Thanks for the video. I'd say Firefly baritone guitars are one of the best less expensive* baritone guitars out there. I've looked into Eastcoast before after watching various videos, but haven't found many in the wild - and have yet to find any for such nice pricing. * The term "budget" has many negative connotations. When it goes on vacation, it always brings a lot of baggage.
Rob, "Budget" is only a dirty word if you don't know what you are looking at. To me "Budget" means my next possible project so long as the neck and body are good. 😉👍✨
It's got the vibe of the Squier cabronita they did a few years back but the pickup placement, especially that neck pickup, really put me off the east coast. Some very interesting sounds you got there gent 👍
Now, that's a funking wagonel! (Look it up!) Barry White the Guitar sounded dramatic and sounded like the right choice for ambient mood sounds. Create your own ambient sounds for the live stream.
I have 7 Baritones and 3 of them are this model because they kept having a sale on them... and I was pretty sure it couldn't last forever .... oh and the whole guitar was cheaper than a baritone conversion neck. One has donated its neck to a baritone-ified strat for now. I really enjoyed having these available. One of them (the black one obvs) is now a doom metal hefter with L500 XL in the bridge, an HV58 in the neck (basically an affordable and slightly improved Dimebag Darrel style set), this can do some chuggy metal all day in a glorious way, so yes they can do metal. The stock pickups can rock the heck out with no problem but I had to tweak for metal. These are also stunning for Ambient & Post rock uses
Please tell me you got all 3 colours? 😀 You gotta get the set! Actually if you got em all at £99 each, all 3 of them would be close to the Fender Subsonic conversion neck in price 😂👍
I've listened to some of your recommended Baritone players. There's some great stuff, especially the funk. Thanks again! I also know this Kiwi living here in cheese head land that builds some really good Strats including some Baritone Strats. Where one supply dries up, another may appear, but the Baritones made here won't be "budget" instruments. 👍
I have a PRS SE 277 I won in a raffle. It’s a lovely guitar. I also have a Squier 50’s Classic Vibe tele that I’ve thought about converting to a baritone.
Congrats mate! I hear of people winning Guitars in raffles all the time! I'm so jealous! 😂 Check out the Fender SubSonic Telecaster Baritone neck. It's pricey - but the perfect fit for your CV 😎👍
Hi steve nearly bought the blue one but already have a snot green Danelectro dead on 67 baritone , and also a tele squire with an allparts baritone neck expensive ten or so years back the dan has as a trem ( instant Chris Issac's!) I tune the tele C - C the Dano B - B . Tuning very stable not played them recently hands sore ( combination of arthritis and Dupreynes contracture and being an old git !) stretching exercises help its hereditary in both sides of my family but I'll soldier on ! . Keep on rocking matey 🤘🤘🍌🍌
Nice video Steve! The old "tic tac bass" of 1950s/1960s country had baritone sounds on them. Usually it was a Danelectro baritone. What could you do if you want some more clarity on your guitar I would recommend that you play with the screw heights on the humbuckers (try raising them) which might help. If you can do soldering replacing the pots with better pots like CTS or Bournes 500k ones and put a better capacitor on it. I usually wire a Switchcraft on at the same time too (my Promo Cheapo formula). I would love to get one of these. My feeling would be to put GFS Firebird style pickups in it, a Gotoh bridge (what the original is based on) and upgrade the electrics like I mentioned above. I most likely would upgrade the tuners with Import locking ones (probably Guyker) and put Tusq string trees on. As is you could play Doom Metal on this East Coast and it would probably sound decent. The guitar sounded ok but try playing with the screws under the strings on the humbuckers, I have found on decent pickups it unchokes them.
@@stevecassidyguitar The pickups themselves are smaller and they come with a pickup ring that can probably use two out of the four mount screw holes for the ring. I did GFS Trons on a IYV Thinline Tele and I am pretty sure that the Trons and Firebird pickups use the same ring from them. That said, I have no issue with filling the holes with toothpicks and redrilling new holes in a budget guitar. Humbucker sized P-90s would also be cool on a baritone guitar. I'm guessing my favorite pickups GFS makes, the Surf 90s (DeArmond meets a P-90) would sound killer too in that. If I were in the UK I would probably do an Alnico based P-90 pickup in a humbucker footprint that was inexpensive. Like 40£ or less for each.
