Leaving for NAMM 2018

And so it begins, with a weary early morning flight to the West coast.

What will this year's show bring? Will the pedal madness subside? Something new that can take your dreams and put them to music? Who knows, but it all starts here!

The big bummer is getting excited at the show, and then going back to a hotel with no guitar to put all that energy into making music. Add in a red-eye flight on Sunday night, which makes Monday a wash. I'll be lucky if I can do any creative noodling by Tuesday after I get home from work.

Anyhoo it's all worth it.

Here are the links for Performer Magazine's website and social media stuff, please follow and subscribe. You'll stay in the loop on our NAMM18 madness, as well as some cool articles on recording, performing and making the most out of any musical situation.

http://performermag.com/

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So in the spirit of today's travels, Going Back to Cali

Short Scale Goodness: The adventure continues

So a previous post covered some interesting short scale guitar goodness; I mentioned that I'd been jonseing for a short scale Fender Offset. Thankfully my wife (say it like Borat) reads my blog, went extra special for me this xmas and picked this up for me:

A Squier Mustang HH.

First off I'm not a name or brand snob in any way. Cool is cool. So I'm not put of by the Squier name. Most other retailers offered it n Black, or a shade of blue that is reminiscent of an old Shelby cobra. Musicians friend offered it this season in White or the Surf/Bel Air Green color mine came in. Colors are a personal preference, and I know where my tastes lie, and my wife knows me oh so well.

This guitar is alot of firsts for me:

First Squier guitar

First String through bridge guitar

First mail order guitar purchase

First short scale instrument

First Guitar given to me as an Xmas Gift.

Out of the box how does it play? Pretty good. First impressions: The frets could use some polishing, a decent setup and a good set of strings. But these are issues I'd have with pretty much any new guitar. Considering it's an Indonesian made instrument, and comes in at a really reasonable price point, I'm not surprised, and in some ways very pleased. We couldnt get new instruments anywhere near this quality for the price when I was starting out. I was lucky to get a used Hondo Strat copy for $100 in the mid 1980's.

Sound wise it's pretty nice, The twin humbuckers are really cool, and when used together sound really full. I look at a guitar like this as a great platform to do all sorts of mods. But If I'm going to do any changes, I'm going to wait and see after a bit of use. So far after one night of practice with my Original band, The Goodbye Theory, I don't have any issues with them, which is a great sign.

Squier stuff seems to get a bad rap in some circles, but they do offer some unusual fender style instruments that are just off the beaten path, like the P-51, or some seriously modded offsets like jaguars and jazzmasters. The price point isn't a bad place to start if you're not a purist.

I brought it to practice, and it sounded great, although it certainly needed a proper setup, which it got last weekend. During disassembly, we figured out that it was made on July 4th, 1997! It got some nice fret polishing, a truss rod adjustment, a new set of strings and a proper intonation.

After all that I brought it to practice and it played and sounded great. It's ultra light as well!The strings are still breaking in, but the setup alone made it a much better instrument!
Possible future upgrades might be, locking tuners, a better nut, some graphtech saddles. But these are items further down the road.

A buddy of mine has a 74 mustang, and comparing mine to his, It's an interesting take on a classic. Modding a vintage or even one of the newer Fender or Squier vintage versions with humbuckers fall in the "not worth it" category. I could have a made a partscaster mustang, but part of the coolness is it's an inexpensive guitar that doesn't need a lot. 

Attention is probably the biggest upgrade any new guitar can get. New strings and a setup are worth every penny.

My wife (again, say it like Borat) is the best!

Not so Shameless Self Promotion

Not to sound like the singer in Sex Bob-Omb, but:

I'm in a band

Yep, I'm totally in a band. Two actually. My cover band is "The In-Betweeners", which plays cover songs, hence the term cover band.

