Steve Haynie

Are those dark areas burns? If someone was setting that Chaparral on fire it would explain why the front is ruined and the back looks OK.

The Chinese restaurant that I like usually plays Chinese disco. It makes that brokeNCYDE stuff sound good.

It is good to know you are OK. The news report stood out because this one was so bad.

Umm...2nd post -Austin Damn.

No one has mentione David Lee Roth yet. There is a guy that can charm an audience. Years ago a friend said that he would be great as a talk show host.

The L.A. hair bands are missing. In a way that is good, but there were some of those bands that earned a place at the top. Is Motorhead really metal? They have their own way of playing rock and roll that does not fall in line with any other bands. They just sound like a very heavy hard rock band.

Can you get us free guitars?

For years I have said something similar. When the topic of lending guitars comes up I tell people this: "Guitars are like underwear, something you do not lend or borrow." In high school I loaned a guitar and gave the friend a new pack of strings to install. The string posts were wrapped with wadded balls of wire. There was no problem other than that. Since then there have been very few people that I would trust with an instrument of mine. There are a couple of beaters in my collection that are a bit more freely passed around. When I went to phoenix' house for an HFC jam I assumed correctly that everyone would be careful with the guitars there, and it was true. We all knew how expensive the guitars were, so we respected each other's gear. A crook in my area was able to convince people to lend him a guitar. He would sell the guitar to a pawn shop right away. The guitars were not stolen because someone gave him the guitars. That is how the law works in my state. There were a lot of people who got burned by the guy that could not legally do anything to him. He was shot and killed last week.

Happy Birthday!

Is there any chance that you are pulling the high E a little toward the edge of the fretboard? At the first fret that is hard to do, but it is a common for some people to pull the first string sideways a little.

Find the stands with the thick black foam rubber and you will be OK.

Happy Birthday!

Janie Hendrix says that Experience Hendrix has nothing against Fender, they just have a better relationship with Gibson. There must be some up front money that is talking. Surely Janie Hendrix knows that if she wanted to do a lower priced Hendrix Strat through Fender it would be possible. They do the lower priced guitars all the time with the Mexican made guitars and Squier line. A long term deal would be easy to work out.

Hamer was never made into a collectible brand when everyone became a vintage guitar expert in the 90's. Everyone chased after old Gibsons and Fenders first. PRS never had an import line and they marketed their "Ten Tops" quite well. Back then everyone wanted an investment guitar. Now PRS does imports, but they got in before the bell. Try to buy a 70's Standard or Sunburst and you find that there is some love-- in the form of big bucks. In the for sale forum here there are people drooling over two recent Standards and not complaining about the price, just the lack of funds. eBay is a matter of timing. There are periods of high and low prices for some items. We have seen set neck Chaparrals bring over $1000 for a brief time.

Spooky Creepy Eerie

Dio was one of those 25 year overnight sensations. Ritchie Blackmore is known as being hard to get along with for some people. It could be that by the time Ronnie James Dio had his own band and a record deal he had learned some lessons along the way about how to do business.

Yeah, we're all getting older.

Somehow you need to work giraffes into the design of a CD cover or T-shirt. They always look cool.

The first song you want to play when you see that finish? .

The whole world has gone the Hell. How much would you love Ace after seeing this video?

There are certain tones that only a Les Paul can get in the clean to slightly overdriven range. bubs_42 is right that the neck pickup is where the LP takes on its own tonal identity. Using both pickups or just the neck pickup and an amp that is not too gain heavy you will find those LP tones that really stand out. Something about the body thickness and the maple cap make the LP different from other solid body guitars. My Standard sounds good through both pickups, but it has less brightness at lower gain settings than my Les Paul. Maybe it is just a different brightness. The Standard makes me want to crank the amp more, but it could be my inner Scorpions trying to break out.

Cool paint job. Considering how much Jol Dantzing likes racing you have to wonder if he has ever thought about racing stripes on one of his guitars.

Ok, so maybe they said "less filler" rather than "filler." The point they made at the factory was that Music Man spends a lot of time on sanding before finishing.

RoyB, your explanation of finish thickness and using finish as filler ties into what was said at the Music Man factory tour from ten years ago. There were a lot of employees sanding bodies and necks, maybe more employees on that one aspect of production than any other group. It was explained that the goal was to create as smooth a finish as possible to to avoid using filler.

It has to do with ratings. Michael Jackson was dragged through the mud whenever possible because his name and image in a 30 second clip would bring in viewers to see commercials. Les Paul's greatest popularity was in the 1950's. His name will be remembered by a bunch of old people, but not much by people under 50. The right people are aware of Les Paul's impact.