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Synopsis

Long time friend of Guitar Village and master pedal builder Roger Mayer joins Sam in our second instalment of “Guitar Village Welcomes.” In this video, Roger discusses some of his pedals, their applications, and some of their famous uses.

Full Transcript

so we’ve got the 4644 Drive can you tell us a little bit about this really this is a relatively modern design right uh maybe three or four years ago uh it was a design that I wanted to to build because it’s a combination of uh overdrive and soft Distortion right so it’s not the same as the voodoo Blues because they’re really blows out as a different type of feel to it in this one this one is a bit more uh what should we say so it it’s it’s voice for the modern people who want a really powerful Rock sound right a true dry sound uh mostly designed possibly for uh Hard Rock planes really uh it’s not you know it’s not designed for really for the blues uh but it’s not it could be used but it’s not so the name right because why is it called 46 24 46 is the rating number for Valentino Rossi fantastic world champion seven times eight times one champion no no anyway 44 is the rating element for Lewis Hamilton and they’re both exceptional drivers that’s why we’re so funny it’s worthwhile yeah yeah that’s my little homage to Lewis and the Valentino uh yeah it’s it’s a combination pedal uh in terms of the way it produces the Distortion It’s a combination it’s unlike anybody else’s one and uh it’s it’s it’s been voiced he hasn’t said you know to be powerful and it’s got very nice tone control and very usable gain and output control now it’s found its way uh into many many players you know from people in Nashville to to rock players to listen and we found it hasn’t found it’s right in the country yes but I might well do it might will do but it’s it’s probably only good so that that type of stuff you know it’s got a chord work and stuff like that it’s very it’s very um you know you can play chords sorry quite well you know and you still get the note definition as well exactly yeah okay virgin one pillow now this was the first panel I designed after possibly the axis battle all right this pedal was designed uh for a what would be called A Hard Rock sound and it was it was voiced primarily you know for for like like the Japanese Hard Rock sync uh and also you know it it it’s a signature power that Michael Landau uses he uses a voodoo one uh it’s a passive uh form of distortion the the the Distortion element is not put in a feedback loop so it’s got a nice speed forward sound to it which makes it expressive and smooth and it’s very musical yeah it has a lot of games so you’ve got that you know like West Coast um you know California sound so you can tap with it and it’s very smooth sounding you know and it’s it’s musical it sounds musical yeah so yeah it’s become popular because it might then I’ve made a kind of popular but a lot of people in the Europe really really like it we’ve sold loads of these yeah now our most popular pedal in Japan and probably worldwide is this panel figurative base it’s the base version of the voodoo one now in in Japan especially having distortional base with with their type of music is very very popular so so bass players have look you know almost several iconic status you know and the bait the way the way they use the bass on their type of music it is unique you know so we we made the base version of this and you know I see the sales of this one are are wearing each set of five times that one wow so both video based pedals probably well in excess of 15 000 units right right we might we made a special version for a place by Mr Commander in Japan and they that was the special edition of just a 500 for him

over the period of time still popular still being so a bit for people who want you know powerful Distortion baits because most most other most other panels can’t be used on a base like distortionators but they don’t have enough leverage you know so that’s it’s completely low end which is very important for the power

