BluesKing777
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Posts posted by BluesKing777
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Blue slide in photo is my Diamond Bottlenecks "Blue Diamond"- main one!
Here it is in action on my 1952 Gibson LG1:
BluesKing777
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11 hours ago, zombywoof said:
Granted, I have not been keeping up with what these L Series flattops are going for these days but those are crazy high price tags. When I snagged my '32 L1, which was only some 5 or 6 years back, top dollar for a 12 fretter was maybe $5K. The more common 14 fretters could be had for less. Looks like the best bargains out there in terms of an L Series Gibson might just be the 0 size round soundhole archtops. Then again, these lo-fi guitars are not going to be everybody's cup of tea so will be a harder sell.
Nope, the fingerpickers 😄 want a mid 30s L-00 in pristine condition! (think I saw one ...once.... but most are.....err...compromised?
That said....and a lotto win could clean out a few items I saw on Retrofret and Reverb and Carter?, I think it was. The first one I ever desired was a black one with firestripe......Retrofret has a black/firestripe from 1938 - were’t the necks getting slimmer by 38? Err....$8500! 🤨
Knew I should have bought a few more!
BluesKing777.
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Cool!
Do a bit of google searching on vintage Gibson L-00 history before doing anything!
In good condition, these guitars are creeping towards $8 - $10K, so....
BluesKing777.
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I have no affiliation with anyone or anything! But I own 4 Maton 808s so have some experience.
BluesKing777.
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I couldn’t care less what you do - I mention ways to get a good live acoustic sound for the other people reading this and are actually interested in sounding better than what a soundhole pickup will give.
BluesKing777.
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Anyway, back to my original comment about a killer live sound guitar - Maton 808s - Tommy Emmanuel has a row of them he uses live plugged direct to PA.
He also owns about 5000 guitars of all makes probably, but live.....Maton 808.
I have a row of Gibsons, Martins, Waterloos, Cargill, Lowdens, Matons, National, Dobros and I play them all in rotation, enjoying the variety. I am an acoustic guitarist....not a Maton guitarist or Gibson guitarist. I have bought all the known pickups that people talk about, soundholes, K&Ks, Anthems, Elements, Sunrise....best plugged in direct sound I have ever had is my custom finish black Maton EBG808.
BluesKing777.
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So fine then - you have never been near a Maton - who cares but you know, don’t disparage things you know zip about.
BluesKing777.
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So keep your shirt on and tell us which Maton model you played.....did you plug in and what settings did you use?
None of the above, my guess, telling porkies.
BluesKing777.
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8 hours ago, dhanners623 said:
Indeed. I’m not as enamored of Matons as others may be. Same goes with Taylors.
My guess is that you are just being mean spirited and you have never been in the same room as a Maton, let alone play one.....if you had, you wouldn’t be asking your silly questions and settling for ordinary.
BluesKing777.
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Yes, I was just putting the information out there for others reading this thread.
BluesKing777.
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Of course if you want a true KILLER live acoustic, the Maton EBG808 (00 deep body size) is the machine with a Maton dual source AP5-Pro pickup system as used by Tommy Emmanuel. Yep, all he does is plug in his EBG808 to the PA, turn everything on full, including the internal mic....he uses headphones to avoid feedback.
I have 4 808s of various woodage and they are sensational.
Here is a video from Artisan guitars of the TE production models:
BluesKing777.
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An advantage of the K&K pickup not thought of - no controls on the soundhole in the way like some pickups - if the room you are playing is too noisy, or you are going to play with rowdy musos perhaps, you can slip the soundhole pickup of your choice in the hole, run the lead out and tape it out of the way.......
BluesKing777.
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It is usually best to just buy the K&K preamp designed for the pickup! It can cause problems by only wanting 1M or whatever it is.
You can also run it from the K&K preamp to another with more controls and gadgetry...feedback stuff, EQ, line out etc. I do that and it sounds really good.
I just had a guitar repaired, setup and.....a K&K installed! So I played it direct.....ok, to the preamp, good, then to another preamp, great! And then I ran my Tonedexter on bypass with the K&K direct, great match. And then I used another similar guitar’s soundfile...even better!
I also have guitars with the K&K Trinity, which is a K&K with an internal mic attached, then run through a stereo lead to the K&K Trinity preamp, which has EQ inside the black box and a volume control for each for blending the mic sound. Absolutely superb for direct to PA.
