Fender Excelsior tone pod mod

  I've been on a bit of a tone search trip lately. I always had almost as big interest on the tone of guitar as I did in the playing of it. Also in the nature of this blog and just plain simple restrictions of finances, I am always aware of how much I spend on my equipment. But even more so I am always looking for something new in tone, something you just can't buy from your local music store. You see, there are these musicians who have the best of the best equipment and all I say is good on you. But I find if our goal is to buy the Gibson Les Paul Custom and Mesa boogie triple rectifier (you can replace the guitar and the amp for any top end make here), more and more things will start to sound the same.
 I know I am not alone in this search and for those of us not too impressed by the perfection of a €2000 off the shelf amp are left with few options. You can go the vintage rout, look for that magical 30 year old amp or guitar, which in many cases is over priced. I personally like the idea of actually customizing my tone.

  So earlier this year I came across a new amp from Fender that got me bit exited (we've all been there). The amp in question is Fender Excelsior. Amp made in style of 1950s catalogue amps. It is a simple amp, with three inputs. Volume and tremolo controls and single dark to bright tone switch. It is full valve (tube for our american friends) design 13 watts and projects the sound from a single 15 inch speaker. The thing about this amp is that it is not trying to sound like any other amp, it has a tone of its own. But also it is designed to be a great platform for modifications.
  After doing my usual research that I do before purchasing any new equipment, I got a great deal and decided to purchase the amp. On my purchase I was very impressed with the amp, but still I knew I was going to alter the amp to get a tone that is more what I had in mind. The first short fall of the amp is the dark to bright tone switch. The bright is pretty shrilly and piercing tone and the dark is lacking in clarity. It was clear from the beginning that the ideal tone from the amp would be some where between the two. So I decided change the switch in to a tone pot. I do need to say here that any one doing this will straight away cancel
out their warranty on the amp. But I had run the amp through it paces and knew it was working fine. If something was to go, it would be something that could be fixed by any good amp tech (also another beauty of the simple design of this amp). I used to have a Fender blues junior, a great little amp. But I was never impressed with this amps internal design. I had a problem with the input jack and one of the valve sockets, which were bot attached to the circuit board that was very tightly designed. To be honest with you, I actually had one look inside and decided the blues junior. But the Fender Excelsior's insides are much more modification friendly. There is loads room inside and the power and pre amp sections are housed separately. If you are more interested in the inner workings of this amp, I recommend you take a look at Billm's website and especially his page on Excelsior

  Anyway, so I had a spare 500k pot in my spare parts, and decided to open the amp up. As I mentioned earlier the pre amp part is separate from the power amp part, so opening the amp was very easy. Two screws on top of the amp and I had the pre amp chassis in my hands. Few more screws and I had it opened up. Inside I could find the dark bright tone switch that has three cables attached to it. I carefully desoldered them and attached them to the pot exactly the same order as they were in the switch. It took little bit of filing to fit the pot in to the hole of the old switch. I also had an old control knob, that nicely covered the screw holes that held the switch. It's not exactly the style of the other two knobs, so I might look for some new knobs, kind of like the idea of cream colored chickenheads. When I started opening the amp, stuck the Black presidents CD on, and by the time I had it done, the album just finished, so just over half an hour it took me and the difference with the tone control is amazing! It really makes this amp very flexible for its three control design.
  Just a small warning here. I would not call my self an expert in electronics, but I knew what I was doing before I opened the amp up. There can be potentially lethal charge in a valve amp. So make sure you know what you are doing! Once again Billm's website has been a wealth of information for me, so check it out at www.billmaudio.com and especially his page on discharging capacitors. This is an easy modification, but you can potentially do permanent damage to your amp, so don't tell me I didn't warn you. As mentioned above, if you do this the manufacturers warranty is gone! So if you are worried about this, either don't do it, or wait until the warranty is out. Personally for me I bought this amp as much for playing and gigging as to learn the insides of an simple valve amp, so I wasn't worried about this.

    So there it is. The first mod on a journey to my own tone. I am also tinkering with the oldest and cheapest Boss distortion pedal DS-1. The results so far are great! So I'll be sharing some of these with you in the future as well. Great tone on a shoestring ;-) and best of all, my own tone.
  J.P.

