Casio W96H, the watch I thought I'd never buy
I seriously thought I would never buy a Casio watch in this style...
...but I did, and it's great.
By "in this style", I mean the type with extra large digits on the face. Extra large for a Casio, that is.
Take the Casio W96H. The feature set and operation is identical to the W800H. Where the main differences lie is in size, weight and strap length. The W800H is 41.5mm tall, 35.5mm wide, 12.5mm thick and weighs 40g. The W96H is 37mm tall, 34mm wide, 11mm thick and weighs 30g. The W800H's strap is longer than the W96H.
I specifically avoided this style for a long time because I know the W800H doesn't fit my wrist well. I have one of those wrist types that's smaller and flat on top, which makes finding a watch that fits right difficult. But I decided to take a chance with the W96H and it worked out great. It's a keeper for me.
Out of every Casio watch I've ever owned, this is by far the easiest to read. And it's not just because of the large digits but also because the layout totally makes sense. Big three-character weekday at top left, big time in the middle, year at bottom left, month-day at bottom right.
Having the year displayed is useless 10 months out of the year. But in January and February it is useful for me because I routinely forget the year has changed for those two months. And the rest of the time, having the year displayed isn't in the way of anything, so it's not a big deal with it being there.
Feature set is minimal. Time, single alarm with snooze, stopwatch, dual time feature, and that's it.
As a tool watch however, the W96H really nails it where it counts. Ultra-legible time with date, weekday and year all on a single screen with zero clutter. The night light is green and works well too.
I wasn't sure I'd like this timepiece mainly because of sizing issues, but it fits my wrist correct, and I'm pretty sure the W96H is the only digital watch that has the largest digits in a smaller case size.
Thick vs. Thin electric guitar sound
I'm going into dangerous territory tackling this topic...
...because it's completely subjective. But I'm tackling it anyway.
The argument I've seen most for what defines thick vs. thin guitar tone is when Eric Clapton in 1969 switched over to the Fender Stratocaster from Gibson guitars. Gone was the "thick" sound of the Gibson, replaced by the "thin" sound of the Strat.
The specific thick Clapton sound that's being referred to was using a Gibson SG.
It is the pronounced midrange of the humbucker that really thickens up the sound more than anything else. And you don't need an SG to get it. The Ibanez RGA42FM can get the sound just as well, or pretty much any solid body electric with humbuckers.
Traditional Strats and Telecasters with single-coil pickups don't have a thick sound, nor are they meant to.
What single-coils are best at doing is clean tone. When you want the absolute best clean electric guitar sound, singles are required. There's just no arguing that point. When clean is the goal, get the singles.
For lead tones however, you may be in for a fight trying to get the lead sound you want with single-coil pickups.
Back in the 1970s when there was a lot of electric guitar experimentation happening, there were many attempts to make guitars that had both the crisp clean tones of the single and midrange-heavy lead tones...
...hence why the '72 Telecaster Custom came into existence. Single in the back, humbucker in the front.
Best of both words, right?
Not exactly.
Sometimes you want a humbucker in the back and a single in the front, and you can't get that out of a Tele Custom.
What about going with H/S? That brings about the problem of a loud rear pickup with buckets of midrange and a quiet trebly pickup in the front. And even if you have 4 controls (two volume, two tone), you either have to turn one pickup waaaaay down or the other waaaaay up just so they're not fighting each other constantly. Kind of annoying to deal with.
What about an HH guitar with coil-split humbuckers? That would work, right?
No, that doesn't exactly work either. Or rather, it works, but a common complaint by those who use humbuckers that split to single-coil is that a) the volume drops too drastically when split, and b) the split-to-single tone doesn't sound "single enough".
Yes, there are pickups that when split do retain the same volume as they do in full humbucker, but the same tonal problems remain. The humbucker doesn't have enough midrange bark, and the split single doesn't have enough top end treble bite.
If you want thick with midrange, go humbucker. If you want thin with treble, go single.
Many have tried to build the all-in-one guitar that has both the thick and thin tones. Heck, I even owned one myself at one point where I had a Fender Stratocaster HSS with a humbucker that split to single-coil.
In my experience, both thin and thick guitar tones can't be had in the same guitar. This is one of those instances where if you want it all, you have to own 2 guitars to get it. One loaded with singles, one with humbuckers.
The simple solution to have it all is owning both a Strat and a Les Paul, or a Telecaster and an SG, or a Jaguar and a Gretsch Double Jet... etc., etc.. Again, one with singles, the other humbuckers.
Is it possible to "thicken" or "thin out" an existing pickup?
With singles, the one I know to have the most "thickness" to it is the P90. The P90 brings the growl because it has more midrange response to it. Of course, the tradeoff with the P90 is that you lose some of that top end treble compared to a Strat or Tele single-coil pickup, but again, it does bring the midrange thunder when overdriven.
But where Strats and Teles are concerned, those are all voiced thin very much on purpose - which is how they are supposed to sound because that's where you get that great top end treble response from.
With humbuckers, the treble response of a single isn't there and instead pronounced midrange. And yes, that's how they are supposed to sound. That midrange is great for lead tones, "fuller" sounding jazz chords and so on.
Yes, there are some humbuckers that are voiced to have more treble than others, like the kind found in many Gretsch guitars. But still, a Gretsch won't be as trebly as a Telecaster bridge pickup - nor would you want it to be.
EQ doesn't fix everything
Using the Strat as an example, okay, so you don't have a lot of midrange response coming out of the pickups, so you just add in EQ at the amp and problem solved, right?
Well, if you have ever tried that, you know that doesn't magically change a Strat single to a humbucker sound.
But let's go two steps beyond that. You add in compression (this "squashes out" some treble and raises midrange some), and punch up the midrange EQ, and wire your Strat so that you have tone control on the bridge pickup (traditional Strat wiring does not have bridge tone control), allowing you to take out that biting top end treble by rolling the control down to around 5.
Does this work? Yes, you are better off than before with thickening up the Strat tone, but at the end of it all it's still not going to sound like a humbucker. At best you have a P90-ish sounding pickup at that point. That's not a bad thing, but still not a humbucker.
On the humbucker side of things, scooping out the midrange and punching up the treble control at the amp won't magically get Strat tone out of a humbucker either. You're just not going to get Strat-like treble bite out of a humbucker no matter what.
What's the all-in-one solution?
There is none. Nobody has ever been able to get both the thin and thick sounds in the same instrument. Many have tried.
In fact, I will give you a real example of a guitar that attempts to do it all that you can buy right now at the time I write this, the Schecter Ultra III.
You may look at that and say, "Three humbuckers? I've seen that before." Yes, but you haven't seen it where every pickup can be split to single coil. Look at those 3 switches on that guitar below the pickups. Those are split toggle controls for each pickup.
On paper, the Ultra III sounds like it can do anything. Every possible pickup sound you ever wanted out of one axe. Perfect guitar, right?
No, it's not perfect. It still has the same issues any guitar has with humbucker pickups that can be split.
So even when a guitar is built with all the control you'd ever want, in the end you would still have been better off just buying an all-single guitar and a separate all-humbucker guitar.
This is not to say the Ultra III isn't good. It's great. Very cool guitar. But it won't replace a Strat or a Les Paul.
Vintage certified electric guitars
Do "vintage certified" electric guitars actually exist? Not really. This is a problem for both buyers and sellers.
Somewhere around 2010, it started to become obvious that without too much effort, it was easy for some to craft a new guitar, distress or "relic" it, outright lie and say the instrument was actual vintage, then sell it for 1,000% more than what it was worth.
Anyone can buy a cheap relic Strat copy from China right now. It's ridiculously easy. Do I have a problem with this? No, I don't. But I do have a problem with people reselling them as the genuine vintage thing. Anyone who buys one of those copies for $300 with the intent of ripping someone off by reselling it for $3,000 here in the USA is an ass. If you buy the fake for yourself, fine, whatever. But if bought to resell, you seriously suck.
