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Old 08-25-2019, 01:40 AM   #31
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Originally Posted by Ram27 View Post
IIRC $40, which was a fucking steal. I guess it was discounted cause it was used, but being used on the mighty starship is a bonus imo



Love it. Have you thought about getting the certificate framed?

 
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Old 08-25-2019, 02:11 AM   #32
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Originally Posted by Ram27 View Post
there's no non shitty, slightly joking way to add this point, but, meanwhile, Jimmy's aux hihat mount from the entire SD and MCIS tour [and possibly beyond, too sad to research rn] is literally mounted on my kit right now

i grin every time i play the verses of hummer or geek
Congrats. That's pretty cool!

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Originally Posted by emilem View Post
why is guitar wiring always drawn like this, and never as an actual schematic? i work as an engineer and it always bugs me.
I guess it's so that non-engineers / people who can't read schematics can follow them. A lot of laypersons handle that stuff in their and other peoples' guitars.



Regarding the Strat that Billy busted at Reading Festival and threw into the crowd, Billy smashing it up might be audible in the show's recording of I Am One:

https://archive.org/details/tsp1992-...08-29d1t08.shn

After 4:20, there are a bunch of intermittent thock sounds that I guess could be the guitar getting smashed.

 
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Old 08-25-2019, 02:27 AM   #33
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lol 4:20

 
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Old 08-25-2019, 04:06 PM   #34
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Love it. Have you thought about getting the certificate framed?
Oh yes! It's in a frame right now, that's an old piccy

 
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Old 08-25-2019, 04:45 PM   #35
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Originally Posted by meatngreet View Post
Thinking about this more, there was a Fiesta Red orange color in the 57 lineup. So that orange strat at Reading probably was a 3rd 57 reissue, just with the 12/31/91 pickguard. Which makes me wonder if the 70s silver strat that was later seen in the Munich 94 video (stoppen zie throwen zie cuppenz), and later appeared all marked up with red marker and a Rush sticker in the Rocket video, was actually the body of the 12/31/91 silver strat with a new pickguard and a period correct 70s headstock neck back on it.

That silver strat also had a sticker of Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, like this one: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1856854...yABEgKdsvD_BwE

So, a Bat Strat, a Star strat, a Mom strat, and an Obi-Wan/Rush strat.
The SPFC page for the 6/9 guitar suggests the neck or the guitar in the Rocket video might be from the silver 6/9 guitar:

"Note: The 70's neck from the Blonde/Silver version of this guitar may have been used for the guitar Billy plays in the "Rocket" video (more on that guitar to come)."

http://www.spfc.org/band/equipment.h...uipment_id=420



Here's a fiesta red '57 RI sale that's from 1988, which is the same year as Billy's star-decalded one (and which might be the year of all of his '57s):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1988-FENDER...E/123886077512

 
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Old 08-26-2019, 09:46 AM   #36
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So I bought that thing on 2/22. A month back, 1/22, I got arrested - I was playing my drums, just finished the last stinger of Jellybelly, and after the last flam, the cops banged on the door. Then my hands, previously blazing through 6s, were cuffed, for rocking too hard and achieving godhood. The cops had a special doctor come but he said I majorly ruled and they had to let me go.
I had some notes on your story; let me know what you think of my edits

 
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Old 08-26-2019, 09:53 AM   #37
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best part is the fake id in the mail

 
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Old 08-26-2019, 10:56 AM   #38
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thanks took haha

love the edits TB. I mean this isn't me posturing or anything - I literally got through Jellybelly stroking out all those rolls. To this day I haven't had the chops to do that again

 
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Old 08-26-2019, 10:59 AM   #39
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Oh, I didn't think you were bragging, I just thought "what's the best way to tell this at a party/bar"

 
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Old 08-27-2019, 03:11 PM   #40
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Originally Posted by he/she/it View Post
The SPFC page for the 6/9 guitar suggests the neck or the guitar in the Rocket video might be from the silver 6/9 guitar:

"Note: The 70's neck from the Blonde/Silver version of this guitar may have been used for the guitar Billy plays in the "Rocket" video (more on that guitar to come)."

http://www.spfc.org/band/equipment.h...uipment_id=420
It couldn’t be the same neck. The neck from the 6/9 guitar was split from the headstock down to the first few frets. You can see video of the damage at the end of the 12/31/91 video, after the show. The Rocket guitar might have used the original body, with a period correct replacement neck, but the body may have been split as well. Can’t quite tell from the video.

