Friday, November 26, 2010

Cool Tracks With Guitars II - Jazz

Another portion of great guitar music, that I found on-line. On todays playlist, all songs are in jazz vibes.
For me, it's a nice playlist for moody days. I hope, that it will be very inspiring stuff for you, as a guitarist.

| Click to listen |

Playlist:
1. Rick Zunigar - Take Your Best Shot
2. Urtzi Azkue (feat Itziar Castrillo) - Bildur Barik
3. Slikk Tim - Looptown
4. JPFM Band - Besse-A-Stress
5. Tom La Meche - Mon Beau Sympa


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Thursday, November 25, 2010

Tom Petty - The Guitar Tone Legend


Today i would like to tell you something about Tom Petty. He's not a „guitar virtuoso” for me. He's not like Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani or Jimi Henrix. He's not playing fast and complicated, but he is a great guitarist. Tom is a master of strumming and minimalistic riffs in the background.


Maybe someone would like to say, that there is nothing difficult in 'just guitar strumming' and 'just playing few notes/chords'. I think, that there IS something difficult. Feeling, dynamic, smoothness, aggression – you can make it in many different ways. You can be boring, or you can have passion.

If you don't know too much about Tom Petty's music, here are some cool videos.

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers:
Refugee  (live)
Don't Come Around Here No More
You Got Lucky
Runnin' Down A Dream


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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Parts Selection for DIY Boutique Guitar Gear

Probably many of guitar DIY fanciers would like to make a real boutique guitar pedal or use some high-grade parts in a guitar wiring. In this post I would like to show you my selection of capacitors and resistors, that I'm using in preamps and guitar wirings. All of them are selected as parts with good relation between price and quality. They are also quite easy to find in online stores.

CAPACITORS:
red Wima and brown Elna caps

Film:

Vishay MKT1813
Vishay MKP1837
Wima MKP 2
Wima MKP 4
Wima MKP 10

Electrolytic:

Elna Slimic II
Nichicon KZ
Panasonic FC

Monday, November 22, 2010

Wiring Mod for Gibson Guitars - More Aggression

Today, I would like to show you a wiring mod for Les Paul, SG and similar guitars. I designed it to make my SG more distinct and aggressive on the bridge position. On the neck position it's still a typical Gibson - fat and full. Another interesting thing in my guitar with this custom wiring is the centre position of the switch - bridge and neck. In this configuration, my SG has got a wide frequency range, it sounds very acoustically.
All you need to have to make it is a DPDT on-off-on toggle switch and two capacitors (ceramic or film) - 4,7nF and 5,6nF.


Friday, November 19, 2010

Cool Tracks With Guitars I - Prog Rock

In this post I would like to present five cool songs that I found on Jamendo. They can be a really inspiring stuff for a guitarist. The playlist is based on progressive rock/metal vibes.

| Click to listen |

1. JT Bruce - Plunge Into Hyperreality
2. Andrea Puggioni - Notte Prog
3. Emerald Cave - Far From Any World
4. Progside - Inside My Robot's Mind
5. PhaZer - Feat Itself


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Thursday, November 18, 2010

Warm Sounding Telecaster - Wiring Mod

Warm, smooth sounding Telecaster guitar, this is my target in this post.
I would like to show you a simple mod of a wiring, which will make your Tele more jazzy and warm. If you like to play slow muddy blues or jazz with this awesome Fender guitar, it can be interesting for you. To make this wiring, you need only two extra parts: 270k and 15k resistors.


Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Wiring Inspired by Jerry Garcia's Guitar

If you're a fan of guitar DIY and The Grateful Dead (with Jerry Garcia as a lead guitarist), this wiring diagram can be interesting for you. It's based on Jerry Garcia's guitar - The Tiger.

This is not a copy of the Tiger's wiring. It's designed to get most of Tiger's tone options, but it's also customized to be mounted in guitars that you can easily buy today.

