Behold

Two modern masters.  Behold the badassery.

Hangers-on

Looking for a way to securely store my guitars.  With a pair of rugrats running around the house - including the mancave - keeping expensive toys safe is rather important.  Thinking about ordering the Hercules GSP38WB A/G Guitar Hanger.  On the entirely off-chance I'm not muttering into the void, does anyone have any suggestions?

Eruption

Do you think Ed ever gets tired of playing "Eruption"?

One of the greatest guitar heroes of all time.  God, I'd love to hear something new.

But the old is all we've got, and the old is still better than everything else.

UPDATED:  Better video

A Different Kind of Truth

Van Halen's new album, A Different Kind of Truth, was released yesterday to generally favorable reviews.  New disk is based largely on old demos that have been circulating among the faithful for more than 30 years.

As a guitar player, it's pretty much required reading for me.  Edward's riffs form the foundation of a pretty fair amount of post-1978 Rock & Roll.  Even if you don't hear it as much in modern recordings, it's what's everyone works on in the woodshed - which is where I'm going to be spending the next several months reclaiming my chops.

Should be interesting, if nothing else.

Fingerboards & oil.

About two years ago, I stumbled into a pawn shop looking for... I dunno.  Trouble?  Truth is, our town has several in close proximity, and I'd never darkened their door.  Since the advent of eBay, the fantastic deals of old are long gone - market price is set on the net, blue book be damned, and many of the items end up listed there as well.    As it happened, however, there was a very old, VERY battered Alvarez hanging on the wall with a $40 price tag, and I was feeling a little rebellious.

You see, since I settled down and grew preternaturally old, I played.  A lot.  Paid for college, among other things.  But law school has a habit of recruiting amazingly talented & diverse people and flattening them out into little robots - amazingly strong and focused on a but single thing.   And in the years since I went through that process, the guitars have largely stayed in their cases.

But the simple truth is, you want your kids to grow up around YOU.  Who you really are.  And I thought we needed a guitar around the house.  Nothing fancy, mind you.  The nice things stay in their cases.  I needed something I didn't care about.  Something that could get hurt, broken, or outright destroyed.

A $40 Alvarez fit the bill.  Perfectly.

Perfectly good guitar, once I adjusted the tension rod & worked on a few technical details.   Played about as well as I could expect for a $40 axe. 

But it looked like hell.   It had obviously been exposed to the elements.  The top end of the fretboard, along with the high end, were weathered as hell.  So was the bridge, which looked as if it had been left out in the sun for an entire summer.  After a while, I noticed the fretboard was affecting playability as well. 

I reached out to an old friend, who recommended ColorTone Fretboard Finishing oil, which I had seen online.  I took the strings off, wiped everything down, and used 00 grade steel wool and gently rubbed down the fingerboard & the frets.  This removes a thin layer of wood & metal from the guitar.  Made one pass over the fingerboard, came back, wiped it down, and... wow.  Plays like an entirely new guitar.  I had no idea how much this would affect the playability.  The change is remarkable.

Planning on doing the same thing to the Les Paul this weekend.  But of course, I tried it out on the beater first.

Zen & the art of guitar maintenance

Formerly the bane of my existence.  You're looking at the input jack on a 1984 Les Paul standard.  They don't really make these anymore.  Somewhere around 1986 Gibson figured out it was cheaper to ground the strings than it was to encase every component in a steel chassis.  Replacing it would mean grounding the strings, which would mean drilling a hole.  I'm rather emotionally attached to this particular guitar,  so that wasn't really an option.

Thankfully, when I opened it up it was nothing more than a 1/4" jack in a chrome box.  

Input was shorting out every time the cord jiggled.  As you might expect, playing a guitar like that isn't something you usually do sitting still.  You move around.  Typically while plugged into a very large amplifier.  This leads to loud noises of the non-musical variety.  I'm not Thurston Moore, so this doesn't exactly work for me.

Turns out, the non-tip wire (upper right) was touching the edge of the chrome cylinder.  A little electrical tape, and she sounds like a dream.  Somewhat.

Sliced the living hell out of my hand putting her back together.  After all that, I doubt I'll be able to play for a week.

Interesting day.

Van Halen. Acoustic. Live.

Van Halen actually has a fascinating mix of acoustic tunes in their repitoire.  Why they chose this to release, I'll never understand.