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Maybe you’ve heard, vintage gear can be really, really expensive! So is it just the hype or is it really worth the price? That depend on what you want in your guitar or amp or basses or whatever the gear is. I’ve played plenty of vintage Gibsons and Fenders, and a good pile of the 60’s and 70’s Japanese guitars. Since there are really new Teiscos and Kuwai guitars to compare, I’ll speak of the guitars I’ve done a “A B” test on. Say a 1956 Gibson Les Paul vs. a 1956 Gibson Les Paul reissue. There are some things that time can change on a guitar that manufacturing techniques can’t. For instance the wood tends to dry out as it ages. As this happens the body resonates easier when its lighter but still has the cellular structure of the wood. End of the day it means more sustain. In my opinion more sustain is better, and most people will agree with that. Pickup are a little different, as they age assuming they are wax potted the wax loosens up and one they feed back a little more, and two which is the important part they get more dynamics to your amp. Sweet!


So now we are on to the magic part of selecting a guitar…the neck. When you find a neck that feels right its such a good feeling. It moulds to your hand like it was built for you. This happen every once in a while these days because the necks are very standardized. On the vintage gear there was a lot more variety in the manufacturing. Some companies have necks that are all the same so if you find a PRS neck you like, you will always find a neck you like. If not…too bad. So for me viva la difference, but I’m not everybody. You have to make that decision yourself. I really liked a neck on a $45,000.00 Les Paul recently, while the reissues of the same year feel a little large to me, so pay attention to the right feel.


Amps are a question of two things: Speakers and Electronics. Most of the earliest amps were hand wired and they used very good components that in some cases aren’t being manufactured today. For example the Marshall Jubilee amp used the Drake transformers which today aren’t available. In an amp, the transformer makes a huge difference in tone, so make sure if you are buying a vintage amp you are getting what you are paying for. For hand wired amps, they are very easy to work on, and because of this you have to make sure the components are all original or at least period correct. Tubes aren’t as important because if you play your amp regularly, you get about a 5 year shelf life out of them. Vintage NOS (New Old Stock) tubes are an ideal change for a vintage amp, but are getting to be difficult to find. Get as good a tubes as you can. Some of the features the old amps don’t usually have are things like, high gain, 4 channels, effects loops and a couple modern features that may make you choose a newer amp versus a vintage amp.


On to speakers…Broken in speakers tend to be more responsive than new speakers. You can’t fake the playing time that goes into a speaker. Now there are some speakers that you might like over others and that’s fine, but head to head with the same model speaker, the older speaker usually wins. Make sure the speakers aren’t blown though. An old cab with new speakers sounds about the same as a brand new cab. So find the sound you are looking for and you might find it in a new cab or combo amp…Great! It’ll be a lot cheaper than a vintage tone monster. But if you find it in a vintage Fender bassman for instance be prepared to pay for it.


So happy hunting and good luck on the quest for the perfect tone! I’ve got my eye on a 1955 Gibson Les Paul jr at the moment. Unfortunately, they want $11,450.00 for it. So, at the moment I’ll stick to my 1976 Les Paul Custom and a few other choice guitars in the collection. BTW eBay is a great place to check street value on vintage gear so get an account and look at the completed listings. That shows what they actually sell for.


As always, if you have any questions, comments or concerns…Hit me up!


Jeremy Gift


Free Musician

Say at this moment you don’t have a band together, but you really want to pull this band thing off. What do you do? Take a moment to envision what kind of band you want to have. Think of the different parts you want to have in a song. Do you want two guitars or just one? Do you want keyboards, a DJ, percussion, trombone? These days, the easiest thing to find is guitar players. Take a look at a Guitar Center, or a Sam Ash and you will see how the breakdown goes. Pretty much you can break it down by square foot in these stores. Tons of guitars, then basses, then drums, then keyboards. The DJ section is a little harder to gauge, but the DJ that want to join a rock band are a little slim. No trumpets, no sax, no school band gear in general. So if you are in the ska genera, make sure you hit up the smaller music stores in your area that carry the brass and woodwinds.


So we have the breakdown. Hopefully, you are in one of the hard to find categories of musicians. It will make finding the whole band easier. If not, start with a few basic steps: Post on bulletin boards in music stores. Ask your friends. Hop on Craigslist.org and put a bulletin up at least once a week till the spot is filled. This is the hard part…you have to have tryouts for these spots. As part of the tryout you have to hang out with them. If you have friends that play instruments, start with them. You know you like them already. Having a band is like marrying five people. You can’t do it yourself, so check your ego at the door. Be careful about other people and their egos as well. There is a balance in a band, you have to have leadership, but everyone has to have some say in decisions. Everyone has an ego and to some degree its a good thing. Imagine a front man that is super shy on stage…Shitty show! So you want someone with enough ego to put on a killer show, but not so much that they kill the band.


