Ennie, meenie, miny,.. Hey Moe!

WEDGE said:
yeah. He really still brings it, he is no spring chicken but still rocks it hard. I remember he opened the show once with an SE and that impressed me. Sounded great. Seen him with the vault a few times and it was always good.

Super impressed with Doug Aldrich too. Played Nash guitars a lot and they also sounded huge.

NUNpad7.jpg

QdEjh5p.jpg

sMVU2Ib.jpg
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I traded him at the Rock Vault. Looked like a drug deal going down in the hotel parking garage. :p
 
sergiodeblanc said:
LOL! I hate myself… the SE EG smokes this thing in terms of tone.
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I wondered... I was completely sold on the 305. Played one and LOVED the way it felt, played and looked, but it was not the "PRS that sounds like a great Strat" that I went looking for. Ended up buying the JP12 BFR instead. And, still looking for the "PRS that sounds like a great Strat."
 
DreamTheaterRules said:
I wondered... I was completely sold on the 305. Played one and LOVED the way it felt, played and looked, but it was not the "PRS that sounds like a great Strat" that I went looking for. Ended up buying the JP12 BFR instead. And, still looking for the "PRS that sounds like a great Strat."
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Gigged a 305 for quite a while.
It's a bit darker.
Love it to death but the SS killed it.
 
dmatthews said:
Gigged a 305 for quite a while.
It's a bit darker.
Love it to death but the SS killed it.
Click to expand...
Still haven't played an SS, but... exactly. I wanted a PRS feeling and playing guitar, that sounded like a good strat. While I did play it through an unfamiliar amp, it was by all accounts a great amp (Dr. Z) and one that is known to be able to be bright. And I played it and kept thinking... "single coils, bright amp... why is this sounding so dark? I should be turning treble and presence down, not up!" I fell in love with the guitar. Cherry red, maple board with birds, played GREAT! Felt GREAT. Sounded dull, IMO. Always wished I could try it with my amps, but lost interest. And, sort of in the DC3 as well... same pickups.
 
Yeah! I really wanted to love a 305 too! I actually first went to @Rider1260 house to check his out, and wound up buying the KL33 instead, and this started my Santana shaped obsession.

I wouldn’t characterize this DC3 as dark… it’s just hella polite and balanced sounding. Which, I mean, isn’t a bad thing as long as I don’t play it back to back with the SE EG. :p

I wonder if it’s just a 500k pot in the EG? It’s so much louder, and has so much more… character? I’m not talking about the bridge pup, as it’s unfair, because the EG has an (awful) humbucker in there.
 
sergiodeblanc said:
Yeah! I really wanted to love a 305 too! I actually first went to @Rider1260 house to check his out, and wound up buying the KL33 instead, and this started my Santana shaped obsession.

I wouldn’t characterize this DC3 as dark… it’s just hella polite and balanced sounding. Which, I mean, isn’t a bad thing as long as I don’t play it back to back with the SE EG. :p

I wonder if it’s just a 500k pot in the EG? It’s so much louder, and has so much more… character? I’m not talking about the bridge pup, as it’s unfair, because the EG has an (awful) humbucker in there.
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Yes, perhaps an electronics change/upgrade would do the trick.
 
sergiodeblanc said:
Yeah! I really wanted to love a 305 too! I actually first went to @Rider1260 house to check his out, and wound up buying the KL33 instead, and this started my Santana shaped obsession.

I wouldn’t characterize this DC3 as dark… it’s just hella polite and balanced sounding. Which, I mean, isn’t a bad thing as long as I don’t play it back to back with the SE EG. :p

I wonder if it’s just a 500k pot in the EG? It’s so much louder, and has so much more… character? I’m not talking about the bridge pup, as it’s unfair, because the EG has an (awful) humbucker in there.
Click to expand...

Jealous of the KL33 but you know that even if I hadn't told you.


If you want to go crazy..

https://quickguards.com/products/prs-dc3-pickguard-black-3ply
 
DreamTheaterRules said:
Still haven't played an SS, but... exactly. I wanted a PRS feeling and playing guitar, that sounded like a good strat.
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That's what the Silver Sky turned out to be for me. I didn't really have an interest in buying one - I even told my dealer I just wanted to see what it felt like and whether it lived up to the intrawebz hate, but single coils aren't my thing. But passing it back and forth with @BeerBatteredPhish, the sound reminded me of what I do love about Strats but never found. It sits on a stand by my desk now, and probably gets most of my fiddling around time.
 
alantig said:
That's what the Silver Sky turned out to be for me. I didn't really have an interest in buying one - I even told my dealer I just wanted to see what it felt like and whether it lived up to the intrawebz hate, but single coils aren't my thing. But passing it back and forth with @BeerBatteredPhish, the sound reminded me of what I do love about Strats but never found. It sits on a stand by my desk now, and probably gets most of my fiddling around time.
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I really wish that was the case with me, it’d make my search so simple.

