Re: Megedeth - Duke Nukem cover, covered
Damn. When I created the thread I thought the name Megedeth would be funny as so many things are off in this video compared to their version. For the second thought I'm rather annoyed of this. Is there a way to modify the thread title?
Anyway, thanks for the feedback folks. I'm glad that you like it. The Megadeth version was killer and complete, the definite version of this song.
And I know you've said you'd explain the neck pickup mechanism elsewhere.
It is a noise reductor prototype of some sort, in a very infant stage. It houses the sensors only, the electronics are all outboard at the moment for better access and tweaking. No wires coming out of it = bypassed.
What's the story with the guitar? It looks like an EBMM logo on the non-matching headstock but looks like an EVH (not Axis because of the switch position) body with the trem routed out.
It has a 20+ years long history, long read alert.
Around the time I was totally into Jerry Cantrell's playing and besides his G&Ls he played MM-EVH around 1992. I liked Van Halen too but maybe because of Jerry and AIC, this design represented something else to me spiritually, somewhat dark, evil, deep. It was so different from anything else back in time.
MM was unavailable around my place and I did not have the money anyway. Still, there was a flood of all sorts of big brand Korean subsidiaries like Squier, Epiphone and the like. In a shop that sold these I noticed this guitar sitting in a dark corner somewhere around '93. It was a helluva, great playing, resonant tone machine that was quite loud even unplugged. I worked all the summer to cough up the bucks and during all the time I worried that someone takes it before I can. I visited the actual shop weekly and checked if this guitar was still there. I won but it was odd as the whole stock was sold around it in 3 months but this one.
According to my knowledge, it is some sort of pre-OLP replica from the MM-EVH era, a semi-official first overseas attempt of EBMM to enter the budget segment without direct affiliation and the name, manufactured in 1993 in the Aria / Korea factory according to the serial number. The logo said 'BLACKMIRRA' with silver EBMM font. Maybe it is no legit at all just a dirt cheap counterfeit with a lucky result, but quite oddly, right out of the box it had the very same black / chrome styling with a chrome knob as MM Reflex guitars 15 or so years later, even the headstock was painted black, too.
During a show the neck broke in pieces beyond repair. By accident, some falling heavy metal stage structure killed it while it was on the guitar stand. The structure fell on it, smashing the guitar to the ground via the neck. I was devastated but knew that I was lucky as it could have easily killed me. It was somewhere around '95 or '96. The impact was so big that it cleaved off the neck and bent the truss rod, it is an extreme luck that the body survived with minor wounds. The neck died.
The replacement gloss (used to be, I played off the lacquer since) finished maple neck is from a cheaper Legend MM copy guitar that happened to be completely compatible. That, the recognisable Aria serial number and a 'made in Korea' sticker on the 'Mirra made me think that they are from the same factory, just aiming different price ranges (the 'Mirra was around $300 and better overall while the Legend was sub-$200). As far as I can remember the 'Mirra had the very same headstock shape as the original EVH and and also drill-through locking nut. The present Legend neck has a more roboust reinforced headstock with a non-drill-through locking nut, different from both the first one and the original EVH. It doesn't matter really as it sounds and plays exactly the same. At least as far as I can remember, the mojo was unchanged. Damn, that was 20 years ago.
Apart from the neck change, the present form is as far from the initial as it's possible. It had the mojo from the start but also had issues to be fixed / improved. So, it became my modding and pickup swapping nuclear test area. All good and wrong that can be done to a guitar have been done with this one, maybe except from cutting chunks out of the body. The bridge did not keep in tune as much as I wanted when I played the **** out of this guitar onstage so after some butchery solutions I just added two junk but precisely sized alu profile trem blocks so you can neither pull nor dive with it. As a result it became super stable and sustains until tomorrow morning. Maybe the trem has something to do with it, I don't know. It says 'licensed under Floyd Rose patents' but I seriously doubt it. It's rather some really simple (yet functional) single-locking toploader design with bigger mass than the original.
As far as I can remember it was the first guitar where I mounted my first SD pickup. During my tone quest, I guess it housed the complete range of SD humbuckers then. Initially it had surface mounted pickups with no rings, then the screws coming and going ate up all the wood so finally I cut out the section that the screws destroyed and and glued two tiny hardwood dices in there and just added a pickup ring. Around the time aftermarket parts were limited here, all I could get was a tilt ivory LP ring for the bridge. I wanted a black flat-top ring so I sawed off the excess and just painted it. During the years most of the paint was played off but I don't mind, I grew to really like the f'd up looks. Also, I like the face expressions of EB fans as it looks like a seriously modded / butchered EVH even from a closer look.
Back in time I thought the black top is too boring as all metalheads had black guitars around so I started to softglue (I don't know the proper term in English, think of a thin rubberish glue material that by gentle warming can be completely removed even after a long time) cheap thin wood veneer to the top and when it wore out after a couple of months, I glued on a fresh veneer. All had different grain. Due to an epic HDD failure storing all my pre-2004 pics I have only a few bad 2002 shots about it:
The frequent change of odd looks caused some funny consequences. I have an ear for rhythm tone and was bi-amping from around 1996. Playing with spear-head underground metal bands of my country frequently (there were years with 60+ gigs) on fest stages with massive sound, having a different top veneer and slightly different sound due to the frequent great quality SD pickup swaps every 2-3 month, different knobs, no pickup ring then yes etc etc made folks picture it big and think that I have a number of different custom-built EBMM guitars. That was not my goal at all, just the result of continuous modding and experimenting with an axe that had songs for me in it. When I was asked about, I told the truth but no one believed me. They thought I just don't want to admit that I have the money or something. Man, I wish I had!
Even more funny, many years later I have heard about a couple of confirmed MM purchases where the owner guys told me that they decided to get an Axis one day after having seen me playing onstage my custom EBMM guitars with that punchy sound in 1990-somewhere. They also told me in a way that I'm totally nuts to push those expensive axes that hard onstage. I was going, EBMM, expensive, what? I was completely surprised that they did not even think and did not believe the truth that it was just one cheap Korean replica with softglue veneer, great pickups, sound and long evolution.
I use this one as an onstage axe again. After a gig where we opened for Jinjer and Trivium last Thursday a guy comes saying, 'I like your new EBMM less, the old ones around 2000 sounded bigger'. Well, funny. The only difference was the looks only as around 2004 or so I stopped using softglued thin wooden top veneer and just kept the original factory gloss black finish. Apart from that it is completely identical to what it was from 1999 or so: weeks ago I bought back the very same 50W Marshall amplifier that I played during the old days, I always played the same cab and even the TB4 pickup is the same, I ended up using that in this guitar after my pickup swap / tone quest period that was closed with my Warmoth in 2002.
Compared to an original EBMM, it feels like a comfortable home-tuned redneck muscle car that wins fun factor vs an officially sponsored precise race car that wins the world championship. Still, I would not trade this rat rod for an original on opportunity. We have history.
