BluesKing777

A screw loose? 😁 I have a buzz from my bridge on my HD28v, think it could be a ball end seating problem. We’re going in, doc. BluesKing777.

I wasn’t expecting that! Was a bit desperate sounding, eh? You fellas not paying your fees? Anyway, job and video well done Mark and back to Norman’s please - don’t get the new chap at all. BluesKing777.

I have read that that Keith used to use his Sunrise with a Demeter Tube preamp, apparently that is the go, or was...don't know about now. Yep. long live the Stones! Someone gave me the Voodoo Lounge DVD, which is the pretty usual Stones set, but in the box were 2 cd's I just discovered!!! Off to the car - perfect! All in glorious tetrahydraphonic. BluesKing777.

About 2002 or so, I desperately wanted the new Martin OM-15 (all mahogany) but there were none for sale anywhere here. There were dozens of the 000-15 and I bought one with a cutaway and a pickup system - 000c-15e.....but the OM had 1 3/4 nut while the 000 had 1 11/16"....cramped for fingerstyle. I played it a lot as it had a beautiful tone, cramped or not. In 2015 or abouts, I bought a 1944 Martin 0-17 all mahogany, also 1 11/16' cramped nut, dripping with mahogany tone. The neck had been reset and it was so bad previously that they had to put a wedge under the end of the neck. The 15th fret on the first string just goes 'plink' and it is amazing how often I play that note since I know I can't! But the tone just seeps out of the old thing, 75 odd years old, so the 000 though larger of body, is long gone to a happy player somewhere. While there was some family resemblance - sorry - no contest!😏 BluesKing777.

I have never used an Edwina, though a lot of people like them. That said, if you read the Tonedexter instructions, they recommend a number of mics that they have tried - mainly small body condensers. I use my Neumann KM184 and wholly recommend it, but it is quite expensive (I already owned it for recording acoustic guitar) and a lot of people have success with a Shure SM81. I think, could be wrong, the Edwina type mic are more for 'vocal' plus guitar? But of course in the way of things, a friend from AGF uses only an Edwina with success ! BluesKing777.

It is the middle of winter here.... I saw at least 2 people get in their cars that are covered in ice and drive off. (one through a stop sign!) I moved mine out to get another out of the nice warm garage and I was driving the first one blind down the drive). Just saying that because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should. But the OP will have to make up his own mind, because everyone here has different advice! BluesKing777.

What were they hoping to achieve with those pickguards? Make the guitar really ugly and hard to sell? It worked! Give it to me then, I will have it. BluesKing777.

And Mick lives! (After being sick) BluesKing777.

You (mainly) Yankees keep going around in circles with this stuff. If I was playing at a bar tonight, not, I would, like most Australian acoustic guitarists including Tommy Emmanuel, take my Maton with the world’s best pickup system which includes an internal mic. This system with pickup and mic is so realistic that once you play it, the rest is forgotten. Most people plug it straight to a PA. It is that good. I appreciate it more because I use to play solo with a mic only and it was hopeless. Blah, blah as BBG says. Feedback, no volume. No monitor volume. People making noises louder than your guitar. People talking. The only, only way you can get the needed volume is to have NO monitors and use headphones or in-ear monitors. But it mucks up your hair.😑 So the next thing everyone here says, again, is that: “But BK, I want to play my Gibson J45 I just bought, not a Maton.” And off we go again to the world of mics in front of it or using the pickup that came with it or getting a pickup installed and buying an amp, PA, truck, van, BMW? Good luck, it is a mine field. BluesKing777.

Sorry, must have been blinded by all the letters in the link. I have a Chummingbird In black finish that looks way, way better than the one above, but in reality is only a guitar shaped object. A friend had one ‘custom made’ by a friend of friend who is a self proclaimed acoustic guitar expert who boasted his Chummer was better than the real thing. Mine arrived with the tuning machines on back to front! I asked my luthier if he could fix them and he had a set of Kluson tulips I got him to put on, plus a 50s DeArmond soundhole pickup I had. These are the best parts of the guitar, which sits in its case as a decoy guitar in a highly visible position near the door to my music room for the crooks to take! BluesKing777.

Looks like I did it! What sort of guitar are we looking at Drathbun? That saddle is high! BluesKing777.

