Pickmaster Plectrum Punch | Lifetime Supply of Picks!

Here's a neat little gizmo that promises hours of fun. 

The Pickmaster Plectrum Punch allows you to punch out your own picks out of any piece of plastic flat enough to fit into its jaws.  Old credit cards, plastic container lids, file folders are all fair game. 

After punching out your pick, a quick smoothing out with extra-fine-grit sandpaper will remove any rough edges and you're good to go.  Or you could try my favorite method, which is to buff the pick against carpet, something I do constantly to smooth out the rough edges after those spur of the moment Van Halen-esque pick slides.   

And if the classic #351 Fender pick shape is not your thing, another company called Pick Punch manufactures a similar device capable of stamping out picks in the Dunlop Jazz III shape.  Ooh, the competition these days.  

Either way, you'll probably never look at an ordinary piece of plastic the same way again.   It's all PPM -- Potential Pick Material! 

Here's to guilt-free pick tossing at gigs.

Dunlop 65 Ultraglide String Cleaner Product Review

Nickel plated guitar strings have never been the best of friends with my grubby fingers.  I have the sort of corrosive finger oils that routinely turn a shiny, new unwound string a unique shade of brown-red in less than an hour.

And for as long as I've been playing, I've always had to pre-treat new strings with some sort of corrosion inhibitor -- WD-40 and lemon oil being among my earlier investigations.  But I needed something that didn't leave a residual smell that followed me to bed and continued to linger around for that morning coffee.

Since the WD-40 and Old English lemon oil debacles, I've been an enthusiastic tester of nearly every commercial product marketed as a 'string cleaner' -- everything from ozone-eating aerosol fingerboard sprays, to wooden dowels with pre-soaked cotton applicators that dried out too easily, to a slew of plastic bottles filled with mysterious liquids that would have Erin Brockovich breaking down the front door. 

I could probably do a string cleaner shootout review of products past and present from memory alone.

But we won't go there.  Yet.

Having gotten hold of a 2 oz. bottle of Dunlop 65 Ultraglide recently, I can honestly say that this is the best string cleaner that I've tried.

Ultraglide.  Gotta love that name!

It takes a few hard squeezes of the bottle to get the Ultraglide flowing to moisten the built-in cotton applicator which is then run along the length of each string.  And other than providing a slick but not overly-greasy feel, my strings stayed shiny after a sweaty 3-hour workout at my regular blues-rock gig without so much as a wipedown between sets!

I've really become a fan of these Dunlop conditioning products.  Check out my earlier review of Dunlop 65 Lemon Oil for fretboards here.

Suhr Scott Henderson Prototype on eBay

According to the seller this Suhr Scott Henderson was one of six prototypes given to Henderson to try out.  (Item #: 160405557376)

All the standard Scott Henderson accoutrements are there -- Suhr 'D' shape neck profile, 6100 jumbo frets and Gotoh 1088 steel block bridge.  Pickups are Suhr's JST V60 pickups -- this was pre-Suhr Fletcher-Landau, which are Henderson's current favorite pickups. 

Interestingly the Body Option in the spec sheet indicates alder, EXTRA LIGHT. 

According to the seller also, this guitar was eventually returned by Scott to John Suhr.  And from the spec sheet it looks like it ended up in Music Loft's inventory. 

If you're bidding on this axe for the played-by-Scott Henderson factor, do the necessary research before forking over the dough!

Dunlop Billy Gibbons Custom String Set

Dunlop will soon be launching a Billy Gibbons Signature Series string set as part of the new 'Rev. Willy's Mexican Lottery Brand' line. 

Or is that 'lineup', pardner? 

As is his preference, Billy's custom gauge set will include a very skinny .007" gauge first string. 

I'm guessing Billy needs his strings to really give under the attack of that Mexican peso he customarily uses for a pick. 

Other than Billy's own ultra-light custom gauge set, Rev. Willy's Mexican Lottery sets will also be available in regular gauges.

¿de dónde parque i mi mula?

Dunlop Fretboard 65 Ultimate Lemon Oil | Product Review

I picked up a bottle of Dunlop Fretboard 65 Ultimate Lemon Oil today.   The rosewood fretboard on my Gibson BFG was starting to look and feel a little dry.  And since I had a gig tonight I figured I'd give it a little drink.  

