Meet Our Producer's New Squier Stratocaster:

Inspector #20

Inspector #20

Ambassador of Tone
Fallen Star
Country flag
Recently, while recording, our producer asked me to play different guitars to exploit the "right/left" speaker effect.

He told me that all my guitars sound very nearly similar, sufficiently so that they don't "jump out" on a recording.

Think about that...

A 1987 Fender Stratocaster with a 16.5k AlNico9 44AWG DiMarzio Neanderthal Humbucker

A Slash/AFD knock-off Les Paul with a 13.0k Planet Tone Afterburner

A 2021 Gibson Les Paul 50's Standard Gold Top with a Gibson Burstbucker 3

And they all sound virtually the same on a recording... :-)

(I've been saying this for years, buy there are those who say it isn't possible)

Our producer called me last week and said he wanted to augment my punchy, humbucker tone (lefft channel) with a brighter, single coil tone, (right channel) as a kind of tonal experiment for our upcoming re-tracking.

He advised me that he ordered a new Squire Stratocaster Hardtail from Fender " just to keep here at the studio."

Naturally, I took it to the office and performed a full setup.

20220302_103145.jpg

20220302_104511.jpg

I polished the rosewood board and applied lemon oil - to close the grain - and micro-polished the frets. I set the intonation with the requisite jig and raised the 12th fret action to .070" and balanced the strings across the fretboard radius.

Pickups were set to factoy spec of 4/32".

We will introduce it into our recordings this weekend.
 
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Recently, while recording, our producer asked me to play different guitars to exploit the "right/left" speaker effect.

He told me that all my guitars sound very nearly similar, sufficiently so that they don't "jump out" on a recording.

Think about that...

A 1987 Fender Stratocaster with a 16.5k AlNico9 44AWG DiMarzio Neanderthal Humbucker

A Slash/AFD knock-off Les Paul with a 13.0k Planet Tone Afterburner

A 2021 Gibson Les Paul 50's Standard Gold Top with a Gibson Burstbucker 3

And they all sound virtually the same on a recording... :)

The first thing I thought of when I read this is......Wow, maybe tone really is all in the fingers?!?
 
Robert Herndon said:
Recently, while recording, our producer asked me to play different guitars to exploit the "right/left" speaker effect.

He told me that all my guitars sound very nearly similar, sufficiently so that they don't "jump out" on a recording.

Think about that...

A 1987 Fender Stratocaster with a 16.5k AlNico9 44AWG DiMarzio Neanderthal Humbucker

A Slash/AFD knock-off Les Paul with a 13.0k Planet Tone Afterburner

A 2021 Gibson Les Paul 50's Standard Gold Top with a Gibson Burstbucker 3

And they all sound virtually the same on a recording... :-)

(I've been saying this for years, buy there are those who say it isn't possible)

Our producer called me last week and said he wanted to augment my punchy, humbucker tone (lefft channel) with a brighter, single coil tone, (right channel) as a kind of tonal experiment for our upcoming re-tracking.

He advised me that he ordered a new Squire Stratocaster Hardtail from Fender " just to keep here at the studio."

Naturally, I took it to the office and performed a full setup.

View attachment 81050

View attachment 81051

View attachment 81052

View attachment 81053

I polished the rosewood board and applied lemon oil - to close the grain - and micro-polished the frets. I set the intonation with the requisite jig and raised the 12th fret action to .070" and balanced the strings across the fretboard radius.

Pickups were set to factoy spec of 4/32".

We will introduce it into our recordings this weekend.
Click to expand...

Okay, three questions:

What is that jig?

How does it work?

How can I get one?
 
smitty_p said:
Okay, three questions:

What is that jig?

How does it work?

How can I get one?
Click to expand...

Not sure if they are available to the public.

It butts against the nut and identifies saddle placement by mathematical scale length.

You know how, on older guitars, or guitars that have been worked on, the 3rd fret and the 12th fret intonation are not always consistent???

That doesn't happen on new guitars. Every fret is dead-on the money...
 
