Sheepdog1969

Seriously, is "arts and crafts" the new version of "Murphy lab", f-up your guitar, embellishment du jour? I guess I'm off to Hobby Lobby tomorrow to buy a bunch of mosaic tiles, acrylic paint, and adhesive to "decorate" my '83 Explorer. Heck, I already "Murphy Lab-ed" it from decades of use/abuse. It must be time to "re-decorate". I wish that I could be like the cool kids.

MOAN! (sorry, had to do it Rabs)

Reply to myself: Bob Segar sang about "points". "Points on her own, sitting way up high, way up firm and high" Too bad Bob didn't mention how to check the coil. Thanks for nothing Bob! Excuse me. I have to go out and yell at some kids who are walking across my lawn. Dollars to donuts, I bet none of those darn kids know what points or a coil is either! Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Sorry, just deleted it!

Got these in the mail just now. My Squire is one step closer to turning me into a white Jimmy Hendricks, (wait, does that mean I'll become a version of Joe Bonamassa without the cool guitar collection or talent?)

Sadly, it only is able to perform, when played by a female, for 15 min or less. It then requires a cigarette and a long nap before attempting to be played again.

I just had a hilarious vision of some ZW young underling sitting on the floor of the toy isle in a walmart/target with a peterson clip on strobe tuner amidst a pile of open hello kitty boxes and guitars desperately tuning and playing open strings and then 12th frets, trying to find just one or two of them that exhibited moderate intonation, (presumably with the crappy strings they came with). Geez, the poor kid probably re-boxed 99.99% of them, and then when through the checkout line with the two or three (at most) that barely made the cut, (probably while wearing black leather and denim like his boss Zakk.) I can see this poor soul restringing these pink monsters with $12+ Ernie Ball acoustic Paradigm strings, praying Zakk would find at least one to his liking. The "Behind the Music" episode of this misadventure would be more interesting than the clip of Zakk playing one. (not that Zakk didn't make that POS sound great.) Now I'm wondering how much a Hello Kitty guitar costs and how I can hotrod it! I think just found my next project. I can't wait to see the reactions to my NGD post, lol.

Sadly, A terrible boating accident in a very deep part of Lake Michigan claimed my very small firearms collection and all of my ammo! I was lucky to survive. 😉

Someone should explain that to the doctors in the US that kill, (on average) 251,000 people per year due to provable medical negligence/malpractice. PS - Thank you for your pursuit of perfection in your field, especially since anything less than perfection in your field would be undoubtedly lethal for countless people. Just as I stated before, learning from failure is no longer acceptable once someone reaches the point in their profession at which their failures go from personal life lessons to catastrophes that devastate others. Learning from failure implicitly demands eliminating failure in order to advance professionally.

Any guitar???? That's a bit of a stretch. What I do know is that I can make even the most expensive, most playable guitar, run through the best and most expensive peddles and amps sound exactly like the worst guitar you have ever played run through the worst peddles and the crappiest amp with a blown speaker. And that's when I'm really trying to play well. Think nails on a black board mixed with a "Baby Shark" extended cut. The point of this thread was to inflate my ego by convincing anyone who would listen that my Cheap Squire Strat whim purchase was actually a carefully planned genius move. (oh crud, did I say the quiet part out loud again?)

I specifically said "loss", not failure.

Since a 5.56 is a .22, (ok, a .223 but who's counting) that may add credence to that claim, maybe. If .22 LR is what they meant, I want to know how many .22 LR's, on average, were needed to result in death? Digest this number for a minute. The most recent estimate found that approximately 251,000 lives are claimed each year because of medical error (provable medical malpractice)- about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United States. This staggering number is higher than deaths caused by stroke, accidents or Alzheimer's. Worse yet, despite this lethal Physician negligence, Health care companies associated with these doctors of death had no issues with sending bills for medical services provided to the now deceased patients and/or their insurance providers. In comparison, in 2021, there were a total of 48,830 people killed by firearms in the US. This number includes justifiable defensive uses of firearms in defense of life or grievous bodily harm by both law enforcement and legal civilian gun owners, murders by prohibited persons illegally in possession of a firearm, accidents, and suicides. ( More people in the US die from suicide involving a firearm than homicides or accidents, per federal data.)

February 1st, 1850, Edward Baker Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's second son died at 3 years of age from "chronic consumption" , presumably due to medullary thyroid cancer. February 20th, 1862 William Wallace Lincoln, Abraham Lincolns third son, died at the age of 11 from typhoid fever at the White House in Washington DC. Just thought I would add to the massive list of loss Lincoln suffered without ever giving up. These two devastating deaths affected Mary and Abe far more than any other political/personal setback they ever experienced together.