Cut your losses! If you have a rehearsal with a new member for instance, and he has no mojo. I’ve been there a million times. You jam with someone and it seem like they are playing a different song than you are. In my mind I always think WTF is this guy thinking…is he really playing this and thinking its good? Keep them as friends, or not, but don’t have them in your band just to have someone there. It will never work plus its harder to get rid of someone after a few months than a few days. Hell, I’ve had my family giving me shit about letting a band member go because “He’s nice”. I don’t give a shit about that. If there is no mojo, there is no mojo. Pay attention to the all technique guy as well. Its great to be a great player, but if you have no heart for music, you’ll never write a great song. In fact, usually the songs end up sounding like whatever they just heard on the radio, or worse, it could sound like one of your songs you are working on. Ok, as much as I won’t be in a cover band, I still have to go into it. Especially at this point. If you are getting a cover band together…get the all technique guy. Get the guy with not an original musical thought in his mind. These guys will nail the songs exactly like the original artists. They will be happy about learning new songs that everyone knows and enjoy it much more than the guy who hate tab and only sort of learns cover songs. If you guys can hone in on an artist, you can really make a ton of money in a tribute band.


Back to original bands. So you get the basics of your band and now you can get at least basic parts together on some songs. Nice! It gets easier to do tryouts the more complete you are as a band. Try to get at least a few songs down with the members you have. If you take this step it will easier to compare the different musicians you are trying out. Remember the guy who learns the parts the fastest isn’t always the guy with the most mojo. Get the guy with the most mojo. Even if you write all of the chords of a song, a drummer or bass player can still make the song. Think of it like building a nice house. You are letting someone else decorate it and do the landscaping. Ugly wall paper can kill a beautiful house. Don’t let your house be too plain either, style is mojo.


Ok, you have everyone you need to play the parts. Great! But you still have one last piece to the band puzzle. How do they look on stage? A great player may do a horrible job on stage. If it looks like you are practicing on stage you won’t be doing a very good job performing. Record a rehearsal or two if you have a camera and play the rehearsal like you are playing a show. If after practicing like you are performing and you still have guys who can’t put on a good live show…cut your losses or get them on the ball and really really work with them. At the end of the day, if they can’t do it, they’ll never get it. Most of the time the performer is in you or not.




Good luck and happy hunting!


As always, questions, comments, concerns…hit me up!


Jeremy Gift


Free musician

So you got the band. You got the songs. You got the gigs. Now what about the merch? If getting on a tour is the goal for your band, or if you just want to make some money at shows, merchandise is the way to go! One, it makes you look more professional, two it can generate cash flow for gigs, and three it helps build the band as a “brand”. If you’ve ever opened for a headliner on a national tour, you know they have a booth set up with a tone of merchandise for sale. Everything from CD’s to buttons to t-shirts. Why? Because that’s how they afford gas to the next show. Unless they are the Foo Fighters, they most likely aren’t making a ton of money on their CD sales in retail locations. So they are hustling at every show. You should do the same. Weather you need to pay for the gas or just need some strings, every piece of merch that goes out has your name on it and when you can get people to wear your shirts around town, you can bet people will come to see you just out of curiosity.

So should you DIY or have somebody do it for you? The answer depends on what you can figure out yourself and how much you’re going to use it. As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t ever recommend buying the gear to make t-shirts and sweaters unless that is going to be your day job. There is a fairly large investment of time, space, and money. Buttons however are a different story. For $200.00 to $300.00 you can pick up a button press that will do everything you need and its really easy to punch out a ton of buttons. The nice part about doing it yourself is flexibility. You can have a large amount of styles of buttons without a huge change in time required to make them. Remember, you never know when someone will see something that they can’t live without! Same goes for apparel variety, is the spice of selling them shit!


Now you have to sell CD’s. That at the end of the day is the whole point…or getting chicks. I forget, but anyways you need a CD. Rule is a good looking demo is better to sell than a crappy looking polished recording. Once they get home and listen to it the polished CD is by far better. So basically you need both. How to get it depends on time and your skill level. Recording it yourself has more than just the CD as a benefit. You can also record songs or pieces of songs to work on it. You can take your time on the mixes and really experiment around with your sound. Cost usually ends up being more than cutting one CD after you get a whole studio full of gear, but you can cut as many CD’s as you want. If you guys are tight and can really lay down some clean tracks in a studio, you can do a good sounding demo for fairly cheap. They’ll do the mixdown and give you a CD you can have mastered and duplicated in an attractive package. (Don’t forget to get a barcode if you want to get it into retail locations) Either way is fine, as long as you end up with a good looking good sounding CD. If it still looks like a demo, no one will buy it. Just a little warning if you are trying to sell CD’s with hand written sharpie on them. Pay the money and get the logos and covers printed. You’ll sell a ton more CD’s.


