Got something cool that only true aficionados recognize?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I occasionally see the “what cool stuff do you have?” threads popping up here, but this is a little bit more…

…Do you have something cool that is below the radar for everyone except for the true aficionado?

I thought about this today at church when yet another person recognized the musical instrument I had set up in the back while renovations were going on:

It’s a Fender Rhodes Mark Ielectric piano, exactly like the one in the first photo. Here’s the classic Rhodes sound.. It’s the sound you hear in the intro to Joy to the World by Three Dog Night. It’s the piano Ray Charles played in The Blues Brothers. I bought it used over 25 years ago hoping to learn to play it (never did).

Of all the people at church, nobody really knows what that cool sound is all about; it’s just another keyboard to them.

Every once in a while some visitor comes up and asks about it, “Is that a Mark I Rhodes?” “Yep…”
Then they ask if they can play a little, inevitably playing some really cool jazz lick. I open it up for them to show the neat mechanical action.

It sure makes me smile when a true jazz man steps up to ask about it.

What do you have that only true fans and aficionados would appreciate?

2

A framed photograph by Joel Peter Witkin on our hallway wall. Typical of him, there are beautifully arranged dead body parts, allusions to specific Renaissance works, and post-development scratching and burnishing of the negative.

3

I have a number of geeky collectibles:

• One of these rare Macintosh “Picasso” signs.

• An uncut sheet of Star Trek the Motion picture trading cards. It’s so obscure, that I’ve never seen another one like it.

• Seats from the original Ciné Capritheater - we use them in our home theater.

• An unused 5,000W spotlight bulb - it’s a globe 8" in diameter.

• A piece of Trinitite.

4

Hmm. If you’re an expert on cynical German post-war fairytales, I’ve got something interesting for you. It’s a weird little yellow book, written in German, published in 1946. The title escapes my mind at the moment, as it’s buried in the back of someone’s closet. I got it years ago at my Austrian great-aunt’s house; it’s filled with classic tales “gone wrong”. I don’t speak German, but it’s possible to parse the text, as many English words are derived from German ones.

In the tortoise and the hare, the hare wins, because who the hell falls asleep in a race? In Cinderella, it turns out one of the ugly sisters has the same shoe size as her, and she tries the slipper on first and marries the prince.

My favorite is the tale of the fox and the stork - in the original, the fox invites the stork to his house for dinner, but serves the meal in flat dishes so the stork goes hungry; the stork then pays him back by inviting him over and serving the meal in tall glasses. In the book I have, it’s the same story, but then the fox eats the stork. The moral is “don’t annoy foxes if you’re a stork”.

5

I love your story and love a good Rhodes tone. (Anything to get the sound of Babe by Styx out of my head ;)).

I struggle with the term Aficionado, because in guitar circles, IMHO it explicitly carries a douchebag connotation: Why Guitar Aficionado is all about the Douchebag Lifestyle (Jim Irsay, Colts Owner) - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

But yeah, I have something like that: a small-bodied bar-fret Martin guitar. When people think of Holy Grail acoustics, a “Prewar” Martin Dreadnought from the late 30’s/early 40’s jump to mind. To be clear: these are very cool. But there’s other lesser-known prewar Martins that are cool, too.

Prior to ~1934, Martin guitars came with bar frets. If you pull a fret out of a neck, and cut one in half on the short axis, the cross-section is a T shape - with the top like a mushroom cap. When you have a truss rod in the neck to adjust it’s curve, you want a way to get frets in easily, with enough “meat” on the top to shape and level them so they can be set up for a good action.

Prior to truss rods, though, frets were bar shaped. Cut one in half, and it is a rectangle. Luthiers back in the day chose bar fret widths to “tune” the curve of the neck - if a section of the neck should be a bit flatter, put in wider frets to spread open the neck a smidge. As you can imagine, this is Master Class stuff and doesn’t lend itself to mass-produced volumes…

But - what’s truly different is the playability of the guitar. A T-topped mushroom cap fret approaches the fingerboard with an angle; a bar fret is a ledge. If you tuck your fingers up behind the fret when making a chord, you can use a lighter pressure and get a bit of a “trampoline effect” - there’s a reason why metal shredders like Yngwie Malmsteen plays scalloped-fingerboard guitars.

I had NO idea about this effect - old guitar geeks will say that bar frets are better, but so much of that is just nostalgia. Feeling this little, micro-measured difference add up to such a new playability experience is amazing. I can impart vibrato differently, and get certain chords to sustain for much longer by taking advantage of that freakin’ ledginess. Who knew?

So yeah - talking with folks who know about old Martin bar fret guitars - not a big circle.

6

I occasionally enjoy a high end bottle of beer. I take pictures and share the experience on Facebook. My beer geek friends ohhh and ahhh, but my other friends are totally puzzled by the experience.

I’m typing this while sitting in my late 1800s barber chair, complete with swing out arms, hinged foot support, adjustable everything, and working hydraulics.

7

I have a bass clarinet with extra low notes on it.

8

All about that bass, huh? :wink:

9

Haha :slight_smile:

I also have an alto clarinet, but that instrument is usually looked down upon. But I think it’s cool, so there. :stuck_out_tongue:

10

A running CADR emulator.

It’s a LispM.

It runs ZetaLisp.

Hey, you asked for obscurity.

