Tell ya what, Wordman. You buy the guitar. (and a case). You don’t like it, late January, we meet, I pick it off you, for cost (you eat the shipping).
If you agree to this, though, I want quasi-approval on whatever you pick up.
(Eg, do not pick up a 585, because I don’t want two.) And maybe not the JT-40. I’m of the understanding that floating trems are nigh-impossible to keep in tune.
Oh man, what a wonderful offer - and a great idea. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be a worse time. I just recently got a guitar - I’ve been mellow about it online for a variety of reasons, but I got an old acoustic, a Martin dreadnaught. Let’s just say I used up all my G.A.S. chips for a while on it ;). And, after a while of just trying to hide from the economy, my wife and I agreed to dig in and build a whole new financial plan which better reflects the slow recovery. Everything is under the microscope, if you follow. Important, but man what a G.A.S. depressor. 
Okay - not this year. But the idea is sound - maybe next year.
ETA:
XV-910 - Semi Hollow with dog-ear P-90’s - kinda like a Beatles Epi Casino
XV-560 - Semi Hollow with P-90’s - different; more like a George Thorogood kinda guitar (his is a Gibson ES-295)
XV-600 - Inca Silver Tele semi-hollow
…you get the idea - I want more experience with semi-hollows, so that is an obvious go-to for me. I find P-90’s more articulate than humbuckers - more in line with my knob-twiddling approach to dialing in my sound…
And here I was thinking a semi would make a nice late Christmas present for my dad.
Yeah, the sales tend to be quarterly, more or less.
http://store.guitarfetish.com/XV-910-Semi-Hollowbody-Alnico-P90-Dogears-Trapeze-Tailpiece_c_186.html
I was looking at that 910, myself. Trapeze tail, could be swapped for a… whatchamacallit trem. Starts with B, right? Tune-o-Matic bridge, and a three way switch, and really nice acoustic volume. And a hundred bucks off…
And you’re gonna tell us about that Martin in good time, right?
In the meantime, why not look at what that old acoustic of mine is now sitting next to at the old homestead:
From the Blue Ridge Mountains of Kentucky:
The dulcimer with lighter colored wood is a Kentucky Mountain Dulcimer, made by Warren A. May, Berea, KY. He is the most renowned luthier of this style. The Governor of Kentucky presented a poplar May dulcimer to the president of Toyota as something in the true tradition of Kentucky when their Georgetown, KY plant opened. A Japanese (Toyota) musician played “My Old Kentucky Home” on it during the Governor’s return visit to Japan.
The wood is all poplar as the tradition of the region. Its timbre is a bit high. This is the sound of bluegrass, and old time folk music. Of the two, this is Jon Sholle’s favorite (see references below). Being very lightweight it is nice for playing in a chair, or in bed.
This is dulcimer #7773 which was handmade entirely by Warren. His total shop output has doubled since this was made (15 yrs ago) as he now employs other Luthiers in his studio.
From The Laurel Mountains of New England:
This dulcimer was entirely handmade by Mary Matarienen in her rural shop of Winsted Connecticut. It has a much deeper and smoother sound than the May instrument. It is typical of the New England dulcimers, and much favored for slow English ballads like Barbarie Allen, or Scarborough Fair
The sounding board is of Alaskan Cedar, while the bell is curly cherry. The cedar furnishes beautiful clarity while matching the cherry color. Curly cherry is fairly rare and it has aged beautifully to the dark cherry color shown. The neck is curly maple. The fretted face of the neck is ebony, as is the expansion stripe on the back and the other parts. This was made about six years ago. Mary no longer makes these with Ebony, but rather uses Wenge wood, as the price of Ebony has gone stratospheric.
References:
A Bigsby. Don’t expect a lot on the acoustic tone - at best, you want to hear some nuance, a clear indication of what the amplified tone will sound like. It will be fine for practicing unplugged in front of your TV late at night, but that’s about it.
ETA: Sorry I can’t enable your G.A.S. I am feeling it, too - I have a dealer who speaks the same language as me; I can trust his judgment. He just pinged me on a high-end guitar “I have to check out” - yeah, sure, just a taste…
That’s what would make it perfect for my dad. See, the reason the dulcimers are out of the way is that my mom thinks they’re ‘too loud’.
In this threadon the Stones, I asked **Boomerwang **about how his playing was going after he hurt his finger - mentioned up thread. He couldn’t find the Stones thread so he PM’d his reply - here goes:
Fascinating - I gotta try more alternate tunings. I am such a lazy player - or, better put, I just know myself: anything requiring any effort is going to keep me from picking up a guitar, so I don’t pursue them. Tunings, stompbox effects or digital modeling, reading charts - too much work, I tell ya.
