Hehe, you clipped off the word “clone”. It wasn’t a real one. Even Behringer makes a clone of a Neve channel strip these days. A JHS Colorbox V2 runs about $500 new. Pricey for a pedal, but pretty cheap for a Neve clone.
I was very bored recently, fired up the Amazon website, and was very unprepared to see that I can buy a Martin guitar via Amazon. That just strikes me as WRONG. Anyone else feel the same?
It does seem kinda weird, but it just goes straight to their store, I think. Amazon will wet its beak.
Seymour Duncan Studio Bass Compressor. I only use it when I’m playing with other people. When I’m practicing, I leave it out of the loop so I can work on my dynamics more.
Did you all already discuss the closing of G&L in this thread? My favorite bass (and my son’s favorite guitar) is a G&L.
Briefly. I can go deep if needed. I did a bunch of the research into their incorporation and trademarks filings while the early rumors were swirling. I’ve also talked to several former employees and the dude that did the epic dumpster dive when the McLaren brothers hired a crew to empty the spaces before the deadline for the next rent payment.
Oh man, that must have been some dumpster dive! I’m psyched when someone puts a mic stand out for the garbage.
My understanding is the dumpster dive, while large, was mostly parts damaged one way or another, which is why they hadn’t been installed on production guitars. One of their Custom Shop guys gave some insight on another forum I belong to. One of my close friends (who coincidentally designed the JMJ Mustang when we were at Fender together) used to work there, I’ll see if they have any insight.
Word on the street is Fender purchased Leo Fender’s NIL rights, but nothing else since the original, pre-CBS Fender tools and dies were already in Corona. I’d be curious to know what happened to Leo’s tools and so forth that were still there after he passed.
I don’t think I have ever bought a guitar that I haven’t physically had in my hands for at least half an hour or so. Unfortunately these days I live in a provincial town with no good music store… 
But I suppose if you are REALLY confident about the return policy….?
I have heard the same about the parts, mostly from James and Steve A. Especially all the BBE electronics. They may have looked good but they were from a giant pile of warranty returns and thus mostly undischarged trash, which apparently those attic spaces were rife with. Major hoarding issues.
The Leo NIL rights story seems to be verified by the snooping I did, finding the G&L/BBE transferred those rights out of BBE and into a new Arizona corp made just for that purpose. And the timing works for the rumors that the McLaren’s had been trying to negotiate a licensing agreement with Fender first, before everything went to hell.
So the big mystery is where did Leo’s office go? No one knows. It was nowhere near as pristine as a lot of people claimed. Watch a few Youtube videos to see Dave pillaging that space for supplies, parts and ideas over the last few years. But sadly, part of what was found in the dumpster dive are things like Leo’s tap and die set plus some personal photo albums. So it sure doesn’t seem like a lot of care was taken.
A work table that George and the team made for Leo, that had a lot of custom artwork and/or inlays, was found cut up in the trash, so not holding out a lot of hope.
Yep, exact same source, James.
Regarding the NIL rights, according to this USPTO link, FMIC has them now, or will soon.
My understanding is that the physical inventory that didn’t get dumpstered went to a liquidator. They probably had no idea what those items were, just the parts. Personally, I think that’s a shame.
MIRC in Tennessee has all the remaining complete instruments as well as the last inventory of parts. January-ish they’re going to start offering the guitars to their dealer partners and sell them through their Franklin Guitar Works store on Reverb. The parts will be sold by their Mity Mite brand.
G&L had been building guitars for inventory for a while, instead of their previous build-to-order model. They were then selling those guitars to a finance company immediately upon completion so they could get the cash up front. But demand was low, so they ended up with a few hundred guitars unsold at the time of closure. Those of course all went to MIRC.
What’s less clear is the fate of the container of Tribute-line instruments that were inbound from Indonesia when they closed. That could be as many as a thousand guitars that will need a couple hours QC each before delivery. Maybe those went to MIRC too?
I finally got a chance to get my bass amp in for repair after my dog did a number on the input jack. Nice to have a fully functional amp back with the preamp and it’s controls. I had to play a couple of weeks with a lower wattage Ampeg amp and I had to crank it to keep up with my loud bandmates.
Was it number 1 or number 2?
LOL! Below is what happened that did involve a dog, but no numbers 1 or 2.
I’ve been teaching myself guitar, off-and-on, for a while. One of the problems I’ve had is finding music that I like enough to keep practicing, but also easy enough that I can make progress. I’ve bought a few books of easy guitar song, including one that’s a couple hundred pages.
Books of sheet music suck. My music stand has little arms to try to hold the book open, but those barely work. And now my music stand has worn out and slowly collapses under the weight of that heavy book.
I’d like to find a better solution. A Staples near me says they can take the books and put them on a comb binding, which would stay open. And if I break that large book into multiple books, it would be lighter.
But then I thought there might be a better way. I have a spare iPad lying around. I started checking on apps, and there are several for viewing sheet music, and some for scanning photos of sheet music. I tried one, and the results aren’t much better than a picture. I checked the publisher of one of my books, and I can get PDFs of the contents, but they’re about five-dollars per song, which seems a lot for something I’ve already bought once.
So, collected wisdom of the Dope, what do you use for playing music? Are there tools that do a good job of reading existing sheet music and creating a good, legible copy to play from; or do I only own the physical copy and creating a digital copy would be a no-no? Keep trying different apps? Or should I go the obsolete dinosaur route and just rebind the books I already have?
I haven’t bothered trying to bring any paper sheet music into the digital world, so I can’t help much there.
That said, I’ve fully embraced my iPad and use both Songsterr and Ultimate Guitar as my gold standards. Both have a variety of ‘play-along’ features, including the ability to slow down playback (for trying to learn difficult parts) and the ability to isolate and/or remove the audio for each individual part in the tune.
Both apps will play the parts with appropriate MIDI instrumentation, but now Songsterr will also sync the music you see on screen with the YouTube version of the track for even more authenticity. And you can still alter the speed of the playback and isolate specific tracks.
I prefer the visual representation of Songsterr as Ultimate Guitar often ends up looking cramped to me, but UG often is more accurate.
I’ve visited Songsterr’s and Ultimate Guitar’s websites in the past. They’re both okay, but neither one really kept me hooked. I don’t really need something to play along with. I assume they have dedicated apps (since everyone does these days); maybe I’ll like those better.
I hate to give up some of the songs I like practicing in my books. They’re not really attempts to reproduce the originals; more of an instrumental version where I get to play the melody rather than sing it while strumming chords.
I appreciate the recommendations; I will check them out.
Gotcha. If you have a scanner, you could scan each page to PDF and use any of the sheet music or PDF reader apps. I think a scanner would do a significantly better job than the apps that use your phone camera.
Now that you mention it, my printer does function as a scanner, too. If I can remember how to use it, I’ll probably get better results than using the camera in the iPad.
I’ve got nuttin’ to offer on sheet music advice. Don’t touch the stuff.
But I do have a JHS Colourbox V2 thanks to my sweetie spoiling me for Christmas. I haven’t used it on anything but bass so far, but damn that thing is a tonal and gain/compression wonderland. Everything from a slight warming and EQ adjustment to nasal or full sounding fuzz, and all the way to completely glitched out fuzz. I’m salivating to try it on guitar, mics, and drum machines. I have a Tascam Model 12, which is a pretty great 12 channel mixer and interface, but those channel strips don’t really sound anything like this thing does. If you do home recording, you could do a lot worse than grabbing one of these.