20th Anniversary of PS - Northern Lights Sound Check

[Tosca]

Very sweet sounding guitar Les...I'm wondering how many of the 40 they are making are still available.

 

[László]

That sounds awesome even thru my phone speakers. I'll give a better listen on some cans or my computer tomorrow. I really thought all the positions sounded great.

What a nice clip, Schefman. The in-between tones are KILLER, especially the second tone you recorded. That guitar is Swiss Army material. VERY COOL!!!

Thanks guys - the guitar really does have a lot of tones in it, and I didn't even fuss with the volume and tone controls on the guitar, they vary it a lot, too. If I had to pick between my guitars for a favorite, I'd sure have a difficult time, but one thing about this guitar is that it's desert island material due to its versatility.

What is missing in my demo are two things:

Thing one, the guitar really does sound better in the room than on the recording, and I think that's because I just put up a 57. So I'm going to give that another go, and see if I can get a little closer to what I'm hearing in the room. Maybe the Rode NTR will do it. The guitar also sounds more stellar with the PRS amps than the Mesa, although I have to say the Mesa is a sweet little amp, too, and does show off the pickup positions pretty well.

Thing two, I'm embarrassed by the playing. OK, I was never great, but this...

I offer my two numb fingers as an excuse, I'm having a devil of a time doing the things I normally do. The timings are off, subtle vibrato is impossible, finger pressure is a joke - I can't feel the strings at all with the two fingers! I sound like a beginner. I have to look at the fretboard to see which string a finger is on at this point. So I'm missing any "natural" feel, and when I'm looking at my fingers to see where they are, it causes my picking to be off.

I've never been a very fast player, but at least I could put the fingers where I knew they needed to go before this without having to look. So hopefully this problem will be fixed soon.

But as my wife says, "Quit worrying about it. You can't play guitar if you're dead!"

So I'm thankful for the surgery anyway.

Very sweet sounding guitar Les...I'm wondering how many of the 40 they are making are still available.

I heard that half of them were destined for overseas markets. Two have shown up here so far, and I know of someone else in my state who got one, but I haven't seen a lot of NGD posts elsewhere. I'd guess there are some available.

Mine only arrived at Jack's store on the 30th of December. They may still be building some.

 

[Michael_DK]

It's so easy to record good-sounding clips, here are some tips:

1. You don't need a fancy microphone. An $89 SM57 does a nice job. Get a sound you like with your guitar and amp.

Then you just need to find out where to put the mic, and until you're used to a particular amp, one way to do that without a helper is just record a loop on a digital looper (lots of players have a pedal that does this). Then take the guitar off, put on a pair of headphones, and while the loop is playing, move the mic around until you like what you hear. When you find a good spot for the mic, leave it there. It's that simple.

2. There are really inexpensive recording interfaces with very fine mic preamps that sound darn good on the market. And I mean, inexpensive. You don't need fancy gear, and you don't need to buy into the myth of needing expensive mic preamps to record guitars. It's nice to have them, but it isn't necessary. No one ever bought a record and said, "Man, that guy shouldn't have used his stock preamp, he should have bought a Neve." Because no one who ever bought a record could identify what kind of preamps the record was made with in a million years. It either sounds good, or it doesn't. And if it sounds good, it IS good.

3. You don't need a lot of signal processing after you've recorded the clip. Maybe level it out with a little light limiting so it sounds nice and even, bounce the track, and you're done.

Words to live by!!!

Just don't get too crazy with the limiter ;-)

The second point also goes for whatever plugins you might use post-recording - the stock plugins that come with your DAW are FINE!

 

[crgtr]

That is probably my fave PRS color.

 

[László]

Just spent some quality time with the 20th PS and the DG30 amp and cab, and yeah, it's really a better sounding combination than the Mesa. I'm set up for a different project with the Mesa, but soon's I get some time, you've gotta hear how this thing sounds with the Grissom amp.

It's like the gods of music came down from the magic mountain and anointed the tone with special sauce. Stellar.

 

[greiswig]

Very sweet sounding guitar Les...I'm wondering how many of the 40 they are making are still available.