BluesKing777.
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Thanks Murph and ZW!
As soon as the red recording light came on, I turned into the old smilin' tap dancer entertainer guitarist and ...changed everything I was working on! 🙂
But the track is close to sort of what I was talking about earlier. (Waterloo WL-14L ladder braced guitar in the track, by the way...)
BluesKing777.
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It is easier to do it that talk about it!
Here is a condensed version of what I was talking about in the previous post - (alternating bass blues medley plus in C capo on 3 etc)
Select 'play in browser' or similar to prevent going to Soundcloud sign up page!:
BluesKing777.
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Yes, if you played his songs 'straight' at a gig perhaps, they don't go very long! They cry out to make a patchwork of a few of the tunes, in C, into a longer medley...stretch the solo gig out by a while...then launch in to a C solo, no bass...morph into the gospel melody of 'Since I Laid My Burden Down' in single notes, then a bit of soloing and come in with a barnstorming chorus, ala the holy rollers dancing down the aisle, with the bass notes, which are pretty much the same in most of his tunes so you could do a bit more...medley....and look out, half an hour or so has gone by..... (and the guy with the beard in the front row table sitting there with his mouth open falls over....)...😁
BluesKing777.
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13 hours ago, zombywoof said:
There is always a Harmony H1260 for sale somewhere. I have managed to end up with three of them. But if you look in the dictionary under "Guitar with good bones" these show up. Tops which would make any 18 Series Martin green with envy and one piece 16 1/8" wide mahogany backs.
Last night for me was a 12 and 13 fret Gibson feast. My mood as of late has been to re-learn songs I had not even thought about in a long time settling on Mance Lipscomb's "Captain, Captain" and Blind Boy Fuller's "Meat Shakin' Woman." Started off with the L1 and then switched to the L3.
If you want some ..simple/easy/very hard....all at once - here is a link to Mississippi John Hurt tabs you can plod through at your own pace in Songsterr.com...if you click on his name in blue, there is a list of his tabs. Yep, simple but hard! And sound great with capo on 3 as we talked about....
https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/mississippi-john-hurt-i-shall-not-be-moved-tab-s423028
BluesKing777.
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12 minutes ago, jedzep said:
God...I've waited silently. Finally, the honesty!!
Speaking honestly.....I have the ‘100 Most Popular Songs For Fingerpicking’ AND ‘100 Most Beautiful Songs For Fingerpicking’., and while the arrangements are good, the pages lay flat etc, there IS some ‘publisher padding’ going on, let me say! I mean, if I haven’t heard it, like ever....it sure isn’t the ‘most popular’ anything.....padding for royalties? Voted most beautiful by a 3 year old?
But anyhow, when the Most Beautiful book comes out, the Lowden S35, my Cargill and my Eric are probably the choice......
And the LG1 would be .....silly.
There you go, JZ.
BluesKing777.
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10 hours ago, zombywoof said:
My rare as hen's teeth 1930s Oscar Schmit-made Galiano Jumbo remains my favorite ladder braced guitar. At the moment though it is off the road having finally reached the point where I can no longer put off the repairs it needs. Next in line is the Harmony Sovereign H1260. Thunderous low end with an overall punchy and up front sound.
1 or 2 H1260s for sale on Reverb.com if you want another, or anyone else wants one!
I have gone the other way today, grabbed my Eric 000, just beautiful! (Can’ really say that about my ladders, love as I do...)
BluesKing777.
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1 minute ago, BluesKing777 said:
sorry, double post.
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22 minutes ago, zombywoof said:
There is a nice little cottage industry when it comes to re-bracing guitars. Prices seem to range from $600 to $1K depending on who you choose to go with. But unlike the LG series in most cases the guitars undergoing the surgery were never available with anything but ladder bracing.
Ah, at last someone sensible is taking the boring as snores X bracing off and replacing it with lovely ladder bracing! 😑
In truth but a fair bit higher up the food chain, my Waterloo X and my Waterloo Ladder are equals and impossible to leave alone. .........the ladder just sings and cries with lead notes though. I went to sleep in my chair last night re-watching the glorious Reacher mini series on Amazon.....but I woke to Spoonful and Wolf on the soundtrack in the early hours - the streaming shows will keep going to the end without you! But just then I played around with Spoonful on my ladder, lead notes mimicking the vocal line and then the riffs.......perfect!
