Re: Looking for that tone
i with ya as far as the antiquity love. i have humbuckers, firebird pups, mini humbuckers, jaguar pups, surfers, texas hots, tele bridge pup... might have more but thats what i can remember at the moment. not to derail the thread but tell me about the ants in your monaco elite if ya dont mind. i have a set of pearlys in mine and while i love it (and it does the warren haynes thing amazingly well) i could be talked into swapping in the ants.
I did a lot of exhaustive tone clips and comparisons between the '59, Seth Lover and Pearly Gates set in my Studio Custom. After all of that, I put in the WLH set and did more clips and recording although I wasn't actually comparing anything at that time. I got a really good handle on how those sets were alike and how they were different in a controlled studio environment. When I bought my Monaco Elite it had a set of WCR Godwoods in it which were really cool but just didn't have any of the magic of the Pearly Gates or Seth Lover set. After they came out, in went the Antiquities.
Tonally the Monaco Elite is nearly indistinguishable from the Studio Custom. The Monaco Elite is a little more difficult to play because of the single cutaway but they are essentially the same. The MOnaco Elite actually had headstock binding and an inlayed MOP logo instead of the silkscreened logo that the Studio Custom has. I just wanted one of those later (2006) Hamers with all of the bling so it would look good on video... plus needed a single cutaway Les Paul style too.
I flat out got the Monaco Elite for the headstock binding and MOP logo... not because the single cutaway gave it more beef of whatever... it sounds identical to my Studio Custom.
So, the Antiquities sounded great, had a deceptive amount of power yet was low enough in output that it jived perfectly well with the AC30 I have been playing as far as dynamics went.
I put Nickel Silver Pyramid hand wrapped strings on it... and between the Celestion blues, those strings and the Antiquities extra harmonic content... I was in
chime city for a pair of humbuckers.
Now when it came time to record... I found myself turning the tone knob down like halfway... 500k pots vs Gibson's 300k pots but still... I never turn the tone that far down and still have useable treble and a relatively flat EQ curve. With the Antiquities... there were highs to spare. I've never had a set of humbuckers work with the tone knob like the Antiquities,it was really interesting and unexpected. Even the neck pickup sounded great with the tone knob down... THAT was really surprising to me. I deliberately record my SD content with a tone that is a bit darker than I would have personally... it's better for business if I'm a tick too dark than if I'm too bright. I learned that with the '59 bridge demo... I had the tone all of the way up and just got ripped to shreds over that video with negative comments and thumbs down. So I learned to cut the 500k pots to more of where a 300k pot would sit treblewise. The Seth Lover video is tone all of the way up (the WLH set is the first video where me and SD really got down to brass tacks of how bright they want my vintage tone to be).
So that's all good and well but the unique tone of the Antiquities kept bugging me until it occurred to me that there was a huuuuge difference in attack vs bloom with the antiquities. I've been working on a sort of contemporary jazz tone for a while now and the bloom was amazing feeling and sounding throughout the recording of the demo... I just couldn't put my finger on what was so special until it hit me one day while I was listening back to the album I am working on (the songs are from the videos I have been doing for SD) in it's totality.
The attack seemed to be clipped in the neatest way possible and the notes seemed to well up a bit and expand after the initial clipped attack... it's akin to how the great vintage tube limiters created all of those beautiful guitar tones of the '60s and '70s. I felt like the Antiquities gave me
instant '60s and '70s tone. You know how the Kemper KPA profiler profiles amps with the microphone and signal chain together as one? That's how I felt like with the Antiquities... they gave me immediate out-of-the-box perfect vintage tone. It was crazy. I play with an aggressive attack at times and I angle my pick for extra texture... sometimes that can lead to a hard edged tone... not with the antiquities. The antiquities clipped all of that hard edge off and gave me sumptuous sustain for a vintage output pickup.
Thats why I played almost the whole Paul Kossof/Free "All Right Now" tune towards the end. I turned the tone most of the way back up for when I play that funky "Love Rollercoaster" lick and the clean solid state sound samples near the end have the tone back up to around the 300k mark. I played the whole "Sunshine of Your Love" song but edited the heck out of it for time sake. I even fooled myself with the Cinnamon Girl riff... the Ants were instant retro '60s and '70s goodness unlike anything I've ever experienced. It's one thing for the tele and strat Antiquities to have lots of chime but the humbuckers too? Woah!!! I was and am still blown away.
Sorry the long read but I felt like I needed to go into detail a bit.
