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Thanks DB, I am pretty lucky to know Lynn Wheelwright. When he needs someone one to demo his stuff, he usually calls me, or the other guitar player in our band Vorraro, Ryan Hawthorn. We have goten to play some seriously cool guitars and amps, stuff people dream about, and more than once, Lynn has allowed me to keep guitars/amps overnnight so I can really learn about them. Lynn is a a walking encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to vintage electric guitar stuff, but when it comes to actually using the gear and making music with it, he loves to get feedback from Ryan and I. Check out Lynn's work on this book... https://pinecasterbook.com/the-authors/

Very very cool. Getting ahold of something vintage like that is amazing. Having the skill and tools to do it justice is even better!

I thought this might be a fun thing to talk about. Last night I spent at least 8 hours playing through a really cool historic amp, a 1941 Fender amp, which you could read about here in these two articles... https://reverb.com/news/the-vibro-set-where-fender-really-started https://www.fretboardjournal.com/video/hear-one-of-leo-fenders-first-musical-instruments/ (that's actually me playing the Strat and the ES125 in some of the videos posted) Last night I was recording the tones of the amp with some different guitars than the ones we used last time. All of them belonging to me, except for one (see below). And the owner of the amp, famous guitar historian Lynn Wheelwright, had me test it out with a new speaker that was custom made for the amp by the Jupiter Speaker company. Lynn built an external speaker cabinet for it, which was probably a good idea, because I was playing with the amp at almost wide open volume at times. The amp itself had just gone through a tune-up, so we were checking it out how to see how it was performing. The amp was plugged into a brown box voltage regulator. The amp performed great, and even after 8 hours of being on, there was no sag in tone that I could hear. And it was really a quiet amp compared to many of the vintage amps I've played through (most every model 50's tweed, and 60's blackface amps). Here's a picture of the Vibro amp (only one volume control which works on the mic channel only, no volume for the normal channel) with the external cabinet miked up as it was set up in my studio (brown box to the right)... I had some rhythm tracks recorded before Lynn got there, so I just played the lead fills on each guitar, so we could compare the sounds of each if them through the amp. I played my Strat, my Tele, and my Gretsch G6120T 55VS (DeArmonds) through it. I chose the Strat and Tele guitars because they are partscasters that I built, and both are better than my Fender Custom Shop guitars. They are three of my favorite instruments, which I have played through some great vintage amps, and Lynn really wanted to know how I felt this original '41 amp compared to these amps. We had already tested the amp with vintage guitars a while back (55 Strat, 56 LP Special, and an early sixties ES125). Lynn may have some reproductions of this amp made in the future, so we were doing some research to see how well the amp played with some modern guitars, and how it compared to modern boutique amps. I say if they got the reproduction right, this would be a cool amp to own because it has some really cool tones. Especially for someone like me, that really likes slightly dirty vintage guitar tones. It gets great clean tones with lots of harmonic content, and some pretty great dirt when cranked, but I really loved it with just a bit of hair on it. It just has a unique voice. I ran the amp through it's paces playing from whisper quiet, to rattle the external cabinet loud. And like most amps, it had it's sweet spot were it revealed the qualities of each guitar. There really wasn't a guitar that it didn't like! The only thing we hadn't tested it with was a humbucker guitar. Well Lynn just got a new Nacho Les Paul, and I told him it would be cool to test the humbucker sound with it. He was thinking the same thing, so he went home got his Nacho, and brought it back to my studio. Here it is... And we plugged it in and it sounded great. It sounded very vintage. The body was very resonant, and the pickups had the microphonics that people associate with a good PAF. The action was a little high, but low enough for me to get the job done. I got the takes with the Nacho on the first pass. I really wanted to hear more of the Nacho, but it was getting late, so I asked Lynn if he would leave it and the amp with me, so I could see I could find some really good tones. Only thing, when I was testing out the other guitars, I was going for some fast picking on the Gretsch, which had on some heavier .012 flatwounds, and I developed a blood blister on my fingerpicking hand (I rarely use a pick). So I was mainly looking to play less aggressive with the guitar while testing for tones. I thought it would be cool to find some tones that would be unique to that guitar and amp combo. While I was twiddling the volume knob on the amp, I heard this really cool acoustic like tone out of the middle position of the Nacho, very Stones like, so I wrote a little slide guitar song around it. There are three tracks, the first rhythm on the middle position, slide guitar with the bridge pickup, and a little solo with the bridge pickup for the third track. BTW I was plugged straight into the amp, no pedals here As a matter of fact if you listen closely, you can hear those Nacho pickups getting some cool compression and double tones. And the amp was just turned up enough to get a litte hair. This is what I came up with...

