Brad Paisley: Play

"This album is my love affair with the guitar.

When I was eight I got a gift from my grandpa. No coincidence that around that time I also got an identity. See, no matter how I have changed, learned and evolved as a person, the guitar has been a major part of it, and really the only constant. A crutch, a shrink, a friend, love interest, parachute, flying machine, soapbox, canvas, liability, investment, jackpot, tease, a sage, a gateway, an addiction, a recovery, backstage pass, pickup line, weapon of revenge, a makeover, compass, target, icebreaker, a temptress, a church, a voice, veil armor, and lifeline. My grandpa knew it could be many of these things for me, but mostly he just wanted me to never be alone. He said if I learned to play, anything would be manageable, and life would be richer. You can get through some real tough moments with that guitar on your knee. When life gets intense, there are peole who drink, who seek counseling, eat, watch TV, pray, cry, sleep, and so on. I play."

Those words are found in the liner notes of Brad Paisley's album "Play."

Before I go into the album, I just wanted to say that those words are just about what I would say describes my love affair with the guitar too. As in everything in life there are lines and everyone falls on it somewhere, and the world of guitar is no different. You have the folks that used to play but the guitar is now in the closet, you have the folks that strum at campfires or church and that's it, you have the folks that dedicate a little while each day to practicing, you have people that practice all the time (the famous "I stopped going to school and played guitar for ten hours straight" story) and you have people that eat, breathe and live guitar.

I'm not quite that far, but I do love the guitar. It's more than a mere hobby meant to pass the time without getting bored. The guitar is, like Paisley said, an identity. A glorious identity. Even if you aren't the best guitarist in the world, you still play guitar and that is cool. And there's so much potential for what it can be for you and where it can take you. You don't have to be famous either.

For instance: Because I play guitar and happen to find Gretsch guitars in particular fascinating, beautiful and probably my pick for best guitars ever, found my way the Gretsch Discussion Pages where conventions were organized and I was able to meet fellow fans and even Fred Gretsch III himself. I've been able to tour the FMIC headquarters and that was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my life and if I had been eighteen and single, I would have begged for a job right then and there. It looked like a great place to work.

You can meet so many new friends, communicate without words, connect emotionally, be both a teacher and a student and have the best fun in the world.

For me it isn't "My name is Pappy and I happen to play guitar," but "My name is Pappy and I'm a guitarist."

But enough of that, let's take a look at this album.

Brad Paisley has both a curse and a blessing on him, it seems. That curse? He's country. And while some may scoff at the idea that being country could ever be considered a curse, just think for a second that there are people who do not like fishing, who do not like hunting or trucks, or NASCAR or country music in general. So if you were to go up to a person like this and say Brad Paisley is an amazing guitarist, you may get a head nod and a "sure" but you know they wouldn't give your statement much attention.

Personally, when I went through a country phase about six years ago, I really liked Brad Paisley and little else. Where almost every country band sounded either the same or they sounded distinctly pop and less country to the point where you would expect more choreography and less guitars on stage, Brad Paisley stood head and shoulders above his competition. He wrote what he wanted, sang what he wanted, played what he wanted. He had no problem putting in his music that he was a devout Christian and had no problem putting instrumental tracks on his albums and even inviting the guitarists he looked up to as influences to record on his albums with full credit. In a world where there were a ton of pop bands and carbon copies of each other with only a cowboy hat to separate them from the Backstreet Boys, Brad Paisley was the real deal.

And some of his songs are particularly well written, but I noticed after a while the clever songs eventually grated on my nerves (as all clever things eventually do), and the love songs became a little boring, I was left with JUST the instrumental tracks on my iPod.

I bought his album "5th Gear" based on the amazing playing on the song "Mr. Policeman" and was disappointed in the album on the whole save a couple of songs. I just didn't connect with the material, I guess, though I could see that some people would really like it.

So I ignored Paisley for a long time until I heard about the album "Play" which was mainly an instrumental album. Finally. After throngs of people saying he's a great guitar player he FINALLY catered to THEM and not the normal country audience. In his liner notes he thanks his fans for indulging him on this album and I say no, Mr. Paisley, you should apologize to the fans for taking this long to make an album like this.

The album is 16 tracks long with five of them having vocals. These five, for the most part, I could take or leave. They aren't why I bought the album and while they may deal with being in bands or playing guitar in general, they would be just as at home on a normal BP album. I got the feeling that, besides the track "More Than Just This Song" the vocal songs were put on the album because he wanted the album to be at least a LITTLE marketable to the folks who don't pay attention to music instead focusing on lyrics.

The reason I pulled "More Than Just This Song" out of that pile is because it was written about Chet Atkins by a friend of Paisley's that used to play for Chet. As much as I would love to say otherwise, Chet just isn't in the mainstream and the message would be lost on the masses. Chet was an absolutely amazing guitarist, the reason so many other amazing guitarists even began playing and it's so sad to see people say "who?" when you mention his name. I guess it's no more sad than mentioning Les Paul the person to people who play Les Pauls and hearing them say "there's really a Les Paul?" The thought alone makes me shudder.

But beyond that, the song was recorded using one of Chet's Gretsches and one of Paisley's friend's guitars and the fingerstyle picking in the breakdown, while great for guitar players to hear, would again be lost on people who aren't as deep in the world of six strings.
So what about the instrumental tracks?

Man oh man, if you like instrumental guitar, this album is for you. Well, let me caveat that and say if you like instrumental guitar of varying genres, this album is for you. It has the country flavor of course, it has fast songs, slow songs, a surf song, a ripping song called "Kentucky Jelly" that reminds me distinctly of SRV. There's even a jazz song on it and the previously mentioned fingerstyle song "More Than Just This Song" which not only has great playing but the lyrics have a lot of heart too. Country is known for manipulating the listener in a ton of ways from making you beam with pride because you're from the U.S. to making you feel sadder than sad because a song deals with losing a child to cancer, to making you feel mad because someone's being abused. Country runs the whole gamut but if you ever DON'T feel anything, that's where country is failing you. The great country songs connect and make you FEEL something, but over time if you're anything like me, you'll grow tired of it and think to yourself "yeah, but what do THEY know about this?" I don't buy half of the sob stories in the genre anymore as songs sung from the heart of the singer. But that song has a true story to it and a true sense of appreciation.

Should you buy "Play?" Yes. If you have any indication that you like the guitar more than a solo here or there, this is one to get.

And maybe next time someone says Brad Paisley's a great guitarist you can nod in agreement and tell them what you thought of "Play."

-Pappy

The First Attack of G.A.S.

When you start out playing guitar, there always seems to be the guitar you’re always looking at, the one you desperately want, the one you’re working up to.

Things happen though and sometimes you don’t get that guitar. Sometimes you veer away from the style associated with the guitar (for instance, if you really enjoyed playing metal at first and wanted a flying V but over time decided that perhaps the funky blues is more your taste so you went with a Strat) and end up with something else, or maybe the funds didn’t arrive and you couldn’t wait and settled for something else. There are all sorts of reasons why this first real hit of G.A.S. never get accomplished.

When I started playing guitar I started out on a Peavey Predator. Being a huge fan of detuned nu-metal, a Strat copy without humbuckers and a maple fretboard just wasn’t what I was after. Initially I wanted a seven string Ibanez but I talked myself out of the G.A.S. by thinking that I can barely play with six strings so why on earth would I want to add another to the mix? Also, Ibanez had said for their RG7620 that they put the strings closer together to make for a more accommodating width on the fretboard which is fine if you have the hand-eye coordination to pick and fret the right strings at the same time. I doubted I had that coordination. Besides, I thought, wouldn’t seven strings limit me in some way? I didn’t know if it could or would, I was teaching myself everything about the guitar after all and so much of what I was “learning” was more like trying to figure out a riddle when you heard it over a static filled telephone line. You THINK you might have heard it all, but there’s a nasty voice of doubt in the background of your mind.

Anyway, I said a seven string was not for me (and about a year down the road said the opposite and ended up getting one that I was really proud of, that had amazing tone and I eventually sold because I just wasn’t using the seventh string nearly as often as I should) and turned my attention to Ibanez’s other offerings. I stayed with Ibanez because so many of my favorite players were playing Ibanez models of varying sorts so they must all be good, right?

I was browsing online when I saw it – my first REAL G.A.S. attack. An Ibanez Iceman. Oh, but not just any ordinary Iceman, oh no, something special. The J(ay) Yuenger signature Iceman, the ICJ100WZ. Check out the picture's of Michael's!








The WZ in the model number is almost certainly a reference to the fact he was the guitarist for White Zombie, one of my favorite bands.

The looks of the guitar were unlike anything I had ever seen. You can look around and see some guitars with stripes, some with patterns, some with iron crosses, but how often do you see a wicked bright green guitar with silver stars? And on such an oddly shaped guitar at that? The difference of the guitar called out to me. This was a guitar that someone would be proud to play, proud to show. It would stand apart from the pack and just listen to White Zombie’s Astro Creep: 2000! The tones are crazy!

Of course, I was just starting out again and was under the impression that a guitarist with a signature guitar used that guitar exclusively on recordings. It never occurred to me to ask what they used before they received the signature guitar but if I had hazarded a guess I would have probably said that they used the same guitar with the modifications that would eventually be standard on their signature models.

