Can the Gibson Firebird X be saved?
A Gibson Firebird X is a ridiculously expensive guitar that looks like a children's toy. Oh sure, it's got every single feature you'd ever want, including one that you don't: The fact that when the proprietary battery dies, it renders the instrument unplayable until you put in a freshly charged battery. I'm not kidding. But it's New! and Interesting! and Innovative! Yeah, well the guitar community said to Gibson that they can take their new, interesting, innovative nonsense and shove it.
I've actually seen an X in person. It was at Guitar Center in Tampa and I asked the sales guy if any of them sold. One sold. Just one. And bear in mind this was at the height of the X's popularity. And no, I didn't play it. I could have if I wanted to, but I just didn't see the point.
The Firebird X could be saved... if it wasn't a Firebird X
Imagine for a moment if the X was a regular electric guitar with a passive pickup set, finished with a dark wine red color (see example of that color on this Epiphone), had an ebony fingerboard with rectangle block inlays and was priced at $900 or so for a USA model, and $500 for an Asian-made Epiphone model. I guarantee you Gibson would have sold every one of them and there probably would have been demand for more. But unfortunately, nobody at Gibson is that smart.
I honestly believe the Firebird X shape isn't that bad, but the styling choices are what make the guitar look like a toy more than anything else.
The guitar both in photo and in person just looks cheap. The swirl-style finish makes the body look like it's made out of plastic. The maple board with dot inlays looks like something you'd find on a Jay Turser guitar that sells for well under $200. The knobs and toggle switches make the guitar look more like a video game controller than an instrument.
Now if you took all that crap out, simplified the electronics to just be one push/pull volume (for coil splitting), one push/pull tone (for further coil splitting or possibly a boost switch), and a 5-way selector, finished the guitar in a solid color and put on a dark fingerboard with proper upscale inlay work, then yes, the X would be a great guitar that players would actually want.
Will it ever happen?
Doubtful.
Gibson does have enough talent to produce new and interesting guitars. But they keep missing the mark with bad color choices, useless features that nobody wants and a price point nobody can afford.
I do hope Gibson saves the design and reintroduces it as a simplified, mid-priced Epiphone model. The X design does have potential if it's done right the second time around, should that happen.
Squier Jazzmaster gets upgrades with both new and 21-year-old parts
My Squier Jazzmaster developed an electronics problem. The volume pot developed a nasty dead spot around a 3/4 turn, and the tone pot was getting a bit scratchy.
I'm not a guy who knows how to work on electronics when it comes to guitars. Or to be more accurate, I can work on them, but for anything outside of a normal setup or a simple soldering job, I'm not that good at it.
Stratocaster and Telecaster wiring is easy. Jazzmaster and Jaguar wiring on the other hand is a bit more complicated. Not insanely complicated, but I'm not familiar with it.
Fortunately, I know people that know how to work on guitars and now my Jazzmaster is all fixed up and slightly upgraded, so here's the story on that, along with a fair amount of guitar tech-talk.
Pots
Traditional Jazzmaster and Jaguar wiring uses potentiometers that are totally different from other Fender or Fender-style guitars.
The vast majority of Strats and Teles use 250K audio taper pots.
Jazzmaster and Jaguar electronics however use a 1meg linear taper for the volume pot and a 1meg audio taper pot for the tone control. I'm specifically talking about the lower lead circuit controls here and not the upper controls on the top horn.
In basic terms, what this means is that the volume pot has a fast cutoff while the tone pot has a more gradual cutoff.
Here's the bogey, however: While I was pretty sure the Squier Jazzmaster uses 1meg pots (the sound the guitar produces makes that fairly obvious), I had no idea whether it was using the traditional linear-volume/audio-tone pots or if they switched it up and did audio-volume/audio-tone.
I took a guess that it uses linear-volume/audio-tone. Fortunately, I was right because the resistance curve of the pots when in use still sounds the same as before.
Actually, that's not true. It sounds slightly different now, but for other reasons that I will mention right... now.
Things done, things fixed
Under the pick guard, the wiring was redone to be more of the traditional Jazzmaster style.
In addition to the replacement pots, copper shielding was installed, and a good amount of re-soldering was done because of Squier's "glob o' solder" way of doing things.
I provided the tech an electrical diagram of a Jazzmaster. When the guitar was finished, he said Squier mostly followed the original specs, but there were a few things that were done by the factory as cost-cutter measures. All of those cost-cutter things were found and attended to appropriately. As of now, my Jazzmaster is more true to original mid-1960's electronics spec.
The only stuff changed out were the lead circuit pots and a few wires. No other mods present other than the shielding, which really doesn't count as a mod.
How does it sound now?