Um.... WTF is up with the lead singers guitar??? I'm not talking about the shape of the body, or the weirdly "hockey stick" looking head stock, (and defiantly not like the Gibson Explorer "hockey stick" head stock, btw. This guys headstock looks like the "before" picture from a Viagra commercial.) , I'm talking about the fret spacing. Can someone please explain to me what this fret positioning is all about??? I have never seen anything like this. At first I thought the "frets" were some kind of stickers used to create a visual illusion, with the real frets blacked out. (The video quality is pretty bad, so I can really tell.) Is this a gag, or a real thing? Maybe 'Scales can let us know if this is an Aussie thing? (is this fret spacing based on some type of Aboriginal instrument? Did a member of the Pitjantjara create this??) Check out the vid for "Rattle snake" below, where this guitar is featured prominently. The other guitarist has the same type of fret spacing too. (PS - Rattle snakes are not native to Australia)

Ha! The song, "Fat bottomed girls" somehow came to mind, based on the saddle size difference.

Ok, Joe Bonamassa didn't actually say MY newly purchased and hot rodded Fender Squire Stratocaster "rocks", but he did prove that a super low cost Fender Squire Strat (without mods run thru an inexpensive peddle set and amp) can sound amazing (in the right hands), even when compared to a top dollar Strat, peddle set, and amp. (Although I think you can hear him whispering about my amazing personal Squire, if you listen really close! lol) https://www.guitarworld.com/news/joe-bonamassa-vintage-budget-hendrix-gear-shootout

When you walk into your local auto parts store and tell the young kid behind the counter (who is staring at his cell phone) that you need "Points" for your 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle, AND (with a befuddled expression), he replies, "What are Points?".

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)- They Might Be Giants

Hey Phil, I was just about to say the same thing, but you beat me to it. The reason I wanted to respond to the Space-X comment was because my daughter wore this jean jacket to school today. (See below. Note the DM-2 patch!!! ) She is going to study Aerospace engineering in the fall @ BAMA, btw

Although I value your opinion brother, I felt compelled to interject a bit, if only to disagree and then get back to your most salient point which we both agree on. 99%+ of truly successful people, those with long term track records of success, have histories of failure, (some more pronounced than others). One important thing that differentiates successful people from unsuccessful people, is how each of these groups deal with failure. The successful group has learned from past failures, (especially the failures of others in similar situations). This group understands the ramifications of failure, is prepared for failure with contingencies, and mitigates the liabilities of failure with rational "make lemon-aid out of lemons" strategies. This group stopped wearing "Rose colored glasses" years ago, and will not tolerate statements such as, "Don't worry about that, everything will turn out fine.". Successful people actually worry about everything, but they do most of their worrying while crafting their business plan before implementing it, thus visualizing failure INSTEAD OF SUCCESS , at each step. Unsuccessful people tend to be defined by the paragraph above, but in the opposite. Failure is universal, common, and necessary. Human learning and advancement has been predicated by failing, understanding why we failed, and then eventually achieving success via failure's education. Better yet, as human communication abilities advance, successful members of our species begin to learn from the failure of others, far beyond the firsthand visual observations our ancestors were limited to. Far more has been learned from failure than has ever been learned from success. In my early twenties I decided to open my own bar in Chicago. At the time, Mayor Daley was making it almost impossible to get a new liquor license. He even denied Harry Carey a liquor license when he tried to open a second bar/restaurant near Wrigley Field. Undeterred, I spent months at City Hall scouring the pre-computer paper files in Chicago's Liquor License Appeals Office. I was NOT researching successful liquor license application appeals, I was studying every single reason that legit and qualified applicants were being denied/failing, for the second time, through the Appeals Process. Buy studying their failures, I found the "magic formula", and became the youngest new liquor license holder in the City of Chicago ever. (I was 24 when I was approved and opened for business.) So yes, successful people defiantly have failed. HOWEVER, truly successful people STOP FAILING IN REALLY BIG WAYS quite early in their careers. Repetitively failing while at the highest echelon of one of the world best guitar manufacturers, (if not the best guitar company), is not only unacceptable, but calls into question how they got into that management position in the first place. Gibson's corporate structure, like most big global companies, is designed to provide nearly infinite market data, tech data, material and production data, etc., to top corporate decision makers in order to insure sales success. Heck, Gibson set up this Forum specifically for sales and marketing purposes, and if you think otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you. (In my opinion, Gibson under utilizes this forum to advance it's business success, btw.). I just noticed that as I have been thoughtfully replying to BBP, this thread has gone NUTS, mostly with people saying kinda what I'm saying. So here's my take folks!

Is it just me, or do English saddles look more feminine than Western saddles? Any thoughts? (Western saddles pictured below)

Just getting one saddle on a mustang is hard enough, simply due to their ornery nature. I reckon the talk here, about the differences between putting three or six saddles on one mustang, should result in bans for overtly discussing animal cruelty. This thread has turned to horse sh!$. 😉