In a little rowboat

Ok well did the best i could...but man, love the ones i got...sorry no pedalboards

Thom's got a 64 SG, a couple 60's jazzmasters, a 60's hummingbird, a 00 martin in these pics

Jonnys got a 70's fender starcaster in these, a martin d-16 (think) plus theres a few of his synths, space echo

Ed's got a boss sampler with a wireless patch, a clapton strat, and a 60's casino ala george harrison

enjoy

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You could also embrace thuddy, beautiful, worn strings. They sound better to me. AND it's cheaper.

I really prefer worn strings, at least on my main guitar, Gibson Chet atkins SST...i have the stock UST swapped out and the thing is is ridiculously bright with new strings and Im a pretty percussive player, new strings have too much pop and snap...my martin acoustic can take new strings better however

I also prefer the sound of worn strings. They feel like they're all working together or something.

 

Anyway...I quickly learned that the guitars get restrung all the time. Each and every time they get used, they get restrung. It seems absurd, especially to a guy who likes worn strings. Now, I feel myself adopting this string changing policy, whether I like it or not!!

i dont know if yall know this trick, but you can get bit more life out of old strings by unwinding them and boiling them in a lite salt water solution for 10 minutes, drying, and restringing...if you even care to go to the trouble...also, when you put them back on, start winding at the tuner before putting the ball end in the bridge...twist the ball end a few times, then insert followed by the bridgepins...theyll give you more tone and brightness

j

sadly, my girlfriend has work Friday, so ill miss Wilco at the pageant

ill try to get some pics of gear and such...for those who dig it

lots of new gear and songs this tour

j

Have had 100 transactions on ebay, most guitar related...never had a serious issue...id hae to agree with what BWW said, read the listing thoroughly, and make sure the seller has plenty of positive feedback AS A SELLER...you can have 100% feedback with no sales...make sure to email questions and be 100% sure on return and shipping terms...

also, pay via paypal if possible...there is massive documentation on the entire sale, and if you somehow get shafted, there are options to get your money back

otherwise, go nuts, ive found numerous killer deals on ebay...and the truth is, effect pedals in general are extremely durable and are among the safer ebay buys

j

You could also embrace thuddy, beautiful, worn strings. They sound better to me. AND it's cheaper.

I really prefer worn strings, at least on my main guitar, Gibson Chet atkins SST...i have the stock UST swapped out and the thing is is ridiculously bright with new strings and Im a pretty percussive player, new strings have too much pop and snap...my martin acoustic can take new strings better however

i have on occasion purchased batches of lesser know brand strings for a discount online, but i found that i tore through those streings even faster than d'addarios...im back to the 10 packs (i miss the 10 pack with pint glass deal)...if you find a cheaper method please let me know....and now im uber-picky and only buy the 80-20 phosphor bronze custom 11's (i only play with acoustic strings these days)

guess you go with what you know

truth is i steal alot of packs from the store i guitar tech for----shhhhhhh!

j

OK I gotta ask: How does the ipod shuffle figure into all of this.

 

BTW, not to hijack but I may hit you up for some advice on the "Headrush" one of these days.

NP headrush is a great pedal, looper, delay and tape echo----delicious

I have a mono y cable going into the second input of the space echo...one lead is for optical theremin, on is for the shuffle...ive got some samples and ambient tracks that i trigger with the shuffle, and then i can play guitar over it...we did 'Poor places" once and the shuffle had the YHF thing with some Am radio noise...i thought it was kind of cheesy so we stopped doing that, but i still use the shuffle for that kind of stuff...cheaper than a $500 sampler and a twentieth of the size

j

The thing to keep in mind with these puppies (not to deter you, I have put myself on to even more frivolous missions) is that they only have one knob. And that knob is so freaking big you can adjust it with your foot even if you're wearing boots. Not quite as elegant as an expression pedal, but it can be adjusted as you strum, pick, or windmill.

i have a half an allan wrench secured with rubber bands on knobs on my re-20 and sometimes tr-2 and use my foot to adjust

good excuse to show the latest setup...

two mono Y cables should work......or something akin to this??

