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

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Thu Feb, 12 2009

Busyness

Between what I have to do here in Japan every day and the running fight going on over at SOLO, I haven't had time to attend this blog. I hate that, but it's just the way it is.

I sneak a few moments out every now & then for Gibbon's "Decline And Fall".

I have been asked several times why I'm devoting as much effort as I am to that mess over there. I haven't explained it to anyone because it's a very complex matter and that work would soak up time that I don't have. I will tell you this: Lindsay Perigo's assertion about "the esthetics, Stoopid" is just as back-asswards as it can possibly be, and the times call for every single decent mind that can be brought to the real fight of our lives. That nonsense cannot be tolerated.

This place will return to its regular Endarkenment annotations as soon as possible, which might not be until I get home, around the 16th of the month. I might be able to blurb here or there before then, but the mass of disaster that I see everywhere now makes that a fairly slim possibility.

Hang tight, or not. That's your call, and I will take my chances.

Onward.

Feb 12, 09 | 11:12 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}