11

I have a portfolio that belonged to Bernard Hubbard’s assistant. I managed to snatch it from an estate sale of a lot of Hubbard’s stuff before it went into museum archives. The man was an intrepid explorer of remote Alaska regions.

I have a small book of photos of work on the Alcan Highway from about 1943. Lots of photos of the workers and equipment. It’s not a rare book at all. What’s special about it is that it has the signatures of a lot of the men pictured, along with some personal sentiments. I picked it up on ebay for about $10.

I collected Alaskana for a few years.

12

Off the top of my head (because I mentioned it in the Collectables thread), I have a ‘Robin Hood’ toby mug from 12 O’Clock High. Most people would probably think it’s a $5 yard sale item, and not know what it is.

I have a Hohner Melodica from the '60s. I used to have fun with it when I was a small child.

And there is a load of film gear that people wouldn’t know unless they’re into filmmaking.

13

I have a Nuemann M149 Tube advertisement signed by Al “Mr. Mic” Schmitt which was ran in Pro Sound, a Japanese pro audio magazine. I worked for the importer for Neumann mics at the time. We arranged a deal where we paid for the ad and Nuemann gave Al a pair of M149 Tube mics as payment. We used to hang out together at AES conventions and went to a concert together in Munich.

I have a Piaget watch, for those who know the brand.

14

I have a red solo cup that Weird Al drank out of on June 3, 2002. :o

15

A well-worn desk knife/letter opener from Robert Heinlein’s desk. Along with one of the little cards he drew almost every day and left for Virginia to find. And the buttons from his cadet uniform.

I also have a number of pieces of red trinitite, in a wall display. Red trinitite contains copper, meaning these were part (partly part) of the bomb casing or wiring itself.

I have the ‘hero’ surfboard rifle from the Babylon 5 pilot. (JMS and John Copeland hated the design.)

Probably some even more obscure stuff around here, if I were to think about it. I’m a bit of a pack rat. :slight_smile:

16

I collect Jamestown Goldcrystal, and have several of the rarest pieces (the cruets, the decanters, and the compotes) in my collection. Part of it was just dumb luck - I liked the pattern and selected it for my bridal registry in my early twenties. And I happened to live near a crystal outlet store where the discontinued items often wound up. I never paid more than $20 for a piece of crystal that I recall, and usually less than $10, but since the pattern was officially discontinued 5 years ago, prices have soared and collectors have gotten more aggressive about the rare items that were never produced in much quantity to begin with.

To most people, it’s just something sparkly on the shelf, but to a Jamestown Gold collector, my crystal collection is more like the Holy Grail.

17

As soon as I played that clip I knew I’d heard that sound somewhere else…it’s in the theme music for Taxi. Checking wiki at least confirms that it was used on the album.

18

Question for the Trinitite owners…

Is this something that is recognizable by another Trinitite fan? In other words, if Amateur Barbarian were visiting beowulff’s flat would s/he instantly say “Wow, I see you have a piece of Trinitite there”

That’s cool, and I’m certain that only a woodwind player would even notice (assuming that it isn’t some crazy thing with three feet of extra bell on it.

I understand what you are getting at regarding “Aficionado”—my intent was “fellow enthusiasts give you a knowing nod and ask a discreet question or two”

The guitar is an awesome example. I would see it hanging on the wall and say “Cool, an old Martin” and that would be that. Only the true bar-fret fan would instantly spot it and go “Say, is that a bar-fret pre-war Martin?” and possibly “Can I play it pretty please?”

That sign sounds really neat, and would absolutely be seen as “Mac fanboi” fair by most of the population, with a very tiny subset asking you politely "How did you get your hands on a “Picasso” sign?

Is the spotlight bulb pressurized? I used to be a projectionist, and I would be lying if I said I did not tremble in fear when I changed the xenon projection bulbs—those things had high pressure gas in them and exploded like hand grenades. Every once in a while one would explode during a show and I would find dents and gouges in the inside walls of the affected lamp house.

Neat! I would walk past and say “Hmmm… odd but interesting photo” while a knowledgeable person would definitely spot the artwork and start asking about your common interest.

19

Like this?
I had to look that up, I had no idea what a bass clarinet would look like. I think someone with some knowledge of instruments would know it’s not a clarinet and not a sax but wouldn’t know what it was. OTOH, someone that’s clueless might just assume it’s ‘a bassoon or something’ and not ask about it.

20

I’d look at that advertisement and say “neat mic” but I’m sure there are one or two enthusiasts who would zero right in on it.

I like nice watches because these days they fly right below the radar, and I can enjoy them without feeling like a poser. I don’t have a Piaget, but I do wear a SS Rolex Submariner, so often copied that nobody even notices it, and often a Omega Speedmaster Pro “Moon Watch”, and nobody around me has a clue that it was the first watch worn on the moon.

That mug looks like the kind of thing that would get pitched if I were cleaning out my brother-in-law’s house (he is a hoarder). But there’s someone out there who knows what it really is.

I’d probably walk right past the attractive crystal and gaze at WordMan’s guitar on the wall, not knowing the true value of either.

Yes, the Rhodes sound is all over the 70’s.
I remember it in the intro to Dirty Harry, as the main driving keyboard sound in L.A. Woman by The Doors (starts around 00:32). The intro to Bloody Well Right by Supertramp. Many others.