The Wishlist of Expensive Guitar Gear I May Never Be Able to Afford

We are going to start the wishlist with the list of guitars I want in my "fleet," although I don't need any more than 5 guitars if I'm remembering right, if I want to get the job done. I am way more interested in playing rhythm guitar, and the only thing I have to temper is a problem I have with not being able to hide when I'm in an ensemble. A rhythm guitarist does get his time to shine, but he needs to be able to be invisible most of the time, and unfortunately, when I'm on stage, I do like to glam.

Glam should be left for the lead-singer and the lead-guitarist in a basic rock band setup. Also, if you are looking for a lead-singer, I suggest you have a dedicated frontman. Look for the craziest possible guy who can sing and act strange when on stage who won't have you sent to a maxi-pen for a maxi-bid, and you'll make a ton of money even without any production value.

So the list:

1. A Fender American Standard Telecaster, with updated pickups and tuned in Nashville Standard Tuning.
2. The same type of Telecaster tuned to a Sawmill Tuning.
3. A Gibson SG Standard tuned to a Sawmill Tuning.
4. A Gibson SG Standard tuned to a C Hardcore Tuning.
5. A Gibson Les Paul Standard tuned to a variation of the Open C Tuning I mentioned.
6. An Adamas-Ovation custom tuned in my own standard tuning.

So that makes six.

Another basic thing that we haven't hit yet is that if you're going to play pro-quality, then when you switch between two very different tunings, a guitar needs a very good bridge and truss adjustment. Learning to adjust a bridge and a truss is not easy. I recommend picking up an old Mexican Strat that will at least play, so that you can monkey with the instrument while you figure out what the words "good bridge and truss adjustment," mean.

The result of this is that you should look at a guitar as, "one guitar, one tuning," if you're going to play at pro-quality levels. What tunings you decide to use exactly would depend on what kinds of sounds you'd like to make, and also what kind of gigs you plan to run. One of the things is that a sound that appeals to one person may not appeal to another. Even people who love underground or serious music don't all purchase the same recordings or go to the same shows, and musicians who are serious about music feel exactly the same about the work they are doing, even if they are punching a chip at a gig they do only because the gig puts some money in the bank.

There are endless variations to the basic tunings I mentioned, and sitting with your instrument and lolly-gagging with it can really get you to some new places. The first hint though is that you have to have some standard places to work from, or you are going to have absolute confusion on your hands. Which shape did what in what tuning? You can get yourself in big trouble.

Another hint is that it is never a good idea to tune strings up - even by a half-step - on a guitar that isn't custom made for those strings to be tuned higher on. Even that half-step raise puts a lot of wear and tear on the bridge, nut and truss of a standardized guitar, and it isn't a good thing to fool around with. You can experiment with trying wires in the wrong places on a guitar, but you should still watch and feel what is going on with your guitar when you do that.

Even a Standard Tele costs 1200 dollars. That is not a great cost for a professional quality instrument, and that Tele is a pro-instrument. However, if you have 1200 dollars to ruin, then I will provide a PO Box number and you can send me a standard Tele. I won't pass up the offer if you have money to waste.

I've been chatting with people who play and love Tele's, and apparently the best place to run with those is the real high-class DiMarzio single-coil pickups. They're a standard active pickup, they aren't cheap, and they get great sound. Apparently they are also a great match with the Tele.

The SG Standard is a bit of a compromise. It gets a better bass and mid response than a Strat, and that is important for a rhythm guitarist, and it is also about the same weight as a Strat. It doesn't even compare to a Strat in the high range. Further, I love playing hard-rock styles, and I know with the amount of pain I experience that I can't wear a Les Paul Standard all night. Further yet, the SG is a bit edgier than the Les Paul.

The Les Paul often gets a Skynyrd kind of sound, and that is not the kind of hard-rock I am going to most often play. And by the way, I wouldn't have said it two years ago, but I'm not much into playing Skynyrd, but Skynyrd does rock. I enjoy their music now.

The Les Paul in the open C would be the least wanted guitar on the list, but it would be good for blues-riffing and some other sort of work-horse situations. I would probably use it very, very little, but it would be a nice thing to keep around just in case. Plus, nothing squeals the blues like a Les Paul Standard in open C, and it is kind of nice to hit a couple of blue notes and squeal them around some. It's glam and showy, and it makes the ladies squeal too. That stuff never does really get old.

The Adamas-Ovation is the guitar I really, really want. Part one is that I'm not a good enough guitar player to justify purchasing that kind of instrument at this juncture. Part two is that I want the bridge, nut and truss set for a pretty strange standard tuning, and I also want the sound hole construction done in a certain way. Most people who play an Adamas order it custom. An Adamas guitar is a bank-breaker in the first place, but what I want is very specific and unusual, and it is going to even more break the bank. 10 or 11 thousand dollars, skinny, that is what I'm figuring, if the Adamas company finds what I want done somewhat easy to do.

An Adamas guitar unprocessed has a sound that is quite a bit like a harpsichord, and you can move things around to get a lot of different sounds, if you have the right electronics in your setup. It is really an electronic instrument, and not an electric or even an electric-acoustic guitar. I want that thing real bad, but when I get geeking I think to myself - "You are really a feeble guitar player still. You don't need a megabucks instrument!" Still, we all have our outsized desires, and I try not to be overly hard on myself today. I'll just go to the Adamas website and drool at the guitar pron and maybe get the old Yamaha out of the case later.

Alright, so now the electronics I want for the setup, although electronics moves so fast that by the time I'm this kind of megabucks player, there will be better stuff being made. Still, if we just take a trip down oversized-imagination lane.

1. The Marshall broad-range small cab.
2. A broad-range pre-amplifier.
3. A limiting head.
4. A two-rack digital limiting logic gate. (There is a UK company that makes a fabulous one.)
5. A Kurzweil Rumor and a Kurzweil Mangler.
6. A switch-pedal setup to change filter-programs with.
7. Two continuous foot-pedals, one for volume, and one for wah-effects.
8. A good quality two-rack voltage equalizer.
9. A standing flight-case style rack-module setup.
10. A hognose-style practice amplifier.

Starting with the Marshall cab. First, Marshall makes the best electric cabinets in the world. Second, I always tune a guitar (except for Nashville tuning) with the bass string at C2, and in that case your show just runs better with a broad-range amplifier. Third, you don't need a large Marshall stack, because you'll be mic'ing through the PA, and that small cab will provide plenty of sound to give you a good mic over the PA.

On the other hand, in a studio, you want the sound fairly quiet, and then the sound will be mic'ed into the board room. After that, you let your sound engineers handle the rest. Well, that is what you want to do unless you want to work in a studio for only 30 seconds, and only one time.

The limiting head I've talked about. You lose some tone, but it prevents overloads of sound. A good one ain't cheap. The limiting gate is really expensive, and I mention "two-rack," because the really sophisticated gates are quite large and used only in a studio environment. That doesn't mean that the piece of equipment is cheap.

Also, a programmable gate is hard to figure out, and there are good presets on the good ones, but you still have to learn the thing well-enough to fit your own shows and work, and it is trial and error, probably for a few weeks a few hours a day to get the thing in order. Running a Tele or an Adamas, I would not want to go without one. The Adamas in particular is very bright and uses piezo pickups and could get you sent to prison for eardrum mutilation if you don't limit the sounds right. There is a further reason I need a really good limiting gate, and the explanation is coming.

The next thing to talk about is a voltage equalizer. Most good venues and studios are wired pretty well, but there can be problems with either power surges or power deficits while you're playing that can bust every piece of your equipment, including your instrument, with a blink of your eyelids. A very good voltage equalizer is not massively expensive, and is going to be a really good buy for you. It is also a very good idea for a deejay to run a voltage equalizer with their kitbag, as a deejay can have just the same unhappy day with his or her entire kitbag for the exact same reasons.

The switch pedals are kind of obvious, but they need to be generalized ones, as my principal filters are going to be rack-modules instead of a footboard. The Rumor and the Mangler are an interesting little tidbit I turned up. The best digital effects processor made in the world today is hands-down the Kurzweil studio DEP, which is really large, really amazing, and really expensive. It is used only in a studio setting, and has been known to make the engineers breakfast while killing their mix.

Kurzweil's point-of-sale largely relies on that kind of amazing, top-of-the-line, cutting edge kind of equipment. However, the Rumor and the Mangler are just around 1000 dollars a piece, and they are single rack a piece, and they are probably the best portable digital processors on the market, for any other price you can name. The Rumor is a programmable digital reverb/echo unit, and the Mangler is a programmable digital fuzz/compression filter unit.

The amazing part about the Mangler is that it includes digital emulations of Ring Modulator effects that are not only programmable, they are also actually usable. ROM effects produce some of the best compression and distortion effects possible, and did even in analog. However, ROM effects also used to produce a lot of broken eardrums and equipment, which holds true even today in digital. The ROM's on the Mangler are usable, but I would rest much more assured about using them if I had a very strong, portable programmable limiting gate.

The hognose is something I can realistically afford when I can afford my first electric guitar. You plug your guitar and a pair of headphones into it, and then you can practice your electric guitar in your rent-controlled apartment at all hours of the morning or the night without getting murdered by your neighbors or getting arrested. It is a really nice buy for anyone who has an electric guitar.

So I'm not a megabucks player than can justify this kind of megabucks equipment, but this is kind of what I'm thinking about in terms of sounds and models and so on. I'm going to take a break to eat a little, and then I'll probably post once or twice more this 26th in the morning before putting myself to bed. We'll do guitar heroes and star guitar tracks next. That will be fun.