In this threadon acoustic tunes to learn, I had posted a version of Moondance I found on youtube - its a lesson I found when I was just recommening the song for the chords and groove. But this guy does it with a walking bass - keeping the bass going with your thumb - in my case flatpick - and plucking strings to fill in the chords on every other bass note.
Here is what I posted in the acoustic thread:
I can not tell you how cool that was - one of my better guitar days in a while. I can barely wobble the bicycle around the cul de sac, but it was the first time I rode it without training wheels
Cool Guitar Alert!!
The guitar that French/Gypsy jazz legend **Django Reinhardt **played with Duke Ellington and was the one in some of the most famous pic’s of Django ever taken is up for auction. The famous pics are included in the eBay listing linked - you can really see how the last two fingers of his fretting hand were withered and scarred from the fire he was burned in as a teen, reducing him to only two useful fingers…
Only $250,000 - such a deal! It is discussed a bit in this threadon the UMGF Vintage Forum…the guitar is from the Swedish guitar maker Levin…
I’d just like to ask the more experienced alternate tuners if they’ve played in DADGA#d or know of tabs etc. I’ve looked everywhere and found nothing.
The Future is Now Guitar Alert:
Gibson has a new guitar, the Firebird X,which has more new digital/computerific features than I thought possible.
I have no idea how to approach a guitar like that.
So here’s the good news first - I picked up my Baritone Classical Guitar from the luthier, Ed Klein, yesterday. It’s in very good shape - you can’t tell from playing it nor from looking at it that anything was ever wrong.
I asked him to thoroughly document his progress, and I thought y’all would be interested in reading the itemized list of what he had to do as well as looking at the photos.
I’ve put the photos up on PhotoBucket - they can be seen here.
Everything about this repair was extra tricky because it all had to be done through the sound-hole or through the hole in the end block where the jack for the pickup goes. That’s the basis of that strange looking device to put the cross-grain patch on the end-block.
I’m very happy with his work.
The Bad News - In the coming weeks, I will be in touch with a lawyer to see what can be done about Purolator. This repair cost $800.00; they have offered me $100. We are out of date on our house insurance - my other classical guitar, L’il Ed, is covered as a special scheduled item. This guitar is new enough that I haven’t got it on a separate schedule, so the deductable of $5,000.00 for house contents applies. For Purolator, the ‘declared value’ and the value for which something is insured are the same thing - declaring the maximum value for the instrument but declining the insurance did not produce the desired result. So, Purolator has declared the value of my instrument at $100.00 - I will see what a lawyer says. Purolator is reminding me of Bluto in ‘Animal House’ - “Hey, you fucked up - you trusted us!”
We had a long talk yesterday, Ed and I. The situation in Canada for travel with instruments is very disheartening at the moment.
-Neither Air Canada nor WestJet will allow a guitar as carry on.
-The airports will no longer allow you to gate check an instrument.
-It is not safe to check an instrument in with the general baggage - when last I checked in 2006, neither Air Canada nor WestJet would insure a musical instrument, and in fact, these carriers will try to make musicians sign a waiver that declares that musical instruments are checked as baggage at the passengers’ risk. I still have the case that WestJet wrecked over the course of a tour with Alberta Ballet.
-I have not looked into either Air Canada nor WestJet Cargo services. This might be a possibility.
-The major shipping companies cannot be trusted with an instrument, as Purolator demonstrated on the shipment out to Edmonton, and FedEx demonstrated on the shipment back to Ed Klein. The carton showed clear evidence of being mistreated.
-I could buy seats for my instruments. For two guitars, that’s a lot of money to reward the airlines’ incompetence. I also haven’t had a particularly good experience buying seats for instruments in any case - it was four times the hassle getting through security, and one of the bone-heads put a scratch in the top with the keys that he had around his neck when he bent over to look at the label. Then on the way back, Canada Customs ignored their own paper-work that I had got before I left to ensure they didn’t try to ding me for unearned duty when I came back.
-I could drive. My driving radius has increased radically over the last month. My next gig in Windsor - certainly, I will drive or take the train. The gig next February, in Victoria - 3397 km. That would add a week on either end, but at least my guitars would arrive intact.
Other options include renting an instrument in the city I’m gigging in. That’s okay for electrics and steel-strings but I won’t get a worthwhile classical, and I sure won’t find a baritone classical.
