Fighting headless

This Q54 is perhaps one of my favourite guitars in terms of tone & playability. However, just days ago, I found it to be problematic. I kept making mistakes when playing notes on the D & G strings. So I re-looked at the following concerns:

• Action settings. It's the same set up done on other guitars.
• Bowed neck. Nope - straight as heck since Day 1.
• No proper warm up. These days I commit to minimal warm up before playing; maybe 5min of finger exercises. I decided to do an extended warm up before playing this guitar but still...
• Uneven frets. If there are any then the first thing that would manifest is fret buzzing but this was not the case. I did re-look at some frets at selected positions & did the rocking horse test; nothing was amiss. 

I almost gave up until I kept my fret rocker away (used for the rocking horse test) into a plastic holder which contain my radius gauge & that was when it hit me - the radius setting. True enough, the radius for this guitar was a little too flat. Someone did a 16" for this one back at the factory so the strings weren't conforming to the curved fret profile. I re-adjusted the radius to 14" & the playing was OK thereafter. I believe when we play a certain guitar, there's muscle memory adapting to certain neck / radius profiles. Once this is not met during play, it leads to mistakes or even discomfort. There's no harm re-looking at the set up just to make sure things should be the way they were meant to be - no compromise.

Headless Sunday

Wasn't motivated to leave the house in this scorching heat today. Indoors with the headless siblings.

Kiesel: Allan Holdsworth

One of my favourite / go-to guitars for inspiration. Used this one to play ideas really slowly before speeding up to taste. I'm not a fan of signature models (if you've been following the entries here closely) but the custom options meant I could trim this down to my specs; that's the only reason I bought this guitar.

Ibanez: Q54

Wasn't attracted to this because it's a headless guitar but because it sports a body contour very close to the Radius series. Was wondering if that kind of ergonomics would help me play differently but I believe it's more of the player, not the instrument. I am too used to the way I play so this was adopted to the guitar & not the other way round. There's something about Ibanez that makes me play fast & fumble all the time. Darn.

Wishing everyone a good week ahead. 

Headless endeavour

 

Spent time with these two today; light stuff since yesterday's episode involved a very heavy guitar. I didn't realize that both are in the same colour family, fixed bridge & sporting a 5-way pickup selector. FYI, the Ibanez is the lighter between the two. Also, despite the fretboard hue difference, both are maple fretboards. 

The Kiesel - This Vader needer some getting used to. It's not the headless detail but that lacquered neck. I'm in no way a fan of glossed out necks but I endured many Les Pauls to appreciate their tone signatures so this one shouldn't be given a different treatment. No mods for this one less an Orange cap in the tone circuit.

The Ibanez - Let me be upfront with this one - it's  B-Stock. Perhaps one day I will get into the flawed details but not in this episode, definitely. I was OK with the default Ibanez single coils in this guitar but the humbucker was something else. Decided to overhaul the entire pickup line up. Very happy with the ergonomics, even the rounder neck profile is a hit with me. If it's within my means this year, would wanna try the 7-string version. Current pickups (Seymour Duncan): JB / Hot Stack x2