This was also my first dip in the signature guitar pool and to this day I love them. I think signature guitars are fun to look at and the more an artist talks about their guitar and its origin, the more I like it. I don’t mean that I like the signature guitars when the artist talks a lot about them, but I love hearing those stories. Like when Mark Tremonti kept getting PRS guitars and he kept sending them back saying it needs to be heavier with the pickup selector here, and four knobs and the pickups need to be hotter, and they sent him his first signature model that was so much like a Les Paul. This is incredibly interesting to me.

Unfortunately, when I found the J model, I was living in Hawaii and though there are some REALLY good guitar stores there, none of them stocked this model. Eventually though, I moved to the Mainland and asked my local Ibanez dealer if he could order the Iceman. He said he didn’t have to, there’s one in the back. He pointed out a normal black Iceman.

“This isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking the J model,” I said.

A smile appeared on the salesman’s lips and he asked why anyone would want to play something that looked like that.

I was heartbroken (this was also the time when I cared about what the salesman said) and let the dream die.

But dreams don’t ever really die in the way that you can visit their graves when you want to, when it’s convenient to you. They are more like vengeful zombies that come and attack you when you least expect it. And so, sometimes I will be sitting there and think about the guitar, about how I would really love to play one to see how I like the tone and feel, the balance. I’d love to see and feel how the guitar is in person.

Unfortunately, according to Wikipedia the guitar is incredibly rare and though you can find them for SALE, you probably won’t be living near a shop that has it in stock.

Fortunately, Abstract Guitars makes custom Iceman copies that look pretty good (even with the J paint job), but still, I want to know how it feels in person (balance is a big thing to me) before I go ordering a guitar online.

Still, it’s fun to stroll down memory lane once in a while and I always keep my eye out at guitar stores and pawn shops. One day I’ll see one.

-Pappy

To Guitar Noize:

I read the blog Guitar Noize posted (located here: http://www.guitarnoize.com/blog/comments/whats-your-pick/) and since I couldn’t find a comment box which may have something to do with my computer and I was planning on writing about it anyway, I figured I would post my response as a blog of my own and they can read it.
Oddly enough, Jon and I apparently both use the same awkward, impractical picking method and both of us are relearning how to play in a more normal manner (apparently we’re both having smashing success at it too) so I thought that was interesting.

I have a couple of Jazz III’s around and they’re fine picks but they’re still a bit too small for me. I think I may be able to use them now that I’ve had more time playing with two fingers, but usually my problem comes not from picking normally, but switching to hybrid picking when I tuck the flat back of the pick against the lower part of my index finger for support so I need a pick with SOME size to it.

Disclaimer: I apologize for the awful photography. My photographer is very busy this time of year so I'm forced to use a point-and-shoot Kodak and it's tough to take a photo of you picking hand (read: your strong hand) while trying to hold still.

Anyway though, above is how I normally hold a pick now. You can see there's still a ton of space so you can find a comfortable area and stay there instead of being forced to use a specific way like you would with a smaller pick.

Here's how I hold it when I go to hybrid picking.

Here's an inside shot of how I hold it when I hybrid pick. You can see how the back of the pick is stuck inside my finger joint to keep it in place.

Moving on...

Normal picks just seem too big to me now.

When I was recently deployed to Japan I checked out the guitar stores and found Ibanez picks. I had never in my life seen Ibanez picks before but only had so many Yen in my pockets so I could only pick one at the time. Not only were these Ibanez picks, but SIGNATURE Ibanez picks and I picked the Paul Gilbert pick. I’m curious if he uses these, but it was the size that drew me in. Just as fat as a normal pick, but quite a big shorter which means less space that my hand needs to pull away from and come back to the guitar as I string skip and I believe it’s helped with my speed quite a bit.

Here's a pick of a standard Dunlop 1mm next to the Paul Gilbert pick. The picture on the pic is obviously wearing away since I use it so much (exclusively if possible). You can see how much shorter it is than the normal pick.

But in case you can't, I put the Ibanez on top of the Dunlop and tried to match the back the best I could. It's a little more obvious now. It doesn't look so staggering, but that small amount of difference IS able to be felt and I think I benefit from it as a player.

I emailed Ibanez asking for samples of their other picks to showcase them here on the 5th Fret, but I haven’t heard back from them. No biggie, I guess because I just found them online at Zzounds.com so I might be buying a few assorted packs of their picks and definitely picking up a few bags of Paul Gilbert picks and I’ll still be comparing them.

Finding them was a great thing too. Up until just now I thought they were unavailable in the US and I've been incredibly protective of mine up until now. If I lost it, it was going to be a SAD day, and I think I would have to contact Lewis from Japan Guitar Journeys to send me more since he's over there and all. Now I can relax...

It blows my mind that such awesome picks wouldn’t be in every guitar store right next to the standard box of Dunlop picks. I love Dunlops as much as the next guy, but my Ibanez pick feels like it was made specifically for me.

So in the future there will be comparisons here on the Fret and I guess Guitar Noize just put a fire under me to get it done fairly soon to keep the conversation relevant. There’s nothing worse on the internet than coming back to a conversation that hasn’t been touched in months.

In the meantime, if YOU would like to try these picks out, here's the link: http://www.zzounds.com/item--IBAB1000PG. Five bucks for six picks seems a TAD pricey, but it's just five bucks so it's OK considering you're trying something new.

-Pappy

Return Of The E.P.

I'm going through the older episodes of Six String Bliss and since this blog started off kind of as a response to certain things they brought up, it's something I want to keep going with. In episode 54 (I'm pretty sure it was 54) they read an email from a listener that basically said that the album is killing the music industry.

What an interesting idea.

So I started thinking about it and how yes, there are an AWFUL lot of albums that have two or three good songs and then a tone of filler. There are even a wealth of albums where the ARTIST said that some stuff is filler. Apparently John Lennon's goal was to make an entire album that contained zero filler.

And while bands that use the album to its full potential do exist (like Tool) it seems that the album is being made because that's how it's been done for a while now. After all, no one wants to go out and spend eight to ten dollars on a four or five song EP when they can buy a 12 song CD for the same price, right?

You may remember back when Pantera released Reinventing the Steel in 2000. It featured a whopping ten songs on it, a small number by album standards and Dimebag Darrel was asked by Guitar World why one ten songs to which he replied that they are ten really great songs.

Quality over quantity.

Tom DeLonge used to say that the hardest part about being a musician is paring down the list of written songs, trying to weed out the filler but it needs to be done.

James Hetfield doesn't mind a small song count. Lars Ulrich does.

But in this day and age when a ton of people are just going to get on iTunes and download one song anyway, it seems like a waste to even make filler anymore.

So here's an idea: if you're in a recording band and you say or hear someone say "we just need one more to finish the album" but there isn't one more or there is one more but it's less than stellar, ask yourself why you need that track.

John Lennon had an admirable attitude toward the all killer, no filler album but he could have shifted his perspective and had the Beatles start releasing EPs of only the stuff that they thought was truly amazing and maybe they would be even more respected.

Ah, there's another point. Flooding the market with songs or albums doesn't exactly make you any more legitimate, at least not to me. I think that a band's goal, instead of releasing an album every year or two, should be in making incredibly high quality songs, and just focusing on that. They could release the songs one by one on iTunes, or in a collection of three or four, and soon enough they would have enough to bind in a full length collection. There's no rush.

Now, I'm not saying you can only write so many songs at a time. Some artists are very prolific. But why not try them out on stage for a while before you consider putting it down on tape?

I think in the long run the band that doesn't focus on the album and instead focuses on the song will end up ahead of the pack. Everyone will know that everything from that artist will be of high quality and therefore everything should be bought whereas some artists always have the disclaimer "I'd stay away from the album XXXXXXXXX. It's a ton of filler and not much else."

It's something to ponder anyway.

-Pappy

Green Day's Warning:

Greetings everyone, I’m here with another inspirational album, this time from Green Day with their Album Warning.

This was their sixth album (following 39/Smooth, Kerplunk, Dookie, Insomniac, and Nimrod) and featured a pretty radical change in the band’s songwriting and tone. Right before it came out Billy Joe was featured in Guitar World saying that it was a “total P90 record” and I was suddenly exposed to the P90 because of this album.

Before this album I was aware of two pickups: single coils and humbuckers. That’s it. Sure there were ones that looked different, but I didn’t get too bogged down with the details. Then I heard the album. More on this later.

When I first bought the album I was incredibly disappointed because it didn’t have the same attitude as their previous albums and didn’t… well, I didn’t think it rocked as much to be blunt.

Time goes by though and I watched the Behind the Music of Green Day and Billy Joe Armstrong’s wife commented that Warning was not an album written by a teenager, it was written by a guy who’s over 30 and it should sound different. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me without assistance but it was like a light went on in my head and I took another listen and with this new frame of mind, I liked it. I liked it a lot. It wasn’t MEANT to be this crazy, wicked fast in your face album, and with this idea I fell in love with the album. In particular, the songs 1) Misery, 2) Blood, Sex and Booze, and 3) Church on Sunday. Misery in particular seems to be the most radical departure from your normal Green Day which is why I love it so much. Not only is it lengthy, but it features a slew of instruments and a very cool rhythm, not to mention a story. Perhaps this song was the origin of future albums American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown?

The other two songs are not only great songs, but it’s the TONE I love. So this is a P90, eh? The songs feature less gain but there’s an attitude all its own in there. The best way I could describe it is that it sounds like all the growl is coming from the pickup, NOT from an amp if that makes sense.

