Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

[ehdwuld]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!









First the Epi's jack is too low. It's fine if you are standing and got it looked thru the strap. But if you stand it on the couch or a chair or lean it on an amp, it jacks the cable up.

The Ibanez (I know it's a bass, but the jacks are in the same place) has the jack close to the edge. With the same results.

The Dean Shire on its lowest of two jacks is much higher and more to the bottom when in a standing playing position

The strat is high and angled out of the way when playing standing or sitting, and it doesn't smash the cable if you stand it in a chair or lean it on an amp.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

Great examples guys! Very much appreciated.

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[ItsaBass]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

Any solid, reasonably versatile guitar can be a "cover guitar." A basic Tele or Strat or Les Paul or 335 or any other standard, classic, common guitar type should do. What's really going to make it a do-everything setup is mainly gonna be: 1) the person playing it, and 2) the amp and the rest of the "signal chain." All you really need from the guitar is that is stays in tune, is a joy to play, and that provides a signal to the chain that is good enough to be manipulated. I say focus more on amp and effects than on guitar here.

If I had to have one guitar and one amp to be in a fairly wide ranging covers band, it's probably be a vintage style Strat with a Mesa amp, or some other similarly tweakable amplifier.

 

[CaptainWhizz]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

The band at my brother-in-law’s wedding used a Strat and a 335-type through an Orange combo, and most of the set was on the Strat.

Assuming all songs in standard tuning, I would probably go with a Tele/ Strat/ similar, and a Les Paul/ SG/ similar. Maybe some pickup and electronics upgrades. Or, I’d just get a Charvel Pro Mod San Dimas. Or two.

 

[Gtrjunior]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

Not sure if it has been said already but volume control knob placement is a concern for me.
I hate where it is located on a Strat. I need a location where it doesn’t interfere with aggressive strumming or get in the way when doing more intricate picking passages on the higher strings.
I prefer it to either be much lower than my picking hand or pushed back behind my picking hand, closer to the bridge.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

The band at my brother-in-law’s wedding used a Strat and a 335-type .

Good point Captain- You can use any guitar to cover a song, but from my perspective, a Cover Guitar is a different animal... it's been customized to get specific tones that are needed for diverse styles-

The other direction is using 'the right guitar' for a specific song, and since the musician you mentioned was playing a hollow body, it's likely he was more on this side of the equation (Of course there are exceptions- we talk about using modeling to make any guitar cover anything).

But we practically never convert hollow bodies into Cover Guitars for a number of reasons-

• They have a distincitve tone
• Hard to maximize sustain for thick heavy parts
• Not easy to get bright fenderish sounds
• Hard to wire and fish
• Not very tough and smash proof
• And last, but not least is feedback

Of course there is nothing wrong with the 'perfect guitar for each style' approach- we love upgrading Strats and LPs to get even better Strat and LP sounds (preaching to the choir on this one).

However, most of teh gigging musician's we work with (who cover many styles) can't afford that many guitars and it's safer to leave the great guitars at home

Thanks again for that great example- weddings are probably 45% of our Cover Guitar gigs.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

Any solid, reasonably versatile guitar can be a "cover guitar." A basic Tele or Strat or Les Paul or 335 or any other standard, classic, common guitar type should do. What's really going to make it a do-everything setup is mainly gonna be: 1) the person playing it, and 2) the amp and the rest of the "signal chain." All you really need from the guitar is that is stays in tune, is a joy to play, and that provides a signal to the chain that is good enough to be manipulated. I say focus more on amp and effects than on guitar here.

If I had to have one guitar and one amp to be in a fairly wide ranging covers band, it's probably be a vintage style Strat with a Mesa amp, or some other similarly tweakable amplifier.

Itsa- Totally agreed that most solid bodies are good potential Cover Guitar platforms- We define a Cover Guitar as an instrument that has been optimized to cover multiple styles - a great example is adding piezo and upping string gauge so that a single guitar can do acoustic and electric sounds well (we call that the More Than a Feeling mod because someone has to do the acoustic intro, but you need dualing leads 30 seconds later

However, we look at 'Cover Guitars' as one of a few ways to cover music well- In the article, we talk about having a stable of specialized guitars- if you can afford the costs and effort and your guitars can take the abuse, most people would prefer to use a heavy humbucker guitars on the big thick sustain stuff and single sized coils on more articulate fenderish stuff.

Modeling amps and FX are another good approach- For the better part of 5 years, I moved to a Zion Strat (hence my handle) that had noise rejecting Joe Bardens with spin-a-splits. In some ways, it was a bit of a Cover platform, but practically all of my tone in that period came from a slurry of modles on a Roland GP100 and a Boss GT10-

This approach is incredibly detailed and very specific- I had a More Than a Feeling patch sitting really close to my Andy Summers Telecaster patch, I used pickup modeling, etc... it really worked well, but it was also a ton of work to maintain.

So from my POV, it comes down to how specific your cover sounds need to be and how much work you want to put into them- our cover clients probably break down as follows-

1. Want to cover songs rather closely and have the bucks for a diverse specialized stable- 10%
2. Want to cover songs very closely and use modified Cover Guitars and Modeling/FX/Versatile amps- 25%
3. Want to get into the ballpark with a modified cover guitar, but will make the cover their own, so guitar variation carries most of the weight -40%
4. Want to cover songs, but not very concerned about the tone and style- 25%

So you really bring up a good point- songs can be covered with any guitar, but when we're talking "Cover Guitars" with our customers, they are usually in 2nd or 3rd catagory-

Of course we love to talk mods with anyone for any reason, but you're a SUDGie and already knew that

Thanks for a great thread!

