Do you have an electric guitar? Do you play it through an amp that is powered with vacuum tubes? If you answered yes to these questions, this pedal is for you. It’s that simple.
A true overdrive, this pedal from Caroline Guitar Co. is guaranteed to make your amp feel tingly in places that it would rather not discuss in public. It’s dynamic, too – hence the “Dynamic Drive” portion of its name. It goes from a light breakup to that sound that makes you say “oh yeah, that’s what insane overdrive sounds like, I had forgotten.”
They are currently sold out of the first run, but I’m sure you can put your name on some sort of list to purchase one. It will improve your tone, add a manly scent to your rig, and greatly enhance the quality of your life in general.
Currently looking into this PBC AC100 semi-hollow, listed on the Myrtle Beach, SC, Craigslist for $600. If you follow the blog, you know I love weird stuff like this.
The guitars are made by longtime custom builder Dave Bunker, and retail for over two grand. For $600, I can likely get my money back even if I don’t like it.
I’ve never heard of the brand before, they seem to be rare, and they have a crappy old website. I’m not in love with the headstock shape or script, but the guitar itself looks pretty cool.
They also use something called a “tension-free neck”. I imagine that this weird metal band on the back of the headstock has something to do with that.
If it comes with a case and is in solid original condition, I’ll probably pick it up. If that’s the case, keep an eye out for an in-depth review soon!
$400 on Craigslist. Sold by the original owner, who works at the biggest music store in my area.
This is a 1997, the first year of the reissue AR700s. It was made in Japan at the legendary Fujigen factory.
At some point, he also added a pair of Seymour Duncan ’59 humbuckers and Sperzel locking tuners. Fortunately, the original tuners and pickups were included in the sale. The factory pickups are supposedly quite nice, and having the original parts and hardware is always a big plus for resale value.
L It sounds and plays amazing, one of the most solid and ballsy rock guitars I’ve ever owned. Lots of bite and clarity while still being very aggressive. It’s set up perfectly with Elixir .10s and it rings like a bell, even unplugged. It’s a better guitar than the 2013 Les Paul Studio Plus that I recently sold.
The Relative Unknown is a column chronicling less-heralded musicians.
Sometime in the 2006/2007 range, I was persuaded by a paramour to leave the relative comfort of my college dorm in Columbia, South Carolina, and travel to Atlanta for an entire weekend to see Bright Eyes, a band that I loathe. Unbeknownst to me, our itinerary involved no bathing, a miserable stay in a dirty hostel, and (most disturbingly) no sex. At some point I saw an actual crack rock change hands in a parking lot. For the 24 hours leading up to the show, I was in hell. Finally, we boarded her late-model VW Beetle and headed to the wonderful Fox Theater. Despite the beauty of the venue, I was dirty, depressed, and brimming with low expectations.
Enter David Rawlings, our hero.
The stage at the Fox is a generous platform, as Conor Oberst proved later when he appeared in an all-white tuxedo, backed by a full band with a 10-piece horn section and a couple of grand pianos. But when Dave and his partner Gillian Welch walked out, it was just two people, two guitars, and one microphone.
Soon after the dissonant opening chord of “Revelator” rang off of Dave’s 1935 Epiphone Olympic archtop I knew I was hearing something special. The sound of the guitar itself would have been enough for me. A small but powerful sound, punchy and direct, strong in the mids. It cut through Gillian’s big Gibson jumbo like a knife, chasing down the bigger guitar and exploiting openings in rhythm like a flyweight prize fighter toying with a drunken bar brawler.
They worked together like no two musicians I have seen before or since, moving into and away from the mic mounted in front of their instruments, each adjusting timbre and volume in a way that complimented the other. There was a dynamic give and take between them that most musicians outside of conservatories are unaware of or are simply unable to effect.
Above this they layered emotional and genuine vocals, with Gillian carrying the lead. Dave provided spot-on harmonies while still laying down fills on the Epiphone. I was utterly transfixed by their entire set as the crowd of misanthropic teen girls surrounding me waited half-patiently for Bright Eyes to emerge, seemingly disinterested in what was happening. As the opening duo wound through their set of dark America, I felt like I had uncovered a secret that everyone else at the Fox had let slip by unnoticed.
Calling Dave Rawlings unknown is sort of a misnomer, because he’s actually one of the most well-respected guitarists in his genre. The problem is, it’s a tiny genre. Traditional music like this doesn’t get a lot of play in the wider world of rock, where we’re all busy rehashing our discussions of David Gilmour’s gear and uncovering new Hendrix bootlegs.