The signal path has definitely cleaned up quite a bit. And since it now has proper grade pots in it, the treble increased to the point where it "screeches" a bit on 10. However, that is what traditional Jazzmaster wiring is supposed to sound like; this is commonly known as an "ice pick" sound. I'm okay with this, because turning the volume down a little cures that easily, being the volume pot is linear.
Also, the front (neck) pickup has more output to it now. Because of that, it's now louder in a good way. The rhythm circuit also has a little more treble response to it.
The immediate improvement I have is with the volume pot. I can now make very small adjustments when I want to whereas I couldn't before. It's nice having a good, proper linear volume pot on my Jazz.
The '93 USA Strat makes its contribution
I bought some Gibson "witch hat" style knobs for my Jazz. However, they don't fit on the new potentiometer posts, nor do my old Squier knobs fit on them either.
The knobs you see in the photo at the top of this article are from my '93 USA Stratocaster. Yes, I have 21-year-old knobs on my Jazz now. I cleaned them up as best I could since they were a bit dingy, and they have natural staining from being as old as they are. But the dirt-yellow (colored that way from age) lettering on the knobs does fit the look of the guitar quite well.
Why wouldn't the old knobs fit?
Replacement pots use American-spec post thickness, so they're slightly wider than Asian-spec.
From a distance, it looks like nothing was done, but a lot was done
Ordinarily, when a guitar player hears "modded guitar", he thinks that some major thing was done to the instrument that physically alters its appearance. That's not the case with my Jazz. It looks like any other Squier Jazz, save for the fact that what's under the pick guard has been significantly cleaned up along with the installation of new lead circuit pots.
The mods done may not be anything major, but I have a guitar that works 100% again, so I guess this could be considered a repair + upgrade + minor mod.
No love for the Fender Mustang
I do champion Fender design, but I don't like all their guitars. One guitar I simply can't stand is the Mustang.
Take the Fender Classic Series Mustang, for example. I love the look of that Mustang. Heck, I even love the look of it in a Squier flavor. Either guitar looks amazing.
Do I have a problem with the way the guitar plays? Not at all. The Mustang a very comfortable player. Small, light and easy to thrash around.
What I can't stand about the Mustang are the pickup slider switches.
It is the pickup switching that absolutely infuriates me when playing a Mustang with traditional electronics, be it by Fender or Squier.
For those not in the know, the technical name for a Mustang switch is a phase slider. How they work is like this:
One slider works for one pickup, the other slider for the other. Easy enough to understand.
Each slider has 3 positions. Back position (towards the bridge), center position which is OFF, and front position (towards the neck).
In-phase and out-of-phase pickup combinations only occur when both pickups are on. That means when a single pickup is on, it doesn't matter if the slider is set to front or rear because it will sound the same in either position. But when you engage both pickups, that's when you can get the in-phase and out-of-phase combos.
What is an out-of-phase sound?
On the Mustang, the out-of-phase sound is best described as "honky" or a "nasal" type tone. Almost no bass to it. Good for country picking or some surf tones with a lot of washy spring reverb. Absolutely awful when distorted in any way.
How do Mustang pickup selections work?
Here is a quick cheat sheet. B means back (switch towards the bridge), C means center position OFF, F means front (switch towards the neck).
CC - Both pickups OFF
BC - Rear pickup only
FC - Rear pickup only
CB - Front pickup only
CF - Front pickup only
BB - Both pickups, in-phase
FF - Both pickups, in-phase
BF - Both pickups, out-of-phase
FB - Both pickups, out-of-phase
In plain English, here are the pickup slider switch positions you will use most often, as the Mustang in reality only has 4 pickup combinations:
BC (slider 1 back, slider 2 center-position off): Bridge-only.
CF (slider 1 center-position off, slider 2 back): Neck-only.
BB (slider 1 back, slider 2 back): Both pickups.
BF (slider 1 back, slider 2 front): Both pickups, out-of-phase sound.
"Okay, cool. I get it now. But why do you not like this?"
It's the positioning of the switches and how you switch that drives me nuts.
I do dig the fact the Mustang has 2-pickup combinations that can be either in-phase or out-of-phase, which is arguably the best part of the guitar's electronics; no other Fender nor Squier does this.
Quick pickup switching however is simply not possible.
If for example, if you wanted to quickly switch from the rear to the front pickup during a song, you literally have to carefully push the rear slider to the center, then jump to the front slider and push it in either direction to get the front pickup turned on.
In other words, there's no way to do it quick.
Is there a better way to wire a Mustang?
I wouldn't wire it differently because that takes away from the guitar's tonal character.
I would however ditch the sliders and use two 3-way toggle switches instead.
