Here is the picture!
Bye
Today I write a very quick post that does not have anything to do with the guitar... it is about the solar eclipse (日食）I saw this morning in Kobe!
Here is the picture!
Bye
Here is the picture!
Bye
You have to forgive me for the long post but it took me something like two days to settle after this wonderful experience.... so in the end I am here on the blog to write about that. And I am taking it long....
First of all, I have to say that I always wanted to talk about this Japanese band I like, called "D_Drive"... I am just too lazy for writing but I won't miss this chance though....
The group I want to talk about in this post is original of the southern Japan region the one around Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto etc etc... (BTW, it is called Kansai). The group is made by two guitars, one bass and the drums and they play instrumental music (no vocals=no vocalist...). The music they play is quite difficult to classify, that is, they play a fast guitar over a rude bass and a powerful drums but it does not actually sound like metal, although the guitars are masterfully shredded (they sometimes shoot bursts of 16th at 175!!). They humbly call themselves "driving rock" but I honestly would like to classify them as a prog metal band. And a good one at this.
Of course you would like to listen to their music to have a better idea, so I suggest you to listen to this clip they have on youtube:
Of course describing music through words is not as good as you may think: we are not talking about a tool, we are talking about a way of communicate emotions. Moreover, there are not so many songs by them on Youtube, for this reason, I suggest you to buy some of their CDs to have an idea; you can find the MP3 version of their firs album "Something to drink?" on Amazon or buy the other albums from their official website.
Soooo, why did I do this long description? I wrote all this as an introduction for this part: this Saturday I went to listen to a mini-live that D_Drive held in my reference music store (Shimamura Gakki, Sannomiya). The reason why they came here to play was to introduce (and sell) the new instructional DVD from Seiji so it was a very, very particular live. To begin, the number of admitted people was limited (40 people max) and more, we were allowed not only to talk with them but even to take something like "personal tips" on how to play, how to set the sound, etc etc.... After a powerful live performance and an interactive instructional demonstration (through which I realized I need more training) we started a free talk session with all the people that wanted to interact. Seiji was actually mesmerized by a young drummer wanting also to play the guitar so I gave her a personal tuition!! Lucky!! I was so envious!
On my side, I gathered all my courage and asked Yuki about tips on how to execute the sweep-tap part of Cassis Orange. She GAVE ME HER GUITAR to play and she instructed me on the proper movement of the right hand during the sweep etc etc. I am studying that song and I think I will try to do a lesson on how to play that! If i find some motivation, of course. Anyway, there is an instructional DVD from Yuki where she explains the basis of fast guitar playing using "Cassis Orange" as an example. It is very nice and she is very "professional". You can find it here. IT comes with "Cassis Orange" score which, by the way, you can also buy from the official website for 300 Y (here).
In the end, we remained there for one hour and more interacting with the band. It was an awesome experience and this is the picture I took with them before coming home!
From the left (I link their blog with the names): Shimataro (bass), Yuki (guitar), Chiiko (drums) and Seiji (guitar even if I don't know why he has drumsticks!!). I am the only non-japanese, of course!
The most elightening thing about this live was coming, without any doubt, from the "human side" I saw in the members of the band. Seen from this close they actually look normal people you can actually talk with, with their weakness, their passions, all the things you cannot imagine through the songs. Shimataro and Chiiko look actually so happy when they play that you want to start to smile with them (!!), Yuki takes out an explosive energy when she plays and Seiji.... Seiji is so cool!
It looks like they are going to get back to Kobe for a slightly similar event at the end of June.... I am strongly thinking to go and meet them again! This time I will take there my guitar to have their signs on it!!!!
Rock on!
The group I want to talk about in this post is original of the southern Japan region the one around Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto etc etc... (BTW, it is called Kansai). The group is made by two guitars, one bass and the drums and they play instrumental music (no vocals=no vocalist...). The music they play is quite difficult to classify, that is, they play a fast guitar over a rude bass and a powerful drums but it does not actually sound like metal, although the guitars are masterfully shredded (they sometimes shoot bursts of 16th at 175!!). They humbly call themselves "driving rock" but I honestly would like to classify them as a prog metal band. And a good one at this.
