New (Cheap, Old) Guitar Day - bargain of the century...

jxe said:
ever play a strat-o-caster with soapbars? pretty cool.
Click to expand...
Don't even make me aware such a thing exists. As much as I love strats and as much as I seem to love soapbars, no good can come from such knowledge...

BTW, you live in Tucson? I grew up there, still have a bunch of friends there...
 
jxe said:
ever play a strat-o-caster with soapbars? pretty cool.
Click to expand...

RaySachs said:
Don't even make me aware such a thing exists. As much as I love strats and as much as I seem to love soapbars, no good can come from such knowledge...
Click to expand...
I have a strat style with 3 P90s in it. It is a beast. It doesn’t sound especially strat like though.
 
the soapocaster i knew had pickups with smooth metal covers, like on a firebird but a little narrower. definitely a vernacular addition, which was the style at the time. can confirm didn’t sound like a fender, which was the style at the time.

i always like seeing an abominable user customized guitar, someday we’ll see 80s hm strat bodies with sanded prs mayer necks and i can’t wait for the fender custom shop to do an artificially aged repro.
 
AP515 said:
I grew up just a mountain range away past Wilcox in a place called Pima Az. I need to get back there for a visit...
Click to expand...
I thought Pima was out west from Tucson, towards Ajo. Wilcox is way to the east, almost to New Mexico...
AP515 said:
I grew up just a mountain range away past Wilcox in a place called Pima Az. I need to get back there for a visit...
Click to expand...
My memory, which is probably not to be trusted, but is all I've got, is that Wilcox was out east, past Benson, almost to New Mexico (I used to go climb the rocks and camp out at Texas Canyon as a kid) and that Pima was west of Tucson, toward Ajo. But I remember Wilcox a lot better than Pima (which I mostly associate with county rather than the town), so I could have this completely wrong...

I loved growing up there and it'll always be home on some level. I still have some good old friends there (all around the southwest, really), and I get out to visit from time to time. But I can't imagine I'll ever live there again... Haven't spent more than several days in the area since my folks left in about '86...

-Ray
 
RaySachs said:
I thought Pima was out west from Tucson, towards Ajo. Wilcox is way to the east, almost to New Mexico...

My memory, which is probably not to be trusted, but is all I've got, is that Wilcox was out east, past Benson, almost to New Mexico (I used to go climb the rocks and camp out at Texas Canyon as a kid) and that Pima was west of Tucson, toward Ajo. But I remember Wilcox a lot better than Pima (which I mostly associate with county rather than the town), so I could have this completely wrong...

I loved growing up there and it'll always be home on some level. I still have some good old friends there (all around the southwest, really), and I get out to visit from time to time. But I can't imagine I'll ever live there again... Haven't spent more than several days in the area since my folks left in about '86...

-Ray
Click to expand...
Yeah, Pima County is the county where Tucson is. The town Pima is a little spot of desert near the Graham Mountains near Safford which is near Wilcox, which is near, and east, of Tucson. You know you're from a podunk town when you have to include "which is near" four times to get to a place someone might know. I loved it though. Parked my truck in the school parking lot with a shotgun in the back window and never locked a door. Hunted quail down by the river. Started all 4 years in 4 sports in high school cuz there weren't enough kids for the odds to be good that they were better than me. We played 8 man football! 33 in my graduating class.
 
AP515 said:
Yeah, Pima County is the county where Tucson is. The town Pima is a little spot of desert near the Graham Mountains near Safford which is near Wilcox, which is near, and east, of Tucson. You know you're from a podunk town when you have to include "which is near" four times to get to a place someone might know. I loved it though. Parked my truck in the school parking lot with a shotgun in the back window and never locked a door. Hunted quail down by the river. Started all 4 years in 4 sports in high school cuz there weren't enough kids for the odds to be good that they were better than me. We played 8 man football! 33 in my graduating class.
Click to expand...
Oh, right on the road from Globe to Safford - why didn't you say so?!?!? ;) I remember some of those 8 man football games as a spectator - I went to a big school so we played 11 on 11. I was good enough to play (defensive back), but not to play very well. I was a below average player on a baaaaad team... I remember driving down to Douglas to play them one season. Another pretty sleepy town...

