And it isn't mine.
The grandparents came to visit over the summer. Dad does some woodworking, and I thought he might do some work on my eldest's broken StratoTele. He decided that this was a bit more than he could handle, and got a Douglas SI13 superstrat from Rondo.
We did not meticulously document the unboxing, but I did spend some time with the instrument. It's HSS, humbucker in the bridge, single coils in the middle and neck. Middle pickup is reverse wound, just like you'd expect, to give you the nice hum cancellation. And, it has a Floyd Rose.
I'm Mr. Hardtail. Really. You can tell. All the Teles I put up, it's clear. Tune and forget it. With the Floyd, change the tuning of one string and you've changed the tuning for every string. My goodness! But I've figured out the magic for what hex bolt adjusts what. Intonation is weird with these. You adjust a Tele bridge a half-turn at a time. With a Floyd Rose, you loosen the bolt and can slide it the whole range, which takes it from an incremental adjustment to something that can slide way out of the way each time you try. But I got it together and it sounds good.
And it sounded like a Strat. I love the second-position switch, neck and middle, but the bridge humbucker has something to it. When I had it kinda set up, but before I really got into tightening the strings and fixing intonation, we plugged in and played some. I showed him a little "Gimme Shelter". It really has to be neck pickup through a dirty amp, doesn't it?
It feels good. A little flatter radius than I'm used to, but that's how they make Shred Machines. Flat fretboards and jumbo frets for tapping and bending. And it is slightly different in body shape, with a bit of the Jazzmaster offset thrown into the Stratocaster. I have been very happy with my STL50 from Rondo and I'm sure he'll be very happy with his SI13. We'll get some pics up, and maybe some audio or video. And, more than likely, some comments from the big guy in the comments.
2 comments:
Found a reason to keep old string packs. Recalled seeing advice to place a stack of coasters under the bridge when you're playing with the Floyd Rose. I don't have coasters. I do have lots of string packages. Good things to keep around.
Since I have the camcorder now, I'll try to get some vids of me playing around with it, maybe into the speakers in my room(rather nice clean, but you have to crank it up, although there's some nice overdrive on the low end), maybe into the Frontman. For the demo, may I please use the super-awesome-effect-a-mo-pedal-thing?
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