it is it uses passive distortion in it it’s not there’s no Distortion in the feedback loop which would be uh panels that have Distortion and the feedback loop would be something like a big mouth would be one tube screamer would be another uh tone vendor would be another there’s quite a few of them and and the characteristics of the feedback type of distortion panels are that they tend to stand out in a mix they don’t blend in very well very hard to uh find a place for that type of first box to blend in it all kinds of kind of sticks out hmm not particularly musical salad so that’s why I’ve never ever made uh that type of pedal I I looked into those type of configurations and just just threw them away I don’t want to make a photo that sounds like that because I don’t like white sounds myself it’s not very musical it’s not very human sounding so let’s just forget about it let’s just uh concentrate on on the on on the philosophy that we use with Jimmy by having a fellow sound human and that fit into a track seamlessly and become part of the track and become part of the human experience of you listening to the sound it’s the Spitfire the Spitfire is a great Rock sounding battle it’s got beautiful it’s been voiced very carefully over a number of years with some good players to fit in it can be heard I’m telling me a lot of the hood stuff Roger Daughtry stuff modern stuff you know quite replies like it you know it’s a good selling pedal well it’s a lesson you know maybe it fits into fits in for your taste you know but uh it’s no tube screen well I don’t make any two screamers yeah I’ll tell you this is this is this is one version of it right now first of all let’s let’s do let’s do an introduction about the Octavia the the concept behind the Octavia is basically to oh excuse me because I can’t count up right the concept behind the Octavia is the question I get asked most often the the concept behind it came from the fact that the matter is we wanted to create uh a sound that is the mirror image of the sound that exists now so that can be thought of graphically as putting uh say an image in front of two mirrors and when you do that you you generate an infinite number of images behind it all right mirror Imaging so this does that this does it electronically um it’s a bit more it’s quite a bit more complicated than it first appears most people like like you know who don’t understand it they don’t understand that because this the actual mirror Imaging technique on this uses information from the player that’s playing to modify the actual outcome this is called feed forward so it’s using information as you’re playing that changes the outcome now those would say oh yeah that’s obvious I said no if feedback the difference between food forward and feedback is feedback assumes that the answer that you’ve got can be corrected by referring it to the input and then making an error signal to correct it this doesn’t work for many many instances this is why um the actual concept of feedback doesn’t work in many amplifiers it will work on assign money right okay because that because let me explain to you music by definition is a non-repetitive waveform that is asymmetry now the the the that means it’s not symmetrical a sine wave is a symmetrical waveform it goes up and down up and down music can have a peak that’s much greater on one on a one sine of the zero then the other side that’s that’s asymmetric also one cycle that goes up and down of Music Never repeats it’s not the same that’s the definition of Music if if it if it didn’t if it didn’t change it would become a tone yeah the right you see it’s not music so the elect electronic techniques that you can use on um or the analysis which the people make and they teach I don’t want to get into it but the the analysis of most filter circuits and and most Electronics is done purely for convenience and simplicity on symmetrical waveforms sideways now me it’s got nothing to talk to do with Sunrise so most of the techniques that tell you were born to teach you about and talk about it’s it’s immediately it’s pointless because it’s got nothing at all to do with music yeah so most of my designs are you use Advanced Techniques like feed forward and and different you know quite complicated techniques within the circuit even though it’s certainly a little simple they are constantly changing with as you play and this is what gives a human feel and this is what means when you play through certain of my