Thursday's Child

Thanks for your replies to yesterday’s report everyone. It’s kinda cool waking up in the morning and reading through all the posting activity that happened while I was asleep. For those of you that mentioned microphonic MFD pickups (me included) I noticed that Craig has put up a few helpful links at the bottom of this post.

http://guitarsbyleo.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2490

Lunch
Yesterday’s curry had no ill effects, so I must’ve eaten it just in time.

Today is a dreary, drizzly spring day in Melbourne. I’m sitting at my desk eating a variation of Monday’s lunch – 7 grain bread, French Dijon mustard, smoked ham, cheddar cheese, tomatoes and rocket lettuce. My stomach is demanding something heavier, so I’m going down to the Monash university cafeteria to get some hot chips (fries) and chilli salt after this.

Dessert is a banana and a bunch of the largest green grapes I’ve ever seen. My kids love them. They’re from California I believe. I never cease to be amazed at where supermarkets source their produce from, or how it can be profitable to move it over such long distances. Australian grapes are just coming into season now, so the days of the USA grape are numbered until next year.

Do you guys in the US ever see any Australian fresh produce when local stuff is out of season?

G&L Topic
Like most people here, I’ve got more guitars than I really need. Just keeping strings on them is a full time activity. But there’s always nice ones up for sale, and discovering a new guitar is one of life’s guilty pleasures so I always keep my eyes peeled, just in case. You never know when the other 8 are all going to get consumed in a house fire / earthquake / tsunami / [insert unlikely disaster here].

One of the biggest problems in bringing a new guitar home is getting it past the household operations manager (my wife). I know I am definitely not alone here. I’ve read about guys going to extraordinary lengths to sneak a new axe into the house e.g. leaving an upstairs window open and hauling the guitar up with rope.

But it turns out my wife is not resistant to guitars per se, in fact she quite likes them. She is resistant to BORING guitars. ‘Is there any such thing’ I asked? ‘Well yes’, she said. ‘Most of yours are boring’. ‘No way’, I said. ‘Yep’, she said, ‘they’re all dark and woody like furniture. Or they’re red. That’s really boring’.

It’s true. I have mainly sunburst or candy apple red guitars.

So we sat down last night in front of the G&L website and I asked her to identify what is NOT boring and what would be agreeable to her sensitive female aesthetics. I was quite surprised by the results. Note: here is the link to the page we worked from, and I’ve written her comments as we worked from top to bottom.

http://www.glguitars.com/instruments/USA/guitars/index.asp

ASAT Classics – ‘Ooh that one is nice’, she said pointing at the ASAT semi-hollow.


‘Nice shape, nice colour, I like the chrome bits and the colour of this thing (the neck) matches really well. The violin hole is cool too. I’ll have that one’. ‘Not so fast, there’s more’, I said.

ASAT Specials – ‘I don’t like any of these. They’re boring like your guitars. They’re red or furniture (sunburst)’. I have an ASAT special. I guess she doesn’t like it.

ASAT Z-3’s – I was going to skip past these but she stopped me. ‘That one is REALLY nice!’ she said.



‘I don’t like the chrome bit on the end (the B-bender), but all the other chrome is nice and I like the colour. It’s like a hot rod’.

ASAT Deluxes – more furniture. I was starting to get the picture by now.

Comanche – I was going to skip the Comanche’s, but no, 'this one is nice and curvy, it has chrome knobs and I REALLY like the colour’. I should’ve known – it’s the same colour as our car, which my wife also chose.



F-100 = furniture

Invader – she won’t like these I thought. Wrong. ‘This one is quite nice’.



‘Why isn’t it furniture’ I asked? ‘It’s got a different shape that I really like and this bit matches (the headstock). You don’t see orange furniture either’. Fair point.

Legacy – ‘these are a nice shape but I don’t like any of the colours’. I’ve got a lake placid blue S-500. Alas it fails the colour test.

Rampage – ‘it looks like a boot’. End of topic.

S-500 – ‘Are there many more?’. She was texting a friend by now. ‘Just one more’, I said.

SC-2 – ‘Wow. That is beautiful. It’s my favourite colour by far. It is simple and uncomplicated. I like the big black thingies (pickups) and the shape is really balanced. It looks like fun to play’. ‘I’d let you keep that one in the living room’. I’ve never heard those words before. Woo hoo. Imagine that. A guitar in the living room.



I know what my next G&L is going to be!

Perhaps G&L should do a poll of what our wives/girlfriends like best and put up a range of female-preferred axes? The ladies have far more purchasing sway than most guitar makers probably realise. G&L could call it the Iced Vovo range (apologies if you haven’t read Tuesday’s lunch report).


Off Topic
I’ve spent too much time on the G&L topic, so just a few piccies here. Most international guitarists are not aware that Australia has two very respectable guitar makers, Maton and Cole-Clark.

Maton are the oldest and most established, and have made some fine instruments over the decades. You can check them out at this link.

http://www.maton.com.au/

I’ve just discovered they’re only a block away from my house and I never knew! Time to book a factory tour.

