Kids back at school today in Finland
 

Woo-hoo! A peaceful morning! Ahhh...

Not been a great summer here weather-wise this year. That's meant they've been inside a fair amount of the time demanding to be fed, etc. They weren't happy this morning as I waved them off with a big smile. Now for 4 hours peace and quiet..

I can tell you are not going to be devastated when they leave home. Although kids don't leave until their 40's these days. And they come back when they break up with their boyfriend/girlfriend/goth. Or when they return from a backpacker's trip to asia.

So enjoy this morning,
B

Young madam here said the other day she wants to dye her hair black. Oh yes. 6 months and she's a teenager.


Btw, how's yer SG mate? Playing much? Got a refund for that Hagstrom finally and ordered a Bigsby B5 for me Tele instead of another guitar. Should be here this week.

The sacred SG must never be touched with unclean hands, and since I've had a flu for over a week I haven't touched much else either. Perhaps a bit dull in the lower couple of frets but barre chords flow like silk. I've gotten good results including nice bright single coil sounds from a cheapie Digitech RP100 pedal. And if its sounds bad, it is now entirely my fault. This thing is beautiful. I don't think the tele will be getting new strings any time soon...

A whammy bar on a tele? Is that legal? Perhaps in permissive Norway it is :) Your strings don't go through the body, I think you said, so it couldn't change the sound. Hope it works out well!

Cheers from wintery Melbourne,
B

Hmm. Have to move to Norway then.

Yeah, it's gonna change the sound loads. It should now go DOIiiiingggg, I hope. Plus.. The B5 Tele kit comes with a whole new bridge - being the plate and a tune-o-matic style bridge which needs serious drilling work, so, yeah, it's gonna change a lot I hope. The bridge I've had on it for the last 12 years is a piece of crap but better than the original which was a real piece of crap.

Here's how it's mounted, though the guy does a poor demo of the "after" sound <<wonders why>>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN2MLRbIC5M

Check these out too:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~msengers/htm/gallery.htm

Big view of the one in the Utube filum:
http://www.music123.com/item/expande.../502065jpg.jpg

And get well soon, to you. Wintry here too. In bloody August..

1 more week and my kids go back to shcool!

Then 1 week after that and my sorry ass is back in!

Help me please to make the most of my 7 days of freedom! Any bad ideas or thoughts of debauchery are of course welcome.

Matt, what kind of whammy bar? Are you fucking around or getting something really useful like a Floyd Rose or better? Fuck whammy bars that can only decrease the string tension. That's like only being to able to fuck with an out-stroke.

Your two are at school now Alex? How old are they? OMG..

Dude, it's the Bigsby B5 Telecaster model - LIKE IN THE FUCKING LINKS ABOVE. It ain't no Floyd Rose, you can't divebomb on it , but it does do up and down. And after I'VE installed it, side to side too probably..

Debauchery you're after? Drive to your relatives' place in Kansas and do a deal:
http://www.porkystruckstop.com/images/32_004.jpg

This 'innernet' ought to be banned. Whatever your perversion there's a group as sick as you. Shame on you, sticking holes in innocent tele's!

B

Yep! One is going into first grade; the other into Pre-Kindergarten, but it is year-round school nonetheless, and she has been kicking ass and taking names the whole time thus far. Its nice to have them on a schedule, and even nicer to have wifey back in the workforce. We were poor for 4 years!!!

OK, I have got to admit my complete laziness in not clicking your links above to the whammy-jammy. That is a bulky unit, kind of resembling a chastity belt made for a veteran prostitute, with that nice big square hole at the base. My first guitar had an imitation Floyd Rose, my second guitar the "licensed" Floyd knock-off on the Ibanez RG 550 in the 90's, and my third (current) guitar has whatever the hell is on the Ibanez RG2550 EX, which is I think some type of Floyd Rose knock off. ;) I love that damn thing. It's fun as hell freaking out power chords with a shitload of distortion/overdrive and a nasty, long delay. You can do all that with well enough with that big, old school model though, and I have to admit it does look nice on the Tele; whereas the Floyd would be a bit of an anachronism.

Hell yeah! I'm goin' to Uncle Zeb's truck stop in Wichita! WooooHoooo!!! Time for some Dexedrine and then a 400 mile drive carrying a few tons of cargo in an 18-wheel rig! That's a hard life, and prone to hemmhorroid development...

LivePsy, you are correct, OVM should have asked the Tele for permission to drill holes in it, or even just drill it in general.

