John Sykes meets a LP Black Beauty

[WMHOLP]

Alrighty then, here's my first Warmoth project.  Can't leave Gregg all alone here:  Here's some particulars:

NECK:  Warmoth Pro Construction 25-1/2" scale neck with 1-11/16" width at the Corian nut.  Frets are 6105.  Pearloid block inlays and neck binding.  Unfinished indian rosewood with a macassar ebony fretboard.

BODY:  Carved-top Les Paul with mahogany back and maple top with natural lip over binding.  Dunlop strap locks.

TUNERS:  Sperzel lockers

BRIDGE:  TonePros TPFP/T1Z setup

ELECTRONICS:  Upgrade kit from RS Guitarworks that includes Hovland tone caps (.015/.022), and RS/CTS 500K smooth taper super pots

PICKUPS:  HighOrder custom-wound:  NECK:  7.8K A-3, symmetrical wind, and BRIDGE:  8.3K A-2, asymmetrical wind

PICKGUARD:  Machine-turned aluminum from Sharp Concepts

KNOBS:  Chrome-knurled knobs with ebony caps from Q-Parts

 

[Superbeast520]

Awesome!!!!, I love Sykes playing when he had the Blue Murder band, "Valley of the Kings" is one Badass tune!!!, you built a Great guitar!!!! :headbang:

 

[WMHOLP]

Thanks.  When I had the overall look in my head to put this thing together, Sykes never even crossed my mind.  I was actually more inspired by a black Les Paul I saw Neil Young playing at one time.  I was originally going to use chrome pickup rings, but decided against it.  In the end, it is sort of similar to the Les Pauls John plays.  I'm not really a big Whitesnake fan though.  About the only tune that's ever rocked my boat is "Still of the Night".  Just a cool riff.  I can't find myself getting to interested in most of the "80's" riffs though.  I gave that Blue Murder album a quick preview / listen, and decided against buying it. As for Thin Lizzy, I'm more into the Gorham / Robertson era.  I have a lot of Gary Moore stuff, but nothing from his Thin Lizzy days.  I'm sure I'll be giving that a closer listen sometime soon.  Will probably pick up Black Rose anyway.

I am pleased with the end result of this guitar.  It is sort of my spin on a hybrid mixture of a Sykes / Neil Young / Black Beauty.  It has a sound and complexity through my Marshall that is hard to describe.  It is definitely a tone I could never get from the Gibson SG Custom I sold to finance this build.  That guitar always sounded kind of sterile in the bridge position.  I think the NOS Mullards I have in my preamp have quite a bit to do with the overall sound too.

 

[Axe]

Nice!!!! :cool01:

  Sykes and Doug Aldrich are my fav LP players.. Blue Murder is a killer cd start to finish!

Nice Job!! :headbang:

 

[Superbeast520]

Yeah, Im really not one for the 80's stuff anymore either,(can't believe I lived that!!) though (it did bring Guitar into the forefront, so I can't knock that !) but Sykes playing is what amazed me,his tone with Blue Murder was like thunder, and his lead lines are tasty,tasty!!!!!  never got into Whitesnake much though, Coverdale,like alot of singers is too G*Y for me, hahhahahahha  ...no offense to anyone, but Im not much for that whole Singers EGO bit;  he fired the guy that wrote the tunes and took Vandenberg on the road, what an A**!!!!!! hole!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats quite a paul no doubt about it, just curious, what made you go with the Warmoth Headstock design over the Gib style??????

 

[WMHOLP]

Yeah, Im really not one for the 80's stuff anymore either,(can't believe I lived that!!) though (it did bring Guitar into the forefront, so I can't knock that !) but Sykes playing is what amazed me,his tone with Blue Murder was like thunder, and his lead lines are tasty,tasty!!!!!  never got into Whitesnake much though, Coverdale,like alot of singers is too G*Y for me, hahhahahahha  ...no offense to anyone, but Im not much for that whole Singers EGO bit;  he fired the guy that wrote the tunes and took Vandenberg on the road, what an A**!!!!!! hole!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats quite a paul no doubt about it, just curious, what made you go with the Warmoth Headstock design over the Gib style??????

I just wanted to be different.  I wasn't trying to copy a Les Paul, just introduce my own design elements to the basic body shape.  Although, I was initially tempted to try and build a Honeyburst knock-off of a '58 Les Paul, sort of like Jimmy Page's main axe.  Then, I started thinking about metallic pickguards, chrome appointments, and went a completely different direction.  You may have noticed that I didn't use a Gibby scale length either.  For my 50 watt Plexi, I wanted a slightly tighter string tension to hopefully let chords articulate the notes a little cleaner and not be quite as "slushy" as the shorter Gibson scale length.

