sparquelito

One of my favorite Monkees songs is also one of their most recent, from 2016.

Those are gorgeous, Andreas. And I especially like your chair there. That looks exceptionally comfortable, sir. We should all be so lucky as to have a chair like that. 🙂

Sgt. Pepper nailed it. 😘

She's not a neck-through, but the scarf joint is nicely done. Those overseas Fender employees really know their wood craft. I love it. Plugged her in. She's a really interesting machine. Not a Les Paul, and not a Stratocaster. The single-coil tones when you pull up on the Tone Knob aren't precisely vintage Tele either. But it's uniquely Fender, if that makes any sense. It's like Billy Gibbons and Joe Walsh had an Indonesian baby, and named it Rick Nielsen. Okay, I'm gonna shut up now. 😬

I must say, I'm impressed. She's a beaut, Clark. Gorgeous edge binding, wonderful color blending, nearly black chrome bits, and a smooth, supple neck. 🙂

Well, the box showed up in great condition, as did the Fender interior box and Sweetwater case candy. No case though. And no gig bag. The guitar itself was well protected, and in lovely shape.

Okay, so I sold off two guitars this past week, and gave one away. (An old but pristine Alvarez acoustic, to the local drug & alcohol treatment facility.) Today I am poised to sell one more, a Les Paul style guitar that I am fond of, but just don't play all that much. Two guys at work are lusting to buy it, so we'll see which fellow ends up buying it off me. Why the purge, you may ask? Because I am making room for a Fender Telecaster that I have had my eye on for quite awhile. And as much as I hope and pray, Sweetwater just isn't putting it on sale. So I pulled the trigger on an online order the other evening, and she should arrive this very afternoon. A teaser image for now, and then complete unboxing photos this evening. Cheers, and happy days. 🙂

Because I like to post nonsensical, seemingly-unrelated, and vaguely disturbing images, whenever I write a bit. There's the original posting that waxed and waned between absurdity and dark humor, right? It was a lark, but an unsettling lark. So the photo posting associated with the original bit should be, accordingly, a bit off-kilter. A movie poster from Soylent Green, for instance, would be cheap and predictable. And un-funny. An image of the Uruguayan soccer team, after surviving the crash of Flight 571 into a mountainside, cooking and eating bits of the flanks of their fallen comrades, on the other hand, would be too heavy-handed. And grisly. And also un-funny. So, in the end, a cheery, clearly borrowed from the internet image of two happy dorks sitting in a garden was in order. It speaks to a contrast between dark and light. Reality and nightmare. Ginger and Mary Anne. Treble and Rhythm. The poker chip. I'm gonna shut up now. 😬

It's similar to rosewood in tone, but I find the Indian laurel ones to be more interesting, and pretty. 🤔

I find this story very hard to swallow. 🤔

I'm enjoying the additional truisms being offered up, and really loving the cannibalism humor. (Cannibalism humor. Is that even a thing? Maybe we invented it.) To be clear however, my posting wasn't meant to be taken as an endorsement of, promotion for, or celebration of, cannibalism. I am personally very much opposed to the practice of one man eating the flesh of another. The truism was that solving the problem of world hunger could be accomplished really quickly by opening up that absurdly-dramatic avenue, and allowing for it. It was so nonsensical and yet pristine in it's truth, I just had to share it. It's kind of like, "How do we solve the problem they are facing in China and India, where the number of men is 70 million greater than the number of women?" (And it is a problem. Men are growing up and finding a scarcity of available women to marry.) The solution is easy. Legalize polygamy in those countries, and allow women to have multiple husbands. Then nobody is lonely, and everybody who wants to be married can be married. Right? 😐

