Another video clip from this album I'm working on

Show and Tell
#1

I promise I won’t post TOO much more from this, or if you all want to hear more of it then I’ll at least consolidate everything to a single thread so as to minimize the spamming.

But, while like 99% of my fast playing is legato, there IS a picking run in here, so for once it’s actually a little appropriate, haha.

This is the hard rock solo section dropped in the middle of a moody song that kind of splits the difference between blues and classical, I guess. Idunno, not sure exactly how to describe it… but while trying to figure out how to add a solo section in here, going in a Tool-esq direction seemed to make a lot of sense (though in its current barely-mixed form you can barely hear them, but there are some fun - and painful, I’ve been working carefully through a fretting hand pointer finger injury here, and holding those bars with long sustained notes while moving my other fingers around didn’t help things any - Satch-like clean arpeggios in the background).

Anyway, This was a lot of fun, and I think I’m honing in on where I want my tone to be - I did some A/B reamp comparisons wirth my Mark V and my Roadster, and it turns out stacking them sounds pretty awesome…

11 Likes
#2

Figured I’d post one more solo in the same thread - this song has been a lot of fun to work on, the solo section is much more “rock” but it’s this big, upbeat pop song that happens to be a guitar instrumental and have a big Satch or EVH-like lead break in the middle. My fingertips were shot by the time I went back and shot this video, and it shows a bit in my bending control, but the vibe was still pretty fun so I thought this would be worth sharing.

This is my Suhr Modern 6 - my Strat always comes first in my heart, but this is objectively the best guitar I own and one of the best I’ve ever played.

3 Likes
#3

thanks, you just gave me Suhr gas. and I was saving my next big purchase to be a J Cedric >:O

1 Like
#4

:rofl: Oh man, I’m sorry. This IS the nicest guitar I own though, and one of the nicest I’ve ever played. 2018, I think, custom order, mahogany body and quilted maple top (not my usual taste in specs at all, I wanted something to sound different than my flamed maple/swamp ash Custom 7, and unexpectedly this one was crisp, resonant, full, and just entirely different from any other mahogany bodied guitar I’ve ever played), with a roasted maple neck and a pair of Thornbuckers. The neck one is good; the bridge is unreal.

1 Like
#5

physically restraining myself from starting a “body wood doesn’t appreciably affect your tone” flame war

1 Like
#6

:rofl:

I think one of the complications is “mahogany” in common parlance is actually rather a large number of different types of wood and probably don’t all sound very much alike, and with Suhr being both very stringent on sourcing and not having to worry about mass production, they’re almost certainly using the real thing.

All I can say is this - I’d never owned a spare-no-expenses mahogany guitar over the years, but I’d owned a few decent ones and played a bunch and had certain tonal expectations. Most immediately, I’d bought an Ibanez RG3120TW as sort of a nostalgia purchase, I always liked the look of that model and remember I was in college when Ibanez introduced the Edge Pro and blew the LoPro ones out for cheap, but back then I couldn’t swing the $500 or $750 or whatever it cost even half off. So, it occured to me a few years before ordering this one to see if I could find one, I did find one used in Guitar Center for a pretty good price, bought it, and thought it was a fun, darker but richer-sounding alternative to the RG550 I’d picked up a little before, and then after a year or two decided I wanted to order another Suhr and since I wasn’t playing the 3120 as much as I’d hoped, maybe I should spec out something similar but with a roasted maple neck/fretboard from them, and placed an order.

Then it sounded nothing at all like the 3120 (or the other mahogany Ibanez I’d owned, an old 2027, or come to think of it I’d owned a PRS Singlecut SE for a while and eventually replaced it with a real-deal PRS Singlecut that was mahogany/flamed maple, so I suppose I DID own a nice mahogany guitar, but the upshot is they were all warm, thick sounding guitars). It was unexpectedly bright and clear, and I’d never in a million years have thought it was a mahognay guitar and still don’t know how much I like mahogany as a tonewood, save for specific roles (with a lot of low-mids, it makes for really thick sounding rhythm parts, hence the PRS), but I do know I really like this one. The resonance is insane, I’m pretty sure this guitar is actually alive. It’s odd, notes just sort of breathe.

Honestly, the funny thing is I don’t even think of it as being a mahogany guitar. It’s just a killer sounding guitar.

1 Like
#7

That is an astonishing guitar! And your playing, beyond any technical specifics, is just tasty.

About the whole mahogany thing, I align with the school of thought that states that the pick angle affects the tone more than any wood choice, and I guess I’m gonna die on that hill :sweat_smile: (@eric_divers you started this).

2 Likes
#8

Good stuff, my man! Really. That actually sounds like music.

2 Likes
#9

Jeez, thank you guys! I’m deep inside the process of recording this album, and it involves a LOT of self-doubt both on my ability to realize the vision of what I have in my head, and why I’m even bothering to write and record original instrumental music in a world where guys like Andy Timmons, Joe Satriani, Nick Johnston, Andy Wood, and Angel Vivaldi exist. I’m just really glad and grateful to hear that even an imperfect take like this is still resonating with people. Thanks for listening, and thanks for your incredibly kind words!

I guess I also think that tone is an incredibly complex equation and there are so many interconnected variables that maybe what I’m responding to with this particular guitar is a bridge humbucker that would be WAY too bright in my normal preferred alder, but here, in mahogany and then into a normally bright amp dialed in fairly dark, it all comes out in the right place, but… who knows. I am using the new Dunlop Flow nylon picks where someone, maybe Eric, I was talking with recently found them too dark and missed the brighter attack of Ultex, and this could all be connected…

2 Likes
#10

I found them to have a weird “swishy” sound that’s not the same as Tortex, and also I find that I prefer a snappier 351-style attack. Flows in general almost feel “too easy” to play with for me. You sound great with them though!

1 Like
#11

Thanks! The Ultex sounded good too, though I think I like the softer attack here… helps that I was always more of a legato guy so it doens’t hurt to have a somewhat smoother attack, I guess.

1 Like