hippietim
Not a new user...
So I got "the call" from Mr. Meader last Thursday. I had him ship it overnight. It landed safely on Friday. I unboxed it and was VERY happy with the look and feel of the guitar. It is really gorgeous. We had family in from out of town that I hadn't seen in 18 years so I didn't have any time to plug it in or anything. Saturday I was busy with all sorts of things and then had to get packed up for a gig. So I grabbed the new guitar to restring it and tweak the action. Just to be safe, I plugged it into the Smokey amp I keep on my bench to make sure everything was working. Everything checked out so I packed it up in a Mono gig bag and took it to the gig. I play in a Stones tribute band so I need to cover a lot of different electric tones as well as acoustic stuff. So my axes for the show were a custom Warmoth Tele (open G), P22 (open G) and the new PS (standard tuning).
The new PS sounded fantastic. Lots of chime when I wanted it, fatness when I wanted it, the guitar rang great, etc.
When I spec'd it, the goal of the guitar was to be a work horse to cover the roles of a Tele and a Gibson. Given my results with the HB II, adding the piezo was sort of a no brainer. With the tonal goals in mind, I thought about the wood and electronic options that would get me what I wanted. I've always found that humbuckers are less picky about their platform than single coils so I optimized the wood choices for traditional Tele woods - swamp ash body with maple neck. I had also decided that the guitar would be a finish that I don't think looks good with a maple board so I opted for ebony which sounds and responds more like maple than rosewood. For the electronics, I had initially thought I'd go with narrowfields because I love the tones I get with those. But when I got my hands on a Signature I knew what I wanted to do. Obviously, I hadn't heard the Sig electronics with the woods I chose but given how they sound in a mahogany guitar I had a pretty good idea of what they'd sound like with a maple neck and ash body.
Based on the gig on Saturday, I think the choices worked out very well. Going to the tapped positions got me all sorts of Tele goodness (without losing volume!). The humbucker tones are fat. I still haven't had any time to just sit down and play the guitar on my own with an amp. But a gig test is probably a better indicator anyhow.
Take this with a grain of salt since I have not yet done an actual A/B comparison, but I would say that the single coil settings on my PS are much more in the ballpark of a Fender than my Sig LTD and Sig PS. These Sig electronics are really very versatile.
The new PS sounded fantastic. Lots of chime when I wanted it, fatness when I wanted it, the guitar rang great, etc.
When I spec'd it, the goal of the guitar was to be a work horse to cover the roles of a Tele and a Gibson. Given my results with the HB II, adding the piezo was sort of a no brainer. With the tonal goals in mind, I thought about the wood and electronic options that would get me what I wanted. I've always found that humbuckers are less picky about their platform than single coils so I optimized the wood choices for traditional Tele woods - swamp ash body with maple neck. I had also decided that the guitar would be a finish that I don't think looks good with a maple board so I opted for ebony which sounds and responds more like maple than rosewood. For the electronics, I had initially thought I'd go with narrowfields because I love the tones I get with those. But when I got my hands on a Signature I knew what I wanted to do. Obviously, I hadn't heard the Sig electronics with the woods I chose but given how they sound in a mahogany guitar I had a pretty good idea of what they'd sound like with a maple neck and ash body.
Based on the gig on Saturday, I think the choices worked out very well. Going to the tapped positions got me all sorts of Tele goodness (without losing volume!). The humbucker tones are fat. I still haven't had any time to just sit down and play the guitar on my own with an amp. But a gig test is probably a better indicator anyhow.
Take this with a grain of salt since I have not yet done an actual A/B comparison, but I would say that the single coil settings on my PS are much more in the ballpark of a Fender than my Sig LTD and Sig PS. These Sig electronics are really very versatile.
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