BluesKing777

For the people that don't know what Galveston Beach is like, here is an edited version of a show called Beachfront Bargain Hunt - someone has cut all the ads out! Is this anything like yours, Buc? BluesKing777.

I get the arm haze on every guitar I own and the bursts show it the worst, but my 2 month old Taylor has what they call the "Silent Satin Finish", a poly finish cured with UV we are told - and it must be 'arm haze repellent'. Zip. Nada. None. Since Easter.... On the offending guitars like a burst Blues King L-00, if you get in early with the haze, you can sometimes breathe hot breath on the area and wipe it off with a damp t-shirt, but once it gets thick, Virtuoso polish will usually move it.....not always. BluesKing777.

The main problem with any mic is feedback and that is the main reason everyone sticks to their various pickups. And in a noisy gig, the mic picks up everything. BluesKing777.

Ha! Just sedate and casual blowing some dough on a few guitars! Check this out for blowing your hard- earned: BluesKing777.

One other thing you could try, and guitarists generally hate the idea...turn the guitar input right down!😳😵 So start by turning the guitar input volume on the amp right off. Turn your mic input up as far as you can before feeding, back it off a fraction, then push the mic stand arm DOWN, so you can get the guitar spilling nicely into your vocal mic with a nice level for your vocal. Play and sing a few songs to get the hang of it. Then gently turn the guitar input up just a very, very little to give 'reinforcement' to the guitar sound without overwhelming the vocal mic... BluesKing777.

Best is a 4 channel mixer to powered speakers. You still want to use the amp? Boss VE8 or similar will do it - you can then run your pickup and vocal to the line/guitar input and use a mic on your guitar to your mic input. Or get a little dual source system in your guitar...K&K has a setup with an internal mic as well as the pickup. Or a Seymour Dunc Mag Mic (soundhole pickup with a mic underneath it.) Or get a Maton or Takamine or Aura loaded guitar. Another approach would be to get a mic booster type preamp so you could get more volume and more control/eq out of the amps’ mic channel - run the mic somewhere lower between your mouth and guitar top to get a balance. And your guitar’s pickup to the guitar channel. And a roadie.... BluesKing777.

Cool! I suppose you will divide your time between fishing on the pier, fishing in a boat, riding the Ferris Wheel with the Mrs Buc, playing at the local open Mic?, and fishing on the beach! BluesKing777.

The ‘51 J45 that I WON’T be getting now I bought the beast in the photo. Maybe never if it konks it and I have to get 4 brake disks or something awful. I will take it to my mechanic to give an oil change and a check up on payday....hope it doesn’t need a neck reset or a new bridge or even a wheel. But seriously, and all your fault, Nick The Evil - I am selling a few guitars I am out of love with...an HD28V is getting some new frets and to be gone, a National reso, and a few undecided....and the money will go to a ‘50. Or car repair. BluesKing777.

I don’t think a travel guitar will fit! It should fit in one of the other cars I bought - stacked up behind the Beemer in the photo! (Kidding, that is the car lot photo.) There is always the back seat for a guitar or 2 in Hiscoxes (Hiscoxii???)in seat belts or the front seat if I am solo. The car is nearly 10 years old and not something most want to take on, parts are killer and the dealers have the old $1000 car wash system (a service plus wash), but I have my BMW mechanic. Same with guitars...without my best luthier, I am nothing and could not contemplate that 51 J45...... BluesKing777.

Monday morning 10am here - we are 12 hours ahead in the international time line..... But Sunday morning is usually DADGAD day and most of the time is Lowden day, not always. The sun peaked out after a week of deluges and rainy gloomy days, so after playing for a morning session of DADGADIA, the mind turned to the new old car.... I used to have 2 cars and got sick of the extra paperwork and expense...I had the little 1989 BMW coupe and a Ford panel van for giggery and later years as a general handy vehicle for garden supplies, paving etc, household items and furniture and going to the rubbish tip with the junk. The old Ford motor kept going and going but the body literally rusted to pieces. So off it went one day on a traytruck. I have the best luthier for my guitars around and after many years, found the mechanic equivalent for the little BMW. But being the genius he is also has foibles like working alone, not answering his phone and taking 3 weeks to fix my car, beautifully mind you - running like a queen -but meanwhile I am stuck here in the middle of nowhere without a car. He can give me a courtesy car but not allowed to have a dog in it! And rightly so, if you saw the back seat of my little coupe. Rescue dogs we get have foibles too, like not liking being left at home alone and ripping the place to pieces... For a very long while, I have said I would like to get a 2nd car and just wear the inconvenience of 2 insurances, papers, upkeep. So I was looking at the closest car yard with an online thing and I was thinking of an old utility type Ford Escape or similar, but when I looked at an actual car the interior and storage of my little BMW coupe was bigger! What? So we looked towards bigger and slightly better, thinking in the back of my head how something I could throw a few guitars in Hiscox cases in the back to visit a friend in the mountains etc, would be ideal. Something utilitarian.....a van maybe, a small truck, ute, 4x4...you know, something spacious and lockable and guitars not visible. But then I got a great deal on this one in the photo below from a used car dealer. And it is like driving a little starship. But the roof has been up since I bought it because of the weather and yesterday was the chance to see if the dog was scared of the roof going up or down....nope, a smiling, drooling sun lover! BluesKing777.