parents especially the uptega it changes the way you think because it’s instantaneous life change so it’s got much more human feel to it oh yeah sure not not many people not many people complain Octavia because what they what they do is immediately they get on it and they’re playing something they play before rule that time is designed for you to play something you’ve never played before fair enough that’s the most important thing and who who used the Octavian uh first person to use it Jimi Hendrix next person of real note to use it Ernie Eisley of the Isley Brothers next person to use it possibly uh junior Marvin from the waiters with Bob Marley she’s done that then we had other players using you know Stevie Ray used it I think you know Prince had one and uh all kinds of players during the 80s in New York you know a few people had them not many limited it to about um uh until I purchased uh in a series of them after 1980 that was about 50 15 people before 1980 you you could have already updated on it yeah and uh it’s amazing that you can you know you can produce these now so that everyone can can experience this for themselves yeah I mean it’s it um yeah but not everyone it’s a it’s a funny video not not the only people can use it but can can play with it because it’s difficult to use yeah and no it’s not desirable isn’t it that sounds great either way yeah right now that this pedal was designed at the same time after we went after we recorded purple purple eyes and Jimmy was using the the fuzz face type or something yeah live he’s always got me something better than that right I thought it was more reliable for using in the studio that’s what I came up with with this particular circuit configuration for the axis and this was designed primarily for recording not really for playing a lot we never use a red playing line it’s because we you know we didn’t have to you know and uh these expensive prototypes so the axis uses a completely different configuration than a third space um it the one they’re holding now is the latest version and I said the latest Hood it’s the latest model that incorporates some of the well it’s got 27 tweaks in it where you can adjust somebody uh tweets that we used in the studio to tailor this pedal for a particular soul in a particular track it drastically changes the way that the pedal reacts because the same circuit configuration by by using uh you know varying the components and and the way the components interact greatly changes the way the pedal sounds so these are all internal dip switches and you can just so you’ve got 27 options in there yeah this is incredible so you’ve you’ve almost got every type of fuss sound you’re going to want well of this particular uh type of uh configuration yes right so the action is a particular very stable uh um configuration that produces Distortion very very musical sounding very very powerful powerful sanding pedal you you play this loud in a club I mean you know it’s a destroyer you know it’s very loud it’s a loud sounding pedal and it it’s used as I said you know it’s good when it’s used to know and that’s good on solos and it’s not and but to complement that one yes we’ve introduced have you got the results there we’ve uh we have got the Visas let’s grab that out now the these the the yeah the results pedal same same uh you know we we’ve we’ve got the 1590 series uh enclosure so it’s pedalboard friendly uh also it’s got and it it’s got a lot of um our panel supplier smoothing as as do all my very modern patterns they the performance you get from these pillows it’s far superior than any battery could be provide so we’re not even bother to put a Factory lead in it it’s just just powered yeah which is which is interesting because you see so many of these panels Boutique panel manufacturers or some big manufacturers to make fuzzies say it’s got to be the first thing in the chain and you’ve got to run out of batteries no it’s [ __ ] now it’s completely full the fact of the matter is and I will continue on this anyway the result is contains 45 degrees and that would Encompass most of the important changes that I did to Jimmy’s uh phosphate circuits in the studio to tune the circuit in the studio without a particular cup because why wouldn’t we do that because when we could yeah we pulled the soldiers and it changes the sound it’s the last box thing yeah and it’s so inside here you’ve got similar dip switch sets up 45 yeah dip switches well yeah not foreign