Here is my project:

Monday, November 15, 2010

If Your Guitar Sounds Too Bright or Too Dark - Wiring Tips

If your electric guitar sounds too bright, or too warm and dark, I can give you a few simple tips. They are based on small modifications of the volume control circuit in a guitar wiring.

This diagram can help in tuning your guitar tone and choosing right parts:

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Multipurpose Guitar Preamp (With a TL071 Op-amp)

I would like to show you the diagram of a simple guitar preamp unit. It's based only on eight parts (including TL071 op-amp).
The preamp is very flexible in use. Can be mounted in a guitar body - as an on-board preamp or as a part of a guitar effect pedal. It's got low power consumption - perfect stuff for work with a battery.
The preamp is based on a very popular circuit, but with this diagram you will get the clear „how to” that you can easily use in your work with guitar electronics.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Michael Wilton and Chris DeGarmo from Queensrÿche - The Guitar Tone Legends

Another great guitar duo. Michael Wilton and Chris DeGarmo made an awsome job in the Queensrÿche band. I like Especially the Operation: Mindcrime album. In one song they can show you shredding, cool melodic lines, progressive riffs and many more.


Thursday, November 11, 2010

Quite Simple Active Guitar Wiring - for Clean Signal Transport

Today I would like to present another guitar wiring diagram with the buffer, that I wrote about in some previous post.
It's very simple. The wiring is based on one potentiometer, one tone switch with two capacitors and the buffer. It's designed for those of you, who are looking for clean, linear guitar signal transport, with no uncontrolled affects from parts of the wiring. It will not give you a lot of on-board tone shaping functions, but will be perfect if you prefer to use pedals and amps equalizers for that purposes, or if you just wan't to hear more from the wood, strings and pickups, without big impact from potentionmeters and capacitors.


Tuesday, November 9, 2010

About Active Guitar Wirings - Preamps, Buffers, Pickups

I already have few post about active guitar wirings with on-board buffers, but I didn't wrote an article, about reasons of building that stuff and it's benefits. So, here it is.

Some people, who mounted an active wiring with an on-board buffer or a preamp, or have active pickups in their guitars, are saying that this stuff changing the tone dramatically and it's a little bit too bright or less full, smooth sounding. I think, that it comes from some kind of misunderstanding the way how this electronics works.

If you mounted an active wiring, with a completely linear frequency response (for example audio op-amp based), the tone should be much brighter. It's because of transporting a full frequency range. Passive guitar wirings usually cutting off a little bit of treble. Active wirings are usually - like I said before - linear. They will just transport a guitar pickup signal. Thy will not cut anything if you don't want it. It's because of preamp or buffer impedance – high on input, low on output – and characteristic of working with the signal.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir - The Guitar Tone Legends

Jerry Garcia (1942 - 1995) and Bob Weir were the awesome guitar duo of the Grateful Dead band. The best thing, for me, that I can say about them, is that I don't know what they were exactly doing? Were they playing blues, jazz, folk, rock or what? They were doing just everything! Bob and Jerry were very flexible guitarists and they knew how to improvise.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Active Guitar Wiring - With a TL071 Based Buffer

In the previous post I wrote about building an on-board buffer. This time I would like to show you some guitar wiring with this thing. 
It's not very complicated. It's based on one buffer circuit,  three potentiometers: 2x volume, 1x tone and one tone capacitor - in quite untypical value range.


Tuesday, November 2, 2010

How to Make a Small On-Board Buffer?

Today, I would like to show you how to make a really small on-board guitar buffer.
It's based on the TL071 op-amp, which is very good for that purposes. It will allow you to make an active buffer with high impedance on the input (1M), and low impedance on the output (it's very important for buffers). The TL071 will not eat your power source too quick - will work hundreds of hours on one, typical 9V battery. 

It is a very popular construction in guitar electronics. Nothing original, but will work fine for the most of our purposes. You need only six parts to make it: the op-amp, two resistors, two capacitors (one film, one electrolytic) and some small multipurpose PCB.