Wangcaster / Swamp Kauri Gats

[rickenbackerkid]

I had a Kauri Weta, which was way soft and way heavy. It sounded pretty good though, like a fatter tele.

[Hot_Grits]

I own a custom superstrat with a swamp Kauri body. it's heavyish considering it's a dinky strat size and the tone is fairly strident and harsh in the upper midrange, sort of what I'd expect to hear from a heavy maple body. My particular guitar is many miles away from a good lightweight piece of alder in terms of sound.

I don't recommend it as a tonewood, unless you really have some dense mixes to cut through.

[calling card]

I've been over this ground before but for all the newbies I tell ya a story:
When I 're-found' the electric guitar last year I had a sort of affinity to Kauri wood as I had a Charvel in the 80's that a friend made a new body from straight grain Kauri. My impression at the time - twenty years ago that the tonal characteristic was in some ways hard to live with, there was no doubt about it, a distinctive sound all of her own, a gritty sort of snarl & trebley. It was heavy & I always had a feeling that it needed to loose some mass to sort the sound out as well.
These days that body sits awaiting as a project - twenty years ago it got cremated in a house fire & sat in my shed with a 1/4" layer of carbon all over. I scraped all the charcoal off last year, this thing is going to be a blast from the past when it re-incarnates.

My thoughts on the swamp Kauri path that Joh has taken is that you are playing something thats as much resin as it is wood, only a cool novelty look I reckon. I'd prefer clean straight grain timber.
I don't think it's the holygrail of tone woods & I'm not so sure there really is one in particular, only subtile characteristics. The thing with Kauri is when you start digging into it with handtools you know there is something very special about it as it reveals it's golden insides.

Here's an old pic from in the day:

[dayl]

I have struck Lancaster clone from my wish list

..and props to the frayed sleveless denim jacket over the wooly jumper thats mo metal.

[Danger Mouse]

Having recently played a guitar equipped with Langcaster's supposed world famous low impedance pick-ups, I have no doubt that Joh has far more interest in the gimick rather than the tone of anything he produces.

[dayl]

Having recently played a guitar equipped with Langcaster's supposed world famous low impedance pick-ups, I have no doubt that Joh has far more interest in the gimick rather than the tone of anything he produces.

How did those much hyped pups sound mate? I've never tried any...prob wont either but still intrigued.

[Danger Mouse]

Having recently played a guitar equipped with Langcaster's supposed world famous low impedance pick-ups, I have no doubt that Joh has far more interest in the gimick rather than the tone of anything he produces.

How did those much hyped pups sound mate? I've never tried any...prob wont either but still intrigued.

Really, really, painfully bright, noisy, lots of clicking and clunking if you accidentally hit a pick-up with your pick, they pick up every little hand movement and unintentional drag across the strings, not resonant at all, no bottom end and just... horrible. Not my kind of thing either, so would never even have bothered trying them out otherwise, but it was someone else's guitar and he wanted to hear it through my amp.

[dayl]

Ouch, that is not a pretty picture, I see Sean Clancy endorses them, anyone heard any of his recent stuff? Last time I heard of him was a tape my mate had over a decade ago.

[Danger Mouse]

Yeah I expected them to be 'not my thing', but didn't expect them to be quite that bad. I would suspect a shredder type that is almost anal in their technique and some serious EQ and pedal/effects unit sound shaping could make them sound almost reasonable, but I've always been a little on the relaxed side with my playing, so I just couldn't get on with them at all.

[ash]

Really, really, painfully bright, noisy, lots of clicking and clunking if you accidentally hit a pick-up with your pick, they pick up every little hand movement and unintentional drag across the strings, not resonant at all, no bottom end and just... horrible.

Yep, thats exactly what I thought too. I have had a few people come in and say they love theirs, but then they usually go on to quote the sales pitch verbatim. Listening with their eyes, I think is the technical term...

[calling card]

Yeah Mouse discribed it quite well.
I've lived with a set for quite sometime but finding I prefer the organic-ness of traditional winding. The overdrive is a good feature, who knows could be a cloned circuit from a known pedal. You can plug into about anything SS or tube & get some good tone, works real good on my 10w Traynor if I've got something to do that doesn't call for big guns amplification. I've heard some pleasing & haunting harmonics at times amongst the unwanted clicks & screeches. Slide use in overdrive has yeilded some good stuff in the past but that axe is parked up for now & I'm using something more conventional.
Which is usually how the Langcaster users story seems to go...

[Pakehendrix]

Sean Clancy...




:puke:

[Rog]

Sean Clancy...

Is he is Creed or U2?

[The Scarecrow]

I had a Kauri guitar, it was crazy heavy and the wood was super soft, chipped so easily.

was that the jag/jazz thing I got off ya?

Yeah. Did you find the same?

Yup. I played it for a couple of months and sold it privately. Cool sounding guitar though.