Music Stuff - Cool Stuff

What Does That Mean?  Maybe I should start by telling the story about an amp that I built.  It started with a JCM 800 2204 kit and a chassis from Triode Electronics.  It was a hand-wired kit, with a turret board and silver connectors.  Triode Electronics sends a box of parts (excellent quality, high end parts), with instructions and a layout diagram.  The builder sorts through all of the parts, including a pile of resistors and caps, and a boat load of different colored wires, knobs, transformers and a bunch of other stuff.   I built a custom cabinet for the kit and branded the head, HEAT. So anyway, after putting the kit together I made a few modifications to the standard grounding circuit and dropped the white noise level down quite a bit, and changed the values of some resisters and caps in the preamp circuit to give it just a little more gain (not much more, just a touch).  After playing the HEAT amp for a few weeks I quickly learned t...

Changes and Good Times Moving to Eugene Oregon was a major life change.  Gave up the recording and rehearsal studios in Raleigh NC and had to leave my bandmates of several years in North Carolina.  But, it has been a good change.  It took awhile to get into a groove. But hey, things are working out nice here. Now it is time for me to ramble on about a bunch of disconnected stuff. The World Has Gone to Pot It is great to live in a state with legal marijuana, and lots of competition. The prices have gone down a lot, and primo buds are only 10 bucks more than rag weed was for an ounce over 40 years ago.  And now there is super primo, I mean damn, whew.  It costs more, but OMG, you have to be careful with that stuff.  Anyway, I don't use much weed, but it is nice to have a toke in the evenings sometimes and just relax and chill at home, without worrying about the cops busting you. New Band The new band line up in Oregon is solid.  Glen Weldon...

After more electrifying jolts and some fresh new body parts, the FrankenTele has risen again!  Yes!  Again! I have lost count, but FrankenTele has risen from the dead at least 8 times!  For those who asked, here is a picture of the latest version of my FrankenTele. This one has a maple neck with a rosewood fret board. The body is African Mahogany with a stain mixture and finish that I concocted. The rosewood fret board and the mahogany body warmed the guitar up a lot. When it had the solid maple neck and pine body the guitar was a little too sparkly for my taste (but it was a sound that many country pickers love).   The pickups are Lindy Fralin. Neck picku p - Lindy Fralin Blues Special Strat middle pickup. Puting it in the neck slot took out some of the treble spike that many Strats are notoriious for. It still has edge and bite, but no ice pick stuff comes out of it.  Middle pickup - Lindy Fralin Pure PAF bridge pickup. Just...

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 mahog...

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...

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 w...

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