h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's like the old joke about the Drill Instructor headgear, the stiff Smokey hat.
The hat never really fits, but your head eventually does...

Sure, Midnight Oil, Boomtown Rats and XTC used ibanez, but lets not forget Mushroomhead, Biohazard, Meshuggah, KoRn, Marilyn Manson, System of a Down, Darwin's Waiting Room, Rage Against the Machine (thats a huge credit, seeing as Tom Morello is the only real guitar hero of the nineties), Staind, OTep. And a lot more, but they would probably do mroe harm than good to my argument.

Oh, I don't know. I like Bucky Pizarelli and his son, whose name I can't remember and Reeves Gabrels (sp?).

George Benson used Ibanez for years.

I liked Robbie Robertson's playing and custom guitars.
We watched 'The Last Waltz' for the first time a couple of weeks ago and I was blown away at what he could do with such simple equipment and a strat with the two rear slanted single coils side by side and no middle pickup.

I've also been a big fan of Todd Rundgren, regardless of what he played.

actually, a lot of those later bands you mentioned I am vaguely aware of, but after about 85, I started listening to local alternative and punk around Austin. After that, I spent a lot of years playing classic rock and jazz to my daughter, who was born in 90.
I think I've reached the point where I'll never be able to catch up again.
But I like Smash Mouth's second album and FastWay's first.
When I need hard stuff, I go to my Motorhead, the best of or my Spike Jones 5 CD set.

Have you heard of a young rock band from Austin called Grand Champeen? They're great.

No, I haven't.
But that's not surprising.
Since Austin became a 'music capital', a lot of bands have been moving there and a lot of younger bands are popping up and making it.

I used to hang around in a small anti-culture that had several bands formed out of it, few of which survived:
Glass Eye
Texas Instruments
Meat Joy
Two Nice Girls
Zeitgeist
Nice Strong Arm

I sold some screws to the guitarists of Dangerous Toys when I worked in a hardware store in austin.
I sold gas to Eric Johnson when I worked in a Circle K.
I used to hang around Erlewine's guitar shop, where instruments for ZZ Top and Johnny Winter were made.

But I don't live in Austin anymore.
I'm further out in the boonies.

But I'm four blocks from Little Joe and La Familia's career museum and recording studio.
He was born in a garage here in Temple, Texas, and now he's world famous and has his picture taken with Governors and Presidents and such.

the best guitar is the gibson les paul , not some ibanez or sommat

Hello.
How many guitars have you owned or built?

i just want a good solid electric guitar. after i get that an amp, ill prob go for a wah/distortion pedal.

A noble ambition.
Start simple and pare it down to the essentials.
Good luck!

Contemporary guitarists' obsessions with loads and loads of effects disturbs me. Give me a good guitar and a distotrion pedal or (even better) a good tube amp, and I'm set. I don't need two delay pedals, a phase shifter, a flanger, and god knows what else.

I agree with you, but it is not a recent phenomenon.
People like Les Paul and Chet Atkins and Bo Diddley and Joe Maphis were messing around with gadgets back in the fifties.
Les Paul was the initial promoter of modern multi-tracking and he played with speeds and backwards tracks a few years before rock as we know it was born.
The modern effects boom is a grandchild of all that activity.
Some of the blame goes to George Martin and the Beatles. Many of the effects found on their later records could not be duplicated on stage until relatively recently.

I am irretrievably attached to my Ibanez digital delay.
It can be so much fun to play with.
I also have a .5 capacitor on my linear taper tone pot that allows me to use it like a wah.
My distortion comes from my Charvel Korean practice amp.
I don't do tubes anymore. I have learned to like my ears. The tones I need can only be found in the pain threshold areas on a tube amp, so I use solid states and muddy up the sound with thick strings and the delay.

My pet peeve is too many pickups. I think two single coils or one humbucker is enough. Three pickups, or having one at the neck position, I find draws the strings down from the pole pieces.
The strings vibrate much more freely with fewer poles.
I placed the single humbucker on my current axe in the middle position, near where a sound hole would be if it were an acoustic guitar. This allows me to pick behind, over and in front of the pickup to get slightly different timbres and attacks.

Though, to tell you the truth, I am thinking of finding an old octive divider. There's something about them that is just strange.

I saw a custom Strat once in a shop that was solid, packed, edge-to-edge pick-ups between the neck and the bridge - there must have been six or seven in there!

Ah, yes, another Nigel Tufnel model.
I sincerely doubt that all the pickups were wired or had real pole pieces in them.
Steve Morse is the gentleman that I am aware of who managed the largest practical number of usable pickups on the same guitar.
He's still around, but he used to play for the Dixie Dregs, whom deserve an entry.

How many pick-ups was it?

Well, let's see. Three pickups on a normal strat. If you're using single coil pickups, and they were all straight, you could conceivably shove two more between the bridge pickup and the middle one, and two more between the middle and the neck pickup and one right by the neck, for a grand total of: Eight!

I'll see if I can find a picture of a Frankenstrat.

Oh, sorry. You were asking about Steve Morse's guitar.
I'll have to find a picture, but if memory serves me, it was a telecaster body with Roland synth bridge pickup, a tele bridge pickup, a humbucker and strat neck pickup...

I'll have to go check.
I've got an ancient Guitar Player magazine with him on the cover around here somewhere.

http://www.picturedwithin.com/newgallery/SM-PA0021.htm

that's the old one I counted a two humbuckers and two single coils in that picture.

his current Ernie Ball custom has four custom wound Dimarzios on it.

I don't know what size strings he is using.

Heh-heh! Possibly a tad obsessive-compulsive but it probably sounds mad! Thanks for that!

OC? Him or me?

Yes Strat is definitely the best.