Wednesday 25 September 2012

Lunch
Roast beef and spicy sauce sandwich with hot lemon tea.

Modding your G&L’s.

Q1 Do you mod your G&L’s and if so why? Is it a shortcfoming that should be fixed in the G&L design, is it just a personalization thing that you wouldn’t expect G&L to accommodate, or are you just a compulsive tinkerer.
Q2 Gave you ever done a mod that you wish you hadn't?

Personally in all my years of playing I’ve never felt the need or urge to mod a guitar. I’ve bought a few that have been modded – from rewiring to pickup and hardware replacement – but never actually changed one after I bought it.

More Signs of Spring
The Grevillea is flowering and bringing in the honey eaters ...


Pets and Vets.

Many of us have pets and love to show them off. Meet Oscar.


He’s an eighteen month old Beagle cross and has been to the vet more times than I can remember - from grass seeds up his nose to torn claws from over zealous rock jumping to reverse sneezing (youtube it) etc etc. Last week I thought he was chewing on something metallic but by the time I got to him he’d swallowed it. After another trip to the vet it turns out he’s swallowed a sewing needle with a couple of feet of thread attached to it. Because he’d only just eaten, the needle was still in his stomach and they were able to have him bring it back up safely … otherwise it would have been a $4,000 procedure to remove it! And just two days later we managed to retrieve a safety pin from him! His sister on the other hand hasn't been near the vet other than for her shots.

So –
Q3 Pets – Its been a while so how a bout a current pick of yours
Q4 Vets – What was the strangest or most embarrassing trip you’ve had to make to your vet?

Btw Darwin … your cats Magic and Sam. Any connection to this guy?
[youtube]7KF2ZI9MdVg[/youtube]


First Peoples - Early Rock Bands

The first reall Australian Aboriginal bands appeared ihn the late 70's/early 80s. The thing I loved about many of the pioneering Aboriginal bands was their earthy rawness. Its interesting that while the singer songwriters tended to raise issues facing their people, for the most part the bands tended to focus on building pride. Its also interesting how many of the early bands were influenced by either country and/or reggae.

There are many more I could post like Scrap Metal or No Fixed Address but here's a couple of the pioneers

Warumpi Band – My Island Home
[youtube]VaqLw1CvPMk[/youtube]

Coloured Stone
[youtube]Sa7M1cRThc4[/youtube]

Tomiorrow indigenous language performances

cheers, Robbie

Last edited by Aussie on Wed Sep 26, 2012 4:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i mod every guitar, i have not found one that satisfied me as factory stock. but my bluesboy is my least modded guitar. just the output jack, the pickup ring, both pickups, the control plate, both pots and caps and wiring. and a straplock.

some very recent pics. just the dogs, the cats later.






lots of trips to the vet, but nothing embarrassing, only sick animals or shots or getting them fixed.

I've modified many guitars but never one of my G & Ls. I found that modifying a guitar to make it sound the way you want usually brings other flaws in the guitar to the forefront. So I've decided that if the guitar doesn't sound right it's just not the right guitar for me.
As for failed modifications, I once tried to replace a floating bridge with a better one on a solid body guitar what a mess that became. Let's just say you can only plug and re-drill so many times before the integrity of the body is shot.

As for pets, nice pics.

I like pets, but I've never had one due to allergies in the home.

Hey Robbie,

Cool plant... I saw something similar at a friend's place - not sure what it was called but it traps and eats insects...

If they're stock, I generally don't mod my gats other than adding a bone nut. If they're not, then its open season...

Case in point, here's what my '90 ASAT Classic "Prototype/Employee" gat looked like when I bought a few months back.


I'm strictly a single coil guy + the black plastic bezel was a bloody eyesore so I turned it into an ASAT Esquire of sorts - slapped a sticker over the front route and called it good. Much happier with it now.


Btw, KLED are a Seattle band who are rather unique... here's a short clip for the uninitiated -
[youtube]XIYWGNVxsAs[/youtube]


Nice looking Oscar there - tho sounds like he has a bit of a death wish -- just sayin. Seriously tho, glad to hear he's still by your side...

[youtube]A4ZpnV9I8kE[/youtube]
I lived with a lovely little russian blue kitty for nearly 10 years who had a big part of my heart. No embarrassing trips to the vet.
Jackie has a small burmese kitty who's world famous and looks a lot like the one in the vid.

Cool tunes - I esp like the 2nd one. Interested in hearing tomorrow's sonic offerings...

Cheers,
Kf

Mods - I've swapped the pickups on all my G&Ls. Nothing against the MFDs, they're just not my favourites.