The whole album is packed with great songs that should not be compared to albums like Dookie or Nimrod, because they really feel like they are from different bands (all except the song Minority which sounds like standard Green Day and was probably the song they used to get people to buy the CD as it was their first single) but if you do listen to it, listen to the tone of the guitar as much as you listen to the songs as a whole. The tone is amazing on most of the songs. Very, very cool album.

And coincidentally, according to Wikipedia (your source for all things with 100% fact and not even .5% of random, incorrect and often flammable statements) it is their lowest selling album. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia: “Though it produced the hit "Minority" and a smaller hit with "Warning", some observers were coming to the conclusion that the band was losing relevance,] and a decline in popularity followed. While all of Green Day's past albums had reached a status of at least double platinum, Warning was only certified gold.”

This is not the first time I happened to like the worst selling albums from a band either. I don’t have any numbers in front of me but I think These Days from Bon Jovi also sold poorly even though it was their best album in my humble opinon.

Perhaps it was the poor sales of this album that helped motive Green Day to go back to their roots a bit more with American Idiot which definitely sounds like it was written by a teenager and not a 30-something guy. Even Billy Joe said that this album is all about being 14 and rocking out in front of your mirror.

I think it’s sad to hear these great albums and then watch the bands go back to something a little more reliable for funds when they were well on their way to someplace new and someplace that seems to FIT more. In any case, Warning is an amazing album well worth checking out, especially the tracks I listed above.




Until next time!

-Pappy

GAS-X

I don’t quite know how to explain what happened. You know how when you have a cold, one day you wake up and you don’t have the cold anymore and everything smells sweeter, colors bright, the world better? That’s kind of what happened to me recently.

Sort of.

My GAS list has been pretty ridiculous recently, which I’ll admit freely. A 1956 Gibson Les Paul Custom Shop VOS, a Parker Fly, quite a few Gretsch guitars, a ton of amps from Satellite’s Atom, Carr’s Raleigh, Orange’s Rockerverb 30, some sort of vintage Fender, etc. etc. It was getting ridiculous. I was just wanting too much.

And like any situation when you put too much in, I reached capacity and like an overfilled balloon, I popped. I was sitting at work and thought about how right then I was good. I was satisfied with my guitars and my Gretsch in particular.

Amps, well, that’s a whole different story. I’m not satisfied with my Fender Blues Jr. so I’m selling that, I haven’t played my Orange Crush 15R in over a year so I’m selling that, and once those are gone I’ll be left with one amp, a Gretsch 5222 which is basically a Fender Champ clone. Besides a very annoying hum that comes with any sort of volume, the tone is sweet and as far as practice amps with tubes go, the Gretsch/Champ is pretty tough to beat. I hear with mods it becomes awesome, but I’m pretty satisfied right now and will be even more once I have a tech look at it to get rid of that dang hum. Every guitarist needs something bigger than five watts though.

Even if you don’t gig, I think we all want the CAPABILITY to gig should the occasion come around.

I’ve always been enamored with the Dr. Z Prescription Extra Strength (or RXES) but it’s packed tight with way more watts and volume than I’ll probably ever need so I really want to try the 15 watt Jr. version to see if the tone’s the same. If it is, I’m sold. It helps that the Jr. version has a master volume hidden on the back.

So there’s still a bit of GAS, I guess. And I want Joel’s Princeton Reverb clone but that’s for completely different reasons.

But as far as GUITARS go, I feel completely set with the guitars I have. It’s an odd feeling as a guitarist. I don’t think I’ve ever been satisfied with what I have. It’s interesting.

I will say though that I do want to modify my Gretsch a bit to make it even better and the mods will include a treble bleed on the master volume which would allow me to turn the volume down and still retain the highs that usually get cut off. I’d also like to swap the switch placement that is currently on it. Right now the pickup switch is closer to the headstock and the tone switch closer to the bridge and since I use my pickup selector much more often than my tone switch, it makes no sense the way it is. The last thing is I would like to install RCA jacks to the pickups so that any pickups I buy in the future can be installed or swapped out incredibly easily enabling more tonal options and less of a “stuck with it” feeling.

I don’t want to imply I’m not satisfied with my guitar’s tone, by the way. I am satisfied, but sometimes I want more options. More of a single coil sound, more of a PAF sound, maybe P90s, etc etc.

After I had this revelation that I was feeling pretty good about the guitars I have, I decided to try something out. I would try to play one guitar (my Gretsch) for an entire year and have that be the ONLY guitar I play that entire time. I’ll go ahead and amend the rules to include one that says “at home” because when I deploy as I often do, I always bring my Telecaster. So far that guitar has been everywhere the military has sent me after I arrived at my first duty station. I want to keep that trend going and when I retire, retire the guitar as well in a display case. Some people show off their shadow boxes with ribbons and medals, and who knows, that might be in the house too, but I like the idea of my guitar being displayed more. I physically put more into it after all.

The idea behind this experiment is that I want to see how this impacts me as a player. I’ve been spending a lot of time on the higher frets recently on all six strings and as a result, on the first day I tried this out, it was pretty tough to play the licks and one of two things will happen: I’ll either learn to play it on the Gretsch or I’ll put the notes somewhere else and flex my playing to accommodate the guitar. I think after a year of doing this the end result will be pretty interesting.

This revelation occurred on August 10th. This is being written on the 18th and so far, I’ve been sticking to it. It was pretty tough this last weekend because I modified my Telecaster and holding it in my hands as I modded it, it was pretty tempting to play it.

As a side note, the modifications was to the strap buttons. They were coming loose and while I could have easily applied glue to the screws and put them back in and that would have probably fixed them, there’s no guarantee that it would last as long as I need it to (about sixteen years) so I went to Home Depot and bought two eye-hooks, some clips, and some wood glue. The plan was to drill the holes a little bigger and a little deeper than the hole already was and install the eye-hooks, but while working on the upper bout my drill bit BROKE INSIDE THE GUITAR. I couldn’t get it out. So I moved a little higher and drilled a new hole. Once the holes were drilled I put wood glue on the threads on installed them. Then I took the clips and connected the eye-hook to the strap. The only way the strap is separating from the guitar now is if the strap broke (which has never happened to me), or if the screws came out of the guitar (which seems incredibly unlikely). It does look a little… rough, but it’s a guitar that goes all sorts of places that most others don’t and sometimes you need it to be a little more durable than standard strap buttons can provide.

I’ll also say that the Recycling Program is still on and it is still going to the Gibson Les Paul Custom Shop. Soon I’ll be looking for some sort of HTML code for a visual depiction of how close I am to the goal.

Back to the guitar though, while it was tempting to play the Tele, I did not. Even after only eight days I feel like my playing is getting better specifically for THAT guitar. My thumb is moving to a different, more solid location on the neck when I play fast and it’s interesting to me to see how things are changing in my playing style. To be clear, I’m not going into this with a goal or idea of how it will end up. The idea here is to just see what happens.

And I’m really excited to see what happens.

-Pappy

August 20th, 2009: News Below The Fold

Greetings, everyone! Pappy here with the News Below The Fold, keeping you up to date on website changes and updates as well as occurrences in the 5th Fret world that has little or nothing to do with music.

If you look to the right of the site you’ll notice links to a guitar Blog Directory as well as a Podcast Directory, both sure to give you tons of options to kill your time reading/listening to guitar-related material. There has also been two guitar charities that have links to the right, one for northwoodsjam.org which is setting up a charity called Guitar Club International, and one for Guitars For Vets. GCI is looking to put instruments in the hands of school kids and Guitars For Vets are looking to get instruments and lessons into the hands of military vets. Both are incredibly worthy causes that at the VERY least deserve a look.

Speaking of GCI, a short press release has been released on pages 16 and 18 of October’s issue of Vintage Guitar which is on newsstands right now. As cool as that is for GCI, it’s also cool for the 5th Fret because I wrote it. Being limited to a hundred words was incredibly difficult and I felt downright guilty for having to exclude Curtis Bias who was the inspiration for GCI with his own Guitar Club in the school he teaches at. Curtis, I apologize profusely, I honestly didn’t have the skill to fully convey the origins in one hundred words. I hope you accept my apology.

So if you have access to a bookstore that sells Vintage Guitar, be sure to pick this up and check it out. Not only for my little article, but also for the rest of the magazine which is great, including Gretsch White Falcon madness.

By the way, I only find it a sign of fate that the first major publication I get published in has a Gretsch on the cover.

So that’s the news. As always, regular articles will be published on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Thank you for your time and have a great day!

-Pappy

Zakk Wylde: This Space For Rent

I think a new record has been made as far as guitarists and their names on products go. I used to think that as far as guitars went, John 5 had the record with is five signature model guitars from Fender and Squier. I used to think Eddie Van Halen held the record for just about everything else from guitar hardware, to shoes, to companies that released EVH signature guitars.

Now I come to find out that my thinking is actually probably wrong. Zakk Wylde may very well be the most used name in musical gear ever.

Let’s tally, shall we?

He has a signature set of EMG pickups.

He has signature Gibson and Epiphone Les Pauls (three to be exact, all three offered in both expensive Gibson style and significantly cheaper Epiphone style).

He has a signature wah pedal.

He has a signature overdrive pedal.

He has a signature Gibson Flying V.

He has a signature Shredneck practice guitar neck.

He has signature strings.

He has TWO signature Marshall amps, one big JCM800 that was limited in number and a smaller 15 watt practice stack that was also limited in number.

