Sire Larry Carlton L7 - Real World Review

[Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everyone I hope you're all doing very well I'm intending to get back on top of things with this YouTube channel so I may be doing a few more reviews and things as time goes on I have been furiously gigging over the last couple of years so forgive me for my lack of uploads however because of all that time spent playing all over the UK I can give you my professional and experienced viewpoint on certain bits of gear that you may find interesting the topic of today obviously is all about this The Sire Larry Carlton L7 now these have been around for the last few years in fact from 2020 I believe but I picked my one up in late 2021 after getting a bit of an l-type guitar craving and sort of needing an instrument like that to do a lot of the rock based sets that I was doing at the time and still am of course and for this video I figured that instead of gifting the internet another fresh out of the box unboxing video I might take the approach of a more sort of rigorous road test testing at the various gigs and events that I've played at for the last couple of years so that I can give much more of a real world working professional musician review uh you know based on my experience that is of course in no way suggesting that any of the other Fab unboxing reviews and demos are somehow of lesser quality or inaccurate far from it but this is just my perspective as someone who has personally invested in the instrument and used it regularly alongside my other guitars so with all of that said let's get to it shall we kicking things off then with my first impressions as this was delivered to me about two years ago you'll have to forgive me because my memory is a little bit fuzzy on certain specifics of the guitar as it arrived but what I do remember is that it was extremely well packaged once it arrived from anderton's as per usual uh the setup was satisfactory I'd call it but um overall looked like it was in great condition as to be expected of buying new uh the flame Maple veneer I think you'll agree looks gorgeous on this guitar really is the business once I picked it up and started playing it though one immediate issue presented itself the B string snapped at the tuning post after my first Big Bend giving it the benefit of the doubts and knowing that I wanted to put on a full set of Elixir strings anyway I decided at that point to put on a fresh set of tens and see how I went from there bad news the strings snapped at the post again this is where I'm gonna have a little moan about locking tuners you see I absolutely understand the appeal of having a guitar fitted with these having them installed on my number one strap myself and I've never had a regret doing that they work very well however the only real benefit I've got from them is actually saving a small amount of time during restrings given that you don't need to wind up the tuning peg as much other than that I haven't noticed any other positive effects on my guitars that have these kind of tuners installed in fact my regular tuners seem to have no problem holding strings firmly in place around the post with no slippage and any tuning issues that present themselves are really just caused by friction at other parts of the guitar cheaper unbranded locking tuners like the ones I suspect were installed on this sire from the factory may have issues with things like burrowing on the string post where it sits or a sharp clamp inside the locking mechanism which will obviously both cause the string to snap when it comes Under Pressure you can avoid encountering this Yourself by just using any decent standard tuner often the ones installed on your average guitar are in the first place are probably best and just make sure you use proper string winding technique ask your guitar tech or repairer to advise or even do it for you if you wish it has been mentioned by a few other guitar channels before now but the standard cluesome tuners that you'd get on a lot of vintage fenders are actually really good they just work tremendously well anyway all of that said I decided to fix the problem by installing some goto 3x3 tuners that would fit the holes already drilled into the back of the headstock for the factory fitted tuners as soon as they were on and all strung up I have had zero string breakages there since I guess if we're going to be moving further on down the anatomy of the guitar I would just like to briefly mention the nut while it was passively carved from the factory it did did a little work in terms of adjusting the height of the slots thankfully my brother is a luthia and as I was near his workshop at the time he was able to file the slots for me while working on another mod that I had installed by him more on that later yeah what you typically see at the factories that they are on the fraction inside of high and I've seen so much a massively high and some which are low as well and that's talking on anything from you know Squires up to Gibson's so yeah it's not because you've got a cheap guitar or a bad guitar or even a really good guitar it's just the way that they come out the factory sometimes yeah it's been two set them up in the first place in terms of other issues relating to the nuts I was having a little bit of tuning trouble with the G and D strings this is a very common problem for