That dog sounds like trouble. The dog we had when I was a kid lived to 17 years and went to the vet three times - once for shots, once when she was pregnant and couldn't handle the size of the litter and once when we had her put down. At the end she was to frail to pat, it was like it was hurting her - needless to say I'm all for making euthanasia accessible to people.

We have no pets at the moment but we really want to get a dog and some chickens, maybe a couple of ducks or geese too, but the landlord won't allow it. No idea why either, when we moved into this place it was a dump that took us 2 weeks to get cleaned up. Only people can make a mess like that!

Louis - what breed is that dog in the bottom pic? Looks almost like a Jim Henson version of a dog its so cute!

I enjoyed that Coloured Stone clip, very nicely done. I hadn't heard that song before. Keep them coming!

blarg, it's a chow chow. with a summer haircut.

here is a different haircut.



same dog still



one of the cats.



more cats

Robbie, I really enjoy the pictures of the flowers you are posting. The flowers are pretty much done here.

I do not mod many and I have not done a mod that I regretted. I have to admit that putting the Bigsby on the Bluesboy was a stretch.

Great looking dog. Sam and Magic were named by the grand daughters. I see where you could have surmised from the clip.

Here is Sam taking a siesta on the Gold Wing



And here is Magic giving an inspection to the Bluesboy/Bigsby project! -- Darwin

No pets at the moment. We had a kitty, but she passed three years ago. Still miss her.

I usually don't mod my G&Ls. I have my Blonde Legacy that came to me with Duncan Texas Hot Antiquitys, and I changed the middle to a RW/RP, and swapped the bridge for the hotter Custom Antiquity. I changed most of the hardware out for gold, to give it more of a Mary Kaye vibe, and swapped in locking gold Sperzels. Good mod, I have a couple more sets of Antiquity pickups, so I'm going mod a couple of my other Legacys.

My Gibsons always get straplocks, but I rarely need to add them to a Legacy. I've changed out some pickups, tailpieces, and swapped in some RS Kits in my Pauls. In the past I've done some sheilding on a P-90 LP Special, and I added a third pup to one of my MM Sabres.

I generally prefer unmodded guitars.

Bill

Q1 Do you mod your G&L’s and if so why? Is it a shortcfoming that should be fixed in the G&L design, is it just a personalization thing that you wouldn’t expect G&L to accommodate, or are you just a compulsive tinkerer.

I won't mod a G&L, and I won't buy one (at least so far) that has had irreversible mods. Even the dumb things that were done to my rescue L-1000 will all be reversible with some minor woodworking skills, good tool setup, and a lot of patience. I guess the refinishing won't technically be reversing a mod, but it will at least get it back close to original condition.

Q2 Gave you ever done a mod that you wish you hadn't?

No, but I've dealt with mods I wished other people hadn't made. My current project with my son is restoring a 90s MIM DuoSonic that had suffered hack job attempts at "relicking" and "upgrades". So far I've only gotten the remains of the original finish off. Next will be plugging the holes from a misconceived bridge replacement, and an even more misconceived attempt to convert the replacement bridge into a string-through-body design:





And plugging and redrilling the body holes for the neck attachment screws, since the previous owner ran a power drill through them, freehand and at an angle:



I realize full well that we will end up with a $250 guitar at the end of this process, but more importantly my son and I will have the memories and I will have some refinishing experience under my belt before I think about the L-1000.

Q3 Pets – Its been a while so how a bout a current pick of yours

All of the pictures are on my wife's laptop. We have one dog (a pug) and two cats (domestic shorthairs).

Q4 Vets – What was the strangest or most embarrassing trip you’ve had to make to your vet?

No embarrassing vet visits. I could tell some stories from my days of working in hospitals, about the buzz in the emergency room on Monday mornings...

The first reall Australian Aboriginal bands appeared ihn the late 70's/early 80s. The thing I loved about many of the pioneering Aboriginal bands was their earthy rawness. Its interesting that while the singer songwriters tended to raise issues facing their people, for the most part the bands tended to focus on building pride. Its also interesting how many of the early bands were influenced by either country and/or reggae.

Yesterday I mentioned two closely related cultures from where I grew up on a South Carolina sea island: Gullah and Geechee. Both terms have lost a lot of their old meaning over the past twenty years, as developers have paved or built on every square inch of dry land down there and "come yahs" displaced the "bin yahs". When I was growing up, "Gullah" referred to a language that had developed among communities of freed and escaped slaves in the 1700s, and the people who spoke it as their primary language. The Gullah had lived in almost complete isolation from American culture from the 1700s up until the 1960s and 70s, so at that point the language was still composed mainly of words from western African tongues, with some Portuguese (a main language of the slave traders) and English mixed in. When I was growing up, Geechee referred to the dialect spoken by many of the residents of the sea islands who were not Gullah, and who had an accent that bore many traces of Gullah. Geechee also referred to natives of the sea islands; some considered it derogatory, and others of us took pride in it.

