steelopus replied to your photo: Friday Five.

Tell me the story of your Les Paul. Also, what model of Fender Tele is that? (I’ve never really gotten into the Fender game so I never knew they even made a sculpted Tele.)

I told the story of the Les Paul once before. TL;DR: it’s about a ‘74 and I bought it at a gig from a guy who couldn’t play anymore due to arthritis.

The Tele is a ‘98 American Deluxe. This was their first edition of it, which featured a third pickup and a 5-way switch like a Strat, along with another toggle so you could get all 7 possible combinations. The pickups are the original Fender Noiseless, which I think are just a rebranding of their Lace Sensors but I’m not sure. It sounds and plays great.  It’s my primary guitar at this point even though I don’t do a lot of the typical Telecasterish country stuff. It needs some time in the shop to have the frets crowned, which I’ll attend to in November during a lull in my schedule.

 jamiek replied to your photo: Friday Five.

What do you think of the Carvin? I remember when they were THE guitar to have in the ’90s, but I’ve never played one…

The Carvin is an AE185, their “acoustic/electric” hollowbody. It has a piezo under the bridge, so you can dial in an acoustic-ish sound, maybe a bit like an Ovation. It also has the regular 22-pole Carvin humbuckers in a traditional Les Paul configuration, though instead of a tone control for each, it has an active treble/bass stack for the whole output. A kinda neat feature is the ability to dial in a mix between the piezo and the humbuckers.

I use this guitar for those very specific situations where I have to switch between an acoustic and electric in the same song. It’s a decent compromise for both tones, but neither is great. I wouldn’t dream of recording with it. If I had my druthers, that humbucker/piezo control would be a switch, not a pot, since I would prefer rapid switching over the ability to mix them. I may mod it for that, in fact. It also has two output jacks, one for each — maybe I could figure something out with a switching pedal instead, but for some reason I can’t explain, I’d feel like a dork with two cables coming out of it.

I have to say what everyone else says about Carvin: the fit and finish are the finest I’ve ever seen. Their computerized gizmos that churn these things out are completely unfreakingbelievable. The action is perfect, almost hard to believe how low it is. It feels like it was hewn from a single piece of wood with the pickups already growing in the tree. Just masterfully built.