Ugly Truth: Boss TU-3W Waza Tuner

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn...

This whole post could be a rant about how boring tuner reviews are, but I'll try to stay on point here. Boss has put out a new series of tuners. The chief among these is the Waza Tuner. If you aren't familiar with Boss and/or their Waza line, just know that Waza means you're going to pay more. As with the other Waza pedals, you really aren't getting a whole lot more for your money. Basically, Waza pedals give you two things: final quality control in Japan and a switch that lets you select from stock or mod. In this case, the mod is true bypass. That's it. You can turn your TU-3 to true bypass. That and they painted it black, so watch out, this pedal had an attitude...

And Then you Have The All New TU-3S (see the pattern here).



It's almost as small as it is not-exciting. I don't know about you, but one of the important features of the Boss pedal tuners was the fact they could mute your signal. This let you tune silently, and doubled as a panic button for when you rig has a ghost and starts to make all sorts of horrible noise. But don't worry, this tuner did away with all that functionality. And it can be yours for only the exact price of the actual pedal (the one with all the features still intact). I wish I was kidding. It is rather smaller, but not any slimmer. Last time I checked, the width of the pedal had more effect on pedal board real estate. I guess someone thought this was a good idea...




A Clip On Tuner

All kidding aside, this one is actually pretty solid. I've gone through the list with clip-on tuners. Some are better than others, but most are just barely passable. Boss have a pretty great track record when it come to tuners, so when they put their name on one, that carries some weight. This one comes in at less than $20, so it is still affordable and I wont cry to much when I eventually lose it.

Going Old-School



The last new tuner from Boss is the TU-30. Its a little more old school, and it gear toward more than guitarist. It come with a metronome and loads of extra features. If you want to read the full list of the features visit Boss. This one is probably the least excite of the four. However it does remind me of the days when I first learned the guitar and when I used a Korg tuner. That thing never stayed put and made tuning a bit of a hassle. I also lost probable a hundred dollars worth of then before switching to floor based models. I'm sure that the tuning and metronome feature are solid and that these would make great classroom and practice aids.




Conclusion:




sooooooo boring........

The Ugly Truth About Turning A 'Trasher' Into a Treasure

A few years ago I was having trouble, trouble justifying my desire to buy more gear... I'll admit. I like to play new and exciting gear. The reason that I started writing about gear in the first place was to curb my intense desire to acquire. There is only so much to write about, so in search to find something worth while and budget friendly, I took to the internet to find a deal on some musical swag. What I found was a seemingly endless bevvy of options. Used gear was the most appealing. I could find something that I was familiar with and a fairly safe investment.

This week, I was digitally flipping through The Tone Report's online magazine, and found an article about buying or finding a junker guitar and turning it into a player. I love this idea. I have attempted to do this a number of times, to different degrees of success. The plan was always to work on the guitar until it was a top notch part of my collection. What often happened was amassing a large amount of replacement parts, spending almost as much as the initial investment, and ending up with a underwhelming result. This got me thinking about the process and the value of experience. What I found wasn't too pretty.

It's Expensive

You got into this because it was cheap, but now you see that it is adding up. $100 on a guitar, $50 on some pickups from ebay, $35 on some decent tuners, $25 on new pots and wires and jacks. You're out $200+ dollars on your junker, then you have to put it all together. If you are like me, you enjoy putting everything together. The process is the best part. Assembling and soldering, It is rewarding to put something together and having it work. I was working on a SG, installing new pickups, and for some reason the neck pickup would not work. I tried to find the problem. I scratched my head and traced wires, I rewire the pots and pickup... still nothing. I finally tested the pickup... it was dead. Which brings me to my second point.

Sometime the work is just work

I know that seems a little simple, but when you drool over the parts you are going to stick into your current project you seldom foresee the issues that you'll have. The job that take a couple of solder joints, take an hour and a half. You can add a half hour to a job by knocking you parts bin off the counter you're working on. Those screws can hide in surprising places. There are only so many times you can burn your fingers and still "enjoy" the work. Even at modest prices, replacing the common parts in a build like these would run you another $100. So we've breached $300. This brings up the conversation that...

You could have bought something new

There are some decent guitars under $300. There are some more than decent used guitars for that kind of money, and what you have made is only arguably better. Best case scenario is that you start with a body and neck you enjoy and change the sound of the guitar to match you liking while upgrading the hardware to make it reliable. Or you could forego this entire process and just find a guitar that has all of these attributes. I've found that a stock guitar is going to be more reliable and cleaner looking than one that I've modified. I've changed tuners and left holes from the stock ones. Tools slip while working and give the guitar "character marks". Some of the solder work might not be as pretty. The worst thing you can end up with after all that work is something you don't absolutely love. You have something you've put you time and money into, and yet you favor your 'tried and true' over your polished gem.

Conclusion

While the process can be cathartic, the outcome can also be underwhelming. I mention it being a safe investment. Sure, you can try to turn a dime on your guitar that you've worked on, but you are charged with convincing someone to buy your customized guitar. Forget trying to get paid for all that work. You'll be working upstream to convince them to pay more than the stock guitar that you bought. Sure, you can get your initial investment back, but you are more than likely going to be upside down in the end. Having said that, I enjoyed and haven't regretted working on any of the project that I have. I enjoyed the process. To me it was a way to learn more about the instrument that is, in some ways, a part of me.