The YouTubes and I have been goofing around looking at reviews of grotesquely expensive boutique guitar amplifiers. There is a lot of dazzling stuff out there. One sticks out to me for purely family reasons.
I had never heard of Hook amplifiers before this evening. Now that I have, I want one. Drool and all that. The R20, on the demoes I’ve heard tonight, sounds ridiculous. Just plain sick.
Oh yeah, the family reason for wanting one? The company is Dutch! I can ask Bellana to bring one home for me. The combo is only about 2,300 Euros. Consider it done, yeah?
Prior to the 50th birthday super gift, a new Les Paul Standard 50s, I was thinking about the future, post Covid and post college bills, where I was going to modify the shit out of my ’78 Les Paul Custom. I was going to go full blown boutique, cork sniffing snob on it. I was going to find the best sounding clones of original Gibson PAFs possible and put them in, and replace the wiring with a 50’s style harness and basically try and make my Custom as 1950’s-ish as possible.
Now that I have the shiny, wonderful new Standard, I’ve changed my plans to updating the holy hell out of the Standard and leave the Custom alone (except for the frets… and maybe the wiring harness). The question then is, do I try to turn my guitar into a modern knock off of a Les Paul from the late 50’s, or do I go for a modern knock off of Peter Green’s Les Paul?
I don’t know. What if I go for Peter Green and decided I don’t like the out of phase stuff? boutique, cork sniffing pick ups are expensive. I don’t want to have to play this game twice.
So we’re being goofy on the youtubes today, checking out some pick ups. I am going to say without a doubt that I will not be buying a set of Monty’s Guitars Bethnal Green PAFs. Partly because they don’t seem to be available yet, and also partly because the website makes me think they won’t be available in the US. That’s okay though. Let’s file this under research and Gear Acquisition Syndrome and just being a totally unabashed guitar nerd.
ADDENDUM: So I wrote the post while watching the video for the first time. After I published the video mentioned that you can buy them from Andertons if you’re in the US, and it’s not that they aren’t available yet, it’s that they are making them in small quantities and running out.
I’ve done a lot of musically nerdy things in my life. I’m a Rush fanatic so I sort of goes without saying.
Years ago I made a playlist on Alonetone that held songs I wanted to re-record. Before I started actually finishing songs I just kept adding songs to the playlist. When I started finishing songs I added those to the playlist and matched them up with the originals. Now that it’s done there are 114 songs on the playlist.
Through all of this time I kept the playlist private. Today I made it public. Good lord what a nerd I am.
At last, The Great 2015 Re-recording project has come to an end. Volume six has 11 songs. For a while there I thought it was going to have 12 or 13, but enough’s enough, right? Maybe at some point in the future I’ll pull together another batch of slightly better than shitty songs, but for now let’s consider this nearly seven year old exercise complete.
The last two songs include one that’s basically meh:
And one that might be okay in more capable hands:
I still have to get volumes five and six onto bandcamp, but for now I think I am just going to rewatch season two of The Mandalorian because this is the way.
The Great 2015 Re-recording project started in, you guessed it, 2015. I failed to finish it in a timely manner and it kept getting extended and each time I revisited it I added more songs to it and by the time 2020 came around and I really got to it for really reals it was gigantic.
I just put the last guitar track onto the last song. Tracking is officially done.
What was supposed to be 8-10 songs has turned into 58, I think, and instead of one little best-of playlist it’s going to end up with six.
What did I learn from today’s monumental (#sarcasm) guitar tracking session?
Stringjoy strings last longer than any other strings I’ve ever played, but they don’t last forever. When they’re dead, they are really dead, and the strings on my Les Paul Standard are dead. I will change them before RPM starts next week, I promise.
Also… calluses are important. Ouch.
I’ve got two songs left to mix and then The Great 2015 Re-recording Project, aka Quarantine Tunes, will be over. I want it done today. Let’s move on to new things, shall we?
I said in the last post that I was going to play guitar tonight but I decided to mix a song instead. The Great 2015 Re-recording Project only has two more songs outstanding after this one. They both need lead guitars and a mix, but after that the whole shebang is done.
Which means that after RPM is done I’m going to have to think of something new to do to waste my time.
When I say that the sixth and final round of The Great 2015 Re-recording project is scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as available songs is concerned, this is what I am talking about.
Not bad. Not good. Just, meh. I probably should have left this one off.
The only song from last year’s RPM Challenge to be added to The Great 2015 Re-recording project is this little sucker. I think this version is better than last year’s, which is nice. Mission accomplished. I also think this needs to be played loud. It doesn’t seem to land as well at a lower volume. That’s probably a sign that the mix is shitty, but I don’t care. It’s done. Again.
Inside the Red Head's Head 