This experience broke me out of that Guitar World induced coma. For me, seeing Gillian and Dave was more than an enjoyable performance: it was the gateway onto a road that’s led to a new appreciation for greatness in all music.
For more from Dave & Gillian, check out the Dave Rawlings Machine, now on tour with John Paul Jones and members of Punch Brothers. Dave sings more, it’s still awesome.
“I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them unique, and develop it.”
Is that it makes decision making impossible. Look at all of the buttons and knobs on this TC Electronic Nova System that I once owned. I enjoyed fiddling with it to no end, but I noticed that whilst I owned it I did more knob turning and button pushing than guitar playing. Some decent sounds came out of it, but there was always the temptation to tweak it some more, or push another button to add something else into the signal. Nothing was ever finished. I was discovering a personal truth: too many options is a bad thing.
I’m not even the only person who thinks this. Barry Schwartz, a freakin’ psychology professor, agrees with me. As he says: “the more options there are, the easier it is to regret”. This is certainly true.
So let’s consider a rig that’s the polar opposite of the Nova System. One of the most talented musicians in my area, a guy that I have great respect for, plays in a number of bands and uses one setup for all of them: a 1970s PA head/mixing board combo plugged into a 1×12 cab. In front of that he puts a Big Muff Pi and a cheap pawn-shop sourced Strat knockoff. This gives him very limited tonal options, but he absolutely kills it.
You don’t need that new reverb pedal, or that boutique drive, or a PRS with a 10-top and those cute little birdy inlays to make music. There’s probably nothing wrong with your tone that practicing can’t fix. Your sloppy playing isn’t due to your Squire Strat. Spending all of your time reading reviews on The Gear Page isn’t going to help you nail that solo or understand music theory.
Maybe we should focus less on what we play and more on how play it.
Picked up a neck for the Pinecaster. It’s a birdseye maple Mighty Mite piece with 22 big-ish frets and a nice compound radius. As a bonus, it came with Fender branded locking tuners. Though it has been previously installed, it’s in very good condition. Sourced from Craigslist for a total investment of $130.
More updates and a thorough Guitarsenal post on the P90 Pinecaster are sure to come in the future, so stay tuned. Next step: picking pickups.
Everybody knows the Squier ’51 was a ridiculously good deal in its heyday. At one point, places like Sam Ash and Guitar Center were trying as hard as possible to give these guitars away. Prices often dipped under $100 for the first run of these mutts, which debuted in 2005. Fender inexplicably quit making the part Strat, part Tele, part something else hybrid after a brief period, but they’ve since realized their error and rolled out a new ’51 model.
The ’51 immediately emerged as a popular platform for hotrodders and tweakers. With routes for a humbucker and a single coil outlined by a pickguard that mirrored the design from the original P-Bass, they were classy, unique looking, just begging to be fooled with. Some enterprising individual even created an entire website dedicated to the modification of the Squier ’51 at instituteofnoise.com, though it’s currently down. Hm.
Most importantly, though, the imported Squier guitars were real cheap. There was also a more expensive Pawn Shop version of the ’51, which Fender made in America. Since I was just looking for something to tinker with, those were out of my price range.
How far out? About $764.99. That’s because I paid $35 for my Squier ’51. Picked it up off of Craigslist. It actually looked okay, but it didn’t make any noise when plugged in. A quick look under the hood revealed that someone had cut all of the wires under the control plate. Inexplicable tomfoolery. Given the existing wiring nightmare and highly suspect quality of the original pickups, I decided to go ahead and make an upgrade.
We’re talking about a $35 guitar, and you hate to drop hundreds on pickups for something that cost less than a tank of gas. So I made the ultimate cheap-ass guitar player movie and headed over to to the GFS website. After sifting through their almost comically verbose product descriptions, I settled on a Mean 90 for the bridge and a Lil’ Killer for the neck.
As the name suggests, the Mean 90 is a hot P90. Sort of. It’s actually a humbucker, and it fits in a humbucker route, but it does generally get the P90 vibe they were going for. The Lil’ Killer is a twin-blade single coil sized ‘bucker that’s supposed to sound like a Seymour Ducan Hot Rail. It is a fair approximation.
I also upgraded the bridge itself. The screws on the stock piece kept biting into my hand. Wilkinson half-Tele bridges with three brass saddles are under $20 on eBay. Done and done.
Everything came in the mail and I soldered it all up relatively painlessly. The results can be seen in the video above. I was very pleased with the finished product, which I had less than $140 invested in. I wound up trading it for a Fender Showmaster of Korean origin, which I then sold for $280. Not a bad turnaround, and not a bad guitar.
L
Terrifying Tone Trip 