drathbun

LOL! Thanks! Sounds like a plan. Drive north to Canada and take a left, straight on until you see a cloud of smoke and you're in Calgary! 🙂

Yes. CSN "Carry On" is in E modal tuning dropped a 1/2 step to Eb, so Eb Eb Eb Eb Eb Eb Jerry shows how to tune your guitar for this song in his free intro to how to play the song:

I've had it about seven months now and have played many of my favourite 12 string song on it: Early Morning Rain Hotel California Over The Hills and Far Away Wish You Were Here Norwegian Wood (instead of a sitar) Turn, Turn, Turn Tuesday Afternoon I Believe in Father Christmas (at Christmas time) We Just Disagree My Back Pages and

Congratulations on your first Gibson! It is a beauty. My first Gibson was a Hummingbird as well but it was a POS (1977). Forty-two years later, I have another Gibson (12 string) and it is truly amazing! Enjoy playing and welcome to the forum!

You are correct sir! I didn't attempt that little feature. 🙂

I just tuned it up and played it. It sounds pretty good for what it is. I'm travelling by car across the country in a month or so. I might take this with me. I was thinking of taking my Taylor GSMini, but I like a full-size guitar. The GSMini is good for day trips.

That's a good solution also. I know I would screw it up with my arm in the sound hole and a bunch of epoxy on a stick. Just a recipe for disaster! 🙂

Again the BEST solution is to replace the bridge plate and every other solution is on a downward scale of cost vs value of the guitar. This guitar was given to me and owes me nothing. So $5 to get it playing and working properly is a bargain.

I know this isn't a Gibson, but it is an Epiphone and this is my go-to guitar forum. Further, this information might be helpful for some of you with older guitars that have this issue; chewed up holes in an old bridge plate. This can become a right, royal, PITA when the ball-ends of your strings won't stay hooked under the bridge plate and either pop your bridge pin across the room or just give you a very buzzy and dead sounding string. This Epiphone AJ210CE VS was a castaway because of a finish crack down the center seam of the top and around the bridge. It also had an extremely chewed up bridge plate and the low E string ball-end would not hook under the plate and constantly pushed the pin out. This was caused during manufacture when the bridge holes were drilled without a caul under the bridge plate to support the wood and it tore out chunks of the plate. This has happened on Gibson guitars as well in my experience. The guitar was also extremely dried out and shrunken. The fret-ends were protruding and the top had caved quite a bit causing the finish crack. I re-humidified the guitar over a period of about a month. A stop-gap measure for keeping the low E pin and string in the guitar was to cut a small piece of the low E string and thread it through the hole in the ball-end and crimp it so it doesn't slide out. That extra girth made the string catch. Not a perfect solution as you have to thread the string from the inside and up through the hole. Another PITA. The proper solution is to replace the bridge plate. This is out of the question for a guitar worth about $400 Cdn in new, perfect condition. I am just trying to make the guitar playable as a knock-around, campfire guitar. There is the "Plate Mate" solution from StewMac. The "Plate Mate" is a small, flat piece of brass with holes drilled for the bridge pins. It glues to the bridge plate and reinforces it so the ball ends will hook. It is an elegant and inexpensive solution. However, at $25.18 US plus $16US shipping to Canada, that comes to $54.02 Cdn., which is also out of the question. So I found a cheap solution. I went to Lee Valley Tools and found a small brass plate called a "Plate Handle Escutcheon" which was the perfect size. Before I ordered it, I mapped out the dimensions on a piece of paper and laid it out on the bridge to ensure it would work, used the bridge pins to pierce the paper in the right places with the right diameter and checked there was enough clearance inside. Then I bought the plate and drilled the holes with a drill press. Then it was just a matter of adding some gel-style cyanoacrylate glue and using the bridge pins to line the plate up and use the high and low E strings with a little tension to hold the plate in place while it dries. The guitar should be completely playable now. It cost $5.40 Cdn and took an hour of my time. This could be an easy and inexpensive repair for any of you with this issue. Cheers!

For images, use an image hosting site instead of uploading your photos to your profile storage as 62burst mentioned. I do this for all my forums. I used to use Photobucket until they went crazy and I've since switched to Imgur. I really like Imgur. You can drag 'n drop images, edit them for size and when you click on any image in your library, it brings up a screen with "click to copy" links for all kinds of purposes like direct link, markdown link (reddit), HTML (blogs etc), BBCode (this forum), BBCode + link (thumbnail with link). So you can just click the image, click "copy" next to the link you want and hit CTRL-V to paste it into your message like this:

Get a drop-in replacement bone saddle from Bob Colosi Custom Guitar Saddles. You might have to give the bottom some sanding to get it down to your previous string height. Before you remove your current saddle, take a regular pencil and sand down the sharpened tip on a 30 to 40 degree angle and trace a line on the saddle with the flat sanded part of the pencil on the top of the bridge. This will scribe a very accurate line of your current setup on the saddle face. Then transfer that same distance from the top of the saddle to the line on to your new bone saddle. All you have to do is sand the bottom of the bone saddle. Double side tape a piece of sandpaper on to a marble cutting board and keep it flat as you move it lengthwise. Keep dropping it into the saddle slot to check until you get it down to the right height. You'll be happy with the result. Here is a great resource page on lowering action at the saddle... Frank Ford on Saddle Action

This one: and this one:

"Thing 5: The internet is only full of your friends for about 5 minutes, then it is everyone trying to make money off everyone." Correction... that is THING 1!

