ILF Unplugged

[le lambin]

I know you all play guitar. Electric guitar.

I don't...

I probably play electric guitar about 10 minutes every 24 months. I play Ableton (randomized sequencers triggering piano samples into copious amounts of delay and exotic reverbs).

When I move this year, I'm going to get a piano or three and run them through granular delays and tape machines. I haven't played a tuned piano in years. I would like to experiment with any type of piano again. (baby grand, upright, student model, popsicle sticks)

My apologies, my assumptions often get me in trouble.

3 pianos? You’re going to acquire three acoustic pianos?

It might be the most beautiful sounding acoustic instrument, in my opinion. And, though three of them would occupy my entire apartment, it is nice to imagine what that would be like.

[Blackened Soul]

Well as long as they are in tune… otherwise you can just aim for interesting

[coldbrightsunlight]

My acoustic instrument focus so far this year has been learning clawhammer banjo and it's going alright.

Interesante. I dabble with a very old Vega tenor banjo. It turned 102 this year. What sort of music are you learning to improve your proficiency? Are you going full bluegrass?

Oh wow! That's cool having something with so much history. In terms of actual banjo repetoire I'm learning old time folk stuff, a lot of Pete Seeger and traditional tunes. Plus using the techniques to learn how to play my own music and covers of more modern songs. I've barely tried bluegrass type picking at all though I love bluegrass and the weirder places Bela Fleck takes that style to. So I'm planning to at some point, but for now I'm really entranced by the traditional folk style and trying to get better at that.

Dubkitty love the look of that Kalamazoo! Very cool.

[dubkitty]

i was amazed when it arrived in the mail...it was nicer than the guitar shown on the eBay page. the flamed back and sides are ridiculous. seriously, it looks like an $800-1000 guitar, not the actual price of $399. i haven't had to do a thing to it other than replacing the pins with buffalo horn like i always do; i got that from Larry Cragg, Neil Young's guitar tech. well, sometimes i use casein or bone pins when the look of the guitar demands white pins, e.g. on the 12-string.

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[friendship]

I play acoustic more than electric tbh. I've just been a couch noodler since COVID, but back when I was writing songs I preferred writing them on an acoustic, or with a piano.

My Hummingbird is in retirement because the neck has pitched so far forward that it's become too difficult to play. I should get it repaired, but I'd have to do a full neck reset and get the bridge replaced and that's going to cost a fucking fortune. I got it in 2002 and wrote a lot of songs on that guitar.

To "replace" it, I picked up a Guild M-20 on Craigslist for pretty cheap as the owner had put a few dings in it. Totally different sound and feel, but I like it.

I also have a bottom-of-the-line Alvarez nylon string that is very comfortable and fun to play.

And that's the wayyyyyyy the news goes

[niftyprose]

Martin LXM Tenor. Like the other "little Martins" this is made of "high pressure laminate" (=clear plastic with sheets of paper-thin timber for woodgrain) and so is unnaturally strong and largely waterproof. I found the six-sting Ed Sheeran version underwhelming but the four-string Tenor and high-tuned Tres both play great, with a strong but slightly artificial sound quality that reminds me of older Ovations. Mine's tuned CGDA but I'd make more friends at sessions if I took it down to GDAE -- just don't know if it will give a convincing low G.

Mandocello (low CCGGDDAA) made from an old Vega archtop. Sounds great but very, very hard work. Bach cello suites every morning with a metronome.

[le lambin]

Martin LXM Tenor. Like the other "little Martins" this is made of "high pressure laminate" (=clear plastic with sheets of paper-thin timber for woodgrain) and so is unnaturally strong and largely waterproof. I found the six-sting Ed Sheeran version underwhelming but the four-string Tenor and high-tuned Tres both play great, with a strong but slightly artificial sound quality that reminds me of older Ovations. Mine's tuned CGDA but I'd make more friends at sessions if I took it down to GDAE -- just don't know if it will give a convincing low G.

