Oh my god. WANT.
Dorkbot Alba's Waldflöte vs Kazookeylele - dueling banjo's - YouTube Dueling… somethings!
(No harm came to any 1890s pipe organs in this video. The MIDI articulation is specifically designed to cause no damage.)
So, my cheap-ass “Xaviei e” LP Special developed a buzz on the B string, 7th fret, which was a little depressing. I guess they don’t dry their wood well or something, if you’ll recall my acoustic experience with that company in January. I raised the action to kill the buzz, but the feel of the guitar really went to heck for me. I didn’t need to raise the action very much, but that killed the 24 3/4" scale “slinkiness” feel that I really enjoyed about that neck.
OK, so what to do? My choices seemed to be a) get the guitar set up, or b) the firewood option. I really didn’t want to spend setup $$ to set up a $135 dollar guitar, so I found option 3): try setting the neck relief and see if that helped. Normally I’d approach setting the truss on a guitar with extreme trepidation, as I’d never done it before, but what did I have to lose?
I loosened the middle strings so I could push them aside and pop the truss rod cover, then I got to work with an allen wrench. I went in 1/4 turn increments, testing the B string buzz a few minutes each turn. I started with clockwise, and after 3 turns, the buzz got worse. Then I turned the adjustment counter-clockwise to where I started + one more 1/4 turn. After one more turn – boo-ya! the buzz was gone.
I dropped the action back where I liked it, tuned the guitar back up, and it was playing as I remembered again, slinky as all get out. Let’s hear it for experimentation.
Excellent and congrats! And that is the perfect guitar to experiment on!
From what I’ve read, the traditional way of tuning a tenor is G3-C4-E4-A4.
This is the only issue I’m concerned with:
I’m used to soloing on the guitar using the blues scale. Will the higher G string [on a concert] make it difficult for me to do this? Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that a tenor would be a win-win because 1) it is a little bigger and 2) the strings are tuned low–>high which is what I’m used to with guitar.
Yep, that’s called low G setup, from what I understand. It’s more common on tenors.
I think the longer scale length might be more of a help than anything.
I love my tenor Uke. I have this one. - Amazon.com: Lanikai SM-T Custom Series Spalted Mango Tenor Ukulele : Musical Instruments
Beautiful look and sound. Can’t recommend it enough.
And speaking of new Ukes, I just picked up a new Kala soprano with a solid Sitka spruce top. High and bright and plucky, sounds great.
Oh, btw, if you’re looking for a good ukulele book, get “Ukulele for Dummies.”. It’s written by the guy who runs the ukehunt.com site.
Congrats! (I just polished my frets with steel wool the last time it happened, but it happened higher up the neck than yours.)
By the way, how’s the P90 hum these days?
The clincher for me diagnostically was the buzz being new and on the seventh fret, exactly where you’d expect a neck relief problem to show up. So lucky me, I was right, adjusting the truss fixed it up.
Re: P-90 hum: it’s the same as ever. I fight it by either blending the neck & bridge pickups since they are rw/rp with each other, or running the amp hotter than I need and keeping the guitar volume to less than 8. Both solutions work pretty well.
That sounds historically exactly what people did with P90s and why humbuckers were developed. So, yeah, sounds like it’s performing to spec, then.
Okay. I’ve just been thrown a curve ball. My band, The Blues Convicts, has a gig on tomorrow (Friday) night at the Empire Hotel in Annandale (that’s in Sydney Australia). We thought we were going on second, but it turns out we’re headlining the gig…
Oops.
Now we’ve got to find another half-dozen or so songs before tomorrow. And, since we’re going on an hour later, hope that plenty of people come and stick around until the end.
Sigh
Mustang Sally.
Q
If you find the groove, this one can take you 30 minutes or more…
I retired playing drums with that set. Never played with a band afterward.
Q
Heh… well, it’s not like we don’t play Mustang Sally. But in the end we added Proud Mary, Highway to Hell, and Lonely Avenue.
I love the choices of Highway to Hell and Lonely Avenue - Bon Scott and Ray Charles, now *there’s *a contrasting set of voices.
Hope it goes great!
Need a very used and abused drummer?
Best wishes on the gig, my friend! Let us know how it goes, please?
Quasi
Does anyone have an opinion on the Gibson ES-135?
Could be fun in a dirty blues, Thorogood sorta way. What are the specs on the one you are considering? Pickup type?
Gibson classic 57 humbuckers.