He has a signature speaker.

He also has Gibson and Epiphone signature ZV guitars which have a shape that would only happen naturally if a Flying V and an SG were to get into a horrible car crash together and blind person were to be told that it is actually ONE guitar that needed to be repaired.

You see? LOOK at that list! That’s ten things that DON’T include the fact that his signature guitars come in a variety of finishes! It doesn’t include the things he endorses but is not classified as musical gear like leather vests or motorcycles or motorcycle gangs like the Hell’s Angels. That’s just musical stuff. And is he done? No way!

Epiphone recently sent out a blog that presented the Graveyard Disciple, a signature Zakk Wylde guitar that is shaped like a coffin. I’ve only seen this in one other instance: Kim Nekroman, the singer and bassist for the Nekromantix plays a stand up bass that is shaped like a coffin. To be entirely fair though, he plays for a psychobilly band and it’s a stand up bass so it’s pretty big. He also made it himself. In interviews he said that he was actually going to use a real child-sized coffin but it was just too heavy. That’s the only saving grace here: it’s big enough to really BE a coffin. That’s kind of creepy. A guitar that is shaped like a coffin that looks to be sized appropriately if you wanted to bury your 12” GI Joe just isn't all that creepy.


While I know that guitarists are just as different as any other group of people that have just one thing in common, I have to say that the ZV and this coffin guitar are pretty horrendous looking. I can’t help but look at the guitar that for some reason seems to have been pushed aside to make way for this guitar, the 1956 Les Paul Goldtop. Thank god I can still buy the $3,000.00+ Gibson version!

Now, I don’t know Zakk Wylde. I don’t really WANT to know Zakk Wylde. In interviews he comes across as incredibly rude and crass and while that may be the “rock star” way of doing things, I find it off putting. I say this because I want to emphasize that I don’t know WHY Wylde plays these things or lends them his name and trademark bullseye but I THINK it has a LOT to do with money.

I also want to offer a little build on something Wylde said regarding Epiphone. He said in an Epiphone ad “Since the 1800’s till the present day, Epiphone has made kickass instruments. Play Epiphone and play a part of history.”

While it is TRUE that Epiphone has been around since the 1800’s (1873 to be exact), they were among Gibson’s many competitors until Gibson bought Epiphone in 1957. Gibson had originally bought JUST the bass line of Epiphone but decided that they would control everything and made Epiphones by Gibson and offered them to dealers who were “still earning their stripes.” This allowed dealers to sell “Gibson-quality product, without treading on the toes of the traders who already sold the real thing.” The quotes are taken from Epiphone’s own history segment of their web site.

Yes, the name Epiphone has been around for a while but whereas it used to be a company that competed directly with Gibson, it slipped and became a subsidiary of Gibson and then after Ted McCarty stepped down, quality slipped and now Epiphone is trying to rebuild their status.

So yes, Zakk, the company name has been around for quite some time, but it’s hardly the same company.

Epiphone also said that they’ve been working with Zakk on other things that are scheduled to come out in the future. Epiphone should stop while it’s ahead. I don’t think a guitar shaped like an Oregon Trail wagon wheel named the Spoke In The Wheel guitar will sell well at all. Maybe a Les Paul with a graphic of a hundred dollar bill on the top (with bullseye of course) called the Color Green WILL sell well though. I think that one would probably have a better chance.

-Pappy

Port City Amps

In this day and age we see a lot of companies looking to recreate vintage gear now. They use the same woods, same colors of tolex, same circuits, same everything. This seems to happen as a result of two things: vintage amps are pricey yet people want them so boutique builders are more than willing to cater to this audience OR builders are trying to make the amps they grew up with better.

In this instance I feel good being born in the early 80’s. Not much from the 80’s is considered good gear-wise or at least none of the gear is held as high as pre CBS Fenders, Marshall Plexi’s etc. etc.

Because of this, innovation is very welcome to me. I love Parker Guitars, I love modern Gretsch guitars VS vintage Gretsch guitars (except for one that felt almost exactly like my 6118T) or any vintage guitars, really. I’m not hugely against solid state amps and one of my favorite amps is the Fender Cyber Twin which has this crazy setting in it that sounds like an organ called Frankenstein. I loved it.

And as crazy as innovations go, one thing almost always gets looked over.

Amp cabs. Sure, you have beam blockers, different speakers, different woods, but honestly, how significant is that difference?

Some folks who make their own cabinets even build the fronts to have slants to the speakers are facing different directions instead of both facing the same way. That’s pretty innovative, I guess.

But a company called Port City Amps takes the cake when it comes to amp cab innovation.

Not only do their cabs LOOK amazing, both the older wave design and the newer design, but inside their cab they have a 45 degree sound deflector in the back of the cab that takes the sound that is being pushed out the BACK of the speaker down to the bottom of the cab where another 45 degree panel is waiting to push the sound up and out the front of the cab to join the sound already being made. The result, according to Port City Amps, is getting the WHOLE sound to come to you which is an amazing idea.

A plus is that they say you don’t need as much to make as much volume or have as much power. One 12” speaker in a 1X12 cab is supposed to sound as big and powerful as a 2 12” speakers, and 2 12” speakers is supposed to sound as big and powerful as a 4X12 cab.

The setup I want to try is a Dr. Z RXES jr. through one of these and see how it sounds. I bet it would sound awesome, but I’m definitely up for hearing it myself.

Also, Port City gets huge points with me as a company. I emailed them and they sent back a very quick response that answered all of my questions. They were polite and helpful. What more could you ask for?

How about asking for a company NOT to shove their products down your throat as what you need?

If you think this is something that should be asked of a company, Port City agrees. In an interview they said that their amps ARE NOT for everyone. This makes a ton of sense to me but it seemed so weird to hear considering that every amp company in the world is trying to convince you that THEIR amp IS what you need.

Port City isn’t trying to play that game. They have amps and cabs and if you like the looks, ideas or sounds of them, they are happy to serve you or answer any questions you may have but they didn’t freak out at all at the prospect of me putting someone else’s head on top of one of their cabs.

That’s probably one of the classiest things a company could do, in my opinion.

There’s a dealer in Atlanta that I will hopefully be able to try one out and see just how it sounds. I’m super excited to give one a whirl. If there’s a dealer in your town, check them out. At the very least, cruise by their website located here: http://www.portcityamps.com and take a look.

-Pappy

MXR Carbon Copy

A Big sound in a Small Package

Effects pedals have always changed rapidly. The amount of circuitry that can be fit into a small package has increased exponentially over the last few decades and pedals of the 21st century can do things never imagined in the 1980s. In the late '70s and into the early '80s analog delay pedals were common but their circuitry limited them to relatively short delay times. During that time period I can remember hearing about digital delays on the horizon that would increase delay times substantially and decided to wait until these came out. In the '80s delay was used commonly and these new digital units contributed greatly to the sound of that decades music but at a cost. Digital delay was considered sterile sounding by some musicians and used analog delay pedals were popular in some circles.

Eine Kleine Delay History

The first delay unit was said to be invented by the late Les Paul as he experimented with multi-head tape recorders in the late '40s. By the late '50s there were at least two commercial tape echo units available, the Echosonic and the Echoplex. These created delay by temporarily recording a sound with one head and playing back that sound with another head. The spacing of the heads controlled the amount of delay and that could be manually set to fit the tempo of the music.

Tape echo units worked well and sounded great to boot. The electro-mechanical nature of the devices introduced some warble into the sound and there was plenty of tube-driven warmth sweetening the mix. However, that same electro-mechanical nature made them require maintenance and the endless loop tape cartridges had to be replaced from time to time. Most successful tape echo users developed their technical skills to be able to keep these devices running at top performance and not everyone wanted to deal with these issues. That is almost certainly the reason that compact, solid-state echo devices sold briskly when they hit the market.

If some was good, more was even better and the early analog delay pedals were soon eclipsed by digital delays with ever greater delay times. At this point these have even evolved into loopers that allow you to create a background track in real time and then follow up by playing a live part over this. Still, some have longed for the warmer sounds of the analog delay pedals and even the tape delay units, most of which are no longer produced.

Forward to the Past

In recent years vintage analog delay pedals have commended higher and higher prices on the used market and pedal manufacturers have taken note. The "bucket brigade" chips used to make these devices are once again being produced and new products using these chips are gaining popularity. My particular choice is the MXR Carbon Copy, a very compact pedal that has a warm analog sound and a lot of versatility.

The Carbon Copy has three knobs and one push-button switch. The first knob is the Regeneration control followed by a Mix control and a Delay control. The pushbutton controls the Modulation feature. Regeneration controls how many echoes are returned, Mix controls the level of these echoes in the output and Delay controls the delay time. Mod activates a mild modulation effect that simulates the warble of a tape echo machine.

In my experience the Regen control seems to sound best in the 10 o'clock position and the Delay and Mix controls are strictly a matter of taste and matching the delay interval to the tempo of the music. If the Regen is set too high it can get distracting, almost like dealing with runaway feedback.

The Mod control sounds to me like a bit of tremolo working in conjunction with some chorusing or perhaps even some light phase shifting. This is only evident when you strike a note and listen closely to the decay. In real-life situations it is very transparent sounding.

So What'll It Do?