Mandocello (low CCGGDDAA) made from an old Vega archtop. Sounds great but very, very hard work. Bach cello suites every morning with a metronome.

Tenor guitar is an unusual choice. I’ve never actually played one. I think the assumption is, why have 4 strings when you can have 6. But, from my limited time spent playing the tenor banjo, I can attest to my enjoyment in playing it. The baritone ukulele is also essentially a 4 string guitar.

I play Bach every day as well! On the guitar though. Prelude for lute BWV 999. That and Merry Go Round Life by Joe Hisaishi from Howl’s Moving Castle- a never ending quest to get it right.

[le lambin]

I play acoustic more than electric tbh. I've just been a couch noodler since COVID, but back when I was writing songs I preferred writing them on an acoustic, or with a piano.

My Hummingbird is in retirement because the neck has pitched so far forward that it's become too difficult to play. I should get it repaired, but I'd have to do a full neck reset and get the bridge replaced and that's going to cost a fucking fortune. I got it in 2002 and wrote a lot of songs on that guitar.

To "replace" it, I picked up a Guild M-20 on Craigslist for pretty cheap as the owner had put a few dings in it. Totally different sound and feel, but I like it.

I also have a bottom-of-the-line Alvarez nylon string that is very comfortable and fun to play.

And that's the wayyyyyyy the news goes

A family member of mine has a Hummingbird- I’ve never played one but I hear it’s a really nice guitar.

I have a 90s Alvarez nylon string- I think it’s an intermediate instrument, not sure. But very pleasant to listen to. I used to have a bottom of the line Alvarez dreadnaught- I really liked it. I think that brand is slept on a bit.

[le lambin]

i was amazed when it arrived in the mail...it was nicer than the guitar shown on the eBay page. the flamed back and sides are ridiculous. seriously, it looks like an $800-1000 guitar, not the actual price of $399. i haven't had to do a thing to it other than replacing the pins with buffalo horn like i always do; i got that from Larry Cragg, Neil Young's guitar tech. well, sometimes i use casein or bone pins when the look of the guitar demands white pins, e.g. on the 12-string.


oriole back.jpg


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oriole side.jpg

Dubs, this looks sick. What a nice guitar

[le lambin]

Well as long as they are in tune… otherwise you can just aim for interesting

Imagine sitting in the center of three uprights slightly out of tune with eachother arranged in a triangle around you, and your chair swivels freely. I feel like your temperment greatly determines your joy! Or agony.

[niftyprose]

Tenor guitar is parallel-universe instrument. It had its brief moment pre-WWII when banjoists were transitioning, but disappeared as bands got smaller and electric six-strings started taking on wider roles. Thing is, if you think about the function of the guitar in more recent styles like funk or reggae, tenor might actually be a better fit than a six-string (assuming you could actually find one).

[dubkitty]

if you’re willing to play Quality Roulette Eastwood has, among other things, quietly become probably the largest seller of tenor guitars in the US. they started with a Warren Ellis signature model on a Duo Sonic framework, but now have everything in their inventory that would work in a 4-string including Strats, Rivoltas, and even a hollow archtop based on a Guyatone design. they’ve actually started a tenors-only website and have a showroom in Nashville which is probably one of the few things there i’d enjoy. i love old-time country, but loathe post-70s country which now seems to be the biggest cultural thing there.

they’re still unusual to see out in the world. i think maybe Atomic Music has posted perhaps two or three used ones in the several years i’ve followed them on Reverb. thus i’ve never played one. i suspect that, like baritone guitars, you can’t just play the same shit you’d play on a regular six-string. i find baritone more appealing because there’s more low notes/end…seems like tenor would be good for that slash-y New Wave style a la the B-52s.

