I started rewiring my guitars years ago. Getting into a guitar and changing it to my specs and needs is always interesting and the rewards are pretty high. My last nightmare wiring job was my Les Paul. I wanted the Jimmy Page wiring and finally got it going. Not too long ago Acme Guitar Works [...]
Captain Beefheart’s Ten Commandments For Guitarists
Captain Beefheart’s Ten Commandments For Guitarists: LISTEN TO THE BIRDS That’s where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren’t going anywhere. YOUR GUITAR IS NOT REALLY A GUITAR [...]
The Taylor Road Show – What is Old is New!
A few weeks ago I had packed up my Taylor GS RC acoustic and took it to my favorite guitar store in Nashville, TN – World Music. I laid the alligator case on the counter and told the manager I wanted to trade it in. Everybody played it and I could tell they were impressed [...]
World Music Nashville and JFK…
I was in my local music store World Music Nashville a while back and ran into JFK. JFK was doing a fret job on two guitars that belong to Eddie Perez. Eddie currently plays for Dwight Yoakam and has also played with The Mavericks. JFK was telling me how low of an action he was [...]
Two New Songs – “Apache” and “Sloe Gin Blues”
I have a thing for surfy, spaghetti type guitar playing. Maybe it was my western fixation as a kid in Texas. My Gretsch was built to sound nice and twangy for that very reason. So in the spirit of that I did my version of Link Wray’s Apache. Who is Link Wray? Why he’s just [...]
I started rewiring my guitars years ago. Getting into a guitar and changing it to my specs and needs is always interesting and the rewards are pretty high. My last nightmare wiring job was my Les Paul. I wanted the Jimmy Page wiring and finally got it going. Not too long ago Acme Guitar Works came out with the new ToneShaper for the Les Paul. I had to have it and here is why. When you wire a guitar there are a lot of options you can choose from – vintage wiring, modern wiring, different pots, different capacitors, etc. These decisions have to be made before you wire the guitar. Every option changes the tone of your guitar. Of couse the goal is to hit that tone that you are looking for and the thing to remember is we are all usually looking for a different tone. If you didn’t like what you heard it was time to open up the guitar cavity and rewire – new pots, caps, etc. TONESHAPER TO THE RESCUE!
Prior to the ToneShaper it was almost impossible and a huge chore to A/B the different tones you could get with different wiring options. Not so with the ToneShaper. They sent me a unit to evaluate and install into my number Les Paul. The beauty with the ToneShaper is that you can flip a few mini switches and A/B everything. Vintage vs. modern? Not a problem, just flip some mini switches and in seconds you can hear both. Need a treble kit with your modern wiring? Just flip a switch. Want to see what pots work best with your pickup? That is simple and fast as well. My humbucker was a four wire so with an push/pull pot I can now go from humbucking to series or parallel. Too damn cool! The install was a breeze and man it’s cool to be able to listen to all the tonal options the ToneShaper has to offer.
I shot two videos of the Tone Shaper for the Les Paul. One is for the install:
The other video demonstrates to the ToneShaper.
I hope these help explain how the ToneShaper works and thanks to Acme for the demo unit. My Les Paul loves it and so do I!!
Captain Beefheart’s Ten Commandments For Guitarists:
LISTEN TO THE BIRDS That’s where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren’t going anywhere.
YOUR GUITAR IS NOT REALLY A GUITAR Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you’re good, you’ll land a big one.
PRACTICE IN FRONT OF A BUSH Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn’t shake, eat another piece of bread.
WALK WITH THE DEVIL Old delta blues players referred to amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts demons and devils. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
IF YOU’RE GUILTY OF THINKING, YOU’RE OUT If your brain is part of the process, you’re missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.
NEVER POINT YOUR GUITAR AT ANYONE Your instrument has more power than lightning. Just hit a big chord, then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.