I'm not knocking Syke's playing at all.  He has a huge tone.  I just can't stomach a lot of the 80's hair band crap with the girly lead vocalists and too many commercially-derived ballads.  Speaking of Coverdale though, I do enjoy listening to the Coverdale/Page album from time to time.  I particularly like the first track, "Shake My Tree".

As for egos, I have experienced some of that first-hand.  I'm not actually as accomplished a player as I'd like to be.  I inspire myself a lot, but I have a lot of room for improvement.  I figure if I don't quite have the chops to cut it in a professional band situation, why not just make whatever music is on stage sound as good as possible.  So, I did a stint as a live engineer for about 7 years. I really enjoyed the live mixing gigs, and got to meet a lot of the local musicians around here.  Most of my early gigs were mixing the likes of the late great Paul DeLay, Terry Robb, Craig Carothers, Kelly Joe Phelps, Lea Krueger, etc.  Then, I got hired by a local 8-piece band to run their sound exclusively for about 3 years.  All the material was tailored to include the 3-piece horn section, so a lot of up-beat rock & roll, Steely Dan, Blues Brothers...anyway, a really wide-ranging set list.  They always had a female lead vocalist + 3 of the guys in the band would do various lead vocals.  Anyway, the "band leader" was a bit bossy, and kind of on a power trip.  I attribute the fact that the band has gone through some really heavy personnel rotations to that.  From what I've heard, they are on their 3rd lead vocalist, 3rd guitar player, probably 3rd drummer by now, a couple different keyboard players...anyway, you get the idea.  When I was with them, it was pretty much the original line up.  Anyway, it was a blast.  Every now and then, they would catch me off-guard, and pull me on stage to play a few riffs.  It was all fun.

 

[Superbeast520]

Yeah I can relate to the 80's hairband crap comment, its hard to believe I thought some of that stuff was so great back then...hahahahahh

I like the Warmoth headstock and with that Rosewood, ebony board it looks killer, I hadn't caught that you used 25 1/2 scale till you mentioned it, thats Cool, does it give you more of the sounds you were after ???? 
I know what you mean I was tempted to think maybe I should build a Gibson copy, but it is so nice with all the options Warmoth offers
that I too don't think I could just build too plain a guitar, when I started planning mine, it was going to be 100% traditional strat with just the best strat parts offered, but as each detail came up the sweet options took over and what I ended up with is a gibson sounding strat with woods that look like they should be on a museum piece..hhaahhahaah  so much for traditional....hahahaha

Yeah, those are some great experiences you've had, playing or not its all relative and usefull, I actually think I gain more from watching someone else play than spending hours jamming???? 

anyway, nice job, its awesome.

 

[WMHOLP]

Yeah I can relate to the 80's hairband crap comment, its hard to believe I thought some of that stuff was so great back then...hahahahahh

I like the Warmoth headstock and with that Rosewood, ebony board it looks killer, I hadn't caught that you used 25 1/2 scale till you mentioned it, thats Cool, does it give you more of the sounds you were after ???? 
I know what you mean I was tempted to think maybe I should build a Gibson copy, but it is so nice with all the options Warmoth offers
that I too don't think I could just build too plain a guitar, when I started planning mine, it was going to be 100% traditional strat with just the best strat parts offered, but as each detail came up the sweet options took over and what I ended up with is a gibson sounding strat with woods that look like they should be on a museum piece..hhaahhahaah  so much for traditional....hahahaha

Yeah, those are some great experiences you've had, playing or not its all relative and usefull, I actually think I gain more from watching someone else play than spending hours jamming???? 

anyway, nice job, its awesome.

The longer scale length does give me more of the sound I was after from my 50 watter, especially in the bridge pickup position.  The 50 watt Marshall is a bit more mid-focused and compressed than a 100 watter would be, so I wanted to try and get a little more presence and top-end snarl out of this new guitar with that amp.  My old SG was always sort of dark and sterile on the bridge humbucker through this amp.  The neck pickup is not quite as warm and "squishy" as my old Gibson was.  It is definitely cleaner, and I can still get those violin tones, but it's not quite as warm and deep as I enjoyed on the Gibson.  The tighter string tension seems to have taken some of that "looseness / sag" away from the neck position pickup.  I have no regrets though....this guitar overall sounds much better than the Gibby in many ways, and the playability just leaves the Gibson in the dust.  Other than the Rosewood neck, I think the one thing that most attributed to the overall improvement in the tone was the un-even windings I ordered on the A2 magnet bridge humbucker.  The sound is really complex, and not as sterile sounding as the old Gibson.  I've never tried any of the other "boutique" humbuckers, so I can't compare; but, I'm really loving these HighOrder pickups.  At one point, I did try replacing the bridge pickup on the old SG with a Duncan Custom Custom to try and give it a little more snarl.  It was a little more aggressive, but it only made the guitar sound even darker than it already was, so I went back to the stock Gibby T-top.  That being said, I wanted to keep the pickups on this new build toward the lower output range to somewhat sound like old PAF's.  The windings I used are very similar to what the Duncan Antiquities are spec'd at.