 

My original band is "The Goodbye Theory", which plays original music. I have to say I love playing original music, but playing covers certainly is an interesting experience. For 2018 I wanted to share some of my original music with you all, and we uploaded our entire catalog to Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon music, well pretty much every music platform. As I don' t know how to share an Itunes link here's the remaining ones:

SPOTIFY

AMAZON

GOOGLE PLAY

So If you're interested, check some of our stuff out, however, if you Subscribe/Follow this page, I will get you a link to all of our music for FREE. Yes FREE. ALL OF 5 EP'S!!!

 

I know it kind of defeats the purpose of getting people to download our music, but It will get the music to people that like original music, as well as get followers to my lil blog, so it's a Win-Win-Win..

New Years resolutions - 2018

This time of year New years resolutions really come into focus. Goals to meet, changes in attitude, lifestyle and well being. I like most musicians, always have great intentions and dreams, and yet my personal follow through seems to be lacking on one level or another.

My 2017 resolutions were to play more. I did that. My cover band played some really cool gigs, and it was certainly a great learning experience in many ways. 

One of my other resolutions was to get all of my guitars setup and configured in the optimum ways for my musical adventures. All the mods and changes I've thought would be cool would be finally achieved. I kinda fell short on that on a few instruments I own. 

So for 2018, I want to continue 2017's promises to myself, with a few new angles:

1. Play more. Pretty simple to do, My cover band, The inbetweeners, will have some gigs, but I'd really like my original band "The Goodbye Theory", to get a couple of gigs as well. So I'm adding that challenge this year! We have alot of tunes that we like, and think others will like as well!

2. Guitar setups. Yes I want to finish this one too. Thankfully alot of them are already good to go. But I'm adding one big curveball. My 1993 PRS needs some serious love. I'll have a post on THAT project soon! My tele could use some electronics love, as well as some locking tuners. The White Floyd rose Strat could use some little touches, that when added up, will make it alot more playable. On the lower end of things, my Paul Westerburg First act needs some new tuners. Plus whatever mods for my Squier Mustang. So I'll be busy with those this year.

3. Recording. I recently got a focusrite 212 and a Digitech Cabdryvr Speaker/cab simulator, Studio one and well as some decent studio monitors. So I have no excuse to be able to write, record and produce some music at home. I'm not saying the recordings will be awesome, but I'd like to do this alot more. One idea I have is to do a track a month, with just one guitar. Yes it'll have bass and drums (or loops or samples), but the only one guitar to be used, Rhythms, overdubs, solos, and anything else. I have enough guitars to keep myself busy on this.

4. Less gear obsession. yes It's easy to say this now. Talk to me after Day #1 of NAMM2018. But I have enough gear and equipment to actually do stuff without any bottlenecks or road blocks. I can easily do the bulk of the meat and potatoes work. The rest should be the icing on the cake. Yes I have eaten cake icing right out of the container, but thats just a meal that doesn't fill you up in any way. So I'm looking at controlling my GAS for 2018. We'll see how that goes tho! I do have some pedalboard issues I'd like to sort out, but it's more on the side of getting what I have to work together better, rather than a new rig, but it;s a fine line between solving an existing gear problem versus getting new gear that'll get lumped on my existing rig.

5. Be more interactive, I'm already on facebook, instagram and Twitter, but I'd like this forum to also be a way to communicate. If you'd like to follow/subscribe to this blog that would be a great way to share our music/guitar related resolutions and interests. 

We have 362 more days left in 2018, and I plan on making the most of them, not just musically but overall in my world. Considering music takes up alot of my time, I know it's alot of "more and the same", but I'm ok with that!

Happy New Year!

In Case You Missed it - 2017 Recap

What a wild and crazy year in gear! It started off for me at Winter NAMM in Anaheim in January 2017. As I'm prepping for NAMM 2018, I figure i'd share some of my NAMM experience, as well as a couple of cool items we checked out in the last year!