Imagine for a moment the Mustang had no slider switches above the pickups, and instead had two 3-way toggle switches side-by-side on the bottom horn. That to me makes a whole lot more sense. You get all the same functionality, plus the ability to quick-change one-handed pickup selections.
"I don't care about the out-of-phase thing because I never use it anyway. Couldn't I just wire it with a single simple 3-way toggle always-in-phase?"
You don't have to. Fender already makes one with the Fender American Special Mustang. That model is as simple as it gets for Mustang pickup switching, as it dumps the slider switches completely and offers a nice, easy 3-way toggle on the bottom horn.
"But I don't get single-coil sounds!"
Wrong. You do. Fender was smart enough to make the volume control a push/pull coil selector. Pulled out, on the bridge it selects rear-side (bridge) coil and on the neck it selects front-side (neck) coil. Think of it as Telecaster-style, because that's basically what you get when the volume push/pull is pulled out. And no, that's not a bad thing because it's a cool sound.
True, it's not a traditional Mustang as there's no vibrato system and you don't get the out-of-phase combinations. But it is the absolute easiest Mustang to operate, no question about that.
Personally, I'd rather see a Mustang with two single-coil pickups, two 3-way toggles instead of the phase sliders and the vibrato on it. But that's just me. And I'd most likely hack up a Squier Mustang to do it. I'd love to have the out-of-phase option, just with different switching.
Even though I don't like the sliders on the Mustang, a Squier version of it may find its way into my guitar lineup someday. I'd simply have to deal with the fact that quick-changing a pickup selection isn't an option.
Two final notes:
First, if you're the type of player that does not switch pickups often when playing, you can use a Mustang as-is once you play around with the switching and understand how it works (which takes all of about 2 minutes to learn it).
Second, for those wondering if you smack the switches often when playing, the answer is no, you don't. Or at least not for most people. From my experience playing a Mustang, I didn't find myself hitting the switches when picking. Your experience may be different however. The only way to know if you do or not is to get one and experience it yourself.
The easy way to cut a Florida electric bill for cooling by more than half
For a good chunk of my New England life, I lived with no A/C whatsoever because it simply wasn't required. Only for maybe 1 to 2 weeks out of the year did you really feel the heat and cranked up A/C if you had it.
It's during the winter months that New England living is most expensive primarily due to the heating oil bill. It's absolutely required to keep the pipes at a minimum 55F, else they'll freeze and you have no running water.
As crazy as this sounds, the best course of action to save cash on heating oil during winters in New England is to use an oil-filled electric radiator. You set the house thermostat to 55F so the pipes don't freeze, put the radiator in the bedroom, set to as low of a setting as possible to stay comfortable and the heating oil cost for the rest of the dwelling won't skyrocket.
Florida has the exact opposite issue. The winter months are the most pleasant because on most days you don't need to run A/C. But from April at the time I write this until about mid-September, people are cranking up A/C units everywhere and spending huge dollars just to cool their houses and apartments.
I live in a 2-bedroom apartment, and my electric bill last month was $57. That's about as low as you can get it in Florida. And bear in mind that cost includes running cycles of my own electric clothes washer and electric dryer every month.
How do I keep my electric bill so low? I know fans and know how to use water for cooling effectively.
Knowing the difference between air cooling and air conditioning
In simple terms, cooling the air cools but adds humidity. Conditioning the air cools and does not add humidity.
The most common way to cool the air is by use of an evaporative cooler. And I can tell you right now that this does not work in Florida because there's too much moisture in the air for it to have any effect.
Dirt cheap easy ways to get cool without A/C
Fact: Most of the time you don't need A/C at all, even in Florida.
More often than not, if you want a cooler room, all you need is moving air - if it's the right kind.
"The right kind?"
Yes. I'll explain.
Ceiling fans for most people are worthless if that's the only fan you have. It doesn't matter whether it's pushing air down or up because there's simply not enough air flow going on.
A combination of window fans, pedestal, box and/or ceiling fans with a periodic splash of water however can make all the difference.
Most fans on medium setting will only use around 50 watts per fan at most. So if you ran two fans, one in the window and a pedestal, and ran that 24 hours a day, that's 2.4 kWh a day or around 72 kWh a month.
To put this in comparison, a window-mounted 9,000 BTU/hr air conditioner run only 8 hours per day eats up 321 kWh a month on average. If it's a central air system, the same 8 hours a day for a month spikes to 857 kWh a month.
I state this because if you were wondering why fans are so much cheaper than A/C, now you know. Central A/C uses a ridiculous amount of electricity. Fans don't.