I learn from watching other players too.  Lately, I've been writing a piece loosely based around a guitar riff a buddy of mine recorded some years back.  He died last year, so it's sort of my tribute to him.  It is forcing me to focus more on theory to at least stay in key with the intro lick.  If anything, it's really good practice for me to learn more of the chord voicings used within various intervals of the scale / key I'm writing in.  He always tuned way down, (a step and a half, in this case), so I'm writing this tune in the key of C# major (played in the open E position of my guitar tuned down).  I'm finding some really cool sounding minor 7th chords for the 2nd & 3rd intervals, along with the diminished up at the 7th interval.  I'm also throwing in some 4th & 5th interval parts in there too as sort of a chorus section.  Might as well learn the chords for the whole scale!  From there, I will figure out some lead patterns to put over it all.  It's still a work in progress.  I have some rhythm parts I want to re-record before I take it any further.  Every time I pull up the tracks, I listen to it, and make subtle changes.  All the drum and bass parts are GarageBand based.  I'm picking up old clips, and recording everything else on to the other tracks.  IT will probably be 8 tracks to master down when I'm done.

Anyway, I rarely get a chance to play lately, so I jam whenever I can make the opportunity.  By myself, with new people I meet, whatever.  It usually takes me a good hour to really get the bugs worked out and start to feel comfortable with my playing.  Well, back to my "day job".  More Photoshop retouching to do.

 

[Superbeast520]

Man how refreshing, I have been pretty busy this last year with my new daughter our other 2 children and of course the wifey, anyway, I had a nice 3 month spurt where I was able to really put some serious shred time in, otherwise Im very busy with reality as well.
Being that I tune down to D I to find it usefull to do alot of theory type research and work, lately I have been laying out the dorian and mixolydian scales in various keys and finding intervals and chords that lay within for a riff I created after hearing bucket heads techno type rythym song "Jordan" its not anything similar other than that its based around that type of technoish heavy rythym, but it has really got me focusing on some specific scales and keys as there are a couple that sound very sweet but I hadn't known very well, at least not as extensively as Im finding is necessary for this particular piece.
Things got even more complicated when I found a way to break into another riff and it happens to be based more on a different key / mode.
So now Im laying out the sweet spots for a couple modes I havn't used much and that has become alot of work, especially when Im finding there are some easier ways to play certain riffs I've come up with, but only to find I like the sound of it more on the multiple strings (which means more string crossing) as oppossed to the simpler way which makes it easier to move to the rythym chords, but dosn't seem to have the same snaze as using the more complex picking pattern...........OH BROTHER!!!!!!.......so alot of my precious time playing lately has been on some tedious / repetitive string pattern work, which can be fun once its up to speed and synchopated up against the beat as it should be, but damned if getting it to that point isn't a b*tch !!! hahahaahahahah.........
sure is nice to bounce this stuff off another guitar player, my wife is about as musically inclined as a plumber, so I find my self holed up in my little studio alot, With Myself!!!!!!!!!!!!! .......hahahahahahaahh.....(they say your only as healthy as the company you keep !!!!)... Uh Oh!!!!
   :laughing7: :laughing7: :laughing7: :sad1: :help:

 

[WMHOLP]

My wife is very understanding of my geetar hobby.  She's even bought 2 of the pedals on my board for me as gifts (my Teece Wizard wah, and the MXR Dynacomp).  I just haven't had much time for it lately.  I also have a daughter that turns 7 next month.  I've been taking advantage of available overtime at work lately to get caught up on some finances.  I'm glad I worked so hard at learning Photoshop.  It's paying off now.  I'm actually a production coordinator / CSR in a print prepress trade shop; but I'm the only CSR here that doubles as a color operator.  So when I'm slow in my primary duties, I jump onto a Photoshop workstation and go at the color / retouching thing.  Never hurts to beef up the resume.  Yeh, life is busy.  It's actually much more fun than dealing with ego-istic sales reps and ignorant customers.  I've been in the printing trade for a long time.  It seems designers and print buyers just get stupider as time goes on.  I think all the people building files for print production these days are greenies out of college any more.  Wouldn't surprise me anyway.