Most guitar buyers these days are fortunately well aware of what to look for when buying vintage electrics. But every year, makers of the fakes are getting better at covering every single thing you could possibly check to ensure a genuine vintage example.
It is at the point now where you have to get science involved just to identify a fake. For example, on vintage Fender electrics, there is a date stamp on the butt of the neck. Since it's not really difficult to make a new stamp look distressed and old, you would have to bring that ink under a microscope just to see if that ink was recently applied or not. And that's assuming you already had looked at actual old ink under a microscope on a genuine vintage neck previously so you know what to look for.
Sellers of actual vintage electrics have a really tough time these days
There are many guys out there that have real-deal vintage electrics but can't sell them due to the pervasiveness of fakes.
Let's say you do have a vintage electric. How can you prove it's legit? You can't. Even if you have the guitar itself, original case, original receipts and even the original hangtag, it doesn't matter. All that stuff can be replicated.
The only thing that could prove without any doubt that what you have is the real deal is if it were somehow "vintage certified"...
...except that doesn't exist. And it should.
Until this happens (which it probably won't), what can you do as a seller?
The only advice I can give is sell locally and get a lawyer involved.
You basically have to handle the sale of a vintage electric the same way as a vintage Rolex watch. You have to talk to the buyer, get to know the guy first, meet in person, and so on.
If you think things will go well, you then agree to meet in a police station parking lot to complete the transaction. Payment is only accepted with a certified bank check and nothing else. The transaction might even involve a trip to the bank just to make 100% sure the funds are there.
The lawyer is involved where you have an iron clad contract written up that basically says, "After you pay for this and receive the merchandise, you own it for the agreed price 100%. No refunds. No price guarantee. I can't guarantee the authenticity of this whatsoever and you understand this. The only thing that is confirmed true is that this is an old guitar and nothing more. It probably will have problems because it's old. But those problems are yours to deal with. Thanksgoodbyegetoutofmyface."
Yes, it's absolutely annoying to go through all this crap just to sell a vintage guitar. But until some kind of vintage guitar certification service is offered, that's just the way things are.
Schecter Reaper 6 wood may not be good
I've been noticing a trend with modern guitars recently, and it's not that great.
Take the Schecter Reaper 6. One of the finish options is Satin Inferno Burst. Good guitar? Yes. But what bothers me about it is the look.
The only styled finish on this guitar is the top of the body and most of the top of the headstock. The back, however... yeah, I'm not a fan of what Schecter did there. The guitar almost looks like a prototype that was never completed. But it's not a prototype. The Reaper model you'll see is the completed production guitar.
You may be saying to yourself, "Hey, I've seen this before just recently on something else..."
Yes, you have. Ibanez RGD Iron Label has a very similar appearance.
The back of that guitar has the same unfinished-like look just as the Schecter does.
I personally think the Schecter looks better, but again, I'm not taking a liking to all that wood showing.
What would make the look work better?
Stain or tint.
If the plain wood showing was either stained or tinted a few shades darker, that would make either the Schecter or the Ibanez much more attractive.
But until that happens, yeah this look isn't cutting it. Yes, it's different. Cool? Maybe. Exotic looking? No, and that's the look both these guitars are going for. Doesn't work.
My favorite China copy relic guitars
This article is just for the dudes, since as I've said before that "relic" guitars are absolute woman repellent. Let's see what we can get for cheap here.
Before continuing, never pay big money for a "relic" job. Buy cheap and stay cheap when it comes to these things.
I can understand guys who spend big cash for guitars that use exotic woods that have grain patterns, grain lines and so on that really pop that would look right at home in an orchestral setting. But as for the relic stuff, paying big for it is a total waste of cash. So again, buy cheap and stay cheap.
Here are the China copy "relic" guitars that are cheap and actually carry the look fairly well for what they are.
Also, I will provide tips at the end for easy ways to "relic" things yourself.
The paisley pattern on a Strat is just cool and always has been. It also takes very well to distressing as well.
It's interesting to note that even if you were to buy a real Fender with paisley, it's not exactly easy to come by. Aside from the Fender Custom Shop, I have only seen Strats in paisley come from Fender Japan.