Brilliant!! 🙂

Okay, this is going to sound weird, but I am now a The Darkness convert. I've gone from never even hearing of the band to (after studying a variety of music videos, interviews, and Rig Rundowns) to being a big fan now. Call me a dork, but I really like these guys. They are funny as hell, and they rock. Sort of like Monty Python, only with guitars, bass, and drums. And instead of The Phythons speaking in a falsetto while portraying female characters, we get Justin Hawkins showing us how epic that falsetto can be. By association, at this point, I now find the OP's sparkly Les Paul to be epic as well. Two thumbs way up. 🙂

Welcome, Converted. It's great to have you aboard, mate. I too am a Fender guy and a Gibson guy. I'm also an Ibanez guy and ESP LTD guy. Definitely a Yamaha guy! It's all good here! 🙂

I'm really excited for the next Autopsy Club meeting. It's open Mike night! 😗

Ever have a thought so profound, undeniably-true, and awesome, yet one that the rest of society will probably never get on board with? I did, this very morning. I was at the local nursery, and chatting with my neighbors about soil, plants, and fertilizer, tomatoes, hot peppers, and a variety of other things related to gardening. The neighbor lady said, "You know, if we could teach all the world to plant a garden, we could solve world hunger!" Another gal chimed in, "Yes. There are so many sustainable resources, and abundant mechanisms and supply chains. If all nations worked together, we could solve world hunger in a matter of three-to-five years!" A stranger (probably an engineer) leaned in, and offered, "It's a matter of distributing water, and proper irrigation, particularly in the arid regions. I'm guessing ten-to-fifty years, best case." I (being me) remarked, "Truth be told, we could solve world hunger in five minutes flat." My next door neighbor knew me well. He shook his head, and asked regretfully, "Uh, how could we do that, Sparky?" I looked off in the distance, smiled briefly, and then frowned myself into some semblance of a stoic face. "Easy. We pass an international law, today, ending all prohibitions on cannibalism." I looked up with a disturbingly-eager smile. "I really think that that would do the trick." I looked around. "You do agree, don't you?" I don't get it. Everyone scattered, and went on about their day's errands and chores. Truisms. Sometimes the truth hurts. 😬

I must confess, The Darkness, as a band, is a bit of a mystery to me. Never heard of them before this day. In between some motorcycle maintenance and gardening today, I caught up on some of their songs. I can't tell from just a few videos whether their over-the-top rock and roll antics are meant to be campy schlock, or whether they are serious. Either way, I kind of like it. The song Rock And Roll Deserves To Die is especially good. 🙂

I do have to agree with Rabs on a few points though; Silverburst has never been my thing, and, the Justin Hawkins model is admittedly blingy. What I like about yours is the execution. The silver paint in the middle is nice and large in the meta-flake department. Big sparkles. And the Bigsby is nicely done. I thought that maybe I wouldn't like the idea of the mirrored flame inlay, but it's growing on me. Great job by all concerned!! 😉

That's a really interesting treatment. I like it a lot! 🙂

Fjestad's Blue Book would place the value at around $1,500 for sure, calling the condition Very Good +. It could fetch a heftier price if it had the original tailpiece/tremolo, and hadn't been re-painted. The neck repair keeps the value down as well. Cool guitar, don't get me wrong. I like it a lot. 🙂

Can you return it to the vendor, and ask them to send you one that actually works? 😐

It's not that bad. That'll rub right out. 😬

My garage-band-mates and I went to see KISS in Dothan, Alabama in December of 1975. We were just catching onto KISS Alive and Dressed To Kill when we drove down there. We were on the front of the stage, right below Paul Stanley's mic stand. It was a phenomenal and formative experience, let me tell you. To this day, we do at least one KISS song in every live band performance. Doesn't matter what the crowd, event, or venue. Some KISS is going to make it in there. 🙂

I have owned plenty of P-90 equipped guitars over the years, including some Gibsons. Nothing stuck with me. They were great, but they didn't do any one thing good. I sold 'em, in the end. Now. The Yamaha Revstar RS502T that I got much earlier this year; MAN. It's a beast. I can't qualify or quantify why it kicks aS$ in so many ways, but it just does. Yamaha got the P90 right with this one. 🙂