BluesKing777
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Posts posted by BluesKing777
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41 minutes ago, jedzep said:
I could work with this number for the one on Elderly...with haggling, of course.
https://www.elderly.com/products/gibson-j-50-1959?utm_campaign=Vintage_Instruments_1620&utm_content=vintage_instruments_1620_vintage_list&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zaiusI would love to play/compare that 59 with my 2002!
Non scalloped bracing like my 59 LG3......same neck as my LG3 which is fingerpickable even though it is 1 11/16”
But at that price, plus CITES etc, delivery, import cost, won’t ever happen.
I think my 2002 looks older.
BluesKing777.
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7 hours ago, billroy fineman said:
Trying to catch a little of BK-itis I've been looking at some delta blues and found this one done on what looks like a J45, but the pickguard is throwing me. The playing starts at 2 minutes and goes to 4 - IMO it's very cool. Thought some of you might like it, for the playing and the J45 demo.
The rest is a lesson that should be occupying some of my time in the near future.
If you want to sound like BK777, you are in luck!
Just send a small fee of $5 million dollars to my account and I will show you an E blues.
But seriously, just go to Stefan Grossman Guitar Workshop, buy the starter blues kit. (“Fingerpicking Guitar Techniques” DVDs taught by Stefan Grossman himself!). Brilliant, simple stuff with videos, old original recordings and paperwork to learn, trick your right hand in to some form of fingerpicking while your mind is tortured with all the left hand stuff..... And when you have all that down pat, not as long as going the long way around to a dead end you could be following above, then he has lessons for the next steps.
BluesKing777.
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Wow, they are seriously flogging these! PR departments on fire.
G45 Studio under $1K..... I wonder how many kids got one of these for Xmas? What a starter!
Someone break it in for me and scratch it up a bit and I will buy one in a couple of years for....$500?
Lots of new videos - I will put the girl up first!
BluesKing777.
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On the matter of pickups for my J50........
I have tried most of my soundhole pickups over the last couple of weeks and have not really liked them, then yesterday I grabbed my Baggs M1A. It has been lying on its side for a while since I took both wings and screws off in an attempt to get it to fit in a guitar with smaller soundhole (Martin OMs!!!!) - fits just. To hold the pickup in the hole - gaffa tape!
The threads for the screws are dodgy, so I sat in the living room in the light, away from guitar distraction, and got it back in action.
Put it in the J50 and ...aha, the settings on the pickup I did previously for another guitar with the pole pieces work perfectly with the J50!
Hmmm, sounds really good. Another example of not knowing until you try it!
BluesKing777.
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We are fine here in southern Victoria, Nick - the bad fires are near the Victoria/New South Wales border 7 or 8 hours drive from here. It is a massive forest but 6 or 7 huge fires have joined together. I use to holiday on that coast a lot when younger...Eden, Merimbula, Narooma, Batemans Bay...few times nearly didn't come back! Beautiful area! No work though....
Here are a few more photos I just took of the J50 (enjoy while we can!!!!):
The guitar's new house!:
BluesKing777.
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Thanks RB!
BluesKing777.
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Thanks Sal!
(the tune is in the key of D, not eff😀...., but a lot of my stuff IS in eff.)
BluesKing777.
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Thanks ratherbwalkin!
Happy New Year!
BluesKing777.
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Thanks all.....
On another thread I mentioned the J50 has a pickup installed already, but the previous owner(s) left the battery in too long and it self-welded to the connector. When I changed the battery, the connector fell apart and half of it stayed melted to the battery top.....
So I have the lead floating around and a pickup already, so I will put a new connector on.....somehow. I have only about 2” of lead reaching out the soundhole, might solder myself to the guitar top?
And then I can plug in to my Tonedexter and/or Boss VE8 and/or mixer and/or EQ devices and/or amp.
BluesKing777.
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Thanks Nick!
Next little project for the J50 is to figure out how I can solder a new battery connector on to wires to replace the broken connector and find out if the pickup still works, preferably without pulling the wires all the way out! Might need 4 hands.
BluesKing777.
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I just recorded this instrumental on my J50 for you.
I didn't think the guitar would come up as yet without luthier help, but there you go....
BluesKing777.
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Yep, some kind of trigonometricalised minefield....
OK, so I want to fingerpick, for example, the Rev Davis C chord. You play a cowboy C but add the pinky to the 3rd fret, 1st string and then move the 3rd finger to the 3rd fret of the 6th string. To play (fingerpick) this chord cleanly on a skinny is next to impossible (for me).
But wait!
