Late Lunch Report - November 18 2013

It's way past dinner time here in Maryland, but I'll pretend it's several hours ago and post a Lunch Report.

Lunch today was a turkey kielbasa on a low calorie wheat roll, with bit of cheddar cheese, ketchup and relish. Not the most nutritious meal, but it hits the spot. A couple of years ago I ate that same thing for dinner every night for a month, and had canned chicken with olive oil mayo, parmesan cheese and oregano for lunch. I was living the bachelor life during a job change at the time. The ingredients were cheap, so the money I saved from my regular food budget pretty much covered the price of a 1980 F-100. I called it the F-100 Diet.

G&L topic:
I have a new neighbor who is a very good guitarist. We played together for the first time yesterday afternoon. We both like American roots music (rockabilly, early country and early rock & roll), so I broke out my upright while he played one of his guitars. We drifted into one song where he really wished he had a vibrato, so I handed him the SC-3 in my avatar. I think he was impressed with the guitar, but I was blown away by how it sounded. I'm never a good judge of how a guitar sounds when I'm playing it, although I get very picky about the sound I get out of any of my basses. Aside from the fact that he is a much better guitarist than I am, the SC-3 has crispness and clarity that I hadn't fully realized before. QUESTIONS: Have you ever sat back and listened to a friend put your G&L through its paces? If so, did you notice any qualities that aren't apparent to you when you're playing?

Non-G&L topic:
I am gradually getting the hang of slapping on my upright. I made my first steps toward figuring it out about six months ago, and ended up with blisters on every finger on my right hand, every time I played. I've been away from the upright for a couple of months, and yesterday's session brought me right to the verge of blisters again. When I tried to play my SC-3 yesterday evening and again tonight, my left hand fingers are still tight and won't go anywhere I want them to. QUESTION: Do you find your hands not cooperating after a break from playing? Do you have any problems going from one instrument to another?

Ken

I am having a carnitas burrito and a Fosters (not the hamburger stand) for dinner. Lunch wasn't worth mentioning.

I should go on such a skimping diet. I am not overweight but I weighed myself last night and found I weigh more than I ever have in my life. I have spent a lot of money on instrument gear over the last few years and have thought "I will do this until I make up for what I spent on that" but I have ended up relaxing on the idea and buying something else and the income/outgo has been a blur.

G&L: No one except me has played my G&L's but I have had the experience of being amazed that the same guitar I was used to (not a G&L) could sound so different when someone else was playing it.

Non-G&L: I go through a variety of different feelings about playing guitar. I might be stiff after playing or stiff having not played. Then I could be surprised another time by how I seem so snappy when I have not played or I might think I am on a roll playing everyday and getting snappier and snappier. Lately I have been having a problem in my left hand that I cannot figure out. I will probably run it by a doctor. It is the longest time an ailment of any form has lingered. It feels like a sore muscle in the heel of my thumb. Sometimes it can reach all the way to my shoulder. Usually something like this goes away but the has not. I have tried to figure out what is triggering it. Anyway that seems to be "The Problem" that overshadows stiffness from playing or not playing enough lately. I like to switch instruments because I find that I get better at playing overall and that I have a better experience playing each instrument. Some guitars play better than others and I do not like to leave one having had a bad playing experience with it. I feel like I am working all of the muscles this way (metaphorically speaking).

Great, a LR even if it be late. Ginny made some outstanding beef vegetable soup yesterday. I cut the veggies. I had it for lunch and will for a couple of more days.

Ken, do I ever know the feeling. Steve, our lead player goes through my guitars as I bring them out. It is usually late at night, after a gig, when we are talking smart. That started him on G&L kick and he now has four of them, three of them that I previously owned. He was a die hard Fender fan. He makes them sing in a different way than I do. It is good to hear some one else play them. We have different picking styles and we really enjoyed playing lead together the summer we had a spare bass player.

I have recently experience a bit of a problem when switching Basses and it usually happens when I switch to the Pick Lady. I will sometimes miss the high string. I am not sure why but I suspect string spacing may be different, I haven't measured yet but will in the near future. I don't have problems switching between bass and regular guitar. I also don't have issues going from 5 to 4 string bass so I am not sure what is going on. I would love to learn to slap but haven't tried. I see many doing it at the local GC and that is all that they do. I am starting to have issues with some pain in my fingers but it goes with the age. Naproxin does wonders. Have a great rest of the evening Ken.-- Darwin

I should go on such a skimping diet. I am not overweight but I weighed myself last night and found I weigh more than I ever have in my life.

I did lose a bit of weight on the F-100 diet, but that was just a side benefit. The real reason was just to build the guitar fund quickly. I find that any time I can spend a couple of weeks by myself (travel for work, or having to stay home for work when the rest of the family visits my in-laws) I can take weight off without ever feeling hungry.

