jwhitcomb3

Take that $450 and RUN! Then pat yourself on the back for having gotten the best possible price ever for that guitar...and then hope to hell you never run into the buyer again! -Jonathan

Did it ever occur to you that the people on this board who took the time to answer your questions actually know more about the subject than you do? It's not their fault that you don't like the answers to your questions. But go ahead, prove them all wrong! If you already know all the answers, why are you asking the questions? -Jonathan

Nothing sounds like Good Vibrations, but Pet Sounds is just flat out a great rock record. It doesn't really sound like anything...it stands on its own. This was Brian Wilson stretching to the edges of his creative abilities, and at his peak he had few peers. I was never a Beach Boys fan (liked the singles but never bought anything) until a few years ago a friend convinced me to get a copy of Pet Sounds. Now it is easily in my top 10. I like the new Smile album too, but it does sound a little out of its time. -Jonathan

Talking Heads doing "Take Me to the River" Elvis doing "Radio Radio" -Jonathan

My brother got me Gram Parson's "GP" and "Grievous Angel" on one CD. How did I live on this planet nearly 44 years without knowing this music? Just great. My wife got me the new iPod shuffle. 200+ songs in a matchbook. Too cool! Best present of all is the kids absolutely digging their stuff. Happy kids = Merry Christmas. -Jonathan

Another +1 on the Aimee Mann. Sufjan Stevens has a boxed set of Christmas stuff that is certainly aimed at the indy market. A good Christmas CD for kids (that won't make adults crazy) is "Eloise at Christmastime" on Koch. All three are on eMusic and well worth checking out! -Jonathan

I'm 43 and still love rock, but one listen to my new CD and you'll notice that my palette has expanded. I dunno if it is age or the experience of putting my iPod on shuffle, but I much prefer my rock mixed in with some jazz, folk, alt-country etc. If I go to a show and the band just has the amps kicked to 11 and playing full out balls to the wall rock on every song I just get bored. But if the band can swing on one song, lay back on the next and then come out rocking, that really makes for an exciting show. My musical soul-mate and I have played together for years in various bands. He'd be happy to play the same songs every night if it got the crowd going. I always have to shake up the set list and add new material or I just lose interest. Similarly if the band I'm playing in seems stuck in a stylistic rut I'll become less enthusiastic. For me the hardest thing about playing in a band is finding a really versatile drummer. The drummer for my band Emery's Misery is a great straight ahead rock drummer, but when asked to lay down a swing groove he was lost. So maybe I'm just becoming an old fart, but all rock all the time just doesn't hold my interest any more. Heck, Led Zeppelin is widely regarded as the greatest hard rock band ever, and they were constantly working other styles into their albums. But come to think of it, while rock has always been the, uh, rock of my musical world, it's never been the whole of it. -Jonathan

Outstanding! Many blessings. -Jonathan

It's getting even stranger, with cover bands like the Australian Pink Floyd Show selling out large venues and even selling DVDs. I'm usually most impessed when I hear bands taking a new angle on their material rather than just trying to recreate the album tracks. Joe Jackson had his band do an a capella version of "Is She Really Going Out With Him" that was amazing. Other performers like Robyn Hitchcock are great to see because their set list and between song banter changes from show to show and you never know what kind of off the wall covers he'll do. I like it when the old bands really work hard on new material. Buzzcocks, Cheap Trick, Bob Dylan and others who make new albums because it's what they do, not just an excuse for another tour. As far as seeing aging bands just trying to re-live their glory days playing the same old tired songs with minimal effort to breathe new life into them, I'll pass. -Jonathan

Double box it, with lots of padding inside the guitar box and even more between the boxes. -Jonathan

I don't really think it's about permission to buy any specific item. We just have to agree what our general priorities are and if one or the other starts making big purchases outside of those without first talking about it this can cause some problems. That said, I'm the one behind my recent guitar purge, not my wife. -Jonathan

I like the Futureheads too. I've downloaded the first Field Music album from eMusic (they have the new one too). I'll check it out tomorrow on my drive to work. The bits I previewed sounded promising! -Jonathan

