DIMARZIO AREA SOLDERLESS PICKGUARD

Hello everyone, today I'm going to post a review of DiMarzio Area pickups that I recently installed on my MIM Stratocaster. They're being sold in a package called "Solderless Area Pickguard" complete with all the potentiometers and proper wiring(2nd tone knob goes to bridge pickup). The installation only took me 6 minutes, it does not require solder, you will only need a wire cutter and a pair of scissors to strip the wires. On the pickguard itself, there are 3 pickups already installed in a conventional SSS configuration: Area 58, Area 67 and Area 61. DiMarzio claims that these pickups are the best hum-free rendition of the original '50-'60 era Stratocaster.

Sound
Right away after installing the solderless pickguard, I put a fresh set of strings and immediately plug the guitar to my amp and start playing. My first reaction is the guitar seemed to reached a new level of dynamic and clarity. I've had lots of DiMarzios on my guitars but these ones are different from them. Compared to my Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2, these pickups sound softer, brighter and cleaner. You can get the famous Stratocaster clicky percussive sound using these pickups easily.

On an overdrive channel, the pickups seemed to retain its cleaner quality. On the neck and middle combined(58 and 67), you can hear very clear the original characteristic of the tone, even with generous amount of overdrive. The bridge (61) gets a bit harsh on higher register, but once you roll down the tone knob a bit, you'll get a very thick, warm and punchy sound from it. Add more overdrive and get the tone knob to around 3 or 4, you'll get a tone that's in fact sound so much like a full size humbucker.

Is this the right pickup for me?
If you play a Stratocaster and you've been struggling to get a good noise free pickups that retain the original qualities of vintage single coils, then these pickups are for you. Once again, they're not the most powerful single coils, but they're a tiny bit hotter than regular Strat pickups. Moreover, they had less magnetic pull compared to your average Stratocaster pickups; hence, you'll get more sustain.

If you're a humbucker guy, these pickups might be worth exploring. Although I never tried the original '50s and '60s Stratocaster pickups, I can easily say that these pickups changed my life. I was once a humbucker guy, believing that achieving good tone can only be done using humbucker; now I'm quite happy with my single coils because they can nail almost everything.

However, keep in mind that single coils are not meant for ultra high gain modern lead drive tone. No matter how good they are, humbucker is still better for ultra high gain; except for some single coil sized humbucker replacement.

Here are some sound clips:
Neck Dirty
Neck Clean
Neck and Middle
Middle and Bridge
Bridge Clean
Bridge Dirty 1
Bridge Dirty 2

I hope you enjoy this post, stay tune for more posts!

Cheers and God Bless :)

FENDER MIM STANDARD STRATOCASTER

Hello everyone, I finally acquired a Fender Standard Stratocaster made in Mexico. I originally hesitated on buying a MIM Stratocaster because of the polyester finish, but this guitar really blows me away. First of all, being a Fender, it shows an excellent craftsmanship and high quality on every details. So for you who think that MIM Stratocaster is not worth your money, please re-consider MIM Stratocaster, this guitar surely worth every cents I spent.

Basic Spec

The guitar was made in early mid 2011. Color is black, with maple neck no fingerboard 21 frets. It uses the vintage 6 screws tremolo and it's pretty smooth and easy to use the vibrato arm(I'm a heavy whammy user). It comes with ceramic single coil pickups on a semi aged plastic pickguard and pickup cover. Tuners are already staggered, it comes with a single string tree.

The Feel
Maple neck isn't glossy, it has urethane finish and it's doing good to my hand. Not as fantastic as my MIA neck or Prestige PGM neck though, but definitely better than my JEM-JR Korean Wizard neck. The tremolo can't be used wildly, it goes out of tune very fast. I'm in a process of getting a set of locking tuners to improve tuning stability. The fret is somehow smaller than my MIA(not quite sure but it feels small) and it's a bit harder to play on compared to my MIA neck. The polyester body finish is very sleek. I'm strongly against polyester finish but luckily on this guitar, the paint is applied thinly to the body(I checked the trem springs cover screw hole).

Weight is very normal for a regular Stratocaster, it won't weight you down too much. I set the trem to float, and the action is already low from the factory so I didn't adjust anything, it feels perfectly right to my hand. The neck is thick and rounded as in regular C-shaped Stratocaster neck, and the frets are slightly rounded too for a more comfortable chord playing.