@@gringogreen4719 Funny you should mention mate - I just put a Vanson Humbucker sized P90 in the neck in my starcaster. Total Game changer! Love it! It cost about £20 new 🤯 I'm converted 😁👌
Very Cool, Thankyou Steve. Very interesting Guitar. Nice playing, demonstrated the "Bari-Tones" perfectly. I have never tried a Baritone Guitar, but have been tempted the past couple of years by Artist Guitars GM1BARI Baritone Guitar. Only in Black 'Grungemaster' (Jazzmaster) Body 27" Scale Length, $299- Australian so similar price to this awesome East Coast I suppose. All the Best. Cheers
Having watched it all now I think I have nothing to add. This were my thoughts on this guitar precisely. Cool to try out the baritone hype , do some overdubs and overall enjoy. Good price for the quality that is very good imo 🎉
@@stevecassidyguitar I’ve become a proper guitar freak, I actually just sold one , the fact I bought two more the other day is irrelevant, but 100 quid and one guitar up 😂😂😂😂
Hey Steve! First of all your channel has so far been in that miraculous zone between "comforting and witty entertainment" and "artisan knowledge mining", so thank you for doing this. I mean it. :) Now there's no chance this previous sentence doesn't sound like sugar-coating my next one: any chance you're selling that EastCoast T1 Bari? There's a whole stoner album asking for that. :D
First of all... Thank you so much for your kind words -it means a lot! 😀🙏 I actually am in a seeling mode at the moment. But unfortunately the Baritone is at School (where I teach) and the school is now closed for summer, So I won't see it again for another 7 - 8weeks 😬. I do think it's likely I'll keep it though as it's handy having guitars in different tunings for teaching pupils who ofter surprise me turning up with new guitars etc. One of my pupils just got an 8 string - just to make my job a bit harder 😂🙈
@@stevecassidyguitar It's so sweet to imagine a baritone laying among the new generation that I'll gladly self-censor my question about you selling it. :D And, as a plus, you get to show it to the "8-strings lad" as in "Are you really sure you need those extra two strings? You can have plenty of "abyss" with six, you know?", nourishingly messing him up a bit. Anyway, thanks for the kind reply, Steve. :) It would have been amazing buying something from a Scot and making peace with the long adolescence I spent in St.Andrews, where basically my musical journey started (and I'm Italian, so, yeah, is THAT surreal).
@@MALAMADREOFFICIAL Nice! 😀👍 St. Andrews is just across the bridge from me (I'm in Dundee). My GF works for St Andrews University too - Small world indeed! 😀 The 7/8 String and Baritone stuff is pretty alien to me when it comes to Metal stuff. This kid is really into "Sleep Token" right now - So i've got the summer to figure out what that is 😂🤷♂
@@stevecassidyguitar Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Baritones and 7/8 strings are surely appealing to the Z generation, yet usually the metal application of that results in heavily compressed walls of sound. Nothing wrong with it (as in "I'm a huge fan of Devin Townsend"), but it can be such a limitation. Even though my metal days are over (as a matter of fact, my best metal days were spent between Fife Park and the graveyard in St. Andrews Cathedral... :D A small world indeed, as you say), baritone and open C/B tunings are one hell of a creative territory. You can get a huge wall of sound with the amp just barely cranked up (I'm currently "poisoning up" my EART Tonerider City Limits pu-modded strat - boy, what a guitar... - just with a Blues Driver) and still get all the nuances from the instrument. The string is all there and it's up to the playing fingers to make it growl or not. I ended up starting a new band recently just based on these kinds of experiments. Anyway, enough ranting. Sorry about that. Say hello to Dundee on my behalf. Miss your country so much. :D
To try lower Tunings, i strung a guitar with 25.5" scale with heavier strings. But didn't want top widen the nut too much. So only went with slightly thicker strings in order to tune it to C.
That totally works mate 👍 I usually use 9's on 25.5", So 11's would probably get me down to C and maintain close to the tension I like. and like you say, no need to make any alterations to the nut 😎👌
If you want to hear some cleaner baritone guitar sounds try J.D. McPherson's "Let the Good Times Roll" and "Undivided Heart & Soul" albums. I saw him live and he had a guy in his band who mainly played a baritone in the band. The first album "Signs and Signifiers" is also fantastic if you like that throwback sound where Jump Blues started to become Rock & Roll. Link Wray also played a Danelectro Long Horn baritone on some of his stuff. Robert Smith of The Cure also played baritone guitars as well.
For some reason when reading this comment I'm hearing "take my breath away" by berlin - that might be a baritone too. (Soz I'm just home from a gig - brain is fried 🥴)
@@stevecassidyguitar I'm pretty sure it would sound good played on a baritone guitar. It may have been a downtuned guitar in the studio. I saw Berlin live back in Reno when they did the VH1 "Bands Reunited (the only original member was the singer) and the guitarist didn't play a baritone from what I remember.