Of course you would like to listen to their music to have a better idea, so I suggest you to listen to this clip they have on youtube:
A guitar karaoke version of Cassis Orange they executed in Tokyo (i think!)
As you can easily feel when you listen to this piece, they have a very high technical skill coupled with a good musical sense. The song is not boring (at least for me) even if it is instrumental and it has some passages where it shows some good mood swing for ex. between the funny intro riff and the gloomy bass solo (here is only a base though), and the sweep-tap part followed by the crazy run on the 1st and 2nd strings. The guitars are not only technically good but they also have a very good tone and expressiveness which, in my opinion is the most difficult thing to achieve as a guitarist (sound+soul through a perfect tone setting). There are guitarists that shred at the speed of light but their soul does not seem to jump on the strings and down through the amp... I can think as an example to Yingwie Malmsteen, Timo Tolkki, Kirk Hammet.... On the contrary, Seiji and Yuki seem to focus more on this aspect with the result of taking out some killer riffs with a powerful emotional charge (you cannot get it as the song is a karaoke... look for the live versions on youtube).Of course describing music through words is not as good as you may think: we are not talking about a tool, we are talking about a way of communicate emotions. Moreover, there are not so many songs by them on Youtube, for this reason, I suggest you to buy some of their CDs to have an idea; you can find the MP3 version of their firs album "Something to drink?" on Amazon or buy the other albums from their official website.
On my side, I gathered all my courage and asked Yuki about tips on how to execute the sweep-tap part of Cassis Orange. She GAVE ME HER GUITAR to play and she instructed me on the proper movement of the right hand during the sweep etc etc. I am studying that song and I think I will try to do a lesson on how to play that! If i find some motivation, of course. Anyway, there is an instructional DVD from Yuki where she explains the basis of fast guitar playing using "Cassis Orange" as an example. It is very nice and she is very "professional". You can find it here. IT comes with "Cassis Orange" score which, by the way, you can also buy from the official website for 300 Y (here).
The most elightening thing about this live was coming, without any doubt, from the "human side" I saw in the members of the band. Seen from this close they actually look normal people you can actually talk with, with their weakness, their passions, all the things you cannot imagine through the songs. Shimataro and Chiiko look actually so happy when they play that you want to start to smile with them (!!), Yuki takes out an explosive energy when she plays and Seiji.... Seiji is so cool!
Lately I was playing a lot around with my guitar and its sound.... some regulations can be done using the amp equalizer and a finer tuning can be achieved using a pedal tuner (I will probably review that sooner or later). Using both of these techniques you can obtain a good sound even from a crappy guitar but there's no doubt that the best way to obtain a good sound, is to use a good quality pickup.
The ZO-3 guitar comes with a very good humbucker pickup, powerful and aggressive from which, with the right amount of distortion you can obtain a good metal sound with deep and round bass. Unfortunately it also has a very bad drawback on the other side of the guitar sound spectrum.... it has really (and I mean really) crappy trebles. I noticed this thing while playing some solos around the 12th fret on the high E string coming from the low E.... I felt like I was loosing edge on the sound, with a lot of squeaks and difference in the overall sound volume.
Taking a closer look to the pickup itself, it seemed that tit was too big to be covered entirely by the strings, expecially the high E. When the strings do not vibrate right on the middle of the magnet and in the proper height, the sound gets really bad. The solution to this problem will never be really achieved by the mere use of an equalizer, not to mention that it would be nice to be able to play using only the sound straight from the guitar. I decided then to buy a new pickup.
Pickups are expensive. I mean, you have expensive and cheap pickups out there but there is no reason to waste money for a crappy and cheap pickup when you already have a decent one.... you have to go for the top end. However, even inside the mid-low price category you can find a very good brand of hand made pickups: I am talking about the Entwistle pickups (you can see the official website here). They are offering a quite impressive variety of pickups, from single coils to single coil-like humbuckers, to classic gibson style humbs.
