投稿日: 2月 13, 2009 カテゴリー: Practice, Purchase コメントする
It’s not that I didn’t have time to practice this week, but I was actually too sick! You always have to push yourself to practice though, even with a guitar as nice as my lady. Last night after shedding a bit on Donna Lee and dabbling in various shades of blues, I restrung her with D’aquisto flatwounds (11-48). The heavier strings feel better, but the low-E in this set was another dud, like the A-string in the last set I bought for my Gibson Es-125. That’s what it sounded like when you pluck it: DUD. The intonation was WAAAAAY sharp, too.
It sounded better after I swapped it for the same gauge low-E (D’addario) on the Gibson, and then went DUD on the Gibson, too. I’m not willing to accept this as a coincidence, and think this D’aquisto must have some major quality control issues. But hey, when your brand is the only one of two (the other being D’addario) sold in every music store in every mall and shopping center in the civilized world, you don’t actually need to make GOOD strings. You just need to make more to put on the shelves, right? (For alternatives, try http://www.juststrings.com)
I already knew I didn’t like this brand. I just didn’t realize that I hated it until last night. The only reason they’re on this guitar is because a new set came with it as a gift. I’ll be replacing them with a GHS set soon. This guitar actually sounded really nice with roundwounds, so I’ll be trialing different string brands to find the brightest set of flats on the market. The only thing brighter than GHS is probably D’angelico, but these start to go out of tune after about a week. As a general rule, I would say stay away from any brand of string that begins with D-apostrophe.
投稿日: 2月 10, 2009 カテゴリー: 未分類 | Tags: Toxic コメントする
I have this friend who I refer to as Toxic, partly because of his old habit of smoking expensive organisms which are remarkable for achieving photosynthesis in all sorts of conditions (e.g., a college dormitory closet.) Mainly though, the moniker comes from the toxic anger levels I achieve after certain types of interaction with him. The most recent example of this type started with a conversation in his new Audi on the way to Tokyo. He surprised me by telling me that he joined a social-network.
Years ago, I invited him to to join a Japanese social network called mixi, but he declined. We both agreed that such networks basically encourage superficial relationships, and are not necessary between real friends (as opposed to virtual friends.) So I was even more surprised when a few days later, he added me as a friend.
A day later, I get a call in the middle of writing a new tune on my GB-10, and it’s him telling me to post a message on his wall. I told him I would, and he told me to do it now, and I told him to fuck off because I was playing. It’s not uncommon for old and new friends to bug me with Pheisu-buk requests (usually applications), and I almost always ignore them. This was no exception, only that the request came first by phone and then less than 24-hours later by SMS.
My reply saying that I didn’t know how to use the Wall was a lie, but I did seriously consider doing it… until I had a closer look at his profile and saw that he included as one of his interests as “enconomy” (s.b. economics, but what he really means is business ventures and online-trading.) For education, he listed what he arrogantly refers to as “one of the top 50 schools in America.” He did actually attend that school, but never graduated. So I sent him a message explaining that if you dropped out, you DON’T have a univeristy education, and suggested he fix this fantastic phoniness. His response was to delete me from his list of friends.
If that seems extreme, that it’s more likely that he was a afraid I would post a picture of him staring down at an erection (or what looks like one) in a pair of swimming trunks. I had asked a mutual friend if he still had the photo, but he didn’t and I probably don’t either. Would I post it if I did? ABSOLUTELY! Phony people are just setting themeselves to be publicly humiliated, and the sooner it happens the better.
投稿日: 2月 8, 2009 カテゴリー: Purchase コメントする
Two years later, the problems presented in the previous two posts have been solved with:
1. an Ibanez GB-10- I should have gotten one of these 15 years ago when I decided that I wanted to play jazz. It’s probably the best playing guitar I’ve ever had, and really an amazing design acoustically. It’s much more of an electric sound than my other two archops, but when you pick harder the archtop character really starts to come out through the pickup. With the bridge pickup engaged, this guitar can sound really funky, too. The body shape and tobacco sunburst remind me of my old Epiphone Les Paul that I played through high school. The only reason I wouldn’t have gotten one back then was because it said “George Benson” on it, so anyone who saw that would have thought I was just copying my idol. So what? Everyone has to copy their idols, and when your idol is George Benson, accomplishing this is no small feat. Maybe if everytime I played the guitar and saw his name on the 12th fret, I would have been inspired to practice harder. I certainly am now!
2. a Dimarzio SDS-1 (Super Distortion) pickup- again, I almost cheated myself out of a piece of great gear. If you looke at Dimarzion’s catologue, almost all their products have awful names like, “The Chopper”, “Cruiser” “Humbucker from Hell” and “Red Velvet,” “Class of ’55,” and “Humbucker from Hell” (which I put in my old Epi Les Paul), but the concepts and sound are solid. The SDS-1 has massive bar magnets in the base, so it’s a powerful pickup without causing a lot of string pull. Whenever I picked hard on the top strings, it sounded like a second slightly sharp note was coming through the amp. The phenomenon went away if I lowered the old pickup, but then the output was too weak to drive the amp into good distortion. The SDS-1 solved this problem, with a slightly darker sound that the original Seymour Duncan pickup. It still sounds open and bright like a strat should, but not harsh. However, initially the strings sounded very unbalanced. I was able to solve this problem by adjusting the pole-pieces, something you can’t do with most strat pickups. I’ve only seen two other strat-pickups with this design on the market — Lindy Fralin’s Steel Pole model, and these:
http://www.vintagevibeguitars.com/windows/sc_90Win.html
…which seem to me an exception a value in terms of materials, application and gaining understanding of how different magents sound in pickups.
gaijinguitarist.wordpress.com 