[dubkitty]

Imagine sitting in the center of three uprights slightly out of tune with eachother arranged in a triangle around you, and your chair swivels freely. I feel like your temperment greatly determines your joy! Or agony.

three uprights with the top/face and knee panels removed so more sound comes out. with bricks on the sustain pedals. give me enough weed and soda and i might never come out. you’d be surprised just how long, and how much, it sustains. i don’t think they compressed the Big Piano Chord at the end of “A Day In The Life”…it just does that.

one of my favorite things i’ve ever done was to open up an upright like that, hold the pedal down, and play a Cmaj7 chord that extended over the entire keyboard and just soak in the overtones.

thanks for the compliment on the Oriole. it was a lucky break to find it at all…apparently the guy who wrote the book “The Other Brands Of Gibson” commissioned a limited number of Orioles and KG-12s, which were very similar but in a sunburst finish, from a manufacturer in China. i got the last of the Orioles. it really is a great guitar…i play it more than any of the other acoustics lately. it’s always out in the living room, either on the sofa or in one of the armchairs. it’s way punchier than a typical parlor guitar and is fine for self-accompaniment. i wouldn’t have expected such balanced response from a small maple-bodied guitar which i’d have expected to sound tiny and overly bright. as i said somewhere else, it sounds more like a 00 than a parlor guitar, probably because it’s unusually deep.

finding it was a total accident…i own a Kalamazoo Bass 30
amplifier that’s missing the nameplate and was searching eBay for “Kalamazoo” in Guitars and Basses and the little guitars came up. the old hippie in me says “that’s because you were supposed to have it.” well, maybe. i had been looking for a parlor guitar for literal decades and, like the Eastman, found it on eBay. i seem to have a pretty good sense for what will or won’t work of the guitars i see online. surprisingly i haven’t really been disappointed yet in online buying.

[niftyprose]

General take on tenor guitar: tunings are everything, and I've never really come back to 'normal' guitar since my decade on mandolin. Tenors tuned CGDA or GDAE give you access to a massive repertoire of music, classical old-time and folk, but at the cost of having all your familiar licks go out of the window. It's more than learning new patterns. The entire tonality of the instrument changes, and your style has to go with it. To get a quick sense of what I mean, compare-and-contrast Ry Cooder's blues mandolin stuff to his guitar work.

Instrument specifics: I've checked out all the Eastwoods I could get my hands on, and didn't love any of them. There are compromises in the manufacture that irritate me. I lucked out and found one of the vanishingly rare Fender Tenor Teles just down the road at a good price. If I was trying to buy a working tenor guitar today, I'd get one of the Fanner Bros Tele-styles from South Africa ( https://www.fannerelectricukulele.com/ ). They're semi-custom, handbuilt, extremely well-priced for what you get, and I had prompt and polite correspondence from Brian F.

[dubkitty]

the unfortunate thing about Eastwood is the unpredictability…some models are quite well-made e.g. my Wandré Soloist, while some are just awful e.g. that Hooky 6-string bass someone here had and wound up replacing most of it including the body. even the nice ones feel slightly precarious, a bit like a Potempkin village. there are a couple of other Eastwoods i like—oddballs with set necks like the Black Widow and their Magnatone copy—but on a certain level i don’t really trust them. i do like the idea of being able to visit the Nashville store which would allow you to do a lot of browsing in one spot, but as previously noted Tennessee is incredibly reactionary and not a place that feels friendly to me. i could get away with passing there—an old guy with long hair is essentially irrelevant to daily normie life—but would never really be comfortable. they also charge way too much for what the instruments are…they have a Warren Ellis Coodercaster that no lie i could build from a Duo Sonic for 1/3 the price AT MOST. a lot of their stuff is Squier-quality sold for American Professional prices. “cool” is nice, but not at a 300% premium. i particularly wouldn’t trust anything from them with a bolt-on neck which appear on information and belief to be less wonderful than their set-neck guitars. i’d be curious about their Mosrites, particularly the anniversary model which appears more authentic, but i’m not a Mosrite guy.