Pickup discussion - fresh recordings

[roger bayliss]

A Gretsch oh no ....

Dave great playing and the right sounds on these. A few tracks have distortion evident to my ears such as Peacd Pipe and Wonderful Land. Otherwise very good and you proved your point about pickups !

[dave robinson]

Agreed Roger, I too heard the bit of distortion so I guess I overcooked the levels a bit trying to do what Malcolm Addey did with Move It, but you can't push digital recording in the same way you could the analogue VU meters. The last few tracks I had realised which is why they are cleaner.
That Gretsch 5655TG arrived from Gear4Music today and I couldn't believe the sound which is why I recorded it. My White Falcon doesn't sound like that and I find it strange that a £700 guitar sounds better than a £3450 one does.

I'd also like to add that the earlier tracks were DI into the Focusrite sound card and probably slightly overloaded - my fault.
The version of Wonderful Land just above the last couple was the first time we used the miking up technique and I think it's better. I'll work on my DI skills.

[abstamaria]

Hello, Dave Your clips are re
excellent. I agree the sound is very good, really close to the original, but then you play very well.

I I think you have proven your point, that one doesn’t need expensive gear to “get into the ballpark.“ Even a Gretsch might get you there, as you and our late number Roberto Pistolesi have illustrated. There are several alternative roads that lead to the Graile.

I should note that some of us, as a separate pursuit, want the guitars and amps that our heroes used. That includes me. A guitar with “Fender“ on the headstock was too far beyond my reach when I was in high school and listening to the Ventures and the Shadows. Late in life, when I could finally afford them, I bought guitars, amps, strings, and so on as they might have used. Yes, one may not need them to get That Sound, but just playing through these instruments is a joy also.

As for The Quest, I thought and still believe that the simplest approach would be to replicate as closely as possible the gear that produced the sound Listening to Paul and the other very good players here, that seems a sensible (if expensive) approach. And one gets to play with lovely instruments, hear tube amps and so on. Analog versus digital, perhaps.

Many thanks for taking the effort to illustrate.

Best,

Andy

[dave robinson]

The main point Andy was to demonstrate the real gear opposed to the less expensive alternatives that is what some people can stretch to.
I think the main lesson here is the contribution of the player to the whole thing. As things turned out it did me a big favour tackling these latest recordings, because there were a couple of guitars that I'd written off over the years as not suitable for this purpose, but I actually surprised myself and proved myself very wrong. I think because I got my hearing 'back' again after my illness, it gave me a fresh listen at stuff and as one who was always looking for better pickups and trying lots of different ones, I had missed the value of some of the stuff we already had. Happily for me I gave them another listen and now think differently.
Also I decided to push my curiosity to the limit and ordered the Gretsch 5565 and it has blown me away with it's playability and sound, it has a more pleasing sound than my White Falcon at a fifth of the price !
I ordered it expecting to be sending it back, but instead the WF is up for sale, it's a funny old world eh ?