Technology Updates
 

On 1/14/2014 6:15 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/13/2014 11:26 PM, thumper wrote:
On 1/13/2014 4:14 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:

Another example using guitars as the subject:

The early (1950's era) Fender Telecasters had horrible pickups,
especially the one in the neck position. It had a dull and muddy sound.
But the music of that era was recorded with them and it established
"the sound" of a Fender Tele.

Which one do you pick up more often, the tele or the strat?
(wondering if I 'need' a tele also...)

And what's the scoop on the little 'M' amp? A vintage deluxe-reverb
clone?



Probably two or three Strats for every Tele. The shop does a lot of
consignments as well as straight out buys and I've found that people who
find a Tele that they like tend to hold onto them more so than a
Stratocaster.

The "M" amp (stands for "Marshfield Amps") is a custom build by a
friend, Jeff Neely, "The Amp Smith. He builds tube amps to your taste,
meaning clean, or will break up easily at low volumes. I wanted a
vintage, clean vintage Fender sound and that's exactly what it does.
Sounds similar to a Fender Princeton. Has reverb and puts out about 12
watts which is more than enough for use at home. I rarely turn the
volume up beyond 3.

I had the Surf Green Telecaster and the Surf Green Strat, so he finished
the cab in Surf Green as well.

The Tele and Strat are also custom built by another friend who is a full
fledged luthier. He built the Tele from scratch and installed slightly
warmer pickups on it. The Strat started life as a made in Mexico Fender
but was totally stripped down and all the pickups, controls, bridge and
vibrato were replaced with upgraded components. A standard Fender
vibrato assembly is notorious for not returning to the same position,
even when adjusted properly. He put a Callaham bridge and vibrato
assembly on it that fixes that. The tone control is also a "pull" switch
that adds three more pickup wiring configurations to the standard five
way toggle switch.

To me, the most important part aspect of a guitar is how the neck feels
to you. Second is weight. All the other components can be easily
changed or modified. I liked the neck feel of both of these guitars so
they became "keepers". I like and have owned Gibson Les Pauls, but they
are too heavy for me, even the chambered ones.

The other guitar in that slide show is a somewhat rare one. It's a
Heritage H-525 that the last time I researched, has a production run of
about five per year. If you are not familiar with Heritage ... they are
basically the original Gibson. When Gibson moved from Kalamazoo to
Nashville in 1985 many of the craftspeople and luthiers could not or did
not want to relocate. Gibson made a deal with them and they set up shop
in the vacated Gibson factory and started producing Heritage guitars.
I've seen a few of them over the years and the fit, finish and overall
quality of Heritage is superior to that of a typical modern Gibson off
the production line. I like the sound of a jazz box, so I set the
Heritage up with 11 gauge flat wounds and found a Polytone jazz amp for
it. Great sound.

My favorite and "go to" guitar is the Tele. If you have a Strat, you
really should also have a Tele in your collection.




thumber ... I realized after I posted this that I misinterpreted your
question. By "Which one do you pick up more often, the tele or the
strat?" I thought you meant how many we got at the guitar shop.

But, I did answer at the end. It's the Tele.

Technology Updates
 

On 1/13/2014 9:00 PM, Tim wrote:

There's an old saying - "Tele's tell no tales" They are what they
are, and it just about seems they're mandatory for playing country.
But then again, Kieth Richards was always known for playing a Tele as
well as Geo Harrison.



When Leo Fender designed the Telecaster he followed the example set by
Henry Ford in terms of mass production which was a totally new concept
for building guitars.

One thing he did was to make sure that no special tools, screws or bolts
where to be used. All the hardware required to assemble a Telecaster
could be found at the local hardware store. Simple was the word.

The other thing was that interchangeability of parts was key.
You can take the neck off one Telecaster and bolt it on another and it
will fit and play perfectly.

That's not the case so much anymore, depending on where the Telecaster
is made although I think the American produced Teles still have
interchangable necks, etc. The ones that are produced in Mexico, Japan
and China may not.

