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Gave the Les Paul a run today .. and


EuroAussie

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I felt like a 15 year old kid in Gutar Centre.

 

Occasion was to give it a run with my new Zoom G3 with its gazillion amp mudulators and effects.

 

Actually reminded me why I stopped playing for so many years. All that distorion and effects just bored me to tears really soon and I found the whole thing quite demotivating. Plus my back started to hurt after a while as the LP does weight a bit.

 

The only thing I can genuinely imagine still giving the LP a run is though blues licks and impro which luckily is somthing I can see myself doing once I become a bit better at lead and impro playing.

 

Do you boys still strap on the electrics, and if yes what do you use them for, and what do you play ? Alone at home, or in a band setting ?

 

I reckon im basically a 99% acoustics guy for life.

 

EA

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Sold my Les Paul and bought the J-45. Hardly ever played the LP. Was a no-brainer. Still have an old strat copy I drag out on rare occasions, mostly used by a friend of mine to lay out some electric leads when we play together. Always been an acoustic guy, I press so hard on the strings I'm forever out of tune when I play on an electric. I'm a soundhole kind of guy.

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Do you boys still strap on the electrics, and if yes what do you use them for, and what do you play ? Alone at home, or in a band setting ?

 

 

teles.jpg

 

DSC00582.jpg

 

335_1-1.jpg

 

DSC00509.jpg

 

None of which have left their case or been as much as strummed since I bought the first Gibson acoustic

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Cheers guys,

 

The big Gibson is a variant on a ES-335, but with the Bigsby. That's a great guitar.

 

To be honest though, these are my favourites.

 

021a45ff.jpg

 

Love these ones, those Gretsches are as close as an electric comes to the feel of playing an acoustic. So they'd be the most likely to get a run out.

 

As for the Mrs, she doesn't mind, it's all contained with my music room, well that's what it used to be called, it's now the second 'spare bedroom' and I am dwindling the numbers slowly but surely....

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Love these ones, those Gretsches are as close as an electric comes to the feel of playing an acoustic.

 

Right on the money and amen to that! Gretsch guitars are just a whole different feel than any other electric guitar around and, as you say, it's much like an acoustic feel. Great guitars!

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Every so often I get the urge to strap on the LP (2006 black beauty reissue), stick the ear plugs in, turn it up (1965 blackface twin) and rattle the walls. Mostly mid-late '60's rock and '50's blues with some Pearl Jam and others thrown in. No petal distortion - just that generated by a good cranked tube amp. I also jam with a couple bands in town when the mood strikes.

 

It's good for your soul!!

 

Peace,

 

LCB

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Yeah, I cant argue with that. Im a huge Malcolm Young fan and love the tone of his Gretsch. Plus I really dig the big *** look of Gretsch's in general.

 

However the LP aint going anywhere as that was a gift from Mrs EA ... what a woman !

 

It was my first Gibson and actually has a great tone as she had a very experienced muso friend to try out a few with her and cherry picked this one.

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Yeah, I cant argue with that. Im a huge Malcolm Young fan and love the tone of his Gretsch. Plus I really dig the big *** look of Gretsch's in general.

 

However the LP aint going anywhere as that was a gift from Mrs EA ... what a woman !

 

It was my first Gibson and actually has a great tone as she had a very experienced muso friend to try out a few with her and cherry picked this one.

The Mrs. bought you a guitar ??? WOW !!!

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I still rock out the electric regularily. I have a 2000 Gibson Flying V '67 RI which I play through a 1981 Marshall JCM800 2204 50w tube half-stack. I haven't played seriously in a band for a few years, but my wife likes to play drums now and then, so together we wake up the neighbourhood every once in a while with our own little garage band. We play everything from old classics by Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd to AC/DC, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, with some blues, grunge, and even punk rock thrown in. It's also fun when the boys come over to get into a couple beers and wail on a drum set with some loud guitar. Good thing I live out in the country and my closest neighbours are wild animals. As much as I love acoustic guitar, there's something great about feeling the guitar so loud that it rattles your bones. [biggrin]

