Lunch Report Thursday April 21, 2011...Late!!

Sorry guys...this just a bit late today! As I mentioned yesterday, I took the day off today. The goal was to do some spring yard work...spread mulch, add some fill dirt around parts of the house to keep water away from the walls and foundation, plant a little grass, apply fertilizer with crab grass preventer, plant a few new perennials and some spinach in my new garden! Quite a list, but I'm pleased to say it's all done! The down side is in the midst of all that, I never even thought about the lunch report...hopefully late is better than never and I won't get sacked!!

Lunch was Wendy's today...had to grab something quick! So it was a very healthy ( ) Bacon Deluxe Single, fries and Dr. Pepper!

G&L Question

When I ordered my Legacy HB last fall, the only humbucker option for the bridge was the Seymour Duncan JB. I discovered that this is really the only humbucker G&L has for the neck position on any of it's guitars...though I know they recently added an EMG option (though I'm not into active pickups). I've been fairly pleased with the JB, but I've wondered why they don't offer any others. Do they just really feel this is the best humbucker out there? One reason I find it odd is that it's a pretty hot pickup...you'd think they'd also offer something like the '59 or something more vintagey as well.

So the question is, two parts...if anyone knows why only the JB, I'd be interested in knowing. Secondly, what pickups would you like to see G&L offer that are currently not offered?

Non G&L Question

Any gardeners out there? My dad was huge into gardening when I was a kid, but I never really got into it myself. Partly because when we bought this house, there were so many trees, there really wasn't a sunny enough place. Over the years we've had to take a few down, so I've finally got a place this year. We have done a little with garden boxes in the past...peppers, tomatoes, herbs, cucumbers. But this year it's an actual garden. I'm using a no-till method my boss at work uses...in the fall you layer manure, cardboard, then several inches of leaf mulch. Then in the spring, you make troughs in the leaf mulch and fill it with a couple inches of top soil, then plant in there. It's early, so all I've got going right now are onions and the spinach I planted today. The onions are really taking off. I know I'll plant peppers and cucumbers, and maybe asparagus, but not sure what else.

So, if any of you garden, what kinds of things do you like to plant? Any gardening tips for a newbie?

Hi Muleya. You're not late, you're just working on Australian time . It's breakfast time on Good Friday here, so no work today.

G&L Question: I've only ever tried 2 humbuckers in a strat style guitar - a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails and a SD JB like you have in the Legacy. I really like them both, though the Hot Rails is almost too hot. It's hard finding pickups with matching output to go in the middle and neck positions (I use SD Quarter Pounders). The Hot Rails is slightly less bright than the JB and has more balls, but I've wired it up via a push pull pot to run in parallel also. In parallel mode it sounds much more like the JB crossed with a vintage bridge pickup. A lot of people complain that Hot Rails pickups are too dark sounding, but you really need to have them wired to a tone control to exploit their full potential. The JB is an excellent HB pickup too. It's really easy to dial up classic ACDC sounds and pretend you're Malcolm Young.

Non-G&L Question: I'm a pretty keen gardener, but my house is on a very shadowy block and the local wildlife (possums) chew any new shoots to ground level when they appear. So I haven't had much success yet. I've just put in a raised vegetable garden bed in the only sunny spot in the garden. It is fortified like Fort Knox with mesh and wire to keep the possums out, and I've applied enough slug bait to exterminate every snail in southern Australia. The cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, snow peas and garlic seem happy in their privileged new location (for now). I'm training a Brazilian passionfruit vine to climb the back fence and hope to reap a good crop of fruit by next summer.

I had a JB in an old Epiphone Les Paul which was good, but I never fell in love with it - but I've never really enjoyed bridge humbuckers, not enough twang for my tastes. I would like to see the ASAT deluxe with MFD humbuckers, something proprietary rather than something available as a replacement.


I started gardening at the end of last year, so I don't know enough to offer any tips yet. We've had a continual crop of silverbeet since about November - it just keeps growing. Also tomatoes, rocket, herbs, zucchini... We planted a winter crop of beetroot, carrots, potatoes, lettuce and other stuff last weekend. We have been extremely lucky that the possums Phil mentioned stay away from our garden. They are around, their droppings are often found on the path to the house and on the back patio, but they stay out of the garden! Both of our neighbors have large, established fruit trees which I can only assume the possums fill up on.

G&L

I don't know for sure why G&L uses the Duncan JB, but if you've played & heard it, you know it's a good choice. I have a couple of guitars with JBs in them, and the only 'bucker I like better are the Gibson BurstBuckers, unpotted goodness.


Non G&L.

I garden for roses, climbers & bushes. My wife gardens for veggies, tomatoes & stuff. Last year she tried an experiment, and planted veggies in hay (straw) bales. We planted in 3 bales. This year, we are going for 8 bales.

I do all the grunt work, she does the planting. And if you've moved hay bales, you know what I mean by grunt.

edg

Muleya, I missed lunch today but it will not hurt me a lot! Just got home and settled in for a cold one and looking at the forum.

I had Legacy HB and liked it. At least is has a phase switch. I have a couple of Fender Hss and they don't even have a phase switch. They do have a S1 switch but I do not think it switches the phase but I could be wrong. I have never thought the S1 was anything special. The Seth Lover in the Bluesboy is great but I do not know if it would work in a Legacy as a bridge pickup. I wonder how the F-100 humbucker would work. I had a new Brian May a couple of years ago. It had 3 single coil pickups and both on/off switches and phase switches on each pickup and you could get an unbelievable difference in sounds on that. Like some others, that one was down the road for another G&L, the F-100 Return, a whole new class.

Ginny is really in to gardening, mainly flowers. The back yard is full and her clients really love them. Sometimes I talk smart to the ladies and tell them I do all that. They can tell a BS'er when they see one. I am the grounds keeper and cleanup man. I help her a lot in the spring and the fall to clean up but she is the brains in that operation. My garden duties are like Guitar Eds. This forum is good for me. I can talk smart here!! Darwin

Yeah, I guess the summer gardening season is over for you Aussies! I don't have possums here, but there is a family of groundhogs that lives under my neighbors shed that show up occasionally, as well as a whole pile of rabbits. So I built a mesh fence around the area where I'm planting.

The passionfruit sounds great...some folks had those vines growing on their fences when I lived in Zambia, and were kind enough to share some with me. Hope it works out for you, Philby. I do want to plant some broccoli and asparagus (which I guess I'll have to wait a few years for!) Should plant some carrots and radishes, too.

Blarg - what is rocket and silverbeet?

Bale gardening sounds interesting, Ed...yeah, I can see how you'd grunt!

Darwin, you're quite the character!!

i also took thursday off to have a 4 day weekend...

a few of my fave bridge buckers are the SD Custom/Custom, PRS HFS, and whatever Dimarzio is in my Dean Soltero SL...i liked the JB in one guitar i had but it was too bright in another guitar...
an MFD bucker sounds interesting...

i've never been into gardening...