An acoustic for non electric practice

[almano]

As there’s a delay with delivery dates for the new Burns Apache Noiseless Special until at least the end of next month I thought I would sort of compensate myself for this extended "new guitar" anticipation, with acquiring another guitar in order to fulfill a different requirement on my projected guitar needs.

This particular “need” is for a guitar that I can just grab in a moment of inspiration and plonk away on without having to go to the necessity of having to plug everything in to get a good sound.

What I was therefore looking for then was a semi acoustic with a useable tremolo arm in a rough sort of price range of around £500. I didn’t want to spend too much as it’s only meant for occasional practice sessions when I didn’t want to be bothered with plugging the whole correct caboodle in and tweaking the settings to get the right sound. It’s just meant basically for practicing scales and trying instant inspirational pieces.

A trawl of the net hit on a reasonably newly introduced guitar which looked like it could fit the bill. This guitar is the Ibanez AF75TDG BK Artcore.

It’s a reasonably good copy of the Chet Atkins Gretsch G6120 – and it’s only about a quarter of the price of the Gretsch – so I bought one!

I have to admit that it is a lot better than I anticipated. Alright, perhaps it is a beginner or mid-level instrument, but it is more than up to what I require of it.

With a good set of D’Addario’s on it, it has a good approximation to a Shad’s sound acoustically – plus it has a working tremolo in the Bigsby style which works really nicely.

For a lazy home guitarist (such as me these days) who can’t always be bothered to connect everything up, this guitar is brilliant. Although, to be honest, when I get the new Noiseless Apache, I may well change my mind! But for now, this “rather incorrect” guitar has actually become my favourite!

Okay, you can all shoot me down in flames now for being a temporary traitor to the Fender cause – but I will (honestly) return to the standard format when I feel like being loud once again!

Cheers,

Alan.

[Bluesnote]

I would'nt call you a traiter to the cause. A guitar is a guitar no matter what the style or make.
The main thing is that you are still playing and enjoying the instrument.
I know some folk cant see past the Strat but there really are some brilliant guitars out there that dont have fiesta red and solid bodies and sound like HBM:roll:
Hugh.

[RayL]

You made a good choice. They are well-made and well-finished guitars at, as you say, a quarter of the Gretsch price. I chose the AFS75T in Transparent Red and here it is at the Pipeline Convention, with Jim Nugent digging some carefully-crafted notes out of his Fender Bass VI and Martin Verrill deciding which of Timothy Jackson's drums to hit next.

secrets pipeline 09.JPG

(55.61 KiB) Downloaded 7090 times

Ray

[almano]

Yes, that's the one Ray. It looks good in transparent red - I chose the black version myself (probably cos' it looked like the Chet one in the Gretsch catalogue!)

It's interesting to see you're using yours electrically - I haven't got round to plugging mine in yet - I shall have to try, if only for the sake of interest, to see/hear what it sounds like. If it's as good electrically as it is acoustically, it must be the bargain of the century!

All in all, a good guitar with a very useable tremolo - and it's only a quarter of the price of a pukka Gretsch - how can you beat that?

Thanks for choosing the same guitar - I feel a lot more confident about the choice now!

Cheers,

Alan.

[ecca]

How disloyal not to buy a Fender.

[RayL]

It's interesting to see you're using yours electrically
Alan.

Alan,

I'd better own up at this point and tell you that I loved the shape, the build quality, the finish, the colour, the trem and the action, but I was not keen on the sound of the pickups. They are medium-output humbuckers - fine for jazz and soft strumming, but I wanted more 'twang' and output so I replaced them. I wish I could remember off-hand what I replaced them with, but I did mods on several guitars at that time and certainly these replacement had all that I required.

In addition, I did a complete rewire which, on a semi-acoustic with f-holes, requires the skills of a gynaecologist! The new pickups (unlike the originals) have coil taps so I replaced the standard 'one volume and tone per pickup' with the following four controls:

Neck pickup 4-way rotary switch - 1. Coils in series and in phase 2. Coils in series and out of phase 3. Coils in parallel 4. Single coil

Bridge pickup 4-way rotary switch - 1. Coils in series and in phase 2. Coils in series and out of phase 3. Coils in parallel 4. Single coil

3-way rotary switch giving - 1. Pickups in phase with each other 2. Pickups out of phase with each other 3. Mute

Master Volume


The guitar still looks exactly the same, but the range of sounds that it can produce in greatly increased. One of my favourite settings is 'super-twang' - Neck in position 1 with Bridge in position 2 which can be heard on the track Badlands from The Secrets' second album, Secret Society.