what amp do you use....easier to do with a 2/4 input amp like a twin, deluxe reverb, or ac30

guitar-tuner-OD-holygrail

for one input amp, youd need a mono Y cable (all male jack) a mono Y (one male,2 female jack) and a single regular cable

ill make a pic in a bit

is this what your talking about?

arrived yesterday...takes a while to tweak into the right sounds...but when you do...!!! Distortion setting alone is all balls...

i found its better to run a light OD into it to get the best throat out of it...after a half hour, i found 'the' AGIB sound...the drive way up sounds a bit thin and buzzy on the high notes, but on mid neck runs and bends, WOW...arpeggios sounds pretty sweet too...also, i can thicken it up with some analog delay, and the swells and splaats last longer

overall a really cool sounding device, and i know that no one around here has anything that sounds like it...ill try and get some samples up now that finals are over

j

Do the Maestro Tailpieces serve a function other than looking totally badass?

 

Can one be installed on an SG that didnt come with it?

When i first bought the guitar, it was just body and neck, no hardware...I installed the vibrola, picked out a Gibson 57 for the bridge, SD Jazz for the neck, cut a new bone nut, added a roller bridge and kluson tuners and shielded the thing...i think theres a thread on VC where i documented building it

The maestro install took about 35 minutes, and yes, it functions as a pretty great vibrato...i had a bigsby on it first and like this so much better and this one stays in tune...i highly recommend a roller instead of TOM bridge

this guitar is for sale...im on to gretsches right now, and want another gibson chet atkins SST

for the money, the SG faded limited editions are the best of that group...solid mahogany body and ebony fretboard with crecent moon inlays...the hardware isnt great but not bad...not any difference between sg faded, special, and standard as far as woods/construction...they all have rosewood fret boards now on mahogany...Standard/classics have the block inlays

I think comparing SGs to strats/teles is comparing apple-oranges, however in this case, i like oranges

mine:

j

Don't mean to derail this thread further, but I bought my Gretsch last year with my tax return (low-end but pretty money sounding).

 

Good luck on the p'n'c any chance we can get an actual clip of you playing it eventually???

 

almost bought a gretsch this year...

ill post a link to some pnc work once i get it...i think its stuck in customs

j

haha i did the same thing with a Kaoss pad 2 also a couple years ago in my radiohead phase (never really went away)...turned out i loved it but never could find much a way to use it...least not playing guitar

rich-no tax return

bored--constantly looking for new sounds

i do have some trust in it, not just from Ghost but just the simple fact that no one around here will have a distortion sound anything like it, let alone the modulator, itll get some use...im not a shredder, more a unique sounds/color guy...ill sound pretty wicked with the re-20 i recently added

plus i got new for $15o

i will fill yall in

j

toyed with the idea for a while...should i be dying check the mail each day or is it going to be a novelty?

j

dont often have the rut, most often dont have the time

things that have helped move me along:

read a book, see a movie you wouldnt normally

try to write something 'not' a song (poem, rant, essay, breakup letter)

new tunings

play in a friend's band for a while

a new internet radio station

play a foreign instrument

people watch and eavesdrop in a bar

buying a new guitar

careful with the last two

http://www.ampwares.com/ffg/

http://thetubestore.com/

http://www.ampage.org/

http://trentino.best.vwh.net/

http://www.amptone.com/

http://www.guitarbuild.com/

http://www.mimf.com/

http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/guitar.htm

http://www.stringsreunited.com/stolen.shtml

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/

just a few on my bookmarks

after listening, i have a few questions where the answers might help you out...

first is, if you dont really like the song, why so much work...im joking, but really, id say strip it down and find the essential elements first...stick with what makes the song work, then discriminate between what adds and what just fills

next, are you assigning frequencies per track...i think you havent enough separation between highs and mids per track and some more selective panning could help...i would also be careful with too much use of compression

are you mixing straight from computer thru headphones? (it sort of sound like you might have)...mixing in headphones usually ends up a bit off and sounds very different in a room...using monitors makes a big impact

also...have you tried to mix the sound files using a different program? While acoustica is cheap and easy, the sound processing engine leaves much to be desired...

its good work, i can tell you put time into it, i hope this helps

j

so I ran out and bought the PreSonus TubePre

Fucker didn't work at all, I think the power supply was jacked up or something. Damn.