Or I could just not take my guitars, and lose a month’s work of practice/progress…
I’m sorry to sound so negative but it is a very discouraging situation.
On a happier note, it’s wonderful to have my new guitar back. I think I’ll call him ‘Tristan’, because of the wound…
wow - sounds like you are enjoying the guitar post-repair - that is critical.
I have no idea what to say about transport - that all sounds awful. All of my mid-life crisis gigging is local. I can’t imagine how impractical it would be to deal with what you are describing.
Wow, Ministre, what a pain in the cojones. I’m glad you’re happy with the repair, and I hope you can make Purolator see the light re the cost.
Wow, a guitar with Pro Tools inside, $5500. Not my cuppa, but interesting.
Offhand remarks:
The whole control interface makes my head explode. Three different color knobs, ‘live’ and ‘preset’ modes, three toggles (with tips that twist!) besides the pickup selector, six sliders on top of the upper bout, three pickups that all split and tap. It’s a good thing you can save presets, because there’s no way in hell you’ll ever duplicate the tone you got last time you played without some backup. The piezo is a nice touch.
The guitar has all these huge flexible amazing modeling, patches, fx, etc. stuff built-in. Then why bundle it with Guitar Rig software? Couldn’t you just dial in “Marshall Stack” on the guitar, and plug it into the PA? Why add modeling on top of modeling?
I love the term “True Analog ™ Digital FX” – as an oxymoron, it’s a real ground-breaker. Actually there’s a lot of “true” stuff here: “true noise-canceling”, “true analog feel”, “true S/PDIF” (this is also a favorite - what would be not-true S/PDIF?).
Gibson thinks the guitar is an iPhone! You can buy processing modules (no doubt VSTs) in a “Gibson App Store”. No word if Flash runs on this guitar. 
First guitar that has an SDK. If it was a little more homebrew/less expensive, that’d be cool to fiddle with, since I could write my own software hacks for my guitar. Perhaps the first Linux guitar is not far behind. OTOH, I can already do this using a laptop and a USB interface, I don’t see how having the software be inboard helps.
The case is designed to “survive a fall from a six-story building”. Ministre, I think they’ve solved your shipping problem. 
I am a computer geek. I play with servers all day long. I dig tech. I eat, sleep and breathe tech.
That guitar is just silly. Too many knobs. Too many controls. At most you should have a pickup selector, tone and volume knobs. Anymore than that and it is tech wankery. The tone ought to come from the hand/guitar/amp working together. On board processor? No thanks. Firmware updates? On a freaking guitar? Nope, I’ll pass.
Now, get the hell off my lawn.
Slee
Note the wording: “a unique case that can survive a fall from a six-story building.” I don’t see any warranty about what happens to the guitar carried within the case. 
Do you work for Purolator, by chance?
It’s analog, which is interesting, and it uses robotuners instead of pezioadjusting, but the competition for that guitar is Line Six’s Variax. The James Tyler ones are nice.
So. I got the Rock Band Fender Mustang in. It doesn’t feel like a real guitar. No. But, somehow, it plays like one. A clumsy one, but it does play like one and it stretches my hand like one and, most importantly, it punished me like one. I can see when I’m accidentally strumming two strings at once without looking down. I can see when I fret wrong… then strum the wrong string.
This is going to be great for me. (also, I suck beyond suck.)
Ministre, I am in awe at the repair job on the guitar. I thought it was going to be creased as hell for life.
Actually, it isn’t. It’s “just as good as analog”, or “True Analog™ Digital FX”, which basically means the sample rate and bit depth of the digital signal is really damned high, and really accurate. But it is not analog in any meaningful way.
My apologies. The marketing misled me. I thought they were actually screwing with the pickups somehow, which would be interesting.
In short, then, a potentially superior and far more confusing competitor to the Line Six Tyler Variax. Which I still want very badly. Except for the robotuning, I don’t see anything this does that the Tyler doesn’t.
Cool Wood Education Alert!
Can’t remember if this was posted, but in NPR’s series All Sounds Considered, they did a piece featuring TJ Thompson, famed luthier - a guy who only repairs pre-war Martins, which is kind of like a art restorer who is so high-end that they only work on Monets or Picassos. He also makes modern replicas of those highly-desired guitars.
In this piece he taps guitar tops made of different varieties of spruce so you can get a sense for what he is looking for and how they sound as a free-standing piece of shaped wood. Kind of like tasting the grapes and figuring out what kind of wine it could end up as…
I have some exposure to these vintage guitars and the varieties of wood, and hang out on boards where folks geek out about this stuff, if anyone has any questions…
