Tech: "The red guitar"

This has been my main stage instrument since Spring of 2007, and I used it to record all tracks on Wake/Lift except Temet Nosce. It's a 2005 Gibson Les Paul Studio, finished in wine red. It had gold/black hardware when I got it, which I swapped for cream almost immediately. Originally it had EMGs in it --- taken from the destroyed cream Les Paul that I used to record Galilean Satellites --- but after having been off the active-pickup kool aid for almost a year in Spring '07, I got tired of the sound quickly.

I went hunting for something that would sound closer to the Velvet Brick pickup in my Sonex-180 (used to record Au Pays Natal and Absent... more on this guitar in another post), but higher output. Since the Sonex is made of "resinwood", the Velvet Brick sounds much less thrilling (more compressed and middy) when moved to a mahogany Les Paul. The closest thing I could find to what I was looking for was the Gibson Dirty Fingers bridge pickup, which I combined with an uncovered 490R in the neck position. I recorded Wake/Lift with this configuration, and the guitar served this way until this past Winter.

I'm now using a Bare Knuckle Pickups Painkiller set. On strong recommendations, I got in touch with Tim Mills from BKP and picked his brain about what I was looking for, and he recommended this. It's the closest I've ever heard to the open tonal character of the Velvet Brick, but with even less compression, more volume, and vastly more clarity in the low end. It's extremely flattering to downtuned mahogany guitars, especially with really heavy strings. My bridge pickup is F-spaced, since this is one of the few guitars where Gibson used a 53mm string spacing at the bridge instead of 50mm. The saddle cuts look strange this way, since the replacement Tune-o-matic bridge I installed is a standard 50mm spacing, but the stock pickup on the guitar was 53mm and the saddles were cut accordingly off-center on the original bridge. In practice it makes no difference, but it's nice to have the polepieces lined up properly.

The guitar is tuned Bb F Bb Eb G C, or four semitones detuned with a dropped low string. The gauges used are .013/.017/.026/.036/.046/.062. The overall tension here is actually higher than in standard tuning with a set of .010-.046 strings. Even with the large jump from the F to Bb strings, the lowest string is still lower tension than the others. I also had to flip the bridge backwards to get extra intonation adjustment to compensate for the low tuning, regardless of the different core/wrap ratios I tried. The nut is now a Graphtec Trem-nut, which helps make tuning slicker with big strings.

All controls except the neck pickup volume pot are disconnected. I have no need for tone controls, and rather than waste time trying to find a 1-megohm long-shaft pot for a Les Paul, I opted to hardwire the bridge pickup directly to the switch. I love running pickups wide-open (see the post on the Frankencaster). I can still roll back the neck pickup volume for more mellow tones.

After playing an 8-string for a while, this guitar feels like a miniature. But it's still the instrument I use the most often, and it has the most reliably-good tone in the widest variety of situations. It's also the easiest to play, which is why I generally don't use it to practice with at home. I haven't toured with anything else since early 2007.