I've tried to achieve three basic sounds with this pedal and was satisfied with all three of them. The first, and most straightforward is the tape echo sound you might hear on a Chet Atkins recording. All it seems to take is a clean amp, light reverb and a little tweaking of the Delay and Regen controls. I found that the Regen at 10 o'clock and the delay at about 10:30 was a good starting point for this sound. I also had the Mod button in and the Mix to taste but fairly high, 10 - 11 o'clock seemed to do it for me.

The second sound I worked for was a very generic sound I use for any number of clean guitar sounds. This is probably closest to the digital delay sound of which we've all heard so many examples but the analog delay makes it much less harsh. I've heard Pat Metheny use a sound similar to this at times and I find that it's a great sound for making a clean guitar sound full and rich. If you've ever heard Metheny's "Question and Answer" CD you'll know the sound I'm talking about. The settings I use are not much different than for the Chet Atkins sound but usually I tighten up the delay time setting that control closer to 9:30 I turn the Mod control off.

The third sound I tried was overdriven and the echo was fairly prominent. Paul Cotton of Poco uses this sound often on songs such as Indian Summer. The biggest difference between this and the Pat Metheny sound is the introduction of overdrive but it is tolerant of much more variation in delay times, regeneration and even mix. The Mod button is fair play for this sound too, it's a very flexible thing once some overdrive is added to the mix.

Conclusions

This is a pedal I expect to use a lot. The mix control can make it very subtle and there is no harshness added to the sound so it becomes very flexible being useful for everything from Rockabilly slap-back to a subtle way to add depth and interest to the sound of a clean guitar. The quality seems quite good and the dark green metalflake paint job makes it quite striking. It uses the same 9 VDC, center negative plug as Boss pedals so you can power it directly from a 1 Spot adapter. In my opinion this is a very fine, very cost-effective analog delay pedal that should do well in the market for many years to come.

This post can also be found at my personal website: MSorensen.net



-Synchro

Gretsch's Fantastic Flying Falcons!

Allow me to be a little self-indulgent for a just a little while, then we can get on with the show. One thing the 5th Fret does more than any other guitar blog I’ve come across is cover Gretsch guitars. All of the contributing writers, save one, have at least one Gretsch guitar and of us owners, we’re a little obsessed. This isn’t to say that other guitars don’t strike our fancies, just ask Nobody about his Eastman or Synchro about his Heritage and of course we know about Fieldhdj’s Telecaster fetish. If it isn’t a Gretsch, I personally like Gibsons and Parkers. Oh, and Ibanez.







And in time we may cover them in detail too, but they say write about what you know and I know about Gretsch more than any other company and I take any advantage I can to put out pictures of these great looking guitars and get the GAS building up for anyone who’s after great, unique and versatile tone.

Today we’ll be going over the Falcon line. We won’t be going over all of it but there’s just too much to be said about the line. I would wager that an entire book could be dedicated to the Falcon’s origin and evolution of the model.

So what is the Falcon? Well, it’s the top of the line, if you believe the guy who came up with the Falcon, Jimmie Webster. Webster’s idea was to make a top of the line guitar and spare NO expense. It was to be glitzy and over the top in visual ways that separated it from the guitar that was very close to it spec-wise, the Gretsch Country Club which featured the same construction, same scaled length and same pickups. The first Falcon – the White Falcon – was a Country Club dressed to the 9’s. The model number was 6136 and this is the model number that most associate with the guitar.

Over time it went through changes from having stereo capabilities like Neil Young’s famous Falcon, to the Baldwin-Era 7593 to the Pre-Fender Falcons, to the Golden Age of Falcons (in this writer’s opinion) of 2003-2005.

There are a few different colors and hardware choices from pickups to tailpieces, but a good example of the Falcon is below.



That’s the 6136DSBK and the 6136T-LDS. Don’t get too tripped up on the specific model number though. Gretsch really likes their qualifying numbers and letters. It makes sense too because it lets you the buyer choose the specific guitar instead of saying a 6120 but in black. There’s a specific model number for a black 6120.

Anyway, the reason these are great examples of the Falcon series is that they show both options for tailpieces, the Cadillac “G” Tailpiece and the gold plated Bigsby. Please take note of the brand name on the headstock and it’s vertical orientation and the wings to the sides. It’s pretty glitzy. Also, take note of the inlays. They are humpblock inlays with wings in the humpblocks. PRS may have birds, these Falcons have wings.

In 2005 these things, the inlays and logo orientation were all the same no matter which Falcon you bough except for Brian Setzer's. Glitzy, shiny, a little gaudy, with beautiful inlays.

In 2006 though, it became significantly more difficult to get a Falcon with these appointments. Most of them started looking like this:



Note the horizontal logo and thumbnail inlays. The square you see below the logo is a plate that says “Black/White/Silver Falcon.” The color is of course depending on which color you bought and are listed from left to right. If you’re equipped with eagle eyes you also spotted a difference in pickups. The previous Falcons have Dynasonic pickups while these have Filtertrons. In all honesty, there is no “which is better” because they make distinctly different tones but I think it’s a little sad to see a person sacrifice either the glitz of the Dyna model for the Filtertron model, or the Filtertron tone for the Dyna glitz, or the money and energy spent in buying after market pickups and having a luthier route the body to accommodate the Filters.

Now, this isn’t to say that these Falcons above are bad guitars because they aren’t. They feel and sound just like a Falcon should but if feel and sound was all that mattered, Webster would have been satisfied with the Country Club.

So, are there any more Falcons out there that don’t have signatures attached to them?



Oh, jeez! That scared me for a second. The 6136 is a guitar that I’ve been looking at forever and it’s always been the same shape with the same big f holes and the same appointments as the first White Falcon shown here. Anything else looks weird to me and to be honest, I’m not a huge fan. I think it has less to do with the quality of the guitar and more to do with what you have in your brain already. Imagine if you had never seen a Gibson Les Paul, but you were raised with Epiphone Les Pauls. The headstock shape would probably look different and weird to you and you may not like it one bit. That doesn’t mean the Gibson is less of a guitar or your Epiphone more of a guitar. It just means it’s weird to you.

These are weird to me.

As big of a fan as I am of Paul Roman and the Quakes, any Gretsch double cut looks weird to me. The one to the right is actually a modern remake of the Baldwin-era Falcon. You can see they got rid of the humpblock inlays and just put in block inlays. This is probably also where modern Gretsch got the idea for the horizontal logo. The small f holes and sharp pickguard seem to say (to me and probably me alone) less White Falcon and more White Falcon copy. I don’t mean to get too down on these two because there are fans of these guitars and the great thing about Gretsch is that for the most part, they try to offer everything to everyone which may explain why there are NINE standard Falcon models AND four signature Falcons. Kudos to Gretsch for doing that and kudos to fans for not all buying the same guitar and creating a sea of homogenous guitars.

But hey, let’s not dwell on these, OK? Let’s move on to the signature Falcons.



Left to right, the artists that these Falcons belong to are Stephen Still of Stills, Crosby, and Nash (and sometimes Young) fame, Bono from U2, and Brian Setzer from the Stray Cats, Brian Setzer and Brian Setzer Orchestra fame.

If the green looks a little odd to you, don’t worry. It looks odd to me too. I’m reminded of the Celtics every time I look at it. But some of the profits generated from buying that guitar go to DATA (Debt-AIDS-Trade-Africa) so there’s a good cause. I wonder though, with U2’s and Bono’s heavy involvement in (RED) if maybe this Falcon, lovingly named the Irish Falcon, is due to be refinished in red. Let me say right now, a red Falcon, maybe with black binding, would be just stunning. At least to me.

There’s one more to mention here.



This belongs to David Lee. Lee used to play with Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, one of my favorite bands and is now leading The Mercenaries. Back when prototypes were being thrown around, the guitar originally had silver sparkle binding on a white body which may sound like it would end up looking washed out but honestly it looked great.

As good as it looked though, I can’t argue with the end result. It looks different enough from a normal Falcon to have a different identity but not enough of a difference to make you look in puzzlement like one may with the 7593. It’s still very Falcon, without the bling which is nice because it walks the line so well. If you tone down the Falcon too much you end up with something that isn’t striking but this is able to play to both camps, the ones who want to be seen as the rock and the ones that don’t want to be JUST seen as they rock. This looks like it would be just as at home in a rocker’s hands as it would in a jazz player’s hands.

Unfortunately they limited the production to just 30 of the guitars world-wide, no matter how many emails I’ve sent, no matter how much I tried to rationalize that it deserves a permanent spot in the Falcon lineup.

Let’s talk lists! I love lists and apparently a lot of other people do, so what is my top 3 Falcons? Well, it would be the David Lee model, the Brian Setzer Black Phoenix (the only Falcon to not be called a “Falcon”) and the 2005 Silver Falcon.

Gretsch came to Macon one year with Cream City Music for a Gretsch Roadshow where they took over the top floor of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and stayed there all weekend. It was a weekend that I spent many hours playing away at all sorts of guitars. Never in my life had I seen so many Gretsches all there to touch and play and all for sale too (which was painful in a way). Fred Gretsch III also came by and we had a short conversation about my 6118T which is different than most 6118T’s in that it has trestle bracing as opposed to soundpost bracing which makes for a radically different sound and then I left him alone to talk to other fans who wanted pictures and autographs.



