Guitar stuff

This is bad ass.

 

I've been playing around with my great-grandmother's six-string that she used to teach lessons with. I've always wanted to learn how to play (I know a few chords from a music class when I was in middle school) but I've never had the chance or I was too focused on my piano skills. Then, one night, I started screwing around with Garageband (part of iLife for Macs) and it actually has beginner lessons you can download for free where they teach you how to play.

This should be interesting. I'm looking forward to it because I need some sort of musical outlet and my parents gave my piano away.

 

I just got my '72 Custom back.
I had my friend fix a broken switch and replace the bridge with a Gotoh, six-saddle brass model. Rings like a bell.
We switched out the 250K pots for 500k CTS tones and 1meg volumes - supposed to be the same way Keith Richards had his Tele done on the 1981 tour.
Sounds fantastic. The tone is just 'more there.' And the floor on the tone doesn't drop away the way it used to.
The single-coil spanks and quacks like a duck. It's awesome.
I'm still not crazy about the WRH, but I'm playing around with it to figure out how to get the most out of it.
I bought this guitar in the spring. It still has fret trouble, and I'm going to have to get it refretted pretty soon.
We reset and lowered the action, and now there's a buttload of fret buzz.
But man, it sounds and plays great.

 

Also, in response to WBCC, I started looking around and found a cool site.
Or another corner of site that I had not checked out before.
I had been to http://www.mojocaster.com/ before. I had linked there from another site while researching guitars mods.
Anyway, it's a cool little site.
But the guy also has a related site I had never checked out before, and it's a nice little resource for beginning guitar players. Check it out:
http://www.threechordguitar.com/


For the record, I am not Mojocaster.

 

I forgot about the burn on my fingertip until I picked up my guitar, just six hours after getting the burn. I won't forget for a while. Pushing and sliding on the B just about killed me. KILLED ME I say! I wish I could just click my heals and have calluses so it wouldn't hurt anymore.

 

It takes a while to build your fingers back if you haven't been playing much lately.

This is not guitar stuff, but I've always wanted a theremin. I don't know why.

Everybody knows the sounds from the Beach Boys' 'Good Vibrations' and the opening credits for the original 'Star Trek' series.
I've always thought it would be great for the Hammond riff in 'Stepping Stone."

 

Saw Joe Bonamassa a while back and he uses a theremin onstage.

 

I just think the theremin would be a lot of fun to learn. It's got to be incredibly difficult to play well, though.

This is another clip of Andreas Oberg. The guy is so sick:

 

My Martin D-15 just didn't seem to be playing very well lately. Muffled tones if any tones at all.

I know, I know, the easy answer is it was me.

Except that I could play any of my other guitars just fine.

So I took it in today and was comforted by the fact that the guy looked at it and immediately said "Even I couldn't play this." The strings were way high (and in guitar talk that can be just a half a centimeter) off the board. Turns out the neck was pulling away from the body and needs to be reglued. Left it at the music shop even though the technician is out on his honeymoon and not due back till Tuesday.

But it was comforting to know that it wasn't really my inability to play it.

Hopefully I'll have it back in a week and it won't cost an arm and a leg.

 

Good catch. I hope they have a good tech.
I bought my 72 Custom Tele off eBay during the summer. It's a great guitar, and we've already done some mods to it.
But the frets are hammered. I took to a really well know luthier here in California, and he said the fret wire at the end of a roll of fret wire is always softer.
You should see these frets. It's not regular fret wear. They're dented almost.
Anyway, we go on vacation soon and this guys going take a shot at recrowning them.
I don't think it's going to work, but he said if it doesn't work he won't charge me for that and then he'll re-fret it.
It's going to cost me $200 or so when it's all done, which is almost half what I paid for it.
But I really like the guitar. And my Keith Richards mods with the pots sound great.

That neck work on yours is going to cost you sopme money, but that's a $1,000 guitar.

 

I have the guitar back now but it's not fixed. That's the bad part.

The good part is the repairs will be covered under the limited lifetime warranty. That's the good part.

But there's another bad part: The shop I bought it at is authorized to sell Martins but not authorized to do warranty work. And the nearest place for that is about a four-hour drive away, so I have to pack it and ship it. Add in insurance and it'll still cost me a little bit, but not the roughly $200 if it wasn't under warranty.

 

That is cool that it's covered under the warranty.
Is the certified luthier near any place cool? Maybe you can make a weekend trip out of it.
I did that to go try out some Eastmans not long ago. My brother lives about four hours from me. There's a shop that carries Eastmans en route, about a 30 minute detour. Went to visit for the weekend, took a 30-minute detour on the way there and the way back. Played two models of Eastman archtops - very nice but a little insubstantial in feel - and visited my brother in the process.

I'm taking the Tele in for fret work in about two and a half weeks, right before we leave for vacation.
I had a new hand-carved saddle done for my Kaman about six months ago. Gave it back to my friend about three weeks ago for a little tweaking. Sounds fantastic. The projection and harmonics of it are just crazy. It's like a new guitar. Action is just slightly lower with the new saddle. It plays nicer, and the improved sound and projection are crazy.
I have a little trouble with the under-saddle pickup. There's just so much more going on, the pickup can't really handle it. The fifth and sixth strings just blow up if I plug it in.
I'm planning to get a pre-amp with EQ some time in the next couple of months. That should solve the problem as far as plugging in or recording goes.
As for playing al fresco = A.