ALWAYS CARRY YOUR CHURCH KEY You must carry your key and use it when called upon. That’s your part of the bargain. Like One String Sam. He was a Detroit street musician in the fifties who played a homemade instrument. His song “I Need A Hundred Dollars” is warm pie. Another church key holder is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty making you want to look up her dress to see how he’s doing it.
DON’T WIPE THE SWEAT OFF YOUR INSTRUMENT You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.
KEEP YOUR GUITAR IN A DARK PLACE When you’re not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don’t play your guitar for more than a day, be sure to put a saucer of water in with it.
YOU GOTTA HAVE A HOOD FOR YOUR ENGINE Wear a hat when you play and keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house the hot air can’t escape. Even a lima bean has to have a wet paper towel around it to make it grow.
A few weeks ago I had packed up my Taylor GS RC acoustic and took it to my favorite guitar store in Nashville, TN – World Music. I laid the alligator case on the counter and told the manager I wanted to trade it in. Everybody played it and I could tell they were impressed with the cedar rosewood combination. I told him it had taken me a year to decide to bring it in. It was mentioned that the Taylor Road Show was coming through that night. I decided to put my Taylor back in the case and see if anything at the Road Show “spoke” to me. This was my first time and it was great to see there were other people that were interested in how different woods affected guitar tone. Then I learned how the shape of the guitar can be thought of as the shape of an equalizer and how that affects the sound. I was in heaven. Then they started playing each guitar through the stage mic. A description of the wood was given, then some playing and then a new guitar was played almost immediately. It was like a wine tasting for guitars! We all listened intently to each one and guess what? My favorite wood combo was the cedar and rosewood. My favorite guitar type was the GS body. The kicker to the story is that is exactly what I own. I walked out realizing I already had the perfect guitar for me. Since that night I have been playing my GSRC daily and recording my acoustic songs on it as well. Thanks to Marc Seal, Barney Hill and the Taylor Road Show for showing me the light!
I was in my local music store World Music Nashville a while back and ran into JFK. JFK was doing a fret job on two guitars that belong to Eddie Perez. Eddie currently plays for Dwight Yoakam and has also played with The Mavericks. JFK was telling me how low of an action he was getting with his fret job technique. Enough from me, lets hear from JFK about the whole thing…
I have a thing for surfy, spaghetti type guitar playing. Maybe it was my western fixation as a kid in Texas. My Gretsch was built to sound nice and twangy for that very reason. So in the spirit of that I did my version of Link Wray’s Apache. Who is Link Wray? Why he’s just the guy that invented the fuzz/distortion sound and the barre chord. I think of Link as a big old cinder block in the foundation of rock. I also have a nice dirty Texas blues song call “Sloe Gin Blues”. Please play them, download them and enjoy them. If you like them please sign up as a fan so you can see what else blows out of my head and on to the strings!
If the question is, “Billy will you try to do as many things as possible to one guitar as you can?” then the answer would have to be Hell yes. I can’t really stop myself and I enjoy it so why should I? When looking for wiring schemes for my Les Paul Plustop Pro/FX I found out that the Jimmy Page wiring scheme is the most complicated and that was all it took. While rewiring a guitar can seem intimidating it really isn’t. It’s just a bunch of wires and all you have to do is make them look like the wires in the picture. Sure you need to know how to solder but that isn’t very hard either. Making your wiring look pretty…now that is hard, and while I have done it a few times usually it looks more like multicolored spaghetti and I’m fine with that as long as my guitar works when I’m done. After my initial attempt I decided the tone knob wasn’t working for my Pearly Gates Neck pickup. I took a look and realized I had left out the Russian oil and paper tone capacitor. I popped that on and BAM! All was well. The only issue I’m having now is I don’t seem to have control of both volumes when I have both pickups running at once. I’m going to dive back in and see which wires might crossed. Other than that I’m really digging the Jimmy Page wiring. there are tons of tonal options (22) and while tonal options can lead to you doing nothing but fiddling with your knobs I still think more options are better than less.
