We asked our readers to get their mods out. Here are some of the coolest.
SHANE KELLY: STEAMPUNK STRADIVARIUS
When Shane Kelly grabbed this mid-2010s Dean Cadillac X at a pawnshop for $100, he saw it as something more. After some routing, the removal of a black finish, and the raiding of a local hardware store, it’s now a steampunk tone machine. He notes: “While the hardware”—all for show—“definitely adds weight, it is balanced out by the removal of wood, so it weighs about the same as a standard Les Paul.” How’s it sound? Kelly says it’s killer!
Check out the tube-driven headstock and gauges. We don’t think this is what ZZ Top meant when they wrote “Got Me Under Pressure,” but….
CARY CUMMINGS: SKULLDUGGERY
When Cary Cummings dreamt of jamming with Steve Vai in Pompeii (Was that during or post-lava, Cary?), this guitar was in his hands. So, he brought it to life. His “Skull Top” was originally a made-in-Mexico arctic-white Fender Standard Tele. He refinished the top, leaving the sides and back white, and added a Warmoth T-style neck, and Gotoh Tuners. Cummings also painted the neck dots and headstock to match the blue top. The original bridge was replaced with three Wilkinson-compensated brass saddles, and he added a Bigsby B50 vibrato. Electronics were swapped with a Sprague orange drop tone cap, a Seymour Duncan Jerry Donahue Lead Tele bridge pickup, and a Gibson Burstbucker Pro in the neck. Now it’s ready for Día de los Muertos.
JOHN HEINZ: GILDED GUILD
This alien was born as a Guild X-79 with a red finish that John Heinz scored at a guitar show—minus hardware and kinda trashed—for $35. He stripped and repainted it with auto lacquer: lapis-pearl blue over a black shade with color-change flakes. The original stop tailpiece got bumped for a Kahler trem, and Heinz installed an EMG and a Kent Armstrong pickup along with Grover tuners. He also carved a comfort cut into the back and made the aluminum pickguard. “It played and sounded great, but I found it a little uncomfortable to play, with the very long top horn,” he says. So, now this space critter may be in a galaxy far, far away. Heinz swapped it, along with some cash, for a Gibson Les Paul BFG.
LUIS MARCELO FERNÁNDEZ SEOANE: A HIGHLY PERSONALIZED STRAT
Here’s a partscaster that’s, well, the sum of its parts, if not more. The neck and body are from Fender.com, but the rest of his guitar is highly subjective. Luis Marcelo Fernández Seoane was seeking many switching options for its Fender Jeff Beck Hot Noiseless pickups. Check the pickguard and you’ll see an add-neck switch, a series/parallel switch, a blower switch, a middle tone control wired for the neck and middle pickups, and a bottom tone control for the bridge pickup. The blower switch is wired so he can choose the combination of pickups going straight to the output jack. “For not much more than a stock model, and much less than a Custom Shop offering, I got the Strat I always wanted,” Seoane says. His hotrod also includes a two-point Strat trem ordered with six vintage saddles and Schaller locking tuners. Plus, he steel-wooled the back of the neck for a more organic playing feel. The output is a Pure Tone stereo jack. Why? “I prefer the Pure Tone TRS-style jack, because even though I’m only using the tip and the sleeve, the unconnected ring provides an added measure of security,“ Seoane adds.
TATE FERGUSON: SIMPLY ELEGANT
Here’s an S-style created after Covid ended Tate Ferguson’s gigs for a spell. Starting with a Muslady kit he bought on eBay for $76 including shipping, he did a little sanding, so the neck and body fit together well, and the bridge and tuners that came with the kit did the trick. He finished the body and the back of the neck with a few coats of Tru-Oil gunstock finish. Then things got real. The string slots on the kit’s plastic nut were too narrowly spaced, so Ferguson installed a nut he made from a dog-chew cattle bone he’d bought at a pet shop. “There’s enough bone for a dozen nuts on one of those,” he notes. “I’ve made guitar and mando nuts from scratch now and then, using the StewMac nut files I bought many years ago.” He also made the lovely pickguard from faux abalone, sourced via Amazon, and attached it with Velcro, and installed a Guitar Madness Songbird (Firebird-style) pickup. “The tone knob is a Fender no-load pot, and the knobs come from a long-defunct 1980s MXR limiter pedal,” adds the impressive recycler. Plus, the 3-spring whammy holds its tuning well. “I’ve been messing around with solidbody electric guitars since 1969, and I’m starting to get better at it,” Ferguson says, modestly.
