zenmindbeginner

I’m not a guitar scientist but, Gibson’s are fitted with a quite hard veneer overlay on top of the softer neck/headstock wood. The tuners bite into something really hard. Hamer tuner washers bite straight into the softer mahogany neck/headstock wood... the hard maple piece runs along the middle right? Are the Gibson veneers even painted? Aren’t they dyed black?

I saw a tiger...

and one half priced entree per week.

My legato is for-shit... it’s basically non existent in my bag of tricks. However, my picking skills aren’t too shabby and they are featured heavily in almost every bag of trick I use. To keep up my speed chops into my late forties, I do a simple exercise of the ol’ regular three notes per string scale. The only twist is that I run across the scale two strings at a time. The lower string gets muted but the higher string does not. I do an up-up pattern and also an up-up-down-down pattern. Those two patterns get me through most picking situations... every now and then, I will use a down-down pattern starting in reverse with the higher string first (using the same three note scale taken at two strings a time). As far as left hand shapes go... I don’t know any scales so I use shapes like George Lynch does. I’ll do all combinations of index+middle+pinky as well as index+ring+pinky... root-half-whole step, root-whole-half step & root-whole-whole step. All picking is alternate and I will mix in double single accent notes during the up-up-down-down pattern (my favorite). I stand in front of the television and run these exercises while watching some stimulating content on the tv. This way, the exercises get stored in deep directories in my brain... the most intense is when I practice while playing jeopardy. lolz My practice sessions last an hour and these picking exercises comprise approximately 25% of my practice sessions. I start out with these exercises and pepper the session with these bursts of picking speed and accuracy exercises.

That is a special little man... who has a fantastic father. Beautiful story and your English was very good!

I’ve basically been rejected more than I’ve been accepted. It’s all politics, posturing and posing as far as I am concerned. The age old endeavor of diminishing others so we in fact appear more grandiose is the low hanging fruit most humans reach for. I don’t have time nor the charity for this bullshit. i’m sorry that you had to deal with this kind of political garbage Nathan... tisn’t fair, tisn’t right and tisn’t proper. My intuition is that you dodged a bullet. i won’t go anywhere near a fucking “band” type experience. Fucking delusional ingrate egomaniacs... they can shove their pathetic low paying bar gigs straight up their asses. of course on the other hand, I would avoid any organization that would have me as a member

Was the previous guitar player that Shaw replaced better or worse than Shaw? Shaw could definitely write a great song... as amazing as DeYoung was, Shaw’s songs were pretty much just as good. I was born in ‘73 and my brain was fairly useless until I was 3 or 4. My first experience with Styx was obviously The Grand Illusion. I remember the full size card board displays of Grand Illusion next to Heart’s “Little Queen” at the front of the record store where my Mom worked part time in 1977. I’m absolutely ignorant on anything before Shaw joined the band... I haven’t gone back through Styx’s catalog. I probably should. fwiw, I consider “Come Sail Away” one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The middle section is friggin’ amazing. The part where DeYoung hits that last note of the space solo and it oscillates onto feedback before the main theme comes back in just floors me every time I hear it.

When I think of Styx, I think analog synthesizers... they weren’t a “guitar” band to me. They always had one guitarist too many. Damn Yankees were such a fart in a bucket... about as awesome as Bad English. Dennis DeYoung was a monster genius and Styx fans act like he weighed the band down with his theatrics and saccharine ballads. The Damn Yankees thing was always a slap in the face to a Hamer fan... the understated rhythm guitarist used the Hamer while the flashy dickbag lead guitarist played the nemesis of Hamer... Paul Reed Smith. Of course being a Hamer fan was always like slapping oneself in the face as far as artist endorsements and owning a guitar from a brand whose artist roster was about as deep as the guy who used to play rhythm guitar for Def Leppard, the rhythm guitarist from Damn Yankees... or the singer from Lincoln Park. i loved how Hamer scored that Jeff Watson endorsement AFTER the public decided that they didn’t want to hear Night Ranger ever again. Great timing Jol!!!

It’s actually the configuration and planning that I have a problem with... the tone was always fine as long as you didn’t try and combine pickups. And there is something to be said about a traditional bridge pickup that is thinner and brighter and a neck pickup that is truly “rhythmic” in that it could double as a bass guitar if necessary. Tradition is important... the endless tone jockeying isn’t all that important in reality... on paper maybe, but we’ve all enjoyed the hell out of our Hamers regardless of the shrill useless sounds many stock configs yield when combining pickups. I’m still a massive Hamer fan even though I am configured a little shrill myself. lolz

Lolz

There is no way a Super Pro’s construction or material choice would give a bridge pickup like a Custom Custom more bass in the bridge and give the Custom less bass in the neck... it’s just not possible. Hamer repeatedly proved they have tin ears when it comes to pickups. The JB + ‘59 combo that went into soooo many guitars is a SHIT combination... how about putting two identical pickups in the neck and bridge where the middle position was “out of phase” like they did from 1985-1988? hell, the stock Centauras had a bridge pickup that was the same polarity as the middle pickup... position 2 was out of phase garbage. The Californian slanted neck design where the neck pickup was slanted with the unwound strings getting more treble and the wound strings getting more bass and this very insanity was repeated with the fucking Diablos?!? Sorry, when it came to pickups, Joel was a fucking moron... he deliberately did counter productive shit that made Hamer guitars less than they could be.

I literally stopped bending strings so dang much on Gibson scale guitars. If I can slide into or out of a note instead of a bend, I do it. Worse case scenario would be a bend on record, but a slide live (I obviously don’t play live so YMMV). The worst thing for me was replacing bluesy and emotional bending with actual fucking licks... I’m self taught and don’t know theory, don’t know any chords or know any scales. My first iteration as a guitarist was a Kirk Hammett “Kill em” All” era clone (LOTS of whole step bending)... my next was a grunge era Mike McReady/DeLeo clone (LOTS of whole step bending)... basically my solos were comprised of mostly blooz bends in the 80s and 90s. Coming up with actual licks was like pulling teeth with me... not easy. I wish I had some tips but I’ve tried everything I can get my hands on and nothing ever works. I do happily bend single notes on my Floyd Rose equipped guitars... no pedal steel, unison or adjacent bends involving more than one string though. These bending limitations really fucking suck IMHO.

Lindley used his own amps when recording despite Browne’s Dumbles being available. Yet when Rick Vito played for Jackson, he used a Dumble. I’m not the best Jackson Browne expert but Rick played the iconic solo on “Tender is the Night” and those great double stops on “Somebody’s baby”... in fact most of Browne’s 80’s stuff has Rick on it, just not “That Girl Could Sing”. Rick Vito used a Dumble for the masterful and epic slide solo to Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock”. Use these tones as a guideline for the “D” sound. picture in your mind a Vox’s crushed glass overdrive paired with a Fender’s clean sparkle and a Marshall’s detailed compression... you get an amplifier that can transmit the most minute of sonic details and deliver them with flair and authority.

I went from 1986-2007 with only one guitar and it was a Hamer. Now I own multiple Hamers (mostly USA but one MIK) & a couple of partscasters based around Fender USA necks... oh and a travel guitar that is a GFS Xaviere. Hamer guitars are an incredible value... the sort of Hamer you can get for less than $1500 used is miles above any other USA brand. I’m pretty Loyal to Hamer.

I could have done a waaaay better demo. Iommi licks are an essential part of my style. Garbage tone and flat lifeless playing. I hate the way there is zero sustain but think this pedal might be a lot better than the video shows... I could be wrong though. Rangemaster fans are some of the best people.