Music Stuff - Cool Stuff

Update: And here is the new incarnation of my Franken-Tele! I am rebuilding my franken-tele again with new parts. I think this will be the 6th swapping of parts for this franken tele. While the pine body was nice, it was a bit too twangy for me.  I wanted a little deeper tone with less highs and more mids resonating in the guitar body; basically, a tele body without the tele sound. So, I found a nice tele body made out of African mahogony.  I mixed two colors of oil based wood stain (neither one was mahogony) and did two coats, and sanded with 600grit wetdry sand paper after both coats.  Then I mixed a little of the oil based stain with some clear oil based satin polyurethane. That was brushed on in two thin coats, allowing for complete drying between coats, and again sanding with 600 grit wetdry sand paper after each coat.  It came out beautiful.  I used the same stains on a pine body and got a completely different result with the final color on mahogony.  If the electroni

My wife Robin and I went to see the movie Detroit.  All I can say is that the movie hit me hard.  So much injustice and bigotry.  What happened in Detroit in the mid 60s, continues to happen across the USA today.  We must all continue to work hard at shutting down racism, bigotry, the KKK and all white-supremacist and alt-right hate groups.  We must also work hard at stopping corrupt racist police from getting away with murder, not just for the people they assault and kill, by for all of the good police officers trying to do the right thing.      One thing that hit me while watching the movie Detroit, was that someone who was a client of mine at my recording studios in Raleigh NC, and someone who I consider a friend, not a super close friend, but a friend, sang with the Dramatics before the group took off to fame.  He is Anthony Wade Sr.  Ron Banks (RIP), a co-founder of the Dramatics, was one of Anthony's close friends and his mentor  I did not know about what members of the D

Tearing Up My Fingers For many years I have used DR Pure Blue strings.  I shifted between sets with 10 and 11 for the high E string.  I love the sound of those strings.  The 11's give a little richer sound, but tore my fingers up (I bend the strings a lot).  So, my go to strings where the 10's because they did not tear up my fingers as much. But, the still tore my fingers up a little. Experimenting With Other Strings One day a few months ago I decided to try some other strings, just to see what they were like.   First, I tried Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky strings.  They were easy on the fingers, but the high E 9 was too flimsy.  They also would not stay in tune very well. Next, I tried Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy Bottom strings. They were also easy on the fingers and the high E 10 wasn't so flimsy.  But, I just could not squeeze the tone and sustain out of the plain strings, compared to the DR Pure Blue strings.  Like before, they would not stay in tune well. After t

These are short takes of a few original acoustic songs from over the years.  Some were written in Los Angeles California, some were inspirational while a lived outside of Phoenix Arizona by a saguaro cactus forest, and some were written in Raleigh North Carolina. Enjoy the Music! Jimmy

It's All About The Tube, 'Bout The Tube, 'Bout The Tube I finally have my Marshall DSL15c dialed in. Stock, it sounded weak, the speaker sucked, the tone was off, the ultra-gain channel was only good for bone crunching metal, and the clean channel was anemic. I made a few resistor and capacitor changes, put an old Celestion G12H Anniversary speaker that I had laying around in it, put TAD 6v6 tubes in the power section, and tried a JJ 5751 in the V1 with Tungsol 12AX7 in the other two pre-amp slots and the phase inverter. After those changes, the ultra-gain channel was much better, but still had too much gain when I had the gain knob beyond 3. It was usable though. The problem was that the Clean channel was even weaker than before. So I searched and searched the internet and learned about the JJ ECC823 pre-amp tube. The ECC823 is 12ax7 style tube. One of the things about 12ax7 tubes is that they are actually two tubes in one (two separately functioning sides). With t

Strings, Strings and more Strings For years I used DR Pure Blue 10 strings on my electric guitars and Martin SP 12s on my acoustic.  Then I moved to 11s on my acoustic. Somewhere along the line, I switched to Dr Pure Blue 11s on my electrics. Damn nation, what a difference one hundredth of an inch makes in a guitar string.  The 11s produce a fuller tone and the overtones and harmonics with the 11s are amazing on my electric guitars. Now, I am locked in with DR Pure Blue 11s on my electric guitars. Back to the acoustic... For many years I used Martin SP custom light strings (11s).  On a whim, I tried a new set of D'Addario Nickel Bronze 11s.  I loved the overall feel and tone, but the D'Addario wound strings are smaller than the Martin wounds.  The big problem was the G string started buzzing because the string slid too far into the nut groove, resulting in the string being too close to the frets. I looked into replacing or repairing the nut groove, and also looked at

I was messing around with my Franken-Tele and broke the pick-guard. I bought a new Tele pick-guard from Warmoth, with holes for a Tele lipstick pickup at the neck, a P90 in the middle and a humbucker at the tail-piece.  The Lipstick is a Seymour Duncan Vintage Stack Tele neck. I've had it laying around in a box for years and never used it, until now.  The P90 is a Lindy Fralin Hum-cancelling P90. I had it in the neck slot but it was a little to deep for that slot. So, I thought I would give it a shot in the middle slot where the tone would be just a little brighter. It is perfect in the middle The Humbucker is a Lindy Fralin Pure PAF.  Fralin did an amazing job on this humbucker.  I decided to wire it up with a 3-way tele switch, with one pickup per position, with no blending of the pickups.  All soldered up and put back together, and the darned guitar actually worked just like I wanted.