The Taxman Cometh ...

I got my income tax return this week, so I picked up the acoustic/electric Guitar I had set aside at my guitar shop. It's an Ovation CK047 FKOA. The top is made of koa wood. It's looks real rich and darkish. I friggin' love it!!! It cost $580, which was real decent.

I tried a bunch of acoustics and this one totally stood out for me, sound wise. The look of it is super hot too. What I like is I can really noodle on it like an electric guitar, since the neck is pretty slim and the action is a lot lower than the crap acoustic I borrowed from my mom ... shhhhhh . You can hear legatos really clear on it. The onboard tuner is the sh1t too; real smooth to operate.

I recorded with it a bit through my POD X3 but I'll have to twiddle with it to get a clean amp + I can't be sitting in front of my computer and studio monitors like I do with my electrics, since the sound from the speakers goes in the guitar, through the pick up, feedback. Anyhoo ... check it out:

I got my son a Gibson!!!

My son (Samuel, 4 years old) got a Gibson guitar for Easter!

I bought him a Gibson Power Tour electric guitar. We went checking out the ladies in the mall while my wife and daughter did the groceries. We ended up going to Toy R Us. He comes running to me " Dad dad dad! A guitar like you!". I told him maybe the Easter Bunny could bring him one. On Sunday morning the Easter bunny brought him one!

They go for about $70, which I never would have paid. I didn't even look at what it did on the box. I thought it was one of those toy guitars that plays tunes and does sound effects. I just found it too cool to resist at the sale price of $19.99. I have a white Les Paul. This is the SG model; close enough.

When we got it I realized that you can actually play guitar with it. You have 12 frets. Open is A, First fret A#, etc. You can play cool stuff like Iron Man and Breaking the Law. My son just likes to shred on it. On him, it looks like a full sized guitar on an adult. It has Heavy Metal, Punk, Indie and Rock settings.

Maybe I'll try to post a video later of him shredding it out!

Check out Youtube for some videos of people playing with it.

Mixing man

Holy smokes, time flies! I just realized I didn't blog anything during the month of February!

What's new? Well, I got a cool little mixer on Ebay ... the Behringer BCF2000 :




It works great with Tracktion 3. It has motorized faders, so when I open my project in Tracktion, it immediately sets the faders to where I had left them the last time I mixed. I can also mute and pan tracks with it.

I only use it at the end of the project to really fine tune my mixes. I try to keep the mixing process at the very end so I don't end up fiddling around for hours instead of recording and working on the track.

It has 8 faders, but I read somewhere where some guy bought two so he could mix 16 tracks. That would be sweet, but for the time being, I rarely use more than 8 tracks ... 2 drums, 2 guitar, 2 bass and 2 solo guitars.

I've been keeping busy playing guitar pretty much every day. I recorded 7 tracks in February and one today. I store them at Sloppystrings.com

Back to playing. Cheers.

Learning ALL the notes on the fretboard!!!

I read a great article about learning the notes on the fretboard tonight. Basically you go through all the notes from A go G# (A / A# / B / C / C# / D , etc), by starting one night with the A and find all the A's on the fretboard and play them for a while until you got it down. The next day you take A# and find all of them (next to the A obviously), and you quiz yourself by going to various A's and A#'s. Next day the B, then quiz yourself for A, A#, B, etc. In two weeks you should be good to go.

Let's see if it works, and see if I can stick to it.

Theory?!? I don't need no stinkin' theory!

Haha. NOT. I've been trying to get into music theory so I can learn more about the reasoning behind scales, chords, keys, modes, sheet music, etc.

I bought this really helpful book two weeks ago: The Everything Music Theory Book by Mark Schonbrun . It takes a simple approach to explaining music theory.

I have also started to learn scales, which will help with finger coordination. I had been practicing the pentatonic scales because a lot of folks say it's a good starting point. I've since been learning more about blues scales, major scales, and minor scales. Another advantage is that I'm starting to learn the notes on the fretboard. Now I know that if you play a C on the low E string, if you move down 2 strings and two frets forward you'll have a C also, but one octave higher.

I never noticed how the guitar was tuned before:

E ( F, G )

A ( B, C )

D ( E, F )

G ( A )

B ( C, D)

E

Wild and wacky stuff. I'm even starting to learn notes on sheet music.

Pimp My Axe: Part III

I finally settled on some pickups for my project guitar. I decided to go with the pair of Zakk Wylde EMG active pickups (EMG 81 and EMG 85):

First Step was to make adjustements to the body of the guitar because the hole from the input jack to the other wiring was too small so I had to drill a bigger hole to pass the 9volt battery connector. I also had to drill, saw, sand the body for the neck pickup becase the hole was too small. Lots of saw dust when I was done with that:

Then it was time to start soldering the different parts of the volume and tone pots. I had never soldered before so I had to practice a bit. It turned out pretty good. Not the prettiest joints but it worked. The wiring instructions from EMG were pretty good. It provides for different scenarios. I chose to wire my strat copy like a Les Paul, since my existing Gibson Les Paul came with Active EMG pickups.

I also had to drill a hole in the body to pass the 9volt connector to the back cavity of the guitar. I ordered a battery box to install later. The second photo shows the back of the guitar without the cover. The battery box will be screwed into the back cover once I cut a hole for the battery box.

This is what it looks like so far. I had to make a temporary humbucker ring for the bridge pickup until my new double humbucker pickguard comes in. I had to do this because I cut out the bridge pickup hole too big. I also had to cut a larger hole in the neck pickup slot because it previously held a single coil pickup.

I placed an order today for a new pickguard, screws, a battery box, knobs, 2 humbucker rings, and a new tremolo arm.

It was a pretty fun part of the project to undertake. I got to learn about guitar electronics and learn about the inner workings of guitars while researching it. I was completely shocked when I plugged her in and it actually worked. I would not hesitate to install new pickups on a guitar. The second time around would be much quicker.

Previous Pimp My Axe Posts:

Pimp My Axe 1 (Nov 17, 2007)

Pimp My Axe 2 (Dec 8, 2007)

Studio Monitors

I picked up a pair of studio monitors at my local music shop on Christmas Eve. I was getting tired of playing through my headphones and mixing with them. It's liberating to just have speakers to play through. I could use my amp to use amp/stompbox modelling software but I couldn't get it to sound right. These monitors are neutral so I know what I hear will sound pretty much sound the same on my ipod.

You can hear all the little nuances, and it forces me to clean up the tracks that insert into songs. Here's a link to the speakers:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOBX5A