Fretboard 65 Ultimate Lemon Oil comes with a Dab-O-Matic applicator built into the neck of the bottle which is a nice touch.  No disintegrating paper towels. Or cloth rags of dubious origin to deal with.  No oily spills, no stained carpets, no fuss, no mess.

Contrary to the directions on the bottle, I didn't bother removing the strings.  I just rubbed the applicator onto the fretboard over the strings making sure I got a thin, even spread on the fretboard -- the applicator ensured that just the right amount of oil was dispensed.

And boy did that fingerboard drink up that lemon oil in a hurry!  The wet sheen of the oil was thoroughly absorbed within 5 minutes, leaving a dry lustre, showing off the color of the rosewood beautifully.  

I've used Old English brand Lemon Oil in the past; you'll see a bottle on almost every guitar repairman's workbench.  Old English is much greasier and my twice yearly lemon oil treatment with that stuff usually took a couple of days to dissipate.   Fretboard 65 Ultimate Lemon Oil appears to be much lighter and more fingerboard friendly.

By the way, the directions on the bottle state that this product is not for maple fretboards.  Maple fretboards are usually hard finished and can't be moisturized with oil.  And if you've ever oiled unfinished maple you'll notice that it makes the grain on the maple stand on end, making it feel slightly rough and 'hairy'.

A final word of caution:  According to noted guitar repairman Dan Erlewine, any mineral oil when soaked into paper or cloth towels can generate heat on their own and spontaneously combust after several hours!  Dispose of carefully!

And here's my review of Dunlop Ultraglide 65 String Cleaner.

20 Life-Saving and Extremely Useful Guitar and Gear Tips!

To commemorate my 200th post, here are 20 useful, and on occasion, life-saving guitar and gear tips that have worked for me over the years.

• Leave cables with solderless plugs for home or studio use.  I really like the tone of cables with solderless plugs.  They usually tend to be of high quality and sound really transparent.   But they're also most prone to a bad or loose connection that can be a nightmare to troubleshoot, especially if you have a huge pedalboard.

• Use an aural exciter if you need to punch through the band without playing louder.  An aural exciter works by separating the different frequencies in a signal by milliseconds so that they reach the input source or amplifier at slightly different times.  This separation reduces muddying of frequencies resulting in better clarity.

• If you've just bought a new multi effects pedal, don't bother tweaking the tone at home.  Once the rest of the band kicks in, it's going to sound totally different onstage.  Book a couple of hours rehearsal time with your band and tell your mates that the session is purely for you to tweak your sound 

• Don't pay attention to the numbers on the knobs when tweaking your gear. Just keep twisting the knobs till the sound approximates what you hear in your head.  Then use the numbers as a reference to remember later.

• When using an amp modelling pedal in a live situation, play through a clean solid state amp -- I love the Roland JC120 or JC160 solid-state amps for this application.  Tube amps impart too much of their own color to the sound.  A direct line into the PA also works well but you'll need a good soundman who can give you a good onstage monitor mix

• Go stereo.  All the famous cats, from Steve Lukather to Pat Metheny to John Scofield do it.  Stereo creates a nice spread to the sound, and surprisingly lets you relax more as you play because you're not dealing with a sound that is emanating from a single, direct source.  And going stereo let's the bass player enjoy some of your juicy tones from his side of the stage too!  

• A simple truss-rod adjustment can make a guitar play like butter.  Learn to do this yourself or shell out a few bills for a repairman or luthier.  My personal preference is for absolutely no neck relief.

• If you're going to be leaving your guitar on a stand between sets, unplug that guitar cable and put it away from the instrument.  Guitar cables have a tendency to get caught in people's feet, unleashing that prized PRS Private Stock onto the floor.  The floor always wins.  If you play an expensive instrument, it belongs back in the case between sets, no matter how gorgeous it looks onstage on a stand.  'At first it's all ooh and ahh, and then there's running and screaming..'

• If you have your guitar setup the way you like it but there is still some fretting out somewhere around the 17th to 20th frets you might want to check that the screws on that bolt-on neck are not torqued too tightly.  Overtightened screws tend to push against the fingerboard, causing a slight hump which can lead to fret buzz. This applies especially to fretless bass!  Thanks to my friend and bass virtuoso Serge Dionne for this tip!