Ozzie said:
Recently, while recording, our producer asked me to play different guitars to exploit the "right/left" speaker effect.

He told me that all my guitars sound very nearly similar, sufficiently so that they don't "jump out" on a recording.

Think about that...

A 1987 Fender Stratocaster with a 16.5k AlNico9 44AWG DiMarzio Neanderthal Humbucker

A Slash/AFD knock-off Les Paul with a 13.0k Planet Tone Afterburner

A 2021 Gibson Les Paul 50's Standard Gold Top with a Gibson Burstbucker 3

And they all sound virtually the same on a recording... :)

The first thing I thought of when I read this is......Wow, maybe tone really is all in the fingers?!?
Click to expand...
I don't just think so... I believe so... At least in a very significant way.

Just take a look at David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Eric Johnson, Ritchie Blackmore, Mark Knopfler and so many more. All Strats (yes, some differences in hardware and so but still, Strats). E.G.: If Slash were to play Jimmy Page's LP, I betcha it would still sound like Slash (playing JP's Les Paul, at best), NOT like Jimmy Page.
 
Robert Herndon said:
Not sure if they are available to the public.

It butts against the nut and identifies saddle placement by mathematical scale length.

You know how, on older guitars, or guitars that have been worked on, the 3rd fret and the 12th fret intonation are not always consistent???

That doesn't happen on new guitars. Every fret is dead-on the money...
Click to expand...
Can you post a pic of one?
 
SIx String Chef said:
Just take a look at David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Eric Johnson, Ritchie Blackmore, Mark Knopfler and so many more. All Strats (yes, some differences in hardware and so but still, Strats). E.G.: If Slash were to play Jimmy Page's LP, I betcha it would still sound like Slash (playing JP's Les Paul, at best), NOT like Jimmy Page.
Click to expand...

Exactly. But, this is not “tone”.

The “tone” of Page’s Les Paul will not sound any different if Slash plays it.

But the MUSIC being produced WILL be different! And, isn’t that more important, anyway?
 
Robert Herndon said:
The tone of the Stratocaster's stock single coil will likely be brighter, more trebly.... but the difference is not night and day as some would have you believe.
Click to expand...
I already know that most people don't know what guitar is being played on the music there are listening to. Sometimes it can be extremely amusing. Even funnier when it's not even the person they thought it was playing it...
 
Robert Herndon said:
Not sure if they are available to the public.

It butts against the nut and identifies saddle placement by mathematical scale length.

You know how, on older guitars, or guitars that have been worked on, the 3rd fret and the 12th fret intonation are not always consistent???

That doesn't happen on new guitars. Every fret is dead-on the money...
Click to expand...
How does it take relief into account? I have leveled and crowned plenty of new guitars to know they aren't all spot on, and even a minor difference in relief can contribute to a need for minor intonation tweaks.

That's a pretty cool jig but I think it really would only give a good generalization for intonation, which in turn could quicken the process for a lot of folks, but I would still end up using a strobe and intonating like I was taught.

If you find that they are available, I'd be interested in checking one out. I see that the one you have is labeled Fender and obviously for a 25 1/2" scale guitar.

A working tech would need multiple scales.

Dangit...now I'm off to surf the interwebs looking for something like that.
 
smitty_p said:
Exactly. But, this is not “tone”.

The “tone” of Page’s Les Paul will not sound any different if Slash plays it.

But the MUSIC being produced WILL be different! And, isn’t that more important, anyway?
Click to expand...
I'm glad you're still carrying the torch with this explanation. I tire of trying to explain to people why there is absolutely no "tone" in the fingers at all lol
It's simply a confusion of terms, methinks. We all know what people really mean when they say "tone is in the fingers" but I believe they're just erroneously using the word "tone" as if it's synonymous with "music" or "techniques" or "style" or whatever. But it's not.

If there was "tone" in the fingers, guitars and amps wouldn't even need any knobs. Heck, we wouldn't even need a selection of different guitars or amps or anything. We'd have one model of guitar, and one model of amp, and the fingers would do all the rest. Because that's where the tone is supposed to be......right?? Lol
 
StrumerJoe said:
How does it take relief into account? I have leveled and crowned plenty of new guitars to know they aren't all spot on, and even a minor difference in relief can contribute to a need for minor intonation tweaks.

