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BIGD

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Everything posted by BIGD

  1. You ever try to guitar whip a hollowbody around your neck? Good point!!
  2. EVH. He did it, so that's where many people started. The strat body is lighter and more easy to wield on stage, strats have whammy bars, and it's easier to swap parts in and out. Without EVH, no super strat.
  3. I own an 91 Am standard (maple, replacement Humbucker in the bridge), I had an Am Deluxe HSS rosewood a few weeks ago that I sent back to MF (Fender Friday deal), now I have an MIM HSS rosewood (also Fender Friday)..I'm keeping the MIM. It's the most enjoyable of the 3 guitars, sorry to say. The American standard I have has a pathetic trem block compared to the MIM..I have a replacement on the way, we'll see how they match up after that. The American deluxe neck maybe was MARGINALLY better than the MIM. The rosewood looked a bit nicer. It didn't feel any more solid and didn't play better, and I actually prefer the pickups on the MIM. The Samarium Cobalts, to me, are lifeless, and the humbucker on the AM deluxe hummed like a single coil. I just couldn't justify the Am deluxe even at $899 sale price...unless my plan was to re-sell it, which it wasn't. I don't even really get the contoured hell on the AM delux..it doesn't do much of anything. I do think, however, that there is a bigger difference in maple fretboards between the Fender series.
  4. He uses heavy gauge Gibson strings, .012 to .056. Musician.com: Any pedals or effects? Banks: No. He's got the Samson wireless just like Angus. It comes out of the guitar into that. I've got a four-way A/B box because Malcolm pops a lot of strings. He plays with a heavy Fender pick and he basically wears them away. He goes through about 40 or 50 picks a night, and he'll sometimes dig in and pop an A or D string, usually the D. So I've always got three spare guitars wired up and ready to go. the guy wears 50 picks a night and pops 12s like they're nothing?? that's crazy! Especially considering he's about 4 feet tall.
  5. MIMs - I hate the two point bridge. What is it that people don't like about the 2 point bridge? Tone? Tuning?
  6. The neck on my MIM with rosewood is really not any worse than the American deluxe I sent back to MF. The rosewood was shinier, the finish is nicer on the dlx, but it doesn't play any better really..until you get up near the 18th fret or so, where there is an obvious fret that needs to be dressed down. This is where you are saving money on the MIM. The American deluxe, besides all the fancy upgrades, has a perfect fret job and flawless finish. But I'll tell you, I don't think it really sounded better than the MIM..I actually found the noiseless pickups on the deluxe to be uninspiring and lifeless, and acoustically I couldn't tell a difference between the 2 guitars...I paid $899 for one, and $299 for the other, and the normal sale prices are even further apart. You can put all the upgrades on the MIM and get a fret level for way less than you'd pay for the Am dlx. I think that with Maple fretboards, there is a wider disparity.
  7. I actually think the guy is a genius. To me he completely reinvented the instrument and didn't let anything get in his way. If he wanted a sound he figured out a way to get it, either by inventing techniques, modifying techiniques, inventing gear etc. I was just switching form acoustic guitar to electric guitar when my friend got VH1 and brought it over and said I had to hear something. When I heard Eruption we were just looking at each other like, "What the Hell could this guy possibly be doing to this instrument?" I love that! The only thing is, there is no way you can keep that up. You can't keep topping yourself forever especially when you ushered in a paradigm shift in the first place. Add to that that he had the look and the image and the moves etc. and the guy was an absolute definition of guitar hero, more so than really anyone else I can think of. And I think a lot of the criticism is unfair, you can't take someone like EVH who obviously thinks farther outside the box than most of us can dream of and make him a house guitarist in celebrity jams. John Petrucci would excel at that but that's exactly why John Petrucci will never be EVH. And also, everyone talks about the first four albums but even if he continued spinning that stuff out, then he would be getting the Yngwie treatment i.e. "Yeah its the same thing over and over.' To me, the Eddie I remember is the one in the poster I had in my room, red overalls with the red white and black Frankenstrat doing his little jump with a big smile on his face. All the photoshops in the world won't change that. Again, we are talking about jamming to some Jazz standards...we're talking about jamming to Stones tunes and Spencer Davis Group....nothing really too complicated or out of the box there. The problem is that he stopped thinking out of HIS OWN box. That's the point I think that some of you are missing. "I'm Eddie Van Halen, I need to do horsey harmonics, tapping, and dive bombs in EVERY PHRASE." Ed, you didn't do that {censored} on every solo before 1984. A prime example is the solo on "Dreams". It's really ...bad. Compare it to the solo on Little Dreamer or Secrets or Push comes to Shove or something like that..is that the same guitar player? It's like no one could ever tell the great Eddie that he played a bad solo in the studio after 1984 or something. And I had the poster of him from the US Festival on the back of my bedroom door.
  8. I would also chalk that up to not being properly trained in musical theory. He's self taught, and that can lead to deficiencies in jamming and riffing with another player. Speaking from personal, self taught suckage experience, I can write stuff myself, and usually learn to play anything I can find the music for, and play it pretty well/accurately. Do I know exactly 'what' I'm actually doing? Nope. I know basic notes and chords, but modes and scale patterns? I do them all the time, I just couldn't tell you what mode or pattern I happen to be playing in when I play. I just know 'this lick sounds good with this chord pattern', and go. Heck, I can't sweep pick to save my life, intentionally, but I play solos in some songs that I KNOW have sweeps in them, and I know I'm sweeping when I do it... but can I pop a sweep lick into something else out of context? I've tried, and the answer is no. I feel like EVH is the same way: Self taught, and for so, so, so, so long has only had himself and his own songs to play with; when faced with something new, he may not have the improv tools to just blend in and let it loose. I hear what you guys are saying, but do you really have to know a lot of musical theory to play a decent solo on "Gimme some Lovin"? You have to play over one note..that leaves a lot open for interpretation. I'm not very good, but in about 2 seconds I figured out something more musical than he did at that show. Just sayin. It's like sometimes he thinks "hey, I'm Eddie Van Halen ***DIVE BOMB**** ***HORSEY HARMONIC*****"
  9. From 1978-1984 he was the most influential guitarist around, bar none, and deserved all the credit he got. It's not his fault that so many lemmings followed him, and that other much more technical guitarists tried to sound like him (Vai) to cash in on his style. I idolized the guy in my teens. Some point after 1984, he started to sound like a clone of himself. He basically lost me after I saw some Cheryl Crow benefit thing in the 90's where he was supposed to be the "house" guitarist...he showed 0 versatility and did the same licks, harmonics and dive bombs for almost every solo. No nuance, nothing new. Basically he became a personification of what all of his critics claimed he was, where as in his younger years he was always a step ahead. It's like he stopped growing after DLR left. It would have been nice if he could have gone in some other direction, but he just kept up with pretty much the same thing for the last 20 years. Then, I saw the DLR reunion tour a few years back (a friend had an extra ticket), and he was flat out terrible. So, I loved him in his younger 10 years, started to hate him from then on.
  10. Originally posted by GZsound So.. what is the recommended step up from say a $500 RNP? There is such a huge number of pre's out there and so many recommendations it gets mighty cluttered mighty fast. Grace? There's a pre that gets mentioned a lot and a 101 is only $565. Vintech, Avalon, that's the next step.. Are they "quality" pre's? And then on up to the big dollar stuff.. Where does the "just O.K." mic pre end and the "expensive pre" start? I read equipment lists of major studio's and the preamp selection is all over the map. I'm guessing Avalon and Universal Audio, amongst a few others. That Langevin unit on Sweetwater looks interesting.
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