This has been a busy month. We’re getting our instruments ready for the NAMM show that’s held every January in Anaheim. During this time, our repair department continues to busily push the envelope and do repairs that, at times, seem impossible.
It was during one such time that the phone rang. “Since the Vegas show has been cancelled, you guys should now have enough extra time to finish that blonde Tele body. Can you get it back to us in ten days?” Calls like this tend to keep the blood flowing. 
Body Shop
The non-original black finish was carefully removed with a spatula and some stripper. We were very careful to not strip and alter the body cavities since they still had the original blonde finish intact, along with the original pencil marks. This patch of original finish is important since we’re spraying color and toner to match what it originally looked like in 1960.
Once the ash body was taken up to 280 grit sandpaper and prepped, it was time to spray a light coat of vinyl sealer before filling the wood pores. Easy to apply water-based grain fillers can be used, but our choice for this particular project was an oil-based filler. After applying both kinds of filler to a scrap piece of ash, we sanded and then sprayed a transparent white overlay. It was then determined that the oil-based natural grain filler gave a more accurate shade of blue-gray visible through the transparent white top coat. We filled the pores with the oil-based natural grain filler, and then the body was left for two days to dry thoroughly. Afterward, we sanded with 280 grit sandpaper in preparation for spraying color. The body cavities were carefully masked off to protect the original finish and pencil marks. 
Color Theory
When people think of a blonde Fender, most of the time butterscotch comes to mind. But the original finish on this guitar was definitely the later, lighter white-blonde that Fender began using in the mid-‘50s, and it had aged over time. A great book for referencing various blonde Teles from the early ‘50s and ‘60s is titled Norman’s Rare Guitars: 30 Years of Buying, Selling & Collecting by Norman Harris and David Swartz. Not only does it chronicle how the finishes went from butterscotch to white, but it also shows how some finishes were more transparent than others. They all looked great, but this project is about giving our customer’s Tele a periodcorrect finish.
I mixed a nitrocellulose clear with a white ColorTone liquid pigment. The end result had a look leaning towards the opaque side with a very slight transparency, allowing some of the wood grain to show through. 
Clear Vintage
Once the white color had been applied and cured overnight, we were ready to age the appearance with a tinted clear. Rick Pavlik made the mix for me with yellow and medium brown ColorTone stains and nailed it, once again by using a scrap piece of ash wood and comparing it to the untouched body cavities as a reference point. After applying a couple thin coats of the perfectly blended tinted clear in the spray booth, we were finally there – the body was ready for additional coats of clear that we would later sand and buff out.
I would like to thank my team: Adam Meyer, Thomas Calhoun, and Rick Pavlik. They all had an important hand in this project. We will cover the final two days of our ten-day project next month.
John Brown
John Brown, of Brown''s Guitar Factory, is the inventor of the Fretted/Less bass. He owns and operates a full guitar manufacturing and repair/restoration facility, which is staffed by a team of talented luthiers. He is also the designer of guitar making/repair tools and accessories that are used today by instrument builders throughout the world.
www.brownsguitarfactory.com
info@brownsguitarfactory.com
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.
Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