the other concept between this was that we were saying that if someone’s got a visual art for instance or an accident that making that one pedal in their gig back with a guitar and they can lock up anywhere with a marshall plug it in they don’t need a pedal board okay you’ve got guitar they’ve got one of these they’re going to get a great sound you know you don’t need the rest of the stuff now you can just concentrate on probably you see because you don’t really want your attention uh drawn away by looking down you know at your feet you just want to play the guitar and I’ll hit the button or turn the volume up on the guitar to change the tone and all these pedals have been designed and most of them are going to design so that the the the the sound can be changed by the volume control on the guitar you don’t even have to do you don’t ever have to bend down you can just leave this on top of your hand plugged in

or if you’re on a bypass it you leave it on the floor and it’s squeaky and you’re good to go I mean that one so reside in an access and say what am I wiper you really don’t need any more playing live because the average person

you can’t expect them to uh uh distinguish it they can’t so Voodoo X product now is previously I showed you the axis 27 panel similar pedal in a similar sized box this pedal does not have any the the internal presets that give you uh access to so many internal uh circuit configurations then the axis 27 that’s right but this pedal preceded this one but what this pedal does have it’s got quite an interesting equalizing circuit which is after the Distortion uh it got you’ve got the Distortion of the regular axis pedal then you’ve got the EQ section but that enables you to get a very quick change of tonal palette so you can dial it in so it’s got its place it’s different you see but it’s got it’s in the same family if you know what I mean so this pedal is in the access family pedal whereas the 31 Voodoo based Spitfire and all that are in are in that family yeah and they’re different so how did the the voodoo Blues get in the lineup then the voodoo blows is a completely different design than than any of my other post boxes or Distortion boxes and like it was designed to give a um to complement you know at the start of playing like uh Stevie Ray or you know how the camera you know that that rock blues sound right not then it’s good if they’ve got a particular sound but anyway it’s a very heavy sounding uh Blues panel um not massive amounts of sustained but it it encourages you to play you know different chordal shapes with a guitar and it’s got a very uh human uh nice nice quality of a harmonics in it it’s got very you know it’s got good serious harmonics which makes it very very pleasing to play and uh that was designed as I said you know for that type of player you know Junior Marvin uses a similar type of pedal with Bob Marley on some of his solo work with uh on Exodus and so forth so that’s what it’s designed for now this this is probably the most impressive looking wild pen I think I’ve seen well it will be

