http://essentialsound.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=ES&Product_Code=Essence_Cord&Category_Code=REF
I'm not real qualified to evaluate things like $150 "directional" guitar cords and $800 power cords, cause I never buy anything like that - in fact I go out of my way to avoid buying anything with "mojo" or "vintage vibe" or "classic tone." (ooh, the manufacturers are scared of me....) Even though the Suhr Guitar site is full of wood descriptions that exude mojo, I fully agree with John Suhr personally when he says mojo is nonsense:
Things that aren't ridiculous hype, and worth it (besides pickups, wire & stuff - well, duh, you need that stuff):
Direct Sound Extreme Isolation headphones, the $90 ones - you can practice much more quietly over traffic, air conditioners, screaming cats, telephones, human contact.... Goodbye Cruel World! No more goo running out your ears after 6 hours of practicing over an air conditioner.
Bill Lawrence solderless cable system. I still use a fat soldered cord for stage, but to hook up pedalboards, looper stations and such the Lawrence kicks it - his former employee George L "borrowed" the idea and sells a very similar system, but Lawrence's is half the price and better made.
http://www.wildepickups.com/The_Wilde_Collection.php (cable kit at bottom)
Not worth the hype:
any thing with "Mojo", "Magic", a "Secret".... anything without objective evidence. The world is chock-full of oscilloscopes and frequency analyzers, yet ridiculous advertising statements go unexamined and automatically, unquestionably become part of "conventional wisdom". For example:
Not worth the hype: Nitrocellulose finishes.
Take four boards of the same species and same weight. Cover one with a nitro finish 3 microns thick and one with a polyurethane finish 3 microns thick. Take another and cover it with a 1/16" nitrocellulose finish and the last with a 1/16" poly finish. Hook them to an oscilloscope and, bang on them or something, fire vibrations in one end and contact-mike the other.
Which board resonates better? Is polyurethane always thick? Does wood that "breathes" obviously absorb moisture, rendering the concept of "finish" obsolete? Where is the evidence - it's a given that people who plug into an amp and wank away like what they're hearing, it's a given that someone who's invested hundreds and thousands of dollars in a nitro spray rig "knows" it sounds better... where is the evidence? Paul Reed Smith, Fender and Gibson use both nitro and poly on their highest-end guitars - if one is "better", why don't they use it?
Eric Clapton plays a superglue-finished guitar, Santana has got to be on anybody's top ten tone god lists - he plays a polyurethane-finished guitar. (He can get any new guitar he wants free, so why choose a bad-sounding finish? :icon_scratch
John Petrucci certainly makes my ten list, Steve Morse makes my top TWO list - his early 90's CD's "Southern Steel" and "Coast to Coast" are the textbooks on great & varied guitar tone. They both play plastic poly Music Man guitars.... Alembic gets $8000 for their poly guitars, Suhr gets $4000 for his. Don't even they know they suck?
Eric Johnson's new signature Strat has no paint between the inertia block and the bridge, because he "knows" it sounds better - that's now conventional wisdom, and thousands of guitarists have diligently sanded their inertia blocks. Q: If the evidence proves that Johnson is right and the paintless blocks transmit better vibrations, why hasn't Fender published the results of their studies? It would be a good selling point, right next to the studies proving the vibrational superiority of nitro finishes, and the proof about the impossibility of putting polyurethane on thinly... And the studies that prove the thickness of the finish makes a rat's ass difference on a solid five pound board, anyway. (ahem)
Not worth the hype:
New Grover tuners, made in China by Ping. They're not even the high-end Pings that Ibanez put on their $250 guitars, theyr'e nasty, cheap potmetal that goes crunchy within months. When I see a decent manufacturer like Schecter advertising Grovers as a selling point on their guitars I gotta wonder where else they're skimping. When I see Gibson putting cheap crunchy potmetal tuners on their $5000 custom shop guitars, I know I've lost my mind.*
*(those tiny items are so easy to misplace....) :blob7:
I'm not real qualified to evaluate things like $150 "directional" guitar cords and $800 power cords, cause I never buy anything like that - in fact I go out of my way to avoid buying anything with "mojo" or "vintage vibe" or "classic tone." (ooh, the manufacturers are scared of me....) Even though the Suhr Guitar site is full of wood descriptions that exude mojo, I fully agree with John Suhr personally when he says mojo is nonsense:
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Jan/Ten_Years_After_celebrating_a_decade_of_Suhr_Guitars.aspx
Things that aren't ridiculous hype, and worth it (besides pickups, wire & stuff - well, duh, you need that stuff):
Direct Sound Extreme Isolation headphones, the $90 ones - you can practice much more quietly over traffic, air conditioners, screaming cats, telephones, human contact.... Goodbye Cruel World! No more goo running out your ears after 6 hours of practicing over an air conditioner.