I walked over to the Phoenix that I had been playing and comparing all day long and pulled it down yet again and started playing it. The neck just felt AMAZING and to this day, I think it’s the most comfortable guitar I had ever played. It was awesome. As I’m playing I hear “HEY!” and turn and Fred is coming up to me. “Oh jeez,” I thought. He’s going to take it away or I did something wrong and I’m going to be asked to leave. I was nervous. It turns out though that Fred had stopped talking with someone in mid-sentence to come over and talk to ME about how great of a guitar the Phoenix is. He didn’t HAVE to tell me though, the proof was right there in my hands and I couldn’t put it down. The fact though, that Fred Gretsch wanted to come over and tell me about how great my taste was in guitar was just awesome. I walked away thinking “yeah, I sure can pick ‘em.”

So what about the Silver Falcon? Well, if you look at the current stats, the Silver Falcon looks an awful lot like the Phoenix. Same inlays, same pickups, same bracing, etc. Well, the 2005 Silver Falcon looked exactly like the very first Falcon shown on this blog, the Black Falcon just with silver everywhere the Black Falcon has gold. It has humpblock inlays, the vertical logo, the wings, and sound post bracing (which is really the only big deal construction-wise and it would compliment the Phoenix in a big way, I think) and in the end, the differences in looks and tone would be enough to justify getting both a Phoenix and a Silver Falcon. I don’t know why Gretsch decided to make the two guitars so similar, but that’s why I think the years 2003 through 2005 are the best for the Falcon.

So there you have it. All of the current Falcons, displayed for your pleasure with a lot of words in between. I hope you liked it and will leave comments with your opinions either way. If you would like to see more guitars in the Gretsch lineup talked about, let me know. Between me and the other contributing writers, we’ve played quite a few of them and have considerable experience with them. All we're really looking for is an excuse to talk about them.

-Pappy

Les Paul: 1915-2009

The 5th Fret rarely deals with news in the guitar world. We may let everyone know about contests when they strike our fancy but for the most part, there are more than enough blogs out there that cover music news and guitar specific news.

However, I couldn’t let this one go without adding whatever I could.

Lester William Polfuss or Les Paul as the world knows him passed away on August 13th in his sleep. To say that the guitar world wouldn’t be the same without him would be the biggest understatement in the world.

While there IS debate about whether or not he truly came up with the first electric guitar there is no doubt whatsoever that his electric guitar has become a staple in the guitar world. When people think “guitar” more than likely they’ll either think of a Stratocaster or a Les Paul and while that may sound like because the mental image is shared with another model, it’s truly a testament to the Les Paul guitar. Consider how many guitar companies and different guitar models there are out there and a whopping TWO pop up in popular culture enough to make even non-guitar playing folks think of the guitar.

The Les Paul is one of my favorites too. I know I’m incredibly satisfied with mine. It’s what I learned on, it has never treated me wrong and I’ve played it so much it needs new frets. It sits comfortably and as far as guitars go, when I put it on I feel like I’m home. I love it.

And while in college I checked out Les Paul’s music and was blown away by it. Anyone who has not heard the music from his time with Mary Ford NEEDS to. I loved it so much the first track was what played in my alarm clock for well over a year which was fine with me but my wife probably wouldn’t agree.

But he didn’t JUST make a guitar. It’s not JUST that, that guarantees his spot forever in the hearts of everyone who plays the six strings. And it wasn’t just his absolutely stunning music either. He was an inventor, a tinkerer to the highest degree coming up with multi-track recording and recorded most of the material with Mary Ford in their house – indeed in different rooms because of their different acoustic qualities which makes me think that people who build professional studios in their basements are missing out on the potential to record elsewhere.
And without multi-track recording the music so many of us love just plain wouldn’t be around. How great is it that his invention was picked up and used so much that it became taken for granted and now we get to say things like “the record sounds like a live show.” Consider how different that would be if the live show recorded was the standard. I would wager that nuances of guitarists wouldn’t be nearly as obsessed over now.

Les Paul was the guy that everyone looked up to. Even the people who are regarded as guitar heroes of this generation from John 5 to Tommy Emmanuel, from Steve Vai to EVH had a guitar hero and that was Les Paul. Without any exaggeration whatsoever, he was one of the central pillars that made what we know of not as “guitar music,” “guitar models,” “recording possibilities” or “guitar hero,” but simply “guitar.”

While Chet Atkins is often called Mr. Guitar because he played so well, I think that label should be placed on Les Paul.

The world has lost a truly great man today. Rest in peace, Les.

-Pappy

M.A.P.

Call it an inappropriate curiosity but I want to know how much it costs to make a guitar. Specific guitars. I’m curious to know how much money it takes to make, say, a PRS David Grissom model (with a gold top, why not?) in both materials and with the amount of work that goes into it. I’d also like to know the gory little details spread out for one guitar.

For instance:

Using the PRS DGT, how much money went into raw materials, and how much money went into refining those materials to the standard we associate with PRS including the amount paid for the electricity the machines used to route the guitar. Then I’d like to know how much money is being paid to the employee who is wiring the guitar, finishing the guitar, inspecting the guitar and so on and so on (in wages AND benefits). Then I’d like to know how much money is going to the big wigs in the corporation. All of this for this one guitar.

And while this may strike you as incredibly rude (it is, after all) to wonder about, I wonder nonetheless. Don’t get me wrong, I think PRS would not have cut the jobs they did recently if they could have helped it, but I wonder if there could have been a tightening of the belt at higher levels where it would be felt less and offering the guitars for less money.

This is providing the difference between what the guitar costs the manufacturer (with all of the above factors included) and what the guitar costs the consumer is great enough to warrant a price decrease. I’m certainly not saying you should sell them for what it costs to make them because that’s no way to progress but if the gap between point A and B is wide enough and the higher level executives are willing to play, why not shrink that gap a little? It would increase interest and purchases and, while you aren’t making as much money as before, you are not burying yourself in the red AND the guitars aren’t just sitting on the shelf.

But even if you didn’t want to do that, didn’t want to say that you do not deserve, say, $100.00 - $200.00 per guitar sold, there’s another way to inspire more buying.

Get rid of the MAP.

MAP (or Minimum Advertised Price) has its good points and its bad points. The good thing is that if you want a guitar that has a high MAP price and you asked a dealer how much it would cost to buy it and the price is ridiculously lower than the MAP, the potential may be so flabbergasted that he may think he got an AMAZING deal, plop down the credit card, leave with a new guitar and will probably keep coming back to the same dealer. This is even including the money the shop keep will pocket in the deal because the buyer doesn’t know what the guitar cost to manufacture or what the dealer had to pay for it. Good feelings all around.

Before I go ahead, I want to say right now that MAP is different from MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) which is a huge joke anyway. MAP is usually, almost always, considerably higher than the real price and MSRP is higher than that!

The bad thing is that the potential buyer has to ask and honestly, if the MAP is high enough, not many people will because honestly, how much lower could the real price possibly be? Just for kicks, look at a Gretsch 6136T on Musician’s Friend. The cost is $3,099.99 (with an MSRP of $4,425.00). Three grand for a guitar is ridiculous even though the Falcon is one of the best guitars in the world. So, now that you have this price in your head, call Joel at Shanghai Music and Sound and ask him what HIS price is for the exact same White Falcon. His phone number is (580) 718-9122.

When you realize how much of a ride you’re going on when you buy MAP (because honestly, who’s going to call Musician’s Friend and try to haggle?) wouldn’t you think “why are they putting this price up?”

Let’s say theoretically you’ve always wanted a guitar, any guitar, and the price you have always seen everywhere is five grand and because the guitar is five THOUSAND dollars, you always think that you would LOVE to have that guitar but you will NEVER get it, not unless you win the lottery or a dump truck full of money crashes in front of your house, and because you’re thinking (nay – KNOWING) this, you settle for less expensive guitars all your life, always with this one guitar always in your mind. Now say you found out accidentally, while talking to a buddy who works at a guitar store, that the price is NOT five thousand dollars, not really, but that it’s actually $1,500.00.

Honestly, could anyone stop you from throwing down the plastic on that? That’s a GREAT price after all.

Now, what if that guitar had always been offered in shops from $1,500.00 - $2,000.00? You’d still probably buy it right? But you’d buy it a hell of a lot faster than in the first scenario when you happened onto the information.

Don’t tell me you’d feel for the shops. Some shops provide such great service and have such a great reputation that people are willing to pay more for their gear because they aren’t just getting the gear, they’re getting the gear-buying experience.

Honestly, what else do you think would happen if they got rid of MAP and made the MSRP reasonable? Imagine if the MSRP, instead of $4,425.00 was $3,099.99. Imagine walking into a store and seeing that number with a slash through it and the dealer’s advertised price (because now for all hypothetical reasons they CAN advertise their real price) with something like $2,500.00 (which is just a number I cooked up and should not in any way be considered an actual quote. Call Joel if you want a real quote). Wouldn’t that be a deal? Wouldn’t the dealer still be able to pocket money? Wouldn’t the guitar maker be making money? Wouldn’t you feel good as you left the store? Wouldn’t you BUY MORE GUITARS?

All if they got rid of MAP. In understand it makes for a level playing field across the internet where price comparisons are so easy to make but you do buy with service in mind no matter how small that part is. I doubt I will ever buy a guitar from Guitar Center because their service leaves a lot to be desired, their prices are too high, and their products are often faulty (I saw a Les Paul that was missing it’s input jack after all). I would rather pay $100.00 or $200.00 more to buy it from someone who remembers my name, who will set the guitar up before he hands it to me to walk out the door with and whom I trust to not sell me junk. If you trust a dealer enough, you can even order merchandise sight-unseen which is always considered a gamble except by those that feel they know who they are ordering from and trust them.

