Jeff’s Take on the Guitar Part II
// February 11th, 2011 // Uncategorized
This is part II of the article started last week by Jeff Larsen of “the Last Act” (again, what other band would it be? =P):
The next step was adding guitars to my collection. And I must admit, I am seriously picky about what guitars I want in my collection. At that time, I had no idea what I was looking for. This was in the latter part of the 90’s. At that time I had heard that Jackson had a good rep and I wanted to check it out. I went to the store and I found a flat black Jackson designed by Marty Friedman, formerly of Megadeth (he was still in the band at the time). This guitar had a real Floyd Rose, played like a dream, and it was built for speed. I got that guitar 30 minutes after I tried it. I have added a couple of more Jackson’s to my collection since then, but I also added another Dean. I went back to the same guitar store that I bought my first Jackson from in 2007 and was just in there to fool around on the guitars and see what was there. I saw a Dean Razorback, Dimebag Darrell edition. I thought “ok, whatever. Just another hyped up guitar. I’ll try it”. I tried it and immediately I discovered that this guitar was going to introduce a new playing style to me and it also played just awesome. Welp, the decision was made and 24 hours later I had that guitar. And based on the crunch and drive of the sound, I use that guitar mostly now, although I still love the Jackson’s for the ease of play, and the beauty of the play of the Gibson (which honestly, I don’t play as much as I should anymore).
My configurations and settings for things have changed a bit over the years, but I finally settled in on D’Adario .10’s for my strings (on all guitars) and .46mm Jim Dunlop vinyl picks. I like my floating bridges a hair ‘loose’ to remove space between the strings and the fret board (improve the action)…but not enough to make the strings buzz. I use my Peavy head for distortion…such a fuller, more real, overall better sound than a pedal (WAY better sound). All EQ’ing is done on the head, and the Transtube setting is turned way up. I use the onboard switch from the Peavy head to turn on and off the distortion when playing live. The guitar I used on that disc was the Dean Razorback…nice and crunchy. A good example of the resulting sound is off the last CD “Still Standing”. The sound of the guitar on that disc is almost completely unchanged from the way it sounds live. The Boss ME-8 pedal is used for effects such as flanger, harmonizer (live), and delays. In the past year I have added a Sennheiser ew 172 G3 Instrument Wireless System, and this thing is incredible! I love how it’s easy on batteries, and I also like the onboard sensitivity settings, cable length emulation, and tuner! Great stuff! And last, but not least, a ‘Steve Vai’ passive volume pedal with a stopper (actually a rubber door stop) glued in so it won’t go more than ½ way down to zero. I use it for when I need that extra “punch” during leads and such.
Maybe some of this will help someone in their quest to find the perfect setup. All I can say is, try, try again until you get it sounding just the way you want it to! I always thought “real” is better than “processed” (i.e. pedals and preamps), but that certainly doesn’t mean I’m right. It’s one big experiment! So good luck and I hope you all that are searching for the “grail” find it!
–JL