l-type guitars or any guitar that uses a three by three tuner setup as the brake angle of the G and D strings over the nut can cause a little bit too much friction and the strings can catch obviously resulting in pulling the string Out Of Tune I personally managed to resolve this issue by taking those particular strings and winding them around the posts in reverse order what I mean by that is taking it from bottom to top as opposed to top to bottom that seemed to reduce the brake angle over the nut and eliminated the tuning issue as I was having with those particular strings but I had to say having those well-carved nut slots really helped now to talk about the neck and the Frets this is where this guitar really shines and I think all the other reviews on it so far would probably agree with me sire have done a fantastic job of giving this guitar a very comfortable feel with modern convenience but a vintage familiarity and as cliche as that all sounds it's true to be honest it seems as though that was their goal for the whole Larry Carlton range what I'm talking about specifically here is the standard c-neck profile having a really lovely smooth matte finish beautifully carved neck joint and the Frets being rounded and brilliantly shaped all resulting in a wonderfully comfortable playing experience in the sense that you're playing a very high quality instrument I haven't even needed to have anything done to the Frets in terms of leveling or anything like that for the setup though I can't guarantee that's going to be everyone's experience I may have been lucky moving on down the guitar we come to the pickups this is where in hindsight I'm really kicking myself for not recording more examples of these stock pickups before I swap them out for the Seymour Duncans are having now just as a quick side note if I haven't managed to find any decent recordings of those I'd advise you find another demo of the stock guitar online and try to compare the demos with the tones you'll hear from my guitar in this video what I can say though is that while the pickups from the factory were certainly usable I found that the neck pickup in particular was a little too woolly for me especially coming from a world where I'm used to the sort of strut type single coil neck pickups that I so often use I did miss having that byte and definition but I knew I wanted some warmth and depth that would be commonly found in a really nice quality neck humbucker pickup so I went for a Seymour Duncan Jazz and according to the handy website description that give me the desired brightness and be versatile enough for a few musical applications which is always greatly appreciated by me as a working musician navigating a number of guitar Styles almost daily [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] pickup now at Seymour Duncan 59 was only really changed to better match the neck pickup totally there wasn't much I disliked about the Factory bridge pickup from memory it wasn't a million miles away tonally from the sound of the 59 I suppose there might be a little more punch and Clarity but that may have even been down to a slightly different pickup height at installation speaking of which there was a little trouble installing the bridge pickup into the cavity that it was meant for as I recall the area for the ears or tabs of the pickup plate wasn't quite deep enough and it made screwing the pickup in place slightly difficult but it did go in after a little bit of persuasion I do sometimes find that the pickup is slipped down on one side occasionally this is just due to one of the screws coming loose so obviously that is resolved by just quickly screwing that back in all good to go it's no major issue but it is something to be aware of if you're thinking of modding your guitar in the same way any small issues like that aside I really do love the sound of this guitar now it definitely takes all the boxes I wanted ticked for an l-type guitar plenty of power sustain definition and not too woolly on the neck pickup oh foreign [Music] coming now to a very common change that they make to pretty much all of my guitars installing graphtec string saver Saddles now this is largely because I have a bit of a phobia about standard Saddles that you get on tuna Matic style bridges and how easily they seem to be able to break strings under the wrong conditions I can usually sort this out pretty quickly by installing some string saver Saddles as I say but I didn't anticipate the difficulty of putting said Saddles onto the factory fitted Bridge the issue was that the saddle screw sizes were not compatible with the graphic Saddles so I had to install a whole new goto bridge that would then fit The Replacements again being sure to check the measurements and the post positions before ordering once I had that all swapped over I was very happy with the setup and I once again have had absolutely zero breakages at the Saddle as for any other changes I made to the guitar I did mention earlier that there was a mod that my luthia brother George installed a sound that I've always loved which has come from a particularly iconic Les Paul guitar was the famous greeny out of phase tone which was popularized by Peter Green and then Gary Moore and that same guitar now is owned by Kirk Hammett but I have always wanted the option of accessing that tone without having to permanently alter the neck pickup's polarity this would allow me to retain the standard middle pickup position sound but then at the flick of a switch flip the neck pickups polarity electronically we decided to install a push pull pot to be the neck pickups tone Pot and also acts as that polarity switch and it works great here's a little clip of that going into the guitar as well as a quick demo of it in action right so I'm here in my brother's Workshop say hello George hello um yeah so we're looking at uh basically replacing I think it's um this pot here isn't it with um when that little bad boy in yeah so this is a little push pull switch uh basically switch between the contacts up here and will allow you to do a few different options uh including the well quite commonly used coil tap that a lot of people using humbuckers to switch to single coil or what you're after today phase reverse yes uh which yeah basically we're revising which is the output and which is going to Earth on the outputs of the pickup one thing we noticed on the way in was that this was a little bit loose with the sort of standard nut and washer and it's not exactly like it's an expensive Jack socket on here but it's absolutely fine but it's a little trick we can do to these to add a little star washer like that which stops these shaking loose which is pretty common on a lot of guitars cheap ones expensive ones all the same all right yeah so given that the uh guitar goes for so cheap you have to imagine that because on the surface it looks like it is a very high quality instrument there has to be some Corners cut somewhere so little bits like this generally you'll find will probably be well occasionally a little subpar but there are easy modifications as we're demonstrating that you can do to make them a lot better so it's a little star washer there makes it nice and tight and that's not going to shake loose in a hurry [Applause] [Music] [Applause] cut the end of The Wire off yeah see how much we need important to Tin the wires before the soldering so that you get a nice Even Flow so it's been the output why I want this in the middle I'm done the output wire we want to have as the alternative output is actually sold it to the ground already so we just need to free that one [Applause] the heat shrink sleeving off it comes off there and exposes the other wire so I can just cut that off okay all right I'll desolder the two often use along those pliers like this [Music] to hold it open you should just pull it apart neatly like that so the other one is just going to be going to Earth by itself yeah so it just to quickly clarify it is important to have a four conductor um four conductors so that means yeah excluding the Earth we've got the main output there that's usually one goes to ground and then we've got the link wires that goes between the two sides of the pickup so humbucker is basically two single core pickups stuck together and which you can see if you look at this guitar down here of course yeah many people have seen that so we're pre-tinning the contact on that as well so you see like the other side you've got it there at the top there we wanted to actually have some salt on it ready to go so that's the side we want for the main output because that's where it's going to be at rest because then you can choose when you pull it up to pull it out of phase it'll be in Phase the rest of the time so that's now soldered on there let's solder the other output the other side a little tricky when you've only got two hands it's on properly another little content between the two [Music] so I'll clip it out so that they're not connected wire up the ground to that as well soldered to ground [Applause] and now that that's in I just need to connect it up and remove the old pop some people just cut these out but I see that's a diesel thing so I can put them back in properly just a wire coming from the volume pot and another one for Earth and that's kind of it for a tone pot they're really simple move and charm up there the nuts off fortunately they're not the right size for this new pot going in so I'll have to use a new washer so that's the old tone pot there very simple nothing much to it we can keep the old I'm sure enough with it so it's not going to be missing anything oh and the star washer so we can keep as a cheeks bear because we know it's in good condition that it's pretty much brand new no crackling or anything so it's yeah absolutely now we're gonna have to remap the hole slightly because we need to put a little bit wider on the shaft as we can probably see if we put them together let's see those shafts are quite a different size oh yes yeah so I've got this reamer so 10 mil reamer yeah I think we're just gonna remount the hole a little bit yeah yeah very useful it's a nice neat workout you can do it with a drill but it's a little bit more risky that you might chip the paint or something because this is a really nice slightly squeaky way of doing it but it just means that this finishes yeah nice and safe get all the way through to the back okay that's through a little pile of wood from what's come out make sure it's all nice and clean and then a new part should just fit check it always before we sold it all up just sit in a hole about my tights over not too bad it's gonna be just fine the other thing as well you get different length pots so you need to be careful as again you can