• A compressor is your best friend for clean tones.  It fattens the sound, increases perceived sustain and generally imparts a polished, studio-quality tone.  Add a smidgen of reverb and you're golden.

• You can buff out ragged edges on a guitar pick by rubbing it against carpet!

• Pickups set too close to the strings can cause a warbling, double-toned, 'out-of-tuneness' when playing above the 12th fret.  This is especially true of single-coil pickups.  Back the pickups off a little more and allow the strings to 'breathe' and vibrate through their full ellipse.  But back the pickups off too much and you'll lose some output.  Find a happy medium.

• The neck pickup always sounds louder than the bridge pickup -- the neck pickup sees a far bigger vibrational movement of the string.  I like to set Stratocaster pickups or Les Paul pickups so that the relative volumes between each pickup are as equal as I can get it.  And this usually means setting the neck, and middle pickups (on a Strat) slightly lower than the bridge pickup. This will also help in alleviating the warbling and intonation problems I mentioned earlier.  

• On nylon string guitars you can get away with changing the nylon treble strings once with every three or four changes of the metal wound bass strings.

• If you go with stainless steel strings on an electric, you can leave the bass strings and get away with replacing only the top three treble strings two or three times before you have to replace the entire set.  Clean the bass strings between changes with isopropyl alcohol or even aftershave lotion!

• Rosewood fretboards tend to dry out and need to be lightly oiled once every six months.  Just a smidgen of lemon oil does the trick.  I usually also take this opportunity to go over the fingerboard with a soft toothbrush, removing any gunk that has accumulated.  Moisturized rosewood has a nice luster and shows off the grain of the wood.  Dunlop makes some nice fingerboard conditioning products.

• Maple fingerboards usually have some kind of hard finish over them and therefore do not need moisturizing.  Just the occasional cleaning with a coarse, damp rag -- with the strings off of course.

• Clean volume, tone and wah wah potentiometers with a spritz of a good quality contact cleaner meant for electronics.  Servisol brand contact cleaner is probably the best.  Don't use WD40 as it has too much gunky industrial lubricant that will build up and spell trouble in the long run!    

• Stewart-MacDonald produces radius gauges for measuring arcs between 7 1/4" and 20".  Repairman use these gauges and often adjust the bridge arc radius to match the fingerboard radius.  When I did get hold of one of these radius gauges I measured how I had set up the bridge saddles on my own guitars.  I found that I had consistently gone with a 12" arc radius, regardless of fingerboard radius, on all my guitars, purely by feel.  Just my preference, but you might want to experiment with the gauges yourself.  Dan Erlewine's 'How To Make Your Electric Guitar Play Great' includes free radius gauges in soft vinyl.  A must have!

• With some bolt-on neck guitars you may find that the bridge saddles are as low as they can possibly go but that the action is still too high.  Shimming the neck in the neck pocket is your only option in these cases -- I've used strips cut out of business cards for this purpose in the past.  The added tilt to the neck angle automatically causes the strings to sit lower to the fretboard.  Fender's Micro-Tilt feature performs this adjustment admirably without having to add shims or even remove the neck. 

 So there we go.  Twenty of my most useful guitar and gear tips.  What are some of yours?

Dunlop Ultex Picks

These are my new favorite picks.


Having used Dunlop's 500 1.5mm picks (in an easy-to-spot-on-the-floor purple) for several years I've just discovered the Ultex series. And I'm a convert.

After buying a handful, I've purposely used the same Ultex pick for the past two weeks to see how it wears down and if it indeed lives up to Dunlop's claim of being 'virtually indestructible'.

After about 60 hours in the teaching studio and several gigs including a couple of aggressive blues/rock ones, there is absolutely no wear on the playing edges of this pick! And I'm not paid to say this.

This is great for the player who is finicky about having a consistent, smooth playing edge -- I know of a guitarist who goes through 3 or 4 picks a night because he can't stand the feel of serrations on his regular celluloid picks.

I'm using the 1.14mm 'bronze rhino' which is the thickest one in the Ultex series. Aside from having absolutely no flex at all, I notice that the Ultex weighs less than conventional celluloid and plastic. The satin matt finish also reacts with the oils from the fingers and actually seems to get tackier the longer you play. Great for those sweaty gigs.

Dunlop has produced a real winner with this one.

