Watch this, excellent music…
March 25th, 2010
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Archive for the ‘ramblings’ Category
One of our esteemed guitar players getting good press
March 2nd, 2010
One of the best thing about the Olympics here….
February 22nd, 2010
….is the music. There is music everywhere and it is great music, every genre, every type, in all these different venues and it is free..
Dats what I like about dat….
My first sale on the steps of a Gulfstream IV
January 26th, 2010
One of the coolest things just happened.
A guy phones me from the air, says he will be Vancouver at 3, can I meet him with some of our guitars. “Ya, for sure”. So I go out to the private jet airport and wait. That in itself is kinda cool
And then this beautiful bright white jet comes honking in, comes to a rocking stop. He waves at me from the cockpit of a Gulfstream IV, the door drops down, he comes bounding down off the jet, comes into the terminal where I have our guitars laid out.
He looks at the guitars and goes “Whoa, those are ridiculously cool” Plays them for a bit and says “right on”
Then he pulls out a wad of 100s “I’ll take em” he says “what do ya need?”
Absolutely nothing to do with guitars, but funny.
January 8th, 2010
I have friends, I am sure you have them too, that is always sending me stuff.. 90% of the time it is stuff that I open it and go, that is stupid or why the hell would they send that to me and a bunch I don’t read, don’t care about..
But, every once in a while.. for what reason I don’t know, I open them and this insanely stupid was one I did and it makes me laugh my head off. This one, for sure, shows my intelligent, witty side…:)
more from ‘When Giants Walked The Earth”
January 4th, 2010
One of the very important things for us is sound. We spend a lot of time listening and coaxing and tweeking our guitars to get a sound that makes me go… ya, ” that’s it. That’s what I want”
I love finding out about what others did or are doing. Reproducing a great sound is always a challenge, but when you do get it right, it is totally worth it. I quite liked this passage of of the book I am reading about Led Zeppelin, about Jimmy Page and John Bonham nailing the sounds of the drums on When the Levee Breaks
Led Zeppelin recorded its version of the song in December 1970 at Headley Grange, where the band used the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio.
This is the excerpt-
The big difference , in the first instance was the titanic drum sound. ” It was always an electric blues” says Jimmy, ” but I never quite knew that the minute John Bonham had set up his drum kit up in the big hall it would sound so fantastic.” Known as the Minstrel’s Gallery, the hall at Headley Grange ” was three storeys high and so it was this big cathedral like hall. And Bonham just started playing this kit that had arrived and is sounded so fantastic we went, hold on, lets do, Levee Breaks” and we tried it and incredible sound came out.
The sound was captured on tape by hanging two ambient Beyer m160 mikes from the staircase and aiming them where Bonzo was sitting with his kit, while Andy Johns sat in the mobile truck outside recording the sound through two channels he then compressed usng an Italian echo unit called a Binson belonging to Jimmy that used a steel drum instead of a conventional tape. A separate microphone would normally have been added to record the bass drum but Bonzo’s unamplified kick sound echoing around the great hall was on its own so powerful that there was no need. ” I remember sitting there thinking it sounded utterly amazing” says Johns. ” So I ran out of the truck and said ” Bonzo, you gotta come in and hear this”
He shouted ”Whoa, That’s it, thats what I’ve been hearing.
( And what subsequent generations of producers and mixers have been hearing ever since, making it the most sample drum sound of all )
Great jam…
December 27th, 2009
Grabbed some of our guitars and a few amps, headed out to a jam with a bunch of friends, some from long ago and some new. Absolutely beautiful way to spend an afternoon. I love it when the what happens with music is way bigger than the musicians sitting in.
Magic was in the room today…
It Might Get Loud…the six-string summit.
December 26th, 2009
If you dig guitars and you get a chance go see this movie, do.
It is like you are old friends with these guys and you just kinda wander around with them, easy and breezy, as they tell you how they made their music, what guitars they used and where, what influenced them. All that very cool stuff that you get when you just hang out with another player and not stress about impressing.
I liked the format, alot, rather than fast cuts and blistering changes of angles and views it is just straight on shots that stayed on them for a while as they talked.
Jimmy Page was just fantastic. Actually they all were great in their own way, but one of my favorite scenes was him in his music room ( a music room I want by the way ) it was all white “ish” and he was surrounded by his cd’s and records. All the walls in the shot were filled with cd’s, 1000′s of cds, I can well imagine all the great, obscure music that is on the shelves. It would be the best room to just disappear into for hours and hours and turn it up way loud.