Here's a video of a Lowcountry native explaining the terms "come yah" and "bin yah". The first part of the video is in a pretty typical Geechee accent. Just to be clear, the music that starts at 1:35 has no relationship to anything remotely Gullah or Geechee - it's just fodder for the tourists. The music at 0:55 is what I remember. The speaker slips finally into Gullah at 4:25, through the end of the clip.

[youtube]No5HrBHkfzs[/youtube]

FWIW, I was never aware of having any Geechee in my own speech growing up, but for about ten years after I moved away I would have people ask me which country I was from. People who hadn't been to the sea islands wouldn't believe that I was from South Carolina. I could definitely understand conversation that sounded like the first part of the video. A lot of my friends could slip in and out of full-blown Geechee, but I couldn't. Gullah was another story - you either grew up speaking it or you didn't. It was really a whole other language. I can get the gist of about half of what is said in the last ten seconds of the video, mainly the English words and some of the vocal inflections. Maybe the speech after 4:25 in the video is pretty obvious to all listeners...did anybody else understand it?

Since I'm already a day or two behind in the First Peoples thread, I'll save Gullah music and musical influences for tomorrow.

Ken

How many dogs have purple tongues? That should have been a dead giveaway.

No pets. I love dogs, but not enough to spend time with them. They are kind of like a 3 year old child. You just can't leave them behind for the weekend.
My good buddy Sadie died a couple weeks ago. 15 years old for a hound dog. If I was the owner, I would have put her to sleep years ago.
She finally gave way. When she was her self, years ago, she was fun to play with.

Mods.
I tried the copper foil thingy. Never do that again.
Replaced 2 HBs with Seth Lovers. Couldn't hear a difference, won't do that again.
I have the strap locks, but lack motivation to install them. I guess there really is no need at the moment.
Impossible to find Black locking tuners for G&L. They might exist in Germany, but not here in the U.S.A. So I am stuck with chrome and ebony knobs on my black headstock.

Believe it or not. I do like the metal pick guard. Yes, it adds weight, but it just has that feel when I rest my fingers.

... and yes Wednesday was the 26th, not the 25th :-(

Louis – Nice family you have there. LOL man, it those changes to the Bluesboy represent your least modded guitar the others must have little resemblance to their origins.

Nut Brown Ale – That’s pretty much my philosophy …. Pick it up, play it, if it doesn’t feel or sound right put id down and move on. Your bridge experience is the kind of thing that has me not wanting to mess around.

Kf – Yeah, Oscar is a bit of a thrill seeker … once tried to eat a redback spider. I’m pretty sure he ain’t gonna do that again! KLED ... added to the list. Jesse Sheehan ,,,, nice track ... visually left me with an impression of Tim Finn in the pre Niel Fin Split Enz - loved them.

So do tell … why is Jackie’s kitty world famous?????

Jamie – My in-laws used to have chooks and ducks for many years until he had some health issues and had to limit himself a bit. Our kids loved going over there … and the free eggs were a bonus!

Darwin - I enjoyed following the progress on the Bluesboy Bigsby project. I must admit that Bigsby’s aren’t really my thing but it looked right on the BB.

Bill – Thanks for stopping by. The Mary Kay’s are a classy look and I can understand why you’d be willing to mod to create one. Interestingly I’ve never changed strap buttons and don’t go out of my way for strap locks either. – (cross fingers, I’ve never had a problem, but I do replace straps quite regularly.

Ken – Looks like someone really did a job on that Duo. Projects with the kids are always a great thing .. even though sometimes they end up taking twice as long. Gullah or Geechee …. Awesome! Looking forward to more!

Meowmix - Good to hear from you. I hear you on how pets can be a bit restrictive. We’ve always had dogs until we lost Ben and Jessie about 12 years ago. I love having animals aroud but we have certainly appreciated the freedom we had. Oscar and Molly came to us mainly as part of my daughter’s therapy nut I have to admit that we’ve neem more than happy to trade a bit of freedom for the pleasure (and vet bills!!!) they (he!!!) have brought. Besides, with the kids being older now nave ready made puppy sitters. And on the mods … after 40 years in front of a Marshall stack my ability to pick some of the nuances is more than a little compromised. PS Given your love of dogs, I’m left feeling curious about the Meow in your handle.:-)