My god. It’s so light. And the neck is thinner. It’s like a miata. The place where you plug the cord in is a little rough, but hey. And the case is lockable and it came with a free cord. And it’s so. freaking. rich and shiny looking. Well, off to set it up.
But it’s half the weight of the Fender. That thing’s like a V-8 Mustang and this is a Miata. On the other hand, I’ve been reading this book… http://www.amazon.com/Please-Kill-Me-Uncensored-History/dp/0140266909
Please Kill Me, the Uncensored History of Punk Rock. Transcribed oral history by one of the guys from Punk Magazine. Everyone’s in it. Lou Reed, Iggy, William S. Burroughs, Sid, Nancy… Patti Smith, Television, Dead Boys, everyone. (Yes, the Ramones are part of everyone)
And I see why they used Fenders. Fenders don’t break when you hit people with them.
Shiny n New is a great feeling, congrats! Did you plug it in and get a feel for the tone? Or was it just in urgent need of Doctor Setup, so off to the clinic (which would be unsurprising for a web-shipped axe) ?
It’s… rich, and responsive, and there’s a lot of sustain in it, and my god, the tuners are fantastic. But yeah, it needs Dr. Setup real bad, so off to the clinic tomorrow or Saturday.
Danelectro Honeytone 1watt pocket amp mostly. I’m very pleasantly surprised by it.
It’s a great book, because during that period I was just outside all of it. I had a great radio station growing up… Howard Stern was the program director/dj at the time. WRNW. And I listened to all that music at a young age.
And now I finally hooked all the songs up with the people. My god, there was a lot of gay sex in that book.
I don’t remember the gay sex standing out any more in the Punk scene as the Beatnik scene or other outsider/artistic scene’s - I think of it as a signifier of folks trying to find themselves outside the rules of the system…YMMV and no need to get all deep in a guitar thread. I’m done.
As for the guitar and amp - all I can say is that you should enjoy what you’ve got and play with it for a while. That particular guitar design is really good for a simple, responsive tone - if you haven’t already, when it comes back from Dr. Setup, try playing it with a crunchy tone and the Volume set to about 8.5 and the Tone on about 6. Play some rock and blues, and see if you can find the sweet spot on the Volume control by tweaking down to 7 and up to about 9 - do you hear a marked transition point where it goes from being tame to really beefed up, especially if you are hitting the strings pretty hard? But not so beefed up that it just sounds like fuzzy noise…good beef, like a thicker, Gibson-y tone…
…if the guitar can do that, and if you find the result cool and inspiring, it is pointing you towards certain choices. If you like it, but don’t find anything remarkable about that approach vs. dialing up your tone with stompboxes or other approaches, then that points you towards other choices. Neither is better - I am just trying to articulate the process one can go through if you really want to listen to what you are doing and tune your gear to better suit your style over time. LP Specials are a specific kind of knife - they do one type of thing really well vs. Jack of all Trades. Learning if you like that one thing can be insightful…
Oh! Now I remember why the gay sex stood out in my mind. It wasn’t that there was a lot of it. There was an amount, and the people who were gay or bi, well, they were gay or bi and we pretty much knew about them. I mean, hell, it’s New York, they talk about Christopher Street and, c’mon, David Bowie’s in it.
What stood out to me was that there were a lot of guys making money by standing out at 53rd and 3rd. Nominally straight guys just trying to score some money for dope or blow.
It was the attitude towards gay sex. It mirrored what I read in Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, which was a little earlier and on the other side of the country. It’s not gay if someone does it to you.
Amazing how different attitudes towards sex are these days.
Thanks, WordMan. Yeah, you’re anticipating where I’m heading with my next set of questions, how to mess around with the Volume and Tone and the knobs on the amp. But not yet.
A thread on portable mini-amps, in which the Danelectro Honeytone winds up being the first answer.
The point is made that, you know, searching Youtube for the amp you’re looking at is probably a good idea. I never thought of that and I don’t know why.
I see those in books and online Small Clanger, but haven’t played one…
Okay - I just finished a big deadline and the document is getting reviewed and I am trying to clear my head before a couple of meetings. I need a break and geek out before I have to be all Mr. Business Guy again.
So - what is going on with guitars in my life?
I played with my band for the first time in a while; between a recent life event for one member and work stuff all around, we have found it hard to take on gigs and get together. This time we are even having to use a sub drummer - it was fun because this sub is a GREAT drummer who I played with previously. Just very different vs. our normal drummer - doesn’t rock as hard, but navigates the changes really cleanly, selling the transitions well - nice fills. Either way, it was nice to find the groove and have some fun.
