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

image
...am here to tap through the walls.


Mon Mar, 15 2004

Chores

Wow. Sometimes, new clients are a considerable piece of work.

I'm working up mechanical drawings and model images in order to convince a production manager for a major boy band (one of the older ones) that trying to tour a full-blast onstage waterfall is not a good idea. It's amazing what it takes to impress some people. I should think the idea of something like that in proximity to every possible variety of electricity might make the folly of it clear. Sometimes, though, they need all the circles & arrows on the big picture.

I've never even heard of someone trying that.

The live volcano suddenly appearing on hydraulic lifts might work, although there is a ton of details in something like that. I've made it clear that my work on the thing is merely conceptual. I don't build sets (although I've drawn some pretty detailed mechanicals in my time), and I don't know how anyone who does might tackle this, but they're not going to find it in these drawings. They'll just have to figure it out. (I'm suggesting four-foot telescoping sections so it'll fit under a five-foot deck, but we'll see.)

Onward. Probably for the rest of the evening.

Mar 15, 04 | 6:08 pm

The Eternal Flame

The Rachel Carson Memorial Funeral Pyre.

Mar 15, 04 | 11:09 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}