Les Paul - The Guitar Tone Legend

Les Paul (1915 - 2009) was a great guitarist and jazzman - not only a great guitar and recording gear inventor.

Les was a quite popular guitar player in jazz fanciers society. He also put something to the pop music industry. He was playing in radio shows and taking part in music projects with many famous musicians. You can read more about his life in this article: www.lespaulonline.com/bio.html

Here is a very cool interview with this gentleman: www.modernguitars.com/archives/000818.html

Custom Wiring Diagram for HSH Guitars (Ibanez RG, JEM)

Today I would like to present my wiring project for guitars with HSH pickup set – like Ibanez RG or Jem. It can give you a few more options than a standard guitar wiring. You will get more pickup configurations and a special possibility to make your guitar tone warmer or smoother.

Wire colors are like in DiMarzio pickups (red, black, green, white and bare), so if you have pickups from other manufacturer, you need to check out his color system.

3 Legendary and Easy to Build Guitar Pedals

If you want to build at home some guitar effect and you don't have enough time or skills for complicated constructions, but you want to make something with an awesome tone, this is the way to go:

• Dallas Fuzz Face 
• Dallas Rangemaster – treble booster
• MXR Distortion + 

Simple Tone + Volume Stack (tone and volume control circuit)

This is the tone and volume stack that can be used in many types of guitar effect pedals and other, similar gear. It's - in some way - based on the Big Muff tone control and „Stupidly Wonderful Tone Control” from hammer.ampage.org (very useful website for guitar DIY fanciers).

Double-Edged Guitar wiring - Killswitches

Today, I would like to present my guitar wiring design (diagram) with two kill-switches. It's inspired on famous Buckethead's and Tom Morello's guitars. The difference between their wirings and mine is in options of „killing the signal”. Guitars of these gentlemen have only one killswitch, which is just cutting-off the guitar signal by pushing a button. My wiring has got two buttons (switches). First will cut-off the signal like a typical killswitch, second will muffle the signal in one moment – but only to some degree. 

Johnny Winter - The Guitar Tone Legend

Today I would like to present an another guitarist with a great tone – Johnny Winter.

I know him especially as the great, distinct blues guitar licks maker. He definitely has got his own style of playing and his own, cool tone. His blues is a quite energetic type of music, with a lot of awesome guitar licks and vocal ornaments.

Johnny Winter is known as an user of Gibson Firebird and Erlewine Lazer – very cool, headless peace of wood.

Johnny Winter - Don't Take Advantage Of Me

I'm Yours And I'm Hers

Links: 

Johny Winter's official site: www.johnnywinter.net

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Winter

Erlewine guitars: www.erlewineguitars.com

Erlewine Lazer: www.erlewineguitars.com/pgs/lazer.htm (Awesome bridge design)

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Wiring Diagram for Stratocaster - Quite Expanded

This is the wiring diagram for Stratocaster guitar, with my new idea for the tone control circuit. It has got also an interesting pickup switching system.

(Probably, your pickguard will need some drilling for it.)

Operating Systems Made for Musicians

Yes, they are exist. I know two: Ubuntu Studio and 64 Studio. They are free to download and use (GPL, Open Source)

Both OS are based on Linux (for me it's a big plus) and have a lot of useful programs already on board. One of those programs is Ardour - on both systems. It's a digital audio workstation. I wrote about it in post: ”10 great, free software programs for musicians and sound engineers”. It's something very useful for home and pro recording studios. 

Ubuntu Studio an 64 Studio have also many other software, not only for audio. They are made for people connected with media production (also graphic designers and video editors). When you will install one of them, you will get all basic software needed to start some home recording studio.

Forshage Ergonomic Headless Custom Guitar & Roger Placer

I was surfing on-line a little and I found some nice guitar sounds. They are made by Roger Placer - who have a cool YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/rpguitar), and by his guitar - Forshage headless ergonomic electric guitar. This axe is a very original instrument and have some interesting type of wiring, with my favourite pickup switching system - every pickup's got its own on-off toggle switch.

If you like jazz guitars, or untypical guitars, or headless-ergonomic guitars, or completely custom guitars :) you really should check it. So, here is the movie presentation: Forshage Ergonomic Headless Guitar

Links: 

www.rogerplacer.com
www.youtube.com/user/rpguitar


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Nice DIY Pedals from YT Users

I would like to present some home-made constructions of guitar stomp boxes. I think, these pedals are really cool, so can promote 'guitar DIY' and give you some inspirations.

Fuzz Face on BC108 

Craig Anderton Tube Sound Fuzz 

Dr Boogie 

Wiring Diagram for Stratocaster - With a Warm-Bright-Warm Switch

Here comes the idea for a Stratocaster guitar wiring.

The biggest difference between my and the original Stratocaster wiring is in control over a tone warmth. My idea gives more options in this topic. The cost is in the one tone potentiometer, which was swapped for the 3-way, on-off-on DPDT switch.