Fans I recommend
Twin window fan - Fits in just about any window, and nearly all of them have 3 settings. The first setting brings air in, the second setting reverses both fans to take air out, and the third setting has one fan bringing air in and the other blowing out. The third one is actually quite useful because it's an easy way to get fresh air circulating in the room instead of having the air direction being one-way-only.
20 inch box fan - Old-school style box fan. Cheap, quiet, works. Use on the floor or in the window if it can fit there. Don't buy one. Buy two.
20 inch high velocity fan - I only recommend one of these to those with large rooms that need something that can really throw some air. Any fan billed as "high velocity" will be loud, and that's just the nature of the way they are. The loudness won't be too much of a bother in a large room because you can place it far away from you and still feel the air flow. And yes, the price of the fan is dirt cheap compared to an A/C bill; it's lower than you think.
9 inch fan - The best use of this one is on the floor when working at your computer desk. Set it down, point up towards you and feel the breeze. Just make sure your floor is clean first or you'll be blowing dirt up at you.
How does a splash of water help keep cool?
Okay, so you've bought your fans and you can now feel the air. Good. But there are times when you still feel too hot.
No problem.
Wet your head. Grab a hand towel, soak that, put on your head and make it damp. Then sit in front of one of your fans and watch how fast you cool down.
Want to feel even cooler? Wet your neck as well.
Want to feel cold? Get a t-shirt, put it on, soak just the shoulder area of the shirt and sit in front of a fan. You'll be shivering in less than 2 minutes.
"What about when I sleep at night?"
The old trick to keeping cool while you sleep is by use of a box fan. Take the box fan and set it against the edge of the bed on the floor so that air runs under the bed. That air will escape out the sides, up and around you. Combine that with a pedestal fan pointing at you and you'll stay cool enough to sleep without A/C and be comfortable.
If you want to make it even more effective, make sure the headboard side (as in where your pillows go) isn't against the wall. Air will go under the bed, hit the wall and escape up near your head for a nice soft breeze.
People in Florida are already cranking up the A/C...
I only turned on my central air once since 2014 started; it was for 5 minutes and that was only to check if the central air system is working properly. Other than that, it's remained off.
That can't be said about other locals however. Even in my own neighborhood, I've been hearing those central air units fire up as early as last month. What a waste.
Bear in mind I'm not talking about people with children or infants using their A/C here. I'm talking about regular non-senior adults, many of whom don't have any children living in the house. And they're all turning their homes into freezers.
It's not that I'm not totally anti-A/C as there are Florida summer days that require it. But it's not even summer yet and people here are blasting the A/C and paying huge electric bills already.
Do none of these people know how to use fans? I guess not.
No more Ovation guitars from Connecticut
Fender owns the Ovation guitar brand, originally brought into being by Charles Kaman, hence Kaman corporation (sold to Fender in 2007).
Anyway, the New Hartford Ovation guitar factory is closing down, so that literally means there will never be another USA-made Ovation guitar made ever again. Yes, the brand will live on, but all the guitars will be made in China, South Korea and Indonesia.
Did Fender totally botch up Ovation?
Not really.
The Ovation brand is not what comes to mind when you think of acoustic guitars, which is what the brand is (or should I say was) known for. When you think of "acoustic guitar", you think of Martin, Takamine, Yamaha and maybe Washburn. But not Ovation.
A typical reaction when you mention Ovation to a guitar player is, "Oh? I didn't think they were still made." Yeah, it's that bad. The Ovation brand was barely noticeable in Fender's lineup.
Yes, it does totally suck that yet another factory had to close down - especially one from Connecticut. And eliminating 50 jobs in this economy doesn't exactly make Fender look rosy, so to speak.
If there's anything to be said where Fender messed up, it's they probably simply didn't know what to do with Ovation after they got it.
Fender will most likely continue to clean up shop
I see Fender as the General Motors of guitars that's basically doing the same thing GM did when they dumped Saab, Saturn, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Hummer, Saab and whatever other brands they nixed - except that Fender is doing it real slow with their brands.
In 2002, Fender dumped Sunn and discontinued production. In 2013, they did the same with Hamer guitars. At some point in the 2000s, Fender dumped Tacoma acoustic guitars. All of these were smart decisions...
...but more needs to be done.
A Fender brand that I don't even know why it still exists is Charvel. There are barely any regular-run models available and that brand almost exclusively operates as a custom shop. They might as well totally operate as a custom shop and dump all the regular-run guitars altogether.
Jackson is another Fender brand that needs to go away or be scaled down to being only a custom shop.
Fender as far as I'm concerned just needs to dump any non-performing brand they have from regular production. Just get rid of the regular-run models and scale back a few brands to being just custom shops.
If that's what it takes to keep Fender around, I'm all for it.