| Author | Message | ||
     Jerry_haughton |
welcome back, Cap'n - great tales!  | ||
| Captpete |
Now that I've embarrassed myself with a "band" pic, I think it's your turn, Jim. I'm dying to see a pic of the Purple Dragons in action in the studio. I really got a chuckle out of your description of the band. And a good feeling from hearing of a father having fun with his kids. | ||
| Captpete |
And BTW, that obnoxious guitar strap was a gift from the guy who makes ‘em. His promotional scheme ensures that every picker in town who stumbles up on a stage is wearing one. But the less personalized variety are actually works of art. He sells quite a few via his website, but can’t be making any money considering the hours it must take to make one and what he charges for them. I think he’s got a lot of time on his hands.  | ||
| Captpete |
Gone fishing - again! | ||
| Jerry_haughton |
i was choogling around on the internet the other night, searching for anything i could find on "Garrison Guitars," and stumbled onto a cool pic:  that's Chris Griffiths in the middle, President and CEO of Garrison Guitars. if you squint your eyes just a bit, he looks a lot like Erik Buell did 20 years ago - young, full of smarts, passion and drive, and determined to climb up on the porch with the big dogs. good stuff. | ||
| Jerry_haughton |
ps: Purple Dragon ROCKS!!!!!!! | ||
| Djkaplan |
If you just squint a little, the guy to the left looks like Ellen DeGeneres. | ||
| Newfie_buell |
Jerry, To see the factory is amazing, kinda like seeing the Buell factory for the first time. | ||
| Pdxs3t |
Cap'n...will try to catch a pic of the dragons in action on thursday when we are all together for the evening. | ||
| Kevyn |
playing this Telecaster guitar is just about as exciting as riding motorcycles and sex...'cept my finger have never gotten sore during sex and my butt hasn't gotten sore playing guitar! Practice Practice Practice Finger exercises, chords and chord progressions, single note discipline and timing... | ||
| Jerry_haughton |
Kevyn, how long have you played guitars? how did you initially learn the "basics"? | ||
| Court |
Ferris: Whilst thou waits . . . I'll offer up a few strictly personal tips. Here is a picture of the fretboard. This if provided to your for TWO REASONS:
 Another thing, mentioned by Kevyn, is TIMING. In the kit of starter crap I am sending you will be an electric metronome. Until it arrives, practice tapping your foot (you've likely been doing this most your life) to a tune. Repeat after me. . . TIMING IS EVERYTHING. There are several notable famed guitar players that are, on their best days at best days are less talented at guitar than they are geniuses of timing. Start here. . . we'll talk more. | ||
| Djkaplan |
Years ago, my best friend and I started a band. He was the bass player and I was the lead/rhythm guitarist (but only because I had the guitar). We jammed for months and collaborated on an original set that consisted of about five progressions (some with breaks!) and we were good enough to make the bass players wife clap and squeal with delight. We decided to get a drummer, but seeing as how we didn't know any, we got a cheap drum machine instead. The first time we set it on an easy rhythm (basically the metrome setting with a flourish) we realized we had no timing what-so-ever. Things we could play pretty easily turned into train wrecks. It took us another few weeks to get our timing down to where we could just play with a metronome! Thank goodness we couldn't find a real drummer. Timing, is indeed, everything. | ||
| Kevyn |
Jerry, Never owned a guitar in my life, this Telecaster is my first(will not be the last or only guitar, no doubt about that fact!)...just plinked around on everybody else's. Played piano when I was a young stinker but had a 'mean' teacher and couldn't stomach the abuse--so I quit...damn! Big sister was a terrific piano player, years of lessons. Used to come home 'after hours' and just sit down and play, play , play. Her husband had a few lessons, could read some basic stuff but man 'o' man could he play. Loved to listen. Right now they have 2 Steinway concert grand piano's in their entertainment room and another upright in the bar. Both of their son's--my nephews--play guitar for their own amusement and enjoyment...but me, this is my first serious endeavor into the venue. And, I'm lovin' every minute. Every sore finger tip, every aching wrist muscle is a step deeper into a creative, expressive world and as you play and grow your neural networks you'll have more enjoyment than you ever imagined. My practice times are late afternoon before I have to rest and when I come home from work. I have an audience of 4 cats---tough audience, get a few nasty looks when the sound is off... Start slow, be deliberate and precise. Keep plucking until you're consistent, clean and clear...then you can pick up the pace a notch!! Court, thanks for the chart picture, well worth a thousand words!!! The music room is starting to emerge... | ||
