The Tao of Walking Ridge

After installing Ubuntu Studio 10.04 onto my new Levovo G550 and playing around for a bit, I settled on Audacity to record the riffs for the Telecaster Custom Guitar post. The rig met all of my expectations for being intuitive and not interrupting the creative process.

First, it was easy to get the signal from the USB amp and to see signal levels and get everything set to avoid clipping but use the dynamic range. But Audacity really shined as a multiple take recorder. Bad take? Just delete and hit record again. A new track is created and recording starts. Maybe that is the take, maybe not? Just hit record again. You can keep as many takes as you want to keep track of. Figuring out how to change the name of the track, add effects (just volume adjustment and fade in fade out for the Telecaster tone tracks), and export to your choice of formats was also quick and intuitive. No need to consult the help file. The effects are nicely organized in groups that let you search quickly through the more than 200 effects plugins. The record and play buttons are big, easy to hit with a touch pad control while a guitar is in the lap and the PC is a long reach away. From powering up, setting levels, doing some takes, adjusting levels, and exporting out was an hour total. And more than half that time was playing around with the amp to tweak tone.

Audacity in Ubuntu Studio 10.04 did a great job of doing what most basement musicians are looking for. A high quality recording without a lot of mouseclicks.

The Pickups:

Like putting a souped up engine in a hot rod, it was time for the adding some extra heart and soul to the custom Fender Telecaster. I was looking for a fat rich buttery blues tone. But I also wanted responsive pickups. I wanted to interact with the guitar and amp.

Kevin from smitspickups.com wound a set of pickups for me. You tell Kevin the tone you are looking for, he dials them in. We settled on Alnico 5 magnets for a powerful signal, his standard bridge pickup, and a mildly hot “Hawkeye” Telecaster neck pickup. Of course, wound in different directions to cancel hum in the mid position. Then Kevin said “I could leave them unpotted”. I couldn’t wait to see how they would sound. I wasn’t too worried about feedback with the moderate volumes I play.

The pickups sounded so good, and so “Tele” I wanted to match them up with a classic Fender blues amp. Finding a Limited Edition Blues Jr with a Celestion speaker, the pair delivered more than I expected. The Blues Jr. is very expressive, changing tone as the attack and volume changes. The pickups blew me away. All three positions sound great. For the first time, the tone knob had a purpose on a guitar. With the neck pickup, it is bright. Rolling the tone knob off a bit lets me adjust how much bite I want. Even half way down it still sounds rich and full.

My favorite tone of all (so far) is the middle strings at the 12th fret with the bridge pickup. For this recording I rolled just a bit of treble off. Recorded with a Bluebird mic and no post processing. The recording sounds good, but didn’t quite capture all of the rich bass. The Blues Jr. was set to a reverb = 3, all other knobs at 6.

SHGP Telecaster bridge pickup, scatterwound, unpotted

The mid position is quite versatile. Here are some power chords with the mid position (both pickups)

SHGP Telecaster mid position

The neck pickup is rich and mellow. It also sounds great with a Boss Blues Driver pedal. Here is a sample of some clean tones around the 3rd to 5th fret.

SHGP Telecaster “Hawkeye” neck pickup, unpotted

The project was a great success. The guitar and amp combination is very expressive and very inspiring. I’ve just begun to explore all the quality tones it can generate. The custom handwound pickups really brought the rig to life. And, for me, leaving the pickups unpotted gave the guitar a personalized custom touch.

The scatter wound pickups sound great, of course. But the the responsiveness has to be played to be experienced. The richness of tone inspires “less is more” blues riffs. No need to jam a lot of notes in. This guitar wants to be played.

Maybe the next guitar will be a Strat…………..

I was so happy when Ubuntu Studio 10.04 LTS (Lucid) installed straight up with no issues on my Lenovo G550. The initial auto connect grabbed the built in microphone, and I was able to play around with Ardour. Jack is a powerful interface system that works with Ardour. But powerful systems do have a drawback. Mostly that the learning curve can be a bit stiff.

In my case I wanted to use a USB preamp. The trick was getting the software to recognize it. I went to sound settings and set it as the default recording input. No luck. Ardour still autoconnected to the built in microphones. I opened the patchbay and and clicked around for a while. Then I fired up Audacity.

Audacity gives up a bit of power and flexibility, but in return it defaults to the stuff that you most often want to do. For example, when you hit record you usually want to record a fresh track. Audacity does that automatically. You always want to monitor your microphone level input, it is always displayed at the top. Also, if you are using the PC as a portable recorder, you want big buttons to hit for record and playback. Audacity has big buttons for those controls. And for the newbie, it was easier to set the system to record from the USB input (there was also a default in Audacity to set) and that became the input. So in 5 minutes I was comfortable multitracking and recording good levels at 32 bit quality from the device of choice.

The only downside I found was the effects don’t adjust live during playback. It is a preview then edit kind of work flow. I can see the value of real time adjustments, but the overhead for that is big and I did see the screen flicker and Ardour struggle a bit. I’m sure there are settings to tweak, and in time I will probably dig deeper into Ardour and get it running the way I want. But Audacity fits the bill for that user friendly modern version of a basic 4 track I was looking for with many more tracks and much better quality and on board effects. Much more power and quality, but a learning curve like the old 4 tracks. And it runs rock solid on the Lenovo G550. The real beauty of Ubuntu Studio is you don’t have to “decide”. They are both included. You can use whatever works for a given project.

