SteveFord

Terminex came out on Tuesday and sprayed around the house and it's amazing, not ONE ant in sight and there was an army of them pouring into the sun porch. They're coming back in another month for a second blast. I don't know what they're using but I'm really impressed.

Let us know when it gets here, please.

Maybe next time I'm in Guitar Center I'll see what they did. Don't mind me, just torture testing your headstock... I've always hit that area with the Gibson pump polish and a soft cloth, nothing ever happened but YMMV as they say.

Nertz to the Yamaha, they make dirt bikes you can run into a tree and not care too much when you drop it. I'm sure you won't go wrong with either model. If you consider the ToneSuck Control to be what makes it a 345 look for an older one. If the VariTone and world's cheapest gold plating doesn't matter to you, I'm sure the new ones are pretty good. 335s are pretty nice, too!

If you can find an earlier one with the VariTone I think you'll be pretty pleased with it. A lot of people don't care for the ToneSuck Control but I think they kind of make the guitar. I haven't played it in a while but I recall the neck being a little stouter than the 2017 335 which is a like a 60s LP profile. Here's the old girl:

I have close (137 Custom and 2017 335) and I believe the neck will be a bit slimmer on the 335. My 345 is a 2006 which I bought for the VariTone and gold plated hardware, my guess is the current 345 uses the same rosewood as the 335 and is just the same guitar but with different binding.

I'd be pissed, too, but I never encountered that with any of them unless it was a bad input jack or a scratchy control. There's probably been 40 or 50 that I've owned over the years, everything from current to early 60s production. Occasionally a new or seldom played guitar will have a sticky feeling neck but that eventually goes away.

Mine showed today as well. I hope this is the version where he had the horn section do Jimmy Page's solo note for note and then he just let loose on that Stratocaster. It was jaw-dropping, that big nosed Sicilian could play circles around just about everybody else.

I've had a couple of GIbsons over the years and none of mine have ever done that. Maybe it's luck of the draw or my halitosis which keeps it at bay.

Put up your dukes, you effers! I haven't been on a plane in years but that trip sounds like fun.

Made In China? Nope.

I don't think GC can afford to keep anything in stock any more. They relied so heavily on walk-in traffic and who was walking into a store during a pandemic? I think it's always best to have something just a little bit out of reach, it gives you something to work towards (like that J-40). The only reason why I set my sights on that particular model is it sounded almost identical to my HD-28V but it was just a bit smaller. Ever have a Fire Ant bite you on the balls? There is a lesson to be learned here: never take a large branch, plug up their mound and stand there to see what their reaction will be.

Got the front wall insulated and put up the sheet rock with the first coat of spackle. I should have a real living room by Wednesday. Terminex will be here Tuesday to work their magic. I learned that there can be mutliple queens which can lay 800 eggs per day and when the colony gets too crowded one of the queens goes off to start another colony of the wretched things.

Whitefang, You talked me into it, I'll call Terminex. They already did a number on the front of the house, who the hell knows how far along they are in the back. Off to Home Depot to get some supplies to put the living room back in order.

Uh oh, a snake that can get beat up by a cicada, no wonder she ran away! Have to take care of the chimney next and that will do it for this year. I'll have to see how much longer I'll remain in the workforce but I need to get this house squared away. It was built right after WWII so it's well constructed but old age creeps up, too. I figure another 5-10 grand on the house as a lot of it I can't do myself. However, that Martin J-40 has been calling me for quite some time...

Truly a hoot. Luckily, we don't have Fire Ants up here. We lived in Georgia for a bit and one morning I woke up and their mounds were popping up all over the place. This one fellow was right, the meek aren't going to inherit the Earth, it'll be ants. They'll win.

Thanks. I hope to get the living room mostly done today after work. I woke up real early this morning (like 4 AM) and discovered that carpenter ants are out and about in the dark. They're going to be difficult to eradicate. I suspect the sun room will be coming apart sooner or later.

They're bad news, all right. Yes, take a look as they can actually knock down a house.

Oh, joy, the house is under attack. The plaster under the front picture window started bubbling, pushing inwards and chunks started falling into the house. Window repair guy said that's not a gasket issue so I called up a contractor who said it's probably water leaking in from the top. The two excellent carpenters he sent out pulled off the vinyl siding and a colony of carpenter ants had eaten most of the sill and were working their way up the beams. They said I caught it just in time as the house was about to start sagging and then it would have collapsed in the front. It looks like most of the house is constructed out of cedar so they didn't care for that (luckily) and these photos show the exterior repair and what the inside currently looks like. The inside had pissants in there and they turned the fiberglass insulation into blobs of damp, smelly, brown mung - it was just horrible. Now the back sun room has an army of carpenter ants running up and down the back stairs so more fun awaits. I shot ant poison in there and am drying it out right now. Boy, this place ever smell. This shows just how far the carpenter ants had gotten on the outside sill. a And here is the finished exterior, those guys really know their stuff.

I would think they'd clear coat over it.

That reminds me, when I saw Dweezil in York, PA he came back from intermission and somebody had swiped his set list. He made a big deal about it, he was really pissed.

Similar but his is different with the nut and tremolo. It kind of has an Austin Powers thing going for it.

So YOU'RE the Illinois Enema Bandit! I knew it!

4 albums, $70 free shipping. I burn the albums to CD so I can listen to it in the TV system and not have to worry about anything while I'm working. That was a great tour but I saw him in a basketball gymnasium so he kept apologizing for the acoustics. The next night he was in NYC but all the shows were sold out.

Thanks for the heads up, I just ordered it.