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Well .... I think if I lived out in the sticks where furry creatures were my only neighborus and I had an appropriate garage I reckon Id be cranking the LP a lot more, most likely with Bon Scott era AC/DC riffs ..... might have to borrow PM's Gretsch for that though .... :rolleyes:

 

I still rock out the electric regularily. I have a 2000 Gibson Flying V '67 RI which I play through a 1981 Marshall JCM800 2204 50w tube half-stack. I haven't played seriously in a band for a few years, but my wife likes to play drums now and then, so together we wake up the neighbourhood every once in a while with our own little garage band. We play everything from old classics by Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd to AC/DC, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, with some blues, grunge, and even punk rock thrown in. It's also fun when the boys come over to get into a couple beers and wail on a drum set with some loud guitar. Good thing I live out in the country and my closest neighbours are wild animals. As much as I love acoustic guitar, there's something great about feeling the guitar so loud that it rattles your bones. [biggrin]

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The Gretsches are amazing, EA, as I said it's the closest in 'feel' terms it gets to playing an electric that behaves like an acoustic. In sound terms it's very easy to get from Angus all the way across to Bryan Setzer or even Chet like sounds from them. Fantastic guitars.

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i havent a clue about electrics , been a purely acoustic guy for a long time . we have no drummer or bassist , just an acoustic little combo , but i was brought up on purely rock

music , and of course would love a big amp and a nice electric to blast out a few riffs.... if i had the funds . .

 

this seems like a good place to ask PM and Buc about the 'closest to acoustic' feel of the gretchs ? can you extrapolate a bit on that? and remember , i'm ignorant .

if i had a windfall then ,( after buying a hummingbird and maybe a little small bodied gibson) , then i wouldve been searching for an ES electric . purely based on the looks i guess, cos most heroes would be strats or telecaster players .... whats difference ? you saying that the gibsons just have one sound to them ? the gretch's are versatile with playing styles ?

thanks guys .

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Sorry for the thread-jack EA,

 

BBG, it's a hard one to explain without sounding silly or contrived, but there is normally a very different feel from playing a Tele, Strat, LP, SG, even an ES model than there is playing an acoustic. Well gretsches tend to feel closer to playing an acoustic than they do an electric, perhaps its just the bigger archtop bodies as a Duo Jet type model definitely feels and plays closer to an LP than it does an acoustic.. but the bigger ones tend to really liven up with thicker/heavier strings too (again like an acoustic).

 

Way to difficult to explain I'm afraid as it's a purely perception thing, only thing I can suggest is to try one out in a store if you see one. The necks, the strings, the vibrations, the response, the fact they pretty much are an acoustic (albeit differently braced) just with pickups and f-holes rather than soundholes, it just feels much much closer to how you would play your acoustic than any other electric guitars I've tried. A very noticable sensation really. A lot of players respond the same way with them.

 

I'm not saying you can't get a full array of sounds, from a Tele, Strat, LP, SG, or any of the ES models, certainly not, but they all feel very much like playing an electric guitar, the closest rival would probably be the ES-330, no central block etc... it still feels like a thinline electric even though it has a bigger acoustic response than a 335, but nowhere close to the acoustic response many players get on a Gretsch. I'm big fan of ES guitars, but I would definitely say the closest playing sensation to an acoustic guitar when playing electrics would be from the Gretsch series.

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These are my two electrics, both ES 335s. As you can see, one has way too many strings on it. I only play for myself these days, and with things turned down pretty low when using these puppies, which are pretty loud even through my little Fender Champ. I do enjoy them, as it enables me to indulge in my old-age fantasies of what might have been.....

 

Even if you are a pure acoustic guy, having at least one electric enables you to indulge in that secret fantasy of being ___________ (fill in the blank here, for example "Eric Clapton" or "Roger McGuinn").

 

These are not light. Each is right at eight pounds (3.7 kg) and they get heavy pretty quickly when you are playing. But they are a LOT lighter than an LP.

 

Do I have a clue of what I'm doing? Nah, but it's still fun.

 

ES335sisters.jpg

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