Reverend Slingshot Custom
I am incredibly pleased with my
Reverend Slingshot! I've had it for over a
year now, and play it as much as
my trusted long term companion ES-335.
Reverend is a small, friendly company
based in Michigan, making cool guitars
for very reasonable prices. I ordered
mine direct from them. It has three
P-90 pickups (with a good deal of P-90
hum, alas), a chambered body, a
Bigsby tremolo bar (my first!), and a superb
25.5 scale neck. I love, love,
love it, and it was less than a
grand.
What I especially appreciate about this guitar is how it resolves
my "Fender
problem." For the Serious and High-Minded Jazz Music I play,
Fender guitars
seemed too "Pop", too hot-rod, too snotty.
Various
Telecasters, Jazzmasters, and Strats (and clones of same) have
passed through
my hands over the years, but I never felt at ease with them.
Each model
carried a lot of historical "baggage" for me, specters of famous
guitarists
and their signature axes, and consequently when I played a Strat,
I was
always playing "a Strat", and so on for the other models. I couldn't
find my
voice. The Reverend guitar has a vintage Fender style neck, with
no
concessions to the shredder guitar market (e.g. shallow and flat neck,
locking
nut or bridge). The guitar blends elements of the Tele, Jazz and
Strat without being
beholden to any of them, and then filters the result
through a Danelectro. I really have
grown very fond of this guitar.
No-name Hoyer Guitar - (made in China, most
probably)
Another recent guitar acquisition is my
seafoam green semi-hollowbody
Hoyer Guitar, purchased from Subway Guitars
in Berkeley. Sometimes a guitar
just feels right, and looks cool, and
you've got to have it! Then you have to change a
million things about it. So I put in
some Art Deco tuners, Gibson re-issue PAF pickups,
new pots, jacks, and switches, and had
luthier Al Milburne make a new nut for it and
install graphite bridge saddles. Now it's
done, and now I have three -count 'em three -
electrics that I am crazy in love
with!
No-name open back fretless
banjo
I finally acquired a
fretless banjo. I've been drawn to clawhammer, fretless,
African-American,
and other esoteric banjo idioms for a
while, guessing that there would be a place
there to come up with some new riffs on tradition. This
banjo came from the estimable
Marc Silber (www.marcsilber.com). I put nylon classical guitar strings on it, and am
learning
some of the basic fiddle tune repertoire, and hope to eventually compose
for this instrumet.
Amplifiers
One of the biggest
developments for me during the past year was
collaborating with Louder Amps.
Well, perhaps "collaboration" is a bit
generous - they build 'em, I play 'em.
Louder amps is in fact my friend
Shane MacKay. He's a Hi-Fi electronics
hobbyist, if by hobbyist you mean
obsessive, perfectionist, voraciously
knowledgeable and extremely skilled.
After building high-end stereo
tube amplifiers for years, he decided to try
his soldering iron on a
guitar amp. He's now built about seven of them, each
with its own
personality, and each in various stages of refinement. The
process has been a
great learning experience for both of us - he learning
how to lay out
circuits better to avoid ground hum and eddy currents, me
learning what a
capacitor is.
The first amp is a 5881 or 6L6 based 35
watt head. It derives from the
Fender Bassman circuit, with an added gain
stage, a Baxandall tone stack,
and an ultralinear output stage. Although it's
fairly straightforward - the
way I like it - it has features of Shane's
invention that I believe are
innovative: the power tubes have adjustable bias
pots in the back of the
amp, and inputs to connect a multi-meter to read the
bias as you adjust it.
The first preamp stage has both an 8 pin and a 9 pin
socket, for more tone
options. There's a switch on the front that cuts the
tone controls out of
the circuit, so that you're just amplifying the guitar
signal. Since the
variable resistors that are the tone controls soak up a lot
of signal,
bypassing them greatly boosts the amplification (makes it louder).
The
volume knobs, bright switch and reverb remain active but not, of course,
the
tone controls. I have really fallen in love with this "amp brut" mode.
It's
hard to put into words, but it seems to me that, with a more direct
signal
path, the sound of the instrument is clearer, more immediate,
more
responsive and alive.
The newer amp is a clone
of a 1955 Fender low-power Twin, (5E8A circuit)
with an added master volume
and a "baxandall" tone circuit. The reverb unit
is similarly 6G15 with an
input tube, 6K6 driver tube, and an octal 6SL7
recovery tube (instead of a
12AX7).
Have you checked out the Trinity Multi-Wah made by Jacques? Will
Bernard has
one, and I was really fascinated by it. Definitely my next
stompbox purchase!
My Crucible Fuzz GE, made by Euthymia Electronics in
nearby Alameda, is a
savage germanium transistor-based, Fuzz Face type of
sound. Gobs of gorgeous,
warm, compelling fuzz!! Works for me.
I bought a used Leslie
simulator stompbox made by Option 5, their
"Destination Rotation." Squeezing
a compelling Leslie cabinet into a
stompbox is a notoriously difficult effect
to achieve; this pedal does it well,
with a little less attitude than the
popular Hughes & Keltner
version. The
other choice du jour is a Hughes & Keltner, which is powered
by a
12AX7.
Charlie Hunter, my bandmate in T.J.
Kirk, has at times been heavily
identified with that sound, much like Bill
Frisell and the volume pedal;
both guitarists have actually used these pedals
less than commonly assumed.
At any rate, the leslie/univibe thing is one of
those guilty pleasures that
I have a hard time denying myself. The Option 5
has a biamp feature that
sends the signal out in stereo, and the effect is,
shall we say, very
gratifying.
Early 80's Gibson ES-335
Cheapo
faux National Steel guitar
Dana
Bourgeouis Martin Simpson OM model
Mesa-Boogie
Mark III