I'm wondering how I can try out one of these? I am very interested, but a contact with PRS said to basically start calling dealers, that they don't know who they have sent these guitars to. This finish or a quilted purple might just be my dream guitar, but I'd really like to try out the electronics at least to see what it sounds and feels like. How do you guys find these beauties?

 

[andy474x]

I'm wondering how I can try out one of these? I am very interested, but a contact with PRS said to basically start calling dealers, that they don't know who they have sent these guitars to. This finish or a quilted purple might just be my dream guitar, but I'd really like to try out the electronics at least to see what it sounds and feels like. How do you guys find these beauties?

Last I checked, sweetwater had two. If you're near them, they do have a brick and mortar shop attached to the warehouse.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Real nice, Les. My favorites were clean middle (NF) dirty middle and dirty neck. I realize this is very amp setting dependent, but I keep telling you guys how awesome the NFs are! Sounds great! Can't wait to hear it with the other amps.

For reference, mind sharing your clean settings on the Lone Star?

 

[CantankerousCarl]

Hey Les, sorry I am late to the replies, but the sound clip sounds great. It's alot like the demo I would do - if I could play worth a damn

I think you managed to capture what the guitar actually sounds like sitting in front of it and actually playing it. Kudos!

 

[veinbuster]

I finally got a listen. I want it - but am happy it is in good hands.
It sounds great, and we all already knew it looked spectacular.

 

[guitarman001]

Is this heavenly sound more the amp or guitar?
Very glad for the recording - I'm always banging on about people putting up recordings, so thank you!
Sounds fantastic!

 

[guitarman001]

Around 2:00 the sound is fab - you'd be mistaken for thinking it was a Fender.
What pups are these again?

 

[garrett]

Nice man! I reckon a couple of splap switches for the 408s would make it just about perfect. Then I could sell every other bit of gear I own and have one guitar to do it all! (yeah, right)

 

[greiswig]

Last I checked, sweetwater had two. If you're near them, they do have a brick and mortar shop attached to the warehouse.

Nope...I'm in Oregon, nowhere near there. No dealers within even a couple hundred miles. I'd make that drive if they had something.

 

[László]

For reference, mind sharing your clean settings on the Lone Star?

No problem! As recorded, the amp is in 100 Watt mode, full power, silicon rectifier, a bit of reverb around 8 o'clock at the back of the amp on both channels. Top channel is the clean channel. Left to right the knobs are gain, treble, mids, bass, presence, channel master, then the output knob controls level for both channels, I didn't use the boost on the recording.

Around 2:00 the sound is fab - you'd be mistaken for thinking it was a Fender.
What pups are these again?

The bridge and neck pickups are Paul's Guitar 408s, the middle is the PRS Narrowfield.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Oh mah goo'ness, dat sustain! You could hit a note, walk away, make a sammich, eat said sammich, come back, and finish your lick.

 

[László]

Oh mah goo'ness, dat sustain! You could hit a note, walk away, make a sammich, eat said sammich, come back, and finish your lick.

I would probably have been better off eating the sammich than playing as incompetently as I did...

 

[CVS]

Great sound clip and logically organized - I, like others here, like the middle pick up clean sound that I heard. But then again I am partial to NF3's.

 

[László]

I agree, the NF makes for a fantastic pickup, and is especially effective with these narrow 408s as a middle pickup, too.

Is this heavenly sound more the amp or guitar?
Very glad for the recording - I'm always banging on about people putting up recordings, so thank you!
Sounds fantastic!

I think in this case it's more the guitar. In fact, the guitar sounds even better through the DG30 and HXDA, I just had the other amp set up for recording on another project and didn't want to reconfigure the rig.

The Mesa is a fine amp, but it doesn't sound this good/three dimensional with most guitars. In fact, I got it for its more compressed, less 3D sound, because there are times I need that for a certain kind of rhythm/fill track.

 

[greiswig]

I find it interesting that the neck pickup on this guitar looks "reversed." Ordinarily the screw coil would be toward the neck on a neck humbucker, but not here. And all the 20th LE photos I've seen show it that way, so it isn't a mistake.