Sounds like you got a big jump on me with working on some of those modes of the major scale.  I'm lucky if I can remember Ionian and Dorian in the same day.  I have a lot of work cut out for me to explore the sonic possibilities of this piece I'm working on.  Most of the time so far has been getting the darn drum and bass parts programmed to my liking.  It took a lot of massaging in Garageband to get the drum and bass parts sounding just how I wanted.  Now that that's done, I can start getting more creative and stringing some patterns together.  So far, I have very little recorded as guitar parts.  A little from the POD, and a little micing the Marshall.  Much more shredding / recording is on the horizon some day.

As for my man cave (jam room / sound studio), that's not done yet.  It's been a work in progress for many years now.  All my crap is sitting in the living room.  Some day, I'll finish my garage conversion to move all my gear out there, then stock the extra fridge out there with cold ones.  As Martin Luther King once said, "I have a dream".  I'll get it done someday.

 

[Superbeast520]

haahahhahhahah..............thats hilarious, (ManCave) I told my wife that one and she laughed, yeah, my stuff was in the living room, and I actually liked it there cause I got more jamming in, but probably why my wife insisted I move it downstairs....hehehehehehh
She probably got sick of stairing at my back and having my brain buried in headphones. .......aw shucks!!!!!
Thats O.K. it was just the reason I needed to convince her to allow me to totally do up a room in the basement, how sweet I have it now, (except, its also turned into my banishment chamber, when the wife gets angry, hahhahahhaah, "Go Downstairs!!!" "Now!!" ..hahahhaah)
Oh well, could be worse........
I can't knock my wife when it comes to forking out for my stuff, If I mentioned everything my wife bought me, I would get hate mail!!! hahahaha
So as far as supportive financially, She's my best friend !!!!!  HooRay!!!!!!!!!! :hello2: :headbang: ccasion14:
I need a more complex drum machine as the one Im using is very limited, so I envy your ability to tinker with the beat, (something Im looking into), I know what you mean though just when I get something more, there's something I want really bad or don't feel like I will be complete till I get it.
It would be so much easier if I could just find the time and the guy's and the place to do all of the stuff Im trying to do myself, but alas, so far has not been my luck, though I have to admit, theres a certain joy to the comforts of home recording and jamming and just the plain solitude of going down to my Man Cave and relishing the little time I do get by myself!!!!!........hahahahaahha :laughing7:
My daughter (she's 11) has taken up flute, and while this gives me excuse to run our printer out of Ink, printing music for her, but mostly for me...(which drives my wife bonkers at $75) I have also noticed she is starting to take an ever growing amount of space for her music stuff, in MY Man Cave, so Im thinking, I may need to put up another room!...hahahahhahha :laughing7:

 

[Axe]

Mancave :icon_biggrin:

We need a thread showing our lil home studios.. I call mine "The Cave" as well :headbang:

SB,,what ya usin for drums? Maybe I can help ya out..

 

[WMHOLP]

I just sold a Boss drum machine.  Got tired of programming the thing.  I just find GarageBand so much easier to edit notes and fine tune with EQ's and various filters.  Once i got my Apple G5 iMac, my G3 with Pro Tools Free just doesn't get used.  I just keep the G3 hanging around for my scanner and camera dock.  I also still use it for Quark page layouts.  I don't have a layout program for my G5.  Can't afford to fork out the $$$ for Adobe CS.

For garage project studio isn't worthy of pictures yet.  Basically, I'm building floating / soundproof walls (with an air gap between the original wall and the floating wall).  I have the secondary wall started with a layer of thin plywood.  I have yet to add soundboard, and the final sheetrock layer.  Once the soundboard is up, I will be framing a sub-floor over the concrete slab, then the sheetrock will go up.  For security, I boarded up the one window, and installed a pair of 10" solar tubes in the roof for natural daytime lighting.  The original "barn doors" (it's an old house) got yanked out, and a new wall framed in for a standard 36" entry door with standard knob + deadbolt.  The inside door framing is also reinforced, thanks to the floating wall, so kicking the door in would be much more difficult.  Before starting all that work, I also rewired the garage.  It has a coaxial cable feed that I ran underground along with a power tap off the main panel for the 60 amp sub-panel I put in the garage.  I have plenty of power now, along with a split ductless electric heat pump to keep all the gear temperature happy.  For backup in the winter, a small ceramic space heater is plenty to keep it toasty in there.  So in the end, all this clutter that is in my living room will move to the new man-cave.

