I think I mentioned a couple posts back that I’ve been playing with some jazz-ish kind of stuff. I know that I’m a blues guy at heart, but some of those outside sounds are just super cool. I’m not any good at it. With the course open in front of me, I can play what’s written, but I’m having trouble remembering the material after I put the book down. The chords are weirdly shaped, and chromatic seems to barely describe some of the riffs as you hit every single note when moving from one place to another.
But it’s fun. And I like the sound. And maybe someday I’ll remember some of it.
One of the fun things about it has been trying to find a good jazz sound. Like I said, deep down I’m a blues guy. SRV and the 3 Kings are my heroes, and I only wish I could play like any of them. Except for BB, they all had some grit and drive in what they played. I’ve even always steered towards the cleaner side of blues. But trying to find a nice ultra-clean jazz tone has been fun.
The three guitars I’ve been primarily using in trying to get that sound have been my Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom ES-355, my Epiphone 1962 50th Anniversary Sheraton, and my Epiphone Standard 50s Les Paul. I’ve played around with my Gibson ES-339 for the sound too, but I always seem to come back to the others. And to my ear, they’re all really good sounding.
The Sheraton, since it’s that special Anniversary model from 12 years ago now, has Gibson mini-humbuckers in it. To my ear, they’re everything I imagine when I think of a smooth tone. The 355 has Gibson Custombuckers in it. They’re really nice sounding. And I swapped the pickups in the Les Paul for a burstbucker 1/2 pair. And that Burstbucker 1 in the neck is probably one of my favorite pickups of all time. Weirdly, I think the Probucker 1 that I pulled out of it sounded better, but I’ve never swapped it back.
So I started the jazz-tone-journey the way that I think probably everyone does. I got the amp tone as lean as a whistle, set the guitars to the neck pickup, and then rolled the Tone knob to 0. I wasn’t a fan. So I rolled the tone knob back to 10. That definitely wasn’t it either. So I started playing around with it.
Each guitar has ended up needing that Tone knob set somewhere different. And the Sheraton, with those Lando-Calrissian-smooth mini-‘buckers has the best jazz tone. In a previous post, I think I said it was as smooth and gooey as warm, melted chocolate. Just so nice. Using whichever amp I happen to be using (usually either my Spark 40 on a Dumble model or my 1w Blackheart set to about 1/4 volume), I’ll set the Vol to about 8 and the Tone between 3 and 4. And I totally dig it!
And that seems to have become my jazz tone. So I guess that makes my best jazzer the Sherry with a little Vol and a little more Tone rolled off into a clean amp. Such a nice tone to my ear. I really want to use it with some blues, but it doesn’t cut like it should. Warm and gooey so that you just want to roll around in it. I think that’s what a good jazz tone is supposed to be. At least it is in my head.
