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

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Thu Nov, 06 2008

Home

That was twenty-two hours and twenty-three minutes on the move, from the first airplane to the last. Door-to-door from hotel room to my desk is way over a full twenty-four but I don't know -- I wasn't taking notes on that. Eight hours forty minutes from Jo'burg to Dakar, Senegal (big storms off the starboard wing about six hours into that) for fuel, pax, and on-board security follies. Wotta laff. Another eight hours two minutes from Dakar to D.C., for a three-hour hang before Syracuse. I had goofed the date of my pickup yesterday -- that's the only detail I dropped along the whole way -- and left my old friend Alan hanging at the curb when I didn't turn up. (About then, I was spinning out the last of my Rand notes at O. Tambo Airport and last good-byes to folx bound hither & yon.) Alan couldn't swing it this morning but the home team taped it all together for me and Michael B. was right there at the curb when I stepped out of baggage claim this morning, to haul my ass home to The Hollow. It was just beautiful.

"Damn," he said. "Homeland Security didn't ream your ass. We tried to call them..."

There's nothin' like good friends, I'm tellin' ya.

He told me they'd finally gotten the idea to plaster my car with Obama stickers and put signs all over the yard but they couldn't find any by the time they'd thought of it. That must've been a good laugh, dreaming that up. The rotten bastidges.

Right. Just walked in. I'll drip up some bean-sweat and see if I can get my feet under me.

Nov 06, 08 | 11:59 am

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}