This guy briefly played a Maton while his Gretsch was being repaired.



Cole-Clark are a much newer company formed by a couple of guys who used to work at Maton. They make some VERY nice acoustic guitars with great stock pickup systems. You can check them out here.

http://www.coleclarkguitars.com/

They're only a 15 minute drive from my house and I didn't know that either!

They’ve started cranking out electric guitars again after Fender threatened legal action over their first efforts. I’m lucky enough to own one of the ‘lawsuit’ model teles, called an Offender. It’s number 54 of about 100. The stock pickups sucked but the rest of the guitar is awesome.



The strat models were called Defenders. Fender didn’t like their name appearing in Defender or Offender, so Cole-Clark cheekily changed the name from the Offender to the Culprit.

That’s more than enough for today. I’m pooped.

"the Iced Vovo range" - Ha! Pink Sparkle with red pickups should get pretty close. I'm very surprised you managed to get you wife to look at the G&L website if she wont let you keep a guitar in the living room! We always had a guitar in the living room when I was a kid - there still is at my parents house. Oh, and she's wrong about orange furniture - my couch is orange, as orange as that Invader.

Those Culprits are nice guitars, I've played a few of them. I HATE the new headstock that he's put on them, looks like something from a hippies knick knack shelf. The one on yours looks a billion times better. I like the colour scheme on it. I played a hollow one made from Queensland maple, it sounded very nice.

There's nothing quite as greasy or salty as university cafeteria chips! I have a theory that in an attempt to avoid paying someone to come and take the old fryer oil, cafeterias ladle it onto things in the bain marie, which also stops things drying out. They do these bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches at RMIT, where I study, and by the time the person working there has passed it to you the bag has gone translucent. Ewwwww.

There's nothing quite as greasy or salty as university cafeteria chips!

For sure. You need a bit of extra grease for the chilli salt to adhere to. If you can't eat grease as a student, when can you eat it?

I don't know what they were thinking with the new Culprit headstocks. They absolutely ruin a nice, well made guitar. I think Fender made them change the headstock to look less Fendery, but gee they didn't have to go THAT far.

I like the name game with the offender and defender...reminds me of my exploiter bass (explorer shaped, but not a gibson)



Thanks for one of the most original and entertaining LR's I've seen...I'm trying to remember when I've seen sunburst furniture...must have been the 70's.
For the record I have a purple couch .

She does have good taste in pickups or rather.. "those big black thingies"

I live near the TV Jones pickup factory , I have yet to visit...it sounds like you have a couple interesting tours coming up ( and hopefully a new SC-2 )

The Langcaster guitars have caught my eye once in a while, I believe they are out of NZ.


....and talk about headstock redesigning:


Great job ...looking forward to more,

Elwood

Awesome about the wife and guitars, I lost it a few times reading those comments. Good to know she liked the orange invader, that thing is sick. My wife tends to really like woody guitars. She thinks my flamed tops are astounding, and is all about getting something with Wenge for my neck build, whenever it may be. It will be natural at that.

My wife is on the same wave length as yours Phil, she definitely doesn't like my new asat with the natural finish in fact I pretty sure she may have said it's ugly. I think she might like the blue one but "like" is a bit of an embellishment
I got the new one in the door as an "investment guitar", I just explained the whole "Leo era" thing and I got it for a good price so it's sure to go up in value! Somehow that worked, although I'm pretty sure she expects me to sell it someday We'll cross that bridge when we come to it....or go around it

-Dave

My wife says all of my guitars are perfect--so perfect, in fact, that she sees no reason to ever consider buying another.

I like crazy colored electrics, and thought your wife's picks were pretty great. My only thing is, I have a burning desire for a fulllerton red bluesboy. A little boring, perharps.

Also, we do see a wide variety of Australian produce in the USA. It is very seasonal, of course, but it handy for us to grow food in the winter, and you in the summer!


Your posts have been great this week!

Hilarious! When I bought my Rampage a couple weeks ago, I had to do some serious convincing with my wife (it's rare . . . I can sell it (yeah right) for more than I'm paying . . . Jerry Cantrell plays one (luckily she likes Alice in Chains as much as I do)) and some horse trading (yes, you can buy that expensive thing you want if I can buy this guitar . . . I'll cook dinner for a week). I'm still afraid for her to see my Legacy because I never did tell her when I bought it. I guess you can say the Legacy is my "mistress". Hope she doesn't find a whammy bar under the bed one day.

'Da wife and guitars? No problemo. I just bring back anything I want and if she says a word I just put on my Big Daddy pants and tell her to get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich.

Nah, my wife used to gig before we got married and appreciates a good guitar. I can bring home anything I want at least as long as it is old, acoustic and says Gibson on the headstock. She went ahead and claimed my 1960
J-200 as her own. I lost a good guitar but how can ya not love a woman like that. But the electric stuff she just does not get.

Maton Guitars - played and endorsed by the Wiggles.