 
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Old 08-28-2019, 07:04 PM   #41
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Originally Posted by meatngreet View Post
It couldn’t be the same neck. The neck from the 6/9 guitar was split from the headstock down to the first few frets. You can see video of the damage at the end of the 12/31/91 video, after the show. The Rocket guitar might have used the original body, with a period correct replacement neck, but the body may have been split as well. Can’t quite tell from the video.
Cool, I hadn't watched that show before now. Yeah, it looks like you're right.

For anyone interested, here's the video of the smashing of the guitar:

https://youtu.be/rLqLqM5paa0?t=3902

 
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Old 08-28-2019, 08:00 PM   #42
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Cool, I hadn't watched that show before now. Yeah, it looks like you're right.

For anyone interested, here's the video of the smashing of the guitar:

https://youtu.be/rLqLqM5paa0?t=3902
I'm glad they weren't typically a gear smashing band, but that this sort of thing happened exceptionally. I wonder what ticked him off that night?

 
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Old 08-28-2019, 11:28 PM   #43
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I'm glad they weren't typically a gear smashing band, but that this sort of thing happened exceptionally. I wonder what ticked him off that night?
As far as i know, there were only three guitar destruction shows:

1. Chicago 12/31/91 at the Pumpkins local New Years Eve headliner show, as Nirvana started dominating MTV.
2. Reading 8/29/92 at the festival where Nirvana was headlining their big “comeback” show.
3. Astoria 2/26/94 with MTV cameras rolling, the week that Billy supposedly started seeing Courtney again. Also, it was a prop guitar - a random black Fender strat that Billy obviously had pre-arranged with MTV to destroy at the end of the show.

See if you can spot the theme....

Last edited by meatngreet : 08-28-2019 at 11:34 PM.

 
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Old 08-28-2019, 11:32 PM   #44
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Originally Posted by he/she/it View Post
Cool, I hadn't watched that show before now. Yeah, it looks like you're right.

For anyone interested, here's the video of the smashing of the guitar:

https://youtu.be/rLqLqM5paa0?t=3902
This one has just the Smashing, and the post show closeup of the guitar:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rvdwp4s1JXY

 
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Old 08-29-2019, 05:37 AM   #45
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Originally Posted by meatngreet View Post
As far as i know, there were only three guitar destruction shows:

1. Chicago 12/31/91 at the Pumpkins local New Years Eve headliner show, as Nirvana started dominating MTV.
2. Reading 8/29/92 at the festival where Nirvana was headlining their big “comeback” show.
3. Astoria 2/26/94 with MTV cameras rolling, the week that Billy supposedly started seeing Courtney again. Also, it was a prop guitar - a random black Fender strat that Billy obviously had pre-arranged with MTV to destroy at the end of the show.

See if you can spot the theme....
sounds just right and inline with the billy that we know.

 
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Old 08-29-2019, 02:03 PM   #46
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it's always been obvious to me that he had planned it, since he used a random strat, but is it obvious that MTV was in the know?

 
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Old 08-29-2019, 03:10 PM   #47
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I believe this is the actual 1994 Astoria smashed strat model. Made in Mexico early 90s dark blue.
Dropped in the lace sensors and smashed away.


 
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Old 08-29-2019, 07:57 PM   #48
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it's always been obvious to me that he had planned it, since he used a random strat, but is it obvious that MTV was in the know?
Given that Billy had that strat on hand, solely for the purpose of breaking it in front of the cameras, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to think he gave the MTV Producers the heads up, so that they got the camera angles just right. Wouldn’t surprise me if MTV demanded that kind of stuff as part of the filming agreement.