I I was modifying wall pedals obviously for Jimmy from you know I found a gypsy to Ernie Isley through all the guitar players you know Steve Stevens Stevie Ray all those people so it when I moved back to England uh around in 1990s right I decided I am tired of modifying and putting right basically a very bad design that that doesn’t work and the reason for that is number one is a conventional um wire pedal like a crybaby was designed primarily when you were sitting down so your foot was like that you were it’s a keyboard right so when you stand up the the the the the whole the whole action of your foot is wrong the balance is wrong on your foot because because of the weight now this pedal is designed as you can you see it now it’s designed so that it it goes down slightly like that yeah and then it goes up now the actual angular movement of this pedal is more than on a on a pride baby the low profile of The Petal is such that it’s maybe 20 millimeters shorter oh it’s closer to the ground than the crybaby would be it also was designed to to be counterbalanced so it stays wherever you put it yeah it’s my good life this this piece of carbon fiber you’re looking here it’s very highly technical groups if I designed it I design the whole enclosure and the carbon fiber it’s it’s very lightweight and it’s it’s phone call but it’s got a piece of Steel in the back like that now the space is still does a very important thing because there is no potential Armature in this you look at this there’s nothing right you say well how did they look well there is a proximity coil here in the back that measures the angle of the pedal like that so this that the angle of the pedal is then converted into electrical signal now now what does that do well I we measured the angle of the pedal so now the angle the the electrical signal from the angle of the pedal has to be converted to micro Suite yeah for me it’s not difficult but the interesting thing about the switching is you get there’s a piece of foam rubber in the front so we can we can actually measure the the electrical signal when it’s just touching the foam rubber and when you can press the phone home and we can measure that challenge and that will create the switch so there’s no so it all works the electrics all work from this side it’s all contactless yeah nothing there and a bit of carbon fiber you’re looking there we went to the top people in um in Derby we do all the carbon fiber work for McLaren Mercedes in it you’re talking about knowing maybe python 20 well in today’s terms maybe cousin forty thousand pounds of touring now wow yeah it was it was the most manufactured piece of carbon fiber that they’ve ever done is they made the on a heavy they made for us but 100 000. so right people that people who’ve got these would be like Carlson and Tanner yeah all right Jimmy Page budget people bunch of guitar players that have them you know um you know the guy the reggae guys because I was Toots and tomatoes uh a lot of a lot of planets they’ve got them because it’s the last pedal that they’ve ever fire because it virtually can’t break it you see and it when you’re standing on it oh no can you show the foot when you’re standing on it it’s designed so that when you apply it’s so comfortable so it connects your foot to your brain in the most transparent way possible and that means you’re going to play better you’re going to play stuff on this because you cannot play on a cry baby and the other part is because it is facing forwards you can come off of it it looks good to switch a sound you you can get your emotion like that and it just changes you know so it’s a cool it’s a cool build um it’s also designed to to have the the leads coming in from here and there so they’re quite protected yeah that makes it makes a lot of sense and what do the the two controls do either so we’ve got we’ve got different models but this one is the um this Blends the wall back into the original sound so you don’t have to have 100 Wire yeah you can it can go between the normal sound and the Y sound or you can also uh vary the mass rings so you can make it wider or noun uh yeah or change it it changed the last week basically yeah here we have this this is this is the latest version of the radio live now Jimi Hendrix Banner gypsies used a unicorn pedal yeah which is made by Japanese company now this particular pedal was the uh use the user user filter circuit right a full stage filter circuit which gave a particular sound the pedal was very crude in design because it didn’t have any uh stability if if the main voltage changed the whole characteristics of the federal change it’s the power supply with it regulated so there was no stability within the pedal it wasn’t particularly quiet um didn’t have many options for getting actually within the filter sweep and and tuning the filters right so when when I um when I helped Jimmy with with the pedals that he had it really came down to all you could do is take the pedal apart and carefully select the components you see to make one that really sounded great you know so look at looking at that I said you know in the future God uh I started to make another rack mounted version for several people cut a semper Vibe and that was based upon you know the the same filter circuitry that the original uh unibike had there was nothing special about the particular uh uh configuration the well-known configuration that people use but it was the tuning of the filter stages that was the important thing yes so if you didn’t have control of the tuning 100 stages you’re basically screwed really I mean it’s never going to sound great so you couldn’t buy and you couldn’t buy components from from a catalog and you could get a great sounding one you know I mean we we’ve actually manufactured the um the main element in this which is a photo Optical resistor but I mean I we make a there’s a huge selection there’s a huge number of bins that I have that that we make out of out of making a thousand pairs or a thousand sets of them we’ll divide them into like 20 different bins and then you have to select the bins that you’ve got to use to make the oval circuit work now the score stages of that now so it’s obviously because quite a bit of knowledge to be able to select the right ones to make it sound right okay you got that so so your chances of of you’re going home and building your own Universe makes it sound great nil zero let’s forget about it so this requires you know to have access to you know the manufacturing capabilities that I do to to manufacture the the actual light cells we don’t buy me and we make them grow from the components so we have to get the LEDs cut them off stick them together test them Gloom and that’s the expensive part you know but that’s the book that’s what makes it sound good now this pedal has three functions on it it’s got the vibrato and the chorus and the other one this one has on it is is is a criminal select selection now the original unit what didn’t have his Jeremiah on it this does and we’ve also got uh six selections of of speed we’ve got three selections of one label and three selections on this one of another way from Square white that makes a real pulses are very electronic but I like me singer so you’ve got that then we get into the you go you’ve got you you have a fine speed control yeah that overlaps so these these you’ve got a huge uh range of speed different very very slow always imperceptible to very fast and um then you have to be controlled which controls you know so that’s more of a fine tune then that’s a fine tune yeah so you can dial it into the tempo itself and then this is the Symmetry control now symmetry well what’s the Symmetry well it’s okay we get back to um the waveform as it sweeps we can have a sweep that’s that speeds up yeah to the end and it slows down or the other way we’ve got with all the combinations of symmetry of the way it sleeps right so it’s not sweeping symmetrically it could be going like that or you know anyway so you’ve got symmetry control then you’ve got the intensity that’s the intensity of the sweep within the rifle and then the bias control now this the the this this is a tricky one the price control actually voices the whole filter so that you can tune it in and guide your actual tone that you really dig yeah and you can do that and then there’s an output control just you can just control the balance of of you of your output burst so you can either have it quieter down