I think it's the same as G uses, most music stores should have a truss rod wrench that fits

hey that is a pretty great idea! And I finally watched that PAF vid, it was good! I must have just landed on that earlier quote by chance, when I previewed it

That's why Page tried to make his Les Paul so much like his Tele Frankly though, I kind of do the same thing. I wired my humbucker Zemaitis guitars with a high pass filter so I can make the humbuckers sound like singles when I need to. I got that idea from the PTB (Passive Treble Bass) cicuit that's in my G&L Legacy. And my Teye guitar has what's called a mood control that does the same thing. I think Page moved to the Les Paul because he preferred the way the his Paul could conjure up the heavy tones with his stage amps, and when he backed up the volumes, the PAFs could get into the Tele zone.

haha!! yes, there's that too

well, a humbucker is a single coil pickup on steroids... granted I didn't watch the whole vid, just happened to catch that bit. I'm sure he put a lot of work into it I'll check it out sometime I think I am aware of most of the PAF history though. I'm bringing a shovel to PSP so I can dig around where Pete Moreno dumped that truckload of them in the landfill back in the day

That's exactly why people work so hard to make their LP sound just like Page's Tele on the first LZ album. They're really the same, just different!

Just pony up for one or both of these. 1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 1, | Gibson 1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 2, | Gibson

Because the Ox population is dwindling.....

I just installed the 59's in my PRS SE Zach Myers (a fantastic guitar). They sound like they should. It must have been the interaction of the wood with those pickups. Wood matters.

Stock Duncan 59's. I chatted with Mike Ortiz about it. He thinks the pickups might be defective. I'm going to test them in another guitar to see what happens. Maybe it was just the combination of the guitar and the pickups. But the JS Moore's sound great.

What was in it?

Yep I know & realize that It sounded like the guy was reading a bad LLM/AI prompt that scourged the internet & "logically" strung that sentence together. And he read it wirth such conviction! influencers, I tell ya...

Meant to say "the goal of the PAF was to sound like a P90 without the noise" whoops

They are just saying that the goal of PAF was to sound like a PAF without the noise. There are many people, including the early pickup designers that feel the P90 is the best pickup that was ever made. And some of those early PAFs do sound quite a bit like an hot Balckguard Tele pickup.

I have it somewhere here. Great pics of the great guitars the old guard put out.

Your kidding! Victor came to PSP that year and was actively marketing his book. I believe he secured quite a few orders. Its a great book, I didn't buy one ( I think they were about $40 back then). Haven't heard from him in a long time.....

Been a long time since we saw him last. Oddly enough, I believe he had a H127 he fully restored and it was a stunner. I had a few conversations with him at the Barn way back when. I remember the book as well as the guitar on the cover page. If anyone recalls, that H150 was on display at PSP on the final assembly work bench. Such a beautiful guitar.

Victor is a member here. He was at several PSPs. His HOC handle is Totonka. I haven't seen him around for a while, though.

What? You found something on the internet that you don't believe? Hard to imagine.

I have a 1996 Super Eagle and I can't seem to find the right size tool to adjust the truss rod. Granted I don't have a specific tool for this so I'm just trying out different sockets and wrenches (US and Metric) but because of clearance I can't get a good grip and I don't want to strip it. Any guidance would be appreciated. Heck I'll buy the wrench from Stewmac if I knew what to buy.

This is a convoluted statement of logic: "The characterization that a great burst Les Paul sounds like a Telecaster on steroids is really talking about how a humbucking pickup succeeded in sounding like a quiet P90" WTF I've never heard anyone say a great burst Les Paul sounds like a Telecaster with P90's

Got it. Autographed too, I think? It's great!