polara

Shouldn't VH rumors be a sticky at the top of the HFC board? *yawn* You know, it's not 1979 any more. The thought of another "booze 'n' boobs" cock-rawk band trying to continue that schtick after they're in their 50s is depressing. They can still play and who knows might have great songs in 'em, but the thought of AARP cardholders in Lycra, singing about bonin' in the back seat after school, fills me with the creeping horrors! If they put out a rockin' record about being grown-up I'll be interested.

I don't like PRSs. I don't like gold hardware. But I LOVE that guitar. Classy!

After reading all this, I guess I'll listen to some DT. I'm one of those who never has heard any member of that band play a single note... never been much for prog... but I'll give 'em a shot. Makes me like A7X more... I understand what they mean about sometimes a band is one group of people, no matter how good or nice a "replacement" is.

Well, well. Look what Madge was sportin' the day after her birthday! Ted, is there something you want to tell us? Hell, that guitar's ruined for me now, even if the would let it loose. The humanity!

I once cranked my 15-watt Lightning with 1 12, and every condo neighbor, even in other buildings, asked me "what the hell" and it was deafening in here, too. I can't even GIG with a Vox AC30 in anyplace less than 500 capacity, and when I was playing in a hard rock band with a JCM800 100-watt into a 1960 cab,the sound guy told us our stage volume was too high... in a 1500 seat venue. A half-stack turned up to power tube distortion at home will require a basement built like a bomb shelter and some excellent ear protection. Genuine hair metal sound and bedroom volumes probably ain't gonna happen. Mess with a POD long enough and you'll get there. Or a little amp (single power tube, 5 watts or so) run clean with a Boss Metal Zone and a compressor and delay in front...?

Thank goodness I've never had the scratch to spend on a custom Hamer (let alone a new one) and get drawn into the "Jol gave me gold-plated widgets!/Jol wouldn't give me silver-plated thinguses!" match.

Agreed... somehow kids need to do SOMETHING that is their own. And that kind of thrash-prog-pop mashup the kids in the video were doing is theirs (though it's not too far removed from Dillinger Escape Plan in a way). Checked out the Winterland footage. Hmm. It may be a case of having to be in the right place at the right time.

Crunchee, you might like that slacker.com portable. I got mine for fiddy bucks used. Plug it into your PC (if you're Mac Like Me you can only use wi-fi) and just come up with forty radio stations. Always had a secret lust for zydeco? Curious about current black metal? Program 'em in. It fills the player with music and away you go. I think for people born after, say, 1980 internet radio IS radio. Might as well enjoy these advances in technology. The days of saying "Everything on the radio is crap" are long gone. Everything IS on the radio now! The downside is that if someone wants to listen to, say, only klezmer music, one can do just that and never have one's tastes expanded by having to listen to anything outside of a narrow view.

"The only lament I have nowadays is that I don't have easy access to what's going on in the music world, except for mainstream outlets. I'm reduced to listening to 'World Cafe' on NPR for something that's different." There are thousands of streaming internet stations. Try slacker.com or pandora.com or spinner.com. I'm using a slacker.com portable that refreshes my stations when it's in wifi range and I get an endless stream of new music on stations I create, from big band standards to dance rock to electronica to acid jazz. Kiss was considered "out there"at some point? Seriously? I mean, they came out after Sabbath and never rocked 1/10 as hard. I have a hard time imagining Kiss ever being thought of as innovative or rockin' except as a marketing exercise.

If there is one eternal truth in music, it's that what our parents loved was boring, what we loved when we were 18 is brilliant, and what kids love now is noisy crap.

If you take Les Paul Hisself, playin' his very own Les Paul as the definitive Les Paul Sound (and how can you argue with that) then I'd say most people who own that model guitar are not getting The Sound. I think where you turn the knobs on the guitar, and the parts you play, will make more difference in sound than the model guitar you're picking up. Yeah, I know most of us aren't really answering the question directly but I guess what I mean is there are far too many variables to ever do a true comparison test. A solid mahogany set-neck guitar with two PAF-ish humbuckers is gonna sound roughly like other guitars of the type. Same if you add a maple top or make it P90s or make it hollow or whatever. Probably as much variation from LP to LP as there is from brand to brand.

I think my wife is taking me to see them June 5 as a birthday present. They were the first band I ever saw, back in 1981. I guess I'm not a hard-core fan but I'll always respect them as a band that doesn't just coast along but instead still makes records with balls, though the last two have frustrated me with the equal mix of really great rockers and some "what were they thinking?" songs. Not that I'm growing old gracefully, but I like how Rick and Tom have let their "look" from their late 70s incarnation evolve into cool elder rock statesmen. If only Robin would try a new hairstyle... I know it's shallow but I keep thinking he has the PIPES of a 25 year old but when you're thinning out on top and thickening a little in the middle, maybe the shoulder-length locks are not the best look!

Letraset was just the maker of that presstype. The font itself is Bookman Bold Italic, and the variant is swashes (as opposed to regular). I don't know the key combination to get the swashes once you've installed the font, but you can get it here http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/detail.htm?pid=415684 Presstype's gone the way of the dodo but I'm sure you can print this font mondo size to make a template or get it vinyl cut reverse to make a mask...

SOLD!

Bump... I'll trade for a decent dirt box or tuner... honestly I don't need much else. Or $80, of course!

'Fraid it won't do 220 without a transformer. Oh, well! The boost... lemme think. It's sort of the opposite of what I need but cool.

Quick weekly bump. Rather sell, but maybe there's some tempting trade out there!

In the interest of budget, is there simply a pickup and color option we could add to an existing model? Maybe take a mahogany Artist, do Phat Cats, make it a unique color, and add the checkerboard logo strip. Price, if we are serious, has to be a huge factor. But at the same time it should be a guitar that can't be replicated by just getting a used one off Ebay and swapping pickups. I think color and logo are things that are cheaply modified at the factory but would be unusual enough and difficult enough to make them distinctive and hard to build at home.

I'm seriously into the idea of a bare-bone rawk machine. I dig sustainblocks but wraps rock, too. I don't want or need the bling. Like I said my DREAM machine is a Junior in white with a sustainblock but a Vector junior would be cool. I personally find the Standard shape kind of enormous for a lonely P90 and wrap tail sitting out there, but maybe that is just me.

Yes, which leads us back to a great many debates over the company... a Hamer off the shelf new is more than almost any of us can afford, and a custom is is way out there.

As posted in the other thread, I'd look long and hard at a Junior, in white, with a sustainblock. Not saying I can afford it, but that makes my nipples stiff.

I love that phrase "Gig-worthy design", may I borrow it at some point in the future? Paul Hamer

Played it for 30 minutes, so almost brand-new. It took too much of the chimey upper-mids off my AC30 no matter how I set it, but it IS very effective at smoothly, quietly dropping your volume. I think if you really need to drop your volume for home use it's fine, and I think with amps that don't rely on that elusive Vox chime it is probably great. I suspect it'd tame an El34 amp very nicely. But I wanted it to take the volume down a hair at rehearsals and it just affected the tone too much. I paid $100 plus shipping last week. Let's say $80 shipped and Paypaled, or hit me with some kind of interesting trade for um... well, I could use a rectangular hard case, or maybe um... a bunch of strings. Maybe a cool pedal. Something!

Wow! How very nice. I feel like we need to watch our language in here now! Seriously, I am down to two electrics now and of course one has your name on it, built under your watch. No one else I've found really made that combination of solid construction and gig-worthy design.

Piano, without a doubt. So useful, the doorway to composition and arrangement.