So here’s what I learned today:
- I still love pretty much every American G&L guitar I play. I think I just really get along with their fretwork.
- Nothing quite gets that Fender strat sound like a Fender strat. It’s just not the sound I need right now.
- I like the Benson Vinny almost as much as I liked the Monarch (may have been a difference in room), but boy these are pricey. And I’m not sure how it’ll work for the higher gain stuff I pay. Still, great amp, and great to play three different guitars into an amp I basically knew already in order to compare them. Ultimately, no new guitar today.
I really liked one G&L Legacy’s sound 1, but I didn’t like how it looked. It also needed to be rewired (neck pickup was dead, possibly middle as well– it had a weird tilt-blade switch that I think was splitting the bridge coil, but that meant positions 3, 4, and 5 worked, variably based on the tilt).
The other G&L Legacy 2 I played looked great, but someone replaced the humbucker with some kind of Seymour Duncan that I just sounded really bad. There was a lot of fizz and flub and lack of clarity. Maybe new pickups would have solved the problem, but I don’t love taking that gamble.
The last guitar I spent a good chunk of time with was a limited Fender with some kind of roasted maple neck I think. It looked quite dark, like mahogany, but because there was no separate fingerboard I’m guessing it was “roasted maple”, which I’ve never played. {Update: The neck was a single, solid piece of rosewood (including the headstock). I quite liked this!} It sounded great, and it played great even though it had medium/vintage frets, which I’m learning I generally don’t like. But it sounded super strat like. It just was full of that vintage, single coil, quack. It was exactly great at what it does, but that’s not the sound I need to add to my stable today.
This was my first time at Atomic Music. They had a collection of amps I would have died for in high school. And while they have a large, packed in guitar stock, it was not as fun for me. There were just maybe 5-6 guitars of the hundreds that spoke to me. The organization was pretty chaotic, which meant it was kind of hard to find what I was looking for anyway. It was far too busy to look at pedals, and the pedal stock was kind of a mess so it would have been pretty disruptive on a busy Saturday to try stuff out.
I was glad I went, and, especially if I was amp shopping, I’d go back again. I need to find a G&L dealer with extensive stock. Maybe I’ll go to Guitar Center tonight– surprisingly, the last time I went they had a lot of guitars that struck my fancy.