As much as those kinds of things were filmed “live”, there is always a level of pre-production and advising that goes on behind the scenes. Think of the SNL rehearsals, or those sound check rehearsals that Nirvana did for Live n Loud. Those things usually have record execs on hand, there to have a say in the final product.

 
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Old 06-11-2022, 08:11 PM   #49
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I want to give an update on the information I put in this post, as I think I have things figured out now.

First, this part:

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Originally Posted by he/she/it View Post
Billy replaced the Bat Strat's neck during the MCIS tour.

In the related thread I linked to, weasel, whose post appears to be deleted (good thing I quoted it), said:

Quote:
no, it was around this time that bill swapped the neck for a squier model neck.
it was shortly before the Brixton show that bill had someone go to Argos to buy a donor guitar for the swap. i'll have a look but there's a video of it somewhere on youtube.

James was so impressed that he also swapped the next out on one of his guitars. i think he mentions it in an interview late that year.
I haven't come across that video myself, but I'd love to see it if anyone knows where to find it.

From looking at concert videos, as of January 26, 1996, at the Rio De Janiero show, the Bat Strat still has its original neck.

As of the April 7 1996 Dusseldorf, Germany show, the neck has been replaced with the alleged Squire one.

I think I might have seen some footage narrowing down (by only a few days at most, though) when it was replaced.
I took a closer look at the headstock on the replacement Strat neck, and looked at some Squire headstocks, and Billy's replacement neck's headstock looks just like a '57 AVRI one, in the tuners, string trees, and "original contour body" sticker. However, I've also seen the odd Squire neck with the "original contour body" sticker, and also the vintage tuners and string trees - but, so far, only with a CBS-style headstock, and not the smaller-style headstock that the '57 and most Fender Strat necks have.

I think that whether the Squire story is true or not is up for question. Maybe the person who posted and deleted it removed it because they weren't serious about it.


Regarding the wiring to get Billy's Lace Sensor Strat sound, I previously wrote this:

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Originally Posted by he/she/it View Post
The wiring in Billy's Lace Sensor Strats is essential to his sound. I haven't figured it out completely yet, but I know he has the bridge pickup unloaded, and at least a 500k volume and neck pickup tone pot, though it could also be a 1 Meg volume pot for extra brightness - though I suspect it isn't 1 Meg as that could make the bridge and middle pickups too bright and brittle by raising the resonant frequency too high.

I think Billy likely uses 500k pots for the volume and neck tone controls, and has a bass-filtering capacitor installed on the neck tone pot to filter out most of its bass. Otherwise, the Blue Lace Sensor is way, way too dark - and Billy's neck tone is not dark at all (listen to the end solo for Hummer at the 1993 Metro show). And to get the shimmering neck-middle sound that Billy uses so much for his cleans (think of the SP cover of Never Let Me Down Again), most of the neck pickup's bass has to be dumped somehow. And it's a clear clue that he doesn't even angle the neck pickup's bass side down lower than the treble side. The Blue Lace Sensor is designed for jazz and is an ultra dark pickup. For Billy to get sounds as clear as his Red Lace Sensor unloaded bridge pickup from it, he's dumping the large majority of its bass, and I think it's being done with a bass-filtering capacitor.

The middle / Silver pickup tone pot is likely between 280k and 320k in value when paired with a 500k volume pot. That sounds right to me.

The higher the value of potentiometer that's used for the volume and tone pots, the brighter the sound will be as less of treble is being dumped to the ground signal path. However, there are two things to factor into using a higher value potentiometer:

1. The law of diminishing returns applies. So, while going from 200k to 300k will produce a significant increase in brightness, going from 300k to 400k will produce less of one, and going from 400k to 500k will produce even less of one. Also, the changes made to the volume pot value produce more significant results than changes made to the tone pot values. And increasing the volume pot value increases the brightness for all of the pickups, whereas increasing the tone pot values increases the brightness for only whichever pickup(s) is connected to it (I think).