Ray

[cockroach]

Blimey Ray! You must be an electronic and wiring genius!

For years I wanted a guitar just like that- with every possible pickup and tone combination possible- in/out of phase, parallel/series, all pickup combinations, single/humbucking switching etc....the mythical guitar that could do everything.

I finally got one which could do a lot of those things, and it also had a piezo bridge pickup- a Godin LGX hybrid.....which was fantasic to play with at home and was a beautful quality guitar...and about 13 years ago was bloody expensive too!

Then I used it on stage- and turned into a schizophrenic mental wreck- especially when also needing to sing whilst playing it and trying to change settings on the fly, as they say...get a good sound, change by a flick of a switch to play rhythm or change sound..and suddenly it was 'how did I get that sound again????'

With the Squier Tele I use as a main guitar now, I can get adequate coverage of virtually any style of sound (jazz, country, Shads-sort-f, rock, blues etc) with a 3 position pickup switch, a volume knob and a tone knob....nice and simple and manageable...which is possibly why the design hasn't changed much since Leo started selling 'em in 1948!

[almano]

I have to admit that I like your idea Ray of changing the pick ups on the Ibanez to something nice ‘n punchy sounding.

I thought it could be a good idea to try to get something comparable to the original Gretsch items so that I could get a sort of Duane Eddy sound to the guitar when I plugged it in. I spent a couple of hours “Googling” this afternoon and just couldn’t find any suitably authorised kind of replacement p-u’s.

Okay, I thought, I’ll look at the Seymour Duncan site instead and see if there’s a suitable item there – “aaaargh!” – I got lost in lists of myriad pick up combinations and single items. So, just what can I use to turn my Ibanez into a pseudo Gretsch G6120?

Obviously it wouldn’t be sensible to spend £300 or so on pick ups for this particular guitar just to try to get a Duane Eddy sound for the occasional “plug in” – but one to two hundred wouldn’t be bad. I don’t mind the wiring bit of the equation – I’ve even wired in 40 odd leg Eprom’s successfully with a Weller gun before now (it’s damn tricky, and wrong - but it can be done!) – so a bit of gynaecological style acrobatics in this area is quite acceptable.

But, my problem is – just what would be the right (or best) pick ups to choose for this task?

Any recommendations anyone?

Cheers,

Alan.

[RayL]

Hi Alan

For the true Duane sound, you need the DeArmond single-coils that were fitted to the Chet Atkins 6120 that Duane bought on October 21st 1957. Ironically, Chet didn't actually like these pickups himself, so when Ray Butts designed Gretsch's own Filter 'Tron humbuckers the 6120 was changed to these.

For a present-day version of the DeArmond, these GFS Surf 90 Alnico II Rockabilly pickups look promising
http://store.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Surf- ... c_259.html

I can't give a personal recommendation because they weren't around when I modded my Ibanez. They're not too expensive, though, and fall within your budget.

Ray

[JimN]

TV Jones ("Tom") is a USA boutique pickup-maker who makes exact reproductions of the original USA Gretsch pickups, in various tone-flavourings, most of them humbucking (Filtertron and Supertron styles), but some single-coil (HiLoTron, as fitted to most examples of the Gretsch Anniversary and Tennessean).

See:

http://www.tvjones.com

Tom now also makes a reproduction of the DeArmond 200 model which was OEM on so many USA guitars of the period and later, including Gretsch (the Duane Eddy model), Guild (esp the Bert Weedon model), Martin (their electro-acoustic flat-top D28Es and the smaller 1-pickup OO model - Bruce had one) and Fender (the Coronado semis and some more modern Telecasters) and even Hofner, who made the DeArmond 200 available as an option on one of their semis (the Ambassador).

See:

http://shop.f-holes.co.uk/T-Armond/p197909_752038.aspx

But Tom's pickups (I've just had two TV-Classics fitted to my Gretsch) are hand-made and certainly not given away, pricewise.

JimN