Generally, I like the bone triumvirate....nut, saddle, pins but my luthier mentioned he prefers ‘high density bone’ for nuts and saddles. Whah, what? And that is what I have on my custom that he made. Why did I not ask if it came from high density cows? Now my 1959 LG3 came with bone nut and saddle and plastic pins from 1959. Loved the sound, but everyone says you gotta have bone pins, so bone pins were got.....and the guitar sound became a bit....shrill. So after a few years of different strings and attempts to get the shrill gone, I put the original plastics back in....Voila. We are back to norm. Still there too, years on. Then the old K&K furphy arrises here again. ‘Get a K&K, they all cry and your next open mic will be a pushover!’ I can’t stand the sound of a K&K direct. Or undersaddles. You need a row of pre-amperage to cut the boom, quack and rattles. My K&Ks sound superb, but through my Tonedexter. Or a host of gadgets. My K&Ks are the source of electricity. That is the beginning only. I think I have spent uranium nut, saddle and pins on my Hummingbird copy. BluesKing777.

50 years ago, Jimi was still alive and on fire, or his guitars were...and Woodstock was still a few months away! I had been playing bongos mainly on my acoustic guitar between painful playing of that action, and at last my father gave up on the guitar hate/muso hate/no future stuff and sent me to a group class guitar lessons, after me pestering forever. We had to buy a bible with all the guitar notes on the strings of the first 3 or 4 frets and the first songs were awful, but then the teacher played Guitar Boogie. Yeah! About that time I had informed my parents that NO, I wasn’t ever having that head bleeding hair cut ever again, which I didn’t for at least 10 years. (It had been about 2 years since a friend said: ‘Look what I bought!’ Sgt. Peppers......). And I looked superb in my white Amco jeans and matching jacket at the free outdoor concert in the park where everyone was smoking Petuli Oil, or so I thought..... BluesKing777.

Stop the presses! No expert here, but... It is hard to tell from the phone photos, but the guitar looks better than most J50s for sale. What are you disappointed in, exactly? The look, the sound or the playability? A vintage Gibson needs a vintage Gibson specialist or you could wreck it. Other people on this forum drive all day or even get their guitar delivered, to get the right person working on it. BluesKing777.

And some fine guitars you are nuancing, there! I capo up to 4th actually but didn't want to confuse the copy players - I tuned down 2 tones/frets on the old girl (37 L-0)....this guitar just sounds good there and I did get to keep the nice 'layout' of the chords that some nice arranger person put in the fake book. I would prefer to sing the tune in F, but I was figuring that out with a whole new game with the chords but mainly the lead notes - and my head hurt, so...capo up, play what the put down for me, until I can comfortably do the 'surprise' notes at the start of the middle part! ('Worry...') BluesKing777.

Too late, but: BluesKing777.

Yes, that is a very 'keyboard' way of writing - adding the extra notes is far more linear than on a guitar. Who invented this stupid thing? (I have a book of Jazz standards for guitar - it has the lead sheet first, a comping sheet, a chord/melody and then a solo....and you think: "What? How did they get any of this there in that position? On guitar...but on keys, all laid out around it. Mainly. Oh Youtube, they try to ruin you now with ads. I was watching an engine production by robotics and as the video was a bit longer than usual - they stopped for 2 ad breaks. That is me gone! And the replies on this new forum layout take an hour to show up! BluesKing777.

Yeah, thanks Nick. As mentioned in the songwriting thread, a lot of people get the chords then add a basic melody to fit. But thinking about my track above, I bet gold dollars Willie wrote the song melody on guitar and then sang it...possibly after recording and listening to his lead guitar part....there are some craggy jumps in the melody. And that is what I mean by learning as many tunes as I can and hope something sticks...not sure if a ‘singer’ would sing like those bits on their own volition? Speaking of learning the tune, because I played the chords, melody, vocal ‘off the pages’, and while I have played that one a bit, I haven’t learned the song per se. If someone asked me to play that one off the top of my head, nope, not much of the original would come out! Playing off the book is using a few other parts of the mind and to get the song ‘gig ready’, I would sit down and memorise the parts or one part if in a band or trio. And a better ‘arrangement’ for the song, not just follow the book. But in a band I was in, the piano player would just hand me some charts he wrote out and often I had never heard the original. The advantage of written music...you can play it without knowing the song! Sort of! BluesKing777.