I’ve been looking for an intuitive user friendly digital recorder now for a couple of years. I was greatly disappointed when I was unable to get Ardour or Audacity to run reliably in Ubuntu on my Lenovo 3000 N200 laptop. I got it to run on a desktop, but it wasn’t very portable, and I didn’t use it much. I wanted a portable recorder.

The challenge is that I also wanted to do the audio editing on a computer. The larger screen (compared to a portable digital recorder) and flexibility to fiddle with the mix is great. But lugging wav files back and forth is a real pain, especially with Boss and Tascam digital recorders I’ve tried as their tracks are not in wav format. Only the final mix is a wav. Boss provides software for conversion, and that is how I’ve worked for years on my antique Boss BR-532.

But today I drop by a friend’s computer shop full of knowledgeable computer types. They had a Lenovo G550 for around $500. I simply threw out the Windows 7 hard drive (OK, I put it in storage just in case since I was forced to pay for the operating system) and for another $75 I put in another hard drive. I burned a copy of Ubuntu Studio 64 bit 10.04 LTS and booted up. Linlap.org had indicated that the G550 worked with Linux, but I still was ready for some issues.

It worked. Ardour, a great full featured DAW (digital audio workstation) fired up and ran snappy. It will do everything you want. Record, mix, edit, add effects. No more export import. All in one. Since it supports Jack you can customize with cool stuff like retro VU meters (I love those).

For years I just figured I wasn’t good enough to sort out audio on Linux. It turns out my N200 model was just finicky. Get a machine that is happy and the software loads up and runs. It wasn’t me after all. The Lenovo G550 and Ardour rock.

Part 2: Finding the project guitar.

I started visiting local music shops looking for the right guitar to start building on. After a couple of stores that only had one or two Telecasters on their wall, I found a shop with a few Fender Telecasters. Two were Custom Shop guitars with price tags over $1200 and didn’t have the hardware I wanted anyway. Around 20 Telecasters were of the made in Mexico variety and priced less than $600. None of the guitars were Fiesta Red.

However, the reasonably large selection of guitars gave me a chance to stand back and see if one caught my eye. Out of all the guitars I was drawn to a translucent butterscotch guitar. I picked it up, noted some nice grain in the wood, an ash body, and played the neck. It played great. It had a more modern neck, so you could bend notes further than a true vintage neck. But it felt very comfortable. Then I noticed that the guitar was a “Special Edition” with ALL of the hardware I was going to add! Brass saddles, modern tuners, even the knobs were inverted!

The overall look was exactly what I was looking for. A vintage look. The butterscotch color is an iconic vintage color. And the brass saddles really give it a vintage look. Likely due in part to the translucent finish, the wood grain was outstanding and it appears to be a two piece body. I walked around and looked at other guitars, but I never let go of this one.

So for a street price in the $500 range, I had the foundation of an outstanding custom guitar project. The vintage hardware and already inverted knobs was a bonus. All that was left now was to go under the hood and put in some smoking pickups.

Next: Custom pickups

Step 1:  Designing the custom Tele.

Hearing the potential of the handwound pickups in a Telecaster, I decided I wanted to build a custom guitar. Just like building a hot rod car, I was looking for something unique, personal, and wanted to bring it in on a reasonable budget.

Step one was to define some of the details.  Just like a lot of retro-rods that look like cars of the 1930s but have power steering, I wanted a vintage look and sound but with modern touches to make the guitar more playable.  A vintage bridge with brass saddles was my preference.  Two strings per saddle gives a more retro look.  And the chrome knobs for tone and volume round out the basic look of the body hardware.  Inverting the position of the volume knob and pickup switch is a nice and easy custom detail that could also be added to any ax.  It places the volume knob closer to the neck for easier access. For colors, Fiesta Red is certainly rare and I liked the translucent color much better than opaque.  Translucent finishes are usually laid over ash bodies.  For wood, I wanted either ash or alder for solid tone and sustain.

For the neck, classic maple with a varnished finish.  I planned on modern tuners and a more modern neck with a flatter radius so notes could be bent more easily. Beyond that, I just wanted a neck that felt good.

I considered having a guitar built up, but the cost was high and I gave up the ability to try the guitar out.  Kind of like paying top dollar to have a custom car built and not knowing until it was done and paid for how it was going to handle.  So instead, I opted for a search of local guitar shops looking for a Telecaster that had the basic wood, finish, and neck that I wanted.  The hardware would be easy to change.  And, of course, I didn’t care a bit about how the pickups sounded because they were coming out and some handwound pickups were going in.  I really felt like I was looking for a rolling chassis to drop a souped up motor into.

Next up:  The ax I didn’t put down.

The blues are all about expression. Less is more. But you gotta make less speak. Making a few notes really speak is all about tone. The Telecaster is not as often thought of as a blues guitar, but with the clear notes and long sustain of the solid bridge, it can generate some inspiring blues tones.

The fullness and depth of handwound pickups in a Tele is a combination that creates an expressive but unique sound. I stumbled across this video on my friend’s website and had to get a Tele to try one of these “Hawkeye” pickups.