less out-of-phase... Peter did this alot in his soloing; which was one of his trademarks allowing him to be all over the map for tones during 1 number... Don't even get me started on his use of reverb in and out up and down... He really ran the gambit! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awel Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 After watching this video, yesterday evening I just plugged my guitar into a Blues Junior, Crank it up, and play ... well it was amazing this crunchy soulfull sound, rich, natural, sensible to your attack! He is right about the magic of a good guitar plugged into a simple tubes (or valves :)) amps ... but the issue is you have ONE sound and who can really live with ONE sound, of course you can vary a bit the tone with volume and tone pots but the main sound is still the same. We play originals and blues rock covers in my band and how can I pass from a SRV tone to a ZZ top 80's period sound? Even if I will do only original songs not sure I will be satisfied with one sound only Peter Green, Buddy Guy, BB King or Albert King could be I think. Perhaps out of the topic but I have just think about that after playing "direct" mode yesterday Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 After watching this video, yesterday evening I just plugged my guitar into a Blues Junior, Crank it up, and play ... well it was amazing this crunchy soulfull sound, rich, natural, sensible to your attack! He is right about the magic of a good guitar plugged into a simple tubes (or valves :)) amps ... but the issue is you have ONE sound and who can really live with ONE sound, of course you can vary a bit the tone with volume and tone pots but the main sound is still the same. We play originals and blues rock covers in my band and how can I pass from a SRV tone to a ZZ top 80's period sound? Even if I will do only original songs not sure I will be satisfied with one sound only Peter Green, Buddy Guy, BB King or Albert King could be I think. Perhaps out of the topic but I have just think about that after playing "direct" mode yesterday That's why I have 6 electric guitars & counting with 2 tube amps and 2 solid-state amps and some pedals... It's all predicated upon my mood... And I got options... It's also why I'm saving up for a Line 6 DT50 and a Pod HD500X, so I can try every conceivable amp I've ever wanted to toy-with, without having to shell-out buku-bucks... You can switch from a Marshall stack to a Fender Blackface to a Hiwatt head to a Marshall Plexi to a Fender Bassman to a Marshall Bluesbreaker JTM45 all at the click of a footswitch instead of having to buy or go to one of each of those amps and get a powerfully accurate signal sound/tone... It just makes sense financially instead of being on this quest for the perfect amp/gear and buying amps to be disappointed and then having to sell or trade-in at a loss to try another... And yes, tone is in the hands! But you can get a reasonably accurate reproduction with an out-of-phase mod on a double humbucker clad axe and still have a plethora of stock Gibson Les Paul, or whatever guitar you choose to modify, tones from the same axe; as when the selector switch is in the bridge pickup position it's a single pickup selected so it's NOT producing out-of-phase tones, and the same goes for when the selector switch is in the neck pickup position. Those positions will give you stock tones, in that guitar, on those respective pickups... It's only when the selector switch is in the middle position combining both pickups that the pickups are out-of-phase of each other giving you that distinctive "quack." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awel Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 That's why I have 6 electric guitars & counting with 2 tube amps and 2 solid-state amps and some pedals... It's all predicated upon my mood... And I got options... It's also why I'm saving up for a Line 6 DT50 and a Pod HD500X, so I can try every conceivable amp I've ever wanted to toy-with, without having to shell-out buku-bucks... You can switch from a Marshall stack to a Fender Blackface to a Hiwatt head to a Marshall Plexi to a Fender Bassman to a Marshall Bluesbreaker JTM45 all at the click of a footswitch instead of having to buy or go to one of each of those amps and get a powerfully accurate signal sound/tone... It just makes sense financially instead of being on this quest for the perfect amp/gear and buying amps to be disappointed and then having to sell or trade-in at a loss to try another... And yes, tone is in the hands! But you can get a reasonably accurate reproduction with an out-of-phase mod on a double humbucker clad axe and still have a plethora of stock Gibson Les Paul, or whatever guitar you choose to modify, tones from the same axe; as when the selector switch is in the bridge pickup position it's a single pickup selected so it's NOT producing out-of-phase tones, and the same goes for when the selector switch is in the neck pickup position. Those positions will give you stock tones, in that guitar, on those respective pickups... It's only when the selector switch is in the middle position combining both pickups that the pickups are out-of-phase of each other giving you that distinctive "quack." +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 I'd say that guitar found a good home. I enjoyed his comments about amp gain too - keep it where it cleans up with a lighter attack or you lose all the dynamics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgm Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 I wonder if anyone has 'The End Of The Game', the Peter Green solo album on Reprise which he made at De Lane Lea Studios shortly after he left Fleetwood Mac....? It's just a jamming album but IMO entirely worth it for the 1st track alone, 'Bottoms Up' which is 7-8 mins of the finest, most fluent guitar soloing Green ever did. Some of the greatest lead playing I have ever heard. Around the same time I was fortunate enough to see