First off, at the NAMM show, I'm working. I'm a product reviewer for Performer Magazine (www.Performermag.com) , so I'm meeting with companies that would want their products reviewed by our magazine. It's a media event, and since I'm in the media, I'm their target. There are music store owners there as well, looking at companies that they may want to carry their products for their stores. Technically it is a "Music Business" event. 

My friends often suggest to me "hey check out these guys.." and I welcome the suggestions. It's tough but I do make notes to see them, and hopefully develop a relationship, but it's very difficult.

However in recent years,NAMM into a bit of a "comic-con" like event. There seem to be more and more people there that just want to check out the new gear, like it's a mega guitar store, as well as possibly meet musician/celebrities for autographs and photos.

As I'm in my mid 40's, I also don't really have any desire to wait in line to meet anyone. It's almost more fun for me to meet or see someone in passing. While walking down an aisle, munching on an overpriced wilted BLT wrap, I saw Dug Pinnick from King's X. I was able to wave and say "Hey Dug", He responded, "whats up man?" I was able to get out a "livin the dream!" between bites. He laughed and moved on. That's the kind of NAMM experience I like when it comes to meeting people.

But the big deal is the gear. It sets the tone for what we'll be able to see in the magazine in the upcoming year. I usually don't get a chance to really try stuff out, nor do I want to, unless It's relatively quiet (a rarity at NAMM), or it's something I can't control myself. Time is a factor, and I usually have meetings every hour. It's like drinking from a firehose that's shooting Jack Daniels. It's fun, but It's gonna be rough. I estimate I walk about 10 miles a day. Usually around November I start doing more cardio at the gym, just to get my legs in shape. It made a difference this past year, as I wasn't as beaten at the end of each day.

So I wanted to share with you all the items we reviewed in 2017, there are links below. Personally I have to say we're lucky to check out so much cool gear from great companies. A few items really stuck out to me though:

1. Fuzzrocious Moth. I love this pedal, it's a great blend of Distortion and fuzz, along with that weird oscillatior. I used this a bit with my cover band when we played "shake it off" by Taylor Swift. It's a fun and wild pedal. LINK

2. Vertex Dynamic Distortion. I like pedals that "blend" and this one does alot, with the sweep of the drive knob; Boost, TS, RAT, Fuzz, all with a really musical tone control. I'm not a fan of the stock tone controls on those kinds of pedals, but this one really works well. LINK

3. EHX Canyon. I always liked simple delays like the boss DD3 and the MXR Carbon copy, but I kind of dreamed of more expansive stuff like Strymons and TC and Lexicon type stuff. But getting such a big box on my pedalboard wasn't my deal. This is a great way to get tons of delay options as well as some extra functions like Octave and string like sounds, while being a smaller pedal! LINK

4.Taylor Guitars. Yes these can get expensive, but the Academy Series we reviewed were Pretty Frickin Sweet (PFS). and quite affordable. Their 810E was positively amazing, but had a amazing price tag at $3400. But it did make me consider selling an internal organ to get one. LINK

5. Supro Amps. we got their 1606R amp, and for a 1x8 combo it really rocked. Enough for me to really consider getting rid of my Fender HRD. Small size, big sound. and all tube. Alot of non amp companies used these to demo guitars, and effects pedals at their booths, as they were low volume, and sounded great! (link to come)

6 Chase Bliss Audio Brothers. You wanna pedal with drive options, yeah they do options on their options. LINK

We got a lot of gear to review this past year, well over 50 items; guitars, amps, basses, effects, microphones, and some cool accessories. So this list above is just a sampling of the stuff we got to check out! I can't wait to see what comes up this year. Drop me a line if anything interests you!

If you're interested in this blog, please hit subscribe, and here are the links for Performer Magazine's website and social media stuff, please follow and subscribe and you'll stay in the loop on our NAMM18 madness, as well as some cool articles on recording, performing and making the most out of any musical situation.

http://performermag.com/

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

INSTAGRAM