Bill Lawrence solderless cable system. I still use a fat soldered cord for stage, but to hook up pedalboards, looper stations and such the Lawrence kicks it - his former employee George L "borrowed" the idea and sells a very similar system, but Lawrence's is half the price and better made.
http://www.wildepickups.com/The_Wilde_Collection.php (cable kit at bottom)
Not worth the hype:
any thing with "Mojo", "Magic", a "Secret".... anything without objective evidence. The world is chock-full of oscilloscopes and frequency analyzers, yet ridiculous advertising statements go unexamined and automatically, unquestionably become part of "conventional wisdom". For example:
Not worth the hype: Nitrocellulose finishes.
Take four boards of the same species and same weight. Cover one with a nitro finish 3 microns thick and one with a polyurethane finish 3 microns thick. Take another and cover it with a 1/16" nitrocellulose finish and the last with a 1/16" poly finish. Hook them to an oscilloscope and, bang on them or something, fire vibrations in one end and contact-mike the other.
Which board resonates better? Is polyurethane always thick? Does wood that "breathes" obviously absorb moisture, rendering the concept of "finish" obsolete? Where is the evidence - it's a given that people who plug into an amp and wank away like what they're hearing, it's a given that someone who's invested hundreds and thousands of dollars in a nitro spray rig "knows" it sounds better... where is the evidence? Paul Reed Smith, Fender and Gibson use both nitro and poly on their highest-end guitars - if one is "better", why don't they use it?
Eric Clapton plays a superglue-finished guitar, Santana has got to be on anybody's top ten tone god lists - he plays a polyurethane-finished guitar. (He can get any new guitar he wants free, so why choose a bad-sounding finish? :icon_scratch
John Petrucci certainly makes my ten list, Steve Morse makes my top TWO list - his early 90's CD's "Southern Steel" and "Coast to Coast" are the textbooks on great & varied guitar tone. They both play plastic poly Music Man guitars.... Alembic gets $8000 for their poly guitars, Suhr gets $4000 for his. Don't even they know they suck?Eric Johnson's new signature Strat has no paint between the inertia block and the bridge, because he "knows" it sounds better - that's now conventional wisdom, and thousands of guitarists have diligently sanded their inertia blocks. Q: If the evidence proves that Johnson is right and the paintless blocks transmit better vibrations, why hasn't Fender published the results of their studies? It would be a good selling point, right next to the studies proving the vibrational superiority of nitro finishes, and the proof about the impossibility of putting polyurethane on thinly... And the studies that prove the thickness of the finish makes a rat's ass difference on a solid five pound board, anyway. (ahem)
Not worth the hype:
New Grover tuners, made in China by Ping. They're not even the high-end Pings that Ibanez put on their $250 guitars, theyr'e nasty, cheap potmetal that goes crunchy within months. When I see a decent manufacturer like Schecter advertising Grovers as a selling point on their guitars I gotta wonder where else they're skimping. When I see Gibson putting cheap crunchy potmetal tuners on their $5000 custom shop guitars, I know I've lost my mind.*
*(those tiny items are so easy to misplace....) :blob7:
