stonge

Centauras were all bolt-on necks. Looks like a 24 fret setneck Chap - 87 would be about right for one those. Pickups look like OBLs (not totally sure about the bathtub around the humbucker) with an added tone control. Ebony and boomerangs, and that flametop and matching headstock are plausible. The thing throwing me off a little is the treble side cutaway, but that's kinda what it would look like if you asked for the Cali bevel on a flametop Chap. If that was legit, it would have been pretty pricey with all those options/upgrades. Hamer did make a lot of unicorns back in the day, even some that Peter hasn't owned lol. Looks cool to me...

I haven't really messed around with it loading but I know it's easy to deal out speaker options (changing the stock cabinets in the software. Sounds like you can import any ir you want. Iirc, the stock tonex software lets you swap out speakers and even microphones and positions on the virtual speaker cone. I'm just a set it and forget it guy. I've bought tonex packs from big hairy guitars and tonejunkie that were reasonably priced and some included irs. BHG had ada mp-1 and Mesa quad preamp packs which I got so I can get my 80's on lol

this was a really cool youtube short to start the day - Congrats Jeff!

HILS also makes some nice headless guitars around the $499 price point which have gotten some good reviews on the Gear Forum. Solar (Ola Englund's company) also makes a headless guitar priced at $599 which looks pretty cool. I have a strandberg metal 6 as my daily driver; it sits in a stand right next to my desk chair so it's easy to pick up and play (during some long teams calls when I don't need to be on camera lol). Hopefully the tonex headphone amp works with the strandberg output jack which would be great for couch riffing lol.

That is exactly what I used for recording. The tonex one let's you switch between two (and maybe a third) presets, but the airstep gives you access to all twenty slots on the tonex. The real bonus is the airstep app which lets you adjust all the amps and effects from your phone(you do have to keep in mind these are captures not models of amp; the eq knobs let you tweak bass/mid/treble/presence but they don't mimic the way the real amp sounds when you twist the knobs. Its like tone knobs on a mixer or interface). The airstep also gives you two assignable expression pedal inputs - I use one for volume and other for reverb or delay mix (I don't know why the stock effects have so much wash in the mix. The guitar just gets buried under the echoes etc). The airstep also switches between bank/preset switching and effects on/off, and powers the tonex one for about 3-4 hours on a single charge. I haven't yet had the attention span to play until the airstep battery runs out of juice. The airstep tx really makes the tonex one practical. I can't imagine using it without the airstep. The demos were Americana tunes, but I had to throw the Eruption preset in there to scare the band leader lol. Sounded mean with my tele...

I used my tonex one earlier this week to record some demos with a friend. Going direct into an interface and daw and saved us the hassle of micing up an amp. Used two captures out of the twenty I loaded up. That headphone amp would have been nice on some recent road trips. Have to see if the jack is compatible with a strandberg that is my travel guitar. IK multimedia has some pretty good profile packs. The EVH Brown Sound 79, Mesa boogie reference amps, and satriani packs are all really good IMHO. They also released a bass amp pack recently that has a nice variety of amps.

I have a Bugera and it's got a few limitations; it only handles 50 watts, and it cuts the volume about in half as soon as it is hooked up (the 100% setting is about half of the direct (amp-to-cab) connection and it gets quieter from there. It's loaned out to Darc, so i can't comment on the tone change if any (hadn't used it for a while). I'd recommend spending a little more to get something more flexible. I did find an original Rockman Power Soak in the basement a while back, but I'm not sure i want to test it with my current amps lol.

I had that thing on once and it's gotta weigh about 30-35 pounds. He has lighter guitars, but changing them every song is part of his shtick. If he didn't run around for at least part of a song with a 5-neck the fans would be disappointed. Maybe he should just stick it in a stand onstage as a static display lol.

to understand plexi, one must plexi (said in yoda voice). while not a plexi, i am still haunted by a JTM-45 reissue blasting through a 1960AV (the tall one) cabinet.

Ed was the tactical nuke of sarcasm, scorn, and wit and many felt the pain of being at ground zero. Those were some times that are indeed legend. Godspeed, and fuck cancer.

that's really nice - that top must look even better when you change the viewing angle and the grain pops. That's also a really good price imho.

I did want to mention that you can hide an Apple airtag under the neck pickup of a guitar so you can track it in shipping; there are also some Android compatible versions that look to be thinner and might be a better fit (the airtag can be a little tall depending on the neck pickup routing depth). The airtag would have fit in the control cavity, but I'm not sure if Hamer's shielding paint would have affected the airtag signal. A big thank you to Dr Bear for mentioning airtags; it's easier to look something up on your phone and get a locational update rather than depend on the tracking info.

and now for something completely different...

just got the 10th anniversary remaster of Jason Isbell's Southeastern; disc 1 is the remastered recording disc 2 has the original demos (neat to see how some of the songs changed, and some remained the same), and disc 3 is a live recording of the Southeastern album with his band the 400 unit. The video for the live set is here: Still one of our favorite albums.

The Pirate Special has wandered to the big city for a bit after relaxing at casa de stonge. The Pirate Special dig get to hang with with Nightwolf's Daytona as shown below.

Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak This was the first rock record that I owned - my best friend gave me his copy. Still sounds cool to me.

The Nashville Sound by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

"none more black..."

For the last year my junk parts tele; $45 pine reject body with bondo and sharpie (courtesy of Lew Motlow lol) with a old warmoth boatneck and a Duncan broadcaster pickup with the Eldred wiring. Just a mutt lol. ..

Deke Dickerson has a great book 'The Strat In The Attic' full of stories which would have just about any guitar geek stopping at every tag sale or estate sale they see. Cool guitars are still out there in unexpected places. While it would be cool to have the guitar, it's even better that it will stay in the family. The backstory is worth it imho.

Given the amount of repair work to get it back to playable (and you don't really know what that will cost) I wouldn't go above $200. Check the neck to see if it looks straight and not twisted; there might be a little kink where the fretboard meets the face of the guitar and that could effect the string height and action (mine has a little bit of this, and a luthier who checked it out pronounced it "original sin" meaning it was built that way). If it's really off, you might need a neck reset and that will cost much more than the guitar would ever be worth. Since you really don't know if it can be made playable, i would be cautious about getting into the guitar too deep as it could end up a wall - hanger. If it had the original case, that might be worth a hundred by itself. I found a really cool '52 L-7 cutaway in the local GC, but there was a slight twist in the neck and a weird kink where the fretboard joined the body that looked like it would be expensive to correct. It hurt to walk away from that one, but sometimes you need to figure out what you are willing to deal with and that went out of my comfort zone. At the price they wanted, it should have been a lot cleaner and had minimal issues. That being said, I do have a beater L-7 with cracks and slight seam separation that I got into at a fair price (my luthier said "if you like it, play it until it falls apart and then decide whether you want to fix it. It might never fall apart though"). It sounded great, so I bought it and really enjoy it. I'm learning to accept that some things can just be functional and flawed at the same time lol.

really clean ones from about 1950 run about a grand; I have a 1950 L-48 that I picked up last year for just over that - mine is a feather and sounds really nice. They were the 'entry-level' archtops of the Gibson line, but they sound and play pretty nice ("affordable vintage"). From about that timeframe, L-7's run about 3K, and L-5's start about 5K from what I have seen so the L-48 is definitely the 'bang for the buck' model imho. I'd echo hamerhead's idea; get it fixed just enough to be playable and enjoy it and the story behind it. Stew-Mac has press-on tuner buttons that might fit those pegs - I replaced the buttons on a 56 Fender lapsteel where the original crumbled into dust when touched. No need for a pickguard imho. Flatwounds or even acoustic (bronze) strings should sound fine on it. Enjoy!

Mrs stonge saw it on FB this morning, so I requested a quote on an emerald green 4 digit bound and crowned with an ebony board. Yeah, that would do it lol. Best of luck to Mike in this new endeavor, and props to Ted and whoever else is providing assistance on this. Great news!