if you get sockets on the back it’s got a to and from you can turn that to an external speed control okay we don’t we don’t make that but we give instructions to people that want to use it very people use it I mean I don’t know less than one percent I think of people uh use that and then it’s got a selection of outputs here you’ve got um you’ve got a hard wire output which means that it’s a direct wire so you hit the button it signal edit now then there’s two other buffered outputs which which you use even even in bypass if you were driving long leads because this would probably come on the end of a signal chain and if the amplifier was a long distance away you might want to have a long need to see so it will benefit from having a buffer there but not necessarily on short distances yeah how much difference is there between the two buffer outputs

you might want to have one sound coming out and then you won’t have one sound going through a delay

or Tiffany well you don’t expect your signal from there one split hopefully yeah yeah you’ve got two parallel outputs to play with yeah oh that’s great it’s it’s a very compressive pedal uh used by virtually everybody yeah it’s a it’s it’s you know everybody’s got this is an industry standard pedal I mean there’s a lot of people’s they did I don’t know I don’t even call them copies but it’s not a good guy plus it ain’t one of them

rm58 now this is based upon a very famous limiter that I made that was used uh you know from the early early 1968 70s in New York it’s um it’s got a great limiting circuit on it and it’s it’s been used in all the major Studios this is this is recording studio already uh it’s got inputs for both you know instrument level and plus four so it’s um it’s it’s professional recording uh limiter it’s made in this particular version uh for putting on the floor it’s probably most uh used um well it’s used a lot nowadays by base price because it sounds great on the base I mean coldplaying or a lot of people use it on the boat those sounds very very good advice I mean it sounds great on vocal business but we have other versions of it which are more Studio friendly that go into rope mounts and you know you use other Studio purposes as was our original ones they were all 19 inch right now but this was one that was designed for the floor uh you saw hey you can use it on guitar you know uh although compression units on a guitar it’s nice for recording we’re talking guitar just if that’s what you want to do with it but it’s it’s an fvt limiter very very quiet and very very flexible it’s got you know it’s different you know selected attacker at these times so you’ve got 36 combinations there of the second release and the threshold and output control so we might as simple as we can uh you know for operation of course the big difference is the you can’t really you can’t compare an analog type of limited like this in comparison with with the software or a plug-in type of owner infinitely better you know more more humid sounding you know per year so of course as I said you know

especially in Japan they love it the answer yeah this is a this is a great thing I do I do love the dial on there as well now it looks cool that moves as you’re playing through it so you can see how much effect it’s having oh the meter oh yes oh the game reduction yeah this this is this is this is quite a unique circuit the the game reduction is actually measured um very accurately on a side chain uh to give you a good re a good indication of how much game reduction you’ve got so so it while you’re recording you can see when it’s moving backwards yeah it’s accurate it’s good nice good pedal okay now I get asked a lot of questions about how to do Mercedes guitars that might now the answer to that is well it would be depending upon the day and which guitar it worked yeah now this this example here is the classic example of a maple Deck with a you know with a a wooden insert where the truss rod goes so this will probably be the brightest example of the neck wood is here right but we used to use um sometimes uh the Sunburst ones where you could see what would the wood was underneath because that’s the purest form of stradicaster is the Sunburst one because you can see that it’s probably made of three pieces of wood that’s the minimum normally that Stratocaster is made of there’s a piece of wood here there’s a joint right um so the colored ones could be made with up to five different breaches that were and then the worst examples of them are the used to be called a blue and all the other ones you see all the solid colors yeah they hit all the imperfections and the offcuts they all stuck in again in this pencil around it and whatever so anyway breathe so so now we get to the setup on the guitar now Jimmy played as I said on this guitar which is you know a left-handed guitar anyway it was the length of this string is quite short which would be that the equivalent for Jimmy yeah yeah except that when Jimmy plays he the this profile of the wood would be here so that the the amount of wood that’s supporting the vibration for the top string is more pronounced because of the more volume of wood because it’s it’s it’s flipped but anyway the string guides is rang from say 26 all right I mean sorry 10 13 10 13 15. 26 32 38. once again 10 13 15 26 32 38. now one of the most important things that most people probably they don’t realize that the 10 13 is it is a wonderful combination no problem because it gives you enough meat on the um string here to get enough magnetic output for the pickups you can’t use it no I let go of strings they’re nice they don’t they sound when they say weedy you know so the 13 is fine but the difference between using a 15 here and a 17 which is normally what happens if most set is that the 17

