'70s Custom Les Paul Silverburst finish

[jrfox92]

Just ran across this little number
http://www.warmoth.com/Showcase/Body.aspx?Body=2&i=lpcp276  :toothy12:
Can i say, Beau-ti-ful.
I've lately been listening to Tool like crazy, only music i've listened to the past couple of weeks.
And i abosolutely LOVE Adam's tone, guitar, everything. So i'm finally planning on building a Les Paul built relatively to the specs of a Custom Silverburst LP. But, I'm absolutely lost on the finish. A friend of mine that's been building for a while showed me roughly how to do a burst, but I'm interested in the Teardrop Silverburst and espevially on the particular paint that - supposedly - cracked up and messed with the tone.
Looked around on other forums and however else i could, but no dice, anyone happen to have a clue about it?

 

[AutoBat]

paint won't mess with your tone
Tonar is the go-to guy for all your finishing needs.  There's almost certainly a thread on it already.

 

[stubhead]

Adam Jones is a member in good standing of "guys who lie about their equipment just to mess with you." Billy Gibbons, then Eddie Van Halen, found out they could use talent and experimentation to come up with great sounds - then make up some ridiculous piece of equipment "secret" to explain it and watch in amazement as all the kids went nuts trying to duplicate that instead of talent. When I first heard Tool, I immediately thought of the song "No Quarter" by Led Zeppelin, then when I heard Tool's cover of it, it's all there. He's playing a Les Paul into a really, really cranked set of power tubes. There's some preamp distortion - a lot more than Jimmy Page used, but the modern amps like Jones's Diezels will do that. And it definitely has that "Celestion" speaker kind of sound - but there's no big, big secret there. Stand in front of 100 watts of dimed tubes for 10 years - it'll come to you. :toothy12:

 

[thebutcher85]

I did 2 non-warmoth guitars for a buddy of mine out in MN, they're not the tear-drop silverburst, just 2 relic'd satin nitro silverbursts (a Tele style and a LP style) I just used spray-cans from Guitar Re-Ranch.com
The finishes might not be to everyone's liking here, but they were exactly what my buddy wanted and he loves 'em!  :headbang:

 

[Cagey]

Adam Jones is a member in good standing of "guys who lie about their equipment just to mess with you." Billy Gibbons, then Eddie Van Halen, found out they could use talent and experimentation to come up with great sounds - then make up some ridiculous piece of equipment "secret" to explain it and watch in amazement as all the kids went nuts trying to duplicate that instead of talent.

You gotta admit, it's fun to watch, in a train wreck sort of way. On the plus side, it puts some decent gear on the used market at fire sale prices. "I bought this [insert expensive piece of gear here] and it didn't sound like [insert famous Amos here], so I wanna get a [insert more expensive piece of gear here] and I need to sell this [incredibly depreciated piece of gear here] quick. Make me an offer!"

 

[thebutcher85]

Adam Jones is a member in good standing of "guys who lie about their equipment just to mess with you." Billy Gibbons, then Eddie Van Halen, found out they could use talent and experimentation to come up with great sounds - then make up some ridiculous piece of equipment "secret" to explain it and watch in amazement as all the kids went nuts trying to duplicate that instead of talent.

You gotta admit, it's fun to watch, in a train wreck sort of way. On the plus side, it puts some decent gear on the used market at fire sale prices. "I bought this [insert expensive piece of gear here] and it didn't sound like [insert famous Amos here], so I wanna get a [insert more expensive piece of gear here] and I need to sell this [incredibly depreciated piece of gear here] quick. Make me an offer!"

:laughing7: too true! haha

 

[stubhead]

Tool is a great band. Kind of a narrow scope, but they do what they do very, very well. So I've been listening a bit, and what I'm hearing tonally is some cranked "British"-type power tubes, the Gospel written by Marshall - EL34's or EL84's. At the time Tool was coming up, Diezel amps were the leading quality amps using these, nowadays Engl amps are the new trendy one. Though it's gotten all mixed up, Mesa Boogie - who were the leading lights of the "American" 6G6 or 6L6-powered amps - are making the "royal Atlantic" EL34 amp that Timmons and Petrucci use. Any one of them powered by a guitar with humbuckers and wood selected for a typical tonal range will be capable of making very Tool-like noises.

Adam Jones has several of the silverburst Les Pauls all from the same narrow period when the paint fell off, and one of them even has a "secret screw" that he's afraid to remove because it may ruin his tone. Now he may even believe this himself - just as Eric Johnson may believe the type of screws that hold his speakers in their cabinets matter - and this may be insane, but you can also take it to mean that they're just hyper-attentive to a certain tone that they can get, and you really can't argue with their own success. But they're still insane. :laughing3:

Put it this way: If you get a good "British" amp head, a good humbucking-armed guitar, and spend several years learning the guitar parts and how to control some very rowdy tubes (and it couldn't hurt to study Jones' model of late Zeppelin too) nobody is going to blame you for not having the correct "secret screw" or flaked paint. I always though the silverbursts were some of the coolest Pauls. Better than hammering fricking beer caps into it to emulate fricking Zakk Wylde.