Another benefit to losing that pesky MAP is more accurate sales figures. If a manufacturer wants to see if a model is selling well, but the model is MAP-ed out at a price so high most people can’t afford to ask how much it costs, the manufacturer will never see how popular the guitar could potentially be. How many cool guitars have fallen by the wayside because of this? If MAP went away a company could look at their sales figures and see that it’s way more accurate than before.

Also, people could buy the guitars of their dreams. Happier customers, more accurate data, more guitars being sold, money is still being made, honestly why is MAP still around?

Perhaps it’s because in times like these a company can lower the “price” of an item when they are really lowering the MAP and keeping the dealer cost the same? That’s a sound theory. With the distance from real price to MAP used as a cushion, a company could theoretically have a sale where they lower the MAP all the way to a level where the dealer would be making next to no money on the deal, but since it’s advertised it sure does SEEM like a deal. I think if a company did this it would be incredibly mean to the dealer, the person who is selling their merchandise and because of that, a person you should jump through hoops to please so your merchandise can remain in their shops.

I’ll say it right now: One day these big box stores will fall away and when they do, horrible business practices will force manufacturers to come crawling back to the small guitar shop with hat in hands saying things will be different this time. Why wait, folks? Start treating small shops with the respect they deserve.

Anyhoo, MAP may have perks, but it has cons too and even the pros, with some tweaking to the business practice, will become cons. MAP is keeping guitars out of players hands, plain and simple. And when this is happening, money is not being made by anyone, stock is sitting on the shelf just taking up the space of gear that could be selling. Lose it and see what happens. Lose MAP, lower the MSRP to the MAP level, and let dealers advertise their price. Guitars will get sold, money will be made, players will be happy. It’s a GREAT idea to lose it because MAP is such a hindrance to everything.

-Pappy

VH1's Hayday

Last night I sat down on the couch after putting my daughter to bed. I had my Les Paul in my hand (because it’s much more quiet than my Gretsch) and was softly noodling away at an old rockabilly solo which is brazenly called “basic finger style” by an online instruction site and my wife was watching a recorded reality show called NYC Prep.

This made me think of the other reality shows out there and when you think of reality shows, you think of the ones that REALLY stick out in your head. Rock of Love, Flavor of Love, I Love New York, Daisy of Love, New York Goes to Work, Tool Academy, etc. etc.

All of these shows are on VH1.

It seems to strange to me that VH1 has become this… kind of channel. I remember back when I was in high school coming home and turning on VH1 because I was guaranteed to watch great shows like Where Are They Now, Pop Up Video, Behind the Music or maybe even (shocker) music videos. There was even an amazing reality show called Bands On The Run where bands (real bands with multiple musicians) would compete playing real shows, selling real merchandise and basically being REAL bands all competing for a record deal. It was a GREAT show, one I rarely missed.

Not only that, but the music was good (for the most part). MTV had the music that was popular like rap and pop but VH1 had the Smashing Pumpkins, and Tom Petty, they even featured GWAR. You would never see GWAR on at seven o’clock at night on MTV.

Where have these shows gone? I know you can look at Flavor of Love or Rock of Love and say that at least there’s a famous person attached to music at the center of it, but those have spun off into side projects where the most famous person in the show is a person who was after a famous person on another show.

That’s no reason to get famous.

I miss when the shows had to do with music. Behind the Music is coming back, but the shows that are promised right now make a short list. Perhaps they’re just feeling out the crowd to see if more episodes should be made.

Because I’m a helpful guy I’ll go ahead and tell VH1 not to base the fate of making more episodes on the general crowd reaction or ratings from the behind the music of Lil’ Wayne.

My fingers are crossed though. Hopefully there will be a rebirth of these shows. At the very least maybe they’ll throw on the episodes that have already been made. I know Family Guy made a gag about how often they played the Leif Garrett story insinuating that VH1 plays Behind the Music all the time but it was interesting and fun to watch. Counting the shorter Behind the Music 2 episodes they have a vault of over a hundred episodes.

Any one of them would be better than New York Goes to Work.

-Pappy

Mercury Radio Theater Shows How An Instrumental Theme Album Should Be

iTunes allows you to buy individual songs for about a dollar (more if you want it to be DRM free with a higher bit rate) as does Amazon and few other sites.

This has caused some controversy in the music world because people are buying more and more individual songs instead of full albums. Looking at modern albums, though, you can see an increase in quality or at least an increase in songs that MAY not be considered filler. Think of how it used to be right before the internet music boom: A band would release two or three singles on the radio and music video channels and hope that these singles would be enough to convince any folks out there that are holding out that the album is full of songs that are just as catchy and just as good so why wait? Buy the album!

Then you would go out and buy the album and there would be a ton of filler on the album. This caused a ton of people to stand up and say that they’re sick and tired of albums with one or two good songs.

These are the people that are buying one song at a time. And for good reason, considering the past.

One way to fix this is having more singles released on the radio. A great example of this is the singer Rihanna who, on her Good Girl Gone Bad Reloaded CD has not two or three but SIX singles on a 15 track CD. Six singles that I can count anyway. I’ll be honest here: I’m not that connected to the pop radio world.

But is releasing more than two thirds of a CD to the radio the only way to handle this situation of music buyers one song at a time? I don’t think so.

There’s the theme album.

Modern theme albums are not nearly as prevalent as they used to be (The Wall, Tommy, etc.) but they are out there. The most widely known modern theme album that I know of is Green Day’s American Idiot which, while it has singles to entice people to buy the album, has a story in the album.

Of course, Green Day released 21st Century Breakdown which is also a theme album so perhaps they are trying to see the validity of the theme album VS a normal album.

Imagine though, if you had an album that contained a story throughout the album, you would probably want the WHOLE album, right? I mean, why read only certain chapters (out of order, more than likely) of a book? Would you skip around reading this page, then that page, sometimes moving forward sometimes back? Of course not. Unless the book is a bad one that isn’t pleasurable at all to read, you would probably read from beginning to end, and completely, right? So if you knew that an album was a theme album and heard a track or two that you liked, would you be inclined to buy just those songs or roll the dice on not only the quality of the other songs on the album but the story too? Wouldn’t the story be an added bonus, enticing you to get the entire album?

I think so. I would be more inclined to listen to a whole album if there was a story keeping me listening which seems a bit obvious when it’s written out, but you know what I mean?

But what about themed INSTRUMENTAL albums?

John 5 has at least two instrumental albums, The Devil Knows My Name and Requiem and they feature themes (famous serial killers on The Devil Knows My Name and torture devices on Requiem) but if the titles didn’t clue you into what John is playing about, is there really any way that you would know what one song is about, let alone that all the songs are connected by a central theme?

I can understand with an album like Black Aria from Danzig because there’s always this recurring sound to it that lets you know the whole album is connected and to me it seems less like a theme album and more like one huge piece of music that gains layers as the track number gets higher. I get that. But something like Requiem may leave me scratching my head if I found out that it was supposed to be a theme album if it did not have the track list it does.

There has to be a way to convey a story with music though, and sure enough, a band called Mercury Radio Theater have figured it out. They have a story and music to match points in the story but instead of relying on track titles (if you have the CD in a normal CD player in your car you may not even have access to the track name) they have a narrator come in between the songs telling an actual story and then a piece of music would follow that was acting not only as a more primal way of telling a story but as a bridge to the next bit of narration.

The album I just listened to was called The Blue Eyed Model which features not only an amazing story that makes you want to sit in your car after you reach your destination to hear the end of it, but GREAT music. I STRONGLY recommend you check it out.




If you listen to it, you’ll see how a modern theme album can work and be successful in a way that won’t leave you buying one song. By all means, check it out. It’s well worth it not only as a great album but as an amazing example of what a modern theme album can be.

-Pappy

Win A Gretsch Guitar

You may remember just a little while ago I posted a blog about the Reverend Horton Heat's new album. If not, the link is here: http://5th-fret.blogspot.com/2009/07/laughin-and-cryin-with-reverend-horton.html.

Well, to add to the hubbub, Yep Roc is putting on a drawing for a free Gretsch Electromatic hollowbody guitar. The link on Yep Roc's page goes the Gretsch 5120 which is the highest selling Gretsch guitar right now and for a reason. They're stellar guitars and great ways to introduce yourself to the new, bizarre and often frightening world of Gretsch. The bridges aren't usually pinned to the guitar, more often than not they have weird pickups, the odd number of knobs and switches freak some people out, the bridges are usually weird, sometimes there's a zero fret etc. etc.

The 5120 is the most user-friendly hollow Gretsch out there for newcomers though. Standard humbuckers, standard tune o matic bridge, no zero fret, a tone knob, etc. To me (and this is not meant as an insult) the reason this guitar is so popular is because it's so... normal. It's got all the features you probably have on your guitar at home, they're just on a bigger, more empty guitar, so there's a level of instant familiarity involved.

And as you get more and more into Gretsch (because it's something you can really get obsessed with), you can modify the guitar to be fairly close to the more expensive guitars.

So, if YOU wan to to win one for free, all you need to do is buy the limited edition deluxe set of the new RHH album. You have to pre-order this. It is limited to 1,000 after all.

Now let's think about this: yes, you do have to BUY something to enter the contest, but honestly, the RHH has never let me down so much that I would hesitate to buy another album. They constantly have amazing guitar work, great songs, and it's fun to listen to.