if you use a 17 you find that as you play the guitar it will become G heavy the whole guitar will become G heavy because the output of the strings is proportional to the square of the diameter so that you get a hundred and and this and that but the difference between 15 squared which is 225 as a 17 square is large so having the 15 there makes it much more balanced when you go to the 26 then and then the 32 and the 38 make the guitar more funky so you could you could hit you can hit the lower strings harder and and play you you can I don’t know what’s on this guitar but you could play three notes easily with with a 38 on that

right so it’s more foggy

I mean it’s it’s just more funky and same thing with the eye so you you have you have that’s the balance of the strings and also the strings that we used back then they were all Nick around they weren’t still well plated a nickel forget about the southern states yeah that makes no difference but the the wild strands of a nickel pure nickel how does that change the sound because the nickel is in the magnetic as the iron okay and also sometimes these strings were were rolled which means that after they’ve been wound put into a roll-up which makes them smoother it’s not like having a uh some of the the the the other brand present strings you know I don’t want a name number you know you got on that finish like sandpipe on your hands yeah take your fingers up no they were but that’s how they were so so you you you you have the uh mixture of uh you know the nickel and the industry engages because because guitar the guitar basically is a very very simple instrument there’s nothing complicated about a guitar he said well be a wire between there and there and then I’ve experience and you put your finger down there it changes it changes that’s it yeah yeah and that sort of mechanically obviously the um the way the way the vibration goes through the neck into the body that makes a huge difference in the Stratocaster because it’s longitudinal grain mating to longitudinal grain over an area that’s that’s relatively large you see at least as large as that so the the way the way the neck sits into the body becomes very important to get the sustained from the neck in in into the body so that becomes part of the setup is the way the um cavity is has been you know sanded and profiled so that the neck gets maximum sustain into the body when I used to do so all the guitars but all the Isley Brothers Ernie especially and Bob Morris guitars they’re all done by me the bass guitars as well to get the sustain it of the note and and make it perfect you know the same thing as cutting of the nut you know to get the angle the the difference of the angle how the string goes into the Machine Head that also affects the tone because of the amount of pressure onto the nut you know right so you’ve got a few little D’s you can play with there the the setup here of the tremolo block um what what does become very important is the the way the tension of these particular pivot screws are you’ve got to be set up correctly so that the you get maximum transparency of the vibration into the body of the guitar from from the fact that the string is wrapping over the various um in a piece of string string sounds and then you’ve also doubt the fact that when it when it goes into the back uh this drill I’ve got here they have made the trailer blocks out different materials from time to time you know different different Metals pardon me yeah and that also affects the amount of sustain that you get out of the catalog we always use fire springs on the guitar because that gives you the most chance uh the best chance of the guitar staying in tune and you get you get less spring memory as as the Romney bar goes up and down but that’s basically you know on on the mechanical side of it also the early stratocasters right which sometimes they still do now the early ones had a conical spring do you remember that for well sorry for the underneath this screw here that holds the pickup there was a conical spring that went like that and the the the point of having them there was so that the pickup became isolated it was floating and it wasn’t touching the fireball so but the idea from that was to isolate the vibration of the body away from the pickup to stop it squeezing because it’s saying it Telecaster where this pickup is virtually screwed to the body in the data squeal so Leo Leo put the coil spring in there and the earliest telecasters had a bit more clearance around it and the pickup was on Springs so yeah it just doesn’t uh it doesn’t feed back it’s our feedback as much and it’s important for these it’s important to have really the pickups kind of floating in in in the OR on or spring mounted so that they’re not touching into into this board because that makes once again it makes the it might stick it it makes the pickup be isolated away from from the vibration of the body which you which you want it to be because you want you want the magnetic pickup to actually pick up the the the the magnetism change but the spring roll I had so many that you know that that’s it really do you feel that uh you know for the people that like modding their guitars let’s say do you think changing pickups is makes a big difference to this end it’s probably the most uh uh overrated and waste of money that you could possibly do on a guitar because basically you know I mean put it this way what is this discussion because you don’t see more I mean Christ I mean you know you’ve got magnets here