Bryan, Jellycasters were MADE to be chopped and changed. Mate, next year I might even stick a pair of TV Jones Powertrons in there - which means big routing job. Hey.. You still interested in EMG's for your Telly?

WTF? LMFAO!

My tele is having a vacation at the back of closet with the Roland keyboards...

Alex is tapping into his inner white trash, but you have to ask yourself if you can look at the bigsby without THAT image in your head. My experence with a whammy bar goes back to a department store in NZ called Farmers where I bought my first guitar for $49 (back in the 70's) thinking it was fantastic. Its best feature was a tuning randomizer function built into the big silver bar. It turned Smoke on the Water into Balinese tunings, but you never knew which one in advance.

You're still lusting after a Les Paul OVM. Do the american economy a favour and buy one. Your kids will thank you - my dad saved the americans from recession! Could even be a tax benefit, but check your local tax laws.

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/division...20the%20Month/

I think Miss April is the one you are after.

B

Nah! Not a Les Paul, I wanna Gretsch!

Not gonna chop the Tele anymore now. Next year's guitar is one of these:

http://www.thomann.de/gb/prod_bdb_AR...3.html?image=0

The strong euro's pushing down the price of Gibsons in Europe now. You can get a new Flying V for under 600€ these days.

Very nice, and no sarcasm in this post for a change. I always thought Gretsch was a brand of Gibson :) However I am practically a member of the family after seeing the down home history and pics on the Gretsch website.

Good idea to aim for something you can't afford. Why would anyone make a guitar that expensive? The point is that if you appreciate it, can you justify the cost? If I only bought what I wanted to pay for, I'd have a very dull life.

Cheers,
B

Bryan, it's dirt cheap.

http://www.thomann.de/fi/gretsch_g51...atic_ltdor.htm

Gretsch moved its entire production to Japan years ago, even the expensive ones. Now they've started in China. Been reading Gretsch owners' message boards etc and it's supposed to be pretty good.

How about this, too:
http://www.thomann.de/fi/ibanez_af75tdgiv.htm

Very very tempted. That with some TV Jones PU's.. <wanks furiously..>

I can get all Thomann stuff 22% cheaper too cos I order through my company, so no tax on an import from Germany.

No, that's not a lot. When you said 'next year' I thought it must be a little expensive. Skippng the huge VAT is quite a coup. Plus you keep the tele intact.

Click the 'lisaa ostoskoriin' button quick before the kids get home from school.

B

No, that's not a lot. When you said 'next year' I thought it must be a little expensive. Skippng the huge VAT is quite a coup. Plus you keep the tele intact.

Click the lisaa ostoskoriin button quick before the kids get home from school...

B

Going to bloody IKEA tomorrow getting furniture stuff for the kids' rooms, so no new music stuff till next year - unless I can hide it from the kids. They'll go ballistic if they find I've blown the wad on another guitar..

Really don't like buying guitars online though. I remember when I bought the Telly, there were 4 in the shop, all identical in appearance but there was just the one that stood out from a playing perspective. Makes me laugh thinking about how the bloke in the shop said something like "Oh yeah! This ones really outstanding, you're right!" Man, I fell for that hook, line and sinker, and just had to get it before someone else "discovered" it. I fucking rushed to the bank in a panic to withdraw the cash (remember those days?) and actually legged it back to the shop!

Yes! The rush to the bank for the cash because you gotta have it :) They were the best days, for all the wrong reasons. I bought a Korg M3r which cost me $1,800 - a fortune for me in the late 80s. It was the most exciting thing at the time. But of course it hardly did anything, not worth programming because the few samples in rom sounded the same no matter what you did with the envelopes. These days I can afford a TI which does an amazing number of things but the acquisition was not the same :(

Guitars are different of course, but after my 'Farmer's special' I was wary of not paying enough money. However I got caught trying a few teles in a shop and then ordering a specific colour. The damn thing is way too heavy and picks up too much hum and buzz to be unusable. I am sure I held a lighter guitar in the shop but got home with something bigger and heavier. And I am sure guitar shops have special eletrical noise dampening because even the $49 ones aren't noisy in the shop :)

What was my point? No idea, but there's something great about walking into a shop, loving something so much you can't live without it, and borrowing your kids inheritance for it...

B

A lighter guitar. I'm waiting for the lighter Nokia. With a bottle opener too.

Just got back from the pub, so, hello.

Never enough ashtrays either