What I luckily found and immediately decided to try is the so called "Hard Drive" humbucker which, unfortunately it is no longer manufactured. Here is a picture of it:
As you can easily guess from the picture, this pickup is not conventional! Instead of the small magnet poles that are so common among the most pickup designs, it has 12 Allen bolts which can be regulated and exceptionally stands out from the pickup body. As I saw this design I immediately realized that it was the best solution I could find for my problem: if you have 0.5 cm wide magnet, it is easier that the string will fall into its preferred position.
It is made by ceramic magnets custom wounded with polyurethane insulated wires. All the things ends up with a 15 kOhm resistance which is very good for powerful sounds like heavy metal and similar. Moreover, they state that the huge allen bolts also bring up the pick up inductance resulting in a greater power output and basses! Needless to say that I was restless while waiting for it to get shipped to my house! As soon as I got it I proceeded to install it in the guitar.
To install a pickup is not a difficult task even if it requires a little bit of knowledge: first, you need a wiring scheme with proper cable colors; second, you need a solder (and to be able to use it); third, in the case of the ZO-3, you need courage to proceed!
Ok, I will outline what I had to to to substitute the pickup in my ZO-3:
- I removed all the strings to freely access the pickup housing. At this step you can clear thoroughly the parts that are normally unaccessible.
- Unscrewed all the screws that hold down the pickup (the four on the corners first and then the regulation screws on the small sides.
- The ZO-3 pickup has a single coaxial cable that connects it to the volume knob, thus, there is no way to know which cable is which... guesswork! Moreover, I had to cut it to remove the pickup, so it is better to evaluate where to cut it for having enough cable left after the work.
- Proceeded to solder the new pickup in place of the old one, soldering the black cable to the outside of the coaxial cable and the green to the center.
- The ZO-3, does not have a ground so, to remove the noise (a lot) that arises after having the new pickup connected, you will be forced to connect the ground cable (fatty all metal on the new pickup) to some metal part of your guitar. I found it very easy to connect it to the built-in amp! You have two places where you can connect it... in my guitar it is the one that is closer to the bottom part of the guitar. However, it is easy to test if you placed it right: if it is wrong, and you turn on the guitar amp you will get a nasty squeak coming out from it and you can reconnect it to the right place. For doing this you will also have to remove the back but it is not a problem at all.
- Put back to the proper tension the strings and connected to the amp. Distortion up and strike.......
.......
.......
.......
....... Kabooommm!!! An explosion of sound came out from the amp! A powerful, round and deep bass sound came out from my distorted power chord.... a completely different kind of sound from the previous pickup. And the trebles are wonderfully sculpted and moreover, have the same output of the rest of the guitar. The voice of my guitar changed in a way I cannot explain! An I thought I could not explain it, so! I made some (very very bad) recordings of the "before" and "after", using some easy riffs with clean and distorted sound. I know the quality is very bad but I hope you will be able to get the difference. For this reason I place the links hereafter:
Fernandes Clean sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Dug4KWi9g
against
Entwistle Clean sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFjsCVo4laM
Fernandes Dist sound (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxbzZOXU-Zw
against
Entwistle Dist sound (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4AmFvCfSUM
Fernandes Dist sound (half distortion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydwlfdTt7qI
against
Entwistle Dist sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzViPMPazUs
Fernandes Dist sound (max distortion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwY_6W4kIjg
against
Entwistle Dist sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAkL5oVMsvQ
There are a lot of files to compare, so I hope you can get the difference between the two sounds.... I am not good in doing this kind of comparison, so I hope you will bear on me if you don't like it.
Anyway, if you have any question about this pickup, feel free to contact me!
The ZO-3 guitar comes with a very good humbucker pickup, powerful and aggressive from which, with the right amount of distortion you can obtain a good metal sound with deep and round bass. Unfortunately it also has a very bad drawback on the other side of the guitar sound spectrum.... it has really (and I mean really) crappy trebles. I noticed this thing while playing some solos around the 12th fret on the high E string coming from the low E.... I felt like I was loosing edge on the sound, with a lot of squeaks and difference in the overall sound volume.
Taking a closer look to the pickup itself, it seemed that tit was too big to be covered entirely by the strings, expecially the high E. When the strings do not vibrate right on the middle of the magnet and in the proper height, the sound gets really bad. The solution to this problem will never be really achieved by the mere use of an equalizer, not to mention that it would be nice to be able to play using only the sound straight from the guitar. I decided then to buy a new pickup.
