I have a series I guitar and I have used it live maybe a handful of times since I've owned it. This has mainly been when the bands i've been playing with have had showcase gigs for TV or promo film recordings etc, so for it's visual aspect rather than directly for its sound.
Anyway last night I took it out on a club gig on a session with a reggae band who were doing an album launch gig. My plan was to use that guitar for the first half and my alembic powered strat for the second set and find out what worked better for me. I was plugged into my Fender Twin Amp and although I had my effects board I hardly used any apart from intro's and some endings and played clean about 99% of the gig.
I would love to say that I preferred playing the Series I guitar but I actually preferred the strat. Thinking about it overnight I feel there are a number of reasons for that. I've always preferred single volume guitars and switching pickups to change tones rather than turning knobs to get my primary tone which I find much slower and distracting when I don't get it right first time. So whilst I was playing the series guitar the tone was always good but I kept feeling I was not playing the right tone I wanted for the song.
I think what happens with the strat is that when I change pickup, apart from the bridge one which I almost never use singly, most of the tone change is somewhere in a small section of mid range which for me works just right because there are no dramatic changes unless I use the tone controls.
I just don't find that kind of thing easy to do on the series guitar as changing pickup often resulted in too much of a dramatic change that I have to react to by changing the volume and/or filter to restore the balance. Something that takes time and becomes noticeable to me in the band sound especially on unison parts or when I need a tone change for a melody.
One simple thought is that I shouldn't use the series guitar live but instead use either my Alembic Orion guitar or alembicised strat. However that would mean leaving the series guitar alone and somehow that seems counter productive as i'd get even less familiar with it's operation and capabilities. Also I don't do many guitar gigs these days anyway and those I usually do are not in the best of venues so a series guitar would be overkill.
Any advice on how you successfully use a series guitar live would be greatly appreciated.