So back to apparel. T-shirts are the first thing you need to get together. Various sizes in one style is ok to start with, but if you want to build your band and sell some gear you need to get more than a t-shirt. So most girls like girl shirts, and they usually look better in them than a regular guy shirt. Get the girls to wear your shirts…if the girls go, they guys will go. Get a few designs going with your bands logo in a few different but instantly recognizable styles. Think the Rolling Stones “mouth” or Aerosmith’s wings logo. Something you can lay out many different ways that will represent your band. IMPORTANT! It has to look cool enough to make someone who sees it want it without knowing who you are. Style! Style! Style!


So, at the end of the day sell whatever will sell and put your logo on everything. Boxers, lighters, key chains, whatever. But before you invest a ton of money on a large quantity of merch, test it out in a small quantity. You don’t want to get stuck with $2,000 of watches that won’t sell till the price is $0. Be careful till you know it works. Just because one person asks for it doesn’t mean everyone will want it. Once you know something will sell, get large batches of them produced. Usually you can get quantity discounts on most things you have to get manufactured, and price shop! I hate seeing friends getting ripped off on merch when they could have done a google search and spent 5 minutes price shopping and saved 50%.


Good luck out there and as always, let me know if you have any questions about this subject.


Jeremy Gift
free musician

If you play live, at some point you realize your stage show has a lot to do with your credibility. However, you need to record a CD and have it sound good. So what do you do? You can spend a small amount of money on a guitar that will be playable and then spend a small fortune making it sound good enough to record, but then you have a guitar that may not be taken seriously on stage. You could also spend it some cases a lot less and have both. It really depends on what the budget will allow. First step is to prioritize your needs. Say you are just getting started and you need a PA an an amp too. You may need to just get a guitar. The good news is most people can’t tell the difference between a Mexican made Fender strat and an American strat. In this case it might be good to go a little lower on the quality of guitar. If you are into the humbucker sound, go with a Ibanez, Jackson or Epiphone. They all have recognizable shapes and will cut it with the “good from far but far from good” idea.


Now say you have been playing for a while and have saved up a little money for a demo CD. With a pickup change you can get a lot better sound out of your guitar for less than $200.00. You’ll still be playing a lower end guitar, but you will have a much better sounding CD. Live, the audience for the most part won’t be able to hear good tone, but in the studio, it makes a big difference. Hopefully you can get hold of a good tube amp for the recording, and a lot of studios have good amps to plug into for the session. Check into your local studios to see what they have available.


After you get a good sounding demo CD get a good cover and packaging together. T-shirts are another good way to get some revenue going. Sell, sell, sell! Next its time for a good guitar. Pay attention to who you like and what they play on. Remember the guitar is only half the recipe. Your amp has a lot to do with your sound, so do your research. If you like Clapton’s tone with Cream, you are going to have to pick up a Gibson Les Paul or an SG. He also recorded on a Fender champ and the live gigs were on a Fender twin reverb. Goggle is a good place to get this kind of info. You can also head to your local guitar shop and plug in. Again think tubes on the amps. Combo or Stack? A combo is very portable, but if you are in a metal band, you get a lot more cred with a stack and more so with a full stack. Playing live you have to think about road worthy gear as well, so try not to get the cheapest gear you can find. Again, name brands really make it look like you know what you are doing. Like a lot of things, presentation is as important as playing well.


Another thing you have to pay attention to is your style. Your band look might have a very large part in your instrument selection. A more vintage looking and sounding band might do well to check out the many random vintage guitars on ebay as well as your used sections in music stores and pawn shops. Be careful that the gear sounds good before you spend money on it! On ebay, check the return policy of the seller. You can get burned sometimes, but if you are careful and know what you are looking for you can find diamonds in the rough for a much lower investment. Sometimes, you can pick up a vintage guitar and change a few components making it play better sound amazing and give you the cred you need to get yourself to the next level. Remember tat vintage gear is always worth more with original everything, so if you plan on reselling it eventually, it has to sound good stock. Worse case, at least keep the original parts of you can put it back on when you sell it.


Now you have the gear to play live, record, and look good while doing it! Whats next? Lighting gives your show a much more professional appearance. Get a portable light stand and a few key lights to make it look full. I recommend the LS7730 for a light stand. It runs about $170 and can fit enough lights to fill about any room. As far as lights, a couple LED par cans, a Scorpion storm FX, and a light that throws a lot of color down in the middle. These light can be set to change to the music automatically and will give your shows a lot of motion so if you guys don’t move a lot yourselves it can cover it up a bit. You won’t always need the lights, but at backyard shows and small gigs, it makes a huge difference.


If you have any questions, post a comment and I’ll try to get back to you! Good luck and good playing!


Jeremy Gift