Pickups are expensive. I mean, you have expensive and cheap pickups out there but there is no reason to waste money for a crappy and cheap pickup when you already have a decent one.... you have to go for the top end. However, even inside the mid-low price category you can find a very good brand of hand made pickups: I am talking about the Entwistle pickups (you can see the official website here). They are offering a quite impressive variety of pickups, from single coils to single coil-like humbuckers, to classic gibson style humbs.
What I luckily found and immediately decided to try is the so called "Hard Drive" humbucker which, unfortunately it is no longer manufactured. Here is a picture of it:
As you can easily guess from the picture, this pickup is not conventional! Instead of the small magnet poles that are so common among the most pickup designs, it has 12 Allen bolts which can be regulated and exceptionally stands out from the pickup body. As I saw this design I immediately realized that it was the best solution I could find for my problem: if you have 0.5 cm wide magnet, it is easier that the string will fall into its preferred position.
It is made by ceramic magnets custom wounded with polyurethane insulated wires. All the things ends up with a 15 kOhm resistance which is very good for powerful sounds like heavy metal and similar. Moreover, they state that the huge allen bolts also bring up the pick up inductance resulting in a greater power output and basses! Needless to say that I was restless while waiting for it to get shipped to my house! As soon as I got it I proceeded to install it in the guitar.
To install a pickup is not a difficult task even if it requires a little bit of knowledge: first, you need a wiring scheme with proper cable colors; second, you need a solder (and to be able to use it); third, in the case of the ZO-3, you need courage to proceed!
Ok, I will outline what I had to to to substitute the pickup in my ZO-3:
- I removed all the strings to freely access the pickup housing. At this step you can clear thoroughly the parts that are normally unaccessible.
- Unscrewed all the screws that hold down the pickup (the four on the corners first and then the regulation screws on the small sides.
- The ZO-3 pickup has a single coaxial cable that connects it to the volume knob, thus, there is no way to know which cable is which... guesswork! Moreover, I had to cut it to remove the pickup, so it is better to evaluate where to cut it for having enough cable left after the work.
- Proceeded to solder the new pickup in place of the old one, soldering the black cable to the outside of the coaxial cable and the green to the center.
- The ZO-3, does not have a ground so, to remove the noise (a lot) that arises after having the new pickup connected, you will be forced to connect the ground cable (fatty all metal on the new pickup) to some metal part of your guitar. I found it very easy to connect it to the built-in amp! You have two places where you can connect it... in my guitar it is the one that is closer to the bottom part of the guitar. However, it is easy to test if you placed it right: if it is wrong, and you turn on the guitar amp you will get a nasty squeak coming out from it and you can reconnect it to the right place. For doing this you will also have to remove the back but it is not a problem at all.
- Put back to the proper tension the strings and connected to the amp. Distortion up and strike.......
.......
.......
.......
....... Kabooommm!!! An explosion of sound came out from the amp! A powerful, round and deep bass sound came out from my distorted power chord.... a completely different kind of sound from the previous pickup. And the trebles are wonderfully sculpted and moreover, have the same output of the rest of the guitar. The voice of my guitar changed in a way I cannot explain! An I thought I could not explain it, so! I made some (very very bad) recordings of the "before" and "after", using some easy riffs with clean and distorted sound. I know the quality is very bad but I hope you will be able to get the difference. For this reason I place the links hereafter:
Fernandes Clean sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Dug4KWi9g
against
Entwistle Clean sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFjsCVo4laM
Fernandes Dist sound (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxbzZOXU-Zw
against
Entwistle Dist sound (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4AmFvCfSUM
Fernandes Dist sound (half distortion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydwlfdTt7qI
against
Entwistle Dist sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzViPMPazUs
Fernandes Dist sound (max distortion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwY_6W4kIjg
against
Entwistle Dist sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAkL5oVMsvQ
There are a lot of files to compare, so I hope you can get the difference between the two sounds.... I am not good in doing this kind of comparison, so I hope you will bear on me if you don't like it.
Anyway, if you have any question about this pickup, feel free to contact me!