On a neck with a decent taper, I put a capo on the 3rd plus frets and although the frets are closer than the wide 1st position, the neck is enough wider to play the Davis C fingerpicked ALL day! Hooray. And that’s why I still have my wonderful sounding 59 LG3, although I could almost leave the capo on that 3rd! Although it has a 1 11/16 nut, it has a chunky and comfy 50s neck. But you would be a masochist to fingerpick this guitar if it didn’t sound so nice. Something to do with banjo players complaining, skinny nuts?
And then we get the modern Gibson ‘compromise’ nut of 1.725 and the Maton with 1.736, both of which I can fingerpick all day and night but also prefer with a capo on at least 3. I wonder why both companies went with these nut specs instead of adding a whisker more to 1 3/4”?
So back to 1 3/4”.... it is not all roses. The modern latest Martins have 1 3/4 nut but hardly any taper - add the thin neck and they have lost me. Then they have the incredible OM18V and OM18A, and others, perfect and weighing in with 1 3/4 and 2 3/8 bridge AND big V!
Even after playing the J50 for only 2 weeks, when I grabbed my Waterloo I had to take it easy for a while as my tendons creaked, let me tell you! Got to keep moving, that’s a song.........
I have to say that in all these years, not one person has told me the 2002 Gibsons had chunkier necks to make the 1.725 more fingerpickable. You know, like perhaps: “Hey BK777, you should buy or try a 2002 J50 - the necks are fatter than the later models like your Blues King!”
BluesKing777.
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1 hour ago, j45nick said:
You do realize the 1 11/16" nut is only about .8mm narrower than the modern Gibson 1.725" standard, right? And that the J-45 Vintage has that same 1.725" nut?
I know you can feel the difference, but that doesn't make the 1 11/16" nut unplayable.
Maybe, and maybe not......
I just put down my Waterloo WL-14X, similar space as the L-00 Legend I think. Same v neck as my 35 L50. Also has 2 3/8” bridge spacing to go with the 1 3/4” nut. Fingerpicking good!
BluesKing777.
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P.S.....On the online rounds, I see the abovementioned J45 Vintage has sold, also the used J45 Legend at $AU6,500, a H&D Country Boy 00 and may highenders of other makes....but the 68 Bird with a pencil neck remains.......
I wonder if we will hear on this forum from the new Vintage owner or the next owner of the Legend? You know: “which strings are best on the J45 Legend?” Etc.
I am glad they are gone from sight!😐
BluesKing777.
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1 hour ago, j45nick said:
Great news! I wish I could find deals like that.
Not my style usually!
A much braver person than I would go in and try the brand new models to compare the necks😧. My memory from almost a year ago tells me the new Bird and new J45 Vintage had identical neck chunk to my previous J45 and same as my 2007 Blues King L-00. The new J45 Vintage was listed at $AU7,600. And I thought something at the time like: “I would buy the ‘56 J50 for that!” on Reverb at the time, but then I thought of the 1 11/16” nut.....
BluesKing777.
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Update to the update!
Saturday morning here. Every Saturday morning, I do a “C” guitar practice. Capo on 3rd. And the rest of the week I veer all over the place, so this is a kind of grounding. I begin with a set list of C rags and blues that progressively get harder and I finish by improvising within the form....some weeks I feel slow, others fast, or have sore fingers or sore head or......plain old don’t feel like doing the same thing again. AGAIN!
This morning first up with the new bat. J50. 2002.
Generally, a L-00 is the ideal guitar for this kind of fingerpicking....balanced tone and plenty of real estate. Some dreads I have owned are too boomy in the bass and this kind of picking sounds ordinary. Next!
So on to the J50 went the capo at 3 and it sounds great, balanced, enough room. Got the job! This guitar has a chunkier neck than the previous (2010?) J45 I owned and nowhere near as boomy. And I keep thinking I am playing a 1955 J50.
And as a comparison, my 2005 Dove is also generous of neck and tone balance.....and the very same tunes mentioned above sound and play well but a lot brighter and clearer.
So, a couple of great, for me, pawn shop finds! They never have guitars like this and now I have both for half the price of the brand new J45, plus luthier repair bill....
BluesKing777.
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There are probably quite a few here that work on the whim of billionaires, without payday we will be down to playing one cheapo guitar in a matter of weeks.
Back to J50 Gibson matters, gulp....err, err, lets see.
I ate dinner outside on my back veranda tonight. Surrounded by silence except perhaps a pool filter or 2 - the screamers have finally exhausted themselves or left to holiday destinations. It is fantastic here when they are all gone, almost as quiet as when I moved in all those years ago - we were the ‘first wave’..... So dinner was followed by the simple joy of playing my J50 outside on the veranda! Boss attracts mosquitos so her and dog stayed watching tv. Played as many instrumentals as I could off the top of my head before the bugs start to come out at dusk. And some premixed bourbon & colas. Hopefully, and weather permitting, I will repeat this exercise every night - I mean, they have all their lights flicking on and off but if there is no screaming, they aren’t really there!