The Sound
The sound is very Fender-ish; clicky, percussive, bell tone on 2nd and 4th position, very bright and clean, sits well on an average mix. It lacks only one thing: sustain; this is what I feared the most from Stratocaster-type guitars. I immediately put DiMarzio Area 58, 67 and 61, rewired the tone knob for the bridge, and now I got a proper sounding Stratocaster with no hum and long sustain.

MIA(Made in America) vs MIM
This topic has been discussed since the existence of MIM Strat. MIM is really worth every cent you spend, it's not expensive and it sounds good too. If you plan to use the guitar frequently, MIM is really worth the money, it has all the "mojo" of Fender guitars. Now you probably ask: then why should I buy MIA Standard Strat? Because it's also worth every cent you spend. The craftsmanship of an MIA is way better than the MIM; let's say if MIM is extremely good, then MIA is perfectly perfect. When you first touch an MIA, you'll immediately feel that "wow" factor even before you know it's an MIA. The neck, the body contour, the finish and all the details are very perfect on MIA.

BUT, if your priority is tone, it's not possible to get a good sound out of MIM Standard Stratocaster. That will depend on how much are you willing to upgrade the pickups on the guitar to make it sound fantastic. MIA by itself already sounds great but if you dare to replace the pickups with a set of better sounding pickups, then you'll get a fantastic tone.

Let's say you'll use a same set of pickups for both MIA and MIM and you do a blindfold tone test, you'll notice only a tiny sound difference. Although MIA surely sounds better than MIM, it's not significant at all.

Overall
10 out of 10. Once again, Fender made a believer out of me. Good quality guitar, good price, great sound. I'm very happy with this guitar and I'll make some good music with it for sure.

I hope you enjoy this post. Cheers and God Bless :)

p.s. I'll soon post a review of my DiMarzio Area Pickup set, stay tune!

DIMARZIO PAF PRO

Hello, this post will talk a lot about DiMarzio PAF Pro. As we all know, DiMarzio is one of those companies who are selling aftermarket pickups with many options to fit your preference. I got one installed on my JEM-JR now and the reason why I put PAF Pro on my JEM-JR is not because it's my choice; ironically, it chose me one day because my local DiMarzio dealer didn't have any humbucker left at that time except PAF Pro.

Paul Gilbert
First time I heard PAF Pro was on Paul Gilbert's solo albums. Paul put PAF Pro on the bridge position of some of his guitars, including the famous PGM300 which he later converted to a 301. It attracts my ear because it's a relatively bright humbucker which means it will blend perfectly with other bright sounding pickups and/or single coils. This also makes it very effective on the neck position to brighten up muddy neck position on a darker sounding guitar.

Put it on my JEM-JR
My original plan was to stick it on the neck of my JEM and get something hotter and darker for the bridge to kind of level off the EQ on both neck and bridge position so that I get the similar bass and treble on both position but with different gain. However, I was more interested with single coils on that time, so I chose Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 to be installed on the neck and middle position.

The sound
Exactly as what it was advertised: bright, strong, punchy and stands out pretty clear in the mix. It was bright enough that you can nail some bridge single coil tone using this pickup on the bridge position. It screams too if you need it to scream, just add more dirt on your signal and you'll get a fantastic result. Harmonic overtones are everywhere! It's not categorized as high output pickup, so it won't really drive your amp too much but that also adds more dynamics to your overall sound.

Is this the correct pickup for me?
I adjusted my volume pot to 250k in order to make this one works better, but even with 500k it was still sounding good. Beware, if you had a very bright sounding guitar you better be ready for some super bright tone especially if you put it on the bridge position. My JEM-JR is already strong in the upper mid but it's not bright enough on the top end. This pickup really helps me to achieve that top end boost so that it can cut easily on the mix without obstructing other instruments on the mid level. If brightness and top boost is what you're looking for, this is what you need.

Price?
Same with every other DiMarzios, they start around US$70.00 depending on the color you choose.

Worth the price?
Obviously, you can't go wrong with DiMarzio pickups if you know what you want.

Sound clip: coming soon
I hope you enjoy the post, cheers and God bless :)

JEM-JR PROJECT UPDATE

Hello everyone, this post will be talking about my modded JEM-JR and some of the sound that I got from this guitar. Basically, I am trying to aim for a cleaner Strat-style sound with the modification that I did. It started with the pickup last year on this post, but now I added more interesting stuffs on the guitar to make it look and sound good.

