Gibson Tour Bus VIP Visit

[Stratcat]

Wow, what a fantastic opportunity for a teenager, to be able to visit that bus. It looks like you and she have a blast together.

 

I'm a Gibson man myself. I used to own an '89 Les Paul standard with a Marshall 100W half stack, as well as a mid '60s Discoverer Tremolo practice amp. I've been meaning to scan some pictures I have and put them up here. I always liked the fat crunch of a humbucker, and the tone quality that a slightly shorter string scale and slightly lesser string tension of the Les Paul gives. I think the covers on my pickups lasted about a day before I took them off. I never knew what to do with a whammy bar anyway. Obviously I was best at rhythm. I have long since sold all this stuff off though, as life moved on and I just didn't have the time to play anymore. Now I have a Washburn 6 string acoustic that I don't even play enough to keep my fingertips broken in. After reading this post a few nights ago I got inspired to get it out and play, and my fingertips still hurt. Most of the stuff I used to know doesn't translate real well to an acoustic anyway. At this point I sort of wish I had a classical guitar. I would probably do more with that than anything. But I wish a lot of things. I'll see if I can get some pics up here for you soon.

 

 

Great would love to see them!!

 

Yeah it comes and goes in my life as well, when I was rasing my girls now 31 and 27, it very little priority, so quit gigging and just played once in awhile. Got divorced in 01 after 20+ years and picked it back up again and started playing out again. Got married to Deb in 05, inherited Carson as my step-daughter and see didn't like me even a little bit. She got interested though in the guitar watching me play, so I taught her and she was a natural, now were super close and have a wonderful relationship. So music has a special place in her's and my life.

 

Keep playin, it's good for the soul!

[pegscraper]

Here they are. I posted earlier to get myself to get these scanned. This is me about 18 years ago. Man I wish I could still get into that size of pants now. The Gibson guitar is an '89. It had a gorgeous flame top to it. I had seen many flame tops I didn't really like. I had picked up some push/pull volume controls which I was going to use to wire up different series/parallel pickup combinations. But the more I played it, I didn't really see a need. Being a rhythm boy, I seldom played anything but the bridge pickup. I never cut the excess string ends off at the tuning machines, and still don't. The Marshall is a JCM900 lead series. Soon after this pic I sold it and got the JCM900 dual channel model. Both of these had a quartet of EL34 power tubes in them, which were my favorite. These were the first models into which Jim Marshall designed the extra gain stage in the preamp, to design properly and offer from the factory what many customizers were doing a lousy job of in their home shops. That extra gain stage gave those amps some serious balls. The Gibson Discoverer Tremolo was in excellent condition, not a ding nor a tear in the covering anyplace. It was a fantastic little amp. It had a pair of EL84 tubes in it, which when run at their max, man they would really sing. It sounded real similar to the Vox amps, and IIRC it had the same power tubes in it as they do. I replaced the power supply caps in it when I got it, as like most old tube amps, they had gone bad and it would hum loudly. Sometimes I miss this stuff, but oh well, that was then, this is now.

 

What kind of amp do you like to use? I don't think I've seen that mentioned here. With a Stratocaster, I'm going to guess Fender equipment.

 

This vacuum tube guitar amplifier equipment spoiled me for wanting vacuum tubes in all my audio equipment. To this day, my main stereo is a Fisher 400, which I saved from someone's trash pile when I was in junior high. The thing must be over 40 years old. All vacuum tubes. I tried a couple solid state amps in there for a while, because after all, if the latest technology wasn't better, they wouldn't be using it, right? Hah! Solid state sucks. Those things are in my shop now where they get dirty and beat around. It's all they're good for. And the vacuum tubes are back in my audio rack. I'm in the middle of building my own vacuum tube preamp using 6SN7s and 6SL7s, and a class A push pull power amp using some 6SN7s and KT88s. I love those octal tubes. The chassis look nice, but they're not wired up yet. There are a couple other designs I'd like to build also, like a single ended design and also a direct coupled design - no capacitors in the signal path, but I can't do everything at once.

