The sound of white noise

I have not played this for a good half year. I'm trying to figure out which replacement pickups should be in there. Recent sale events saw some DiMarzios & Bare Knuckles with significant price cuts but I'm not a fan of those despite the temptations.

This one caught my attention & there's no turning back. A Custom Shop piece with Seymour's signature; must be my lucky day.

So the entire Seymour Duncan line up: Custom Shop Crazy VIII (B)/ Classic Stack Plus (M)/ Distortion (N). The white middle pickup was intentional & the control knobs together with the selector tip were given the white treatment as well. I made a big decision to leave the tone control unconnected for a wide open tone. It's that special consideration for this guitar in making it a little different from the rest. Some tone appraisals soon.

Re-strung with Sfarzo's 5109 set of 9s. Sfarzos are not sold off the shelf here, bought this online.

Ready to annihilate everything that gets in the way. Sort of. 😎

Available but not available

It seems that the distributor here wants you to be content with just the bags... without the goods. *facepalm* 😜

Good page

Managed to play this one. One of the best out there in terms of a Strat variation.

Playing didn't take place before a quick re-string. I'm still waiting for a Tele-stryle to be available for the picking. There's one in store right now but after a thorough handling, it's not quite up there in terms of fitting despite sounding awesome. What I like about this John Page Ashburn:

• Outstanding default pickups- these are JP's own Bloodline model & they made the cut for both clean & driven. Nick Johnston would have been proud of them; it's that kind of tone, definitely.
• Superb tuners + nut slots- Tuners are simply above average in terms of response plus the fact that the nut slots were well cut at the factory, I'm giving them a thumbs up for sure.
• Controls- There are only 2 for Vol/ Tone. As such, there's room for the volume to be away from the bridge pickup & this addresses that common Strat issue. 
• Neck profile- It's a definite C-carve but it's slightly thicker than a contemporary American Fender. For a C-profile, I prefer it this way as it helps keep the thumb comfortable at all positions. For a D-profile, I get along better with a thinner carve because the thumb isn't arching during play so if it's thick, it's stressing out the rest of the fretting fingers- dunno if you realize this happening to you.

Jackson looms

It's official- Jeff Loomis is now on the Jackson roster with an upcoming signature model to be revealed at Winter NAMM 2019. 

Pic: GW

All that (good) jazz

Got these two recently.

• John Scofield: Combo 66. Sco is back & his masterstrokes are all over. New for this release, the inclusion of pianist Gerald Clayton. Sco is jazz but his approach is highly unformulated & entertaining. If you can't muster the discipline to sit through a serious but offbeat take on the genre, this might be the time to try.
• Alex Skolnick Trio: Conundrum. It's definitely not the metal Alex Skolnick plying his shred stuff in a trio format, so be warned. Like Sco, this is a lesson in skills & mastery, nothing too extravagant to warrant an individual acclaim by any of the members. Why jazz? Alex Scolnick is a schooled jazzer, it's as simple as that. I might be wrong but hearing what's on offer, Skolnick is stretching a hollow body for most numbers. Great release for me, personally.

Shhhh!

I'm kind of going through a BOSS renaissance moment. This is my second NS-2, the first one was a very frustrating episode that took place in the late 90s. I bought it in the hope of checking my then set up which consisted of an unearthed Fender Bullet amp, a Zoom 505 & a BOSS Metal Zone (MT-2). The background hum was terrible, the amp was largely to blame for that plus the fact that the aforementioned Zoom multi-effects pedal was powered by a 2-pin adaptor which extended the noise annoyance further. I enjoyed playing through this set up though, just that the extraneous noise needed to be tamed. 

Enter the NS-2 which, to my dismay, added to the noise factor. OK so it did kill the earth-related noise issue to a good degree but introduced another form of humming which was more tolerable but what the heck! The label said it's supposed to contain the noise altogether but there's a trace amount of humming still going on. I tried switching to battery power for a while but the noise was still there. The irony of buying something to address an issue which turned out to be an issue itself. So I got rid of my first NS-2, sold it to someone who is electronics-savvy & told me he could fix it & designated it for his personal use. I sold it for peanuts & moved away from the idea of having a noise gate unit of the pedal kind till the turn of the century where more choices were available in the stores & the fact that cyberspace information was there to school me in on signal-related noise management. 

So today, I have with me, my second NS-2 which I hope to be keeping for old time's sake. I have plans to acquire a few more BOSS pedals because these were the standard to beat in the stomp box realm for a long time & they still maintain this reputation of sounding great & lasting till the very end.