Volume pot
Last year, I added DiMarzio PAF Pro on the bridge and Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 on the neck and middle. I can't really tell if the sound is right or not because at the time I don't have a "true amp". But now with my AMT preamp and my other effects, I can tell that it really has some nice tone. However, it was proven that 500k volume pot was a bit too bright for my pickups, even for the PAF Pro.

So I decided to go with Fender 250k Pot for the volume pot. It was not too pricey and there are some good reviews of the pot. Got it installed and I instantly get warmer sounds from all pickups. The PAF Pro doesn't bite with too much treble anymore and it balances perfectly with the new pot. The single coils are now getting warmer as well without losing the glassiness.

High-end pristine presence
However, at this point I was still struggling to add presence to the guitar. So I asked a technician to put 330k resistor and a lower value capacitor in parallel on the volume pot to boost the presence a little bit. It worked and now I don't have to tweak the EQ too much to get that super high crystal pristine presence that I was looking for.

Visual
I also changed the pickguard to a homemade white acrylic based pickguard. It was a bit heavier and thicker than your standard 3 ply plastic pickguard, but it worked. It adds more resonant to the guitar acoustically but it doesn't affect the tone too much when the guitar is plugged in.

Overall result
This makes the guitar sound even better than it was before. I was quite happy with the "Stratocaster sound" that I got last year, but this mod significantly adds more to the overall tone AND to the visual quality. Check out some of the audio clips below and hear it for yourself.

Neck Clean
Neck + Middle Clean
Middle + Bridge Wet
Bridge Wet

Thanks for checking this post out. More posts on their way, cheers and God bless :)

JOGJA'S HIDDEN TREASURE

Hello guys, in this post I want to talk a little bit about some great musical instrument shops in Yogyakarta, my current hometown. Although they don't have everything, they got some hidden jewels that are priced sometimes cheaper than in U.S.. Let's support our local musical instrument stores and help to make them better!

Diana Musik Yogyakarta
Jl. Pakuningratan no. 51 Yogyakarta, Indonesia
0274- 584354
They had some great collection of guitars and basses, some good quality and high end effects and of course some high-end valve amplifiers. They had a Gibson Les Paul and Mexican Fender on their store and they are reasonably priced for local market. They carry some of the best pedal brands in the earth, including Electro Harmonix and MXR/CAE. Totally awesome store and worth checking it out if you are around Yogyakarta.


Hana Musik Gejayan
Jl. Gejayan CT-X No. 8 Yogyakarta, Indonesia
0274-549618
They offer some good quality keyboards and they proudly carry Yamaha instruments. The keyboards that are offered in this store are quite amazing and you couldn't get the price as cheap as in this store anywhere else. They also carry some good quality entry level guitars and basses from various brands(some are even Indonesian brand). Good service, great store. They also offer music instrument lessons with good music instructors.

I'll add more stores in the future. Cheers and God bless :)

A LITTLE SOMETHING FROM ME

Hello, sorry for my absence the whole last month, I was busy organizing myself to move back to Indonesia. Now here I am in Indonesia, starting a new chapter of my life. There won't be much guitar item that I can check out due to limited supplies of guitar gadgets here in my town, but I'll try my best to keep up with the blog.

Thank you to you all who check out my blog, you guys deserve something good from me. As for this post, I am posting a new video of me testing my JEM-JR loaded with Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 and PAF Pro over an Andy Timmons' tune. I hope you will enjoy this video.

Once again, thank you for keep coming back to my blog :), you guys rock !

Cheers and God bless :)

DIMARZIO VIRTUAL VINTAGE HEAVY BLUES 2, AIR ZONE AND TEXMEX

Hello everyone, I am going to share some sound clips of my newly installed pickups on my Strat. I hope you will enjoy these clips and make good use of them. Some notes first: the Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 does scream in high gain pretty well but I didn't have time to capture it. I'll try to get the recording next time.

On the other hand, Air Zone definitely sounds fantastic! It doesn't sound similar to any other DiMarzio humbuckers I've tried, this is very unique. It's not a total screamer, it doesn't make your sound muddy, it has definition and good pick attack. I really like it, it's very versatile.

The combination of the VVHB2 and the standard TexMex is very amazing! I can get a very funky clean tone out of the combination and it really works very well!