I admit it, I like weird guitars. The Epiphone Les Paul Pro/Fx fits that description. The satin neck, coil split humbuckers, Floyd Rose, and allen wrenches mounted on the neck put it in that category for me.
So far I have:
Changed out the pickups – Neck Pearly Gates SD and bridge GFS VEH. I know the GFS should not be that great in comparison to the Pearly Gates but it is sounding pretty good. The Pearly Gates is everything I hoped it would be.
Paper and oil capacitors – This is my first try with Russian caps. I installed these the same time I put in the pickups so I can’t really gauge how big of a change they made but for $14 I’ll probably do this to all my guitars to grab that retro “Bumble Bee” tone. I will say this, usually I have my tone at 10 but with the new caps I am finding great tones all over the knob.
Brass Block – The block on that Floyd rose is thin and looks like pot metal to me. I have the brass block shipping my way and will get that in latter this week.
To do – I am going to go back in to check on the wiring. The humbuckers aren’t sounding great split. I want to check and see if they have them wired in parallel. If not I’ll wire them that way to see if it helps any.
Overall – Originally the guitar was pretty muddy and not what I would call a “go to” guitar. The new pickups really woke the guitar up and I am grabbing it a lot more now. I also put on .095 strings. I run them on all my guitars and they sound great on the Pro/Fx as well.
I could live with the guitar on the neck Pearly Gates at all times. It really does nail the Billy Gibbons tone but it also can sound “pretty” and has tons of sustain. The cheapie VEH GFS pu sounds pretty good and when used in conjunction with the PG brightens the sound quite a bit. Using the VEH by itself is a little brighter sound that I could use for our Lynynd Skynyd covers. I expected to rip it out immediately but wanted to give a shot since it was laying around and I’m pretty surprise how well it holds up against the PG.
In general it is built well, looks great, and plays great as well. I lowered the bridge height to get a lower action and did not run into any string buzz. That was a big plus that I didn’t need to mess with the frets. The action is fine with me. I don’t like the Floyd trem arm but I guess I’ll have to learn how to like it. This thing is pretty amazing to be an Epiphone.
So there I was, sitting in my high powered golf cart at my show in Leipers Fork, TN. Tony D. and I were on the top of a hill sipping a Budweiser when Tony D. proclaimed, “BILLY! That’s the American Picker van!!!”. He hadn’t finished his sentence before I was hooking it across that field at 28 MPH with my over sized mud tires throwing up dust. Sure as Hell it was Mike Wolfe from my favorite show, American Pickers! He was picking up a nice 1963 VW bus with no windows. It looked like a blue submarine. Mike and I know each other from back before the American Pickers show began. About six years ago we spent a leisurely afternoon sipping a…you guessed it, Budweiser. He left sporting a Billy Hell t-shirt and I told my buddy Bryce Custer, “he’s good people!’ Mike was nice enough to come over to my annual air show and say hey to everyone. All 80 plus pilots were pretty excited he was there. We got him on some FPV goggles (first person video) and flew a plane around the event so he could see it as the bird flies. He was gracious enough to accommodate the guys for photos. I brought out my pinstriped JimmyC Gretsch and Mike told me about a 1932 National he had just picked up. You can check out my photos and interview at the bottom of this post. I want to also give a big thanks to Mike for taking the time and hanging out with us He made everyone’s day.
So I was at my favorite guitar store, World Music in Nashville, and I met Barney Hill. Barney is the district sales manager for Taylor Guitars. He had some high dollar guitars with him but I was curious about what he had strapped to his back. A big smile broke out on his face and he said, “This is the brand new GS Mini Taylor!” It is the size of a travel guitar but built around Taylor GS specs. My number one acoustic is a Taylor GSRC so I had to learn more. He immediately let m know this was his personal guitar but they should already be on the street. I did play the guitar and it doesn’t sound anything like a “travel” guitar. It was nice and warm with good highs. I also approve of the neck. I think we all need one!
Watch my interview with Taylor district sales manager Barney Hill to learn more!
December 26th, 2011 
billyhell 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCeQfV5c85U