I continue to focus on expanding my use of Hybrid picking - i.e., holding a normal guitar flatpick between thumb+index, and using my middle and ring fingers to fingerpick as well. Using more fingers just feels more natural to me - I am a multi-tasking kinda guy, I guess. For some reason, even though I am using more fingers, I feel more secure in my playing because I am less likely to play myself into a corner - if my pick can’t reach the place I want to go, one of my fingers can. As a result, I find myself playing far more horizontally than I ever have - I am less likely to stay in the same scale-box - I can trust that if I move my fretting hand to a new position, my pick or fingers can be there to sound the note. And even though I am using more fingers and moving more, I feel like I am playing less - holding notes and focusing on saying something melodic when I lead. I think that is a byproduct of being a bit more confident. I still get stuck in minor blues soloing and also with an alternating, same-groove rhythm because it is easy to alternate between flat-pick and fingers, but I am trying to figure out how to move past those…
I just finished a draft of my next Teemings column. Unlike the first two where I featured obscure-but-important rock n’ roll progenitors, this time I am featuring an obscure punk band that has just been rediscovered. We’ll see how it makes it through an editing pass with **twickster **
I am stuck in GAS land. I have found a couple of vintage acoustic guitars that I would love to own - but, yeah - kinda pricey. I have been trying to build a war chest to go after one of them, but no joy so far - I try to generate funds from selling off some first edition books I collected over the years that have appreciated in value, but my normal buyer just bought two estates - sigh…I have reached out to another dealer, but they are coming across like amateurs so I don’t think I can get a deal to go down. And the big annual vintage guitar show is happening in Texas this weekend and I am not going - so no new GAS and there is a chance that one or both guitars will get sold if the dealers go to the show (which they almost certainly will)…
I’m trying to make a decent run at Bach Bouree in E minor BWV996. Man, that’s a challenging piece, no forgiveness at all. I haven’t done classical guitar in ages, my hat is off to you guys that are good at this stuff. I found a Segovia recording of the song, and he belts out the whole thing in 91 seconds, holy cow! I think I like the piece at somewhat slower speed than that, but still not slow. But jeez, keeping my performance clean is tough, and the piece doesn’t sound difficult at all to play. Damn you, JSB!
And I am stuck on the last two measures of clapton’s solo in sunshine of your love. I have the whole thing recorded in garage band but I just cannot make all those notes fit into two measures.
I am about ready to give up and ad lib my own ending.
I really don’t understand why they call him slow hand.
He has his fast moments - I know you are just kidding, but his nickname is more about his fluid motion - he looks slow even while he is playing fast - but he only uses that in bursts and tends to play melodically…
IIRC the Slowhand nickname came about (when he was in the Yardbirds) because he was using really light strings* and would break them all the time, stopping the set while he changed strings - pissing off the crowd leading to a slow hand clap. It’s clearly a play on his style too, he was considered fast. If he was American he’d have been Fast Eric or something, but we’re more sarcastic over here I guess.
As in lighter than you could actually buy back then, a standard set was probably 012 or 013. The ahead of the game guys at the time** used a banjo string for the top E and shifted all the other strings down a notch. Using the A for bottom E, D for A etc.
** Somewhere or other I have an old interview with Jimmy Page where he’s asked if he has any advice*** for young players he said “Use lighter strings”.
*** Ricky Nelson (Cheap Trick guy) asked the same question answered “Give me your guitars”. Not quite as helpful.
Yeah - the lighter-gauge string thing was revolutionary at the time - it enabled the Brits to realize how bending could happen. And the strings, coupled with big overdriven Marshall stacks, sounded really thick.
Then the pendulum swung the other direction when Stevie Ray Vaughn came on the scene - he was all Fender amps and heavy, heavy gauged strings.
Both approaches can work - you just have to know what works for you. I can’t imagine playing with 8’s or 9’s like Pagey does - freakin’ rubber bands. And yet I love his playing and would say my sound is much closer to his than, say, SRV’s. But I get to it via a different route that includes 11’s not 9’s
I’d read a bit about that custom five-necked guitar of Nielsen’s. From that picture, it looks like the “bottom” neck is fretless, and the “top” neck is a twelve-string…does anyone know the rest of the story behind it?
(And, yeah, he’s a nut. Heckuva guitarist, though. Local Illinois boy. )
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