NIKOLAS SIMON: BACK TO THE FUTURE
“In a world full of mods, I decided to bring my 1961 Gibson Melody Maker back to original spec,” says Nikolas Simon. So out went the Seymour Duncan Hot Stack Tele pickup. (That pickup’s base was shaved to fit in the original cavity without routing, and there was a push-pull pot for single-coil tone.) “I had a set of original early ’60s pots that were still wired from the factory, and sourced a 1964 pickup to complete the ‘mod’ for this versatile guitar,” Simon says.
SCOTT HASKITT: SWITCHED UP
Scott Haskitt “absolutely fell in love with this guitar” when he got it, but also loves the idea of bridge and neck pickups with the same amount of highs.
After a few different pickups sets, he found a solution: installing a new tone cap and a bridge-resistor toggle on this Novo Miris T 2021. He also swapped in a Bliss humbucker (soapbar) and a T-Bar Bridge (with P-90 characteristics) by McNelly Pickups. “The DPDT on/on switch is wired to toggle between the bridge pickup with a 500k pot (up) and a 47k resistor in the circuit (down), so it sounds more equal to the neck pickup.”
The neck pickup does not ever connect to the resistor. When the resistor is not engaged (up), the whole circuit uses the Novo stock .022 tone capacitor, and when the resistor is engaged (down), the whole circuit uses a 0.0015 capacitor, for completely different and more usable sounds with the tone pot rolled all the way off. The Novo uses 500k for both volume and tone pots.
KRISTOFFER HAGEN: THE “PG’S FAULT” MOD
Kristoffer Hagen says, “I fell deep in a rabbit hole of Premier Guitar mod articles.” In particular, “Bass Bench: Cheap and Easy Bass Mods,” from 2012, and “Three Must-Try Guitar Wiring Mods,” from 2014, inspired his project. It started with a B-stock Warwick RockBass that played well, but its active electronics didn’t provide the tones Hagen wanted. “The finish concept was stolen from a YouTube video,” he relates. “The color was supposed to be dark blue but turned out a little green. I settled on Nordstrand pickups because they looked unique.” The “Bass Bench” article fueled his idea for a series/parallel switch. And in the wiring article, he discovered the Stellartone ToneStyler rotary cap switch. “Those pickups and wiring turned an uninteresting bass into a complete monster,” he attests. In the photo for Hagen’s mod project, you’ll see: 1) the original bass, 2) the striped wood grain, 3) the routing for soapbar pickups, 4) the “dark blue” staining, 5) the silver finishing wax to fill the grain, 6) the surface wax, 7) the new passive electronics, and 8) the Nordstrand Big Single pickups in place along with a black bridge.
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EBS BassIQ Blue Label Triple Envelope Filter Pedal
The EBS BassIQ produces sounds ranging from classic auto-wah effects to spaced-out "Funkadelic" and synth-bass sounds. It is for everyone looking for a fun, fat-sounding, and responsive envelope filter that reacts to how you play in a musical way.
The LR Baggs AEG-1 represents a highly versatile, forward-thinking approach to acoustic guitar luthierie. It sports a streamlined body shape with built-in electronics and pickup/microphone settings, providing a wide range of tones suitable for different playing environments and musical styles.
"The reason for AEG-1’s groundbreaking performance is its patent pending integrated neck support system that frees the guitar’s top and back from the need to support the neck. This allows Baggs unprecedented freedom to voice the top and back of each guitar to maximize the acoustic response, achieving a full-bodied sound from a slim and comfortable design. With greater structural integrity, more string energy is driven into the top, resulting in a wider dynamic range, greater tonal depth, enhanced low-frequency response, and improved tuning stability."
The AEG-1’s electronics feature an all-discrete studio grade preamp with a multi-pole crossover system that seamlessly blends the HiFi Pickups and Silo Mic for an inspiring feel and sound in any position – ranging between direct and natural to open and airy,and everywhere in between. As with all LR Baggs electronics, you can expect wonderful warmth, purity, low noise, and long battery life. The system’s three-knob side-mounted controls offer quick access to master volume, pickup/mic blend, tone shaping, phase inversion, and a battery life indicator.
Features
- Three different gloss-finished options for top wood: Torrefied Sitka Spruce, Natural Engelmann Spruce, or Sunburst Sitka Spruce
- Indian Rosewood back, with composite poplar frame body
- African Mahogany neck wood carved in a slim “C” shape
- Indian Rosewood fretboard with 16” radius, 25-5/8” (651mm) scale length and 20 frets
- Indian Rosewood bridge with composite saddle
- Nut width is 1.7” (43mm)made of composite material, with closed back tuners
- Onboard electronics/pickup system: Custom HiFi Duet with HiFi Pickups and Silo Microphone
- Full-sized body similar to a dreadnought-style guitar with scalloped X bracing, slim profile 2-1/2” body depth, and carved beveled armrest for extra comfort
- Utilizes single 9-volt with approximately 120-hour life
The Baggs AEG-1 Acoustic Electric Guitar is the culmination of a lifetime dedicated to high-performance acoustic amplification, all rooted in the craftsmanship of a luthier. Our founder and master luthier, Lloyd Baggs, began his journey as a guitar maker, creating instruments for artists like Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, and Janis Ian. His deep respect for the guitar evolved into a quest to faithfully amplify his own instruments for live performance.
