tot_Ou_tard said:
Sure, no worries. I love this stuff, could yack about it all day!
tot_Ou_tard said:
So any idea what makes the toaster sound, other than wide aperture low output alnico single coils?
Haha. no, I'm pretty terrible at the tech side of things. In fact, your above description is more succinct than I coulda put it.
With that proviso, though, I will posit that it's my theory that the jangly Ric sound is only partially based on toasters, and that the guitar's composition and construction play equal parts in the jangle sound. Note that modern Rics are still pretty dang jangly, but at this point it's only a very distinct minority of their models that have toasters. A much larger portion of the line now comes with the hotter "High-Gain" singles, including the Ric 620 I own (the lead singer in the HotHeads has a matching one in blue to mine in red, and his is his main guitar used at virtually every show at this point) and the 430 I owned back in the 80's (kicks self for selling).
The High-Gain'd Rics tend to come in two body types, and each type tends to contribute to "that great Ric sound" (as Ric promo stuff still says) in different ways. The solidbodies in the 600 series tend to be neck-throughs with rrrrrrrrrreally thin bodies, made of maple, with two models using walnut instead. I dunno about walnut, but maple is a very dense aurally very bright wood, and the combo of a thin body, bright wood, neck-though (for arguably a smidge more sustain), and single coil pups make up for a pretty jangly guitar.
The semi-hollow bodied 300 series with High Gains are maple too, so the brightness factor is there as well. Plus a semi-hollow has a slight acoustic "ring" or "chime" to it that's very difficult to accurately describe, but is nevertheless there.
Finally in the mix for almost all the semi's and slightly over half of the solidbodies (including my 620) is the tailpiece, versus the more common stoptail. Tailpiece guitars have a slightly more "acoustic" sound because they produce some very subtle overtones not present in stoptails, where the string vibration is directed down into the guitar straightaway. In contrast, a harp-type tailpiece will
itself vibrate (as the top of a good acoustic will) since it "floats" above the guitar body held aloft only by string tension. I noticed this (after it was pointed out to me by the recording engineer on a Crash Pad CD) on a harp-tailed DeArmond M-75 I had several years ago.
Basically, if you have a bright-wood body (I bet alder, ash, and poplar would all be in the same group, though not as bright as maple) with single coils, you'll have something pretty jangly, even if the singles ain't toasters, and with the additional factors of neck-through construction and/or semi-hollow and/or harp tailpiece would only add to the mix.
Note that your Radiator is chambered maple, so the combo of it's singles with that type of body should put you into jangle territory!
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