Me and my Telecaster

  On last Saturday afternoon I got back from my well deserved holidays all charged up and hit the ground running. Four hours with Sliotar in the Porterhouse and it did feel good to be back. As much as I was looking forward to my holidays, usually after a week I start missing my guitar and miss playing. It's kind of crazy... I start missing my guitars like people, my finger get itchy and I get fidgety. If guitars were a substance, I suppose I would have a problem ;-)

  Since my return, if I wasn't gigging with Sliotar my Telecaster has not left my side. Also I suppose refreshed from my holidays, I have been messing around with a sound a bit. So I thought to write a bit about my trusty friend, my Telecaster.

  My very first electric guitar was a East German Strat copy. It was rough and cheap, but it was mine and I played it until the frets were nearly down to nothing. One thing I do remember about it is that the pickups had these massive magnets under them and the output was very hot for a Strat. Since then, I have gone through dozens of guitars and I am sure I will go through dozens more before my days are done. I know for some players guitar is just a tool, but many of us are as much in search of that perfect tone as just hoping to play. I love sound, and for me sonic qualities of a recording is almost as important as the songs them selves.
On this on going quest I learn something new all the time. It's what keeps me exited. Sometimes just a great tone can inspire you to write songs.

  I had few guitars over the years that I just had to have. But the relationship with guitar and the player takes time to develop. Some guitars felt great in my hand from the first moment I picked them up, but after a while I started missing something in the tone, or playability. In other times I picked up a guitar and it was a struggle from the get go, but over time I learned to love the instrument . There was always the three legendary guitars that most players leaned towards, Les Paul, Startocaster and Telecaster. Now there are tons of more, but these three are the ones every guitar player has at some point. Also these guitars are copied more by other manufacturers than anything else. I have very nice Gibson Les Paul, that I will never part with. It is very nice guitar to play! It sings, sustains, and drives the right amp in to very sweet and full distortion. I've had several Strats over the years, one of them was a Fernandes copy that was excellent! It was one of the only guitars that I kept stock, as it was built great, the action was great, the pickups were great, the electronics were very good quality. This Strat was a proof that going for the big names is not always the best thing to do. But when I left Finland I got rid of most of my gear. Silly me... Anyway, apart from this Fernandes most Strats were no my friends, just the sound and feel didn't sit with me. I had an obsession about Telecasters for a very long time. I'd say it goes back to me being a big Rolling stones fan since I was a kid. I've had few Squire and few Fender ones over the years. My current Tele is a 2008 Fender highway 1, that I got as a trade few years back. I have now idea what the history it was before I got my hands on it. These Highway 1 series guitars had a mat paint finish that tends to wear off pretty easily, and one of its previous owners had put a varnish on it after the paint started wearing off. The pickups are Fender Texas specials at the moment, but I'm sure there will be many pickups in this Tele through out its life with me. But yeah, part from the varnish, it is very much stock for now. It sounds like Tele, and plays like one.

  Telecasters have been part of rock and roll music from almost the beginning. It has been in production since 1950! That's 62 years and still going strong. It has been played by so many famous guitar players in pretty much every sub genre of rock music. And if anything it is more popular today than ever before among the indie rock guitar players. It is a guitar that plays nicely in most hands. But I think its flexibility is still very under estimated. This guitar has twang, it has bottom end, it has warmth and clarity. It can be a smooth jazz machine, or it can scream like a monster! Very often I see players rocking the Tele, but I feel there is so much more you can do with it. This guitar likes to be treated roughly. It is like it has hidden gears, if you dig bit deeper you can get some wild tones out of it. It is definitely not the easiest guitar to play, but I find it makes me play better when I need to work that bit harder with it. If I had to choose one guitar to do it all, my Tele would be it. At the moment I would love to get my hands on another and put a Bigsby tremolo on it, but I think this has something to do with the fact that I have bit of a Gretsch bug at the moment ;-)

  All I can say is big thank you to Leo Fender for designing such a simple, versatile and strong guitar that has shaped rock music.

  It is funny how we build these relationships with instruments, and how they define us as musicians. What is your favorite guitar and what does it mean to you?


J.P.