(second block, fourth letter of the prisoners' quadratic tap code...)

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Thu Oct, 30 2003

It Just Makes Me Bone-Tired

I know, I know: I am badly neglecting my project of annotating The Endarkenment.

I know, already: it is quite frivolous of me to be goofing around with something as silly as guitars while America is busy going to hell. It is, however, turning into quite a bit of work. There are seven of the damned things in this house, now, and I am suddenly taken with the maintenance project of it all. Today, I took the ES-355 in for work on its frets and a developing headstock crack. (I used to think this was an extreme crisis, but weeks of research have informed me that it's really not.) I also installed new pickup covers and did a neck adjustment and complete setup on the SG, as well as shopped for more parts. (This is a splendid little axe: my first eBay buy, and it could not possibly have gone better. I'll probably write about this guitar at some point, but for now, I'll just say that I wasn't so much thrilled as very intrigued when I first opened the case, and I am slowly becoming quite thrilled, if you can grasp that idea.)

Since about ten o'clock this morning, I spent about 45 minutes of every hour with a guitar in my hand. I've had myself a day at it.

I'm about to go to bed. Before I do, though, I just want to point this out:

I got a note about a discussion thread somewhere else. I went and looked. I left a comment.

I don't know when I saw such utterly rotten nonsense posted so credulously. I don't know when I last saw so many people talking so circuitously around an essential point.

Go read it, and take, for a single example, dear Kelli, who actually suggests that it's a good idea to pay bribes to commies. She doesn't put it in that many words, and I don't even think she understands that that's what she's saying.

I can't say which I find more horribly fascinating: the suggestion, or the fact that it's embedded in her mind like a soda-pop jingle.

And the whole thread is like that. It's a positive case-study in how not to analyze or argue these issues.

You know what?

There is time enough for me to fool around for a while. People like that will be around when I get pissed off enough to write about them.

Oct 30, 03 | 3:22 am
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AxeBites

Various guitars I see floating by, mostly Gibson and mostly eBay.

Early Norlin ES-335 -- 1970, in Walnut ("ES-335TDW"). This is a period-piece look and feel, and arguably the sound as well but that's to cut things very finely. A "classic" 335 would be the original of 1958 in the Sunburst or Natural finish, or the Cherry Red of 1959; the Walnut of 1970 (second year of that finish offering) is not really a "classic" 335. In the history of the Gibson aesthetic, this is analogous to, say, vertically-striped polyester bell-bottoms or Bahama Blue shag carpeting. None of this is to say that they're not cool guitars, and this is a nice one. Excellent photographs.

Chrome hardware, featuring the trapeze tailpiece (like my L-47 and I've always liked it) and ABR-1 bridge with period-typical nylon saddles. Bound rosewood fretboard, with small block markers, and then the crown inlay at the machine head. These would be the T-top Humbuckers. Vintage Nazis would moan that the upper bouts are pointy (the body templates were wearing-out in the factory) and the fourteen-degree machine head with the volute signals a sometimes not-fun era of the line, but these things really do rock or moan or whatever you want a 335-type semi-hollow to do. ...which, of course, is because it really is a 335.


In the months since I've let AxeBites languish all to bleedin' hell, Gibson's Robot Guitar technology has sifted out to other models than the original Les Paul application. I don't know how it's going: I still haven't even seen one of these self-tuners. I don't see piles of them burning on the sides of the highway, nor reverent hangings in display cases over bars, so who knows? This 2008 Robot SG is ready to rock in the Metallic Red. Nickel hardware; it's the stoptail wired for data to send to the tuners, with dual Humbuckers. It's a bound rosewood fretboard, but I really like the single-bound machine head with the crown inlay. That's a real cool old-school look, right there, to set off that crazy-ass color. {nod}