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

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Sun Oct, 08 2006

Travails

Wow -- I'm just poking around my online storage by FTP to see if I got a good download, and it occurs to me that the blog might be awake.

And here it is.

The way I understand it, the server that this blog lives on has been "unsuspended" by the people who own it, and whose bill my hosting company has not paid. So, the thing went black last Monday. Now, that's the story as I get it up to the minute, and I think it's right, because the person who announced this also took the authority to open the reseller servers so's people like me could download their stuff (about 1.3gb, in my case). He didn't have to do that, and a lot of people really appreciate it. As I understand it right now, the servers will be available until the 21st (after which they'll be formatted). If that means that everything will be as it is now, it looks like I can coast the blog right up until I get a new host going.

Let's see what happens. Watch this space.

Oct 08, 06 | 8:07 pm

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}