Besides that, when else are you going to get 1 in 1,000 odds for a free guitar? Those are pretty great odds and worst case scenario you have a deluxe edition of the new RHH CD with two CDs in the box, a custom container, and a shot glass. Best case scenario, you get all that AND a free guitar!

So check it out: http://www.yeproc.com/news.php?articleId=6221.

-Pappy

Sex Sells

Guitar World’s latest Buyer’s Guide came out complete with models.

This always strikes me as a curiosity. I like girls as much as the next guy, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve always been interested in the GUITAR, not the eye candy holding the guitar. To me, the eye candy is the guitar.

I look at these magazines and wonder what the sales figures would be if the they didn’t hire models to display the guitars and amps and pedals and whatnot and instead used that money to put in more pages and show more products from the companies instead of the very brief smattering of the company’s line.

Would the sales figures be higher or lower?

Is the guitar playing population really interested in the guitar or are they looking for pinups for their walls?

Honestly, when I buy a guitar magazine, I only want the guitars. If someone were to make a magazine that featured nothing but reviews, I would subscribe. I would also subscribe to a magazine that featured well thought-out and in depth articles and interviews. I would ALSO subscribe to a magazine that wanted to teach a variety of styles and genres at different skill levels.

Basically, I want Guitar Player to split off into three magazines. Maybe, to make sure the content always has quality to it, they should release them once every three months. An article/interview magazine one month, a lesson magazine the next, a review magazine the next and then back to the article/interview magazine.

I would subscribe to all three if they were separate publications and if they were all under the Guitar Player header, I would obviously subscribe. I really feel that trying to hit each section is a fine goal, but the content suffers when you limit an article to, say, two or three pages (with ads).

And what about these annual buyer’s guides or product reviews? I’m all for it if they were thicker and actually gave you an idea of what each company was offering. I don’t care if there’s a girl holding the guitar.

But even if you wanted pictures of girls, why not get pictures of girl guitar players? Female band members would probably be more than willing to donate their time for free (and a mention of their band) to be in the publication so all you’re paying for is the photo session. How many great pictures of bands that happen to feature females are already out there without the term “model” being thrown around?

And how do female guitar players feel about this? I’m incredibly curious about this. It’s ridiculously stupid to think that, even though the hobby seems to be male dominated, that it’s OK to put something like this out without the consideration of what could very well be a large section of hobbyists.

Look at it this way: if there were a publication that featured half naked guys with abdominal muscles and no chest hair that just make the ladies swoon featured in a guitar review book, would you buy it?

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with a pretty girl holding a guitar in a picture, I just don’t see the need to pay money toward that when that money could be going into making a more fleshed-out (pardon the pun) magazine.

I asked the guitar playing folks around me and they seem to all agree, but I’m curious what you think. Please tell me if you think I’m nuts or if you too think a guitar buyer’s guide should focus solely on the guitar? Let me know. I’m genuinely curious.

-Pappy

NON Guitar News

Well, Gear Vault released their top ten list of blogs and oddly enough, only five were on the list. The reason this is so is because these are the only five guitar blogs that meet their criteria and are "rockin' blogs."

Here's what they said: "Though Gear-Vault is a committed webzine, an all-in-one resource musical instrument palace, we strive to supply matter-of-fact information and music gear reviews for musicians researching straight forward, no fluff, no frills wealth of knowledge. With that said, we also enjoy surfing and reading some of the over-populated guitar blogs that can be found plastered all over the interweb when we’re killing time, and if you, the reader, has the patience and don’t mind spending the time and energy digging through authors muck and useless personal opinionated force-fed bloats, you will eventually find a diamond in the rough that actually supplies some knowledgeable and useful information. Gear-Vault has been secretly auditing guitar blogs around the blogoshere for the past 6 months. We took the liberty to compile the best guitar blogs which do not fall into the laziness of posting useless garbage and personal bio-hazard poo, here they are listed for you."

To all the other blogs a message was sent: "If you are a guitar blogger or want to start a guitar blog, take lessons from the aforementioned guitar blogs. These guys are the real deal and will be successful beyond the blogosphere. These guys get it! Don’t feel bad if your blog didn’t make it, it is hard work and not for the faint of heart."

It's been a while since someone's said "you're just not good enough."

In a way it's kind of upsetting. Not just for me, mind you, I'm not sitting here crying sour grapes over my little blog because I know the hits are pretty low when compared to others but there are a lot of good blogs out there and for Gear Vault to say "here's the five and that's all that's worth looking at," well, that's a little upsetting.

But in another way it's kind of freeing. I'm not considered legitimate and if I'm not considered legitimate, why limit myself to JUST guitar or music oriented blogs here? Why not tell some BIG news in my personal life and to hell with the folks that say it's just not good enough?

A caveat: I have a personal blog but I think this is important enough to post here and if this meets the criteria, then it's going to be rare to see a personal post here.

On Thursday night my pregnant wife and I went to the hospital for a scheduled inducing. I'm in the Air Force and the schedule is obviously tight and she DID go full-term so she scheduled to be induced to best accommodate my schedule (the trooper). We dropped off my two year old at a friend's house and checked in to the hospital. They gave her the usual drugs to soften the cervix and then to cause contractions. The whole process was going on for about seventeen hours until my wife was crying out in pain and she wanted DRUGS RIGHT AWAY. The nurses saw she was in some wicked bad pain and called the anesthesiologist and while we were all waiting the nurse said my wife's stomach looked a little weird. Like the baby's head was on top, not on bottom, so she went off to get the ultrasound machine. She wasn't an expert on the machine (I found the "on" switch for her which was still less difficult than reaching behind a Fender to turn it on blind for the first time) but we got the machine working and couldn't find the head. Then another nurse came in and found the head in the bottom like it was supposed to be but there was a problem in a specific area of my wife's stomach which, when pushed, caused her incredible pain. She was sobbing and crying and pleading asking if everything was okay and apologizing for whatever she might have done that was wrong.

So the nurses went from thinking the baby was breached (upside down) to thinking my wife was ruptured (bad news). But there was no blood which is a tell-tale sign of rupturing and the doc came into the room and checked her, felt that she was still too close, not open enough to deliver but something WAS wrong, most definitely wrong and they needed to do an emergency C section right away.

Now, my daughter was an easy birth. I held one of my wife's feet so she had something to push against and watched my daughter (who's named after my favorite guitar) came into the world. It was a natural birth (albeit with a lot of drugs) and everything was easy like Sunday morning.

THIS was not. The bed was yanked from the wall and they tore down the hall yelling at each other. A frazzled nurse looked my way and said "come with me!" She explained as I followed the bed that since this was an emergency C section, they were going to knock her out completely and since this was an absolute emergency, I was not allowed in there. She planted me in a chair facing the door of the O.R. and I waited.

Up until then I had been updating my FaceBook with anything new and here I was with no one to call and talk to about this, no one to help me out. No one was at the hospital with me and my best friend was getting cut up. I have never, ever in my life felt so scared and alone. I had my iPhone in my hand thinking I should call someone but who to call and who would understand when I hung up all of a sudden to deal with whatever news came out of the O.R.? I didn't know who to talk to so I talked to everyone via FaceBook explaining that I have never been so scared and I've been in situations where I was pretty certain I was going to die. Me dying, that doesn't really bug me (or it wouldn't for long). My wife dying, THAT bugs me. My unborn son dying bugs me. My eyes were welling up and right then I wished I hadn't seen so many movies where fathers and husbands lose their loved ones and are forced to go on alone. I kept picturing it in my head and it wouldn't leave.

The doors kept opening and closing and there was a growing number of bloody towels on the floor.

This was it. I was sure they were both gone. I couldn't hear any crying, the staff was yelling at each other, and I resigned myself. I would now be a single father and life just wasn't looking good at all.

But then the doors opened and a nurse came out saying to me as she ran for something that the baby's out and crying. I tucked my head down and said to whatever's out there that I appreciate it.

With my head down, a hand touched my arm and a nurse said that my wife is fine, my son is fine. Do I want to come back and see him? Yeah. I do. They made me put on a mask and a hat and when I saw him there on the table moving around I just about lost it. Here was my son. Something had gone horribly wrong and yet here he was.

It turns out that in the womb he twisted and turned so much that he wrapped his cord around is neck not once but THREE times and was choking in there. In my head I was thinking as tears of gratefulness were soaked up by my mask that if she hadn't been IN the hospital right then, like she wouldn't have been if she hadn't scheduled the inducing, or if the nurses HADN'T thought her stomach looked a little weird, well, I wouldn't be looking at a moving baby boy right then.

My wife was still knocked out and they asked what the boy's name will be. It had been planned that his name would be Joel Alexander. Recently though my wife was talking about naming him something else and since the situation warranted it, I said what the hell and named him Adam. I wouldn't give a middle name just in case my wife would wake up pissed that I took that naming right away from her. She ended up liking it though.

Right now she's still in the hospital. The nurses call her Superwoman because she has refused all pain meds after about twelve hours of morphine. She said she didn't need them and she doesn't. She's a tough chick. If she was in pain she would take them, don't get me wrong, but she's not in pain. Looks like our doc did everything right.

My son's there with her for the night. They'll probably come home tomorrow. I'm at home with our daughter who can't really grasp the fact she has a brother let alone what happened. As far as she's concerned, she had a great sleepover at a friend's house.

-Pappy