KuruPrionz

Customer service is less than nothing.

I agree! I use heavy picks with a light touch. Recently I've been exploring picking with fingers and thumb on electric guitar (and bass). Another tone and style of playing. I've done it for years on acoustic guitars but that is yet another tone and style as well.

A big part of that sound is a brisk stroke with a medium or heavy pick slamming quickly and relentlessly on the strings in between the pickups. It's probably a Marshall or clone, it could be other amps or pedals.I can more or less get that sound with a Tech 21 Sans Amp Para Drive DI pedal but you have to dial it in correctly. The magic aspect of the Tech 21 SansAmp pedal is that it has Level, Drive and Blend controls. Most distortion pedals don't have all 3 knobs. You can blend a clean tone with a distorted tone so you get the grind but keep the clarity.

Iguana, Ya Wanna?

There is no such thing as nothing.

I have a Tele with the active EMG set of pickups. Instead of a tone control, it has an EMG SPC control, which rolls off the highs just a bit, kicks the midrange up considerably and makes a great option for going from strumming behind vocals to taking a solo lead part. I highly recommend it, simple and the battery will last for well over a year if you remember to unplug when not in use. I found I could just slightly enlarge the sides of the opening for the control panel and the battery will fit in there with just 2 screws needed to access and change the battery.

I profoundly disagree. Even people who will never play a musical instrument or sing still judge music based on whether they like it or not and they are 100% accurate in that judgement. They may love the music they hear, they may hate it or they may simply not give one crap about it at all. Indifference is a judgement as well. The fact is that if everybody disliked a particular musician's music, that musician has failed completely to engage the audience. It's really simple but really real.

It's Nothing To Me

Uhhh... what?

Seen a Butt-Load of them kind. Never bought one. I have two 25 key USB boards that play plugins. I barely use those, they were on our local craigslist. If was going to buy any serious keyboard I'd want to play it first in person. So it needs to be no more than a fairly short drive away. This is true of all music gear for the most part. Once in a while I'll go ahead and order something, that's how I got the Korg Wavedrum Global and I've never regretted owning that one. Great tool/instrument.

Great line in this John Prine song "Nothing but a big bunch of nothing, driving me insane." In the 3rd verse.

Then there's Keith Richards, who has used a 5 string guitar for decades and uses another tuning - G D G B D I haven't dabbled much in tunings, I can play a bit of 5 string banjo, which is similar to Keith's tuning but the low G is tuned to the G at the 5th fret of the high D string. I do tune a 12 string down a whole step and I use "Nashville Tuning" on a couple of guitars, that's the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th strings all an octave higher but still EADGBE. Sounds great with a standard tuned guitar, sort of multi-dimensional 12 string sound. I've always felt like there is still much to learn on standard tuning so I haven't investigated other tunings. I saw John Reborn once, he used a variety of tunings, amazing talent.

I haven't been to a "big show" in a long time. This will date me but I think the last one I saw was at Grizzly Stadium in Fresno - BB King was the headliner and Jeff Beck opened the show. It was 111 degrees and a bit humid, I understand that Jeff Beck got up and jammed with BB on most of the shows on that tour but not in Fresno. Can't say I blame him. Bellingham is 110,000 people now, it was much smaller when I moved here in 2005. They can't get big acts here and there isn't a venue large enough for such an event anyway. Fresno did have Selland Arena - 10,000 seats and being in-between Los Angeles and San Francisco we got quite a few big acts there. I'm not inclined to drive to Seattle or Vancouver BC to take in a high end concert in an appropriate venue, you cannot imagine the shits I do not give. Attempting to quantify or make music "obey etiquette" is absurd and counter productive. Let it be what it is!!!! I truly can't imagine going to Coachella and hanging out for the weekend to hear live music. I just head down to one of our local clubs and listen to local music. I have noticed that our world up here is gravitating towards more duo and solo acts and fewer bands. I'm OK with that, I either like the music or I don't and it isn't the number of people performing that quantify that feeling.

I understand. No offense taken or intended. FWIW, ALL my favorite bolt on guitars have Fatback Warmoth Necks and I have another one waiting to be assembled. I have one Maple fretboard 1 3/4" at the nut that used to have a Floyd Rose nut and does have a cracked and repaired Tele headstock - Tele body for that one, book matched walnut top wood about 3/16" thick over a 1 piece pine back, kinda heavy, one Maple 1 7/8" with scalloped fretboard and a reverse Strat Headstock on a turquoise Squier Strat body (thinner), one Baritone 24 fret maple board neck on an ash Tele body and the one in progress is a Rosewood fretboard 1 7/8" and a re-cut headstock that is sort of Tele but bigger so also sort of Strat like, it came to me that way and the body is another Strat body (sunburst) but full thickness.

I had 20/240 vision with remarkable close-up vision for many years. I had to wear glasses to drive but working on tiny guitar bits and soldering were very easy. A few years ago I had foggy cataracts and they replaced them surgically, now I have 20/30 distance vision but the super close up vision is gone forever. I've found the tool in the photograph to be very helpful when soldering things like switches, etc. You can reposition the magnifier light thingie around to the back side of the unit if needed, provide more access to things like a flipped over control panel on a Tele. I don't recall the price but it wasn't expensive and it's been a valuable tool for years.