After years of studying the physics of acoustic instruments and pioneering advancements in pickups and electronics, the Baggs AEG-1 is the realization of everything we’ve learned about acoustic sound and amplification. Lloyd’s dual expertise as a luthier and a pickup designer allowed us to craft a guitar and its electronics in harmony, finely tuning the system for this instrument.
Lloyd Baggs, founder of LR Baggs and Baggs Guitars, describes the journey that has led to his newest creation: “My desire to faithfully amplify the acoustic guitars I was building as a luthier led to the creation of our pickup company. It became my life’s work to eliminate every obstacle to playing live acoustic guitar easy, inspiring, and fun. The AEG-1 is the realization of this philosophy and I’m incredibly proud of this instrument. I hope it brings you inspiration and joy for years to come!”
Designed in California and manufactured in South Korea, the Baggs AEG-1 carries a street price of $1599.
For more information, please visit lrbaggs.com.
Trey Hensley | Baggs AEG-1 First Listen - YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.LR Baggs AEG-1 Acoustic-electric Guitar - Torrefied Spruce Top
Loopers can be complex enough to make beginners cry. They are fun if you have time to venture for whole weeks down a rabbit hole. But a looper that bridges the functionality and ease-of-use gap between the simplest and most maniacal ones can be a sweet spot for newbies and seasoned performers both. The JamMan Solo HD lives squarely in that zone. It also offers super-high sound quality and storage options, and capacity that would fit the needs of most pros—all in a stomp just millimeters larger than a Boss pedal.
Fast Out of the Blocks
Assuming you’ve used some kind of rudimentary looper before, there’s pretty decent odds you’ll sort out the basic functionality of this one with a couple of exploratory clicks of the footswitch. That’s unless you’ve failed to turn down the rhythm-level knob, in which case you’ll be scrambling for the quick start guide to figure out why there is a drum machine blaring from your amp. The Solo HD comes loaded with rhythm tracks that are actually really fun to use and invaluable for practice. In the course of casually exploring these, I found them engaging and vibey enough to be lured into crafting expansive dub reggae jams, thrashing punk riffs, and lo-fi cumbias. Removing these tracks from a given loop is just a matter of turning the rhythm volume to zero. You can also create your own guide rhythms with various percussion sounds.
Backing tracks aside, creating loops on the Solo HD involves a common single-click-to-record, double-click-to-stop footswitch sequence. Recording an overdub takes another single click, and you hold the footswitch down to erase a loop. Storing a loop requires a simple press-and-hold of the store switch. The sizable latching footswitch, which looks and feels quite like those on Boss pedals, is forgiving and accurate. This has always been a strength of JamMan loopers, and though I’m not completely certain why, it means I screw up the timing of my loops a lot less.
Many players will be satisfied with how easy this functionality is and explore little more of the Solo HD’s capabilities. And why not? The storage capacity—up to 35 minutes of loops and 10 minutes for individual loops—is enough that you can craft a minor prog-rock suite from these humble beginnings. Depending on how economical your loops are, you can use all or most of the 200 available memory locations built into the Solo HD. But you can also add another 200 with an SD/SDHC card.Deeper into Dubs
Loopers have always been more than performance and practice tools for me. I have old multitrack demos that still live in the memory banks of my oldest loopers. And just as with any demos, the sounds you create with the Solo HD may be tough to top or duplicate, which can mean a loop becomes the foundation of a whole recorded song. The Solo HD’s tempo and reverse features, which can completely mutate a loop, make this situation even more likely. The tempo function raises or lowers the BPM without changing the pitch of the loop. As a practice tool, this is invaluable for learning a solo at a slower clip. But drastically altered tempos can also help create entirely new moods for a musical passage without altering a favorite key to sing or play in. Some of these alterations reveal riffs and hooks within riffs and hooks, from which I would happily build a whole finished work. The reverse function is similarly inspiring and a source of unusual textures that can be the foundation for a more complex piece.