I took my daughter to see the Wiggles a few years back. I had not seen that much dancing in the aisles since the Grateful Dead in 1967. All that was missing was the purple haze wafting through the air.

Angus got nothing on Murray.

My wife doesn't say much about me buying guitars...especially since they come out of my "allowance" and never the general fund! And I don't have that many, anyways.

Funny you're wife liked the Blueburst semi-hollow Commanche. Just last week when I was looking at the G&L site she saw that guitar and said "Oooh...pretty!" Maybe I should be looking at that instead of the Cherryburst Legacy HB for my next guitar!!

When I got the Legacy a couple of years ago with the Tobacco Sunburst (my avatar pic) she said "Don't you have one that looks like that already?" It took me a minute to figure out that she was thinking of my Gibson LP Studio with the Fireburst finish. I was like "Are you serious? That goes to black around the edges, this is goes to reddish-brown! They're completely different!"

Anyway, that was enough to tell me she thinks they all look alike! Well, that's not quite fair, she can tell a Strat from an LP and is very proud when she sees a guitar somewhere that she can identify correctly, pointing out that not every wife can do that!!

Hmmm...looks like there have been some changes in the Wiggles lineup since my daughter watched them a few years ago!

I don't recall ever seeing any Australian produce on the shelves of the local grocer. But I have had some fine Australian wine a few times. Does that count?

I liked your wife's comments regarding the guitars: "chrome bits" and "square thingys". Sounds like how my wife would pick out a guitar, or a car, based purely on color. But I'll admit my wife did like the looks of an orange Bluesboy with f-hole when I dragged her into a music shop once. If your wife likes that blue SC2 you better buy it now before she changes her mind! Tell her you'll always think of her when you play it.

BTW - the background image at bing.com today is a Tasmanian devil. The associated story is about some disease that is apparently threatening the population.

Jeff

You are fortunate that your wife likes so many of the G&L guitars. Now you can buy one of each and not offend her sensibilities. My wife has never been interested in my guitars. She has no idea how many I have and what their colors are, or the differences between any of them. She knows that it is my hobby and is fine with that rather than something else that may be much more detrimental to our marriage.

I have seen Tommy Emmanuel play his Maton acoustic/electric in concert. I have wondered how long his Matons last given the way he 'abuses' his guitar. His Maton looked like it's been dragged behind a pickup truck for miles.

I've never heard of Cole-Clark. Yours look fantastic, I love the coordinated color between the body and the pickguard.

Kit

Maton Guitars - played and endorsed by the Wiggles.

...and it doesn't get much better than that.

Or maybe it does. Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age plays one of these. I've seen one in the local music store and pictures don't really do it justice.

I've never heard of Cole-Clark. Yours look fantastic, I love the coordinated color between the body and the pickguard.

The best thing about this guitar is that I snuck it home and my wife hasn't even noticed it! So it doesn't count right?

It must be like wallpaper to her!

....and talk about headstock redesigning:

Now THAT is interesting. Someone over there in NZ is thinking (they are 2 hours ahead of us Aussies after all). What a great alternative to those pesky string trees. I wonder if it keeps tune better?

Philby, great week from down under. There is a lot of valuable technical information and resources on this site.

I love the Red guitar from the land of OZ in your picture.

I can relate to your Better Halves interpretation of your beauties. They are beauties in the eye of the beholder. My wife doesn't think that all of mine are drop dead gorgeous either. Some she likes, and her favorite is probably my 58 Gretsch reissue in Walnut, which I just found out yesterday. Ginny doesn't normally comment but yesterday I told her that I might trade it for a custom built Legacy that a guy doesn't like. It is new and this poor dude is in love with ASATS. So, I lay that on her and she says " You can't trade that one!, I really like that one." No problem, as I have 40 others to choose from. She has been fantastic about my guitars and I had to convince her that they were investments. She accuses me of having too many Reds. She also said "you really like White don't you?', in other words, too many Whites. I also have the old furniture types and probably some boring Green ones. Traded an amp with a CL guy this week and I really impressed her with that one because the knobs turn by themselves. Good thing as I am probably too old to see them. So here is my advice Philby. Let her pick out the next 5 or 6 guitars (Colors) so that they are not boring, and then you can get right back into it with the old furniture type and more boring Reds. When the whole wall is covered with this beautiful art she will love you for it! Just don't fill the closets as that did get me in a bit of trouble. Fellow GLDPrs, now that I am mostly retired, I am available for some consulting on how to Git Er Done Without Getting In Trouble with The Better Half. Still my story--Darwin.

So here is my advice Philby. Let her pick out the next 5 or 6 guitars (Colors) so that they are not boring, and then you can get right back into it with the old furniture type and more boring Reds.

Hey, thanks for the advice Darwin. You are certainly no. 1 around here for collection tips!

How do you keep strings on them all, let alone find time to play them?

Glad to hear that you're another 'boring reds' man!

Maton Guitars: Thanks for bringing it to my attention. New to me!