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.

Talman bout

I was literally fighting this Talman last weekend for over two days. I think it's an episode worth sharing because I definitely do not wish for you to commit this oversight. 

So I started with unhappiness. This guitar manifested a high action when I started playing so play halted immediately. A quick sighting up the neck showed excessive relief & that got taken care of very quickly; truss rod adjustment. Nothing to it. That should pretty much solve the problem but no. Action was still high past the 15th fret so some shimming took place which addressed the action issue but resulted in fret buzz. This was restricted to the G, D & A strings. Re-shimming took place using a thinner piece of paper but buzzing persisted. I proceeded to check fret height but nothing was amiss. It's only the following day that the answer to my problem presented itself. I decided to check the guitar specs & found out that the radius for Talman models are 12" unlike the flatter 16" RG models. Darn! So there you go, a simple solution for a simple problem, really. Never assume, make efforts to check.

For the fun of it, I tried reverting to a 1.5mm pick which really isn't my kind of pick any more. Nothing good happened so a 3mm pick took care of proceedings. Hope you are having a good midweek. Take care. 👋

Tweaks: Kiesel DC

Was at Beez's last Saturday. Caught in the downpour (trapped at the bus stop for more than 20min) but still managed to get there.

Forgive the fuzz but that's the Kiesel DC's new input jack right there. The old one was crackling, after several bouts with the contact spray, it was still problematic so it made way for this Switchcraft version.

While at it, told Beez to swap out the default capacitor with the Emerson one here. Beez insisted on not cutting the wires away, he told me I would need a good working length should I decide to remove it into another guitar. So, like the true pro that he is, he managed to insulate the exposed parts (blue) as seen above. Awesome.

This guitar was set for a 20" radius & it might be the reason why I snagged on strings during fast picking runs. It was re-set to a 16" setting when I reached home.

OK, all done! Spent time with it on Sunday morning putting the Angry Driver pedal to good use. More on this to come. 

Flat & curved

Started playing yesterday with the Singlecut which has a flat radius. Things were alright but the fingers got tired rather quickly after a legato workout. 

After the break, the Strat took over & the fingers felt more relaxed, there were less mistakes.

Implication: Flatter radius does not equal easier playability. Yes, there is a fair amount of ease when one plays with a flat radius. The action tend to be more uniformed across the fretboard but that does not always translate into a preferred playability. The flip side of this is of course, our playing style, particularly how we posture our fretting hand. Personally, if I am focused on rhythm & riffs, I'd grab a flatter radius. 😁

Ibanez RGD321: Radius check

There wasn't any focus on speed when I spent the initial moments with my Ibanez RGD321. Each & every fretted note was a check for dead notes/ uneven frets; there weren't any of course. When the speed came, I knew something was amiss when I always fumbled coming to the B & G strings. A quick look at the string saddles revealed uneven action; there's an abrupt change in height moving from the D string to the G.

A slight adjustment here to observe a more regular curvature. Initially, I thought I had a bad Gibraltar (Standard) bridge but that's not the case.

Special meddle (2)

When the bridge is set flushed against the body, it is necessary to check the action. In this case the default action for my American Special Strat was readjusted & the unexpected entailment was the 'disappearance' of those height adjustment screw bits which were previously jutting out. So now the picking hand rests comfortably over the bridge saddles. Fantastic!

Upon setting up, make sure the radius arch complies to the fret radius to prevent choked notes. Someone pointed out the fact that if there is an ideal arch to be observed, shouldn't both the E-string saddles be of the same height? Of course not, the action for both these strings are different, yes? It's due to the fact that one of them is plain, while the other is wound- different thickness. That's the reason.

Ibanez JS- from S-series, right?

I am often asked this question- which S-series is the JS model adapted from? Well, the Joe Satriani signature model is the perpetuation of the extinct Radius series, not the S-series of today.

What's the difference? The Radius model features a mono-tapered body edge design, unlike the S-series dual taper which features thin treble & bass-sides. Ibanez calls this the aerofoil make, the pic you see above is taken from a 1991 catalogue; that's how long ago this appeal existed. I would very much like to see its resurrection, of course, it's wishful thinking. *sigh*