Tonight’s gig at the street fair was rained out. Ah well. On the upside I have some unexpected free time, so here’s an update to my blog.
I picked up a new guitar not too long ago. This has been on my list for a long time but the stars never aligned. Every few month’s I’d go to the music store to see what they had but I never found one that felt right. I mainly play acoustic guitar, strictly rhythm, to accompany myself singing. I’ve written a few songs on guitar and I want to use it more in my recording.
I have a Strat that Martin lent me a long time ago but I could never really get the sound I was after. I wanted something with dual humbuckers, so I was looking at Les Pauls for a while, and finally figured I’d check out some hollowbody and semi-hollowbody guitars. I found a few new but I’m not such a good guitarist that it’s worth spending huge money, and there’s no point in getting a cheap guitar. So the strategy was to wait until the right used one went by.
This one was for sale at my rehearsal studio, in new condition and at less than half the original price, and right in my zone. It’s a hollowbody with the right pickups, an Epiphone Joe Pass signature model. It’s made in Korea, basically a knockoff of a Gibson (alot like the Chuck Berry one at the museum) that costs ten times the price, but you know, a well built instrument and a good value. It sounds great even unplugged, with excellent sustain and a smooth rich tone. The feel of the neck is great too, much more facile than any of my other guitars.
Gary was with me when I bought it and declared it an excellent jazz guitar (he’s a huge Joe Pass fan). Erik, the studio manager says there are two kinds of players who like a guitar like that: jazz guys, and punk/surf guys who crank it up and prize it for it’s nasty feedback. So perfect for me.
I came home and plugged it into my amp. Playing guitar thru an amp is the big missing piece in my sound, and it’s another thing you have to get used to. My amp is a Roland JC-120 which I use mainly as a keyboard amp since it has that built-in chorus and warm distortion, great for thickening up Fender Rhodes and organ sounds on stage. But it’s really made for guitars and pairs particularly well with a jazz guitar. Woah, totally awesome! So now I’m getting used to it and exploring the range of tones between smooth and chunky.
Next step is to hook it up to some effects. A long time ago Martin also lent me a Zoom multi-effects box, but for the life of me I can’t find it. Ah well, the main application is studio recording, and my method has always been to apply the effects in software. That’s still and option. I can come direct out of the guitar or out of the amp and it ought to sound better than before. But I’m unlikely to fire up my computer just to practice, and it’d be good to get together a bag of tones that I know and can use in various writing and arranging situations. So I might end up getting a new FX box anyway. But not until at least sometime in July.