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

Not sure if it has been said already but volume control knob placement is a concern for me...

Ah, you're quite the wise one- it's amazing how many times we get relatively complex mods in general where controls hadn't been thought through and we spend a lot circling back to what will really work in the real world.

Volume and pup switch placement are probably the two that come up the most- Can't have rhythm parts knocking the controls around, but there are a lot of players who do the strat style pinkie swell effect, so there are always trade offs.

We lightly touched on tone selection in the article- it's nice when we can get heavy thick, leadish tones on each end of a switch so that a missed gear lands in a rhythm tone that's still relatively thick.

Bottom line is when someone is digging into a the bigger mods, we spend a lot of design time on controls-

 

[Mincer]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

I grew up playing a Strat, so pretty much every guitar I use has to have the volume control there.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

I grew up playing a Strat, so pretty much every guitar I use has to have the volume control there.

Yep, I've built many HHs with 5 ways and vol in pinkie reach because Strats are so functional.

But I've also enjoyed the Gretsh Jet approach- I never hit that vol by accident

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

I've never hit a volume knob or switch by accident, on any guitar. I fumble over them or pop them in to the wrong position or can't get to them in time – but I don't hit them by accident.

My least favorite common style of control layout is the standard Gibson two-pickup, four-knob setup. Having the switch on the upper bout (a la Les Paul) makes it a notch worse too. SGs offer an improved switch position IMO. I'd rather have a 1V/2T setup on a two pickup guitar. (I convert all my 2V/1T guitars to 1V/2T – e.g. my Explorers).

My main broad, sweeping gripe about guitar controls is the use of a master tone control on a multi-pickup guitar. It's the major flaw of modern Tele wiring IMO – and why I prefer Esquires. It's also why I despise standard G&L Legacy-type wiring: every knob is a master control. I love the PTB controls, but not that I have to apply them across the entire guitar. There is quite literally NEVER an occasion in which I want an onboard tone adjustment to be applied equally to all pickups.

Sadly, there isn't a control layout that feels perfect to me. But vintage Strats are extremely close; all they need is a third tone knob. I prefer the three way switch – much easier to quickly pop into the position I want, and I don't play the notch positions anyhow. And I like having separate tone controls for the neck and middle pickups, even though it means no tone control on the bridge pickup. Modern Strat wiring, with the five-way switch and combined tone control for two pickups, is worse to my tastes.

 

[CaptainWhizz]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

Hypothetically, if I was helping someone to design a cover guitar, I would probably get them to name the extremes of styles they were going to be playing, to work out the kind of tones they would need,

Armed with that, I would probably look at the pickups needed, and the best scale length to achieve those sounds.

After that, I think I would look at the shape and construction of the body and neck, taking into account tone and player comfort. Including where the strap buttons were/ how the guitar hangs.
Type of bridge would probably have to be considered around this time.

Then I guess onto controls- what was needed, and where to put them. After that I think I would have to look at the jack socket too.


I think that’s how I would approach it, anyway. I guess it boils down to two main areas, tone decisions and player comfort decisions. With looks being important too

Also, as much as I love the look of 3-a-side headstocks, I think 6-in-line feels easier to do while you’re looking down at a floor tuner?
Which reminds me, I forgot about checking whether they need to change tunings during the set.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

...
My main broad, sweeping gripe about guitar controls is the use of a master tone control on a multi-pickup guitar. It's the major flaw of modern Tele wiring IMO – and why I prefer Esquires. It's also why I despise standard G&L Legacy-type wiring: every knob is a master control. I love the PTB controls, but not that I have to apply them across the entire guitar. There is quite literally NEVER an occasion in which I want an onboard tone adjustment to be applied equally to all pickups.

Sadly, there isn't a control layout that feels perfect to me. But vintage Strats are extremely close; all they need is a third tone knob. I prefer the three way switch –

Itsa, you're not alone- there are a lot of strat players who like a tone per-pup but you don't see that much talk online- For those who like to set and make minor changes, co-centric pots are an easy way to get another tone, but tend to be messy if you're are making a lot of changes. Did 3 concentric pots on a strat type once to add a tone, spin-a-split and blender- very pretty black chrome stacks, but only the bottom ring was easy to grab- top needed to stay put.

Considering there isn't a lot of room on a strat to easily add a pot, and it ugly things up, I've also added mini toggle tone switches on strats to tune in bass and treble roll off - Kind of a preset PTB per pup.

Thanks great post and thanks for the reminder that we don't have to stick to the standard configurations.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Designing a Cover Guitar- Appreciate your input!

Hypothetically, if I was helping someone to design a cover guitar, I would probably get them to name the extremes of styles they were going to be playing, to work out the kind of tones they would need,

Armed with that, I would probably look at the pickups needed, and the best scale length to achieve those sounds.

After that, I think I would look at the shape and construction of the body and neck, taking into account tone and player comfort. Including where the strap buttons were/ how the guitar hangs.
Type of bridge would probably have to be considered around this time.

Then I guess onto controls- what was needed, and where to put them. After that I think I would have to look at the jack socket too.


I think that’s how I would approach it, anyway. I guess it boils down to two main areas, tone decisions and player comfort decisions. With looks being important too

Also, as much as I love the look of 3-a-side headstocks, I think 6-in-line feels easier to do while you’re looking down at a floor tuner?
Which reminds me, I forgot about checking whether they need to change tunings during the set.

Right on. You nailed a lot of our criteria... Scale length is probably the biggest variable... It's relatively easy to roll off some of the 25.5 snap, but rather difficult to add snap into a short scale.

Regardless, a lot of players just don't like long scale, so we spend a lot of time playing with variables to get more fenderish tones from 24.75s.

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