Telecaster To The Rescue

One of the first posts I made on this blog was concerning my G&L Korina Collection. I still have them all. Other than using the ASAT Bass to record Bird Stealing Bread a while back, I've barely played them. However, I've kept the Korina Classic Bluesboy, with its traditional Telecaster bridge pickup, in the upstairs rack just in case somebody needed it.

And, lo and behold, that somebody turned out to be me! On Saturday, I was seized by an odd desire to write and record a song. I had approximately an hour before my son would arrive from his week-long trip to Florida. I knew from experience that once he stepped in the house, nothing even remotely resembling the recording of music could take place.

Good. A deadline focuses the mind. (Or, in the case of what I'm doing right now, makes you write blog posts instead of doing your deadline stuff for Monday.) First off --- acoustic guitar and voice track, my '74 Gibson J-40 into my TASCAM DR-40. A lot of people talk a lot of shit about the Seventies Gibson acoustics. It's true, they are built in, ah, rugged fashion. Not a lot of delicacy involved. Some of them are even made from walnut. None of them will ever be worth anything. But this is the second one I've owned and I do love it. Played into the TASCAM, it has strength and character. One take and done. Fifty minutes left.

Set up the Bromberg for the bass track. Run through to practice and come up with idea. Then it's time to do the actual track. I don't like it, but I'll keep it low in the mix. Because I'm now twenty minutes into the thing.

Time for the electric guitar track. I'm hyped. This will be the first time I've actually plugged in my racing-stripe PRS Standard from 1988. Fire up the MESA Maverick. Headphones on. The way the DR-40 recorder works in overdub mode, I have to listen to the entire song, or at least the point up to the solo. So I sit for two patient minutes or so then play.

Ugh. Total generic PRS sound. It's so far from being right for this. The neck pickup lacks any bite and the Maverick is just squishing what's left into irrelevance. For the hell of it, I roll the tone all the way down. Yup, that's the authentic Santana tone. But I don't want it for this. Get back on the wall.

Thirty minutes to go, and twenty of those will be spent in Audacity putting the tracks together. I'll get two shots at this, max. I spot one of my Electra X340 Jacaranda Les Paul copies sitting around. That's the one. But wait, it's tuned to E-flat. Um, um, um... look around, twenty guitars and none of them are quite right.

But then I see the G&L Classic in the corner. I realize, all of a sudden, that what I've written is basically a pop country tune. It needs a Telecaster. Demands it, even. Plug in, tune up. After the slicked-back ease of the PRS, the ASAT is like driving a Greyhound bus. Flat radius fretboard. This takes effort to play. I quit the solo the first time through. Then the second time I summon my inner cowboy and give it a shot. That's it. I'm thrilled. Not a great solo, but I'm not a great soloist. It's good enough.

Ten minutes left. Oh, man. I placed the TASCAM incorrectly. The track's badly miked. The guitar sounds far away, hollow. It's not what I wanted. But it's still better than I was getting with the PRS. Sometimes you just need a certain guitar for a certain job. Or so I tell myself.

And the song itself? I'll do it right and put it up here. I'm not displeased with it. But it needs to be played again, correctly. No question, however, that when I play it again, all the PRS guitars will still stay up on the wall.