Here are the clips:
VVHB2: Clean wet, Jazz comping, Dirty
VVHB2+TexMex: Funk
TexMex+AirZone: Funk
AirZone: Clean, Dirty

Hope you enjoy!
Cheers and God Bless :)

IDEALISTIC APPROACH OF BEING A "GOOD" GUITAR PLAYER

This post isn't going to be a review. Instead, I'm going to share with you something that I had in mind for some time that can hopefully expand the horizon of your guitar playing and tone chasing. It's about becoming a better guitarist. What's been driving me to write this post is actually the fact that in the last few days, I've been searching for a way to keep me motivated as a guitar player.

First of all, let's look at some of the top guitarists in the planet. They all have some things in common regardless of their genre. One of them is the willingness to learn; to be humble. They are willing to learn from other guitarists that inspires them and apply that knowledge into their playing. Take Paul Gilbert for example: he's considered a monster in the world of fast guitar playing, but to acknowledge the work of Johnny Cash in the realm of country guitar playing and applying it to his song writing techniques is just very humble and heart-warming; the result shows best during his live performances when he's able to balance between hard and soft songs.

John Petrucci also improved his technique by simply learning from other guitarists that had been playing with him together during G3 concerts. He's so used to alternate picking, he doesn't even consider putting bits of legatos in his playing; but by learning from other guitarists and acknowledging their great work really put Petrucci on the extra mile of his already amazing techniques.

Secondly, most of them are willing to learn many genres although they are known only for particular genres. Take Eric Johnson for example, he's known for his instrumental Rock and Blues but he can go far with some cool Jazz comping, Latin, Swings and Bossa Nova. Guthrie Govan perhaps is one of a few guitarists that can master many different extreme techniques ranging from shredding speed guitar to groovy funk rhythm playing. That kind of multi-genre thing really helps many guitarists to enhance their tone palette too! They will not just stuck with one boring overdrive sound; instead, they will investigate how to achieve many different and interesting sound for different types of moods.


Other thing is their view about their gears. This is a bit hard to apply for us because some of us are limited both financially and/or availability of gears. Andy Timmons really knows the details of his gear, he knows exactly every pedal, every tube in his amps, every cable, every speakers, everything! This really helps him to shape his unique tone that influence him to play in certain way that goes into his liking. On the other hand, some guitarists such as Mike Stern don't really go crazy with expensive gears but they rely on simple setups that are handy, don't require massive maintenance and produce consistent tones during concert.

More importantly, the main point that I want to say ultimately is try to rotate your concentration on different stuffs. Don't just concentrate on tone alone, don't just concentrate on techniques forever, don't just concentrate on gear all the time; try to circle between different stuffs. That way, you will avoid getting bored and you will also develop a bigger picture of being an overall good guitarists. Many young players concentrate only on playing as fast as you can as precise as you can; that's good but that's boring, if players start to develop ear for good tone, they will start tweaking and probably learning different techniques that suit different tones and that is exactly what many young guitar starters need!

I've just recently started to explore good Jazz tone. It requires me to get out of my good overdrive tone and start exploring ways to replicate a semi hollow guitar tone. It's not just about the tone, I'm also trying to learn how to comp in a modern Jazz music and it's really hard for me considering how comfortable I am in the world of Rock music. But the result is starting to show slowly and it's very rewarding to see yourselves develop some new and inspiring tone and techniques.

I hope you all enjoy this post. Reviews aren't going to be as much as before, but I promise to keep the blog interesting! Come back often and enjoy your time here.

Cheers and God bless :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR

Sorry I haven't updated the blog for a while. I was busy packing and sorting things out before I'm going back to my country of origin. Here's some new updates:

I sold my 7 string Ibanez RG7321 with the DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan. It's a bit sad knowing that it's now being played by someone else. Nonetheless, the 7 string served very well in the last three years.

I put a DiMarzio Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 on the neck of my Strat. It sounded great on Strat! I had it on my JEM JR(check out my older post about it) and the same pickup sounds different on different guitar. I guess I'm about to discover something interesting. Also I tried a DiMarzio Air Zone on the bridge of my Strat to replace the Diamondback humbucker that came standard with my fat Strat. It does the job very well, sounded very warm and balanced. It doesn't overpower the guitar too much but it gives enough punch to drive my tubes to my liking.

