heres another of Richards tunes,he did the bass ,kit and keys in cubase 5 and sent me all the files and i added the guitars and mixed it all in cubase 8.5 cause im on a 32bit pc and don`t have a music studio at the minute ,i went direct into a boss gx 700 for this one for some of the sounds .recorded about a year ago.thanks
That’s very nicely put together indeed. Took me back to the 80s (in a good way); lovely groove that stays interesting because of the details of the arrangement. Nice guitar parts and solo once again, fits perfectly.
Steve.
Hi Steve ,much apreciated comments.thanks
Hi Polgara, I do love this kind of stuff. Your friend sounds great on the bass. I also loved your guitar work. Which guitar are you using, which pickup setting, all that? To me it sounds double-coil but on a bridge or middle pickup. I have dared recently to try my own bridge pickup. On the Strat it’s a little frustrating because there’s no tone control, and I was wondering if a mod was in order (to wire the bridge pickup through the middle pickup’s tone control).
hi Leon ,thanks for your kind comments,ha ha are you still pondering over your bridge pickup . The guitar i used was my old strat with a tele neck and you were right about the double-coil, it has 2 humbuckers on it , both pickups run through one tone control , so yes i used all three positions on the guitar ,for the rhythm probably neck with coil split, for the pickin type funk riff mid position both pickups split i also have an out of phase option here with a pull/push pot a bit like jimmy page mid position sound but i didnt use that i dont think ,for the George Benson type solo (i wish lol ) was neck probs with tone back a bit , for the last solo,i used the bridge pickup it does sound a bit bright and rough so i may have split the bridge i dont know, i remember using the back of the plectrum which was all rough from scraping down the strings rock style ha ha .and i was going through a boss gx 700 fx rack . yes you should connect the bridge pickup to the same tone pot as the middle pickup if you want .if you google the question youll find a solution .it is easy to do, on one of my three single coils strats i have all three pickups going to the bottom tone control ,i removed the middle tone pot and moved the volume pot down into that hole so that i do`nt knock the volume pot with my picking hand which is very anoying when you turn it down accidently .
Interesting. Did you do the mods yourself? One thing I’m concerned about is that mods can reduce the value of an old guitar. My strat is from the early 80’s, made in California. I don’t suppose it’s very valuable, but I have heard that mods will ruin its value. It plays and sounds just like it did when I bought it and the only thing I had to fix was the tremolo bar, which stripped the hole in the bridge. Another mod I’d like to make is to put that plate under the bridge pickup, which is supposed to make it sound more like a Tele bridge pickup. The bridge pickup on the strat (mine, anyway), is the weakest and thinnest sounding of the three.
I have an even older SG (Deluxe) that I’ve never been quite satisfied with, and don’t play very much. The supposed “bigsby” vibrato is guaranteed to put it immediately way out of tune, and the neck is somewhat wobbly. Ironically, if I’d gotten a model with no whammy bar, I could have just wobbled the neck for the amount of vibrato I would normally use. I saw Guthrie Trapp doing that with a Telecaster, and he sounded so great. But I think the old SG is somewhat valuable, so I am always thinking that I could sell it, and buy a brand new SG, with money left over. I’ve tried one in the store, and the new ones sound exactly like mine without the neck wobble or the tuning problems. Ah guitars. Cheaper than orchestral instruments, though.
Loved your Benson solo, by the way, you pulled it off. Your guitar just sounds great.
Hi Leon yes i do most mods on my own guitars. do you know how to measure the ohm resistance of your guitar pickups with a multimeter.
I’ve never done it, but I think it should be easy enough - I saw a video on that once.
Hi Leon .If all your pickups are rated at 6k which is kind of normall in strats ,i would replace the bridge pickup with one rated at 8 or 9k for a better balance. but first you need to find out their output with a multimeter . The bigger the number the higher the output and the fatter the sound but high frequency decreases or are just muddyed out.
6k is a good number for the neck pickup on a strat it`s full and bright enough, the smaller the number the brighter and thinner the pickup sounds.hope that makes sense .