That's a pretty cool jig but I think it really would only give a good generalization for intonation, which in turn could quicken the process for a lot of folks, but I would still end up using a strobe and intonating like I was taught.

If you find that they are available, I'd be interested in checking one out. I see that the one you have is labeled Fender and obviously for a 25 1/2" scale guitar.

A working tech would need multiple scales.

Dangit...now I'm off to surf the interwebs looking for something like that.
Click to expand...

I have a jig to set relief with a dial indicator.

If you are with the spec of .008" to .012", then intonation is always right.

The only times I see intonation variations is with the cursed wrap-around bridges and the old Telcaster 3 barrel saddles.

I've set intonation with a jig and checked it with a strobe tuner and it's right on the money.

Now once in a while (and this is one of my job functions) a guitar will come to me with the saddle or saddles moved back and intonation is still sharp, sometimes by as much as 10/15 cents.

In those cases, the string is the culprit, but I also see nut slots cut incorrectly, or slots that are not cleaned after slotting.

Here's an example of a Telecaster nut slot cut improperly, shifting the intonation point beyond the capability of the bridge to correct.

20220214_070854.jpg

There's no such thing here as intonation being "off" as everything is targeted CNC.

If the mathematics check out, intonation will also be "in spec."

I sometimes stop by Guitar Sinner and I've had guys ask me to set intonation on a Fender and I do it by "eyeball" (pattern) then invite them to check it with a strobe tuner.

They don't want to believe it can be done that way, because it invalidates a lifetime of musical mythology.

Now, I had a brand new, 2016 Gibson Les Paul 50's Tribute that had intonation issues and the Gibson warranty tech discovered the first fret placement was .010" off from the factory and nothing can "fix" that kind of error.

Many vintage Gibsons have these kind of errors, but it's become accepted because of the vintage chatlracter of those old instruments.

But with new guitars, built with close-tolerance CNC methodology, intonation is dead-on anywhere you check it up and down the neck.

If I'm in doubt, I just start measuring. The numbers don't lie, nor do they subscribe to mythogy. If it's off, then it's off...
 
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Beagle said:
I already know that most people don't know what guitar is being played on the music there are listening to. Sometimes it can be extremely amusing. Even funnier when it's not even the person they thought it was playing it...
Click to expand...

I’ll tell you a funny thing, my wife is not a guitar player and knows nothing about guitar design or build, but she can identify a Strat or a humbucker-based sound with very good accuracy from listening to songs. What’s more, when I have had her listen to clips I’ve put on SoundCloud, she can usually pick out the guitar I’m playing. She knows the difference in sound not just between my Strat and other guitars, but she can usually tell if I’m playing my ‘74 SG or Les Paul. I’m sure this is just due to the differences in pickups, but she can hear the difference.

She is a singer and has a very good ear for tonality.
 
smitty_p said:
I’ll tell you a funny thing, my wife is not a guitar player and knows nothing about guitar design or build, but she can identify a Strat or a humbucker-based sound with very good accuracy from listening to songs. What’s more, when I have had her listen to clips I’ve put on SoundCloud, she can usually pick out the guitar I’m playing. She knows the difference in sound not just between my Strat and other guitars, but she can usually tell if I’m playing my ‘74 SG or Les Paul. I’m sure this is just due to the differences in pickups, but she can hear the difference.

She is a singer and has a very good ear for tonality.
Click to expand...

I can hear intonation being out...
 
Robert Herndon said:
Now once in a while (and this is one of my job functions) a guitar will come to me with the saddle or saddles moved back and intonation is still sharp, sometimes by as much as 10/15 cents.

In those cases, the string is the culprit, but I also see nut slots cut incorrectly, or slots that are not cleaned after slotting.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I’ve personally encountered the string thing (I get extra points for rhyming!).

When I do any setup work on my guitars, it is always with the strings I intend to use.
 
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