produced magnetism another help you sleep call the wire goes around the outside Copperas copper doesn’t give him a monkey so how many times you put on these is up to you now when I thought when I first started modifying the duty I took some of the pickups and I’ll wind up a series of pickups but all difficult number to call on it just to work out which was what we thought was the best and we came back to the the original what what they have changed you know couldn’t they approve upon it because there’s a trade-off if if you put if you’ve got more turns on it you get more output but because you get this you know

you could you know it gets more basic you know I mean more terribly but you know no that’s it there’s nothing nothing in it you know I mean the way the magnets is tag that yeah that that can become kind of personal of course you can’t adjust them whatever you do don’t hit the magnet because if you move the magnet you’re going to break the coil new pickup so I I don’t think the pickups make a lot of difference but the major difference in in in some of the tallies is when you change when you swap out the pickup and you put in a P90 or something it’s changing the the actual type of pickup instead of changing it for life a lot because because the the major quality of these type of pickups is that you’ve got six uh single magnets that would produce a um a magnetic field that is quite Point quite pointy so that makes it quite detangled you see if you’ve had a bar right across something is it it matches everything together yeah so you know it’s up to you you know that’s why certain gifts and pickups don’t don’t really uh have much definition they don’t you can’t get Swang out on a boat streak out but gives you heavy now I’d say it’s a completely different sound isn’t it of course it is yes um that’s to to do with the way it’s picking up the vibration of the string and plus you know um it gives us don’t sound very cranky because of the way of of the wood construction on the guitar but even if it did I mean I’ve got a Telecaster I’ve made a custom one all Maple Kentucky Maple and we put plain ideas in it what was it p55s the old ones like yeah why not yeah but two in a minute great it’s powerful you know it sounds like not Gibson but it’s it’s a blend between the two so I mean you too you do have that option you know but uh have you ever met Leo Fender no you still don’t think I think he’s around no I haven’t been here I am a good engineer yeah look adoption engineer yeah he always seems to be like yourself pushing pushing the change you know to make everything uh better with his his ass he went on any money if you’re nice because I was a GLS me at one time yeah yeah um

I mean the strategories of design is hard to beat it’s got you know the cutout is you know obviously you know it’s very comfy isn’t it it’s hamburger friendly isn’t it that’s why the Americans like them yeah yeah it’s very food friendly so I mean it’s good and in this you see oh there oh there’s another Point too because because you’ve got the slope here when you play a guitar uh if you look at Kimmy the way you play the guitar when you when your elbow comes out it looks like you’re soaring wood so when your hair goes back in like that and you’re playing the speed of your play and then comes from your wrist yeah it’s like that and then it’s it’s the release of your these three fingers as you come down like that it gives it the acceleration see maybe that’s not that

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and then you you can divide it you can divide the uh the fretboard into three areas where the whether you’re coming on a down strap I mean I already played with my fingers but you foreign

‘s doing that he looks like to do this and you’re not trying to pick up the noise I mean if you wanted to go

you know my head’s hardly moved yeah and I’ll just use my fingers I said but that’s how I got

how you can go on the back side

because you can’t buy that when you’ve got something stuck under your arm yeah let’s pull because your hands sticking out so you can’t do it you try it’s so it looks awkward so when you actually put the guitar on it’s very important to get the the next of the strap absolutely correct so that your arm it’s relaxed and the only way that you can really see that is if you play the guitar set a mirror up in front of yourself and look at it and start the dancing practicing in front of a mirror so you see to find out the correct position of I don’t know your hand should be it would be like a golfer like standing in his swing there’s a lot more to it than it looks I mean why it looks easy with Jimmy Buffett it’s because it is easy

ethical not difficult for him yeah

that’s the attention to detail of everything so the way it plays so you know I mean he would he would notice if you know to strap out right or discipline right you see or um yeah I’ll tell you oh yeah yeah I mean well because he would because that’s his job