It’s All Here and it Works

Lunch time came and I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. I pulled a power cable off of another amplifier and took the new (used) Vox AC15 for a spin. Much to my surprise it actually works. Jen was still working so I didn’t test the volume, but I did play it clean with the master volume and the channel volume low, and I played it dirty with the master volume WAY down and the channel volume cranked. I can still smell the tubes cooking. Nice.

Fortunately, while I was noodling UPS came with the missing power cable. The amp was eight days late. The cable was nine. It’s here though. My ES-335 is feeling like it might need some new strings. Other than that I think I’m ready to record some guitar tonight.

I should note that I still haven’t actually plugged in the new power cable yet. Am I counting my chickens before they hatch? Probably. Oh well. I’m sick of this shit. It’s over. Let’s boogie.

Specs

You know those super annoying Facebook adds? You know how they pull things from cookies on your machine? They just got me. There was an add for a sale on reverb.com for one of my guitars. It’s not really my guitar, it’s just the same year, make, and model. 1979 Gibson ES-335 Pro. I bought mine on ebay for $700 in 2000. Mine is a factory second, so the sales price doesn’t actually apply here, but this reverb add is currently listed at $3,285.

Yikes!

That’s not why I’m writing this though. One of the pictures included in the sale listing looks like a magazine add for the 335 Pro that is complete with the specs. Cool!

My favorite part of this add is all the things that are white that, thanks to a heavy smoker in the guitar’s past, on mine are yellow. Maybe I should name my guitar Nicotine. It would be fitting.

Sweet Tones

I took my laptop into my room to record some guitars. I had every intention of working out the kinks in the KTR/D&M Drive combo and then without really planning it I unplugged the board and plugged in the new RYRA The Klone pedal. Then I did something that would not have happened without Coronavirus.

I was planning on selling a guitar (my Strat) and some pedals so that I could buy another amp. With the lock downs and all there was no selling anything so all of that stuff is still here. When I took the D&M Drive out of storage I also pulled a few other pedals, thinking I might experiment. One of them was the Keeley Super Phat Mod. I bought that pedal a couple of years ago and I tried but I never really connected with it.

Tonight I put it into the chain after the RYRA and… it sounded really good.

It worked pretty much perfect with the first two songs I worked on. On the third I should have lowered the gain on the Keeley by a lot so the tone is way heavier than it should be. The fourth and final song of the night was just the RYRA because it’s freakin’ awesome.

i still only have seven songs in progress, but now they all have rhythm guitar. As for the guitar itself, I used the ES-335 and it went really well. No issues at all. The intonation is good, a lot of the buzz is gone (not all, but a lot) and it just felt and sounded good.

Robert is pleased.

Guitar for Lunch

I spent my lunch break dicking around with my ES-335. There was a horrible buzz on the first and second strings between the 3rd and 5th frets. Bad. I played around with the action, trying to get rid of that buzz. I brought the bridge up a couple of screw turns and the problem is about 85% fixed. There is still a little buzz on the 3rd fret of both strings, but not nearly as bad as before. The 4th and 5th sound pretty good. I also checked the tuning at the 12th fret and the intonation seems to be pretty good still. I was pleased so I took a couple of faux artsy pictures.

I should also note that I have no idea what I’m doing. Is raising the bridge a little the correct way to deal with some fret buzz? I am guessing not. I probably need to play with the truss rod, but if anyone knows for sure, it’s not me. Maybe I’ll do some youtube research and see if there’s a better way.

A few weeks ago I sent a message to Gibson’s repair facility with some questions on what they can do for my poor, mistreated guitar. They never wrote back.

Lunch Break when Working from Home

Here’s today’s telecommuting lunch break breakdown.

First, pet Patches the HipstaKitty.

Second, grill up a burger and a hot dog for lunch.

Third, add lead guitar parts to two songs on GarageBand.

Forth and finally, post to WordPress.

Feeling Goofy

That picture I posted earlier today that got something like 70 hits out of the blue over on Flickr, along with thinking about what I need to do to get ready for the RPM Challenge which starts next week, has me feeling musically goofy. I went over to the ancient photobucket account that I stopped using when I joined Flickr in 2009 and found some Break Even stuff. hehe

My wife (and anyone else who was living in Salem, NH 10-12 years ago) will get a chuckle out of this.

Here are two of the three Les Pauls in the previous post in action. My sister took this at the Mammoth Road Club in Dracut.

This was our “press shot”. Taken at Burgundy’s in Derry, NH.

And finally… the fat boy singing. This is from J Rags in Tewksbury, MA, possibly at our first show. Laugh to your heart’s content!

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: