Premier Guitar did a rig rundown on Eric Johnson's tour last year. The link is below. It may provide some insight.

http://www.premierguitar.com/Video/20110906/1629/Rig_Rundown_Eric_Johnson.aspx

Hello, all, thanks for your helpful posts. A further update.

1 I risked taking the EJ Strat out to one of the UK's premier jams in London's Denmark Street last night. It's always quite difficult to get a good sound in the few seconds between sets at jams which is why I always pack a good transparent stompbox like my Freekish Blues Alpha Drive or Barber Burn Unit and set the amp to clean. The EJ sounded ok, maybe a bit thin. None of the usual compliments on my tone, though, and lots of people getting way better sounds from the same backline. One of the other good players there kindly played the EJ for one number so I could listen to it, and he found the same problems.

2 I spoke to the only other person I know who had an EJ, a high-end guitar and amp dealer and excellent Strat player himself. It was not an encouraging conversation. He'd owned one when they first appeared and he became frustrated with it and got rid of it for very similar reasons. He now uses a Suhr C2 and swears by it. His advice? "Get rid of it. You'll never overcome what you are describing and which I understand from my own experience, for example by changing pickups".

This is not going well! I doubt there is an obvious electrical/electronic fault, but as I'm seeing my tech later anyway, I'll have him look it over just in case. I am playing in the house band at another jam tonight through my own tube amps and will give it another, longer outing (though I will also have my excellent Mexican-made '01 roland-ready Strat with stock cheapie pickups as a spare as I will also be playing guitar synth on some numbers).

Everything I have read suggests that the EJ should be a damn good Strat, certainly no thinner or less full-sounding than a regular one, and EJ's Strat tone points in a fuller, warmer direction. This guitar is simply nothing like that. I didn't buy it to play funk chops, but to play mainly lead. Double and treble stops, especially involving the second and third strings, are downright unpleasant. Rolling the treble off on the guitar or amp masks the problem, but also muddies the sound and loses the note definition I crave for blues/rock/fusion.

There are good and bad examples of any guitar. I reckon by tonight I will have tried everything, and will know for sure whether I've simply landed myself with a dud....

Ha. Well that is all very interesting, thanks for the update.

It's curious, to be sure, but perfectly possible that nothing is at fault and the guitar just doesn't make the sound you like. After all, there's nothing wrong with finding a certain model is not for you - that's why the world is full of different ones.

The only remaining thing that surprises me is you say you do like the sound of your Mexican Strat. In itself that's perfectly reasonable, but it does mean it's not intrinsically Strats that are the issue, just the EJ version. So then I don't see why it can't be put right by switching in different pickups. Eric worked hard with Fender to procure a particular grade of enamel coated winding wire for those pickups which he felt captured the exact '50s-ish sound he was chasing. So they're unusual pickups and no doubt not for everyone. (Though I like 'em!)

The timber on the EJ is slightly unusual in as much as it is spec'd to have a quartersawn neck, which most Fenders don't. But with no disrespect to Eric's legendary ears I just flatly don't believe the precise angle of the grain in the neck is making that much difference. Also, the breaking angle of the top strings over the nut is slightly less than on most Strats because Johnson had them omit the stringtree and shave the headstock face back a couple of mil and also use staggered tuners to ameliorate but not entirely compensate for the difference. I think any tonal effect that has is very tiny indeed - I can't hear it on the two EJs I've handled (though of course Eric says he can). In other words, I strongly doubt the construction of the instrument is at the heart of this.

Rockbeare, to help us take a bearing on the matter and also out of simple curiosity, which guitar gives you your ideal sound?

Cheers - C

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I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to discribe as the problem. Are you saying that the pick ups are too bright?

Assuming that there is nothing worng with the pickups try:

If so you can change other things lot the pots and capaciters. This will change the overall tone of the guitar.

Also mess with the tone knobs. I didn't like how hot the pickups on my Hwy1 were, but the moment I turned the tone knob down to 4 and used position 2 & 4, with overdrive, the guitar sounded great.

If you're comparing EJ's to Mexican pickups. I find the same. Ceramic magnet, overwound singlecoils drive an amp in a far more pleasing way than alnico's do.

They overwind the ceramic magnet pickups to alleviate some of the harshness produced by having a (usually) much stronger magnet. (in excess of Alnico . It makes for a much fuller sound.

If you can try a Deluxe with SCN's fitted, do. They have a really balanced sound, almost like a flat eq. I've never struggled to get a good driven sound with them and I use a hell of a lot of gain at times.

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No no and no

Hi,

You say you're in Devon?

Well I know it's a little way, but if you happen to be passing Bristol at some point, PMT there has an EJ on the wall* - that way you could at last compare it to another EJ to see whether it's something unique to your guitar or actually the design of the pickups that's causing your issues...

AJ

*at least they did when I was there 2 weeks ago...I suppose it could have sold in the interim....

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How did it sound to you?

Hi again, folks, and thanks for your various posts. I gigged the guitar again, this time for longer and the tone was pretty treacherous, even through the sweet-sounding Egnater Rebel 30 1x12 combo.

I really like the chassis, so before I resort to the nuclear of option of selling the guitar and retiring disappointed, I've arranged to have a set of hotter, warmer Lollar Special S pickups delivered on a 'fix the problem or return them' / no risk basis.

