Cowtown Guitars Las Vegas trip report

[rfgordon]

My job sent me out to Vegas this week. Twas a good week. They ran out of econobox cars, so I was forced to spend the sunny week in a Chrysler Crossfire ragtop.

Spent about 4 hours in Cowtown guitars Wednesday pm. What an awesome place. There were about six of us passing around different guitars and trying out a new batch of Divided by 13 and 65 amps. They all had their own personalities and were great in their own ways. Some seemed to favor strats over humbuckers. One universal comment, from the pickers to the employees: all the amps played that afternoon sounded best thru a 2x12 Guytron cab with Guytron speakers. Don't know who makes their speakers, but they are killer. Played several axes with Lollar pickups in 'em. Most excellent.

I started talking about building amps and the guy working said that Dennis, a local tech legend, was coming by after closing to A/B some cap values in a custom amp he'd built. So, I had to stick around! Dennis had wedged a two channel amp into an old brownface Bassman chassis. You could switch between clean, dirty or both channels. He was a bit cagey on the design (said he was seeking a patent), but it ran a 3 stage clean and 3 stage overdrive into a regular PI and fixed bias 6L6 section. Absolutely marvelous amp. Great feel and tone. He had EQ knobs and switches added to the back, since the front was full. This guy Dennis, who is also very respected as a guitar player--30+ years of picking on the Strip--was a firm believer in MPP caps. If people liked Mallory 150s he'd use them, and he hated the ODs for most applications. Also tended to favor carbon films, though he admitted that for certain tones he used carbon comps. He favored Heyboer iron from Mojo. In his opinion, Mercury Magnetics iron was not worth the difference in price--probably since most of his customers are gigging Vegas musicians who make scale (and that ain't enough to put MM iron in yo amps!!).

Watching him work with the chassis open and gingerly jumpering in/out various cap values for coupling caps in the amp was inspirational. That's the sort of service guys like us can offer that no big-name brand, no matter how cool they are at the moment, can offer. He also gave me some ideas to try...

So, if you're ever in Vegas, forget the casinos and head on over to Cowtown guitars.

[skyboltone]

Great Post Rich.

I'd like to spend some time in a big store like that. My trip to Berkeley this past week to play the Heritage guitars was hampered by an expired parking meter. I really didn't have the time to evaluate like I would like.

What were the Lollars in? I think his P90s are the best around but by his own admission he doesn't even like humbuckers. With that in mind though, Collings has specified Lollar PAF copies in the new $6K I-35 electric they've introduced. None of those guitars are available around the country as the dealers are hanging on to them for demo/custom order use. I'll probably never be able to afford one but I like the idea. It's a 335 copy with the back and sides carved from a single hunk of mahogany. The top is made up of carved maple. Should have an interesting tone. Anyway, I'm going to sell some guitars and get a 335 or copy here in the next few months and really should go somewhere like Cowtown before pulling the trigger.

Dan

[Tdale]

I sure will use my xicon MPP caps for my next build (which I'll be starting on as soon as my current build is finished!)

Did he try different coupling cap values, or did he test all the different caps? Do you have any comments on what he did, that affected tone in a good way?

Tommy

[Darkbluemurder]

I fully agree on the Lollar pickups. I have a set of his P90s and a set of Lollar Strat Specials. But the best of all is the Firebird pickup set he built for a Firebird guitar. The guitar was built by a local guitar builder to my specs (white, 3 pickups, looks absolutely awesome). Even the guitar builder was floored by the sound of the pickups! Great sound which falls right between a humbucker and a single coil.

I have yet to try his Imperials but from my experience so far they cannot be bad.

[rfgordon]

The Lollar pickups were in two strat-style guitars--one Fender Strat, the other a Suhr. Each had different models of Lollar singles. The Strat was more "stratty" and the Suhr was fatter, almost humbuckerish. There were no Lollar humbucker axes to be tested, unfortunately. Several people said they either had them or liked them, and another favorite was WCR pickups.

When Dennis came in to work on the amp he had a ziplock bag full of caps and some jumper wires w/ alligator clips. He set up the amp on top of another amp cab, fired it up, and proceeded to A/B values while Larry played his Eisenborn guitar (absolutely beautiful guitar). They first worked on the cap entering the PI, then moved on to one in the overdrive section, and another used in a bass-enhance switch on the back.

Dennis was of the opinion that for clean channels, the magic range for plate voltages on a 12AX7 was between 200 and 235 volts. For an overdrive channel, he liked it a bit lower, between 185 and 200.

[David Root]

I've been there three or four times, but not in the last two years. I bought a very nice '77 Marshall 2204 head for $750, which I still have, and a '62 brown reverb unit, both completely unmolested.

Great place, you could visit once a quarter and see all kinds of different new and vintage gear. The people there know their stuff too.