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

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Wed Jul, 29 2009

Good Rotten-Ass Morning

I've got about two hundred pages knocked out of Montefiore's "Red Tsar", and I'll be burning that along today. Very good. For instance: I've never had a better look at Andrei Zhdanov.

Here is a discussion with photographs of my former 1977 Les Paul Custom, now in the evidently very happy hands of Jim in London, who has re-fretted it and swung some other details on it.

My net.reading over the last couple of days is fraught with every sort of bloody outrage, but this is very illuminating of the horrific state of politics in this country, now. This is criminal arrogance. No polity that values freedom could possibly brook that in peace. That doddering old sonofabitch -- and all like him -- would be instantly pitched straight into the Potomac. The implications of his audacity ought to be obvious, and I simply do not understand a people who would not be summarily done with him. That's the very face of hell, right there.

Jul 29, 09 | 10:19 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}