Unexpected NGD-- Another Valentine.

[Ted]

Hey all, this past week I took my BFR Pine Green Valentine to a local shop to check the string gauges and ask about a setup. I've had it almost 6 months and even though I love the tones and find it inspiring-- I recorded 75 new demo songs with it in 75 days-- I never found it as playable as some of my other guitars when playing highly technical things. It seemed to have a lot of tension in the strings (I asked the dealer to put 10's on it when it was shipped to me--I use 10's regularly on some of my other guitars) and it cramped my hand at times. I chalked it up to the much discussed "tiny nut" and "skinny neck" of MM guitars and having big hands.

I opened the case so the shop owner could get a look at my Valentine, and as we were looking at it, he reached behind where he was standing and grabbed a guitar off the wall. He handed it to me. I couldn't believe it. It was a Trans Buttermilk Valentine. I don't know how I didn't notice it before.

"We just got this in on a trade. I don't think the guy ever played it. He considered it a 'Tele' and decided he was more of a 'strat guy' so he didn't play it." I thought I was dreaming. I had been looking online at different Valentines even after I got mine. I really liked the Trans Buttermilk and had been thinking I'd like to have one. The store is a nice little shop but they don't have a super spacious inventory of high end guitars, so to stumble upon this particular guitar blew my mind. Very "Needful Things" type feeling. Haha.

As I took the instrument, I could see that it was completely new condition-- not a blemish or scratch or speck of dust on it. I asked how much they wanted and it was a pretty nice price. I turned it over and saw that the neck was one of those super tigerstriped flamey types that looks 3-D in the light. Nice flame on both front and back.

The big surprise happened when I went to play it. It was the most magical playing guitar I've ever laid hands on, bar none. Oddly it was so good that it made my BFR Valentine play like crap in comparison-- and it got me thinking that there had to be something wrong with my BFR. The Buttermilk Val did have 9's on it but that couldn't really account for the entire difference. I played about 5 minutes unplugged, then plugged into a small combo amp. The feel of the gunstock and wax on the neck... I knew immediately that I had to buy it. So I did. Holy grail situation. I forgot to even get my BFR set up.

I came back to the shop a few days later and brought the BFR in again to have it looked at. The tech told me that the nut slots were cut too high on it and that's why it had all the tension and high action. He said he'd fix it and it would play just like the other Valentine.

So when I got it back, it did play light years better right off the bat. Night and day difference from before... but the new Buttermilk one was still superior in playability, tone and feel. Could be down to a few factors, like woods and finish, etc. I had 9.5 gauge strings put on the BFR so now not a huge difference in string gauges either. I noticed that plugged into my interface, the signal from the Buttermilk was louder than that of the BFR with all controls set identical and the boost off. Maybe some trim pot inside one of them is set differently in a way that causes one to be louder, but at this point I don't know. The BFR plays and sounds really wonderful now-- but it's just that the Buttermilk one is even a little better in every way. I swear it has a more organic, woodier tone. It shreds just as good as it does anything else. Any difficult practice piece I've had in my repertoire for years just comes out flawlessly on this guitar where my fingers stumble on other guitars.

I've played guitar for a long time, but did not know that a guitar could play like this...

 

[edhalen]

What. A. Find. Huge congrats and I'm so very happy you found "the one!"

 

[beej]

Great story. Sounds like you found the perfect guitar

 

[GWDavis28]

WOW congrats and like Beej said that's an excellent story!!!

Glenn |B)

 

[fogman]

That's beautiful. Congrats!

 

[Tollywood]

Congrats on finding such a great guitar at a small shop. Wow, 75 songs in 75 days! Good for you.

 

[fbecir]

Very nice guitar and I am very happy for you that you find your guitar perfect.

But come on Ted, we are all grown men with several guitars hidden in our music room. Thus, don't use the word "unexpected" when you speak about a new guitar.
I imagine saying to my wife : "Honey, I unexpectedly went to the guitar shop where I unexpectedly saw a nice guitar. I unexpectedly asked to try it and ... unexpectedly it was a perfect guitar. By chance, I had my credit card with me and I unexpectedly remembered the PIN code ...". I don't know how are the women near Saint Louis, but here, this sort of explanation does not work smoothly !

 

[elvisdog]

nice!

