vintage les paul

I listened to browned eyed girl and I'd say the guitar should have been higher in the mix, maybe also with the tone control rolled forward a little - there's way too much space, imho, between the vox and the other instruments.

for gigging purposes, you will need a decent amp - which one you go for is gonna be a based on several factors - size of your budget, what guitar sounds you best want to create/recreate (for a fun covers band, I'd suggest something like the Line 6 amps with amp modelling features, but a lot of companies do this now, so try Vox, Marshall, and whichever other ones are in your local store), what size venues you currently play or hope to soon be playing, and how noisy the rest of your band are.

my searches on the Vintage company just keep throwing up loads of expensive gibsons and the like. I'm aware of the Vintage brand, but haven't tried them myself. I'm going to assume the pickups on your guitar are fairly cheap (although I could well be wrong), in which case you can buy new pickups and get them installed. For a two-humbucker (i.e. Les Paul style) guitar a safe bet would be Seymour Duncan SH-2 Jazz and SH-4 Jeff Beck humbuckers. Also, the Seymour Duncan SH-1 '59 is going to give you some classic tones. Each pickup retails at around £50-70 from the quick google-search I just did, so you'd be looking at spending £100 or more.

Since the wood used to make your guitar (provided I'm right about Vintage being low-price guitars, similar to Encore guitars and Squiers), you'd probably be better off buying a second guitar than spending that amount of money on pickups and then having to possibly pay someone to install them for you. If you wish to purchase a second guitar, I'd seriously recommend Spear guitars which are excellent quality for a reasonable price (pm me if you have any trouble getting hold of details for them, they're fairly new as a company). Or you could go with an Epiphone Les Paul guitar for around £200+

As you've said you're fairly new to guitar playing, I would advise getting a decent amp for the gigs you currently play or hope to play in the near future, and maybe adding a pedal or two to your set-up. Which pedals you go for depends on what features the amp has. If the amp has reverb as an effect, go for an overdrive pedal and a wah pedal. If the amp has no reverb effect on it, go for an overdrive pedal and a reverb pedal. As cheap-but-good-quality recommendations, I'd suggest the Marshall Bluesbreaker for an overdrive pedal, and a Holy Grail reverb pedal (although you may find cheaper reverb pedals). If you continue with guitar playing, in time you'll decide to replace your guitar, but you'll have a better idea about what you need from your guitar when the time comes to make this decision. But don't hesitate to annoy the local music store staff in the interim by playing all their guitars and then not buying any of them - as a guitarist, such behaviour is expected, nay, demanded. :wink:

hope this helps

Thanks again for taking time to write a long reply, that really helps. Thanks also for not mentioning how out of tune my guitar was on that opening riff (i plugged straight into the recording thingy and had no feedback of how it sounded through the song). we will have to re record that.

Have a good weekend. Bye