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

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Thu Mar, 26 2009

All It Takes

"There remained an easy dialogue with Vyshinsky along set lines:

"Is it true that every opposition to the Party is a struggle against the Party?' 'In general it is, factually it is.' 'But struggle against the Party cannot help but grow into war against the Party.' 'According to the logic of things - yes, it must.' 'And that means that in the end, given the presence of oppositionist beliefs, any foul deeds whatever might be perpetrated against the Party [espionage, murder, sellout of the Motherland]?' 'But wait a minute, none were actually committed.' 'But they could have been?' 'Well, theoretically speaking.' (Those are your theoreticians for you!) 'But for us the highest of all interests are those of the Party?' 'Yes, of course, of course!' 'So you see, only a very fine distinction seperates us. We are required to concretize the eventuality: in the interest of discrediting for the future any idea of opposition, we are required to accept as having taken place what could only theoretically have taken place. After all, it could have, couldn't it?' 'It could have.' 'And so it is necessary to recognize as actual what was possible; that's all. It's a small philosophical transition.'"

(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation", 1973, 1974, Harper & Row. Vol. I, Part I, "The Prison Industry", chapter 10, "The Law Matures", p. 418, all emphasis original.)

Mar 26, 09 | 2:33 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}