After reading the Songwriting thread, thanks, I was thinking about the opposite - playing covers of other people's tunes to try and break it down to the elements...my theory involves learning as many as you can in different ways and hoping something may stick! Now, below I recorded one way (of zillions) of playing a song and dissecting the parts a bit to get more of an idea of what is going on. So this tune is in a standard type printed fake book with the simple chords on top of the melody line in music notation, and the lyrics underneath. Obviously I didn't learn the track live, but here is a way I generally try things. Capo on 2... Run through the basic chords once to get an idea of it, then I play the vocal melody on guitar, looking for tricky bits, and then I got that vocal line I played in my head better and had a run through plying the chords and singing.... BluesKing777.

The Sunrise buffer box pre gives a big fat sound to everything, then alter level and tone on the Boss..... I like my DiMarzio Black Angel.....passive, no battery, adjustable poles etc, but also through the Sunrise buffer. I prefer the Mag Mic with a bit of the mic on...or a lot.....but if you don’t get to use the mic, you may be pleased with the Black Angel. Lots of people use the Sunrise pickup with a Demeter Tube DI, I have been told..... BluesKing777.

You should probably try to find what is causing the problem and make sure it is guitar playing and not working on a computer or jackhammer too long....we tend to work longer than strum. If it is something guitar related - you mentioned a sore elbow from strumming too hard, well, don't strum too hard. Try a different approach - strum gently with your index finger only, for example. It is ok if you are playing at home for entertainment, have a rest, but it is the end of the world if you have 2 1/2 more hours to go in a gig. While there is no one answer, warming up before stretching anything is usually helpful. I 'say hello to the guitar' - I strum an E chord, then play each note/string in the chord, play a gentle E major run that goes up and over the whole fingerboard just using my 1 and then 3 finger on my left hand...then back up. Then the same run with 2 and 4 finger left hand. Then I do an A Major scale at the 5th fret from deep to high and move the whole form up a fret, repeat, move all the way up as far as I can take it. Then I repeat that but play Thirds. Finish off with playing frets 1234 on each string with alternating picking, start at the 1 fret and do all strings and then move to the 5th fret, do all 1234, and then move up to the 8th etc.etc. Then I play a few chords and then an easy blues introduction that even my dog knows. But I have 'said hello to the guitar' and it has said HELLO back. I have warmed up my working bits and also got used to the different guitar/s neck/strings/action/ width...... If I don't do this, everything is wrong and aches later. BluesKing777.

I thought you would be up to it after your recent foray into Woodstockia.... Matching hat, boots and you are in! Then Nashville, you said. I might buy it myself. Guitar looks very, very clean. If not this one, what about a vintage Bird? BluesKing777.

What about a 1963 Gibson Hummingbird and a short trip to Waterloo, Ontario, Canada? http://www.folkwaymusic.com/vintage-instruments/gibson-guitars/1963-gibson-hummingbird-0419/ BluesKing777.

I am sorry to hear that awful news. My condolences, Tom. BluesKing777.

I have the Blackstack. I threw it in the "Failed Drawer" - on its own it sounded awful and little level to use. But someone suggested a quite expensive fix - Ha, this will rock you - use a Sunrise buffer preamp. Sounds great, but the Sunrise pickup is way 'nicer'. I have had trouble balancing the 4th string pole piece. and don't know why....get a buzz at the mo. But running through the Sunrise box and then my Fishman Pro EQ to trim the fat all over - gets it close. I love my Seymour Dunc MM - just having that mic on a few percent makes it easier to play like it is an acoustic. My opinion. Hey, I did an experiment with the Sunrise in my Maton (SRS808). The Maton AP5-Pro pickup system has sep controls for vol on the undersaddle and internal mic. I turned the undersaddle off and ran the mic only to a mixer channel - and the Sunrise to the buffer and another mixer channel. Voila! Sunrise with a bit of real mic as well. (Sunrise had to have the wings taken off to fit in the small soundhole of the Maton and gaffa tape applied to hold in position - and then I could not get the pickup out without loosening the strings.) But end result - the Sunrise needs a mic as well! But the Maton normally can have a soundhole anti feedback buster. Oh Oh. Err, back to SD Mag Mic then.. BluesKing777.

Good work, Doug! The Plate Mate has extra notches under the holes to perhaps help latch the string? https://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/Tools_by_Job/Tools_for_Bridges/Plate_Mate.html BluesKing777.