The Arsenal Pt 1 - Mick

I own a lot of gear. Now, before any smartass decides to track me down and rob me blind, yu gotta understand one thing: I'n not a collector, I'm a shit hoarder. I've never believed that big buck gear made sense: most of my influences played what they could afford, or what they could scrape up. I recorded an entire project using guitars that ran me from $50-$130. That's my bag - I collect the unwanted stuff, sort of like a crazy guy with a house full of stray cats...

This all really started a couple of years back. I spent a large swath of my 20s and 30s doing fix & flips, often just to cover rent or groceries. I've worked on a boatload of axes. And I miss a lot of them. Now that I'm in a (very slightly) more comfortable position, I can actually keep this stuff around, instead of sending it off to be neglected by yet another player.

Plus, like any guy, I like showing off my toys.

So let's start with the obvious, the guitar I use for most of my YouTube videos:

This is Mick. He's a Dillion '59 LP Jr. copy in TV yellow. I got this about 6 years back from an on-line Canadian concern (sadly out of business) for about $350. Mahogany, set neck, great build and finish.

The first Special I ever tried was an Ibanez that my friend Eject had. I was 19, mid-80s, and it was the first recognizable "lawsuit" guitar that I played. I mean, I started on a Raven Les Paul copy, you'd see strat copies and such, but never the more obscure stuff. And the body shape stuck with me, a slab that didn't feel like you were playing a cutting board (like a tele). It felt great. Never saw another Ibanez one: I guess they were scarce. In this neck of the woods, you'd occasionally run across Univox DC copies (Chris from Euthanasia played one for a while) and very *very* rarely original 50s ones (which were always massacred with horrid shred metal humbuckers). So I figured I'd spring for this when it came on the market, like 2 decades later.

Problem was, when it arrived, the manufacturer had opted for a modern style Badass bridge. Now I've been on record before about how much I hate that bridge design. And Mick suffered from it horribly: banjo sustain, ghost notes, chords that would choke out instead of decaying. You couldn't set the string height right because the bridge was too fucking tall! I actually almost got rid of him, but in the end I grabbed a $12 Ebay wraparound bridge in a desperate attempt to get him playing correctly. 

It worked like a charm. I've slowly been bringing the string gauge up on Mick, from the 8s on the original bridge to my preferred 9-46 (although next change I'm dropping back to 9-42s). Slinky action, killer neck, just damn fun to play. And yes, it's a Special: the neck is a whammy bar (you lean into it and it goes out of tune),: it neck dives like an SG; I bang my hand into the cutaways constantly.  In other words, it's a real guitar, with limitations that make you concentrate on what it's capable of. Which is a lot.

If you've never played a Jr. style before, it can be a shock how many different sounds you can get out of such a simple set up. I find P-90s to respond to subtle changes in the controls much better than any other design out there: you can hear a difference between 8 and 7 on the volume. (Try that on a strat) The pick-up's a little bright, and a little too hot, which the controls really help with. And they work really well: so much for "cheap Chinese pots"!

Outside of the bridge, it's mainly stock. It took a tumble while I was recording this summer: no damage, but the D tuner started acting up (it took the full brunt of the blow), so I just slapped on some fresh tuners a few weeks back. I'm trying out some tele knobs on it, to make knob twiddling a little faster. *Very* smooth acting truss rod on him: set-ups and tweaks can be finessed like on a much more expensive instrument.

So why do I tend to use Mick for my pedal demos? Because he's got a P-90. And nobody uses P-90s for effect demos. I actually prefer humbuckers for most gain situations, but I'm sure I get 10% more hits because of him :)

And yes, I do name all of my guitars. Some are obvious, and some are obscure. Mick seemed obvious.