2. Increasing the values of pots raises the resonant frequency in the circuit. The resonant frequency is basically at which frequency the sound is emphasized. Too high and it sounds nasty. Too low and the sound might be less interesting. That's a reason I suspect Billy might not be using a 1 Meg volume pot. I tried unloading the neck pickup and it still had too much bass, but in addition to that, the highs were ice-picky and unpleasant. That leads me to strongly think that Billy filters the Lace Sensor neck pickup bass with a capacitor rather than trying to offset it by increasing treble with an excessively high-value volume or tone pot.
I think I've pinpointed the sound, using these specs:

- a volume pot that's in the range of 470k - 515k
- a neck (Blue Lace Sensor) tone pot that's in the range of 470k - 515k
- a middle (Silver Lace Sensor) tone pot that's in the range of 260k - 290k
- the bridge (Red Lace Sensor) is unloaded (it doesn't use a tone pot)
- for the tone cap, I'm using 0.022uf

And, very importantly, a 0.015uf bass-cut capacitor on the neck pickup's hot wire, as this diagram shows:

https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/t...ng-neck-pickup

That diagram is for a Les Paul-style guitar, and it shows a 0.047uf cap. But the concept is the same.

In my Strat, I soldered one lead of the bass-cut capacitor to the tab on the pickup selector switch for the neck pickup, and then soldered the neck pickup's hot wire to the other lead of the bass-cut capacitor.




A friend of mine doubted this idea for a long time. But they've just tried it for themselves. And, after trying it, they think it's spot-on.

Here's a photo they sent me of their work.




I think that's Billy's Lace Sensor Stratocaster sound. The bass-cut cap on the Blue neck pickup balances the amount of bass between the neck and the bridge pickup positions, and it brings out a lot more clarity from the neck pickup, and enables getting that chimey neck-mid position sound that is Billy's go-to Siamese Dream-era clean sound. Of course, the amp, its tubes, and the amp settings also play an important part of dialing in that sound. But, in my experience, you can't get there without the bass-cut cap.


With those stated values of pots and the 0.015uf bass-cut cap, I get the BC Lace Sensor Strat sound with my pickup heights and angles set like Billy's:






I also tried 0.047 and 0.022 bass-cut caps, both of which left the neck pickup sound too bassy. And I tried a 0.01 cap, and that filtered out far too much bass, middle, and treble frequencies, and left only the highest of high frequencies, making the sound extremely thin. So, the 0.015 cap seems to be the right one.

Last edited by he/she/it : 06-12-2022 at 11:45 AM.

 
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Old 06-13-2022, 08:08 PM   #50
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Thanks!

this information is a goldmine.

 
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Old 06-15-2022, 11:30 AM   #51
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With those stated values of pots and the 0.015uf bass-cut cap, I get the BC Lace Sensor Strat sound with my pickup heights and angles set like Billy's:
While switching up the wiring and pot/cap values will obviously impact the guitar's sound, I think the Alesis 3630 compressors in his signal chain were responsible for his chimey/clean sound - as that's a big part of what compressors do. He also ran his preamps with settings for each song, which took care of the EQ differences from one song to the next. Notice also that Iha's sound was not really that far off from Corgan's, and he was using a Les Paul, in addition to different SGs, and those guitars were also not likely to have had any special wiring. When guitars get up that loud, and have so many things in the signal chain, the differences between instruments becomes minimal.

 
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Old 06-15-2022, 12:12 PM   #52
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Thanks!

this information is a goldmine.
No prob. I hope it saves people from having to go through the years of tinkering and spending lots of money, trying to figure out that sound, that I did.


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Originally Posted by meatngreet View Post
While switching up the wiring and pot/cap values will obviously impact the guitar's sound, I think the Alesis 3630 compressors in his signal chain were responsible for his chimey/clean sound - as that's a big part of what compressors do. He also ran his preamps with settings for each song, which took care of the EQ differences from one song to the next. Notice also that Iha's sound was not really that far off from Corgan's, and he was using a Les Paul, in addition to different SGs, and those guitars were also not likely to have had any special wiring. When guitars get up that loud, and have so many things in the signal chain, the differences between instruments becomes minimal.
I have 3630s in my rigs. They don't turn the sound from dark to bright. Though, in his MCIS rig, Billy likely used his Drawmer DS201's filter to shave off some low frequencies.

