sparquelito

No sir. I just dragged a generic image off the interwebs for that photo. I hung up my flying spurs many months ago, and gladly. Here's another generic shot, with a ppt. arrow to show where Beth and I sat yesterday evening. 🙂

Just got home from his make-up show, here at The Orion Amphitheater. A wonderful concert. Great venue, expensive food and drink, and James and his band were really, really great. He's not 100% as far as his vocal powers, but the man is 75 years old. The crowd loved it. Everybody sang along, to nearly every song. 🙂

Good God. Those are not the OEM pickups. One of them (the neck pickup) looks like it was lifted out of a pawn shop Dean. Run away from that guitar. 😐

gerv, There are people on here with a lot more experience with that year and model of Les Paul. Please allow them to respond before you make any hard decisions. I'm just going off of Blue Book values of your guitar versus the Blue Book and Reverb prices on that year and model of Les Paul. Your guitar is much more valuable, in all likelihood. I don't want to see you taking a bath on such a deal is all. 🤔

gerv, Your Larrivée L09 is worth a lot more than the Gibson Les Paul Classic Antique, especially if the Les Paul is a player with some wear. Unless the L09 is the player with wear, and the Gibson is pristine. In which case it's a good trade. 🤔

gerv, Do you live in Europe, the UK, the US, or somewhere else? The resale question comes with a certain number of variables, not the least of which is market/location. 🙂

A very exciting visual feast, that video! But I'm with you on the song. It did not grab me. 😐

I looked up quite a few 1976 Gibson Explorers while researching this question. It seems that Gibson manufactured somewhere in then neighborhood of 1,800 or more Explorers that year. In Black, Natural, and White finishes. About half of those were Limited Edition Explorers. The Limited Edition ones had thick, baseball bat necks, but otherwise nothing special about them. And I cannot find a single one that had numbers pressed into the fingerboard above the 22nd fret. Which leads me to another possibility; Did Gibson allow factory 'seconds' to go out, with sales strictly to trusted vendors, employees and families? If so, maybe those guitars that failed QC might have been numbered like that. I don't know. Maybe I'm just blowing smoke rings here. 🤔

Darned termites. 😔

Q Branch just called. They want their bloody guitar back. 😔

A fantastic and lovely acquisition! Congratulations, good sir. 😀

I just wire orange Skittles in there. Pure, sweet tone. 🙂

Interesting how the two of us could be at polar opposites when it comes to those two songs from the Anthology albums. Me personally, I am quite fond of them. A lot of reasons for that; They include John's actual voice, singing the songs he wrote himself. (Or was nearly finished writing.) The other 3 Beatles played and sang on them to help finish the songs. Were there ELO tinges to the songs? Of course. But it's Jeff Lynne, man. And he admittedly put a lot of work into producing those two songs. We're talking about the days before Pro Tools. Jeff was cutting tape, slowing down and speeding up tape machines, and using old school EQ and sliders to filter out the cassette tape hiss, while preserving the clarity of John's voice. So, on one hand I am adamantly against AI-created 'music'. But I respect the work that goes into producing, playing, and singing actual human music, even if it uses voices recorded many years prior. Here's a question; How did you like (or dislike) Natalie Cole's duet with her father on Unforgettable? 🫠

Great looking tele-shaped strat!! I love the dark natural wood finish too. 🙂

I have a policy of never clicking on a link to anything related to AI. Especially links to AI-created music. I agree with IanHenry that 'creating' new music by computer-simulating John Lennon's voice is an abomination. A heresy. 🙁

Hmmm... It appears that Mr. Bond approves. 🙂

It depends upon your intentions regarding playing and performing live, in front of an audience. I have owned two really nice acoustic amplifiers. The Crate Teluride, and my current one, a 2010 Peavey Ecoustic E110. The Teluride saw a lot of action over the years. Band gigs, and solo gigs at the old folk's home. The Peavey is a 100W amp, featuring a 1-10 in. speaker with 1-3 in. high-freq. horn, acoustic guitar combo. Microphone XLR input with mic EQ controls. A great busking platform! And I plan to use it at a gig coming up soon on 22 September. If you have no intentions of performing live in front of an audience, then the Spark is more than enough. It offers tones that will please even the most discerning living room or bedroom player. 🙂

