Saturday, January 3, 2015

Start with the Start, Stupid.

Last fall, I picked up a big bodied Gretsch on Craigslist, and proudly showed it to my wife when I got home.  She saw that it was hollow bodied, and asked me to play it.  I strummed a bit unplugged, and she said, "Hmmm, it's quieter than I expected....Do you think it needs new strings?''  I rolled my eyes at her, and packed the guitar off upstairs. 
 
I fell in love with this guitar as soon as the sellers took it out of the case: gloss black, lots of chrome accents with a Bigsby, big body and a wide flat neck to match.  It looked like liquid cool, and I conjured up the Gretsch twang inside my head.  I tried it out on the big Marshall amp they had, and it had the growl, but not the Gretsch twang.  I bought it anyway, thinking I would get the twang on my brighter amps at home. 
 
But when I got it home and played it for my wife, still no lively sound, just as my wife could identify with her untrained ears.  I kept the lie alive, fending off buyer's remorse, because how could a guitar that looked and felt so great sound so lifeless?  I tried it in a very bright amp, and still it had a happy mellow jazz sound, but no real nasal bite.  Disappointed?  Not yet.
 
You'd think I would be able to get the big sound out of this slick Gretsch.  I tried amps and effects, and was able to get a somewhat brighter sound, but not the right fundamental sound.  I went on the internet, and found out that the pickups in this guitar are a bit dull sounding.  I found a mod where you pull out one whole row of screws which did help a bit, but websites recommended changing the pickups altogether.  I didn't want to do this to a "new" guitar.

So thinking about what my wise wife said, I swapped off the old strings for some D'addario flat wound.  There was a big change in sound. The sound had more presence, and was definitely louder.  It was very mellow and the flatwounds eliminated finger squeak.  It had a great jazz sound, so instead of using the big Gretsch for country, rock, or rockabilly, (what the guitar is made for) I started using it to explore jazz.  If you know Gretsches, this is like using a banjo to play jazz, but the big body and hearing some jazz in the summer just pointed me in the jazz direction.   It made me feel more jazzy, but the feeling didn't last.  Or maybe the feeling lasted, but it wasn't a feeling I wanted for this guitar.

At the same time, I felt the Ernie Ball strings on my Strat were too brittle sounding.  I'd played this brand of strings for 30 years.  They were my go-to brand but this was the first time I'd felt any ear fatigue with them.  Maybe it was from playing the overly mellow Gretsch so much recently. 

"Hey!  Wait a second!  My Strat is too bright and thin, and my Gretsch is too mellow sounding.  Hmmmm," I thought.  Yup, I did the thing you aren't supposed to do.  I took the strings off one guitar and put them on the other, and vice versa.  Waddaya know?  The Gretsch came back to life!  Acoustically, the guitar sounded louder and the amps sounded like I lifted a blanket off them.  And my Strat was tamed along with a fast feel with the flatwounds.

So many lessons learned here.  First, I should have listened to my wife.  Second, the fundamental part of the guitar sound is where my fingers touch the strings.  I should have started there in my sound investigations too.  And talk about a cheap fix.

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