 

[Cagey]

Adam Jones has several of the silverburst Les Pauls all from the same narrow period when the paint fell off, and one of them even has a "secret screw" that he's afraid to remove because it may ruin his tone. Now he may even believe this himself - just as Eric Johnson may believe the type of screws that hold his speakers in their cabinets matter - and this may be insane, but you can also take it to mean that they're just hyper-attentive to a certain tone that they can get, and you really can't argue with their own success. But they're still insane. :laughing3:

There are a huge number of superstitious people in the world who believe all sorts of wildly insane things with no basis in fact, but we're leave that obvious issue alone. No sense picking the low-hanging fruit when better stuff is within reach. Look at baseball players who won't wash their "lucky socks" or race car drivers who'll only drink blue Gatorade or football players who kneel down and talk to ghosts when they somehow do a Good Thing. They're all convinced that their success is predicated on some totally disconnected thing, or are at least unwilling to tempt fate. It's not easy to get "annointed" and often it depends a great deal on luck, so you don't dare mess with surrounding conditions/activities/beliefs. You might break something and lose it all.

 

[Death by Uberschall]

Adam Jones' sound is very simple: Les Paul into a Fender Bassman, plain and simple.

 

[jrfox92]

Thanks guys, good info. Although, I was well aware that he lies alot about all the little things that people are interested in. I simply was just interested in the particular finish of the era, I've seen a few and absolutely adore how the silver gets kinda greenish over time. :laughing7:
I saw the backs of two of his LPs and they're are pretty damn flaky, but I'm really just interested in whatever paint that Gibson used in the burst that eventually gave a greenish tint to the silver teardrop.

 

[pabloman]

Ahhhh the Bassman, the original British amp.

 

[jrfox92]

Adam Jones' sound is very simple: Les Paul into a Fender Bassman, plain and simple.

You think so? Hm, I swear I ran across one of these at the local GC. Perhaps I should go back and check that out.

 

[Cagey]

Y'know, I have an Axe FX II now, and I swear one of the best sounding amps in that little miracle worker is a tricked-up Fender Bassman. When I think back on how many of those things I could have had for next to nothing back when I was a puppy...

 

[thebutcher85]

Thanks guys, good info. Although, I was well aware that he lies alot about all the little things that people are interested in. I simply was just interested in the particular finish of the era, I've seen a few and absolutely adore how the silver gets kinda greenish over time. :laughing7:
I saw the backs of two of his LPs and they're are pretty damn flaky, but I'm really just interested in whatever paint that Gibson used in the burst that eventually gave a greenish tint to the silver teardrop.

I *think* they turned green because of a combination of things: the outer finish yellowing with age, and  bronze flakes in the silver paint that Gibson used would change color when exposed to UV, any of the old (haha 'wiser') guys here know for sure?

 

[Death by Uberschall]

Ahhhh the Bassman, the original British amp.

So true.

If you go all the way back to the beginning, the original Fender amps were an exact copy of the circuit in the "free" RCA tube manual. RCA gave away the circuit designs as free "open source" info. They knew the money was in selling the tubes, not the circuit back then. The Bassman circuit is an example of this. The first Marshall was an exact copy of the Bassman, using components sourced in England/Europe. The slight differences in those components vs. their American counterparts, and use of poor/loose tolerance components is what made some Marshalls sound great, while others just didn't have the magic. The addition of the EL34 tube is what really set Marshall apart. Sourcing 6L6 tubes in Europe was very difficult at that time.

 

[Cagey]

You got it. Everybody thinks there's some "magic" to those old Fender amps and Leo was some kind of genius, but they were just RCA reference diagrams. If you had an old engineering tube manual, you had the schematics to all those old amps right down to the resistor values. I mean, dead nuts. They didn't even try to do anything off-book.

 

[Death by Uberschall]

You got it. Everybody thinks there's some "magic" to those old Fender amps and Leo was some kind of genius, but they were just RCA reference diagrams. If you had an old engineering tube manual, you had the schematics to all those old amps right down to the resistor values. I mean, dead nuts. They didn't even try to do anything off-book.

And Leo Fender did everything he could to keep the amps circuits clean and simple to provide the cleanest sound with no distortion of the guitar's signal. They were meant to be clean and clear. He'd be amazed and shocked at how far those amp designs have been changed by today's standards.

 

[stubhead]

Leo WAS some kind of genius, he took some free RCA reference diagrams and turned it into to the billion-dollar baby. He just wasn't the kind of genius that idiots need him to be to, to validate their own mental.... slothiness, shall we say. Following the leader "works" better if you have some powerful indication that the leader wasn't just... the first goofball in the room.

 

[Cagey]

No doubt. But, when you think about it, RCA really wanted their tubes used in high-quality, high-fidelity amplifiers. There was no thought given to guitar amplification. That application was practically non-existent at the time. Those designs were meant to be used for radios, phonographs, and public address systems and any distortion was detrimental to that end. So, they came up with designs that made their tubes shine like... something shiny. That they didn't was just a side effect of the technology of that era.

You always work with what you have, and it eventually sounds normal. Even an old transistor-based Crate or Peavey amp will sound great if that's all you have. Look at Frank Zappa and his Pignose. For most people, they sound like shit but he made it work. Move off the thing to a Marshall or Traynor or something, and all the sudden it's "WTF?" and you have to start over. So, that's what the guys who are now famous did. They used Fenders and Marshalls and what-have-you and created music with a sound that we now consider "normal" when really they were just doing the best they could with the tools at hand. No magic. No tricks. Just being practical.

 

[jrfox92]

Strange how this morphed from Silverburst finishes to philosphy over the creation of guitar amps.
Good enough for me, this is still a genious thread. :rock-on: