McKinley James Roadmaster
Mickey sent me his Roadmaster last July to swap out the old vintage size frets for some bigger medium jumbos. I finally getting around to sending it back to him. It’s hard to believe this guitar is 8 years old already.
C.A.R. Pickup Comparison
A few months back I stopped by my friend Deke Dickerson’s place for a visit. We ended up doing an impromptu comparison of my CAR pickup mounted in the neck position of a Tele next to a couple of real Bigsby neck pickups. Each guitar is plugged into Merle Travis’s Standel 25L15 with same amp settings and they all have the volume and tone controls wide open. The Bigsby guitars are both set up with round wound strings and my Tele has flatwounds. Here’s the results, recorded with Deke’s iPhone.
I wasn’t planning on Deke filming this get together. If I’d known, I would’ve warmed up and worked out something better to play, haha.
Bryant Trenier Guitars and Pasquale Grosso
I discovered Pasquale Grosso on youtube during the pandemic. I was instantly a fan. Pasquale takes what some of my favorite pickers, like Bill DeArango and Chuck Wayne, were doing in the mid 40’s to a whole new level. Needless to say I was thrilled to find out Pasquale was using one of my pickups on his latest Trenier archtop! You can check out more of Bryant’s beautiful work here.
You can catch Pasquale playing around NYC and Birdland is posting live clips on their youtube channel. Here’s one from last week of Pasquale playing Frank Vignola’s guitar night. The whole 1 1/2 hour show is incredible, but if you’re in a hurry check out Pasquale playing ‘I’ve Never Been in Love Before’ as a solo at the 57 minute mark.
1941 Gibson ES-300
This one is for a friend of mine. He got it without a pickup, pickguard and someone neatly plugged the holes for the pots. Guessing they wanted an acoustic and ditched the electronics.
For the pickup I went with 1/4″ slug magnets, the originals had adjustable pole pieces. I made the guard and pickup cover out of celluloid sheet. I’m really happy with how it turned out.
In the short clip it’s going through my BR-3. I have the tone on the guitar rolled way back and the treble up on the amp. The high end sounds very George Barnes-ish to me. If only I could play like him!
Swamp Ash Roadmaster
I’m wrapping up four solid bodies. Here’s the first, 7 lbs 5 oz, fat soft V maple neck, SV pickups with slug magnets for the neck and adjustable pole pieces at the bridge.