Anyways, he grabbed a vinyl album and put it on his record player and let it play and lead us to enjoy it with looks and gestures, you know like your buddy does when he has an album that he loves and wants you to love it too.
The other thing about Jimmy Page is that he is the coolest rock ‘n roller still. He wears his age well, a country gentleman that was a rock star. He looks bright, alive and loving it, knowing totally where he is. He isn’t trying to live in the past with a look that has long gone or dying his hair with that shitty black ink stuff. You can tell he is liking it where he is now, it shows.
The edge, who is huge for me because the joshua tree, when it came out was simple one of the best albums I had heard. A lot of what made the songs great was the wall of sound his guitars produced. He, the edge, in this movie, talked about his exploring for sound and affects with pedals and machines and delays and then he explained, which as funny and true ,that the guitar is relative simple in some songs. I think he was talking about ”where the streets have no name” and he showed that it is just two notes, do do do do do back and forth, but when run through his new found effects, the sound blossoms spectacularly. I like that he talked about that and smiled about it. The bottom line for me is that in the songs he used it on, totally worked.
And Jack White,…wasn’t so sure about him, definitely would not have been first choice if they had asked me to cast the movie. ( they didn’t by the way ) but then I can see why he gets the attention of other guitar players, because he totally loves guitars and the sounds that can come out of them. He played off some Son House stuff that was absolutely cool, just pure and clean and smooth blues guitar.
and then they jammed and you know what.. they really smiled when they played. Like you and me, they were playing with their friends and it was good.
Go see it, you’ll enjoy it too.
Here is an article about the movie from Entertainment Weekly: Read more…
The magic of serendipity
December 7th, 2009
We just finished the clear coat baking of our latest batch of LMG T, the hard tails. We do it the same way a car has the paint applied and then baked on, then polished. The look of them, finished, is so incredibly cool to me still, I just can’t get over it, I love it. With the process we do, the way we machine the surface of the guitar’s body and the way the thick clear coat goes on to totally enhance the look, simply blows me away how it came about.
The machining look we use now came about as an accident. We usually skim the surface of the aluminum before we set to do the hard cutting, just to get the oxidation or bumps and scrapes removed. One day, when we were doing this and the cutting bit we were using had snapped one of the biting edges off, it was just a tiny break. The cnc machine travelled the whole way up the length of the body and ripped these swirly into the metal…
We panicked, “shit..its wrecked it” and then we all stopped and looked at each other and simultaneously smiled and said..
“whoa, that looks very cool, that’s the look we have been looking for”
And it was.
The other thing that happened, is I was put on hold with a paint company down on the heartland that we had been using. I needed some tolerance info, something like that, but I was on hold for 72 hours, well okay not that long, but then a real person comes on, tells me I have the wrong department and he will transfer me, but the result is, I get disconnected.
I tried them again about five times, same result and out of sheer frustration, I phoned up the local paint retailer, rail away with my story and he says ” that is exactly why we aren’t distributing them anymore” he asks what I need and I tell him and he says ” you have to talk to this guy, is a instructor in auto/motorcycle painting and plays guitar.”
Immediately I call the guitar playing instructor in auto/motorcycle painting guy, tell him what we are up to and he gets so he so fired up he is beside himself and tells me that he has just this moment perfected a process that will enhance the look of etched or sculpted metal as well as protecting the surface….that would be perfect for what we are doing.
and when we did it, damn he was right, it did…
Two things that happened that have made what we do…better.
Guitar Jokes.. one or two will make you smile.
November 16th, 2009
Q:What do you call a guitarist that broke up with his girlfriend?
A: Homeless
Q: How do you get a guitarist off of your front porch?
A: Pay him for the pizza.
Q: What’s the difference between an annuity and a guitarst?
A: The annuity eventually matures and earns an income.
Q: What is the difference between a guitarist and a large pizza?
A: The large pizza can feed a family of four.
Q: How do you know a guitarist is ringing your doorbell?
A: He doesn;t know when to come in.
Q: Define “Perfect Pitch”
A: When you chuck a banjo into the garbage and hit an accordion
Q: What do you throw a drowning accordian player?
A: His accordian.
Q: How do you know the drum riser has been leveled?
A: The drool is running out of both sides of the drummers mouth.
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