I no longer have the SG; but, everything else will move out.  That includes the amp, guitars, computers, and the shelf tower full of misc. nonsense.  (Tascam US-122 USB interface, POD 2.0, ART TPS II tube preamp, scanner, Zip drive).  Someday, I intend to outfit the garage with a small PA, $$$ permitting.  I'm planning on a small Soundcraft board, decent power amp, and some mains for playback.

 

[Axe]

Nice lookin setup ya got there :icon_thumright:

That's my"Cave"
For drums I use everything from  EZ Drumer w/DFH plugin to Drumcore w/ Matt Sorum's MattPack1 plugin to Pro Drum Works to Betamonkey loops to Drums on Demand.. And even a Scott Rockenfield disc of loops that aren't too bad.. I hate doing drums.. It took me a month to do the drums om "Lost in the Clouds" on my soundclick page.. I can't seem to bring myself to sit in fromt of the PC and edit drums.. hate it hate it hate it!! :tard:


Oh,,, and my studio engineer :icon_biggrin:

 

[simple]

We need a post called "The Mancave". 

Yes, drums are the worst! I bought a roland td-6 kit a while back so I could play it (I'm kind of a drummer) and capture the midi information and then just assign what ever drum kit I wanted to the midi file it created. Works OK but it's hard to find a way to speed up the process. I used Acid Pro for a long time with a huge library of drum loops, beta monkey, BFD and the rest. It's labor intensive no matter what way you slice it.

 

[WMHOLP]

Yeh, it's fun having toys to play with.  With my setup just thrown in the living room, it's difficult to lay down guitar tracks when I'm trying to record that Marshall plexi.  I decent recorded tone (or live for that matter) requires quite a bit of volume from that rig.  Without an isolation area for the half-stack, it's hard to monitor the backing tracks when I'm laying down parts.  For guitar parts that aren't as critical to me to have a true Marshall tone, I use the POD direct.  Much easier to monitor the backing + recording tracks with that toy.  I try to use it sparingly though.  It's mostly for late night practice when I get from work while the wife and daughter are sleeping.  For recording, it does have some useful sounds you can eak out of it.

 

[simple]

It's mostly for late night practice when I get from work while the wife and daughter are sleeping.

I made it a point when I had my kids to get them used to sleeping through noise. We never hesistated to play the stereo loud in the other room and such while the babies were sleeping and the rewards of this custom conditioning have been awesome for years.  :laughing7:

 

[Superbeast520]

Hey Axe, nice "Cave", dosn't look like your in any great need anytime soon!!!!.........Im jealous, I've been traveling around the country for quite a few years so I've been through about 5 or 6 setups, my current has been put together in just the last year so Im in dire need..hahahahaah

WMHOLP, sounds like your gonna have the PRO version done soon huh???  you've obviously been doing your home work, sound proofed, secured, awesome, lock out the world!!!!!!!!.........sounds like a dream ...........

Yeah Greg, Im a bit bummed my wife made me move downstairs, my little one was getting used to the noise too, my wife got mad though, because when ever the bambino woke up to feed, she was more interested in what dad was doing with that geetar and all them bright red lights in the corner, than going back to bed! hahahahahah...........so I got the boot!!!!...hahahahaha

We do need a "MAN CAVE" post, Its gotta be every players dream to be a Joe Satriani, and hole yourself up inside your own little workshop and dream up Cool Creations..............sounds like a great thread to post some great gear and recording tips as well, gee Greg, this Forum could become your fulltime work??????...........are they ready for that down there ??? hahahahhahah....sounds like a nice gig too me! :laughing7:

I'll get some pics up later, I got one photo off and the batteries died on this camera, though my space isn't as fancy and equiped as what you guy's got going.....mine practically is a cave ....hahahahaahahah.........but it works...... :laughing7:....hell Im still using transcription paper........hahahahahaa :laughing7:

 

[WMHOLP]

Update on my build.  I removed the Warmoth sticker/decal on the peghead, and replaced it with a chrome metal logo.  Also waiting on a custom truss rod cover. It will be my initials in red abalone inlay on black ebony.  Also caught a Pat Travers show this weekend in Centralia, WA.  He signed the rear control cover for me.  In a few short weeks, this thing will finally be done.

 

[WMHOLP]

This build is finally done.  Just put the new truss rod cover on, and the chrome Warmoth logo on the headstock.  I just wish I had a better camera.  This one sucks, but you get the idea.