Q1: Which one of you folks flagged a photo of a Marshall practice Amp on this thread? Weirdness!

Q2: Who's arm is that with a tattoo in the reflection in the last photo? --Not mine I can assure you!

Yeah.. that would be an intense job. You would have to take off the frets, sand off the urethane lacquer, then pull out the dots, the put the new ones in, then sand it, do a full re-fret job, and re-lacquer the fretboard.

You wouldn't want some guy at guitar center to do something like that.

You are better off selling that guitar and buying a different one or just buying a new neck to swap in.

DallasTeleAg said:

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Yeah.. that would be an intense job. You would have to take off the frets, sand off the urethane lacquer, then pull out the dots, the put the new ones in, then sand it, do a full re-fret job, and re-lacquer the fretboard.

You wouldn't want some guy at guitar center to do something like that.

You are better off selling that guitar and buying a different one or just buying a new neck to swap in.

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Nah. I'll just stick with the dots! I love this neck!

To get dots out? I wouldn't think it would be that intense. Drill a hole in the center and pry them out is what I'd read in the past.

Fender lacquers their maple fretboards. You would have to sand that off.

Once you place the dot, you would have to sand it down to be flush with the board, which would make your board at the dots a different depth than without.

Ah, ok.

Uh oh...

https://reverb.com/item/70239099-fender-custom-shop-2023-fender-custom-shop-63-telecaster-candy-green

How have you not bought it yet? That flamy neck is stupidly awesome.

Quincey P. Morris said:

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How have you not bought it yet? That flamy neck is stupidly awesome.

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Because I negotiate!

Bad ass. I'm surprised they're still more expensive. Everything seems like it's been dripping like a rock lately.

Honestly, I could probably play hardball and wait a few days to see if he would come down even more, but i've already let a few of these slip through my fingers in the past. It's not like I don't have the money, and that neck is beautiful.

The only differences from what I have on my guitar are it's alder vs swamp ash, it's a lam board vs a slab board, and it's not double bound.

But at the end of the day, waiting for the perfect used guitar where every component is so custom could have me waiting until i'm 60.

DallasTeleAg probably flagged the marshal Bluetooth speaker at Best Buy

That neck is really just ridiculous. I don't know that I've ever seen a Fender neck with that much figuring.

Did you buy it?

Pics or it didn't happen (in a few days).

Wood definitely matters. People who say tonewood doesn't matter just have poor hearing.

Who are you, Eric Johnson??

I saw Eric Johnson at Rudder Tower one time. We had maybe 100 students there to see him total. Pretty incredible performer.

maroon barchetta said:

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Who are you, Eric Johnson??

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It's a Tele, not a Strat!

i'm friends with the guy who runs the entertainment side of a bar and grill in San Antonio. He told me Eric Johnson is a really nice guy, but is extremely OCD. He once fired (or yelled at, i can't remember the story exactly) one of his roadie/tech guys for putting the wrong brand of battery in one of his effects pedals.

The EJ pedals and batteries story has been going around for 30 years at least. Duracells over Energizers. He can hear the difference, etc.

Not sure how true it is.

I could believe it depending on the pedal--perhaps one battery is noisier than the other or holds its voltage better. If the power circuit had no filter it could be a problem.

When I was doing electronics design, we would work to account for the noise loops and range of input voltages and design the sensitivity out of the circuit...

Of course, it would take a highly sensitive ear to detect the difference, and I'm douting thus was a scientific test that EJ ran...

In this video, he mentions Fender recreating his Virginia model Strat.

There was something just not quite and he figured out there was a flat washer missing at the output jack. Adding this particular flat washer gave him the proper sound, at least to his dog ears.

I believe in tone woods. That a dude actually heard the difference because of a missing washer? Not so much. Same as that whole scene with The Edge in It Might Get Loud where is tech is imperceptibly turning a knob on a pedal and he's hearing a difference.

Maybe this is what separates the greats from everyone else.

This is from a page or two back but, yes, the little amp in the picture is the Positive Grid Spark Go and it has a headphone output. It also functions as a bluetooth speaker like the bigger Positive Grid amps - the Spark Mini and original Spark (which is sometimes called the Spark 40).

I actually keep the Spark Go tethered to my guitar strap and plugged into my guitar with the dinky patch cable so that I can use my headphones and noodle with it quickly when I have a spare minute. I have had a blast using all the different effects from the 'Tonecloud' on both the Spark 40 and the Spark Go. I've played almost solely acoustic (quite terribly) for the past 25 years because the electric I had from high school was kind of a POS. I never got into pedals/effects other than the 'overdrive' button on my tiny Crate amp.

As far as sound quality of the Go when not using headphones, my initial impression was surprisingly good given how small it is. Now that I've had a week or two play with it, there are definitely limitations. Some of the Tonecloud effects that sound great on the Spark 40 cause clipping/crackling on the Spark Go. Playing with the EQ or simply turning down the volume eliminates that but I'm guessing Positive Grid may tweak the Go firmware in the future to try to avoid the mismatch in behavior.

So you think a nice set of Bose studio headphones and Spark Go would be awesome for those nights that I just want to jam in the living room a practice?

Does it sound much better with headphones plugged in rather than the speaker itself?

That's really what I'm chasing, amazing tones in my headset.

Steven Barber

That's a great story, btw.

For those of you interested in the Spark amps, The Captain and Danish Pete take a deeper dive than most channels.

I find their choice of guitars interesting. I almost went for the Silver Sky SE over the Sire S7. Lee tends to choose an S7 often when doing a pedal or amp demo.

That neck does feel great!

Yeah, I would think so. I'm using it with a pair of Bose travel headphones (don't know what model) and it works well. But remember I'm coming from having never heard of a modeling amp 6mos ago. I can't believe the variety of effects/tones available through the app with a couple of taps on my phone.

Well that's even better if you say you have been running nothing but tube amps this entire time and you find the Spark Go pretty good