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rct

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Everything posted by rct

  1. Hooray! I hope it is a beaut! Keep us ordinary 'splorer users updated! rct
  2. It's just money. Nobody squints hard and rubs their chin while selecting "tonewoods" to make guitars out of, nobody at the product development at x price point level cares what it sounds like or what is used to make it. In America, they simply broaden the definition of "mahogany" such that today, whatever they call mahogany is mahogany. Someday they'll get it all the way out to 2x4s from home depot, they'll be mahogany too. The cheapest wood they can get that they can legitimately call mahogany is what they will use, all the while participating in determining what it is that is called mahogany. Same as it ever was. rct
  3. Sexy guitar, a sweet little dog. I have a regular Explorer, so I'll go now! rct
  4. Fender Foto Flames wer awful. It didn't last long because it was actually very expensive, in the context of guitar margins, too expensive to keep it up. Thank goodness. rct
  5. Panther was one of the best platforms ever, and it was definitely the most profitable. Why they ended that I will never understand. Sold all our Ford stock because of that. rct
  6. As of today September 20th 2014, the plan is for sometime in our 35th year of marriage. So somewhere between November of '15 and November of '16. Boat over, which'll take a week. Three weeks or so puttering around France, but it all depends on the boat back and how we can work that one out. So a minimum of three weeks eating and drinking continental for the first time since The Romanoff in Bermuda. Can't wait. You have some nice art over there too I've heard. So Mrs is up for spending some time in London before we boat home, so I told her you nice people would buy her dinner at Galvin at Windows and she reluctantly agreed. rct
  7. Sure! Open. 12th. After both right, 3rd. 15th. On my guitars, for the most part, once the open and 12th are right, any other 12 fret distance is either right on, or off by, and this is important, the same amount. So if open and 12 are right, but 5th and 17th are both just a smidge sharp, that's fine. If 3rd and 15th are off and different, which hasn't happened much at all to me, it's usually the nut that is wrong. That's it. Remember: pretty much in tune, pretty much all over the neck, for the most part, pretty much. Guitars are imperfect. Unless you are using it in a vacuum to calibrate other machines, it is going to be just fine, most tuners can hear 40 times better than we can. Green Grass And High Tides will sound just fine, even if yer off a bit. Same gauge, same brand, same composition on all of my electrics, so I don't often have to move a saddle. I honestly don't know. Back then, analog Conn/Petersons, guy at the shop showed me why not to use harmonics, not even the 5th/7th that most guitar players use. Could their analog-ness have something to do with it? Today I use an early Peterson Virtual Strobe. Harmonics seem to ring consistently on it, so perhaps it was the time and the technology. Since nuts are cut usually by hastily set-up-by-people machines in one whack at the end of the neck line, and I've watched them, it is entirely possible to have a G string nut slot stop the string too close to the first fret, that is, too close to the pickup side of the guitar. Put that string on and it will intonate sharp assuming the saddles are in the middle of their travel and the twelfth is correctly placed. A guy setting up your guitar that has saddles with really odd distances for that particular guitar will often replace your nut with a fairly compensated set of slots. Mr. Feiten made a career out of just putting a zeroth fret on there, which in effect, makes all strings the same stop length up there at the nut, basically preventing the problem you and I are talking about here for fretted notes. Zero fret has been around a long time, he is by no means the first. Did any of that make sense? The node at which the harmonic is strongest is what I guess we would think of as the actual center of the string when stopped by the nut right now and the saddle right where it is. That can often be somewhat forward, pickup side, of the actual fretwire, and it can be aft, nut side, of the actual fretwire, too far back in the space to fret it without affecting the tuning. Follow me? If you continue to intonate to harmonics, you may, could, probably not always and quite possibly never intonate your guitar to a point that you actually can't fret well. If you set it up and are all intonationized via harmonics and you can't get 5th and 17th to be on or the same amount in the same direction off, it might be because you intonated with harmonics. We want to set the guitar so that when we fret at the 12th we are fretting at the center of the string, as exact as we can, which isn't very. If we divide the string (almost) exactly in half, both sides of that half will be (relatively) in tune with the rest of the guitar, and in tune with the other instruments that were tuned with the same reference. Intonate on bruthas. rct
