Category: Music

I’m Not Guitar Shopping

I am absolutely not guitar shopping. I am, however, suddenly curious about lower end, sort of affordable, fully hollow electric guitars. I own a semi hollow guitar but I’ve never played a fully hollow electric.

It’s all just curiosity.

July is Coming

After working on a couple of seriously atrocious song ideas tonight it’s got me wondering about the near future. The 4th of July is right around the corner, and for a musical net nerd like me, the 4th of July means 50/90.

Should I do 50/90? I’ll definitely do Record Every Month, so there’s three songs. Should I try to bang out the other 47 as well?

I’m not sure. I’ll be pulling shifts at my parents house again probably starting next week, so there’s a lot of time where I won’t be recording. I’ve used that time to put initial ideas down, and to mix, but I can’t do guitars or voices.

I guess we will have to just wait and see where my head is a couple of weeks from now.

Play

I did it. I snuck in some guitar playing. Dinner is going to be late tonight so I went straight from work to the new Les Paul.

I worked on rhythm parts for two really terrible songs. Les Paul Standard 50s into a Rock Your Repaired Amp The Klone overdrive pedal into a Vox AC15. Life felt good for a few minutes there. Excellent.

Up next is some hamburgers cooked on the grill where life will continue to feel good for a few more minutes.

Baby steps, babie. Baby steps.

Guitar Commercial

This video is a commercial but given the subject matter I don’t mind sharing it.

Gibson guitars and Alex Lifeson from Rush once designed a Les Paul model together. It was called the Axcess Les Paul, or Les Paul Axcess, or whatever. Despite Alex being pretty much the guitar god to me, and Les Pauls being my favorite guitars by far, the Axcess didn’t really do it for me. The look was just a little off, and a Les Paul with a Floyd Rose bridge just bothers me on a fundamental level. I watched Alex play them more times than I can count and he always sounded amazing, but that one just wasn’t for me.

He’s working with Epiphone now to make an affordable Axcess model. I’m sure it’s great, but again it’s not for me. This video is a four minute intro to the new guitars where he basically tells his entire history with Gibson. It’s pretty cool. The music playing is pieces of the two new instrumentals on his new website. It’s been kind of a busy week for old Lerxst.

For the record, Gibson did once release a custom shop copy of his ES-355 in a very limited quantity for an absolutely stunning price. I’d kill to get my mitts on one of those, but I’d likely have to sell my body for medial experiments in order to afford it.

California Tweed

The Mesa Boogie California Tweed is probably the only non-Fender amp I am seriously GASing over. It’s crazy expensive, but I hear it’s worth every penny.

It’s way out of my price range, even if we didn’t have two tuitions to pay for. Robbie just likes fantasizing about groovy gear sometimes.

More Les Paul Fun

We’ve seen a lot of this before. In this video, Joe Bonamassa is going to get a bunch of different sounds out of a Les Paul without stepping on pedals or messing with his amp.

I know all of this. When I was in high school I had this super loud, solid state Peavey 2×12 with a built in chorus (that I never used). It had a clean channel and a drive channel and a foot switch to swap back and forth. I didn’t use a lot of pedals, apart from a wah wah, and that amp foot switch did all of my clean/dirty work for me.

Then in 1988 or ‘89 or so, we did a gig in a parking lot. I put that huge Peavey into the back of the mini van along with the rest of the band’s gear. The foot switch was plugged into the back of the amp and in the process of squeezing everything in the plug got squashed and was unusable.

I had a ton of switching channels to do, but now I didn’t have a switch to switch with. My work around was to use the drive channel, but set my neck pickup volume way down low so that it sounded nice and clean. Then instead of using the foot switch, I just flipped the pick up switch.

These days I have pedals for all of that so I generally keep all four knobs on the guitar up full. It bothers me a little though when I see people refer to cleaning up with the volume knob as a trick. It’s just the most obvious thing there is, right? Anyone whose messed with an electric guitar through a distorted amp figures out that lowering the volume on the guitar cleans the signal… don’t they? Why does Mr Bonamassa (and countless other YouTube guitar players) make it sound like it’s news to us? I don’t get it.

I have nothing but respect for Joe Bonamassa and I would literally kill to have his chops. I actually have his signature Cry Baby Wah on the band pedal board right now. Someday I’d like to try out his signature Fuzz Face too. Joe may tell us to use the guitar instead of pedals, but I’ll be okay using pedals with his name on them for now.

This post seems to have rambled a smidge. Sorry, I’m really tired.

Have a good night, friends.

I’m Tired

I am really tired tonight but we’re going to hang out in the living room for a while and watch the tube.

Is it weird that the last two programs I watched, Fear the Walking Dead and an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 whose name I didn’t catch, both ended with a nuclear warhead detonating over American soil? Is that an omen or some shit? I keep trying to figure out what the “nuclear option” is for my parents’ healthcare. Now I’m watching bombs go off in the good ol’ USA.

Coincidence?

I need to make some music. I need my band to get back together. I don’t know if it’s possible. Covid-19 done fudged everything up.

Stupid global pandemic.