Counterpoint:

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 2:34 pm Once I swapped out the Lace Sensors for Fralins it became a guitar.

I KNOW I like Fralins, but I wonder about that strange!

Dipping in again quick to say that it's semi-amusing someone's mentioned Lace Sensors.

Even though they apparently entered the market in the mid-eighties, they are one of those things I always associate with the nineties, like this style of dancing, and Chevy Luminas. (My family had a Lumina back then, and I don't think I've seen one on the road, or even on TV, in ages. Wouldn't be surprised if all of them were recalled, smashed to bits, and then dumped in a landfill à la that failed E.T. game for Atari.)

That said, I honestly can't knock the Lace Sensors without A-B'd them with other sets. That aforementioned Strat Plus came with some, and they served me well enough, but I was less predisposed toward "tone chasing" and modding then.

Shit. I'm cured. I don't want them anymore. That was weird. It was like I really wanted a bad haircut and stopped before I got to the barber shop.

Lace: Alumitones > Sensors

Squier 40th anniversary jazzmaster that they were blowing out before christmas. Thought it would look too Masciscy but the pickguard color has a rosier appearance - doesn't show up well in pictures. This is a great guitar! Other than some fretwork I have to do past the 12th fret, the action is good, the bridge appears to be working, and the trem isn't even putting it out of tune (yet). I'm a sucker for bound necks with block inlays. I paid $360, but this is totally worth it at the $600 regular price. The pickups I guess are the alnico ones from the classic vibe series? They sound great in any case. I know people have been saying squier stuff right now is great, but I'm ecstatic. with like an hour of work this is a perfect guitar.

Niiiiice! I played one of those at GC, would've bought it but the neck was just a bit too chunky for me. $360 is a steal!

DaveA wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 4:36 pm Even though they apparently entered the market in the mid-eighties, they are one of those things I always associate with the nineties

Yeah me too. My strat is from '96. I don't even remember what I did with the lace sensors....

I am a big fan of the Red-Silver Lace Dually humbuckers. The right mix of fudge and clarity for me, and lots of output, which I like.

The Alumitones definitely sound like nothing, though that's kind of useful to me in a middle pickup. Good clear strummy sounds, good for fingerstyle. Not a 'classic' single coil sound though.

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Thu Jan 19, 2023 10:15 am

DaveA wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 4:36 pm Even though they apparently entered the market in the mid-eighties, they are one of those things I always associate with the nineties

Yeah me too. My strat is from '96. I don't even remember what I did with the lace sensors....

Yes, they might have come out in the mid-eighties, but Lace Sensors have that sort of vaguely urbane bougie look of certain nineties consumer items. There's an untidy overlapping of such sensibilities in fashion and industrial design from about the mid eighties to the mid nineties, a little confusing all of these years later.

Oh and it was the Chevy Lumina APV I had in mind earlier:



I might have put it down, people of today might scoff at such a thing, but ask yourselves, would you rather tour or putt around town in this or in a Tesla Cybertruck?

I bought a DOD Spectrum R-895 for $80 bucks the other day. For the price, I couldn't resist. Circa 1983, it's a 1U rack that's got flange, chorus, double tracker and "X2" which is more like a slapback. All analog. I wish I could find info on this, especially a manual, but after lots of internet scouring all I can find is a single old Reverb listing, a few mentions in forums, and brief mentions in some music publications. They must not have been very popular or around long. It looks like they did a similar digital multi effect in the same enclosure a few years later.

I can already tell I'm going to need to put some painters tape on the top with settings marked. Things go from very subtle to fucking bizarre. The wet signal can be modulated to do some insane pitch-bending-out-of-tune stuff that I've never heard from a pedal before. And if the regen is turned either all the way up or down with the speed and width up it does that thing like if you unplug a reel to reel and hear the signal die as the tape drags to a stop over the head. It's going to take me a while to dial it in (and, like I said, I gotta make notes). I'm going to try it with an expression pedal going and potentially get the 3rd hand involved too. Have yet to try it on bass or drum machine, but I'm looking forward to that.

Here's what it looks like;
https://reverb.com/item/6543170-dod-spe ... 895-chorus