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I agree about the wood variations, but my '97 Am. Std. Tele weighs more than my Japanese "Wayne's World" Strat.

Technology Updates
 

On 1/13/2014 10:50 PM, Califbill wrote:
Or you be like me that worked with card sorters and pneumatic card readers
with 110 db 3' from the heads, and you are missing certain frequency
ranges. Makes cheap players sound OK.

Nothing beats adjusting hammers on a high speed drum printer printing
lines of e's or dashes.
Maybe that's why my Creative speakers sound so good.

Technology Updates
 

On 1/14/14, 9:00 AM, Hank wrote:
On 1/13/2014 10:50 PM, Califbill wrote:
Or you be like me that worked with card sorters and pneumatic card
readers
with 110 db 3' from the heads, and you are missing certain frequency
ranges. Makes cheap players sound OK.

Nothing beats adjusting hammers on a high speed drum printer printing
lines of e's or dashes.
Maybe that's why my Creative speakers sound so good.


A few months after I was recruited by The Associated Press, I was
offered a sweet job as correspondent covering West Virginia and parts of
Ohio and Kentucky. It was a great assignment. I had "offices" in several
cities, but those offices typically were nothing more than rooms off the
city room of the local AP member newspaper. Nothing fancy.

One of those offices was at a newspaper that had expanded its building.
The AP office was set up in...a former mens' room. All the toilets and
all but one of the sinks had been removed, and the walls and floors
retiled where the fixtures had been.

The problem was the room also served as the "trunk" for nearly a dozen
AP teletype machines, and the clatter in that room was unbearable, or at
least it was for me. In those days, the correspondent, writer, editor,
whatever, would prepare his or her own copy and also edit for resending
on the state wires national or regional copy that came in over the
machines in the form of typed out copy and on punched paper tape.

Unless there was hard, breaking news which required me to head to a
particular office, I basically was a circuit rider, visiting each of my
offices several times a week. I was assigned a keypunch operator who
would meet me on my schedule to keypunch whatever I wrote and edited and
put the news on the "A" wire or the regional or state wires.

My keypunch operator was a very nice young West Virginia guy who was
pretty much deaf because of his several years of working in the former
mens' room office. The noise in there was just unbearable, and I never
actually worked in that room. I just grabbed an empty desk in the
newspaper city room and did my typewriter typing or editing there.

When I left The AP, I advised the young man to find himself a lawyer and
sue the wire service for a work atmosphere that made him deaf. I don't
think he ever did; decent jobs in West Virginia were hard to come by in
those days, and my guess is that he preferred to be deaf and working in
an otherwise safe office making decent pay than being down in a mine or
driving a coal or chemical truck.

Technology Updates
 

On 1/14/2014 4:16 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/14/2014 6:15 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/13/2014 11:26 PM, thumper wrote:
On 1/13/2014 4:14 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:

Another example using guitars as the subject:

The early (1950's era) Fender Telecasters had horrible pickups,
especially the one in the neck position. It had a dull and muddy sound.
But the music of that era was recorded with them and it established
"the sound" of a Fender Tele.

Which one do you pick up more often, the tele or the strat?
(wondering if I 'need' a tele also...)

And what's the scoop on the little 'M' amp? A vintage deluxe-reverb
clone?



Probably two or three Strats for every Tele. The shop does a lot of
consignments as well as straight out buys and I've found that people who
find a Tele that they like tend to hold onto them more so than a
Stratocaster.

The "M" amp (stands for "Marshfield Amps") is a custom build by a
friend, Jeff Neely, "The Amp Smith. He builds tube amps to your taste,
meaning clean, or will break up easily at low volumes. I wanted a
vintage, clean vintage Fender sound and that's exactly what it does.
Sounds similar to a Fender Princeton. Has reverb and puts out about 12
watts which is more than enough for use at home. I rarely turn the
volume up beyond 3.

I had the Surf Green Telecaster and the Surf Green Strat, so he finished
the cab in Surf Green as well.