Great video. I'd definitely like a baritone at some point - be great for ambient music. I know this is a budget guitar, but can you please stop making me want to spend my money on more gear.😇
Ha! Many apologies sir! 🙈 If you don't want more guitars lying around but want to taste that Rich baritone flavour... Ya could always restring an existing guitar with heavy strings and tune down - pretty much works the same 😃👍 There ya go... Just saved you "at least" £99 😜
I have my Epiphone ES-339 Inspired by Gibson in standard tuning. I drop to D sometimes. Or to C. Or to B. Try it, it makes you think about wtf you're playing haha!
@@stevecassidyguitar They indeed do! That's why I use a 58 on the low E when I know that I will stay in C or B for a while. I think that Dave Grohl uses a similar gauge for his low string when he's playing drop D, because he's a hard hitter.
@@nedim_guitar That makes sense for the tension mate - good move. Although that would be way too much tension for me tuning it back to standard. I think you might be doing it wrong mate - you clearly need to buy another Guitar for this 😜 It's basically the rules. ANY excuse for another guitar! 😂👍
You’re so silly, lol. Anyway, I’d love to have a baritone someday. I think this looks like a neat guitar for the price. The pickups sound muddy to my ear, but that’s easy to fix. Overall, if everything else is nice, you can’t complain for £99 . . . I mean you can, but then you’ll look like a jerk, lol. It was just my 43rd birthday on May 22 if you wanna unload that thing, lol. I mean, you said you’re not a metal guy and don’t know what to do with it, after all! 😉😂
Ha cheers Marsha! 😃🙏 A belated Happy birthday to ya! If the shipping and taxes wouldn't cost more than the guitar... 🙈 I don't know of anything that could be comparible available in the US for this price? Let me know if you hear of anything 😃👍
Love the sound Steve ... I keep telling myself "Save for the amps, save for the amps" :-) Question, why doesn't one tune a Baritone to Standard - One Octave? Would it still be a Baritone?
Ha!😆👍 I hear ya - distractions often arise 👹 Great question! So do you mean, take like a long scale (27"+) Baritone guitar designed for say B standard, and tune it back up to E standard? If that's what you mean, you'd probably need to go back to lighter gauge strings. At that point, i'd say it's a baritone scale length, but tuned to standard. Might be a good option if you've got absolutely massive hands/extremely long fingers and struggle on standard scale length? 🤷♂️ If you mean, have a Baritone tuned to 1 Octave below E standard, then you've basically got a Bass VI type thing going on. Your bottome 4 strings would be the same pitch as a Bass guitar
@@RobbieF Got ya - Yeah that sounds like a Fender/Squier "Bass Vi" I think Gear4Music also do something similar with thier SubZero extended range guitar things 👍
@@RobbieF No worries mate - Although I've probably not clariefied it enough 🙈. It's more to do with the pitch range of the instrument rather than the specific tuning. So on regular Guitar/Standard tuning your lowest note is E, Of course you can tune to Eb, or drop D or D standard, that's all fairly standard/ par for the course stuff on guitar. I'd say anything lower than D standard, like C# Standard down to A standard (Maybe even G standard at a push), is more Baritone pitch range across the neck. Once you get down to E again (1 Octave below standard) that's the same range as a Bass Guitar. I don't think there's any black & white start and end point to what a Baritone guitar is, as different people chose to use it in so many different tunings. It's more like a big Grey area - I'll bet that didn't help - soz! 🙈
@stevecassidyguitar can't make a guitar for everything I think it did clean, broken up and overdriven pretty well. Ps if you've not heard the dead south, you need to have a listen. They have me gassing hard for a mandolin
Quick question I wanted to ask. Do you think a fender loaded pickguard would fit on a jet js400? Saw your video about modding the jet and wanted to try it myself.
The screw holes won't all line up. Quitea few people have did it successfully, but it will require some drilling and refilling and potentially a wee bit of fileing too. 😬👍
@@stevecassidyguitar i like to think that too, if i write a riff etc half the times its funk based, i like them sorta baggy 16th but accenting the 3 rd one each time, i think of that as being the kinda funk skeleton to start from? and yes, i can't praise prince enough, i call him ten geniuses in one, same category as stevie wonder and jacob collier imho.
@@jibicusmaximus4827 OK - Now your talking! 😃 Stevie Wonder is my all time favourite artist ever 😎👌 There's never been anyone as good, and probably never will be... IMO of course 😜