Tom Waits - The Guitar Tone Legend

Tom Waits is not picking up an electric guitar very often. Probably you know him more as a vocalist only or a singing piano player. I would like to present here his 'made with an electric guitar' music. This guy has got a really cool tone!

Lie To Me

I've been changed

Links:
www.tomwaits.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Waits
www.tomwaits.com/photos/photo/3701974843/ (guitar gear photo)


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Free Software for Audio Analysis - Sonic Visualiser

Sonic Visualiser is an awesome program for audio files analysis. It's completely free - on GNU license. It can be useful for some more advanced guitar pedal and amp makers.

It is a very expanded software, with a lot of ways of sound visualisation (spectrograms), comparison and track marking. The interface is intuitive and easy to learn.
The program is available on Linux, OS/X and Windows.

Some video about how it works on audio alignment and comparison:

Audio alignment using Sonic Visualiser and MATCH from Chris Cannam on Vimeo.

Check out the SV homepage for more information: www.sonicvisualiser.org


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Wiring for P90 Pickups (Soapbars, Dog Ears)

This guitar wiring is designed for use with P90 and similar, hot output single coil pickups. To my taste, it's especially good for crunch and hi-gain drive tones.

Guitar Wiring for Metal Maniacs - Two Pickups Version

This guitar wiring is very similar to the previous one (Guitar wiring for metal maniacs), which is designed for guitars with only one, high output pickup, made to play rock/metal. This is just a 'two pickups version' of it.

About Natural Tone, Benedetto Jazz Guitars and Guitar Wirings

I think, Benedetto Manhattan is a really cool jazz guitar. I didn't ever play on one :), but try to listen an audio sample on Benedetto website: benedettoguitars.com/guitars/flagship-series/manhattan .

This natural tone is awesome. I can really feel the wood. All electronics, which are taking part in the second part of the audio track (first is unplugged) are there just to show the wood on first place, not themselves.

As you can see on submitted site, Benedetto didn't put any complicated wiring to Manhattan. All potentiometers, capacitors and pickups in guitar wirings always have some impact on the sound, so if the wood is the most important, 'one pickup + one potentiometer' wiring is something that we should think about.

I also started to think about on-board buffers, which can save a guitar signal from some affects of potentiometers and capacitors. Using good quality active buffers on a signal line, just after the pickup, can allow to put some more tone controllers in the guitar wiring, with no affect on sound, which can't be controlled.

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Pedal Board With Cool Distortions

Another cool pedal board. Awesome delays and old-school distortion/overdrive tones.

This guy knows how to use wah-wah (04:05). > Just listen <

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Guitar Wiring for Metal Maniacs

There are some electric guitars on the market, designed especially for metal music. This guitars, very often, have just one, high output pickup and just one potentiometer – 500K volume. This kind of simple wiring is not smoothing the sound, so it's a perfect distinct, distorted tone maker.

Here, i would like to present my mod of it. This wiring will allow you to make the tone more crisp and percussive, just by one click. It's something useful for fast palm-muting, or screaming solo play. 

All you need to make it, is push-pull 500K potentiometer and some resistor.

3 Good Articles About Electric Guitar Pickups

There are many articles in the WWW about guitar pickups, which trying to show you how this stuff works. Many of them duplicate popular myths. Not a lot of them showing a good, technical analysis.

Here, I would like to present three good articles, abut technical character of guitar pickups. They all have some portion of physics and some practical music knowledge. This articles are more for those of you, who already know, why electric guitars have electromagnetic pickups, but want more technical, scientific knowledge.

Pickupology by Bill Lawrence
The Secrets of Electric Guitar Pickups by Helmuth E. W. Lemme
Some Words About Pickups by Sven Petersen


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Some Cool Pedal Board

This is a very cool sounding pedal board. Very original. Awesome modulation effects. Just listen: Beavis Pedal Board Noize


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Stereo Guitar Wiring

This is my project of the quite simple stereo (two channels) guitar wiring. 

Every channel of the wiring has got his own, unique tone characteristic and his own, separate output socket. 

It is something very useful, if you want to connect your guitar to two amps, or to two different sets of effects. 

It is also useful for recording in studio. It allows you to record two, different sounding, but symmetrical tracks. You can use them together, as stereo guitar tracks, or chose only one, because it will be the best sounding track for some part of your song. 

There is also possibility to use this wiring as a mono circuit, by choosing only one output (channel) from two. In standard wirings you don't have that kind of choice.

Guitar Wiring for Les Paul and SG - Maverick

This is the guitar wiring that I designed for Les Paul, SG and also some hollow-body guitars users.

The biggest change is in the tone control circuit.

I swapped one of tone potentiometers, from 500K to 250K. I also took out the second tone pot and putted the mini toggle switch in his place.

Useful Tool for Guitar Wiring and Pedal Makers

A bunch of jumper wires with crocodile clips!

It's something reeeally useful. It allows you to test your ideas or new parts without soldering/desoldering.

A bunch of jumper wires. More colours = better.