I just looked at a post describing a very simple one-wire mod that can send the bridge pickup output through either the middle or neck pickup tone control. Might be a good first try in case I ever want to sell this guitar, because it’s easily reversed. And I was thinking it would make more sense to send it to the neck pickup tone control since the neck and bridge pickups are never on at the same time. That way I could still have independent tone for the bridge and the middle (a position I really never use I must admit). Do you see any drawbacks to that?
Nope ,i dont see any drawbacks ,actualy strat single coil bridge pickups sound great when you can roll the tone back ,i dont know why they dont hook them up to the tone in the first place ,compulsory surf sound i guess. id be interested to know the ohm ratings of your pick ups
Hey, I’ll make the measurements tomorrow. Just have to find my multimeter.
Hi Leon ,personaly id share the bridge pickup with the middle pickup because i never realy use the middle pickup, if i do its only by accident or if i want the “sweet home alabami” sound wich is very rare nowadays.but thats just me.actualy id consider disconecting the tone off the middle and just connect it to the bridge.
I tested the resistance of the pickups by connecting the multimeter to end of the guitar cable. It’s not exact, but I didn’t want to take the guitar apart. I get 5.8K for neck and middle, and I get 7.4K for bridge. I guess these numbers are around what I should expect (according to some forums I browsed). The bridge is supposed to be higher so that it’s roughly equally loud, I gather.
On my strat, I was mainly use only the neck, but sometimes position 4 for funky rhythm stuff, or certain SRV songs. Lately I’ve been playing with a band doing old rock covers, and for that band I really need to use mostly bridge or middle. That’s what lead me to want to get tone control on the bridge since it can be ear-piercingly bright. I was looking for videos to hear how the wiring changes affect the sound, but didn’t have a lot of luck with it. The few I found were so full of distortion effects that I couldn’t get a sense for it.
For every possible rewiring, there are people who advocate strongly for it. That’s the internet. You can find any opinion you want to believe. If I put the bridge pickup on the neck tone control, I think position 3, 4, and 5 should be unaffected, but 1 and 2 should be affected. Position 1 (Bridge) should have a tiny bit less output I think I read, but the brightness can be tamed. Position 2 might sound very different, because the signal runs through two tone controls I guess - I only use position 2 when trying to sound like Lowell George.
If I just move the tone control from middle to bridge, then maybe bridge becomes so much better that I don’t use the middle, and I am also wondering if position 4 will sound twangier. Maybe I’ll de-solder the middle tone control and put an alligator clip on it so I can experiment.
hi Leon ,yes that spec looks right for the pickups ,the strat i used on "cant wait"the bridge pickup which is a normal size humbucker is 16k and splits to 8k and the neck is a normal humbucker 8k splits to 4k. i didnt know you would lose volume on the bridge pickup if you shared the tone with the neck pickup thats news to me .Yes you should experiment with the pickups and even with your amps and fx . i must say Marshalls are great rock amps.
I guess I’m officially off topic, but I made two mods to my old strat: 1) I put a jumper from the bridge pickup to the middle pickup so that the bridge pickup would have a tone control, and 2) I installed a capacitor/resistor across the volume pot so that the treble wouldn’t disappear when I turn the volume down. First of all, the guitar still works! Second of all, it’s nice to have some tone control on the bridge pickup, but even better is being able to finally use the volume control without losing tone. Just thought I ought to report in! I don’t think I have the courage to make any further modifications!
Hi Leon ,glad to hear your strats still working ha ha ,hope you are enjoying the sound of a strat bridge pickup with the tone rolled back some. yes the cap that keeps your tone bright ,very usefull ,i have an on/off toggle switch between the cap and volume pot on most of my guitars because it can be annoying keeping the guitar bright all the time when you turn down ,sometimes its nice to turn the guitar down and the tone gets duller like it`s suposed to especially when playing da blues but yes a nice option to have .
Nice song, great Benson tone and nice chops on both tones. Thanks for sharing!