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Great ... but opinions are opinions. I wish the sound had more snap to it myself. It's murky and indistinct.
Originally Posted by jzucker
No, I'm not a pro, so you can happily discount my opinion and press on your merry way. Enjoy your group and the opinions you share.
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12-21-2018 07:43 PM
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Bloody hell, with the post I assumed Robert was replying to redacted, this probably comes off quite sinister lol.... Originally Posted by christianm77
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I've never owned more than five guitars at one time in my life. At the same time I had four amps. I like tone options. I also like making the car payment. There are guys here, I'm sure, who've spent more on one guitar than I have on music gear in all my life. Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
I like a guitar that delivers what I demand. It's not a matter of being faithful or unfaithful. It's a matter of, does this guitar do the job I need it to do inside the budget I have available?
If we really want to learn our one and only instrument better, there's only one route ... practice. It's not how much the damned thing cost. It's how much it's worth. If it makes us want to play, it's a great guitar. If not, time to keep shoppin'.
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Just wanted to add that tone is also in the pick (or lack of...?).
The pick to us is kinda like the mouthpiece to a horn player, sure the way our flesh interacts with this foreign body has a large effect on tone, but the physicality of the piece or pick itself imparts a sound. With a pick, different material, different thickness, shape etc all make a difference. Need more attack but don't wanna play harder? Get a file and give the pick's edge a rasp or 2... In my past life as a rocker, I remember being frustrated I couldn't get that Hendrix "attack", even after trying everything gear and pedal wise. Then I tried putting a kink in the pick's edge and there it was!
...
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OK this vid is a little cheesy YouTube guitar fodder, but he does make the pick angle and attack point I was trying to make (wish he had demonstrated it more). I think he gets a nice jazz tone, although if he moved his pick hand above the neck pickup on the strat, he wouldn't need to do that tone roll off so much.
Of course he is talking about solid body guitars, but in this world, I agree with Darrell. the instrument is essentially an attractive vehicle for the pickups (#shotsfired) and the effect of wood is very small. Tangible, but a small part of it, and objectively it's hard to necessarily say maple or mahogany sounds better than any other type of wood. Anyway that is a whole other flame war.
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Part of the huge appeal, an appeal that extends well beyond jazz guitar circles, of a Julian Lage, IMO is his phenomenal ACOUSTIC tone. To say that it's the road less traveled in modern jazz guitar, is an understatement.
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Thanks for the introduction to Ulf. He has some great content out there on Youtube and I have enjoyed his clear, woody tone and the excitement of his fast-moving, long, flowing lines.
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That post now seems to be gone too, as is my reply to it. In fact, any post that quoted that post seems to be gone as well! Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
Like it never even happened! you'd think those of us who had posts deleted would at least be told.
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I have a fairly substantial collection of Ulf's music and he's a really interesting guitarist/musician. He probably has the widest dynamic range of any guitarist I know of, all the way from whisper quiet to playing an acoustic so hard that it completely detunes (and everything in between). He also has an enormous stylistic range from straight ahead bop to quiet chord melody to duets with Flamenco great Gerardo Nunez to jazz interpretations of Baltic folk music. Every once in a while I just put the whole collection on shuffle while I walk and the variety is amazing. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
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No big. I think this falls pretty squarely into the realm of "Shi!t Happens". We're all probably better off having that exchange disappear. I wasn't going to do anyone any good and it wasn't going to change anyone's mind. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
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Ulf Wakenius, Notes from the Heart (The Music Of Keith Jarrett) is a treasure. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
Ulf Wakenius: Notes from the Heart
I attended a clinic when he was touring with Oscar Peterson where he spent most of the session demonstrating how to play in the style of many of the best known jazz guitarists (Pass, Kessel, etc.). He nailed each one. He played his pawn shop prize black Aria, plugged into a Jazzkat (they had just come on the market), turned the treble way down and the bass knob up and left it there the whole time. He might have tweaked the guitar’s tone control a bit, but everything else was in his fingers.
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Interesting about picking location. Originally Posted by christianm77
Question- do you think your Tele would sound much Jazzier and deeper/warmer
IF it had 19 frets and Neck PU was at 20th fret location ?
You had it sounding very cool on the Middle Eastern Clip ( another thread )with the scale and picking and attitude ( I guess that counts as fingers ).
I just wonder if in addition to warmer picking location as you say if a warmer location for neck PU ( on Solidbodies and Semi -Hollows ).
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Dunno Squire. Probably not though. The physics doesn’t quite work that way (although I sometimes strum on the fingerboard for swing rhythm.) Originally Posted by Robertkoa
The best position as I understand it for a neck pick up is at the 24th fret, because that’s the harmonic node. So if you pick and sense the string there you get most fundamental and least overtones and therefore the most ‘warmth’ (but also the least cut.)
So I think that’s where the tele pup is. I’ll check it later, but warmth is really not a problem even with the single coil...
If you look at Gibson 125s and 175s etc you’ll notice the neck humbucker is set a little way from the end of the fingerboard which is usually 18 or 19 frets on those guitars iirc. So that’s about the 24th fret I think (have to test it when I get my hands on a guitar at some point)
The same is true of a Les Paul, but the Paul obv has more frets so that gap is filled up on those guitars.
