
The H-III’s natural sustain makes it a good choice for melodic lead playing as well. You’ll find vintage electric blues tones and sounds for aggressive punky, garage-rock style riffs.

The master tone switch gives a muddy, mellow chord comping voice and the mute switch knocks the output back to a fraction. This is very useful, as you can toggle between this three-pickup chord voice and the warmer, jazzier rhythm sound created by using the neck and bridge pickups together. The switching arrangement is simple but powerful, allowing you to drop the middle pickup in and out at will. There’s a good degree of hum cancellation without the more obvious `quackyness’ Fender players will be familiar with. It’s not immediately apparent in this configuration, but the middle pickup is wired out of phase with the other two. With all three pickups engaged, you get an excellent chord/strumming voice that’s very clean and hi-fi. The guitar is particularly resonant, and even the clean sustain is excellent. Overall, the pickups feel neutral in colour and allow the natural qualities of the instrument’s materials to define its sound. Soloed, the middle pickup is one of my favourite voices its wide open and jazzy but very precise, while the neck unit offers a little more mid and bass colouration. However, it nails a clean 60s melody/lead tone. Even the bridge unit delivers without brashness. Engaging bass cut and concentrating on the Hagstrom’s vintage voices, there is still plenty of roundness and warmth to be had. However, it can help sculpt some fantastically brooding rhythm parts. For most distorted lead tones, it’s too much.
TEISCO GUITAR REMOVE TAILPIECE SOFTWARE
However, for driving a software Fender emulation the rich, rounded and natural-sounding bass is like a gift from above. You can certainly see why you might want to tame the bass end if you’re using an old Vox, Selmer or WEM amp. 003uFD capacitor out of circuit? These pickups are very full-frequency, and this is the full-signal tone. Just what is the basic clean tone? Is it the bright, clear and twangy 60s-style sound with the bass cut switch engaged? Or is it the more contemporary sound with a fuller, richer bass that you get with the. Right from the get-go, the H-III is an enigmatic instrument. There’s also a master tone on/off, mute and bass cut on/off. This gives a remarkable range of voices: seven combinations in total. The first three simply switch the pickups on and off. In practice, the layout is much less complicated than it looks. While the single volume control needs little introduction, the six selector switches certainly do (the seventh, on the upper bout, is a useful kill switch). The new Retro-S single-coil pickups are designed as close reproductions of the 1960s originals, and with the blocky, rectangular design and chrome surrounds Hagstrom’s certainly got the look right. Also, the pickup surrounds have been fitted over the scratchplate’s clear film protector, which makes it difficult to remove cleanly without leaving a ragged edge. Over-zealous buffing of the neck appears to have caused some scratching of the upper frets on the treble side of the neck above the 12th fret.

However, there are a couple of minor issues. Generally speaking, the instrument’s finishing is very good. It has the appearance and feel more of ebony than rosewood. This isn’t luck, it’s materials science the fingerboard is made from a proprietary substance called Resinator, which Hagstrom now uses on all of its guitars. It’s broader and flatter than you might expect, while under the fingers the board feels remarkably consistent and friction-free. I like this new look it’s chubby in a vintage Teisco way. While the body, which is made from selected American alder, retains its overall form with sharp offset horns somewhat reminiscent of the Guild S-100, the headstock gets a redesign to make it a little less Fender-like.
