Guitar Mania

It has been a busy March. It ended exceedingly well. Prior to writing this, I had been spending some time cleaning and maintaining the guitars under my care. I kinda decided to share some of my passion with anyone who's reading this...but first...


PG 165 most recent gig was for SPARC's Lost Masquerade prom held in The Legacy Hotel on the 30th March. It was a fun, no stress prom whatsoever. I think i've finally learned to come to a point to not take my gigs tooooo seriously...so i had a real relaxing time performing for this gig...


And hottie Hannah Tan was the emcee....wowie...but her stuck up aussie wannabe manager or something didn't let us take a picture with her unless we bought her album..pfft...whatever...

Ok, lets get down to business...


Here are the primary three guitars that i use most frequently...can anybody guess my favourite colour?

YAMAHA SGV 300

Taiwan made(but the build quality is very nice) Alder body, maple neck/rosewood fretboard, 22 frets, volume tone and pickup blend controls; one neck singlecoil and two bridge singlecoils that share the same pickup cover. black with a white pickguard. Body style is very unusual with a protruding lower horn and a stumpy upper horn( not your typical guitar mould ). Floating tremolo with a roller bridge similar to the old Jazzmasters but with roller bearing pivots. Inline non-locking tuners.


Here's a pic of me back before my goatee days...This is my first darling which i purchased in late 2002 (impulse helped a bit). What attracted me most to it was it's kick ass shape and nasty samurai headstock and it was and still is shining black. I did get one or two comments that it was a darn ugly guitar but i also got a lot of compliments due to it's rare breed. But cosmetics aside, this baby helped honed my skills as a budding lead guitarist. The tone controls are unique since it has the ability to blend the outputs from the two pickups.
PG 165 won the Tones of Absolution Battle of the Bands first runner up and best original song with this guitar. Of late, i've been learning to appreciate the juices produced from its single coil. I'm not good at describing sound but it can play like a Strat if toned properly. I simply relish belting out bluesy tunes on lonely nights...yeah...bluesy is what i get. Like on John Mayor's Jazz album "Gravity"... but it's not a sissy single coil guitar...ooh no...it can bite pretty nasty and loud. =) It played dang well in Rachel Lee's wedding.....even the SKH sound guy complimented on the tone and asked it i was using the same gear as i always used...*grin*

YAMAHA TRS PRO

This is my church guitar but since I'm the sole user, i treat it like my own. Honestly I've flipped through the manual, looked up in the internet, I'm not sure the exact model for this guitar. TRS-Pro is the model for the vibrato system which uses a Floyd Rose TRS-Pro. This is your typical rock guitar with 24 frets...and yeah, it can rock LOUD.


One thing that bothered me the most is how the rust and humidity ate away at the exterior of the bridge. So far, i'm just applying damage control to try and slow it down by polishing and applying antirust to the metalic parts. But besides that i pride myself in being able to perform a complete set up for this system. From adjusting the thrust rod, dealing with bridge heights to balancing the system...it's a lot of hard work but it's really satisfying to know your gear inside out. And this baby stays in tune 97%. So far, this is the most versatile guitar i've ever played. If given a chance to turn back time, I'd use this guitar for the NOC 3 recording instead of my SGV 300. This baby ROCKS!!!

PRS TREMONTI SE

ORIGIN: KoreaTYPE: Single-cutaway, arched-top solidbody electric BODY: Indonesian mahoganyNECK: One-piece mahogany, glued-inSCALE LENGTH: 635mm (25-inch)NUT/WIDTH: Graphite/43.4mmFINGERBOARD: Bound rosewood, pearloid dot inlay, 254mm (10-inch) radiusFRETS: 22, mediumHARDWARE: PRS- designed Korean-made Stop-Tail bridge, PRS logo'd tunersSTRING SPACING,BRIDGE: 52.5mmELECTRICS: Two open-coiled alnico humbuckers, three-way toggle pickup selector switch, volume and tone for each pickupWEIGHT (kg/Ib): 3.75/8. (PRS Tremonti SE review)


OK, this was and still is my dream guitar. Oh yea, that says it all. It's made for guitarist Mark Tremonti of CREED and Alter Bridge fame. I got this baby in mid 2005 by chance it came my way from Singapore...during that time PRS got sued by Gibson and this model was taken off the market. Somehow i thought i landed myself a collectors item.(Gibson lost and this model is back in production). In my humble opinion, i feel it plays better than its Epiphone counterparts of the same range. I can get pretty fat and heavy tones from this guitar with a very nice fat clean sound. I'm not goin to do a review here. But it plays smooth...droooolll...


Alternatively, I use a US made FENDER Telecaster in church which belongs to a doctor who allowed me to use it. This baby is retro and rich in tone with a thick neck as opposed to the slim Yamahas. I get pretty raw vibes from playing it with the trademark twangy sound of a tele. Telecasters are known for it's durability to take a lot of beatings during gigs. It doesn't take a lot of beatings in church, but i'd sure love to take it out for gigs to give it what it deserves. (if only it belonged to me la).





OK...no, i don't play this. I found it while surfing some forums under the thread "The ugliest guitars"...

And ladies and gentleman...I could be Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Eric Clapton or Paul Gilbert...(ok maybe Paul Gilbert could pull it off and also Andrew Liu would definitely play this!!)...but i don't think anyone would take me seriously with this dude. You definitely can't name this guitar after a lady...oh NOOOO!!!!!

but i think if it was lying around....i may be tempted to try it....... err...yea... maybe...