Ladder rules, ok! Don’t alter it.
BluesKing777.
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51 minutes ago, Jinder said:
Okay-speaking as former guitar tech I’ll offer up a few bits of friendly advice:
1) You don’t want back-bow. Whoever told you that needs a swift slap in the marital potatoes.
2) I’d imagine that the same person told you to check neck relief with a business card. Dude just earned himself a second wallop in the lovespuds. Please don’t do this. Business cards come in all shapes and sizes. Buy yourself some feeler gauges. Do not use anything other than feeler gauges. For an acoustic you want between .008” (eight thousandths of an inch) and .010” (ten thousandths of an inch) of relief, measured at the 7th fret on the low E string with a capo on the first and twelfth frets.
3) If your truss rod (or neck!) is creaking, stop cranking the nut. You’re going at it too hard and/or making too drastic an adjustment. Truss rods are tools for very delicate incremental adjustments which must be done very gradually. A quarter of a turn at a time is enough, and a neck can still be settling after an adjustment that small a day later. If you’re making big adjustments, you’ll forever be going back and forth trying to find the sweet spot, which is not good at all for your neck or the bond between your fretboard and neck. I’ve seen (and repaired) two guitars which have had fretboard separation due to aggressive truss rod adjustments. Just go gently and take your time. A quarter turn and give it a day to bed in.
4) Don’t adjust your truss rod with the strings under tension. This is fairly obvious, but you’d be amazed how many people wail away on it with the strings on, stripping the nut threads or rounding off the nut flats in the process. Everything works better with the strings detuned or removed.
5) if you are in ANY doubt whatsoever about what you are doing, take your guitar to a tech and have it professionally sorted out. Ultimately it’s far cheaper to pay for a setup than a setup and a new truss rod plus other repairs.
I hope this helps. If you’re still getting buzz with 8-10 thou of relief, your saddle is too low.
Hee heee, having trouble getting past your ‘love spuds and marital potatoes’.....😳
I am guessing the guitar was an online purchase, so too far to take it to the seller to adjust?
BluesKing777.
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So what is involved in swapping the LG1 ladder bracing for X bracing? Take it all apart, top, binding, braces? Won’t that cost more than buying the x braced LG2 to begin with? Plus you may upset the Guitar Fairies.
I personally like the LG1 ladder sound and vote to leave it. (Sell it to a ladder brace lover).
BluesKing777.
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Should have mentioned that I capo up to get a whisker more room between the strings, but it gives less room along the neck and chord shapes need to be shrunk a whisker to fit. This is assuming the neck has taper as it widens to the neck join - some modern guitars don’t have much difference..eg Martin ‘high performance neck. But on say, my 59 LG3, capo on 3 gives probably about the same room for a chord as an open 1 3/4” nut guitar, except more squished long ways.....😄
The end result is I can extract some vintage tone goodies from a vintage 1 11/16” nut guitar that should otherwise go to the.......pawnshop!
There is probably some kind of formula for working out how the tune you learned with no capo plays with a capo on 3, (X+4+3-4+12=😐but easiest way is to try it a few times. (I mainly use Shubb capos with the ‘Tony Rice Method’ - put the capo right on the dotted line of the fret and it is normally nicely in tune!)
P.S. Can’t keep doing this all the time, with capo, or hands shrink! So we need to move to another guitar with wider specs before that happens...or........buy more guitars! So then we move to a guitar with V neck 1 3/4 and 2 3/8.....ha, ha, put the capo on 3 also ha ha and the formula is then X+4+3-4+12+a little bit more= Dunno.
BluesKing777.
Let's Talk Slides.
in Gibson Acoustic
Posted · Edited by BluesKing777
I was telling here everyone about Diamond Bottlenecks years ago - I found lots about them on the Michael Messer reso forum.
I use the Blue Diamond all the time, one reason is it is custom fit for my pinky, absolutely perfect, may need the strings a bit higher to play cleanly - I have those bow neck guitars for that!
I had another Diamond Bottleneck that I gave to a friend, it fit his middle finger so I got generous. I miss that slide because it was some kind white bottle glass made out of higher soda lime content and it had more 'grit' than my original Blue Diamond (they make the blue ones now - they ran out of my blue bottles (Italian???) and fabulous for 'digging in' on the National Tricone! You could hear the difference, not making it up!
BluesKing777.