shankyboy

My favorite app for learning songs is Amazing Slow Downer. I have the desktop version and the app on my phone & ipad. You would need to rip the CD to digital format. I use it all the time to learn licks.

Love them Hellecasters. I have a friend here in Austin that used to work on all of Jorgenson's guitars. He has the entire Hellecaster Fender and G&L collection. Here's a pic with a few.

Yeah, I was bummed that I couldn't make the show but my weekend in New Orleans for the NOLA Funkfest was amazing. Hopefully next year.

He's going to be here this Saturday at The Haute Spot in Cedar Park. I was really hoping to see his show but I have a gig at the same time.

It's official. So sad.

It would be heart breaking to see G&L get swallowed up by Fender but I wouldn't be surprised. Honestly, I don't feel that they have been building them as well as they did in the Nineties. I have 3 ASATs, 1 Legacy and 1 Comanche from that period and they are fantastic. This Legacy is my #1. She takes a beating, gets drenched in sweat and stays in tune for every set.

Jimmy James is one of my favorite guitarists. No pedals or boutique amps just raw, from the heart playing.

My Keyboard player recently turned me onto this guitarist, Jimmy James, who plays with the Scone Cash Players and The Delvon Lamar Organ Trio. Don't know if any of you know anything about Daptone Records but many of the players in these videos are tied to various artists on the Daptone label. Anyway, I can't get enough of this stuff. Did Jimmy laying down the funk with an old Silvertone hollowbody.

I got turned onto The New Mastersounds a couple of years ago and can't get enough of their music. Eddie Roberts is a masterful guitarist.

I bought one of those tweed limited edition Blues Juniors a few years back from Guitar Center. They had the price down to $299!! I get monster tone out of it and I drag it to most of my bar gigs. It doesn't have the roar of my Vibrolux, but for it's size, it roars plenty loud. Especially when I have my Fulltone in front of it. I think it is the perfect amp for bar gigs.

Jams were how I got good enough to play live and put my own band together. I spent 3 years going to every jam that I could possibly attend. Typically, I would come straight home from work and get some sleep and then get up and hit a jam, get home at 3 am, get up at 6 am to go to work and then do it all over again. There was always at least 1 jam a night Sunday thru Thursday. Many of these jams were fairly run and many of them were run on the buddy system. That's all part of paying your dues. I'll pass on a personal learning experience from a jam that, after all these years, I can now laugh about. We had a local jam that was a "Pro" jam. Somehow, I had convinced this guy who was our local elder statesman of the blues to let me up with him. This was before I learned how to lay back and respect whover was leading the song. I was playing too loud and stepping all over this man's singing. Midway through the song, another experienced player came over and unplugged my amp. As I turned around to se what was wrong, he bluntly told me that I needed to go back home and practice and to not come back until I had learned to respect the other players on stage. I was really pissed at this guy and almost cleaned his clock, but the reality was that I had it coming to me. This same guy now calls me on stage immediately whenever I walk into one of his gigs and proceeds to tell that story and that now he's proud to have me sit in with him. That lesson was certainly the best lesson I could have ever learned.

I have a larger PA that I use for the Pop & Rock bands that I do sound for(EAW Speakers and Crown Amps), but for my own band gigs, I have been using my Mackie 808 with the passive Mackie 450s for the mains and a pair of Yamaha club series 15s w/horns for monitors. My band is a 6 piece band with horns & keys and this PA is all I ever need for any of the club gigs that I do. It is very clean and the 808 has more than enough power & headroom. (I think the 450s were designed specifically for the 808 head) I have owned some of the lower end powered heads, Peavey, Crate and Fender and they just don't have enough horsepower to give you a good clean sound. I think Mackie is the king of small club PAs.

My band will be appearing at the Rhythm Room on Jan. 15th.

Thank you gentlemen.

I used to do sound for this really good top 40 band with a chick lead singer and they did "seven nation army". I had never heard the original and thought it was a real cool song. The way they performed it and the way I mixed it made it sound like a real eerie soundtrack for a Tarantino movie. When I actually heard the original on the radio, I was very disappointed. I have seen them perform a couple of times on TV and they were terrible. On the flipside, the Loretta Lynn CD is pretty damn cool with Jack's production & playing on it. Genius, no, different & unique, yes.

Magic Sam Howlin' Wolf Albert Collins

I have one of the 72 Vectors from 97 and it is a fantastic guitar. Before getting the Vector, I thought that all of the rock stars that rested them in their crotch were just making some sort of phallic suggestion, but I have found myself doing the same thing more than once when I am really digging in. Definitely not a comfortable guitar for sitting down and practicing though.

I am a member of a couple of other user groups and, quite honestly, I have been amazed at some of the mud slinging that goes on on this site. I see more irrelevant topics here than any where else. Perhaps the folks who manage this site can create some more topics in order to allow us people seeking specific information to avoid the BS that some of our less mature members seem to enjoy posting. Perhaps: 1. Hamer Guitars (info only pertaining to Hamers) 2. Non-Hamer Guitars 3. Guitar & bass Amps 4. PA gear & related questions 5. Studio & recording 6. Gigging & Performance subjects 7. Musicianship 8. Ranting and other off topic items.

This whole Analog vs Digital thing is sounding like a broken record. Each medium has it's own qualities & characteristics and both can sound good or bad. In this day & age, the analog argument is losing validity as most big name engineers have moved away from it. The argument that Blues will sound better on analog is a load of crap. I have a very nice studio which has evolved over the years from 100% analog to a DAW with very nice analog preamps & compressors. In addition to that, I am a blues player. My music sounded good on my old analog rig and it sounds good today tracked & mixed on my DAW. The bottom line is that the engineer will be the key to a quality recording, not the medium. Find an engineer with the sound you are looking for and don't pay attention to what he is using to record you.

Mine was my '97 Limited Edition Korina Vector. That's what started my whole Hamer collecting frenzy. The following year, Hamer sent me a Rick Nielsen Limited Edition Korina Standard with the same serial as the Vector. How cool is that?

What I would like to see them make is a copy of the 1958 Modern. Then I would have the complete trio from '58.

I have one of the Korina Vectors made in '97 and I got it because it looks exactly like the '58 V that Albert King is holding on one of his album covers. (He's my hero) I have never played any other Vs, so I couldn't give you any neck comparisons, but I will say that it is an incredible guitar and it definitely gets that Albert King tone.

Kilroy, I see our Rick Nielsens are sequential cousins. Mine is #22.

Damn Foodermon!!! That green one is bad ass!!!

Here's my Rick Nielsen Standard.