In answer to the question as to which guitar gives me my ideal sound, there is no one answer. I'm primarily a blues/rock/fusion player, but I have lots of guitars which I use for different things (see rockbeareguitars.com).

On the positive side, this particular guitar looks, plays and sounds very much like several of the original '57's I've looked at but declined to purchase because of their thin, glassy overdriven sound. (I wanted to buy the only fat-sounding one I played but it wasn't for sale!). So on that dimension, it's excellent.

My issue with it is that sounds nothing like listening to Eric Johnson playing his Strats would suggest. Even after the application of as much processing as he uses, the glassy sound shows through.

I'll report back one final time on whether a change of pickup solves things - I sincerely hope it does.

So the real problem seems to be Your not Eric Johnson. I have a CS Eric Clapton strat and I sure don,t sound like Clapton either. I don,t blame the guitar.

Thing is, and I guarantee this, you could record a les paul, a strat and a telecaster in a good studio. By the time the recording has been mastered you'll never tell the guitar sounds apart with a half competent engineer.

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No no and no

Rockbeare glad you've worked out a possible solution to your problem. I hope it works for you. I believe your ear is a little more refined than mine. I thoroughly enjoyed my romp thru your website. On a side note I was looking for a decent cheap overdrive to plug into my pedalboard and I might just throw that Joyo in for grits and giggles to see what happens.

Ah-ha! Well, that's given me a very enjoyable half hour. I've looked at that site before, but didn't connect it with this thread till now. Lot of thought-provoking things to see there: I especially like the colour and topwood on that '58 Les Paul. I always like the maple when it is less shouty and more quirky and individual. Be great to hear something of the history of that guitar, if it's known? (Out of curiosity about whether it's had any notable owners.) Also, I'd love to see a photo of the back of the headstock.

Many other good things to look at on that site too.



So we see! Still, amongst your stable you must have something that gives you the type of sound you are looking for and not finding in your EJ. Be useful to know what that is...?



Frankly, the conclusion we're coming to is that the typical sound of a '57 Strat is just not what you're looking for. As you say, the EJ captures it well, which is why it's not satisfying you.

I'm betting what's at the root of this is indeed the pickup winding, not withstanding your doubts on page one of this thread about whether changing the pickups will help.

As we know, not all vintage pickups were created equal. Forum user Nikininja and I spent an evening with Trev Wilkinson, who worked for some years with Leo Fender and also knew Seth Lover well and indeed bought up one of his old winding machines.

He described to us the manufacturing process back then: when the coil wire broke on the winding machine they could stop it, re-join the copper wire on the pickup in question and start it up again. However, that slowed the whole process down too much so instead when a wire broke they just left it and ran the machine till the rest of the pickups were done. They'd put the broken ones aside in a box till the end of the day and then work to finish their winding individually. However, by then they had no idea how many winds a coil already had on it when the wire broke, so they had to guess how many more to put on to complete it. They just did that by eye, with the result that some '50s and '60s pickups ended up being wound a lot hotter than "standard" spec, others somewhat under.

Which is a long way round saying that I bet the '57 Strat you liked but couldn't buy happens to be one of those with a noticeably over-wound pickup or two in it. It would be very interesting if you had the opportunity to put a meter on its pickups to compare them to others - but that's asking a lot of its owner, of course.

Anyhow. If your pickup swap on the EJ doesn't work after all I'm looking forward to seeing it on Ebay (I mean that humorously) with its original pickups. That sound works for me, even if not for you!

Good luck - C

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Dulpicate message removed

Hi again folks, an update this time from beside a lake in lovely Switzerland.

I installed the Lollar Strat Special pickups and the guitar is transformed.  Still the brightness you would expect from a maple board, still great clean and definiton but enough body and warmth to make for a good non-glassy overdrive tone. No more shrieking.

I persevered because I was sure that I wanted an overwound '57-style Strat, at least until I find a real one.  I got remarkably close to the '57 bit with the EJ, but the stock pickups were curiously highly-magnetised yet way too weak and thin for my needs, definitely not in any way reflective of original overwounds and as I've said really surprising given the artist's typical lead tone.

My takeout is that the combination of EJ's quartersawn neck, maple board, light body and customised trem block all point to brightness, and that the very bright/thin/glassy pickups carried this into overkill, at least for me. I own and have owned many guitars including quite a number of Strats, but I have never come across one which was so sensitive to and therefore required such minute adjustments.  The Lollars put things back on track. I'll keep the stock pickups in the case for if and when I sell the guitar.

I'm delighted that a number of you enjoyed visiting my web site and can now see that I have considerable choice at my fingertips when it comes to realising my tone.  Although I could have just kept the EJ as stock and used it only for clean parts, I really wanted a guitar I could gig, and not being a famous musician, i don't gig with many guitars.  Now I have modded this guitar, it can do that.  As ever, all I need now is talent.

It's a strange one. I'd expect this guitar to sound incredible. Don't know what to say really. Maybe it's just a bad one that got away and that's why they wanted to sell it. Did you buy it private or from a shop? If private maybe that's why the guy wanted it off his hands? I just don't know about this.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

Private buy. It's great chassis, but at least for my taste the components in combination pull much too far towards brittle. All sorted now anyway.