Laminate top

This is how the interior on my Brian Moore i91 pickup cavity looks like. The thin layer, as indicated by the arrow, is the maple top material used for this guitar. The manufacturer chose to simply layer the mahogany body with a laminate top; the idea here is for the top to function as a cosmetic enhancement, not a tone enhancing layer. Is this a bad thing? No, it's how the manufacturer wanted it to be, pertaining to the overall cost of production. So when you strum the guitar unplugged, you are hearing the mahogany resonance as the dominant tone source.

Watching over

Deep in the recesses of Tone Central, the Dark Knight watches over habitual attempts to disarray the generation of pure tone. Tone fiends will only discover the futility of their confrontation.

Special order: ESP M-II

Davis GMC is currently extending ESP's Special Order programme to us local dweebs. So how does it work? It's basically a custom order purchase but in limited format. The idea is to limit the custom charges, otherwise, it would effectively become an official Custom Order which would extend costs into the $3K - $4K bracket. Details of the Special Order programme will be disclosed here soon.

Since I have a pending M-II delivery which was originally scheduled in January 2011, I asked Janet if my order could be converted into this special order & I was lucky enough to be given the positive answer. My special order instruction was a simple one for this first time purchase; to have my M-II sport a hum cancelling single coil pickup instead of a full humbucking unit (so Duncan's Classic Stack + was my natural selection) The rest of the features remain unchanged.

I foresee a more adventurous order in the later half of 2011 should this initial episode prove to be appealing. I don't see why it shouldn't be the case.

Hey, dad! (Part 41)

Hey, dad! I can still help you prepare your Brian Moore guitar even with my mouth full, see the biscuits in here; aaah...

Fender... oops?

Just hours ago, my friend, Rosli, was at my residence. He was here for me to try & figure out why his high E string kept popping out of the retainer every time he whammies his bridge. This happened even after the nut of his Floyd Rose equipped Fender Highway 1 Showmaster Strat, was locked tight. He is also baffled by the fact the bridge itself suffers from over-projection every time he tried to tune his guitar.

After a closer look, the string-popping mystery was an easy problem to deal with; Fender actually equipped the guitar with a retainer of the wrong length as depicted above (A). I compared it to the spare I bought for my Ibanez RG guitar (B) & the difference was rather obvious. Easy solution for an easy problem.

Moving on to the bridge over-projection issue, I tuned the guitar accordingly & indeed saw the anomaly myself. So I thought a quick tightening of the whammy spring screws at the rear body cavity would do the trick but even after doing so, the problem persisted. This was when I decided to feel the strings & that's the cause of it all- the strings in there were a set of .010s. So the quick string replacement (the guitar now has a set of Fender .009s in it) & corrective tuning took place. Rosli wanted a slightly higher action to rid the guitar of that shred-action buzzing & he got his wish. But while at it, the rosewood fretboard got re-moisturized as well; the upper fret vicinity was rather dry. I expected it to be so because this guitar could be in storage for years; the reason it looks untouched & in splendid physical condition. 

I simply like how the guitar's default humbuckers reacted to high distortion settings; it's rather obvious they were conceived to rock. The instrument's build is also solid & blemish-free; how that wrong retainer bar got through was quite a mystery.

A good Smash

If you are looking for a no-frills guitar for both good distortion/ clean applications, remember the Smash S2 is available at the SV Guitars sale. The guitar is as good as it is, no further mods necessary in terms of electronics. The fact that it's a little more massive than say, the average Squier Strat, implies the good bottom end on board. We sometimes struggle with single coil equipped guitars tone-wise because they tend to be lacking in bottom end but the S2 has a good balance in this light.