HD, of course, stands for high definition. And the Solo HD’s capacity for accurate, dense, and detail-rich stacks of loops means you can build complex musical weaves highlighting the interaction between overtones or timbre differences among other effects in your chain. I can’t remember the last time I felt like a looper’s audio resolution was really lacking. But the improved quality here lends itself to using the Solo HD as a song-arranging tool—and, again, as a recording asset, if you want a looped idea to form the backbone of a recording.
The Verdict
With a looper, smooth workflow is everything. And though it takes practice and some concentration in the early going to extract the most from the Solo HD’s substantial feature set, it is, ultimately, a very intuitive instrument that will not just smooth the use of loops in performance, but extend and enhance its ability as a right-brain-oriented driver of composition and creation.
The Warm Bender dishes these sounds with ease and savage aplomb. Outwardly, it honors the original MkII—a good way to go given that the original Sola Sound unit is one the most stylish effects ever built. But the 3-transistor NOS 75 MkII is only one of the Warm Bender’s personalities. You can also switch to a 2-transistor NOS 76 circuit, aka the Tone Bender MkI. There’s also a silicon 3-transistor Tone Bender circuit, a twist explored by several modern boutique builders. Each of these three voices can be altered further by the crown-mounted sag switch, which starves the circuit of voltage, reducing power from 9 to 6 volts. From these three circuits, the Warm Bender conjures voices that are smooth, responsive, ragged, mean, mangled, clear, and positively fried.
The Compact Wedge Edge
Warm Audio, quite wisely, did not put the Warm Bender in an authentically, full-size Tone Bender enclosure, which would gobble a lot of floor space. But this smaller, approximately 2/3-scale version, complete with a Hammerite finish, looks nearly as hip. It’s sturdy, too. The footswitch and jacks are affixed directly to the substantial enclosure entirely apart from the independently mounted through-hole circuit board, which, for containing three circuits rather than one, is larger and more densely populated than the matchbox-sized circuit boards in a ’60s Tone Bender. Despite the more cramped quarters, there’s still room for a 9V battery if you choose to run it that way. Topside, there’s not much to the Warm Bender. There’s a chicken-head knob for output volume, another for gain, and a third that switches between the NOS 76, NOS 75, and silicon modes. Even the most boneheaded punk could figure this thing out.
A Fuzz Epic in Three Parts
Most Warm Bender customers will find their way to the pedal via MkII lust. If you arrive here by that route you won’t be disappointed. The Warm Bender’s NOS 75 setting delivers all the glam-y, proto-metal, heavy filth you could ask for. It sounded every bit as satisfying as my own favorite MkII clone save for a hint of extra compression that falls well within the bounds of normal vintage fuzz variation. My guess is that when you’re ripping through “Dazed and Confused” you won’t give a hoot.
“There’s more color and air in the NOS 76 mode.”
If the NOS 75 circuit suffers by comparison to anything, it’s the 2-transistor friend next door, the NOS 76. The lower-gain NOS 76 mode is, to my ears, the most appealing of the three. It’s the most dynamic in terms of touch response and guitar volume attenuation and delivers the clearest clean tones when you use either technique. There’s more color and air in the NOS 76 mode, too. Paired with a neck-position single-coil, it’s an excellent alternative for Hendrix and Eddie Hazel low-gain mellow fuzz that’s more like dirty overdrive. The silicon mode, meanwhile, lives on the modern borderlands of the ’60s-fuzz spectrum. It’s super-aggressive and focused, which can be really useful depending on the setting, but lo-fi, spitty, and weird when starved of voltage via the sag switch. It’s deviant-sounding stuff, but extends the Warm Bender’s performance envelope in useful ways, particularly if you hunt for unique fuzz tones in the studio.
There’s a widely accepted bit of wisdom that says most germanium fuzzes sound lousy unless you turn up everything all the way and use your guitar controls to tailor the tone. This is partly true, especially with a Fuzz Face. But in general, I respectfully disagree and present the Warm Bender as exhibit A in this defense. The gain and volume controls both have considerable range and fascinating shades of fuzz within that can still rise above the din of a raging band.
The Verdict
Some potential customers might balk at the notion of a $199 vintage-style fuzz made in China—no matter how cool it looks. But the Warm Bender looks and feels well made. The sound and tactile sensations in the three circuits are truly different enough to be three individual effects, and $199 for three fuzz pedals is a sweet deal—particularly when consolidated in a stompbox that looks this cool. There is a lot of variation in old Tone Benders, and how these takes on the circuits compare to your idea of true vintage Tone Bender sound will be subjective. But I heard the essence of both the MkI and MkII here very clearly and would have no qualms about using the Warm Bender in a session that called for an extra-authentic mid-’60s fuzz texture.