Here's a fresh thought. And it dove-tails with tx-ogre's cervical spine issues. Sometimes arm and wrist or hand pain has less to do with what's going on structurally in the arm, wrist, and hand, but more to do with the nerve bundles feeding the signals to and from the brain. I myself had all kinds of pain symptoms in my upper back, left arm, and even left side of my chest. (And yes, I ended up having some cardiac tests and scans to eliminate heart problems.) It turns out that all my symptoms resulted from some discs in my neck settling and bulging, and pinching on some nerve bundles. (I flew helicopters for decades, and wore helmets with night vision goggles and counter-weight velcro bags, go figure.) But this situation, age-related degenerative disc disease, is common with many people from all walks of life. So, KSDaddy, my recommendation is this: Visit the doc. Get some x-rays or scans of your cervical spine (neck). If there is some evidence of settling and degeneration, ask for the doc to prescribe you a Saunders Cervical Decompression device. (or just buy one for $300 bucks) I used mine a few times a month. It gently stretches your neck over a 20 minute session, and makes the discs comparatively fat and tall again. Temporarily, obviously. And it therefore takes the pressure off of pinched nerve bundles. But I get up off the mat, and all my aches and pains are gone. It's worth a try, good sir. 🙂 https://www.djoglobal.com/products/saunders/saunders-cervical-home-traction-device

Rest in peace, Mr Robertson. 😑

Praying for you, ksdaddy. I have similar problems with my feet, of all things. But luckily, I don't play guitar with my feet, so I'm sort of okay for now. 🙁

The next-generation Gibson Les Paul BFG. But back to the roots, instead of the anemic version that they issued a few seasons ago. Maybe with the headstock already broken off, and poorly repaired. I'm ready. 🙂

Yeah, man. Split Enz sort of epitomized the 'new wave' music of the early 1980's, for me anyway, and Tim Finn certainly infused a lot of quirky, weird fashion and stage antics. They matured into a fine band though. I loved the Time And Tide album especially. Over the years, everything that Neil Finn and Tim Finn had my attention. Saw Crowded House a number of times, and loved them thoroughly. I'm pretty sure I own every CD or album that Crowded House and the Finn Brothers ever put out. 😐

I was aware of Punk, and managed to hear a bit of it during Punk's short time in the popular consciousness. I understood the fashion, and the attraction, for some, the unpolished, raw, 3-chord rock and roll. I got it. It just never grabbed me at any point, nor did it very really do anything for me. A couple of reasons that punk never really lit me on fire: * Though I did have plenty of reasons (or excuses) to be angry at the world at that time, I really wasn't an angry, unhappy young man. I was too cheerful for Punk. * I was then, and still am now, a fan of music with a hook. Music with quirky melody and pleasing harmony. Rock music written with an interesting story to tell. Living in Germany in the early 1980's (post-Punk) I did find myself attracted to two acts that were considered, at the time, to be New Wave, though not necessarily Punk. Elvis Costello and the Attractions out of the UK, and Split Enz (out of New Zealand). Over the years, I have indeed kept up with, and listened to a lot of music by Declan MacManus (EC) and the Finn Brothers. 🙂

Yeah, that's been my experience with it. I had a 1996 Gibson Les Paul Studio in Ebony, with all the gold bits. The gold didn't age well, and a few years of living on the North Shore of Oahu certainly didn't help. Funny, when I sold it locally back in 2012, the fellow who bought it off of me LOVED the aged patina of the gold parts. "Makes it look like a real veteran of bars and clubs," he said happily. "Yeah, it's been in one or two bars and clubs," I admitted. 😐

Brilliant!! 😃