  8. Do you know that I meant for tuning with an electronic tuner, as in, intonating a guitar? rct
  9. I've been intonating guitars since about 1974. I've played all over the country, recorded, made loads of money and had a blast. I've never been turned away from any sort of guitar use because my guitars were not intonated correctly, not one of probably more than a hundred in my lifetime. None of them ever intonated by harmonics. One of us can intonate a guitar without using harmonics. If his problem was chronic sharp strings, yes, he needs to lengthen the string to correct that. One of the dangers of using harmonics is that they begin sharp and can take quite a time to even out. Tuning to them too soon cause an artificial flat, which is compensated for by over sharping at the bridge. If the string stops too close to the first fret the string will intonate sharp, therefore, the string is stopping too close, NOT too far away. Sharp = short, flat = long. Strings that won't intonate because they are too sharp, that appeared to me to be the problem I was responding to. Whatever the case, far too many guitar players using harmonics to intonate their guitars. The string needs to be a length, it needs to ring open at a frequency, and it needs to ring at exactly half the length of it at one octave up. The harmonic is too near the center of the string, a place we can't fret, to intonate to. Sorry kids, argue away, have at it, one of us has never had a problem intonating any guitar, and most of you are in here most of the time moaning you can't get yer guitars in tune. rct
  10. May have to turn the saddle around if it will give you enough room to go back some more. If not that, nut may be stopping string too close and have to be re-done or replaced. If not that, the string gauge you are using won't intonate on that guitar. If not that, bridge in wrong spot! It happens. rct
  11. Open string, fretted at 12th. You are tuning half the length of the string to match the whole length of the string. Harmonics will elude you. Forever. Don't use them. rct
  12. Sure! Fingerboard/frets/binding is late, the guitar is nearly done when that happens. Sure again! Think of the neck on that guitar as part of the blank, it was rodded up and set in early. So yeah, I think an employee of Gibson did that. Truck driver, cafeteria lady, somebody like that. Unfortnately it has no provenance whatsoever. No story can be believed. I suppose it is a great oddity that would be awesome in a museum, and I suppose if I had all the guitars I wanted and could have that one for a hunnert bucks I'd give it a home. But man, the constant explaining about that thing? No way, not for me. A great guitar needs no explanation! rct
  13. I've been to two of the three American Guitar Makers. They are just short of paranoid about their trash, them days of the Charvel/Jackson guys taking stuff out of Fender dumpsters were short and long ago. I've never met anyone with a dumpster guitar. I don't want to talk about him like he is not in the room, but man I hope that guy didn't pay a lot for that thing! rct
  14. So...who got the parts out and put it together? Where'd they get the neck? Can a guitar like that even have a serial number? rct
  15. I have one of those. Them. Mine is lighter than my pick. Righteous sounds one would expect from a Gibson made of mahogany with those pickups in it. That particular guitar, if you can't make it sound good, the only answer is practice, because all the wood in the world won't make it any better, it's a great guitar already. rct
  16. Way overthought. If you can't pick up a decent guitar made by the handful or so decent guitar makers left, Gibson included, and make decent sounds come out of it, yer in trouble. A mahongany bodied guitar with humbuckers in it will only make so many sounds, the guitar player does the rest. If you have to think this hard about tenon lengths and wood densities you have the wrong hobby. Just my grouchy opinion. Overthinking is usually what kills most things. rct
  17. Yes, I am in Americur. Both Sweetwater in Indiana and Wildwood out there in northern Colorado have offered me a choice of serial numbers. Most dealers use the weight of the guitar and the serial number to try to sell you a decision when they have a few of something. Odd that yours do not, to me. I don't own one, may or may not ever own one, but have looked at lots and they all had a serial number along with the sequence number inside on the blue label. rct
  18. I don't have a dog in this fight, but I have had a burning in my loins for a Sorrento, so I've looked at quite a few. Each had an "x of 1962" inside the secret chamber, and an imprinted serial number on the back of the 'stock. I have been offered a choice of serial numbers, I think in CO they have a half a dozen, and all of them come with a serial number. rct
  19. The ones in your guitar and the ones in the ebay look like Dimarzio minis. Not saying they are, but they sure look just like his. Believe it or not, the pickups might be worth more than the guitar. rct
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