Junior Sunday

Sunday indoors. Spent the whole morning with Jr. What could a restrictive, single pickup guitar do, really, other than some tone manipulations via the tone/ volume knob? Well, if you choose to restrict your adventure as such, then you are further limiting a limited option. I chose to do the following:

1. Clean tones- Amp: Marshall DSL40

I started with cleans, even shredded some notes clean. I'm not much of a clean fan but it's worth listening to the P-90 in this application simply because it offers a different perspective to a single coil take. The highs weren't as protrusive as a standard single coil, in fact, they were fatter & more rounded like a humbucker should be but there's still the single coil snap in the mix. Sounded wonderful, in fact, I prefer the P-90offerings in a mahogany body as opposed to true single coils.

2. High gain- Amp: EVH 5150III

OK, the extraneous hum was inevitable but it only persisted when one stops playing. High gain applications shouldn't be served with single coils especially ones with a mad squeak from start to end but I did it anyway. The pickup manifested this coarse midrange only distortion freaks could understand but the bottom end wasn't that commanding in any settings simply because the pickup wasn't a humbucker to be exhibiting some inclinations toward the lower frequencies. If there's a useful application for this, it would be to double a very bottom heavy tone. But it was a pleasant playing experience knowing some black metal & high octane shred could be had from such a guitar which is not the default go-to instrument in this aspect.

3. Guitar-pedals-amp- Amp: Kustom Defender 5H

I'm not too into pedals for the sake of them being able to pull off some tone alchemy in the right combination; I prefer a straight-through set up, that's the way to truly assess the worthiness of the guitar/ amp/ pickups without too much external interference. However, I do line some pedals up occasionally to go into alternative dimensions all in the name of tonal exploration. In this case the following effects were used: tuner (ENO)/ overdrive 1 (Maxon), noise gate (Mooer), overdrive 2 (EHX) & a looping device (Hotone).

The objective here was not to replicate an intense distortion setting but to manifest drive saturation hence the use of 2 overdrive units. The noise gate was necessary because there's a single coil guitar in use, together with that twin overdrive in the mix, it's hum galore. It's good to know that the use of 2 overdrive units simultaneously gave off a thickening effect, enough to push a single coil pickup to produce a fatter tone response (watch the EQ while you're at it) but in this case, the fact that a P-90 is in use, the fattening effect was augmented. This adventure is a little introverted because there were no modulation effects in use to colour the overall output, it's all about hearing some drive overkill & that's what I indulge in most of the time- saturation overkill!