 

[gforce013]

Nice guitar , enjoy it

 

[Ted]

Thanks for the replies, i really do feel like this instrument is "the one". It even weighs half a pound less than my BFR-- it's only 6.8 lbs. Feels like a feather compared to the other one, which is still on the lighter side.

When I started out looking at Music Man instruments the goal was to get an Emerald City Albert Lee, but somehow instead now I have TWO Valentines and no Albert Lees. Maybe some day. I guess the Valentine guitar as a "platform" really works for me. The shape was initially something I thought wasn't really my style, but somehow it grew on me. I do really love the pickups in these guitars. I was hesitant about the single coil in the bridge, initially,(would it have enough heft for overdriven rock power chords?) but I have a great Tele and can't argue with the bridge pickup in that-- and the bridge in the Valentine is even better. I don't go for a lot of complicated controls on a guitar, but I find the push/push knobs and 3-way lever on the Val to be like home to me. That boost is just something I thought was a gimmick I'd never use, but it's one of the most useful features of the guitar.

I really dig the wedged slab design of the body-- I could imagine that when designing the Valentine, someone could have said "hey lets make this a carved top" and made it some really contoured instrument with a bunch of bevels and cuts like a PRS, but aesthetically, EBMM and JV did the right thing by keeping it to that slab design. It's a design that just looks pretty good on a tall guy like myself.

With the playability, after having an EBMM for 6 months I feel like only now I get the love for these instruments and the comments I've read here about how people can play better on these than anything else. I'm very glad that I got that issue with my BFR ironed out and it plays like it was built to do. I like the poly satin on that one, but I love, love LOVE the oil and wax on the new one. Turns out both guitars were born in late 2018 a mere two weeks apart.

fbecir, well this purchase was completely unexpected. LOL. I get what you're saying but I had zero intention of buying a new instrument when I went to that shop. ZERO. The funny thing was that my brother was thinking of getting his first EBMM guitar and I was steering him toward a Valentine-- and he absolutely favored the Trans Buttermilk. When I encountered the used Buttermilk I had a dilemma. Last summer I was playing bass in a band and I didn't like my Jazz Bass. I was looking to get a P-Bass and my brother was playing a nice Spector with P/J config that he'd bought at the same shop. He loaned it to me for a gig and I was super happy with it. I still wanted a P-Bass but I liked the Spector too. A week later, my brother went to that shop again and bought a second Spector-- similar to his first one but different pickups and finish, etc. He offered it to me if I wanted to buy it from him-- otherwise he'd either keep it or maybe return it. I immediately found it to be what I was looking for in a bass, so I bought it from him (and I used that bass on all my demos-- I ended up quitting the band I was in). So fast forward to last week, I thought about buying the Buttermilk Valentine to see if my brother wanted to buy it from me-- but I felt bad because after playing it for a few minutes, I knew it had to be my personal instrument. It's a long complicated story, but my brother and I have a running gag of finding guitars for the other one.

I guess that's the good thing about being a single dude is I don't have to justify a guitar purchase. Still the money I spent was from my savings for a really good studio mic for vocals, which will now have to wait.


Tollywood, about the 75 songs in 75 days... In 2021 my brother and i both did the "75 Hard Challenge". You can look it up, it's a personal fitness challenge where each day you have to do two 45 minute workouts (one has to be outdoors), no alcohol, strict diet, a gallon of water, a daily progress pic and you have to read 10 pages of non-fiction. If you fail to do one of these just once over the 75 days you have to start over from scratch. I thought it was a bit arbitrary, some of these things, but I did it anyway. My brother and I both succeeded on our first attempt. It was difficult but the results were impressive. Of course I drank like a fish when the challenge was over. So in January of 2022, we decided to try a second challenge-- this time modifying it to our own goals. Only ONE 45 minute workout a day-- but adding one hour of directed guitar practice a day. I bought us both identical study books to work from. We were going to reward ourselves with a new guitar if we succeeded. We did. My brother bought a nice locally built Tele style guitar and my reward was the BFR Valentine.