| Bomber |
I once jammed regularly with a fella that was entirely, completely, irrevocably rythm blind (the analog of tone deaf, perhaps?) -- train wreck is a great way to put it, Deej -- I sprained my wrist trying to keep up (down?) with him -- I felt I knew what it was like to be the Band and try to follow Bob Dylan guy went on to a successful career as a commodities trader, which is good, I'm thinkin I also found that many drummers have trouble keeping a beat . . . . odd, ain't it? | ||
| Court |
Here Ferris...if you want to see how some of us get COMPLETELY HUMBLED....check this out. | ||
| Jerry_haughton |
DJ, Kevyn and Bomber, i'll chat back at y'all in a bit (i'm SUPPOSED to be working...), but had to take a second to respond to Court: first, thanks (i think) for the fret chart. sheesh, i had no idear there'd be homework... second, WOW! Joscho Stephan is my new guitar idol!!! it's funny, i watched the clip three times, and i love him and hate him all at the same time!!! and what's this about a Chet Atkins Convention??? tell me THAT wouldn't be a cool place to see people get blisters on their fingers! thanks for the link, and for the inspiration. FB | ||
| Kevyn |
http://www.neilyoung.com/greendale_frames.html http://www.neilyoung.com/prairiewind.html ...for your listening pleasure | ||
| Road_thing |
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| Al_lighton |
All this guitar talk, I gotta show some of my stuff... I played in bands for years, nothing particularly commercial, mostly just for fun. I converted my garage to a full fledged studio, had some serious recording gear for a while. As I got more into motorcycles and our band kinda disintegrated, I sold most of my recording stuff, but kept all my live gear that just collects dust these days. But I built all my guitars and drums and such. Here's some photos and descriptions. I built my first guitar in college. It was a P.O.S., but I learned a lot. The first neck sucked, so I bought a gibson 24.75" neck and put it on. Later, I sawed that guitar to pieces, stole the neck, and built this one from it:     It has a honduras mahogany body with a figured maple top. I flush mounted the bridge and pickup rings. I hand cut the mother of pearl inlays in the neck with my "AL" logo. The pickups are Fender Heartfield Elan II split coils, with a 5 positins strat switch that runs rear-rear-single coil, rear humbuck, rear-front-single coil, rear-front-single coil paralled with the neck humbucker, and then front humbucker. The rear-front-single coil has a phase reverse pull switch on the tone (rear) knob, and the other two knobs are volume for the front or rear pickups. Sperzel trim-lock tuners. This guitar plays nice, is more Gibsoneque than Fenderish. But I'm more of a fender man, so I decided to build another. My second guitar is this one.        The 25.5" maple/ebony neck came from Stewart Mcdonald (guitar supply company), the body center is Phillipine Mahagony, the front and rear caps are 3/16" thick Indian rosewood. Doing it this way let me route the electronics from the front and still have no plastic pickguard. The pickups are Lindy Fralins, standard strat switch pattern. The bridge is the VERY cool Wilkenson Convertible that locks when the arm is back, floats when forward. I LOVE that bridge. It's a bear to adjust, but once dialed in, it is so versatile. The Tuners are unique Wilkenson pull style. You don't see them often, I have no idea if they are even made any more. But I like how they work and are very precise. This guitar plays nicely, but due to the rosewood caps, is a bit "dead". It isn't a lively resonant guitar. Not a bad jazz/studio guitar, but not a great live blues/rock guitar. So, lacking a strat-ish ball buster, I decided to build another. This one is my favorite. It's a Jag-caster, with some of the features of both body styles. After I built it, Fender released something that was kinda like it. But mine came first      This one has a nice 25.5" full birdseye maple neck from Stewart Mcdonald, a swamp ash body, Seymour Duncan Antiquity pickups, standard wilkenson trem, sperzel trimlocks. The balance is excellent, and this guitar is very lively. In addition to these, I built a little Koa/flame maple lap steel, a kit guitar for my son, and painted several friends guitars. All of them are finished in nitrocellulose lacquer. I built my own full rack drum kit as well, with Precision drum shells and Sonor Force HW with Rims mounting systems. Very nice kit that now spends all it's time in storage under my ping pong table  I also built up a few amps from early 70's vintage beaters. I restored my 71 Vibrolux reverb into a blond tolex with oxblood grillcloth, cream knobs, and dogbone handle, complete with a brownface switchplate