The Mainly Guitars Page
Welcome to
the Phil Graham Band DIY site. The band has produced two albums released in
2007 and 2009 (Reunion
and Al's Casino) and has
featured on two
This page is mainly for guitar enthusiasts. Most of the guitars I used on Al's Casino were heavily modded during the project. I'm going to show each of these with as much information as I can in case you are interested in doing the same thing with yours. Warning -- some of the sound files are quite large, so you might need to be patient while they download. I hope to put more of the collection up soon. If you want any more info, please contact me at phil **at** philgraham.net
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This
is my Gretsch Electromatic 5120. I modded it with TV Jones Classics, replacing
the stock humbucking pickups . I was reluctant to do so because the stock
numbers sounded great recorded. But I tried them live and they didn't
cut through. You can hear the difference in
a track I played on Lost when the 5120 had the original humbuckers
and another I played on Guess Who once
the TV Classics had gone in. This is not the best comparison because they
are very different parts, but you can hear the difference anyway (and
I will put up a better comparison later).. Both samples are played through
the same amp setup - A Traynor YCV 40 and a Fender Blues Junior, which
are recorded on separate tracks and mixed together. Mics are Shure 58s
and they are run through a focusrite silver channel strip and a Joe Meek
channel strip, mostly for some nice compression. The engineer on all these
tracks is Naomi Sunderland. |
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This one's a doozy of a mod. It started life as a white Fender Squier Vintage Modified HSS Tele which I immediately took apart, first replacing the tuning heads, nut, and bridge. I used Gotoh Tuners and bridge and the nut is teflon. Then we stuck a Bigbsy arm on it. You can see that process at esnips. The sound of the thing was quite interesting at that point. The pickups were Duncan designed stock numbers. You can hear how it sounded at that stage in these clips from Naomi Sunderland's Stitches: Duncan designed tele stack for bridge and a middle sound between the Duncan Designed Strat stack in the middle position and the DD Mini Humbucker in the neck. I really liked the sound and feel of the original pups in this one, especially the bridge pickup. But two things happened; 1) the bridge pickup developed an unsatisfactorily loud hum and 2) I started to hear the sound of the paint on the guitar. It was very thick whit powdery duco and was affecting the vibration of the wood. Willy and I stripped the body of paint and gave it three coats of beeswax. We also sanded most of the thick lacquer off the beautiful neck. At that time I decided also to upgrade the pickups, putting a seymour duncan Vintage Mini Himbucker SM-1 in the neck, an SD tele stack in the bridge, and a di marzio area style strat pickup in the middle. I also took out all the wiring including the switch and replaced the whole lot with three 500K pots which I now use to mix the pickups. The sound of the thing is incredible. I really think some of the new Squiers are better than just value for money. Many are superbly thought out instruments and only need (at best) hardware upgrades to be as good as anything. You can hear a few more of these types of instrruments below. This is what it sounds like now -- sample one from Grounded (Stitches Album) -- sample two from Grounded (Stitches Album) -- Sample 3 from Leaving Here (Als's Casino). These tracks all used the same amp setup as above, except we added a Legend valve 5 watt amp for a bit of extra sparkle in the sound. |
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This is a standard MIM tele which is today modded with Haeussel T-Broads. I'm still not sure I've done the right thing. This axe came off the shelf sounding just lovely and most of the recordings of it on Al's Casino and Stitches are the original Fender pickups. Whether as a clangy, clean feature sound in Lost, or as a lead guitar in Stitches, or as a slinky and haunting feature in Language, the Mex seemed to shine every time. Don't get me wrong, the Haussels are great pickups, and I will always have them in one of my teles, I'm not sure it will always be this one. The only recording I have of it with the Haeussels is this one in Guess Who, which has a lot of digital nurgler on it. I need to give the thing a run live before I make any more decisions. I tried Lawrences (T1 and T2) in this axe as well, but they were too bright. I've heard in a Japanese 52 reissue and they sound great. Here's another samples of the stock standard tele in Love Walks In. |
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This is one of the famous Fender Squier 51s, which are no longer made. They are a modders dream, mostly because they are cheap, fantastic quality, really nice to play, and can sound great, which this one does. It's had major mods and a professional setup. I replaced tuners, nut, and bridge. Drilled through the body for the strings (like a tele) to get more solid contact and sustain. Removed all switching and replaced the pots with a 250 K on the Di Marzio area T neck and a 500 K pot for the TV Jones classic at the bridge. I strung this with 11s and haven't touched it since. It sounds amazing and is very versatile. Here it is on Grounded and Love walks in. In love walks in, we mixed it with a Collings acoustic, which I will show a little later. The 51 comes with a push pull pot to split the humbucker and one volume pot. No tone. We removed everything and now it just has the two pots which can be mixed to find just the right tone. The samples are clean and I will show some diry ones later. |