Ooh...that sounds cool! And it's on eMusic! I'll check it out! -Jonathan

The Redwalls - De Nova Bob Dylan - Modern Times Tom Petty - Highway Companion The first two are excellent, the Petty disc is better than his last (The Last DJ) but still not up to his best. My iTunes collection is over 100G (and yes, it's all legal - mostly ripped from my records and CDs and the rest downloaded from eMusic), and I've spent a bunch of time rating my songs. For the past couple of months I've been playing a randomized smart playlist of my 4 and 5 star rated songs (over 18 days of music), and it's a fun way to listen...Thelonious Monk followed by the Buzzcocks followed by the Beatles followed by Fountains of Wayne followed by Allison Krauss! -Jonathan

And there's the rub: what I call a "funky vibe" somebody else might call an "annoying twang". And depending upon our playing styles, we might both be right. I play with a choppy, rhythmic style, so long sustain doesn't matter much to me. My style of playing works great on that Tonic. Somebody who plays long fluid lines might be frustrated with the response because the guitar doesn't "sing". But because I have that 30th, I can start to squeeze those long, sustaining lines out myself and explore a musical territory that eluded me for 25 years because my other guitars played to my existing strengths. Even if all this response could be listed and charted in a way that would make some sort of sense to a guitarist, he still wouldn't know if it worked for him until he played the instrument. And then there's the surprise factor: when I went out shopping for a Strat 10 years ago I stumbled across a Parker Fly in a store and came home with that. Completely different animal, and I didn't know I'd love it until I actually picked it up. One of the things that's fun about this group is that we've got players across the musical spectrum. After you've been here a while you learn who's tastes jibe with yours and those are the people who's opinions you start to pay the most attention to. So while I'll enjoy reading the posts of a metal head raving about how great his new pickup is, I won't be as tempted to go out and grab it as I would be after reading the post of a power popper saying how he's getting a ringing, chimey tone from his rig. The guitar is only half the equation: the other half is the person playing it. Until you match them up you can't tell how the combination will work. -Jonathan

I think by every measure I can conceive of the 30th Anniversary is an excellent instrument, and by similar measure the Dean Tonic is a cheap instrument. Any objective measurement would indicate this. I think each was a good deal. The fact that the Tonic has a funky vibe doesn't make it better or more valuable, it just make it unique among my collection. The 30th is an heirloom quality instrument. The Tonic is a fun toy. My conclusion was actually the reverse of your premise: that a guitar that would measure sub-par under any objective scrutiny can still be rewarding to play. And that is why the kinds of tests you propose would have little practical value. -Jonathan

I find it hard to map a guitar's price/value to my preference of playing it. I have an import Dean Tonic S. I bought it new for $100 (MF closeout) and put another $120 (Bill Lawrence pickups) into it after the original pickups imploded. It looks cheap, it is cheaply made and the finish is terrible. But the guitar is just a gas to play and sounds great. Despite everything going against it, it just has a cool vibe. I also have a Hamer 30th Anniversary LTD that I bought new for upwards of 3 grand. It is stunning to look at, exudes quality and feels and sounds great. But for some reason I reach for the Dean more often. I also write more songs on the Dean...my muse just wakes up when I play it. I don't know how you quantify that. If you measure dollars spent vs time played, then I completely overpaid for the 30th and the Dean was a steal. But I have no regrets buying either. Those Deans didn't sell well and were quickly discontinued. They would have failed any quantitative test you applied. But then I would have missed out on a great guitar. Rock 'n' roll is about attitude. That Dean's got 'tude, man! -Jonathan

I imagine that "stringing day" is pretty chaotic at your place! Where do you keep 'em all? Do you have a rotation system? Are they insured? -Jonathan

