Girl needs help~!

I have been told to be a little more VANILLA in my postings~

I am a girl

A girl who plays a 62' Reissue Telecaster (1998)

I paid $1150 for my baby~ it came with the vintage case, cord, strap, and ash tray thingy for the bridge~

did I pay too much?

Secondly~

I really like SRV's bell like neck tone from his strat~

and I really dig Jimmy Page's solo sound on Stairway~

what mods will help me get this sound?

thanks so much~!

Looks like you may have paid a little high - at least according to a quick eBay completed items search.
Having said that, no two are alike - you thought it was a fair price - may very well be.

Regarding the mods, from what I read and know its your playing or choice of amp and settings that will get you to the SRV or Led Zep sound. I don't think I'd be in a hurry to mod the guitar.

SRV's tone comes from HIS hands. No one else on earth sounds exactly like SRV. A Strat pickup will get you way closer than a Tele neck pickup cause they are too dark to get that bell like tone.

Your guitar can get close to Jpages tone you need an old Supro amp with a 15" speaker and a soul bender pedal for that sound.

If you paid $1150 in 1998 you paid too much they are around $1250 new todays prices.

Have fun thats what its all about.

About the price, I would recomend listening to the others here, cause I really dont go out and buy an awful lot, so I feel a lil ignorant on what the going prices are.

Marc is absolutely right about Pagey's sound/tone; you'll definitely need a Supro!

SRV's tone, besides being in his fingers, and his Strat, you'll need a couple of Fender Super Reverbs, and turn em all the way up! Stevie was always derided for playin too dern loud! But that is how he got that tone: Tubes fully saturated! Another thing he would do, is when he would set his amp up, he would go right to the neck pup, and just "pop" that low E string, and dial it in till it sounded right! Also, he used really heavy gauge strings. Depending on his mood, or string availablity, he would play either 11, 12, or 13 gauge strings, Also, his action was purportedly really high.

I hope that helps!


I just gotta ask: Ars Longa, Vita Brevis?

I wouldn't worry much about whether you paid too much or not; what's done is done and if you're happy with your baby it was worth it.

My advice for the SRV tone? Go get yerself a good ol' Strat. A Tele and a Strat compliment each other. Many people have turned a guitar they really liked into something they just couldn't live with by trying to make it a "do it all" guitar.

Go get yerself a good ol' Strat. A Tele and a Strat compliment each other. Many people have turned a guitar they really liked into something they just couldn't live with by trying to make it a "do it all" guitar.

I think that should be a qoute for the ages! Unless of course you like the canned sound of the Variac, and then we just sound like cantankerous old men!

I have a "Vintage Noiseless" pup in the neck on my Tele and I have always gotten some pretty good SRV tones off the neck pup (or in middle position with the "SK T-90" bridge pup I just installed), but that's just tones. The SRV "sound" has more to do with left hand technique, muting a bunch of strings (with the left hand) while playing lead on one or two strings at a time. Stevie had a great way of muting all the strings with the left hand, except the strings of the lead he was playing, and attacking all 6 strings at once like power chords (or power arpeggios) resulting in his intense lead sounds. Just listen to the guitar line in " Cold Shot" you may know all the notes, but unless you understand the way it was played you will never duplicate the sound. And that's his easiest guitar line to follow.

I really like Harmonic Design pickups and my plan for my next project guitar is to put their mini-Strat neck pickup in it. You might be interested in it.

http://www.harmonicdesign.net/allpages/custom_shop.html

Cheapest (and fastest) way I know of to move towards SRV tone is to get a Boss DS-1, set the tone around
10 o'clock, dist around 1 o'clock, and, most importantly, your guitar volume around 5-7. Total cost ~$40.

For a more genuine solution you'll need a Strat, a Fender amp, and magic fingers.

SRV-sound? my guess is: tune down, use heavy strings, get an ibanez tube screamer reissue. don't put a strat pickup in the neck position. a tele with strat pickups doesn't sound like a strat (unless you put in a strat-tremolo, strat-bridge and an alder body).

I just gotta ask: Ars Longa, Vita Brevis?


"Art is long, life is brief"

I honestly don't feel that you can get a SRV tone out of the tele neck pup. To my ears at least, the tele neck pup tone is a little bit rounder while the strat neck pup is a little more shap with a quicker attack. Of course, you could alway put a strat neck pup in your tele like Jerry Donahue. I think the main thing to get Page's tone from Stairway is a Supro or another small tube amp. I've often read how Page loved to record with Supro's.

Is your tele a custom or just a standard 60's re-issue?

..."art is long, life is brief".

Amazing. Had the post been titled "Boy needs help", I doubt it would have recieved 550 views!
I know I was sucked in. No offence, I just love girls with big guitars! :oops:

I just wanted to point out that although the latin translations provided above are technically correct, Chaucer's translation of the familiar latin phrase gives a better idea of its meaning: "The lyf so short, the crafte so longe to lerne." I always knew my degree in medieval literature would come in handy on the TDPRI!