him and Snowy White jamming, just the 2 of them at a benefit for a small club in Surrey. I tried the albums after that - 'In the Skies', 'Little Dreamer', but his heart wasn't in it. Years later I heard the Splinter Group and there were brief flashes of the old brilliance but still no, not the same; then I saw them play live (in Farnham, must have been 2003 or something like that) and I was horrified at how awful he was - he obviously didn't care at all and shouldn't have been onstage. But even to this day I feel that in truth, the guy could get it all back with a couple of weeks of good practice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pippy Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 I wonder if anyone has 'The End Of The Game', the Peter Green solo album on Reprise... Strange as it may seem I've got it on a Compact-Cassette! A real, pre-recorded one, too! Not a copy.....LOL! Happily I still have a Technics cassette deck....... Shame to hear about your experience with the Splinter Group, though. P. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 I wonder if anyone has 'The End Of The Game', the Peter Green solo album on Reprise which he made at De Lane Lea Studios shortly after he left Fleetwood Mac....? It's just a jamming album but IMO entirely worth it for the 1st track alone, 'Bottoms Up' which is 7-8 mins of the finest, most fluent guitar soloing Green ever did. Some of the greatest lead playing I have ever heard. Around the same time I was fortunate enough to see him and Snowy White jamming, just the 2 of them at a benefit for a small club in Surrey. I tried the albums after that - 'In the Skies', 'Little Dreamer', but his heart wasn't in it. Years later I heard the Splinter Group and there were brief flashes of the old brilliance but still no, not the same; then I saw them play live (in Farnham, must have been 2003 or something like that) and I was horrified at how awful he was - he obviously didn't care at all and shouldn't have been onstage. But even to this day I feel that in truth, the guy could get it all back with a couple of weeks of good practice. Lest we not forget when he finally came out of his hermitage it was after volunteering himself into serious mental health treatment. He basically surrendered himself to a sanitarium and I believe he may have even underwent electro-shock therapy and other serious treatments for his Schizophrenia that was exacerbated by by the infamous Munich Germany acid trip/party in 1970. He has been on serious serious psychotropic drugs as an ongoing course of treatment from before his re-emergence with The Splinter Group. He may seem like he didn't care and shouldn't be on stage, but the truth is the major and powerful drugs he's still on to treat the mental illness that the Acid and drug-culture self-abuse he inflicted upon hisself, leave him quite zombified for lack of a better term... It's as if he's not there... Probably less so now, as the treatments have gotten somewhat refined since he originally got somewhat of a handle on his mental illness... He was having serious psychotic delusions and hearing voices... So much so that during his hermitage he threw all of his possessions, furniture, and household items out of his house, and then he threw himself out of his house thinking the voices were in the items, he then ran out of his own home afraid to go back inside as a way of fleeing from the voices... The constabulary was called and offered to take him to a mental health institution and he agreed he was so terrified... Yes, he did it to himself, but clearly he must have had some level of it in his genes to begin with, but most schooled on the subject believe the Munich Acid trip/party was the catalyst to the end of his career and even his entire persona as we all knew it to be up to 1970. It is a very sad story! Knowing this makes me believe that it's actually a miracle that we have him at all and that he's been able to continue making music all these years. He never really stopped and those other albums you brought up were made with his brother during his hermitage in which he remained very active in music, but only within a very tight cadre of trusted friends and family. Frankly, he could have ended up like Danny Kirwan and be so hermitted and reclused that he lives in half-way houses and mental institutions off and on and doesn't even make music any longer... Danny was just as badly affected by the same Munich Acid trip/party and he's never recovered, it only took longer before like a slow rolling train before Danny finally broke-down. He kept it somewhat together throughout his solo career and then fell off the face of the earth... He was apparently living in The USA for a time, but a few years back it appears that he moved back to Saint Mungo's shelter for the mentally ill and homeless in London... So while it appreared that Peter Didn't care and shouldn't have been on-stage, rest assured it was due to the massive amounts of powerful psychotropic drugs required to keep him able to function socially at all and that it's actually fortunate that he's even available to the public whatsoever... Another tragic case of Rock & Roll excess and substance self-abuse that was completely avoidable destroying 2 more shining white-hot burning careers at their peak... But yes, he's simply a pathetic shell or shadow of what he once was... So much so there was actually some speculation at one point that he was an imposter and not even the real Peter Green... As sad and pathetic as he is now, it's him, but at least we still have him... And no, he'll never get it back no matter how much he practices because his neurology has actually been corrupted and damaged by the Acid and the mental illness, not to mention the treatments... I apologize for the long-windedness of this response, I just wanted to spread the information and answer the innocent misunderstandings I saw in the post... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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