As far as picking I'm not that conscious of it anymore, my hands kind of know what to do and where to go. If I'm digging in a bit sometimes I'm angling the pick a bit, a lot of times not realizing it, things like that. I gave lessons for a while and started noticing some things I did I don't think of. Like sometimes I'd PM a little further away from the bridge for a different attack or something, but you see a kid do it and you wonder why it sounds different and it kind of hits you.

I've actually wanted to try setting up a bridge pick up like that. How would you describe the differences in tone? Did it sound very Jimiish?

So you're saying 5th fret harmonics sound different on a 22 fret guitar than a 24 fret guitar because the pickup lays over a node?

I think he is saying that the overall tone when using the neck pickup is different.

But this is not a strat, it's the Jerry Cantrell Rampage, it has a 13.75" radius. Pretty good for some sweet sustain.

As for the is Cantrell metal thing going, I'd say his tone definitely has a metal edge to it and I love it. He's used Les Pauls throughout his career too when the tone called for it.

he plays grunge peeps, not metal

No one said he plays metal, but you're not going to play Stella by Starlight on that axe, man.

this conversation has def gone beyond the scope of this thread. i am completely lost.

man that is nice. me getting that would be like a kid with a permit driving a porshe though. too much guitar for me, but man is that pretty, and a good price it seems.

Warning: Long post about sustain imo

Don't think he was talking about the fretboard radius, that's not really a sustain factor at all. It's primarily the angle of the strings after the bridge and after the nut. If you compare say an LP with a tilted-back headstock and a tune-o-matic bridge, you can see the angle of the strings is more extreme than on say a Strat or Tele.

Also there are other factors like string gauge, tension, woods involved and then [more artificial] ways to get it through your signal chain, like with compressors and amplification, Fernandes sustainers and ebows also.

For a good while there has been a lot of debates about whether a set neck joint sustains better than a bolt-on, though more recent hard studies dispute that. There was one I came across a few years back where a guy went so far as to build a set neck guitar and measure it with a spectrometer and all, then removed the neck and made it into a bolt on. Then there's the difference in mass between these types of guitars also that is an important factor, and some woods have more dampening effect than others.

With Strats and Teles that have single-coils with more powerful magnets, there's more string pull, and that can work against sustain too. Hard for me to say how much given there are other things working against sustain, but I back them off a little.

There's a lot more that I never looked too hard at which people discuss and argue about, like how much difference a big heavy trem block makes or doesn't make (sounds reasonable to me), I've even seen people clamp a weight to their headstock trying to increase sustain and suggest heavy tuners too. I seemed to get a little help locking down my trem but I made other changes to the guitar in question also.

Other things equal I've found thicker mahogany types with TOM-type bridges and a decent angle behind the nuts are just consistently better-sustaining guitars. I have 5 that fit that description at the moment (two bolt-on, one of which is semi-hollow, which appears to sustain less) and have had others before them. My two ash teles have humbuckers, 3 strats are alder, two having passives and one active EMGs - the two heavy ones sustain a little better than the rest but still not in LP range.

Man it's hard to say anything sounds like Jimi lol.

Ymmv but I find that with your typical Strat bridge single coils, the bridge pickup can get a little shrill especially on the higher register. It's not that big a problem and you can tame it a bit with things like EQ or some of the compression you get out of a Tube Screamer. The clarity and all on the rest is definitely something I like though so moving it back seems like a reasonable approach.

I think I like the bass end about where it normally is, so I'm considering just straighting out the pickup and trying that out where it's about an inch off the bridge and seeing how that works. Some people have a humbucker they coil split and use the top coil like a single, which would put it in about the same location, but I'd have to look more into those before I went that way as it's not something I've put that much serious thought into. I also know know how to set up the pots for that as I'm pretty strictly a 250k guy for the single coils I like. I'm still trying to build the perfect Strat really, it lends itself to all kinds of possibilities I'm still tooling with.

Even when bending strings?

Not unless you're completely fretting out, which I don't see as a huge problem for most people on proper setups unless you're talking about a 7.25" vintage Fender radius, really extreme bends, or extreme low action (or some combination). For example take somebody like SRV who bent heavy strings to the moon, he just had to go with a flatter radius and higher action, otherwise those bends just don't make it. String tension is a factor and how much you dig into them also.

Even with the lower side of more modern radii like Fender's 9.5, a typical good setup with leveled frets is fine for most. Before I posted this I went over my green strat (which is a 9.5") and two full steps works everywhere I'd conceivably do it without issue. Typically fret-out problems on modern radii guitars are solved with adjustment, I see folks grab new mass-produced guitars off the shelf and expect they can just lower the action to the floor, adjust intonation, and go. Sometimes that works out well enough and sometimes it doesn't.

Now for people that want their action super-super (almost buzzy) low--some serious potential drawbacks depending on your playing style btw, I've tried this--then yeah going with a 12"+ and finding someone who knows what they're doing is a better plan.

But that's all a setup and style issue that leads to notes choking off, and not one of sustain. If you took that guitar at 14" radius and made it a 20" radius or just flatted it completely it wouldn't make the notes ring longer. I mean yeah interfering with a string will cause it to stop ringing out on any guitar, likewise frilly-cuffed shirts are bad for sustain in that sense. Bang out a big chord or something and radius is pretty meaningless and won't help you hold it longer.

I'm saying everything you play sounds different through the neck pick up. To simplify, (the closer the pick up to the bridge the brighter and crisper the sound). A 22 fret guitar has it's neck pick up placed further away from the bridge than a 24 fret.

Sorry didn't mean to insult or anything. I agree with what you say about LP's. In my mind tone-wise they are the best sounding hard rock guitars (without the add-ons). The picking thing I just meant it more of a gimmick, or just to break things up. Every now and then it's nice to pick right next to the neck or the bridge. Harp to Koto

Yes, I'm familiar with the differences between sul ponticello and sul tasto as it relates to pickup placement. I guess I was just thrown off by you mentioning the front pickup being located under a harmonic node on a 22 fret guitar, when you really were talking about distance from the bridge and nothing about harmonics.

That said, 22 and 24 fret models by the same manufacturer are usually the same distance on both models, so it's not an absolute.

love me some Mitch Evans

Very good deal for a beginner.

If you can get past the red color that is. It covers really all the bases I'd tell someone to look for in a new guitar. I'm picking one up to tool with a bit, I like the layout a lot and have some pickups left over. It also has binding which is hard to see in the photo.

No not insulted, just saying I sort of have my thing going in that area the way I like it now

Gonso just posts good deals!

Gonso are you a ceramic or an alnico guy iyo?

i think it is really pretty. sweet looking instrument imo.

done

did you really?

I'm tempted by that Ibanez Gonz posted earlier. I've been looking for a mahogany guitar with humbuckers, but not a Les Paul because the body isn't comfortable to me.

Looks like a decent, cheap alternative to the guitar I've been kind of lusting after, getting the Jim Root signature Strat and replacing the EMG's with Motor City JB style pickups.