Cool. Thanks Brian. Rookie move.

Played my "Surfocaster" through an amp for the very first time at a gig my band had on Saturday night. (The Charlottesville Skate Park was celebrating the installation of its lights, enabling them to stay open past dusk!)

It's a partsocaster, but mostly actual Fender parts. It's got an American Pro II body, an American Player neck (had to have the big headstock!) with Fender locking tuners and Fender American Vintage 65 pickups. The bridge is by Mann Made. Switching is standard 5-way, but the bridge is on its own tone pot, while the neck/middle share the other tone pot. Bridge pickup is reverse-slanted to get a sharper bass response. Warmoth pickguard.

I was surprised at how little noise came from the pickups, so apparently my shielding work was adequate This isn't a surf band, it's my indie rock band 7th Grade Girl Fight, but this is the guitar I put together to get Strat tones on my surf stuff along with my Jazzmaster.

I may need to put a string tree on it; the high E string occasionally pops out of its nut slot when I engage in excited wigglebarness.

Amp for the gig was my Koch Twintone (50W EL34) into a Marshall 1965B converted from 4x10 to 2x12. Pedals are all BOSS - TU-2 (tuner), CE-2 (chorus) & PH-2 (phaser). Simple, classic, sounded great! Plus I could turn way up because we were outdoors

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Project: MAYHEM by Hypersonic Secret now available!

Last edited: Oct 17, 2022 07:49:16

chiba wrote:

Finally had the chance to debut my FCS Jazzmaster on Friday night. Again, not a surf band, but holy crap does this thing sound good!! Playing it through my Tone King Falcon Grande (20W, 2x5881). It's quite a simple amp - Volume, Tone, Reverb, Dwell, and what I call a "flavor" switch - Clean, Tweed, Lead. It's a single-channel amp, but depending on which "flavor" you choose, it produces different levels of gain. It also has a built-in attenuator, which is SUPER handy.

We play some sketchy places - naturally - so I've been saving this to debut it live at a decent venue with a good sound system. Friday night was the night It sounded fantastic, and since I put fresh strings on it and tweaked the setup the night before, it played great. You can see my backup for this show behind me, that's a 2002 Rickenbacker 380LPZ, a weird and rare Rick with a piezo bridge allowing for fairly convincing acoustic guitar tones if you're into that kind of thing.

What a nice Jazzmaster!

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

Durn it! You guys have me wanting a JM, now.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

CenturyBob wrote:

synchro wrote:

Durn it! You guys have me wanting a JM, now.

Hey Mark I know who has several to choose from!

This is the post you’ve been waiting for.

Nothing is likely to happen. I’m actually thinking of selling some gear. I got a killer deal going on a Temple Audio Duo 24 board, and I’m about ready to consign my Gretsch 6120.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Never can choose among these, but probably Jaguar is the surfiest beast.

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

synchro wrote:

Samurai wrote:

Never can choose among these, but probably Jaguar is the surfiest beast.

You’ve basically got all of the bases covered. It’s interesting, because I was just thinking about this, earlier today; Jaguars, Jazzmasters and Stratocasters did the lion’s share of the work in the early days of Surf, and truly, to this day.

Strangely, even though I love Surf, I don’t own any of these guitars. I play Surf on hollow-body Gretsch guitars, but it works, for some reason.

I also have telecaster and several Gretsch guitars and use them to play surf as well, hollow body, jet, streamliner, all are great)

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

synchro wrote:

Samurai wrote:

I also have telecaster and several Gretsch guitars and use them to play surf as well, hollow body, jet, streamliner, all are great)

I have a Tele with Fender Noiseless, which sound pretty close to single coils. I can get some great Surf sounds from it. If I were going to play nothing but Surf, I would probably choose a Gretsch Duo Jet with Dynasonic single-coils.

Telecaster has his own vibe, not traditionally surfy but I like it

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

synchro wrote:

Samurai wrote:

Telecaster has his own vibe, not traditionally surfy but I like it

A lot of the twangy guitar music coming out of the west coast session musician world was done on Teles. For example, Tommy Tedesco used a Tele for Hawaii 5-0. It’s definitely not the sound of a Jaguar through a 6G15 and into a Showman, but it’s a great sound, in its own right.

I use my Tele to experiment with effects. Having a four-position switch, I can get a pseudo humbucker sound, and a pretty decent single coil sound. When it’s time to get serious, I use Gretsch, with either Supertron or DuoTron pickups. These are bright, but powerful pickups.

As you see in my video above Pipeline with tele gets some country vibe)

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

InkEye wrote:

Nice JM! Is that a silver toggle switch? Where did you get that?

I dig the light blue sparkle.

"Black Chrome" - not what I ordered, but what I got. I wanted a plain black plastic toggle to match the pickups & knobs. I'll get there someday

Fender calls it Sea Foam Green Sparkle - depending on the light it can trend blue or green or anywhere in-between. It's really pretty!

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Project: MAYHEM by Hypersonic Secret now available!