For Teles, there is one and only one currently made by Fender at the time I write this, the Brad Paisley Worn Telecaster. But no Strat.
Blue Metallic (Candy Blue) Relic Strat copy
Out of the guitars I'm listing here, this is the best one because it needs the least. You'll notice on most China copy relics that the body is done correct but the neck is not. On these, the neck typically does have distressing on it. It still needs a little work (more on how to do that at the end), but still this is pretty darned good.
And who would have thought that blue heavy metallic would relic so well?
Like the previous guitar, the cool thing about this one is that yes, it does typically have both neck and body distressing.
I dig the fact that most who do these don't go too crazy with it. Some who do relics take off way too much finish, but this one is more reserved, which I consider a good thing.
When you look at these, some are an attempt at a copy of the signature Andy Summers Telecaster. So if you see an oddball electronics layout, that's probably why.
And if you do see that, does the switching work the same as on the real Summers Tele? I highly doubt it. The extra switches might even be there for show and do nothing, with the guitar just having a standard Telecaster wiring setup...
...but it has the look. Somewhat. It mostly carries the look for a relic Tele copy.
Last up, we have a Precision Bass copy.
To those that know basses, yes the pickup covers will most likely be wrong from no pole pieces showing - but as you'll see from listings, the back of the neck is usually distressed, and there's one other thing staring you straight in the face...
...a vintage-correct (mostly) bridge cover.
For those of you that aren't bass players, the fact this is a relic that comes with the correct bridge cover makes this worth buying alone. It's one of those stupid pieces of hardware that completes the look but you always have to pay out the nose for. But not on basses like this. It usually comes with it, and the bass is cheap.
Now let's look at ways to relic for cheap.
How to relic
The general rule of thumb for relic'ing an electric guitar is to burn then oxidize metal parts, and stain plastic parts.
I'll start with staining first.
It's ordinarily true that what you'll be staining will be pick guards and knobs.
To stain both, you use instant coffee - but it takes some experimentation to get it right.
For knobs, pour a mug of water (cold is fine), stir in a small amount of coffee, drop a plastic knob in for 30 seconds and then take it out to see how it looks. If no staining happened, stir in more coffee and try again. If nothing still happens, try staining for longer.
For pick guards, the process is the same but it requires a cookie skeet. Make your mix of coffee first, then pour into a cookie sheet enough to where you can submerse the entire pick guard in there. Then stain the same way you would for the knobs.
Where metal components are concerned, the goal is to make them look tarnished and slightly rusted.
Note before continuing: This is dangerous and you can burn yourself easily. Follow these instructions at your own risk.
One of the easier ways to burn off some finish from a metal component is by using a hibachi style grill. Put in some coals, light them, get them hot, then literally cook your metal until that finish starts coming off.
How much heat is required? I've no idea. You'll have to experiment.
How long will it take? I have no idea because finishing varies from part to part.
The easiest one to test your "cooking" on is a teardrop output jack from a Strat. That's a piece of metal that's thin and should have its finish burned off relatively quickly.
After burning the finish off, it's time to oxidize.
To promote oxidation, the easy way is just to leave the metal part outside and have it rained on a few times.
If you don't have the patience for that, you can promote oxidation pretty much instantly by spraying or dipping the metal part in bleach, salt water or vinegar.
How much tarnishing/rusting is good? That's up to you.
What about the body and neck?
The way to do this right is to sand all the finish off yourself, refinish in your nitro color of choice, let cure, then burn it off. This takes quite a bit of experimentation and time to do.
Could you do it with a urethane coated guitar? Yes, but it won't look right. If you're going to do it, you have to take your time, sand-sand-sand, then repaint-repaint-repaint, cure, burn it and hope for the best. Yes, it is as annoying as it sounds. And there are a million ways to screw it up.
And that's why you just buy a cheap China copy relic in the first place. Buy something where some basic relic'ing has already been done, then just finish up the metal and plastic parts yourself. Much quicker, much easier.