James' Les Paul sound is really bright, and he used brighter pickups and also a BBE 462 Sonic Maximizer to make his sound brighter and more focused. He might have also used a bass-cut cap on the neck pickup. I also have a same-era, ebony-neck Les Paul Custom with the same pickups James had (Bill Lawrence for the black SD LPC, and I think Seymour Duncan SH-2 and SH-4 for his silver MCIS LPC), and I'm thinking of installing a 0.047 bass-cut cap to shave-off some of the bass. I messaged Drew Foppe, asking if he knew which pickups James had before he changed them, and whether there was a bass-cut cap in there, but he said he has no idea what was in there before - he just ripped them out and installed Tom Anderson (I think they're H1 and H3+. I verified it previously, but I'm going off memory now).

Standard wiring in a Blue / Silver / Red Lace Sensor Strat with the bridge pickup unloaded (as was noted in one of Billy's Reverb listings that Billy does with all his Strats) will create a huge imbalance between the neck pickup and the middle and bridge pickups. And with all 250k pots, the sound is basically pure mud.

Billy mentioned in this video that they used to have to mod their guitars a lot to get the sound they wanted.

https://youtu.be/binU9zv-_Qc?list=PL...OKwNfQd9P&t=93

Billy's also known to mod his stuff to get a different, and hard-to-replicate sound - his JMP-1s were Voodoo modded (though, I'm guessing later than MCIS), his Strategy power amps were modded (he said to give them a "rounder" sound), perhaps to handle a different type of tube. And in his signature Fender Stratocaster, Billy went nuts with the pickup and switch wiring. After Gish, and claiming that Nirvana copied his studio sound, Billy said he set out to create a sound that nobody would be able to replicate.

I have replicas of Billy's Gish, SD, and MCIS rigs, and I think the pot and cap mods I mentioned make all the difference.

Last edited by he/she/it : 06-15-2022 at 12:33 PM.

 
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Old 06-15-2022, 07:06 PM   #53
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Standard wiring in a Blue / Silver / Red Lace Sensor Strat with the bridge pickup unloaded (as was noted in one of Billy's Reverb listings that Billy does with all his Strats) will create a huge imbalance between the neck pickup and the middle and bridge pickups. And with all 250k pots, the sound is basically pure mud.
But that's not correct, is it? Lace Sensors in the Blue/Silver/Red combination have been sold thousands (if not millions) of times. The tonal/volume difference between Neck and Bridge pickups is inherent to their design. Everybody manages through that. Strat, Les Paul, etc. That's different than needing to jump to treble bleeds, bass cuts, or special wiring. That really wasn't widespread, pre The Gear Page era. Sure, some people did it. But your average tech was not really working that way.

Billy had a lot of tricks in his rig, but most of his wizadry came from stock equipment. The Eventide patches he used were largely stock to that unit and just tweaked to his liking. Same with the Digitech Harmonizer and the other rack effects. It was the fact that he used them in songs that was memorable. Everyone else was using the standard stuff right from the store. His stuff was more expensive, that's all.

Lace Sensors had already been on market for a few years when he put them in his strat. Lots of guitars came with that combination. No need to mod anything beyond the standard "upgrade" that people did to Strats back then. Change out the saddles, switch-out the tremolo, replace the tuners, switch out the pickups.

Just my .02 cents. You could absolutely be right here, but there is a long long long list of famous players who had a specific sound that people swore could be decoded, and time after time it usually turns out that there was no special trick involved. Tony Iommi's Black Sabbath sound turned out to be achieved by turning the bass all the way down at the amp with a Dallas rangemaster, yet legions of doom/stoner rock players swore it was a mid-scooped Big Muff fuzz, which is pretty much the total opposite EQ. Likewise, everyone thought that Jimmy Page's Zeppelin tone was completely Marshall Super Lead, and yet it turned out that most of the Zeppelin records were using small Fender/Vox amps, and Hiwatt amps onstage - and when Page did move to Marshalls he actually used the Super Bass, not the Super Lead. With Corgan, the Big Muff used on Siamese Dream was assumed to be one of the "special" versions, and yet it turned out years later to be the lowly IC-based design that everyone had sworn was the least desirable.