Happy Birthday! -Jonathan

Jeff, it comes down to this: All the technical specs in the world for a guitar will just tell you how two guitars are different, not which one is better, because with guitars "better" is entirely in the ears, eyes and hands of the beholder. The technical specs for the components of the computer you are using help you because in general you can immediately make judgements about how the component will affect your system based on the specs, and you can generally be sure that the specs of the part that you buy will match those of the one tested and reviewed, and that your computer will change in a reliably expected manner as a result of the change. That doesn't work in general for guitars. Look how many posts on this forum there are of people saying "I tried pickup X in my new guitar because I loved it in another guitar, but I don't like it in this one." To again answer your question about why not build the rig to chart the fourier analysis of the frequency response of a plucked string over time: even if you had this data it would (1) only be valid for the specific instrument tested with a specific set of strings and that specific setup and (2) not be a useful indicator of the suitability of an instrument for any specific guitarist. To put it in scientific terms: you can't solve the problem mathematically because there are too many variables and not enough equations. In folksy terms: one man's trash is another man's treasure. At the end of the day if you had a bunch of numbers telling you that the Artist Korina P90 was the best possible guitar in the world for your playing, would you enjoy it any more? -Jonathan edited because the smiley tool was changing my "(a) and (b )" (without the space) into (a) and (

You certainly could scientifically quantify many properties of a guitar. You'd have to invent a rig that could always pick a string in the same place relative to the bridge with the same amount of force, and then you could measure the output from each pickup with the controls set at a certain position. You'd chart the Fourier analysis in 3-D to see how different frequencies sustain and decay over time. Then you'd have to re-test with a different string height, different string materiels, different string gauges, different pick materials, different pick thicknesses, etc. But you wouldn't really learn anything about the overall quality of that guitar. And as many have pointed out, even if you lab tested ABC company's XYZ guitar, you'd only have the data for that particular guitar, and not the next XYZ that rolled off the assembly line (and certainly not the next one that came out of a hand made shop). Even if you could find a guitar whose acoustic properties closely correlated to another's, it will still sound different when you play it from when someone else plays it. So what does all the data actually tell you? And what if you find one that lines up with your wishes on paper but it just doesn't feel good to play? You are going to strike the string at a different location with a different pick angle and different pick attack than anyone else. You are going to have different strings, different picks and different amps. The way you play the guitar may cause its output to behave differently from the test rig's results. So you invent a rig that perfectly mimics your own picking style, attack, location and force. You put several different guitars into the rig and look at the output. And you still won't know what they sound or feel like to you. And you'll still have to sit down with each instrument and decide which you like better. The nice thing about buying a guitar is that it isn't a terribly important decision. If you make a mistake and buy the wrong one for you, just sell it and find one you like better. It is an iterative process, and there are no absolutes. The "perfect" guitar for the way I was playing 10 years ago might sound terrible to me now. My style and tastes have changed, and they will probably continue to do so. I sold my once treasured '89 Tele a few months ago with no regrets. In 1992 I would have told you I'd take that guitar to the grave. I probably wouldn't have given my current favorite a second look. And by a strange coincidence, my current favorite electric guitar is a Hamer Artist Korina P90 which had passed through the hands of two other HFC members who obviously felt they could part with it. Sometimes I have to adapt guitars to my playing (setup, strings, pickups), sometimes I adapt my playing to suit the guitar. My different guitars make me play differently, bringing out different aspects of my musical personality. Nobody will ever be able to tell you what the right guitar is for you. Ask 100 well meaning guitarists and you'll probably get 100 different answers. Some might line up with your tastes, others not. But that doesn't make any of their recommendations wrong. You're just asking an impossible question. What painting should I buy for my living room? -Jonathan

A couple of months back when I had to decide between selling either my Artist Mahogany P90 or my Artist Korina P90, I let the Mahogany one go. But I do have other guitars that are either all mahogany or mahogany topped with maple or spruce. Don't spend too much time on this...you really can't lose with either. -Jonathan

Cool! I wonder if the body routing is going to clear out the block where the tailpiece/bigsby was. -Jonathan

43. Hair's still good. Health's okay (give or take a gallbladder). I wouldn't know about the libido slowing down...who's got time for sex between work and family? How about just getting motivated to do the daily work grind, knowing I've got another 25 years until retirement? -Jonathan

Sad news. What a talent! -Jonathan