Here is "TheFatRat" who had his original copyrighted and UPC coded song stolen by some anonymous group with no online presence called "RamJets". His journey through the stupidity of YouTube is astonishing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4AeoAWGJBw

I think this is the root of the problem. In a reaction to the EU legislation, YouTube created a system that rewards accusers and punishes content creators. In this video, a YouTube content creator recounts how his OWN VOICE was hit with a copyright claim. He was testing his microphone and his new compressor in a PRIVATE stream and YouTube's "Content ID Tool" (bot), hit 30 seconds of him saying "test... test" into his mic as a copyright claim by "CD Baby". He appealed the decision but because YouTube's system has your appeal sent for a decision by the very group that made the claim, they denied his claim. If he appealed further, YouTube warns his streaming and channel might be taken down. Since this is his living, he backed off and gave it to them. Hopefully, YouTube will review its flawed practices and create a fairer system that will punish false claimers like it punishes true copyright violators. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4WC9CbFEy8

Thanks Jeff. That's some great background information.

I received another notice from YouTube today about a video that has been removed. I wonder how long they are going to beach at me about this. If I remove my entire channel they'll probably send me an email saying "We miss you! Was it something we said?"

Hey dhanners. The Parker Sonnet is an awesome pen. I have a lookalike in the Baoer 388 but they are a little thin for me. My favourite pen at the moment is a Kaigelu 316 which is very similar to a Parker Centennial Duofold (but not a piston filler). I also have a lovely Visconti Van Gogh Starry Night. But I think I'm off the topic of guitars and might be a cease and desist order from Gibson! (My last post her got booted to the black hole of the lounge ) Edited to add a gratuitous photo of a Gibson guitar:

Thanks for the constructive information Boyd. I understand the YouTube (Google) position and the EU ruling. However, YouTube should have some provision for making the accuser PROVE they are the copyright holders of the particular song. YouTube believes any group that makes a copyright claim and takes action pre-emptively. The example is my video being taken down unilaterally without warning based on a "claim" by a "music group" that is well known for being a kamikaze. There is no forum to make a claim that my playing my guitar and singing a song in my basement and sharing that is a violation of Supertramp's rights. Supertramp will get zero income from my video or any ads that YouTube places on my non-monetized YouTube channel. Perhaps YouTube should refrain from placing ads on non-monetized channels.. allowing the fair and academic use of amateur content. Regardless, I will not be a content contributor to YouTube because they don't give a **** about content creators. They proved that when they forced me to change my channel into French because I am a Canadian.

Thanks Lars. I have all my tunes on Soundclick page (it is in my signature). It is just YouTube that is the issue. Google (the worldwide tax evader) owns YouTube and YouTube bows to its corporate sponsors who make these bogus copyright claim attacks knowing the joe everyman doesn't have the deep pockets to fight. Google... a really responsible corporate world citizen: From Wikipedia - "Google Vice-President Matt Brittin testified to the Public Accounts Committee of the UK House of Commons that his UK sales team made no sales and hence owed no sales taxes to the UK. In January 2016, Google reached a settlement with the UK to pay £130m in back taxes plus higher taxes in future. In 2017, Google channeled $22.7 billion from the Netherlands to Bermuda to reduce its tax bill."

It looks like it is time to take down all my YouTube music covers. I've been putting up videos of me playing my favourite tunes on YouTube for around 10 years. I'm retired on a fixed income and have a few hobbies. Now that I'm being attacked every day with threats of legal action I have no choice. I can't afford to be sued or afford a lawyer to protect something that is just a bit of fun. I'll leave my how-to videos unless any of them have me playing Hotel California longer than 30 seconds. My fountain pen videos will remain as well until I get sued by Montblanc.

I'm still trying to get my head around this. I just received another notification from YouTube that says this: Dear Douglas Rathbun, Your video "Key To Highway", may have content that is owned or licensed by LatinAutor, UMPG Publishing, UBEM, and LatinAutor - UMPG, but it’s still available on YouTube! In some cases, ads may appear next to it. If this is your performance of a 3rd party song then you can still make money from this video. Click here to change your monetization settings. This claim is not penalizing your account status. Visit your Copyright Notice page for more details on the policy applied to your video. - The YouTube Team Now AFAIKT "Key to the Highway" has no confirmed author. The first recording has the song attributed to blue pianist Charles Segar. It was then recorded by Big Bill Broonzy in the early '40's and then covered by Eric Clapton on the "Layla" album and again on "One More Car, One More Rider". How does UMPG come off claiming copyright for this song? Do they have copyright on "The Star Spangled Banner" too? Also, this notice just looks like an attempt to steal future ad revenue for the group that just claims the copyright. My channel isn't monetized but they want any revenue that might come IF it becomes monetized. I really expected other of my covers to get hit before something as old and unattributed as "Key to the Highway". I guess I'll have to shelve that idea about covering "Dem Bones Dem Bones Dem Dry Bones".

I beg to differ about the nut having no impact on sound. I think the nut has a huge impact on the tone of the guitar. Just go from plastic to bone and hear the difference. That said, ebony is MUCH softer than bone so I expect you will get a much more muted, softer tone from ebony over bone. My preference is for bone over Tusq, Tusq over Micarta, Micarta over ebony and ebony over plastic.

Thanks BBG! Here is the YouTube video. If you FFW to 15:09 you'll see Nick Campling (inventor) demonstrate the ART system that is used on the Heritage and the Performance 3 capos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-phn1VIcFg&t=455s

My suggestion BK... OVGLOVE! Serious... heal soon. I'd agree with that J15 comparison with the 317e.