It is way, way, way easier than learning the fully impossible - GUITAR! While the few very talented are born seemingly knowing how to do everything, the rest of us plod along our whole lives learning it. You can come up with incredibly complicated ways to practice singing on pitch but the only way is to do it for many years with fine tuning and refinement. Now, what can seem the hardest immediately can also be the easiest in the long run.... learn simple music theory. It really is the key to everything. It is incredibly easy, but like anything, can get really hard, so you don't have to become Beethoven - just learn the basics, Music for Dummies perhaps: https://www.amazon.com.au/Music-Theory-Dummies-Michael-Pilhofer/dp/1118990943/ref=asc_df_1118990943/?tag=googleshopdsk-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=341793170132&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18096642114680131673&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9071459&hvtargid=pla-432174309496&psc=1 After getting started on that, it is like everything to do with music - repetition. And then one fine morning, you have it. All. Easy - and you think, why didn't I do this all those years ago? Everyone goes -"Aaaah, I'm can't do it, I'm a moron, I'm too stupid, I'll never get it!" etc. Fooey! easy. And easiest in the long run for all the stuff you want to learn. So the other day, I posted this track I recorded - a simple instrumental version (link below) of Kris K's "Sunday Morning Coming Down'. All it is really is playing the music notes on a page in a book I have but adding a few simple chords now and then. But here is the crux - if you learn the music notes, you can PLAY THEM ON GUITAR to help you learn to sing them! Over and over and over until you got it, or got it a bit, doesn't matter. You can even RECORD IT and sing along! You can buy a zillion books full of it, you can play things you have never actually heard or have a copy of.....music communication! So see if you can sing the tune I did below after a few listens - lyrics on the internet everywhere if you don't know them: BluesKing777.

Thanks Billroy! Much appreciated... Off the top of my head on a Monday night brain dead: The song above is stretching it all a bit...country tune, and I am playing the melody line (vocal part) live off a lead sheet from a fake book as I record it, and added a few easy chords to fill it out...manly using my index fingernail. While a lot of guitarists don’t read music or even need to, I am still glad I made an effort all those years back.....because I use it a lot and it doesn’t go away. Well worth the small amount of time spent. But full stretch for BK777 is chord/melody jazz style or related things...I am terrible, but still enjoy having a run at it. BluesKing777.

Thanks Paul14! BluesKing777.

Thanks for the replies, Lars and Murph! It is work on Monday morning here, so the Sunday song is useless now - more like we need "Don't Like Mondays" or something... BluesKing777.

Thanks MP! It is a very evocative and strange song and I didn’t sing it because for one, the only time I would sound gruff enough would be ..ha ha..Sunday morning after a bender and I doubt I have done that..this century, and secondly, the song gives me a hangover even if I don’t have one and then we get to the bit with ‘the Sunday smell of someone frying chicken’ and I have to stop playing and go to the kitchen to get something to eat! 😀 And while the tune could be a bit ‘elevator’ as it is on my track, it is good to try things like that to get some ‘feel’ in my other playing. And as an added but peculiar bonus, it is a good thing to do on new guitars to impart some vibe in to the guitar top.... BluesKing777.

Sunday morning 11.32am here on the other side of the planet and here is an instrumental version of Kris K's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" I just cooked up for you on my Martin CEO7: BluesKing777.

You asked! Ho ho. It is harder to explain than use. You plug your guitar with pickup in one plug, and plug your mic in the other plug, put on your headphones, play while the gadget listens and does the magic trick, you listen back to it and if you like it, save it. Play it. So if I was gigging tonight, what would I take, you ask? Easiest is to take for an open mic would be one of my three Maton acoustic- electrics. They currently have one of the world’s best live pickup systems which includes an undersaddle pickup and an internal mic plus controls on the side of the guitar. Just adding a small amount of mic allows me to play ‘real’. Direct to a PA. Now if I had my own gig or more time to setup a power board, I would take one of my other beautiful guitars with a big fat neck or whatever the mood struck me, as long as it has a pickup to run through Tonedexter. The rest stay home. BluesKing777.

Ha ha, do you really want to ask that? I looked it up on their site - Tonedexter uses a wavemap, which is transformation filter known as an IR (Impulse Response). I kid you not, BBG. The Aura would be a similar thing. But it is really a software made comparison of the EQ of your guitar’s pickup sound and the EQ of your guitar’s sound through your mic....then it is saved in the machine for use later when you want it. Like using a Graphic EQ with many thousands of adjustments.. But having said all that, the Tonedexter is also a preamp/DI and a very nice quality unit. You wouldn’t buy it for this reason, but once I owned it, I found you can use the preamp without using the soundfile thingy. It is a very ‘smooth’ preamp and my Baggs M80 and Seymour Duncan soundhole pickup and others like it, all benefit from running through the preamp. (With the soundfiles OFF). And I also enjoy the extra controls if I run those unmentionable here guitars I have through this. Just add water. (Reverb). And now the killer salesman punch, kidding - the K&K sounds great just run through it too! Also without the soundfile. I always get a bassy, boomy sound if I run a K&K direct to an amp or a mixer, but the bass and treble knobs on the Tonedexter turned down (cut) a whole quarter turn and there we are! A usable, to me, K&K sound. If I turn on the soundfiles, I also don’t need much percentage with K&K pickups to be improved by Tonedexter. Undersaddle pickups need higher percentage soundfile to hide the awful piezo quack. Tonedexter works beautifully for these. BluesKing777.