Lol, my issue is that the DC3 is such a perfect Strat-like “interface” for me. Great ergonomics, perfect build, really a joy to play, and some proprietary, comfortable, and impeccably designed pickups… that got their @sses handed to them by some f@ckin’ stock Korean single coils on a $500 guitar. :p

(slams nuts in dresser drawer)
 
dmatthews said:
Yes, perhaps an electronics change/upgrade would do the trick.
Click to expand...

Well, as you know, the "knock" on some PRS models was that you couldn't easily swap the pickups to your favorites of that type, because PRS used non-standard sized pickups in many models. I heard this more than once in a store, and in forums, about the 305, DC3 and especially NF3. (Again, anyone who wants to change the pickups in an NF3 is just nuts. Present company excluded of course, for legal purposes).

But I fell in love with the feel of that 305, and so did one of my friends when he played one, and neither of us bonded with the pickups. I still had my 50th Anniversary American Deluxe Strat when I played the 305 (soon after that, traded it to Brian's Guitars for the EBMM Axis) and I just couldn't get the strat tones I wanted out of the 305. And of course, new in a store, I can't start adjusting pickup heights etc. But the big knock was, I also can't buy this great feeling great playing guitar and just throw some high end single coil pickups in it to make it sound like I want.

When I bought my NF3, the guy at the store said that many people including him LOVED that guitar but nobody would buy it because you couldn't swap pickups. I played it with two amps and bought it immediately. NO swappin' needed here!
 
sergiodeblanc said:
I really wish that was the case with me, it’d make my search so simple.

Lol, my issue is that the DC3 is such a perfect Strat-like “interface” for me. Great ergonomics, perfect build, really a joy to play, and some proprietary, comfortable, and impeccably designed pickups… that got their @sses handed to them by some f@ckin’ stock Korean single coils on a $500 guitar. :p

(slams nuts in dresser drawer)
Click to expand...

Were those pickups the same as the 513 pickups? I had been decently satisfied using the 513 as my Strat-like guitar, and could still get by with it, but there is just something about the pups they came up with for the Silver Sky. I'm sure that's an oversimplification and it totally disregards the differences between the bodies and necks.
 
alantig said:
Were those pickups the same as the 513 pickups? I had been decently satisfied using the 513 as my Strat-like guitar, and could still get by with it, but there is just something about the pups they came up with for the Silver Sky. I'm sure that's an oversimplification and it totally disregards the differences between the bodies and necks.
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I guess 305/513/DC3 pickups are supposedly “different”? But yeah! They’re the same looking (and sounding to me) pickups.

Maybe I gotta tear it down, restring this beast, set it up, and reassess it on a less even playing field? :p

I dunno… part of the things that make Fenders sound so glorious is their amalgamation of janky @ss properties. It’s not really a fair fight at this point but… dude, I hate to admit it but the SE owns the DC in the tone department.

I gotta keep both these guitars until I can get over to Mike’s crib with all his Silver Sky’s.
 
sergiodeblanc said:
Yeah, that was mine. I traded it on a green Santana… that’s what I was alluding to naming.
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Ah, OK, I got confused, sorry!

As for your struggle in finding a strat-like guitar that has everything you like in a strat but not the stuff you hate, I dunno, I think a lot of that is symbiotic. You "fix" the bad stuff, and it compromises the "edgy cool" stuff. I do find the Silver Sky to be as close to a Strat as I can imagine, with the pups dialed in just perfect (better than any Strat is what I have read, but I have not played a billion strats).

But maybe if you got a new pick guard for the DC3, customized with pup cutouts for the EG (which look pretty standard-sized), and slapped the EG pups in, maybe that would be a good mod for you to play with? You'd be able to keep the old PG populated with DC3 pups in case you ever want to sell.
 
DreamTheaterRules said:
Well, as you know, the "knock" on some PRS models was that you couldn't easily swap the pickups to your favorites of that type, because PRS used non-standard sized pickups in many models. I heard this more than once in a store, and in forums, about the 305, DC3 and especially NF3. (Again, anyone who wants to change the pickups in an NF3 is just nuts. Present company excluded of course, for legal purposes).

But I fell in love with the feel of that 305, and so did one of my friends when he played one, and neither of us bonded with the pickups. I still had my 50th Anniversary American Deluxe Strat when I played the 305 (soon after that, traded it to Brian's Guitars for the EBMM Axis) and I just couldn't get the strat tones I wanted out of the 305. And of course, new in a store, I can't start adjusting pickup heights etc. But the big knock was, I also can't buy this great feeling great playing guitar and just throw some high end single coil pickups in it to make it sound like I want.

When I bought my NF3, the guy at the store said that many people including him LOVED that guitar but nobody would buy it because you couldn't swap pickups. I played it with two amps and bought it immediately. NO swappin' needed here!
Click to expand...
Yup. I am one of those that has mentioned that caveat on a few occasions.
 
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