G&L TOPIC: I see there are a couple of Broadcasters up on Reverb this week. Thinking seriously about picking one up, but I know I am not set up money-wise right now. So I am hoping they find a good home who can appreciate them. I wonder how different, if they are that different, they are from a US ASAT Special - seems like they should be pretty near in sound etc. Anyone who has any firsthand experience with both should feel welcome, and even obligated to share their experience with the class.
NON G&L TOPIC: The silent creeping in of vanity sizes in retail.
It is only because I have been watching calories these past few months (and meticulously indulging my OCD-like commitment to quantifying everything I can about losing weight these past few months, that I came to see something of a weird discrepancy between my tape measure and the waist measurements of most of my pants.
This all started a few months back when I needed an accurate Body Mass Index measurement to see what kind of danger I was in health-wise (spolier warning: Plenty of danger) so you're supposed to measure your gut circumference at the point where it is largest. Mine was embarrassingly closer to 50 inches - did I say embarrassingly? I meant humiliatingly.
I then compared that to my waist measurement - which I didn't bother taking, since I already knew my waist measurement to be the current size I was wearing in Jeans. So that number put me well into the Morbid Obesity category. They say Morbid, because you're straight up more statistically likely to die than you would have been if you didn't eat so many desserts.
Well I'd read elsewhere that if you think of what you need to do as "lose some weight" - you're not really hitting the bullseye. What "they" say you should really be focused on is getting that gut measurement down to something less terminal. A rule of thumb they give is that you will no longer be at an elevated risk once the largest circumference of your waist is equal to (or less than) half your height in inches. As a former 68 inch tall man, now 67 inches due to gravity and aging - that meant I had to get the "fat" measurement at or under 33.5 inches.
I was at that time wearing... "stretchy" jeans that owned up to being 36" when you pulled them hot out of the dryer. But they were already 38's by the time you stepped out the door. I thought to myself, well, I only need to loose, what? 2 inches or so off my waist? Shouldn't be that hard.
When I measured my gut it seemed way bigger than it ought to if my waist was 36" So I measured my waist. It wasn't 36" it was closer to 40". The label said 36, but reality said - nice try.
That was when I discovered that many clothing manufactureres have (for years!) been intentionally "vanity sizing" their clothes. The idea being that you're more likely to buy a pair of pants (in this case) that fit you and show a smaller waist measurement than a pair of pants that fit you showing a much larger, and more accurate waist measurement. Not only that, you'll end up "liking" these brands because they "fit you better" etc.
If you want to feel good about your waist measurement - don't measure it with an actual tape line. The extra 3-5 inches you find will only depress you that much more. Call this a public service announcement.
Last Topic: The Jim Dunlop 741 Slide Capo.
So I was watching one of my favorite guitar players - Joey Landreth, playing slide rather well on his Suhr - using a weird capo that raised the strings high enough to play slide comfortably - and act as a capo for quick key changes between songs. I had a time and a half trying to find out what that was. I looked for capos, and I liked for normal-to-slide conversion "whatnots" etc. but for the love of me, nothing I found looked right.
Then one day I just typed in "slide capo" to a google search and came up with the dunlop 741 Capo slide. It looked right, but I could never find a still photo of him playing with enough visual resolution to confirm that this was the actual product he was using. I seemed to have more than one thing - and that made it more difficult to determine what was what.
Well, I bit the bullet and but one - and tried it out. It actually works quite well - though I am not much of a slide player. I did learn a few delta blues tunes from Robert Johnson back when I was first playing, but I haven't played a lot of slide lately. Notwithstanding I thought it was a fairly useful tool -and it was on sale the day I bought it. I wonder if anyone else has tried one, and what their thoughts were. I'll say this -it was a bit tricky to put on the first couple of times - not a lot of instructions, and just shy of intuitive - it took a few tries I'll say it again.
This I will say, I makes a decent er.. slide-capo. I really don't play enough slide to need one, but I can see it does lend itself to quick key changes - you can play in open G, and in less than a few heart beats, you can be set up in open A - without having to do much. Great for playing out, but still a bit over priced for guys like me, for whom it is essentially a vanity item.
Let me know if you've every seen one, or even better fiddled with one.
have a great day guys.
