Re: Klein Electric Guitar

[Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>]

At 7:58 PM -0500 6/1/97, Mikell D. Nelson wrote:
>Someone was talking earlier about the gorgeous tone and sustain the
>Klein guitars produce. My question is this - is this true for clean
>sounds?

The vast majority of guitar playing I do these days is with clean tones.
That's what I was talking about with the tone of my Klein. I'm getting
everything from out-of-phase funky strat tones to bluesy strat tones to Les
Paul type humbucker sounds to rich acoustic/arch-top tones. (all through
tube amps, naturally) I do a lot of jazz playing, so rich clean tones are
very important to me. That's the first thing I look for in any guitar or
amp!

> My number one guitar is a 15 year old G&L Skyhawk (strat style
>replaced by the Legacy) with a solid maple body. Through a good tube amp
>this ax sounds beautiful. I know the Steinberger, and I suppose the
>Klein, sound great for very high gain, overdriven tones like Alan
>Holdsworth uses, but do they project an acoustic richness and complex
>woody sounds?

Other than the missing-headstock design, I would describe a Klein as "not
at all like a Steinberger."  The graphite in the Steinbergers make them
sound very flat and one-dimensional to me. You can get a Klein made with
graphite if you really want to, but I get the feeling that nobody does
that. Mine is swamp ash and rosewood, and "acoustic richness and complex
woody sounds" is exactly what I love about it. Strummed acoustically it is
quite loud, like a 335. The resonance chamber does that for you.

In fact, all my high-gain distortion sounds had to be "fixed" for the
Klein. They had all been biased on the bright side to make my other guitars
sound good. All the upper harmonics from the Klein made them sound muddy,
sort of like the way an archtop like an ES175 or something sounds through a
distortion pedal. Once I rolled off some of the treble, they sounded great
too.

kim


______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
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