So there’s a problem with floating pick up guitars in that if the pickup is screwed to the fretboard it’s a little out of position. The Ibanez solution is to attach the pickup to the fingerboard, which also allows them to have guitars with a floating bridge pickup.... Another solution is just to have more than 19 frets so I suppose it’s more a problem for retrofitting pickups.
Might be why I never liked the sound of my Atilla Zoller pickup on my 19 fret Loar come to think of it. I can put my blue tackable Djangobucker wherever I like otoh.
Also 24 fret guitars displace the neck pickup. Look at the way the Ibanez JS sig model has changed to try and deal with this for instance. Joe likes his neck pup les paul type tone.
(Btw the first 24 fret shred machine was the Selmer maccaferri. First guitar with a cutaway too. The fingerboard on the d hole model goes over the sound hole, which is not an option for pickups obviously. Siting a blue tackable pickup like a Stimer is never quite satisfactory to me for this reason maybe)Last edited by christianm77; 12-24-2018 at 08:12 AM.
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I don't agree it's all in the fingers. Some of it for sure, but a lot has to do with the gear you choose. What i see in the OP video is that a great player like Ulf can make any type of gear sound great, is great at getting his sound and generally good sound out of any type of gear, which of course is true. Also the fact that you don't need expensive gear to get a great sounding working rig, also true. Probably the kind of gear Ulf chooses to use is his thing (cause he has a lot of gear as seen in his videos, plus at the level he plays i think you can get whatever you want eventually), but musicians that never get into the gear thing and just use whatever is available, or whatever they happened to buy, sure that's pretty common.
However, for me at least, there's a lot of joy to be found in gear, it is a musical trip on its own. It's all about supporting the music and sounds you 're after. I can happily play a jazz gig with my Tele and Roland xl40 and i like the sound, but use my Elferink and vintage princeton reverb and it's a whole different level. There is something about a great archtop, acoustic, classical, even electric guitar that can't be found in lesser instruments. Amps are like that too. If that thing is relevant to your playing, once you experience it, you gotta follow the path. And a lot of times, players that are not interested in gear anymore are players that have really been around the block, tried a lot of stuff, and settled on what they like, which sometimes can be cheap stuff ( but usually it's not).
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Takes us back to the likelihood that Ulf plays that set up because it’s consistent and works well for the road
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I’m quite sure that if Peter Bernstein were to play some EHV-type solid-body guitar with only a bridge pickup (and only one knob for volume—no tone knob!) playing through a Marshall stack, try as he may, would not get it to sound like his Zeidler through a vintage Blackface amp. Conversely, if EHV were to play Bernstein’s rig (with no pedals) he would not be able to get his signature sound either. The reasons are pretty obvious—gear does matter! Hands won’t make the EHV guitar sound like the Zeidler, although I’m sure that either one of those guys would still make them sound good, because of their HANDS. Both of those guitars are still guitars, and both those guys are great players, but their styles and personal sounds are what make them who they are as improvising artists. Each requires different gear from the other to achieve their sounds. Now, give Bernstein a solid-body guitar with a neck pickup, and he will get much closer to his tone and sound a lot more like himself than he would with the guitar sporting only a bridge pickup. I think you get my point—HANDS and GEAR are both required for every guitar player. With a beginner it doesn’t really matter whether they’re playing an electric or an acoustic (they’re both guitars, for cryin’ out loud!), since they can’t get a good sound with their hands—YET. That was the point of my earlier post that started so much controversy.
Last edited by El Fundo; 12-24-2018 at 07:34 PM.
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+1 El Funds
True
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Just comparing Bernstein's sounds with the L5 and with the Zeidler era, noticable difference there.
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Another way to say it is:
What good are hands without a guitar, and in the case of an electric guitar—the entire rig?
What good is a guitar without hands?
Hence, the Jascha Heifetz anecdote.Last edited by El Fundo; 12-24-2018 at 03:11 PM.
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Someone needs to come up with a syllogism!
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I think that it makes a difference if the pickup is half the distance from the note to the bridge. Originally Posted by Robertkoa
The usual approach is to do that for the open string. That places the pickup at the 24th fret. And you get maximum fundamental by picking right over it.
But why should that work for a fretted note?
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Like what I said but shorter and clearer lol. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Good question! Why should it?
One thing I have noticed is that it always seems easier to pick when amplified when you are right above the pickup. If you are in bridge position, it’s easier to play near the bridge.
The string gets slacker as you go towards the middle. That may also have something to do with it?
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I can see how Ulf could get a good sound from a solid body, as far as I'm concerned it's the player who dictates much of the tone. As an example, I recorded one of these clips on a Gibson 175, the other on an Ibanez solid-body. I seem to be able to produce a fairly similar tone from both of them.
Good Morning Heartache by Grahambop | Graham | Free Listening on SoundCloud
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I’m not sure which albums he used an L5 on. Would love to hear it. Originally Posted by Alter
Last edited by El Fundo; 12-24-2018 at 06:10 PM.
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Dunno about the L5. He used to play an ES175 as well pre-Zeidler, which is obv a very different guitar:
Very different tone too.
As mentioned above, he didn't rate his L5 very highly.
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mclaughlin sound here
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