Thanks KB! Not much of a mentor, I’m afraid, still working things out myself....more of an enabler!😎 But Tonedexter, oh Tonedexter! I have had you for a year and a half and like anything, schitt in gives schitt out. It is NOT designed to work with mag soundhole pickups, sorry BBG. But...when I bought my latest guitar, my Taylor 717e, I got the onboard pickup version after conferring with some other Tonedexter users who said the Taylor ES2 system is very much like a K&K but with an inbuilt preamp and volume, bass, treble controls, and they have had success with the pickup and Tonedexter. Some of you won’t want to know, but the sounds I am getting with this combination, plus 18 months of trial and error, are very pleasing indeed. As promised by the maker, it is the sound of my guitar through a mic....but with no mic after the initial setup. Just plug my guitar in to Tonedexter and run direct to a mixer or my acoustic amp. It is still slightly electric sounding, but very, very good. I am also enjoying Tonedexter’s tone controls - they actually work and are useful! It is a great, great solution to get rid of the harsh piezo sound of pickups in the vein of the Fishman Aura systems, but with the ability to make soundfiles for YOUR guitar with YOUR mic - the Aura system mainly has the well known brands and models in their sound gallery and you download what they made. Except the Taylor ES2 pickup system is quite usable stock standard plugged direct to a mixer, but just adding a couple of percent of Tonedexter image file in a blend is enough to make the sound very real. Aura needed at least 30 - 40%, YMMV! I am extremely pleased! BluesKing777.

Well, there’s something grim to keep an eye out on the beachwalk! Preceded or followed by a few chapters of Duma Key (Steve King).... Now for a slightly cheerier beach story - here on the other side of the planet, it is 7.20pm on a Friday night in Winter! So normally, I take the dog for a run and throw the Chuckit Ball after I finish work, but today there was a Red Zone (heavy rain/possible thunder) on the rain radar when I checked my iPad, so I could see it may pass so I told the dog I would practice guitar a bit now and take her to the beach when the storm cleared. Dog followed me to my music room and sat staring daggers at me while I had a strum or 2. There was very heavy rain for a while, but dogs care not, do they? Packed up, and dog and I piled in the car to pick up the Boss at the train station and a visit to the supermarket, but first.....walkies on the beach as promised.....Boss stayed in the car with her arms folded and phew, I had my snow gear style jacket but it was freezing cold and windy and funnily enough, dog and I were the only moving creatures on the whole beach. I mean, as far as I could see. Dog ran like a rocket and then set herself to chasing a bit of sea foam before back to the car urgently! BluesKing777.

Since my last reply, various 'partings of the way' have been replaying in my head... I hope you leave on good terms, but you seem a fairly nice person. But I was thinking of some wild and weird partings I have had - from a full on band members holding 2 of us down to stop us from killing each other (intoxicants involved), to a sad phone call where someone just doesn't want to 'do it anymore', or in guitarist fashion, just don't turn up. From 2 members of a band 'not wanting to drive that far anymore' (wasn't that far really), and the cushy row of gigs at clubs and nice paydays evaporate....to the crazy 'I can't believe you picked that idiot as our manager, I'm leaving' to my reply that 'I thought you found him'...to the manager of a club asking: 'Are you expecting trouble?' (the roadie friend of a bass player told the club owner he was 'security'), and everyone had a hissy fit and that was it... But fairly generally, I think I was the 'last one out' usually and only once I recall have I rang and said I wasn't turning up.... That said, there are people and songs I never wanted to see or hear again and that has remained true to this day.... But I mean, how did I go from this sort of gig: To this???? Solo - what happened?: To sitting here working on a computer and relating tales on a forum......huh? BluesKing777.

I have been there a number of times....sorry to hear that, Sal. Take it easy and put your feet up, resist the temptation to have a bonfire burning of the weapons. (guitars, gig bags, mic, gadgets, clothes, hat, car?)....You may change your mind in 3 weeks. It is just very different liking doing something and having to do something. BluesKing777.

Plus ONE for the Tonedexter, well make it Plus 50. But it is not what BBG asked about.... Another approach that is very popular lately is singing and playing into an (expensive) Edwina - Ear Trumpet Labs condenser mic: http://www.eartrumpetlabs.com/products/microphones/edwina BluesKing777.

Except BBG is using a little acoustic guitar amp..... BluesKing777.