I'm also packing some of the pedals that I acquired and now my pedalboard looks empty haha!

Anyway, I'm wishing everybody good blessings in 2012! Keep in mind, in whatever you do, both musically and not musically, do it with heart and passion. 

Last but not least, keep checking out this blog! More materials are coming while the old ones are also good food for thought!

Cheers and God bless :)

FENDER AMERICAN STANDARD STRATOCASTER HSS

I can't believe I'm actually owning this guitar! I have been dreaming of getting an MIM fat Strat before because of its relatively not too expensive price but now I am getting this baby instead with a very good price. It's a blessing from God actually that I can own this little piece of Fender's legacy.

Strat noob
I never really own a Stratocaster before. However, I have some previous experience with my friends' Stratocasters. I tried an American Standard HH 50th Anniversary Stratocaster, a Custom Shop Jimi Hendrix Black Beauty Stratocaster and a Stratocaster that I reviewed before in my old post.

All the Strats that I tried have two common problems: sustain and tremolo. I always prefer the sustain of my Ibanez PGM to the Stratocaster and the locking tuners in my PGM works pretty well. I tried vibrating a Strat for just one bar and it went out of tune quickly. That's how I view strat before I got my own Strat. I aimed for Superstrats such as Suhr, Xotic or James Tyler instead in hope for a better quality Strat-type guitar.

Surprise!
This Strat blew me away! When it first came, I notice that it sounded and set just right out of the box. The pickups were adjusted properly, the string height is not too high and not too low, the guitar is almost in tune. It is an alder body with maple neck, it is aimed toward a more traditional wood configuration.Acoustically speaking, when you ring the B-string, you can feel the guitar vibrates at some places; this is a good sign of sustain and overtone harmonics. I plugged it in right away and I get a pretty good sustain on B, G and D strings!

Other surprise: the Corona factory set my tremolo to be floating...?? It is totally floating and I just don't feel too good about it. I tried to do some subtle chord vibrations using the trem and not surprisingly it went out of tune. So the sustain problem is gone but the trem tune problem is still there.

Modification
I instantly order a set of Fender Locking Tuners online and installed them right away. It was proven to be one of the most important modification to my AmStadStrat! I can now do some crazy dive bombs and other crazy stuffs without the fear of getting out of tune. It is still not as stable as my double locking Edge Pro Ibanez trem, but this is already good enough. Combined with the floating setup on my Strat, I can go either up or down with my trem. My goodness!!

Sound
The guitar is loaded with a pair of Tex Mex singles and a Diamondback humbucker. The TexMex is very bright, combined with the maple/alder configuration it goes even brighter. I like the clean sound of the Tex Mex pups, they are very snappy and good for quick funk chops. However, they are not noiseless; turn on your distortion pedal and get that 60-cycle hum. Turn on a compressor and you can hear a radio broadcast on your amplifier!

On the other hand, the Diamondback humbucker is good. It's a bit too bright for overdrive sounds but you can easily cure that by rolling back the tone knob a bit. This HSS configuration makes me pretty happy since I can cover a lot of different sounds just by choosing from the 5 combinations of the pickups. However, this Strat performs better on clean sounds compared to my PGM. PGM performs better on overdriven sound due to its high-powered DiMarzio pickups.


Feel
Maple neck has a glossy finish and it is pretty sleek. It does not feel sticky or anything, it's very good on your hand. It's a standard C-shaped Stratocaster neck and it is a bit rounded on the frets. The body is contoured and it has a thin Urethane finish. Feels very good and the guitar is very resonant. I instantly removed the tremolo springs cover plate and it gets even more resonant after that!

The weight isn't too bad. Alder is a pretty lightweight wood but basswood is still lighter. I can play standing comfortably with this guitar for a relatively long period of time without being dragged down too much. This guitar is built on a very high quality standard and you can feel it right away when you touch and play it.

Overall
I like this particular guitar. This HSS Am Stad Strat really beats the other Strats that I had tried. The locking tuner upgrade is by far the most important upgrade that you probably want to have on your Strats too. The sound is very versatile and this guitar in particular shines very well on clean sounds. I will probably upgrade the pickups by putting Fender Noiseless singles and a DiMarzio, still not too sure about that but we'll see.

Definitely a guitar that defines the American sound, I will give this guitar a 10 out of 10.