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

image
...am here to tap through the walls.


Tue Aug, 30 2011

Comes The Dawn Of Darkness

{hah!} Who fucking cares? The dekulakization has begun: who fucking cares?

My e-mail inbox has been flooded with popular requests to address this on my blog. I have nothing to say about it: I've said it all before. Tell me: why shouldn't I turn cynical and throw every one of you to the dogs? Why shouldn't I start voting? Why shouldn't I start paying taxes to fund these sonsofbitches?

They came for my cigarettes -- who among you said one word against it? I could ask questions like this all day long and there are no answers.

Why should I care? I've got a bagful of nice guitars, and when they take them away from me, then I'll be in the same leaking kayak with the rest of you, with one signal difference: I always told you they were coming, and almost all of you always thought I was out of my mind.

Well, I wasn't. I was way ahead of all of you.

Tell me why I should give one shit in the world, now.

Aug 30, 11 | 4:08 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}