 

I'm glad you and Carson are getting along. That's also a great thing for a teenager. Dad and I never got along, and it never got any better as I got older. We haven't spoken to each other in several years now.

[Stratcat]

Here they are. I posted earlier to get myself to get these scanned. This is me about 18 years ago. Man I wish I could still get into that size of pants now. The Gibson guitar is an '89. It had a gorgeous flame top to it. I had seen many flame tops I didn't really like. I had picked up some push/pull volume controls which I was going to use to wire up different series/parallel pickup combinations. But the more I played it, I didn't really see a need. Being a rhythm boy, I seldom played anything but the bridge pickup. I never cut the excess string ends off at the tuning machines, and still don't. The Marshall is a JCM900 lead series. Soon after this pic I sold it and got the JCM900 dual channel model. Both of these had a quartet of EL34 power tubes in them, which were my favorite. These were the first models into which Jim Marshall designed the extra gain stage in the preamp, to design properly and offer from the factory what many customizers were doing a lousy job of in their home shops. That extra gain stage gave those amps some serious balls. The Gibson Discoverer Tremolo was in excellent condition, not a ding nor a tear in the covering anyplace. It was a fantastic little amp. It had a pair of EL84 tubes in it, which when run at their max, man they would really sing. It sounded real similar to the Vox amps, and IIRC it had the same power tubes in it as they do. I replaced the power supply caps in it when I got it, as like most old tube amps, they had gone bad and it would hum loudly. Sometimes I miss this stuff, but oh well, that was then, this is now.

 

What kind of amp do you like to use? I don't think I've seen that mentioned here. With a Stratocaster, I'm going to guess Fender equipment.

 

This vacuum tube guitar amplifier equipment spoiled me for wanting vacuum tubes in all my audio equipment. To this day, my main stereo is a Fisher 400, which I saved from someone's trash pile when I was in junior high. The thing must be over 40 years old. All vacuum tubes. I tried a couple solid state amps in there for a while, because after all, if the latest technology wasn't better, they wouldn't be using it, right? Hah! Solid state sucks. Those things are in my shop now where they get dirty and beat around. It's all they're good for. And the vacuum tubes are back in my audio rack. I'm in the middle of building my own vacuum tube preamp using 6SN7s and 6SL7s, and a class A push pull power amp using some 6SN7s and KT88s. I love those octal tubes. The chassis look nice, but they're not wired up yet. There are a couple other designs I'd like to build also, like a single ended design and also a direct coupled design - no capacitors in the signal path, but I can't do everything at once.

 

I'm glad you and Carson are getting along. That's also a great thing for a teenager. Dad and I never got along, and it never got any better as I got older. We haven't spoken to each other in several years now.

 

 

Very Cool! I'm lovin all the pics! Sounds like your a lot more techy than I am. I'm just a player/singer.

 

Back in the 60's - 70's all I could afford the Fender and Gibson stuff but I loved and still do the old tubed Silvertone Stuff like the 1485 and 86. Silvertone's head and cabinet or the Twin Reverb wanna be.

 

In fact here recently I have started to collect some of my earlier axes. To start my first guitar was the Silvertone 1448 tube amp in a case with the cool little short scale Danelctro's couldn't afford anything elese back then. I have snatched two of them recently on Craig's List, they are getting quite collectable on Ebay. They're awesome.

 

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff242/stratocurtster/Trials/silvertones/1448-1.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff242/stratocurtster/Trials/silvertones/1448.gif

 

In Fact I have some vintage 8mm of us jamming Silvertone Style when I was around 12 on my YouTube Site. No sound back then so I laid a little Vintage Byrds down for a soundtrack, we even had GoGo Girls

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3n2Jq2T7Dw]YouTube - Music The Early years[/ame]

 

Man you guys are taking me back, can't wait to get together at some function and we can do some jammin and sing'n!