 
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Old 06-15-2022, 07:15 PM   #54
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Old 06-16-2022, 09:59 AM   #55
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If billy was REAL he'd have sowed his own hey to feed his own goats, to slaughter and make his own gutstrings.
or at least bought a mine to smelt his own steel strings.

using "off the shelf" strings, what a pleb

 
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Old 06-16-2022, 01:05 PM   #56
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But that's not correct, is it? Lace Sensors in the Blue/Silver/Red combination have been sold thousands (if not millions) of times. The tonal/volume difference between Neck and Bridge pickups is inherent to their design. Everybody manages through that. Strat, Les Paul, etc. That's different than needing to jump to treble bleeds, bass cuts, or special wiring. That really wasn't widespread, pre The Gear Page era. Sure, some people did it. But your average tech was not really working that way.
Fender Lace Sensor Strats, called the Strat Deluxe and Strat Plus, actually came with a funky wiring for the special TBX tone-pot that would gradually unload the middle and bridge pickups, boosting their brightness. And they typically came with a Gold or a Silver in the neck position - both of which are far brighter than the Blue. Lace Sensor also recommend the Silver for the neck position. Billy's Blue / Silver / Red combo was unconventional for the time. And Billy's rule (according to one of his Reverb listings) of leaving the bridge unloaded also didn't reflect how Fender shipped their Lace Sensor-equipped Strat Plus.

Everybody with the standard wiring that you see demoing it on YouTube has a murky sound that doesn't properly convey the SP sound. That murkiness is what's fixed with the mods I mentioned. Billy's neck-mid position sound can't be dialed in with a stock setup.

https://youtu.be/V5lAFu77PlI?t=210
https://youtu.be/MMheeahEKrw?t=89
https://youtu.be/SO0PumuBrwA?t=61

This guy got the closest with effects, but it's still off, and he doesn't demo the neck-mid position sounding like Billy's (from what I've seen, anyway): https://youtu.be/QY0a63439bw

In that video, he doesn't even use the neck-mid position for the intro, which is what Billy played it with on the album, but uses the mid-bridge position. He probably does that because the neck-mid sounds really dark with his setup, and so the mid-bridge position gives the closest thing to the album tone that he can get.

And while the Marshall 2203 is a super bright amp, Billy's JMP-1 + Strategy 500 rig is a dark-sounding combo. With a stock B/S/R setup, using Billy's pickup-heights (all basically horizontal to the pickguard, so not dialing down neck bass by angling the pickup), the Marshall 2203 rig would run into its own problems when switching from neck tones to bridge tones, as, if the neck-mid were set for some level of clarity, the bridge would be very-painfully, ear-piercingly shrill.

Quote:
Billy had a lot of tricks in his rig, but most of his wizadry came from stock equipment. The Eventide patches he used were largely stock to that unit and just tweaked to his liking. Same with the Digitech Harmonizer and the other rack effects. It was the fact that he used them in songs that was memorable. Everyone else was using the standard stuff right from the store. His stuff was more expensive, that's all.
While Billy would have tweaked some presets, Billy also had some Eventide patches custom designed for him by italo de angelis, a former Eventide programmer who was banned from Gear Page some years ago for abusive comments.

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/in...italo.1988500/
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/in...ilable.956321/

From what I recall, Billy used his Eventide H3000 just for delays and reverb.

Quote:
Lace Sensors had already been on market for a few years when he put them in his strat. Lots of guitars came with that combination. No need to mod anything beyond the standard "upgrade" that people did to Strats back then. Change out the saddles, switch-out the tremolo, replace the tuners, switch out the pickups.
Lace has probably since sold a ton of the Blue/Silver/Red combo because Billy popularised it. But they don't know what the wiring in his Strats is like (I've asked them), and I know that a bunch of people also take the Blue / Silver / Red combo out again later, because they can't work with how dark that combo sounds.