see a short one and a long one there well that's not even that long it's more of a medium length yeah but that there's a short one something that you'd find in say um a Telecaster or a uh Strat something with just a thin scratch paper yeah or is this going through a wooden body they're typically a bit thicker yeah with a bit of a calf top on it as well so the height varies a bit on the top and this has also got a little Notch which again can be used for locating but in this case it's just going to get in the way so we're just gonna snip that off like that that is only going to get in the way for mounting and then it can mount with a little bit more spare on the other side there so we can get another washer on just fine yeah and then it should just go like that when you push pull Fab and I'm going to fit the nut and washer and for this one I'm not entirely sure if this is a metric or imperial size probably metric but having said that but I think this one is a bit of a funny one yeah in that it has an imperial thread even that's a metric top yeah you get all kind of weird sizes with guitars so yeah so that's a little bit too thick so I think it's probably going to be Imperial size and it is so metric pot with a metric spine shaft Imperial thread on it it's uh one of the tricky ones that sometimes you get through slightly different size of washer of course they're all mixed in because they're roughly the same size on Imperial size washer all right yep that fits now as to that lovely okay now we're just finished soldering on those last few bits before we fit it in properly now we've got the wire coming from the volume pot for the tone which is obviously a tone type as well is going to be our Push Pull face switcher now we need to fit that through from the volume part otherwise we ain't got no tone and we always need to turn on we do need tone it'll be remarkably amazed how a few guitarists actually use the tone control um kind of a set and forget for a lot of people but yeah spot with this modification of course um altering the tone and volume pots with the out of phase position is going to have quite a drastic effect and it will vary the sounds quite a bit which is something I'm interested to try when this is done yeah that's on [Applause] just tighten that up sold to that Earth back onto the pot that's on and now fingers crossed everything should work perfectly so it is all in working order so we've got that's the neck position there yeah little Bridge here's all working so even the connections you haven't done it's good to check there you go the phone's working volume's working and you'll hear a change when you change the uh yeah phase around but no discernible change in tone yeah obviously until we put it in the middle position so this is how it was before and this is now with face switch all right okay and that's it cool [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] in summary then obviously it's clear I've done a number of things to this guitar to get to be the exact instrument I wanted and needed but it should be remembered that the stock instrument after a decent setup to maximize playability is a whole lot of guitar for the money I can say hand on heart that if I had to choose a guitar to hire out on a tour date overseas for instance potentially dodgy locking tuners aside this will be pretty high up on the list it's pretty solidly put together and is very comfortable to play night after night what I can say with absolute confidence is that it is entirely worth the money it feels and sounds like a guitar that could be easily double the price and with a few optional mods it can become a truly top quality instrument I would really struggle to settle for any other l-type guitar at this point this has everything I'm looking for I hope you all gained some insight into a regularly gigging guitarist experience with a good quality but affordable instrument I think going down the route of buying the guitar as a solid base for modding is a great way to go but even as a stock instrument there's certainly ahead of a number of instruments in their price range to summarize like me you could Tinker with it to make an amazing guitar to suit your exact needs or you could use it as stock to have a respect upgrade from your beginner guitar or if you fancy splashing out you could have an absolutely brilliant starter instrument on your hands certainly has my seal of approval it should also be stated that this isn't the only side guitar from this range that I own I'm intending to make a similar video about my S7 which has been modded in very similar ways to make a very usable backup for one of my more expensive guitars but I'll get into that next time if you enjoyed this video please give it a like share and subscribe all that lovely stuff so you can catch content like this plus anything else I've already done on the channel that you may well enjoy and if you enjoyed my playing through the video why not check out my new music video for my latest single release look at the sky anyway until next time folks stay safe out there stay positive and stay Musical [Music]

Channel: Toby Pearson

Views: 20,226

Keywords: Sire, Guitars, Review, Musician, Working, Accurate, L7, Larry Carlton, Les Paul, Seymour Duncan, Pickups, Mod, Phase, Demo

Id: WILGl7VksvE

Length: 27min 21sec (1641 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2023