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Musician thread

$899 is street price, which is fair enough given the circumstances.:thumbup

Welp, the vocalist I mentioned texted me out of the blue at noon and I just got home from a three hour practice with him and his drummer. Dude was not at all up to speed with the (rather plebian)tunes he wanted me to learn and insisted on playing his out of tune acoustic while he sang. Oh, and on two of the tunes it turns out he felt more comfy singing a step and a half higher than the studio versions, so I got to transpose on the fly. Yay, fucking garage band primadonna on the first date.:laughing

Though on the plus side, I’ve been involved with vocalists who were arguably worse and this guy isn’t afraid of technology. So, nowhere to go but up with this bunch. Still have a few lines in the water which is only prudent, but he’s already blowing up my phone for next week so what the hell. Otis Redding here I come...
 
Looks cool! How's it play? Pardon my ignorance, but isn't the whole purpose of a Tele for the wangly jangly bridge pickup? How does the metal plate on the bridge affect a humbucker tone? Any fancy electronic coil splitters or anything?

Speaking of Teles, I usually hate the relic jobs, but that Joe bonamassa HS custom shop Tele sounds frickin amazing. I wouldn't mind one of those in vos rather than the heavy relic they're doing them in
 
Haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but there’s a decent review of the features here:

[youtube]xF1QwhRGs9U[/youtube]

As for the setup, I honestly like the single cutaway, but wanted something with hotter pickups and a compound radius neck. This hit those targets for me.
 
So yeah, after I've had a chance to noodle with it for about an hour now, I absolutely love this guitar. It has the jangly highs as well as the thick lows. It's a Fishman active pickup system with "vintage" and modern" sounds toggled with the separate toggle switch between the volume and tone knobs but it also has coil splitting for taking it even further. :thumbup
 
Tasty!

So the neck is described as “hand rubbed urethane” which I’ve never heard of, but in the vids&pics it looks like a pretty straight forward roasted maple. Can you describe it feel-wise?

I’m not super picky and feel comfy enough with any neck finish, but my preference is always tung>roasted>gloss
 
Yeah it’s very smooth and quick. A far cry better than gloss, for sure. I don’t think I’ve owned a roasted neck guitar before so I don’t have much to compare it to.
 
Gotcha. Looks like it’ll be a while before I get to feel it myself. But that’s ok, I’m used to 12-22 week Kiesel build times so a couple months is nothing.

Meanwhile this little $650 Indo PRS has earned a “within reach at all times” spot along with my other go-to instruments. I’ve never owned nor played a 24.5” scale electric guitar in my life. It’s like a big floppy, fun loving puppy and my chronologically challenged hands really dig it. The tuning stability is off par from what I’m used to for sure, so I see a tuning key upgrade soon. But other than that, solid purchase.:thumbup
 
My bends aren’t as consistent as I’d like them to be so I’ve taken to practicing them with a clip on tuner.

Turns out, calling them inconsistent would be a charitable understatement.:rolleyes
 
Yeah, it’s pretty annoying. But I think it might be one of those things where a small tweak pays big dividends, so I’ll throw 5min a day at it during my morning exercises and see if I’m right. It’s kinda already helping my vibrato by giving me a solid benchmark to bend back up to after bending down a 1/4 or 1/2 or whole or whatever.

Because who doesn’t want big juicy vibrats...
 
Vibrato can hide bending intonation to a large extent. While an important expressive tool, I’d separate practicing vibrato from practicing pitch accuracy.

Bending is mostly a matter of ear training. There are physical sensations we get used to, but they vary all over the neck. Mostly, we just need to learn to be controlled in our movements, treating a bend as the precise movement that it is.

To bend accurately, we need to be able to hear ourselves as well as whatever reference tone we are trying to harmonize with. This could be another instrument or it could be ourselves. I think a good start is learning to bend accurately when there is no other backing track, nailing intervals. One routine that can help is playing a slow scale on one string, starting on maybe the third fret, bending up a whole step, then sliding up to the fifth fret (not bent) to see how close you got with the bend. On the fifth fret, bend up another whole step, then relax the bend and slide up to the seventh. Bend up a half step, relax and slid to the eighth, etc. This works both pitch recognition and the changing sensation as you work up the neck. That whole step bend on the third fret takes more force but requires less physical displacement than a whole step bend at the tenth fret.
 
Agree 100%

Re bends, I don’t look at the tuner until I’ve hit what I think is my target pitch. I’m using it to check my work, so to speak.



Not so much on the vibrats
 
I gotta stop spending money haha. My new R9
dkekkcO.jpg


In other news, anyone wanna buy a lightly used 2020 gibson slash standard?
 
Hnnnnnnnggg...what a beaut.

I’m keeping my powder dry for the time being though, but I’m sure you’ll find a home for her.
 
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