The Ultex is also available in Jazz III and larger Tri-sided models.


Buy Dunlop Ultex Picks Here!

Visual Sound 1 Spot Pedal Power Supply

I'm a big fan of Bob Weil and his company, Visual Sound.

I own a couple of his pedals -- an original issue Route 66 overdrive (with the coveted new-old-stock JRC4558D chip) and the ultra-lush H2O analog chorus/echo. This guy makes a good product.

And Visual Sound's 1 Spot is hands down my favorite pedal power supply.

Doing away with conventional notions of bulky power supplies with toroidal transformers, the aptly-named 1 Spot handles up to 1700 mA (milliamps) -- compare this to the once ubiquitous Boss PSA adapters rated at 200mA.

Assorted multiplug cables are available as options, allowing one to daisy-chain pedals with standard 'barrel' power sockets. It's interesting to note that this connecter was pioneered by Boss/Roland around 1977 and is now the de facto standard that has been adopted by virtually every manufacturer.

For very old pedals, cable adapters for the early US-type 1/8" (3.5mm) are available allowing one to power 70's and '80s DOD, Ibanez, MXR and Electro Harmonix devices -- I successfully powered my original 1980 TS808 Tubescreamer on my pedalboard from the 1 Spot before deciding the 808 was too valuable to take out on gigs.

Also available are adapter options for Line 6 pedals and reverse-polarity adapters for Yamaha devices. And there's even a battery clip converter to power pedals that do not have a DC socket such as the earlier Dunlop and Vox wahs, or (if you have 'em and are so inclined), vintage Fuzz Faces and Colorsound Tonebenders .

I bought two 1 Spots five years ago and the one I've been using has proven very reliable through several hundred gigs and, touch wood, shows no signs of quitting yet. And I've not had reason to break out the spare at all.

Scholz Rockman

 Here's a Rockman ad from the early 80's.

Tom Scholz, the guitarist and leader of rock band 'Boston' was quite the tinkerer and genius inventor.

At a time when the only way to get a decent distorted tone was to mic an amplifier, Scholz created a barrage of home-brewed electronic boxes that allowed him to plug directly into a mixer to track his monstrous guitar tones in his home studio without waking up the neighbourhood.

Also a smart businessman and savvy marketeer, Scholz soon unleashed his creation upon the world.

Advertised as both a versatile headphone amp and recording device, the Rockman soon caught on in a big way and was the secret blackbox of nearly every guitarist plying his trade in the recording studios.

When it wasn't always practical to mic up that 4 x 12 Marshall cabinet, the Rockman provided a viable alternative in the form of a DI unit from which you could also get great rock guitar tones.

Simple to use, there were 4 mini-switches on the Rockman's control panel:

• A 4-way switch for selecting between Clean 1, Clean 2, Edge and Distortion tones
• A 3-way switch for Normal (which was actually full stereo mode with both chorus and echo), and Chorus Off and Echo Off
• A 3-way switch with three fixed volume levels in lieu of a tapered volume control
• The on/off switch

Also included was a 1/4" Aux input so you could play along with your favourite records or cassettes (!)

And not forgetting the Scholz Rockman stereo headphones which were supplied with the unit. Mine still work after 25 years.

A cool feature was the red LED power light that blinked at 1-second intervals in a constant hypnotic manner.

The only downside to the Rockman was that the only outputs were 2 parallel stereo mini-pin headphone jacks, which meant one had to deal with dinky hi-fi cables with stereo mini-pin to dual mono 1/4" plugs in order to interface with a recording console.

The unit ran on 8 'AA' alkaline batteries (yikes!) or more economically off a wall wart that cost about a third the price of the Rockman unit itself!

The Rockman's clean and distorted tones became the hallmark of many an 80's hit song. The Clean tones were incredibly glassy and crystalline and really cut through in a rhythm track, especially with single-coil pickups. I would get a Rockman again to use it solely for this sound.

The Edge and Distortion tones were very processed sounding like the ads claim, but provided good utilitarian tones for the obligatory 8 or 16-bar guitar solo mid-song if one was so inclined. Think Michael Sembello's guitar solo on 'Maniac'. (If you can remember that far back..)

If like me you're nostalgic for some good ol' 80's guitar tones, Dunlop has reissued a version called the Rockman Guitar Ace.

Rock on!