Fender Acoustic Review DG41SCE

Why did I buy it?

I came to university with just an electric guitar and a bass after having spent the previous year playing bass full time in a band with an amazing electric player. I had become quite depressed about my own abilities so decided to swap my strat for a good acoustic guitar that I could play in my room. Originally I wanted a Takamine however the model I was after was out of my price range. I went into the local shop and started playing all their acoustics and this one, the DG41SCE, really stood out in both feel and sound. I fell in love and bought it immediately.

How does it sound?

This model was later discontinued by Fender, and I haven’t seen many other positive reviews (edit: however it seems this is because it is quite rare. I’ve now seen a couple reviews where other people have been as equally impressed with it as I am). I don’t know if I was lucky and managed to find a single instrument that really stands out as remarkable, or if they were all this good (and if they were why on earth did Fender quit making them?). Everyone who’s ever played it has commented on how it both feels and sounds like a guitar twice it’s price. I have used it for (probably hundreds) of gigs and recorded with it many times. It has an excellent Fishman pickup built in and sounds well balanced both acoustically and through a PA (although annoyingly the battery can only be reached through the sound-hole). A cool feature of the built-in pre-amp is a phase switch that can magically makes the guitar sound better on the rare occasions that it does not sound great straight away through the PA. I really cannot fault the sound of this guitar in anyway – it easily competes with all the Martins and Taylors I have ever played or jammed with.

Keep or sell?

Keep keep keep – if I had to choose only one guitar to keep this would be it. I have owned it for twelve years and been through so much with it that it is now part of the family – or even an extra limb!

Fender US stratocaster review

Why did I buy it?

As a kid my best mate had a squire strat that I used to borrow all the time. I was also a great fan of Clapton and so all through my teenage years aspired to get a US strat. I finally bought a US cherry-red one with a rosewood fretboard when I was 18, played it for a few years but then traded it in for an acoustic guitar when I started university. This was a real mistake that I made after playing bass in a band with an amazing lead guitarist and becoming depressed that I would never be that good. A couple years later I bought a Mexican “Sambora” strat which was great except for the Floyd-Rose tremolo that I really didn’t get on with. After a brief dally with a Telecaster I finally went to ebay and got this second hand maple-necked guitar at about the same time I bought the Fender blues-junior amp. I wanted to “cut back to the roots” with nothing but a good guitar and amp.

How does it sound?

I love the five pickup selections. The neck pickup gives a great bluesy lead, the neck+middle is a variation on this and also good for jazz, the middle is cool for clean, I don’t really use the middle+bridge, whilst the bridge on its own is really trebly and precisely what is needed to cut through a mix, especially with lots of overdrive. On my first couple strats I kept the stock pickups however on my current version I changed all three for Texas specials which have a much higher output and thus drive my tubes much better. After having a Telecaster for a few years it was a real relief to come back to a strat which is far more flexible, and quite good for mixing up your sounds a bit especially when engaged in shoe-gazing noodling!

The only problem I have had is playing in a couple places (churches) with a hearing aid loop that gets picked up by the single coils. After a coupl bad experiences I made sure I always carried a guitar with humbuckers whenever I took the strat out!

Keep or sell?

Although I have tried out other guitars I always keep coming back to strats. I know some people do the same with Les Pauls etc. however there is just something about the sound and feel of a strat that does it for me. I think I will always keep this one, and maybe one day add a HSS version to my collection when I have a bigger house. As blues rock is my favourite genre, a strat is about as good as you can get.

The perfect guitar tone

I have to admit to really quite enjoying the technical side of electric guitar – browsing around music shops and websites, trying out new amps, playing around on a computer or with the lastest amp modeller. However I have long since given up looking for that perfect tone for a number of reasons:

1. Tone is in the fingers. I was once in a band with one of the best lead guitarists I have ever had the fortune of playing with. What was most remarkable about him was that he didn’t really care about what kit he used so long as he could hear himself and had middle to lots of drive. He always sounded great no matter what he played through. Even going through a crappy boss SD-1 straight into a mixing desk he sounded better than I did through my valve amp. The only thing he was fussy about was his guitar that had to “feel right” which normally ment a US Fender, Tele or an Ibanez. After touring with him for a year or so I realised that there is quite a gulf between the great musicians and those of us who play for a hobby.

2. Tastes change. Although I have a long-term preference towards bluesy overdrive rather than straight distortion, I have noticed my tastes changing over time. What sounded great a couple years back doesn’t quite cut it for me anymore. I am also suspicious that I quite often blame my sound rather than my ability, and sometimes when things don’t seem to be rocking I’d rather change my amp than practice more!

3. Every room is different. Can’t add too much more apart from carpets really help!

4. Volume matters. A bit of a difficult one for those of us who are now bedroom guitarists, but there is something called “psycho-acoustics” which is to do with how our ear hears sound and transmits it to the brain. Since we have evolved to hear voices and communicate we are naturally sensitive to middle frequencies at low volumes, however as volume increases our auditory system starts to flatten out so that we hear all frequencies at similar levels. This is why people often scoop out the mids on their stereo systems but why anyone involved in PA looks scornful when the same is suggested. Basically our EQ on our ears flattens out around 60dB which is actually quite loud. So it is perfectly true that my guitar “sounds better when I turn myself up”.

—————-

In conclusion, if you can’t get a great tone out of middle of the range guitar (eg US Fender strat) and a middle of the range valve amp (eg Fender blues junior) you probably need to practice more. Yes of course effects are cool, but great players don’t need to hide behind them.

Fender blues junior review

Why did I buy it?

I got a bit fed up with my Laney VC30-210 because of how sparkly the sound was so decided to get a fairly small single channel amp that would give me a great bluesy tone.

How does it sound?

Using an A-B box I ran my pedal board set up through the Laney and then with a single stamp could switch the guitar straight into this with everything (except master volume) on ten and the fat switch on. It worked perfectly for a beautiful bluesy lead tone with both a strat (after I changed the pickups to the higher output texas specials) and also with a PRS Santana SE (this one with hotter DiMarzio’s installed). After I got rid of my Laney I found the pedal board worked fine going into a reduced gain set-up on this amp (and no fat switch) although needed to mic the amp and come through the foldback to get guitar levels appropriate in louder gigs without the natural overdrive kicking in(which worked quite well for getting an impression of how I sounded embedded in the mix).

Sell or keep?

So far it is keep. As a nice small amp it sits in my study and works great for noodling after a couple whisky’s, again everything turned to ten except master volume which is as low as it can go (for the wife). One day I will probably replace it with something of better quality (currently my eye is on a Mesa Lonestar) however for the bedroom guitarist with a blues bias who only gigs occasionally this amp is pretty perfect.