In Fall of last year I was thinking I'd been successful with two 75 day challenges, how about another? So this time I kept the no-drinking, strict diet but now I would have to write and produce in my DAW the music for one NEW song per day for 75 days (minus lyrics/vocals). "New" being defined by me as a musical idea I had never demoed before. I had a lot of hummed and strummed voice memos (melodies and riffs, etc) in my phone from the lockdown. This time I allowed myself to keep going if I missed a day-- but in the end I would still have to have 75 songs at the end of 75 days. I found that it was really hard when I'd miss a day or three and then find myself having to do 3 or 4 songs in a day to catch up. In the end, I did it. It was a great way to make use of the glut of song ideas I'd accumulated during the lockdown--and about a third of the songs I came up with on the spot. I'd recommend this method to anyone looking to build discipline.

 

[Tollywood]

Thank you for telling me about your challenges. That is quite a commitment. It must be fun to go head to head with your brother. Talk about motivation. I can appreciate the aspect of giving up drinking. I usually give up beers every week…and then after the weekend I give them up again. My record is six days. Beers are delicious.

 

[Sweat]

Nice congrats on the nice pair, strange but I have yet to see or play a Valentine.

Like both colors of yours alot

 

[Ted]

Yeah, I like to drink beer too (and many many other things!) and I'm not what I'd call an alcoholic but I do walk the line sometimes, especially since the lockdown happened. I'm a bartender so I'm playing with fire(water) anyway. I've lost a couple of friends to alcohol related deaths of despair so as I get older I have to be careful with myself and people I care about. I've also reconnected with some friends who found out the hard way that they can't balance alcohol into their lives so they have to live the rest of their lives without. It's a bummer. I don't want to find myself in that boat, so I have to make periodic checks on my chemical state of affairs so I know I'm still in control. So far, so good!

 

[Ted]

Another pic of both Valentines.

 

[loocnmad]

9 times out of 10 when ime going to record something at home with grab my trans buttermilk Valentine. It's not the only one I use but it's the one I use the most.

 

[Ted]

So for the past few days I've been wondering why the white Valentine sounds so much better and so much louder than the green one. Here's a shot of the preamps of each. The trim pots in both look to be set identically. Can anybody see anything that looks different or off that would cause the green one to have lower output?

Beyond that, does anybody have any theories or ideas for solutions? I'm not a believer in tonewoods as being a thing in electrics, but I can't say for sure. The white one has 9 gauge strings on it and the green one is sporting 9.5's. I do think I play better one the white one partially because of the oil and wax on the neck-- but like I said, just strumming chords straight into an interface shows objectively that the white one has higher volume output when the controls are set the same.

The main thing I'd like to see is that the volume output of the green could be made to match that of the white one. Is it possible that being the same pickups and electronics, there are still enough differences between individual specimens to conclude that they can't have the same output? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ted

 

[loocnmad]

I'm kind of grasping at straws but have you started both with fresh batteries? If the relief, action and pickup height all measure the same I would say it just comes down to sway in the tolerance of the components.

The first Cutlass I had was significantly brighter than the second and I can't find any other appreciable differences.

 

[Ted]

I had just put a new battery in the green one a week ago and am using the old one that came in the white one, but just for the heck of it I swapped them today and the guitars still sounded the same.

However I did check the pickup height with a gauge and found that the pickups in the green one were a tad lower, so I raised them up a bit and it did raise the output. BIngo. ( Looks like I just failed basic guitar maintenance 101-- my cousin down in Nashville is a guitar tech to some of the biggest names in music-- he'd disown me if he knew, haha) So now they are more similar in output which I am satisfied with. Loocnmad, I owe you a beer. The tone of the white one is still more articulate and brighter whereas the green one is darker and jazzier sounding-- I don't know if its the rosewood fretboard or the slightly heavier string gauge (more likely IMO) or whatever, but I'm glad that each has its own feel and subtle tonal personality.

I can't put these guitars down. So versatile, beautiful and fun to play.

 

[beej]

Yep. Pickup height is a biggie. Doesn't take much to change the output.

 

[2mdude]

Pickup height is a biggie.

What this guy said.

Another pic of both Valentines.

Lovely Valentines, Ted. Nice find on the buttermilk, always liked that finish with the tortoiseshell scratch plate. I've only got one EBMM guitar left in my stable, a trans oxblood Valentine. I know nothing of the artist and not big on sig models per se, but there's a lot to like about the guitar in both usability and looks.