strange, ive used this unit for a few years now, never such an issue....this is the blue one with VU meter, right??

j

Just picked up a boss eh2 enhancer pedal....designed for the re-enforcement of lost high freq signals from running a lot of pedals, but works great as a clean boost (i use it on my acoustic rig as well)

Lot of folks use a boss eq for this also

Having reached a period in my life where I no longer have the time to play music with others or play live, I have grown to love recording. I love exploring all the possible ways to put together a song, taking it apart, putting it back together, and finding it become something new and different. It's great when some , keyboard vamp, or whatever I've put down suddenly becomes the heart of an entirely new version.

Yea...i feel you...i have the extreme luxury of having many very good musician friends, and the sense of the unknown when doing your music with folks who know/like it but dont rehearse it is much like that throw-away bassline or guitar lick you mentioned...anything to keep it alive and fresh...and the idea of a song capturing the moment is very appealing

j

On topic, i often recommend the AKG perception series condensers, starting at $150 each...i have 2 for basic room and instrument recording--a very good perormer and value

in most cases, used microphones are a huge value as well...its hard to break a quality dynamic, and as far a s ebay goes, condensers are dimes on the dollar...just make sense of buy feedback, terms of sale, etc to protect against a lemon

j

This result in its typically moderate state is scarcely identifiable to an avid listener, but a running headache for a mastering engineer preparing to complete your work.

 

If your preparing to make the leap to a high quality, mastered, mass produced, product- get everything at 24 bits at a rate of 48khz if possible. If your demo studio doesn't have the capability (which these days most do) its ok.

regrettably, in many cases, the mastering process itself will degrade from the originally set rate...while there are many different definitions of what mastering is, in generally it consists of compression, EQ (notch volume), and formatting

I have the argument with friends all the time...with the advent of currently available recording/mixing devices and playback devices, i contend mastering is a waste of money and time if your mixing is done correctly

also, if at anytime your music goes from the 'master', to CD, DAT, or other files such as MP3/M4u its a moot point...all of these formats compress in diffferent fashions

I despise the traditional recording process in general, so forgive my rant...my focus in music is in writing and live performance, and since there will never be a 'definitive' version or recording of any of my work, the nit picking involved in the 'quality' of recordings is unimportant

j

I would suggest picking a key and focusing on it for a while. G and D tuning are great tunings to get started. You can quickly develop your own techniques that can add a lot of dimension to your shows or just allow you to have more fun messing around. Did you raise the action on your guitar and go to heavier guage strings?

open tunings are the way to go for starters...and vary between major and minor tunings...

however, the further along you get, youll want to go back to standard...the runs are more interesting and youll be more versitile without having to retune after every song

Favorite slide player here=George Harrison (standard tuning, and some d modal)

j

A new wrinkle...the guys at my local guitar shop here in Savannah (who I respect; these guys are working mucisians, not cheesy mega-store salesmen) are raving about the B-Band pick up. It has the built in pre-amp and a control for both volume and tone. One guy is using it on a Santa Cruz OM pre-war and another on a vintage J45. There is an under bridge and under saddle pick up -- nothing in the soundhole. They swear it is the most "acoustic" sounding pick up out there, and great for direct through the PA playing. I had gone in there ready to go with the Baggs M1A, and now it's back to the research!

have had 2 guitars with Bband systems, was clearly more acoustic sounding than, say, a fishman matrix, but live would often sound thin and would not give much string response...hit it hard, it sounds weak...depends on your playing style, but i found it had no balls...the bband uses a piezo-electris film which will wear over time and eventually sound shrill and unbalanced (see the many online reviews)...i ended up selling both bband equpt guitars i owned...

Mixing pickups seems to be the best way to go...i go K&K pure western with M1a to 2 channels in the PA...terrific!

As i mentioned before, in my experience, K&K transducers are the best for the body, Sunrise and Baggs M1a are the best soundhole pickups, Trance acoustic lens is wonderful but expensive

Remember, which ever you go with, a proper EQ/preamp/DI is essential to live sound re-enforcement...Bagg para DI is a great option

j