I Know Some Stuff About Guitars

Guitar nerd stuff

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The Jesse. Behold and beware #csufsteelbridge #titanUp #pswc2016 #BeholdAndBeware (at California State University, Fullerton)

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At the game with my love. Win or lose--I'm always happy to be at a Kings game. #gokingsgo #giveburnsanoscarbecausehewontwinacup

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My amp is holiday ready

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Just obsessed with this EP right now. Probably more punk than everything @duhomie_omar has ever done 😉

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Buy Vintage Pedals

Oh boy, why did I find this site or stumble on to it? This is like a dream come true and a curse all rolled into one. This is like the most perfect sight ever for pedal junkies and they even let you rent them! The curse end of this is that all my time will mysteriously vanish while I'm on this site.

"Oh, it's 4:30, let me see what's on BVP." 

Five days later, my eyes will be squinting at the screen while I stare at the image of the purple majesty that is a Boss Delay. My skin will be pasty and filthy, my hair will be messy and oily, and my clothes will have a layer of dust on them. 

[iknowsomestuffaboutguitars]

[insert long breathy sigh] I'm sure there are friends of mine that probably won't acknowledge me after they see this post. But what can I say, this is a rad performance of ridiculously proficient musicians just doing their thing like it's nothing special. The harmonies, the vocals, the guitar playing--it's all top notch. This song is catchy and pretty slick and they're pulling it off live just like it is on the record. I can't think of too many bands now with this big of a hit that can play it this well live with this kind of underwhelming stage presence. Yeah, I said underwhelming--just look at them. They're just dudes hanging out that happen to be playing a song. Even in the Ramones sense of it, because the Ramones were just dudes playing, but at least knew they looked intense and that their sheer volume would melt your face off. Holy shit, I just compared the Eagles to the Ramones--there is a special place in hell for me now. These guys have no sense of the grandeur that rock could be, no conceit, no arrogance, no attitude, no sexuality, and you would otherwise have no idea that this was one of the biggest acts of the '70s. And here we see them near the top of their game. Is there anything wrong with them not being self-aware or having a false perception of themselves as gods? I guess not, it's just not very rock-n-roll. I just always thought you storm the stage like it's your kitchen. These guys don't even look like they rented the kitchen, more like they're just keeping an eye on it until you get back and they don't even want to touch anything. Ok, i don't know where I'm going with this anymore. If you mentally check out while watching the clip after 2:30 that's cool, it fizzles out right out there for me too.  

[iknowsomestuffaboutguitars]

Things that Never Should Be (or So Awful, It's Amazing)

(not even gonna try)

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I have a few friends that like to call me Cheddar. It all started when they found out I'm not a huge fan of a certain 20th Century Latin-American communist revolutionary. So they called me Che-mlilio, then just che, and somehow they ended up on cheddar. 

When I found out about this sweet-looking delay pedal, I thought it would be cool to post the link. It's from a boutique company in Buenos Aires (of course it is, just like that certain someone mentioned above). They have some other swanky looking pedals to provide some eye-candy for your board.

[iknowsomestuffaboutguitars]

Vinyl Record Pickguards

I'd like tip my hat to Mike & Mike's in Seattle for this swell little idea. It's a pickguard made out of a vinyl record. 

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I'm obsessed with this song right now. Cool guitar tones, rad solo, nihilistic fun angry lyrics, funny video, catchy chorus, cool production, rockabilly/surf riff. I like it so much I feel like the wrote the damn song for me. That dude would totally kill me with a bottle of Chimay. I wonder how he feels about Chimay ice cream?

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Hot damn, this is a cool jam but things get interesting building up to 3:37 when 3 dudes on keyboards vamp a bit and then watch rob pope, basser extraordinaire, lead the tune to a fine close. This track is also a good example of a record vs. song, like in regards to the grammy awards. "Inside Out" is a cool spoon song but it doesn't lend itself to interpretations by other artists. A good song, I think, is something that is enjoyable even when covered by someone bringing a completely different perspective to the piece. The things that make "Inside Out" cool, as it seems to me, would be lost by another trying to recreate the recording treatments, the interplay between the musicians, and the highly developed/refined vocal delivery. There's a lot to be heard just from the vocals even though they aren't written on the lyric page. Either way, the new spoon album is rad. This clip is rad. Thanks to my great friend, Ernie, for sharing it with me.

[iknowsomestuffaboutguitars]

saves the day rules

http://youtu.be/HN2GbNXl4Mc

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emo/mod/ska ...wait what? I don't know a whole lot about this band except that they were from Minneapolis and that they wrote this song that just rules. It's pretty unique in the way that it embodies those three distinct styles mentioned in the title of this post. Ultimately, this is just a great rock song. Between this band and the Rx Bandit's Progress, the amazingness of ska (well 3rd wave ska, I guess) just kind of shriveled. Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, Mustard Plug, and the Aquabats began to seem one dimensional. The guitar tone in "If You're Not Now (You Never Were) is stellar, especially for that period. Overdriven guitars in the verses?! No one did that at the time in ska; verses were always clean when playing those barre chords. And there's no excessive pedal distortion in the choruses either. But wait, there's more!--a great melodic guitar solo that isn't recycling the vocal melody and it has a cool lead in with the help of the organ. Brilliant! Maybe the Siren Six! didn't have a mega successful career chalk-full of mainstream radio hits, but they wrote and recorded this awesome track. Here's to the Siren Six! wherever they might be.

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A fun little quiz. I got big muff ...twice.

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The Very Best Brand of Strings Is...

...new strings. No, really. Indeed, there exist differences between brands involving core wire, winds, ball ends, coating, silk wraps, and what not. But a new set of whatever brand of strings is exponentially better than whatever you have on your guitar now. New strings are the best kind of strings.

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INDUSTRY STANDARD: Overdrive.

 THE GOOD: Sounds fine with any kind of guitar and any kind of amp for any kind of music, yet responds different enough to different players, guitars, and amps to keep things interesting. It's indestructible, unbreakable, will never fail, and completely mod-able. They've been around for ages and will continue to be around long after their expiration date. They cost around $100 new and there will always be a resale market for them. It does clean boost, slight boost, lead boost, grit, overdrive, distortion, fuzz, alternate tone, and over the top lead boost. It's fairly responsive to changes in picking and dynamics. It will definitely hurt if thrown at an uncooperative drummer.

THE BAD: The footswitch is hard to press and the indicator light is hard to see from most angles. The controls have too much interplay between them and this sucks because when any of the them are adjusted the others are affected. Subtle and transparent tones are hard to achieve. The amount of gain and volume on tap will always leave you wanting more. Most of the mods available don't actually do much. While it does clean boost, slight boost, lead boost, grit, overdrive, distortion, fuzz, alternate tone, and over the top lead boost--it does all those in somewhat unsatisfactory manner. There's are several less expensive clones, like the boss super overdrive and the digitech bad monkey, that have a better footswitch or more tonal control. There are thousands of clones that cost more, like the fulltone fulldrive, that offer more transparency, more features, greater control in all possible parameters, that look prettier, and have a good buzz that wow pedalboard enthusiasts. In fact Ibanez makes a few different versions that  are arguably better. 

EVERYTHING ELSE: If you haven't tried one and you have a chance, you should get acquainted with one. You won't be floored or have a humungous desire to get one, but it will never let you down live or in the studio. The better you play it, the better it will sound. It doesn't deeply affect your tone or add that much compression in it's harder to find subtler settings, unlike the boss super overdrive. As soon as you get to the edges of its abilities though, you already start wishing for something better. 

(I will be doing other "industry standard" type evaluations on other well known pieces of gear in the future)