that I had silkscreened in early 60's style. After I finished it, Fender released a similar amp...darn them, they must have been watching me again. I will NEVER part with this amp, it is magic. I've heard several similar vintage vibrolux amps, none of them have the magic that this particular one does, and I don't know why. I even restored a friends amp with the similar blackface mods, but it just doesn't have the same mojo. I did the same thing with an early 70's super, but after blackfacing the reverb channel, I restructured the gain stages on the non reverb channel so that the input stage cascaded right into the tone stack recovery gain stage with a pot. Nice natural overdrive, that then went right into the input of the reverb channel. It has a switch so you could use it as a normal super on the reverb channel, but flick a switch and you were overdriving the reverb channel with the normal channel gain stages described above. It was a very nice amp, but useless anywhere but live gigs outdoors. Just too freakin loud. I sold to someone who got a very good deal. These days, I just play bass with some friends once a month while drinkin. They're all better guitar players than me, so I just plunk away on the bass happily. Whatever callouses I used to have have all gone away from lack of use, just no time to play anymore. I have a nice Dan Crary Taylor that I electrified with a piezo bridge, and Joanne has a nice Martin Acoustic Bass. But my fingers are so soft it hurt to play either very much. I'll drag them out for camping trips every now and again, but other than that, just no time to play...Sigh. Someday I'll get back into it again. A.S.B takes too much of my time now to give it too much thought now. Al | ||
| Sandblast |
Damn Al, that is impressive. Anyone else here feel like an under-achiever?  | ||
| Pdxs3t |
Very nice Al! Now I have to go wipe the drool from my face. | ||
| Kevyn |
...nothing quite like hand skills. Love that birds eye maple neck! Fender has released some nice mahogany bodies with maple tops...recently...after you made yours of course. jeez Al, that's some nice work. Never imagined one man could be so versatile in such a big way. | ||
| Old_man |
http://www.sportsmansguide.com/cb/cb.asp?a=241614 I don't know anything about guitars but what do you that do think of this guitar. | ||
| Kevyn |
hard to tell, I'm not knowledgeable enough about acoustic guitars... If you're looking for a guitar...my approach was; shop local, ask folks who are active in the industry questions, handle a bunch of guitars and listen carefully...my personal experience was that the local music shops were willing to sell lower than the bargain internet sellers. No waiting on delivery, free set up and after sales support. The big plus was a rather remarkable selection of guitars and folks who absolutely positively without question knew their way around... through this whole experience, I've met some great folks who are just great to do business with ...not to mention this whole thread. | ||
| Bertman |
Great handcrafted beauties there Al! I can't believe you made three of them. My one has been an on going project of change for probably 20 years. Nice tube amps too. For you young guys and gals, a vacuum tube was something your grandpa use to have to replace in the TV from time to time. I remember them so that would make me, umm......old. | ||
| Court |
Al, that is too cool. Don't get me wrong, the world of Buell is much better with your handiwork here, but if you ever get back into guitar making....well, I wanna know. Wonderful stuff. Sure you're not wanting to get rid of that Vibe? | ||
| Jerry_haughton |
Al, you're a tough act to follow. which, alas, has been the case from the first time we met. cool stuff, sir. here i am, thinking i'm gonna be hot property when i can actually hack out a cord or two on a guitar and you're actually BUILDING the damn things. and amps. AND drums. very impressive. i know that American Sport Bike keeps you and Joanne busy, and we're all sure appreciative that the legacy that Tat and Maria started is so superbly being carried onward and upward. but one of these days, after i get "Little Brown Jug" dialed in, maybe we can find the time to get together and jam a little bit. i'm with Court: this is wonderful stuff. FB | ||
| Jerry_haughton |
"This old guitar, the more I play it the better it sounds, it cries when I leave it alone." Neil Young, "This Old Guitar" from Prairie Wind very nice Kevyn, thanks. | ||
| Bomber |
Alright, Mr Haughton -- I'm sitting here, my knees talkin to me due to a front moving through town, my neck stiff as a result of a poor choice while body surfing eons ago, having to clean my freaking glasses due to linving WAY longer than the design spec (which I'm figuring is about 35 years), and, on top of all that, my fingertips hurt like heck! and IT'S ALL YOUR DOIN'! thanks, sir! |
