Raid the Quarry

Another comparison video coming at ya. I wanted to see how different each of these guitars sounded through the exact same setup. These guitars are being played on the bridge pickup, tone and volume all the way up, through the crunch channel of a Marshall DSL 50 with gain around mid way, same EQ settings for all. 2x12 cab w/ Vintage 30s mic’d with an SM57. Video sound is a combination of the raw mic output and the iPhone. No processing was done.

Part 2 of this experiment. I’m interested if most people will think the 57 sounded better. This specific comparison feels a little like you start with that bright sparkly sound and then throw a blanket over it. But much like how we tend to prefer a song that’s loud vs one that’s quiet, or a tv that’s bright vs one that’s dimmer, there’s more here than the clarity.

Specifically, if you follow the band at all this won’t surprise you, I don’t play clean very often. And so while a clean is nice, for me to play this at gigs I need to be able to drive it hard and it needs to cut through a band mix. The Custom Custom has a very pronounced midrange which is a key to being heard.

I did keep the 57 in the bridge though, and it’s full of super spanky vintage tones. In a way, this is almost two guitars now - scooped and jangly, almost tele-like in the neck but round and midforward in the bridge more like a Les Paul. It remains to be seen how well that combination will serve, but im planning to break it out at the next gig on Friday.

I picked up this used Ibanez AS-73 Artcore because I had been looking for a semi-hollow and I loved the green finish on this and thought the neck felt good. It came with Chinese classic elite ceramic pick ups, which are fairly well-suited to the guitar; but I thought it could make it sing a little more with some more reputable ones. So in addition to new tuners, pots, switch and jack, I installed a pair of Gibson 57 Classics with a Classic Plus in the bridge.

I liked the 57 in the neck but felt the Classic+ was too bright in the bridge, lot of searing treble that I couldn’t tweak out of it. It felt thin and brittle to me. I looked for some options that were supposed to tame a bright guitar, and the Custom Custom kept coming up as an option to round off the top end.

I didn’t have much in the way of reference tracks recorded with the 57 to do a good before and after comparison - just these clean chords played straight into my interface and using a GarageBand amp sim. This is the tweed with a little bit of reverb and delay. No other processing was done to the signal. I wanted to see if it would make a difference - boy, did it!

this weekend at ! Come sing all your favs plus hear what we’ve been cooking up. 9 pm start, $5 cover.

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