The Tele and Strat are also custom built by another friend who is a full
fledged luthier. He built the Tele from scratch and installed slightly
warmer pickups on it. The Strat started life as a made in Mexico Fender
but was totally stripped down and all the pickups, controls, bridge and
vibrato were replaced with upgraded components. A standard Fender
vibrato assembly is notorious for not returning to the same position,
even when adjusted properly. He put a Callaham bridge and vibrato
assembly on it that fixes that. The tone control is also a "pull" switch
that adds three more pickup wiring configurations to the standard five
way toggle switch.

To me, the most important part aspect of a guitar is how the neck feels
to you. Second is weight. All the other components can be easily
changed or modified. I liked the neck feel of both of these guitars so
they became "keepers". I like and have owned Gibson Les Pauls, but they
are too heavy for me, even the chambered ones.

The other guitar in that slide show is a somewhat rare one. It's a
Heritage H-525 that the last time I researched, has a production run of
about five per year. If you are not familiar with Heritage ... they are
basically the original Gibson. When Gibson moved from Kalamazoo to
Nashville in 1985 many of the craftspeople and luthiers could not or did
not want to relocate. Gibson made a deal with them and they set up shop
in the vacated Gibson factory and started producing Heritage guitars.
I've seen a few of them over the years and the fit, finish and overall
quality of Heritage is superior to that of a typical modern Gibson off
the production line. I like the sound of a jazz box, so I set the
Heritage up with 11 gauge flat wounds and found a Polytone jazz amp for
it. Great sound.

My favorite and "go to" guitar is the Tele. If you have a Strat, you
really should also have a Tele in your collection.




thumber ... I realized after I posted this that I misinterpreted your
question. By "Which one do you pick up more often, the tele or the
strat?" I thought you meant how many we got at the guitar shop.

But, I did answer at the end. It's the Tele.

Thanks, I did mean pick up to play for while. I have a strat and a Les
Paul deluxe but mostly play the strat for its versatility and comfort.

That Heritage reminds me of my first guitar that I got as a kid from my
uncle. It was an *old* Gibson single pick-up, no cut-away but otherwise
very similar. I wish I still had it.

Technology Updates
 

On Monday, January 13, 2014 10:50:50 PM UTC-6, Tim wrote:




I have a Bose table top radio/cd player and it's good for what it is, but nothing like Haul Harvey advertized that it replaces a whole 'wall full' of equipment.

Paul Harvey, Tim... "PAUL" Harvey!


crank it up and it barks like a dog. Well, not really but for the money it's over rated. I lost the tiny little remote control for it and bought another for a whopping $44.00 about 10 years ago. That's the last time it'll happen.



Now speaking of cabinets that could hold a small child, Well back in 'the day' I bought the best I could afford. and shopped for quality used.



I ended up with a Kenwood Kr 7070 receiver and two Ohm F speakers (Walsh drivers). That Kenwood was rated a 350w. and you could NOT over drive the Ohm titanium cones! I thought that wasn't enough, and I couldn't find any more Ohm's so I got a couple of Klipsch "Heresey's" for a quad system. The only other item I had in the system was a Technics cassette deck with 'chrome' and Dolby. I couldn't use a turn table because the system would rattle the tone arm. So, a friend of mine that worked at a radio station would bootleg albums for me. Also my consortium of friends would buy albums, or go to the local library and borrow them and rack them onto tape as well.. I had a good collection of 'stuff' and bought all my equipment of less than half value. Still over a thousand in the late 50's. I just sort of build as I went.


"Late 50's? How about late 70's? I swear I'm typing challenged!

Technology Updates
 

On Tuesday, January 14, 2014 6:55:04 AM UTC-5, Mr. Luddite wrote:

I paid the $12K. Sold the case by itself for $3,700. Bought a era

correct but new rectangular case for $200 and sold the guitar and it

for $12K.

You ARE a stupid ass, aren't you? More money than brains.

PAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA