Lunch Report: 2012-08-14

Lunch
Black bean nachos with rotisserie chicken. The tea is Brooke Bond from Unilever Hindustan (India).

Did someone say "rotisserie"?

[youtube]O8xmiLERHGM[/youtube]

G&L
Anyone here play (or own) a Kahler G&L? I haven't played one, but did get my hands on a similar era Guild Pilot bass with the Kahler some years back and I did not at all like that. My interest in Kahler bass anything is zero.

Who is digging, or hating, or tolerating the Kahler on a G&L? I doubt I'd want a tremelo bridge on a guitar either, they just aren't for me.

Passive Television
This may be my favorite of the This is Ambient series so far. It's Dock at Lake Walcott. You might notice the GPS coordinates aren't exact ("give or take..."). I actually bust out the google maps when editing and decide on coordinates then. No GPS recording happens on site.

[youtube]n3Ad9YBXQjY[/youtube]

I'm thinking about creating a new Ambient show where the camera turns 360° in 15 minutes, but I'm going to have to engineer up something that turns the camera one fluid rotation in (at least almost) exactly 15 minutes. It needs to be portable and battery powered. Needs to run a consistent speed, and needs to be quiet. And cheap. The current thought is to hack together a tripod, a bicycle wheel, and a cassette recorder. Any suggestions out there? I'm a software guy, but I'm getting better with the physical world in more recent years.

Bicycle!
A $5 bicycle ruthlessly hunted me down on Saturday at a yard sale. It had a flat in the back, it's missing the front fender, and someone peeled of the headbadge. Other than that, it's in really nice shape. It looks like this one, other than the missing pieces and it doesn't have a light group.

http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/bik/3139757828.html

The three speed rear hub is really, really nice. The ride geometry is way too close to a road bike though and I feel like I've been riding a bike when I hop off, unlike the cruisers I normally ride. Raising the handlebars would be helpful.

Anyone else rolling internal speed hubs? Like or dislike, or somewhere inbetween?


More food and tea tomorrow...

Its breakfast time as I write this, there is no food in the house, black bean nachos and chicken would be lovely right now

Cool bike too, even with it's hippy name!

I'm not a fan on Kahlers or Floyds for that matter either tho a few years back I was tempted to bid on an early model black ASAT that was purportedly owned by Gibby Haynes of Butthole Surfers.

Nice Vids!

Cheers,
KF

Cool bike too, even with it's hippy name!

"Free Spirit" is the Sears bicycle brand, or was anyway. Here's an ad for the bikes that probably a little older than my bike.

[youtube]h3pRgKbWp4g[/youtube]

Brock, I watched your video presentation on Passive TV. Now I get it. It is almost the next level from cycle TV. Great presentation by the way.

Your 360 degree in 15 minutes is possible. I could be achieved with an electric timer such as used on a water softner and could probably be purchased to fit your needs. you could also use a step motor that would step one degree at a time. This would give the effect of a frame at a time and really draw attention. People could develop a tick watching in this mode. You could simply use an electric motor and pulleys for the proper reduction and turn the bicycle wheel as you had envisioned. That would be especially cool with the bicycle theme. There are some engineers here who could tell you what you need for pulleys and reductions. If you use a 50 foot belt the motor would be far enough away so you wouldn't hear it. this is not an impossible task. Just ask some of the wizards on our forum.

I had not heard of multiple speed bikes when I was a kid. I had my first bike in probably 1948 or 49. It was a one speed hub with a coaster brake. It was faster than hell downhill and slow going up. We lived in an area with big hills and we used to smoke the coaster brakes on them. We also had problems with the spokes. they did not hold up well to our use (brutal). One of the most vivid memories I have of my bike is trying to spin the rear wheel and slipping off the pedal. That would bring tears to your eyes and make you see stars for a while. If there were girls along they would see the crotch grab long before Micheal Jackson ever made it popular. There were two hubs, the Bendix which was much simpler to repair, and the New Departure, which had many disks in it. The discs used to turn blue when we smoked the brakes and it would cook the grease out. No wonder my dad used to shake his head. Brock if you would have had cycle TV in those days we could have given you some material.

I've already forgotten the G&L question but I can catch up tomorrow. I don't even own a bike but now I am tempted to get one after re-living my childhood. I bet I could get a laugh out of Ginny if I slipped off the pedal and demonstrated the crotch grab from the 50's. Darwin

Lunch: Water

G&L: No I have not (nor am I interested in one)

Non G&L: I owned a Schwinn "Pea Picker" Stingray 5 speed with a stick shift...when BMX was becoming cool and my bike was NOT. My son did get a new bike this summer, 21 speeds. IT is cool.

Ambient TV: I didn't get a chance to watch yesterday's video, but I really liked this one. If somebody rode across a path in the background of a TV commercial or movie scene, I probably wouldn't notice and definitely wouldn't care. After nine minutes of bird songs and scenery, I found myself getting interested in what the bicyclists were doing and why the girl was waiting at the left edge of the frame. I'm not sure how to approach the 360 problem, other than seeing if any sort of automatic lazy Susan is available and could be slowed down. Tinkering with an old portable record player might also be feasible.

G&L: I prefer hard tails, but I've ended up with two Kahler equipped G&Ls by pure chance. One is a Superhawk and the other is an ASAT, both from '86 with maple bodies. I don't use the vibratos for any aggressive dive bombing. They work well for the gentle bends I sometimes use, and seem to hold tune well even without the locking nuts tightened. I've read comments about these vibratos being very bad for tone, but I actually think I get a better sound from this ASAT than I do from its hard tail twin (also maple/ebony, with a body date from the same year and month).

Bikes: I've never even hear of an internal speed hub before this. I used to ride very seriously, but my last bike purchase was a Nishiki mountain bike back in the 80s. It was early enough that I had to hunt around San Diego to find a shop that actually sold mountain bikes. I would have road bikers stop me to ask what the #*$* I was riding, and could cruise the canyon trails in San Diego all day without seeing anybody else. My sons are both getting into riding now, so I just dusted it off and tuned it up after almost ten years. Now that it's a classic, I have no desire for anything more modern.

Ken

I like the Lake shot ambient TV. You should ride through the frame and yell TVcycle! every 5 minunutes just to make sure you stake out your ownership of the video.- (Just Kidding)

Kahlers- I hate 'em. The dumbest idea ever devised for bass, IMHO. I had a beautiful Black 1983 Precision bass that I sold to a student and it had the most figured flame maple neck that I have ever seen on a Fender. Two weeks after he bought it from me, he went and installed a Kahler on it! It was torture for me to look at the bass every week in his lesson.

Bikes- HELL Yeah, I have a 3 speed bike! I own a 1973 Raleigh Sports that a bought at a thrift store for 40 bucks or so 10 years ago. It has a Sturmy Archer 3-Speed and it is fun to ride. I don't own any one speed lumbering hulk bikes thank you.