Lunch Report - Friday March 14 2014

[KenC]

It's a bit after lunch on the East Coast, but this will be on time for some. I'm enjoying a relaxing day off from work. I meant to post an LR a couple of hours ago, but so it goes...

Lunches today were a Subway ham sandwich on wheat, with lots of veggies, and some vitamin water. I went to my sons' school and had lunch with both of them. Each time was half of the sandwich. The boys are still young enough that they aren't embarrassed to have me show up, so I'll enjoy doing it while I can.

G&L Topic:

This morning I pulled out the Cavalier-E, with the intention of putting it into an alternate tuning that I haven't used in a while. I rotate through my amplifiers, an right now I have the Jazz Chorus in my "music room" (my wife has a very different name for it!). I hadn't played the Cav through the Jazz Chorus before, and it really gave me a WOW moment. The bridge pup on the Cav isn't my favorite, and it sounded a bit thin as it has on other amps. The neck pup was amazing, though. Straight through the amp with a flat EQ was great, but dialing in some spring reverb and a touch of chorus really made it blossom. I think I'll experiment with the bridge pup this afternoon, to see if height adjustments make much of a difference. Do you have any G&Ls that really shine on one setting, but are lacking something in the other positions?

Non-G&L Topic:

I mentioned that I was planning to put the Cavalier into an altered tuning. A couple of years ago a friend suggested C-G-D-A-E-E, which was inspired by his attempts at learning the cello. I found it to be very versatile, and had my Superhawk tuned that way for quite a while. For the past year I've kept an ASAT in open G, which I don't play nearly enough. More recently, I discovered that a favorite song of mine years ago was recorded in E-B-E-F#-B-E:

[youtube]cGNrezAdD8c[/youtube]

Skip to 1:15 if you want to get right to the music. I spent way too much time my senior year in college trying to figure this one out by ear in standard tuning. After I fiddle with the bridge pup, I may go ahead and start cracking this song in the correct tuning. Do you use open tunings? If so, what are they and what do you use them for?

Enjoy the weekend!

Ken

[blargfromouterspace]

Thats a beautiful tune. I don't know where I'd start with working out how to play it, its pretty busy.

I haven't messed around with open tunings but want to for playing slide, if I ever learn to do that.

The only dodgy position on any of my G&Ls is the middle pickup on my Classic S. Its not up to much by itself. My WOW moment came when I played my guitars through my H&K Puretone for the first time - the differences between the guitars is much clearer, probably because its such a simple circuit. This is generally a positive thing, but its not the best amp to use with a Bluesboy as the differences between the mismatched pickups are made even clearer.

[Elwood]

Happy Pi Day !!

Let me think about your G&L question a bit,

Alternative tunings really are an easy way to get traction when you think your in a rut,
I've hardly got my feet wet. My Black ASAt has a D-tuner and the stiffness in the build makes for a deep strong Low D.
Even playing a drop 'D' tuning keeps me on my toes

This guy must have it in his DNA:

[youtube]LWPHrRwQqVE[/youtube]



Alex DeGrassi's LP Southern Comfort was one of my mainstays in my late teens/early 20's.
[youtube]f5FveXO9toE[/youtube]


back when I can,
nice to see a fri LR Ken,thx
elwood

[glvourot]

Lunch today was Nasi goreng at a favorite hole in the wall. Really good authentic Malayasian food, I make it a point to pop in when I'm in the neighborhood.
I guess the bridge only position on my S-500 is my least favorite, but it improves somewhat using the PTB. Everything else is all good.

I put my SC-2 into open G and open E when I want to practice some Stones songs and I use DADGAD for some finger style acoustic.

Thanks for the report today !

[NickHorne]

I've loved experimenting in open tunings ever since I heard Elmore James, when I was a teenager in the '60s, and then Joni Mitchell a couple of years after + John Fahey and a few others and generally realising that anything goes. When I was young. Lucky!

Nowadays I have a Danelectro permanently in open Dma, and an acoustic the same; these get used for slide and also fingerstyle vamps and the like when the slide will often stay on my pinky just in case it comes in handy. I've come to like a heavy slide; my favourite is my last-but-recent Martin Simpson model, the stainless one. I machined a few mm off the thin end, to an overall length of 52mm, and it's perfect for me like that. Works on acoustic and electric string gauges and neck sizes. You have so much more finesse of control with a good substantial mass for the strings to work against, and sustain and proper tone to play with.

But for repro Elmore, it should be thin steel, a bit of 1950's bicycle handlebar.... he was kind of playing the edges of the imperfections of its sound, the way it only just had enough mass to work, rattled a little, wasn't perfectly smooth (his sustaining vibratos were a bit abrasive-sounding, but that was all somehow part of how he used it). I doubt he stopped to design the result very much, he just got on and did it; I just have good memories of discovering him!

I did use open G, but I was always missing the tonic on the first string. The extra 5th in the bass on the bottom didn't justify it for me.

But what I do like (G&L WR Asat) is to just drop the top string down a tone to D, when in otherwise regular tuning and playing in the key of G. This makes more sense in the bass to me, and is how Clarence White played his "Nashville West", with a skinny G-string (not a B-bender). It's like an open major scheme on the top 4 strings with a regular bottom-end tuning. Great grooves possible in Gma, and also transferrable around the neck.

I still dabble occasionally with experimental tunings. It's refreshing, and sometimes it's a way round a technical pothole too; I'd do right away it in studio if it would "get me home", no question.

I'm also alert to the risk that it could make me physically or mentally complacent sometimes.