-Ray
 
A quick update. Despite really liking this guitar a LOT, I returned it. I had a pretty trivial amount of money in it, so it wasn't about that in the least. But as I've written a bit about elsewhere (downside of too many guitars or something), having two very very different guitars, which my 594 and strat are, really seems to work for me. It's such a clear binary choice, that I'm never conflicted about which to grab - I know which one I'm in the mood for when I grab a guitar to play.They don't feel or sound even remotely similar. Having a third electric that in some ways split the difference between them (played a lot more like the 594, but not nearly as well, sounded part-way between humbuckers and strat single coils) just put me in an indecisive place almost every time I went to grab a guitar. I found myself thinking about the subtle differences in the sound of the guitars more than the music I was trying to make with it. It felt like a distraction rather than an enhancement, which I should have known from previous experience. I know that very few if any folks around here will relate to this reaction at all. And that's fine - I'm the only one that has to live with my choices. Over the almost two weeks I had it, I put it in the mix a couple of times and took it out a couple of times and I was enjoying myself more without having to think about a third option. Maybe if I'm ever a versatile enough player to appreciate all of the subtle shades of color that various guitars offer, I'll be interested in or able to add another option. But for now, it was giving me a reason to get in my own way.

I liked the sound and feel of the P-90s enough that I could make an argument that if I was ever gonna have just a single electric again, a really nice soapbar model could be the way to go. They really do have a lot of the best characteristics of both humbuckers and single coils and there was nothing about them that I didn't like a lot - their sound is RIGHT up my alley... But I had absolutely no interest in letting either the 594 or strat go, let alone both of them, so the soapbar went back. With minor regrets, but with a clear head...

-Ray
 
Fair enough. If you find two guitars is enough, who am I to argue? I was that way for a couple of decades, and could easily still be there if not for this forum...heh heh.

Ah, I remember that day well, when I found this forum, having just bought my first PRS. I was all agog, I would never need another guitar in my life, since I had finally acquired my Emerald Green 10 top CU24 with birds. What more could I want?

Oops.
 
shinksma said:
Fair enough. If you find two guitars is enough, who am I to argue? I was that way for a couple of decades, and could easily still be there if not for this forum...heh heh.

Ah, I remember that day well, when I found this forum, having just bought my first PRS. I was all agog, I would never need another guitar in my life, since I had finally acquired my Emerald Green 10 top CU24 with birds. What more could I want?

Oops.
Click to expand...
I'm conflicted, I'm the first to admit. I LOVE guitars as objects, as playable art and playable engineering and all that. There's a side of me that would LOVE to have walls full of the damn things, PRS and otherwise. I'm just not a good enough or varied enough or versatile enough musician to take advantage of more than two, more than ONE really. But the second one gives me some variety and gives me a perspective check. I go back and forth between my 594 and strat a lot and every time I've been leaning into one of them for a while and then put it down and pick up the other, I'm in that "where have you BEEN all my life space with the one I just picked up again". So two really different ones seems to work for me, but a third, unless it was yet again completely different (which I guess is my acoustic) just seems to confuse me and bog me down rather than inspire me. Maybe someday, maybe not. But definitely not today...

Forums like this and others really don't help. I played happily on one electric and one acoustic for a LOOOOOONG time before there was an internet. Now I always want another. I'd stay away except that I like the communities on some of these forums and I learn a LOT, not just about gear but also get turned onto new music and learn various tips and techniques. So I keep hanging out and get a lot of benefit from it, but the downside is constant GAS and whenever I give into it, I tend to wish I hadn't. Although I can't really say that because both my 594 and this current strat are both quite new to me and I've never been happier with my gear, so the GAS isn't a bad thing per se, but it can definitely lead me astray if I'm not careful...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

B
NGD: DGT Wood Library
2
Replies
24
Views
457
shimmilou
shimmilou
P
Help our 13 year old son decide, he saved up his money
2
Replies
36
Views
631
Credible_Hulk
C
MA Pete
NGD: Late 2023 build of the new 2024 Model - Custom 2408 with the Paul's Guitar TCI Pickups
2
Replies
24
Views
1K
MA Pete
MA Pete
Max Headroom
And another NGD, cheap soapie time
Replies
15
Views
523
Max Headroom
Max Headroom
B
My First PRS--Paul's Guitar Core
2 3
Replies
40
Views
976
Rider1260
Rider1260
Back
Top