tomteriffic

When I was appraising houses, I used to get what I called the "breathing the air" syndrome. It went something like "My house is worth twice what any other identical house on the block is worth because I've been breathing the air here longer than anyone else". Or something similar. Maroons. Sometimes I'd get phone calls from these folks and I wouldn't even argue with them. I'd ask then to show me some hard, verifiable data that was better than what I had and I'd reconsider. I only had one guy take me up on it, but it was just fluff. Usually I'd just let 'em rant for a while and if they broke into profanity I'd just tell them that the conversation was over. I used to like to screw with the folks whose house I was in mid-appraisal on. And which house I was just leaving, having done none of the analysis, etc. that I needed to do to come up with a value. This also leaves aside for a moment the fact that, if I was making the appraisal for a bank (which I usually was) by law I couldn't tell them Jack Schidt anyway. But some of these folks, for whatever reason, wanted to know the magic number RIGHT NOW. Nothing I could say seemed to placate some of these people. I finally developed a method that involved looking over my hastily scribbled notes, referring to a blank piece of paper in the back of my folio and then I'd look them straight in the eye and deadpan: Mr. Jones, your house is worth hundreds, possibly THOUSANDS of dollars. That got me out of a lot of houses tout de suite.

A NOS 5751 in front and a pair of late-breakup JJ's in the back helped me with the clean headroom a bit. It gets really plexi-ish now. But I still can't dime the gain AND the volume without getting serious whistles and such, regardless of the guitar. Below that, though it's delicious. I run it into an open-back Avatar 2 x 12 that has the extremely good-sounding Weber Blue/Weber Silver combo in it. It gets pretty loud, but if the drummer were to get aggressive it would probably get washed out. As it is, I get compliments/comments on my playing from the neighbors a couple of doors down. With the windows closed.

All the best!

The Hagstrom Kent. This might have been the finest iteration of the plastic body / vegematic switch type of guitar ever produced. Other than its vaguely Strat-oid appearance it mostly looked like a Fender that was afflicted with radiation poisoning after spending time a mad scientists lab. The zero fret and the big honkin' screws holding the front of the guitar on were kind of cool though, especially in black. Strap it on, though, and you found a very comfortable, solidly built guitar with some very fat sounding (for single coils) pickups with a fast neck. Amazingly, the intonation on the Hofner Beatle-Bass styled bridge (wood with the little metal inserts which could be moved from groove to groove) was very good with 9's, but the whammy was a joke and the bars tended to disappear almost immediately.

Wow, how did I miss this? Happy Belated, Rob!

Matt, I'm trusting you got my e-mail concerning our planning on being there?

All the best from down the road a piece, Counselor. I'm hoping it's either a false alarm or an early catch. Every day, look at a copy of the scan, or the appropriate spot on your middle, put on your best studious frown and say "Litigation?". That word scares me shitless. Maybe it'll work on the whatever-it-is. Hang in!

I LOVED the Maxwell St. Market. Shady, a little dangerous and a load of fun.

Actually, saxes aren't too terribly bad. My son just got a vintage Selmer Mark VI Alto for $5500 from a reputable shop. True, dat, but when I started on tenor in 1966, a Selmer Mark 6 was about $800. The last I checked with some symphony players I know, a "so-what" 18th century Italian cello was in the vicinity of $30,000

Cheers!

We've got three of them today! Many Happy Returns, guys!

Jeroen, mine says Channel/Effect on one button, and Reverb on the other. The first button switches from the clean to the distortion side and the second switches the Reverb on and off. As to how they are wired internally, I don't know. It may be possible to get the rubber back off of the footswitch part and use a multimeter to test for continuity between the various portions of the jack (tip/ring/sleeve) and the switches themselves?

I'll take the Schlabotniks.....

Not making excuses for the price or any of that sort of thing, just an FYI. Ken Fischer was the guy who, in large part, started the small-production boo-teek amp phenomenon. He made a fairly large number of very good amps, at one point taking on some employees to help with assembly (at least some of his missives to the world suggested that that was in the works, IIRC). It was pretty much a basement/garage kind of operation, though. Health issues forced him to cut back and eventually stop building amps. They were very good and very expensive. He died recently, I believe. Meanwhile the boutique amp craze, especially the lower wattage single channel type thing was catching fire. At the time, the amp against which all others were measured was the Trainwreck. At least one builder set about making unabashed copies of the three-knob Trainwreck (whatever it was called). That was Alessandro. At that time, the corksniffers were all about "does it sound as good as a Trainwreck?" So, for better or worse, it really did set some sort of standard for supremegodlytonalexcellence. Anyway, with that "benchmark" status and the fact that it was the first one built, I could see how it would attain "Holy Grail" status for some folks. It would kind of be like getting your mitts on Randall Smith's prank of putting and Altec 12 and a hot-rodded Bassman with cascading channels into Barry Melton's Princeton, thus creating the first Boogie.

Berraberranize looking burst on that one, Geoff! Now all you have to do is get a Duotone bridge on it....

Small aside: Yo, Willie. Good piece but you need to pull fewer punches. Simple fact is that there are two original Eagles left and it's the Don and Glen show these days and has been for a couple of decades. Members have been fired for political differences, just disappeared etc. The Eagles eat their young. Fukk 'm Brian Setzer Orchestra could project into a stadium, I think.

I'm an even older duffer and I really don't care if it looks a little silly, these things balance and play so well that you're just strapped in and ready to roll. DavidE Looks great behind one. The Korina is supposed to impart an upper-mid spike, and I don't know how true that is. But my Goldtop Standard had a chamber and a rock maple top, and it's definitely got a higher center of resonance than its all-mahogany brother. Neither one is particularly heavy either. The new one is also chambered and, at least over the phone, had that upper mid bark. So do it. I saw some of the very first-ever Standards come through the door at the studio where I worked in the '70s and it took me almost 30 years to catch up, but man, they are some of the baddest, finest, coolest guitars on the planet. Especially when you're driving them. I still think I'm not the Vee type tho.

The smart money uses a PayPal affiliated bank account that is typically empty. You move the money in there and then immediately move it to another, unrelated account. That way PayPal can't dip into your bank account or freeze it.

I used that exact same rig in a rehearsal space in LA in the early 70s. Who knows? Might be the very same pieces? That one looks to be in great shape!

The control setup is actually taken from the original Explorers and Vees. Compared to, say, a Lester, there's a lot shorter signal path, individual pickup levels can still be preset and overall tone controlled, but with a lot less control interaction than you get with the typical LP setup, although there are some alternate wiring schemes that reduce this. On Hamers, I find myself, as often as not, leaving the switch in the middle and getting my tones from the volume knob. And the tone knob is usually set-and-forget anyway. The two volume knobs are a lot more conveniently placed, at least for me.

Lots of contenders, most are worthy and I'd be hard-pressed to pick a "best", since each has their own distinguishing capabilites and characteristics. Having said that, I sill have to throw Claypool's hat into the ring again. Primus' stuff usually isn't my cup of mud, but damn can that guy come out of left field and play some! Just his pretty-much-solo bass theme for Robot Chicken is worth some serious attention. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, Duck Dunn.

Dang! Somebody call Frank!

And the Barbie Ferrari.

Looks like the beat Scarab is too.

They're certainly distinctive! They look like they might be one of those "either you like them or you don't" kind of deals, with not much middle ground. I like 'em.