Metropoulos Forum

You seem to be pretty well versed in ac/dc. I just picked up a malcolm gretcsh (2 pickup model)
and was wondering what you were running in the bridge for yours? Seem somewhere I read that the tv jones was the ticket for the mal sound. Also, I originally bought it with the neck pup for more versatility, but am wondering if you have tried yours without the neck pup installed? I know he also uses 12's with a wound G What brand is the ticket?
Thanks

one time bump .............

the mal young gretch uses the same pups as the other filtertron gretsches. the first ones had ceramic pups that sounded very different from the old ones. the later ones have alnico 5 pups that are good. the best new pup, however, seems to be tvclassics from tvjones. I recommend these. Notice, however, that you must be very careful about the setup - the pup and the polescrews must be close to the strings - follow tv jones instructions.

What have got peoples attention is mal's heavy strings. what gets overlooked is that he uses pure nickel roundwould strings, mostly old gibson jcm2000 I believe. these are hard to find, the closest gibson string today is the L5 jazz strings. I prefer pyramids, however. snake oil nickel strings are also supposed to be good. I don't like the GHS nickels strings and the new gibson strings - they sound to darka and muddy for me. the pyramids are brighter and will give you much more punch.

I have some comments on amps and settings as well

Thanks for the scoop Roe, I'll give the pickup/strings a shot.
Right now out of the box the guitar sounds pretty muddy unless
you hit the shit out of it, but I don't like where they put the
tone switch. Well, I also don't like the tone switch period.

For now I'm happy with my amps,(early metro 67 and jtm45)
2 4x12's ( one with h75/m75 scummies and one with heritage g12ms)

actually, i havent tried to remove the neck pup. It might work because the magnetic pull is a bit strong. I like to keep my neck pup a little away from the strings on the bass side.

I like H75s or H55s for mal's tone - the M75s will break up a bit too early and lack a bit of punch IMO. the filtertron pups compresses the sound quite a bit when you play hard with thich strings. a jtm amp will sound quite distored at 5-6 when you're trying to copy mal's tone. My experience is that you have to turn up the mids and turn down the bass. volume varies from 3 to 6, depending on amp and sound. my 45/100 sounds good at 5-6 with a 500pf bright cap. with a superbass you'd probably want keep the volume a little lower and also to reduce the bright cap.

Nice info......
Yeah I noticed my 67 had a better mal tone at around 5 with basically what you said as far as settings.
I'm anxious to find out what the thicker strings are gonna do.
Right now I'm happy with my speaker set up, but if I change anything I might try something
else in a scumback mix in place of the celestions. I sure like the h75/m75 combo I've got now.

In an article in Guitar world Malcolm stated that he used to use Gibson sonomatics but then switched to Gibson 900M's .056. (November 1995)

Hey thanks guns..... I'll look into those also

those are old strings - very hard to find