As I said, Lace recommends the Silver for the neck pickup. And when they sold the Strat Plus and Deluxe with Lace Sensors, which is how Billy probably would have demoed Lace Sensor pickups back in the day, the Silver or Gold was what would usually come in the neck position, and it would also have TBX pot wiring. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Blue come stock in the neck position on one of those guitars - but maybe it did.

https://reverb.com/item/52917561-fen...or-pickups-tbx
https://reverb.com/item/46762092-199...e-sensors-case
https://reverb.com/item/54461879-fen...t-tbx-sperzels
https://reverb.com/item/48427102-fen...nson-schallers

Edit: Yes, some Strat Plus Deluxe came with a Blue in the neck position: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224991974...oAAOSw~0dihLv0


Me and a friend messaged Billy's tech from the SD days, Bob English (AKA, Hippie Bob), who said that they tried every pickup combination - sometimes the Silver in the neck, sometimes the Red, sometimes the Blue. So, Billy's pickup layout didn't come from just going with a stock configuration, but from experimentation.

When Billy started using Lace Sensors, he didn't start with the Blue / Silver / Red combo. He started with just one, maybe a Red, in the bridge position. He later added another two Lace Sensors. I guess that he was experimenting until he found a sound that he liked.




Quote:
Just my .02 cents. You could absolutely be right here, but there is a long long long list of famous players who had a specific sound that people swore could be decoded, and time after time it usually turns out that there was no special trick involved. Tony Iommi's Black Sabbath sound turned out to be achieved by turning the bass all the way down at the amp with a Dallas rangemaster, yet legions of oom/stoner rock players swore it was a mid-scooped Big Muff fuzz, which is pretty much the total opposite EQ. Likewise, everyone thought that Jimmy Page's Zeppelin tone was completely Marshall Super Lead, and yet it turned out that most of the Zeppelin records were using small Fender/Vox amps, and Hiwatt amps onstage - and when Page did move to Marshalls he actually used the Super Bass, not the Super Lead. With Corgan, the Big Muff used on Siamese Dream was assumed to be one of the "special" versions, and yet it turned out years later to be the lowly IC-based design that everyone had sworn was the least desirable.
I've been after that sound for 2 decades, and I have basically all the same gear Billy did (I don't have an H3000 for my MCIS rig, but, other than that). The most challenging part of his Strat tone are the neck and neck-mid position sounds. They just aren't right with a basic, all-250k pot setup. And none of the people who have demoed a basic all-250k pot setup with B/S/R LS have come close to that tone that can be heard on Never Let Me Down Again and other recording from the SD era.

Last edited by he/she/it : 06-16-2022 at 09:11 PM.

 
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Old 06-16-2022, 01:56 PM   #57
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i love hearing about all of this stuff - sincerely no irony

i remember an old site from the late 90s that was just assigned to "amp settings" for billy and with my little peavey practice amp i thought i was the biggest band in the world

 
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Old 06-16-2022, 03:05 PM   #58
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What positions did billy use the most with lace sensors? You're talking a lot about the mid-neck while i've always considered him to be a bridge/neck kinda guy

 
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Old 06-16-2022, 03:20 PM   #59
topleybird
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I don't understand a single fucking word either of these two are saying but I'm reading everything with great interest

I think I just like seeing two clearly immensely knowledgeable people, in any field, arguing over minutia by throwing facts at each other until it turns out one has more and better facts

I felt the same when someone, I don't remember who, came on Colbert's show and quizzed him on really obscure Lord of the Rings shit and Colbert was just windmill dunking on every single question

Who do I root for? I think I see which way this is going, but I'm hoping this goes on for at least another couple pages with some twists and turns along the way

 
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Old 06-16-2022, 05:35 PM   #60
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Never heard that the Strategy 500’s power amps were modded. I’ve always read the “rounder” quote in regards to his 2203 being modded for KT88’s. I think his Mesa’s were stock and he used the half power setting as he’s stated before.

 
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