Lately I have been having a problem in my left hand that I cannot figure out. I will probably run it by a doctor. It is the longest time an ailment of any form has lingered. It feels like a sore muscle in the heel of my thumb. Sometimes it can reach all the way to my shoulder. Usually something like this goes away but the has not.

IMO, that would be a good one to run by your doctor - sooner rather than later. If it turns out to be tendinitis, getting treatment as early as possible could shorten the healing time and minimize pain/impact. I hope all goes well!

I am not sure why but I suspect string spacing may be different, I haven't measured yet but will in the near future.

I find my playing style is different on a 1 3/4" neck (like the L-1000) than on a 1 5/8" or 1 1/2" profile. That extra bit of wood really slows me down.

I would love to learn to slap but haven't tried. I see many doing it at the local GC and that is all that they do.

I put a little bit of time into trying to learn how to "slap & pop" on a bass guitar, but the mile-a-minute stuff I see kids doing to show off in music stores escapes me. It sounds like a drum roll to me, and I've never figured out where it would fit into a musical context aside from gratuitous soloing. What I was doing yesterday was slapping on an upright, which is an entirely different thing that comes from traditional rockabilly and bluegrass. It's hard to describe, but basically it's slapping the right palm down onto the fingerboard so that the fingertips catch the string you want to play, and then letting the palm bounce a couple of times on the other strings to make them clack against the fingerboard. It's good for setting up a percussive shuffle beat when you're playing without a drummer.

Ken

G&L: I've heard mine being played by someone else a couple of times and always like the sound, and the person playing is almost always very impressed with the feel and sound of them too.

I am gradually getting the hang of slapping on my upright....

I kind of wish I'd got an upright bass instead of the LB100. Not that I don't like it - quite the opposite - but for the stuff I'm playing on it, honky tonk country, I'd really like to get that percussive click happening. Our drummer is only using a snare in this band and the click could really add some extra interest to the sound. I'll soon be shifting to guitar in that band anyway, and hopefully we can get an upright player.

I have no intention of ever learning how to slap and pop on an electric bass!!! The guy I bought my amp from demoed it by slapping at a hundred miles an hour and while it is impressive, the sound it produces does nothing for me at all.

As for changing between instruments, I find that as long as I've put enough time into playing the instrument to know what to expect when I pick it up I'm fine. If I don't play the bass for a week or more I find that it takes me a few minutes to adjust to the longer neck. The master of changing instruments would have to be Junior Brown, right? And whilst singing. B@st@rd!
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Ah...blisters.... Well, do you know about the nose oil trick? A lot of my bass friends swear by nose oil!

A nurse once told me that soaking my blistered fingers in warm, salted water would help take away the pain. It works! BTW, oral intake of Wild Turkey is an excellent co-adjunct treatment.

I currently have 54 guitars in my collection, and I've taken as many as six gits and a banjo to my gigs. Legacy, Les Paul, Taylor or Martin acoustic, 12-strings, etc. So I am changing neck profiles and widths quite often. I do have a couple that throw me, like moving from one of my slim G&L necks to the very large neck on my '58 LP Reissue. But it usually only takes a minute to get comfortable. I try to take care that all my G&Ls are set up the same way, but even then I have one Legacy with what I assume is a #1 neck...that apparently was made on Mars. Maybe Pluto, it's that far out. Very weird, and it takes a long while to adapt to it.

I let people play my guitars about as often as you can walk into your local auto repair shop and actually have a mechanic let you borrow his favorite Snap-On socket wrench. My guitars are my livelihood, and the rule is: THOU SHALT NOT TOUCH!!! I do know my guitars sound good. Must be that whole, "...hands of the Master..." thing. LOL!!!

I can relate one thing that happened to me a few years ago. The then-manager of one of my local GCs had taken in a couple of dreadnoughts from a collector. One was a Breedlove Custom Revival D-18 clone, and the other was a Collings rw/addy dread, I believe the D-2A model. Not cheap guitars. The manager, a couple of his guys and a couple of other customers were playing these, passing them back and forth. A Taylor 910CE got added to the mix, and I had my new Standard Series D-18. My 18 sounded new and tight, and really couldn't compete with the scalloped-braced acoustics. The Taylor is voiced very differently thsn most other makers' dreads...tremendous clarity, but without the warmth of the others. The Breedlove and the Collings were clearly fine instruments, yet I felt something was lacking.

I grabbed a new Martin HD-28V off the wall and that pretty much ended the conversation about how wonderful the Breedlove and Collings were. It was a tremendous eye-opener for all of us. The Martin simply demolished the competition. By far it had the most volume. By consensus it had the best blend of warrmth, clarity and richness. Extremely resonant, it had a terrific responsiveness to both light fingerpicking and loud strumming. It felt alive. It was everything a great Martin rosewood dread should be. I didn't buy that one, but I eventually did get one and it's an amazing guitar.

So it's a good idea to compare a lot of guitars when buying and to hear someone else's playing. But in the end, it's what I feel and hear from the guitar that matters most.

Thanks for stepping up today!

Bill