J50 sounds great outside. Very pleased!
BluesKing777.
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8 minutes ago, j45nick said:
Not directly, although the guy who is my direct boss in SailGP is the tactician on Wild Oats. A lot of guys I work with are sailing on various boats in the fleet.
Cool!
There isn’t much between them on yacht tracker, currently....not sure if Wild Oats is 3, 4 or 5. (Comanchie leading).
BluesKing777.
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2 hours ago, j45nick said:
Great to hear, BK!
Thanks Nick!
Non guitar related, though it could be debated because of the ‘no work, no guitar’ rule of the cosmos😁.......do the people you work for have a horse in the race? (Feet up in front of the TV here with a combo of 5 days of Test Cricket and Sydney to Hobart race start on at lunchtime for the cricket...... Split screen TV’s rule!) and I had the sound off while I played my 59 LG3........
BluesKing777.
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Didn’t we just tell this story recently?
Anyway, I will tell my story (again) from a different angle.......
1964, eight years old, doubt I knew what a guitar WAS, and my father took me with him to his boss’s house, no idea why now. Probably something about biz, sales or more likely no sales? The boss’s wife played her bought that day, everyone excited, acoustic guitar! BK’s mouth was probably dragging the floor and then.......right place at right time: she gave me her old dread! A no name - no sign of ID on it. Zip.
So we banged on it for a few years, stretched it, taught myself something, met all the guitar players at school!!! With some fancy footwork I somehow talked my father into springing for lessons!
And we are still trying to learn it!
BluesKing777.
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2002 Gibson J50 Update:
So, we are about 12 hours ahead of the US on the international timeline, so it the day after Christmas Day here - Thursday morning on what is called Boxing Day here.
Silence!
All the screams and yells have stopped from 4 or 5 houses near me. Boy, some of them must be suffering now! We had a quiet one as illness caused cancellation of the usual stuff we go to.....
So quiet I can hear.....birds! It won’t last because Boxing Day is ‘redeem the vouchers and the project going’ day. Get them machines chomping!
Meanwhile, BK sprung up early, had coffee, checked email, internet, news....and there is big news here (that not many will care about!): I took the J50 out of the Hiscox case it now lives in and..........it was still in tune! It is 11 days since I bought it and the guitar would be unrecognisable to the previous players, owners, shops. Monday, I couldn’t get it in tune, keep it in tune.....
It was dry as a bone and I humidified it with an Oasis soundhole thingy for a week, put new Elixir PB mediums on Saturday morning and bought a new Humidipak system for it on Sunday. Guitar is now stable! Sounds great, sharp frets have receded nicely and it even plays better. Setup and work to come but for now......Wow!
BluesKing777.
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7 hours ago, j45nick said:
I can't believe you guys still have "swamp cooler" air conditioning. Last time I saw one of those was when I was in high school in the Arizona desert, 55 years ago. Modern mini-split systems aren't cheap, but they are easy to install and would work well in your environment.
But extremely glad to have it on the extreme days!
It is a fairly modern and efficient model that runs very quietly on ‘the cost of a light globe’. That was the blurb. Before that, we had a Penguino! (Portable DeLonghi pushing out a massive 10,000 BTU.) Again that was the blurb. It worked great as long as we sat in one room with the door closed. And it made your eyes dry and itchy. I gave that to the BIL.😁
Before that we had....zip. Fans? This house is a full blown hot box built by morons....I met them. Long story. But we are still here, so it couldn’t have been as bad as suspected.
BluesKing777.
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I am not answering the phone (or the door) in case they want them back!
Buyer’s remorse turns to seller’s remorse.
I was trying to mentally review what grabbed me about these guitars in the shop and it was a combination of the sound and the neck - both are played in to be ‘loose’ sounding but also both have chunkier necks than the recent models.......very fingerpicking good!
And Nick - when my evaporative air con is blasting, the humidity will get to 70% quickly.
BluesKing777.
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27 minutes ago, j45nick said:
You done well, BK. Saved another couple of fine guitars from the dustbin of history.
Ha! Recycled!
I rang my luthier today to see if he would give the J50 a quick look over before he goes on holidays, you know, just put the stethoscope on it and in it and give us a diagnosis. His assistant answered the phone, relayed my babble to him and I was told he would ring me in a minute. No call back.
BluesKing777.
Is This Legit - J-45 ?
in Gibson Acoustic
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But I have nearly worn the 2002 out!
I need a spare one, maybe 😐.....59 has a nice ring to it, maybe the same neck as a LP Standard?
No, just curious about how each would sound.
BluesKing777.