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Alex_SF

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  1. Ya really, how do you get to the truss rod with that thing there? I suppose you can get around it. Either way, AWESOME guitar! I really like it. HNGD! Thanks -- I'm pretty happy with it so far. As far as the truss rod goes, I adjust mine so rarely (i.e., nearly never) that it's not a very big deal to just take the string lock off if I need to -- it's just a couple more screws than the truss rod cover. And given that I don't clamp the strings anyway, I may just remove the string lock on this one altogether at the next string change.
  2. I blame Billy; it's his fault. He posted on Facebook that he'd just found an '82 Ibanez Artist for a ridiculous number -- and, having had a fascination with these guitars myself for some time, I had to do a curiosity search on my local Craigslist. And look what followed me home after I did that: This is the AM-205 Stagemaster, but with factory whammy bar. 335-style semihollow but with a smaller body -- not much bigger than an LP. Predecessor of Gibson's ES-339 / CS-336 by 20-odd years. Laminated body with burl mahogany veneer front & back. Super 58 pickups. Medium profile neck, maybe comparable to Gibson "60s" thickness? Ebony board. Full specs of the AM-205 here. The AM-255 doesn't even appear in any catalog or brochure I've ever seen; think it might have been a John Scofield endorsed model based on some message board posts I've seen elsewhere but I'm not certain. Came originally with an Ibanez "Hard Rocker Pro" trem unit, but the one on mine has been replaced with a Kahler -- which is just ducky as far as I'm concerned. I have a Hard Rocker Pro on my RS-1000, and it works great and stays in tune, but string changes take a long time and require a screwdriver. Kahler arm was missing, but already ordered a replacement and I can just swipe the arm from my Greco for the time being. Neck is a 9 out of 10 -- straight, with level frets with plenty of life in them. Some cosmetic dings that are unnoticeable at stage distance, and a crack in the finish on the back of the neck at the headstock volute, which looks like a prior owner probably knocked it into something on stage. I'm 95% sure the crack doesn't go any deeper than the finish; but if it ever appears that it does, the price I got the guitar for was good enough that I don't mind spending a couple hundred on a pro repair. Gold parts have significant wear on the plating and a "vintage" patina befitting its 28 years of age. Bridge required lots of string height / spacing and intonation adjustment when I got it home, but it's dead-on now. Replaced the very cool boomerang strap buttons with Schallers, but keeping the boomerangs in case I ever want to put them back on, or put them on another guitar. Also replaced the factory Sure-Grip knobs with amber top hats. Sure-Grips are kind of cool, but the numbers on them are printed in black, which makes it impossible to quickly look down and visually check your settings on stage. These top hats aren't much better contrast-wise, though; may switch to speed knobs with white numbers if I can find some. Taking it to practice this afternoon; can't wait to hear it cranked. Only trouble is, now I've really got to sell a couple guitars; the cases are taking over my bedroom. That's actually a good thing, though: there are at least three that I never really bonded with and that ought to be owned by someone who'll play them more than I have.
  3. The hood-pass stuff was just stupid -- a stupid thought, stupidly expressed -- but as far as I could understand, not derogatory. Just dumb. As one of the celeb sites or other roughly put it, if he tried going to the real hood and acting like he was at home there, his lily-white prettyboy ass would find out pretty quickly how wrong he was. The more obnoxious part of the interview was kissing and telling on his exes. A real man doesn't do that.
  4. Not nearly as disturbing as the $90.00 Gibson Hoodies for sale inside ! What are you complaining about? MSRP was like $200; at $90 they're a bargain!
  5. The exact wording of the definition may vary depending on your specific jurisdiction, but "theft by deception" is recognized by the law pretty much everywhere in the English-speaking world as a subcategory of the crime of theft. Those of you who disagree, at least thanks for letting us know about your personal concepts of honesty and integrity.
  6. The Bends is their best as far as being consistently good all the way through, and a great listen as an album start-to-finish. OK Computer is close, and it had several amazing songs -- in fact, its best songs might be better than the best songs from The Bends -- but "Fitter, Happier" and "Electioneering" both suck so badly I can't stand listening to them: so it can't be better than The Bends, which I don't have to fast-forward through at any point. Pablo Honey is in third place: inconsistent, but overall a very good album. About a third of Kid A and Amnesiac each is good. The rest of those albums blows. And with Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows and since, they've been pretty much dead to me. Apparently they took the {censored}ty parts of Kid A and Amnesiac and decided to evolve in that direction, perhaps owing to the same "waaaah, it sucks writing music that is popular" attitude that was apparent in that execrable Meeting People Is Easy movie.
  7. I think Social Distortion did a cover of "Ring of Fire" that had a few in it. Social D's "Bad Luck" has a nice one in the middle of the third verse (or between the fifth & sixth, depending on how you divide it). John Cougar's "I Need A Lover" has a couple in the intro. VH's "And The Cradle Will Rock" has one at the beginning, but it's broken up into a series of small scrapes.
  8. Get a load of this: When I was 15 years old, I joined my first band. I had a hunk-of-crap Hondo Flying V that had as many dead frets as good ones. So the other guitar player let me use the guitar he inherited from his father: A 1955 Fender Stratocaster. ALL ORIGINAL, down to the case. I used that guitar for a year and we complained up and down about it because it wasn't "metal enough." Youth is wasted on the retarded. Ha -- that's about the mirror image of me with the '63 Jag and the Hondo Rhoads. The Jag was definitely not metal enough. The Hondo actually played pretty good in stock condition, but I messed up the action pretty badly when I installed a Kahler "Flyer" whammy on it. Thought I'd done everything right -- drilled the holes for the little trem post studs so they sat exactly flush with the guitar's top when I installed them, but the action came out way too high, even with the two height adjustment posts screwed all the way down flush against the studs. That screwup was one big contributing factor to my shortly-thereafter 14-year hiatus from playing. But I was later able to finally adjust it to just-about playable condition so I could eBay the guitar a couple years ago ("Needs a setup.").
  9. Was also my first -- a '63 Fender Jaguar, which I found in the attic and appropriated from my father, who'd put it up in storage many years before and wasn't using it. I didn't appreciate it so much at the time, though: it was (and still is) heavily reliced (naturally), and the pickups were not so great for the hard rock and metal that I was mostly into at the time. I went the opposite path of many here by "upgrading" at age 16 to a plywood-bodied Hondo II Rhoads copy, which I bought with my paper route/lawnmowing money. Glad I didn't sell the Jag to buy it -- it's a good thing I still considered it my father's guitar at the time (and have all along, even though he recently told me he'd pretty much given it to me when I appropriated it).
  10. I caught the tour in Concord, CA about 2 weeks ago. Coverdale was struggling a lot to hit the high notes that night: when the songs got to a point with a scream, he'd just do this harsh, rough, atonal shriek that was painful to listen to. I recall thinking that maybe it's finally time for him to hang it up -- but now I hear he's been battling laryngitis and ultimately had to call off the tour, I'll give him some benefit of the doubt for the trouble he was having at the show I went to. I have a pretty sensitive throat myself, and understand that a rock tour with few nights off can be pretty rough on a singer's instrument, especially once an irritation or infection gets hold of you. If'n I hear Breaking the Law one more time I think I'll gag...... Yeah, Priest has a few overplayed tunes and several that I consider filler, even on British Steel ("United," f'rinstance) ... but their best stuff is amazing enough to make the filler worth sitting through. I was happy to hear them pull out a couple from their best album, Sad Wings of Destiny -- "Victim of Changes" and "Ripper" -- and only sorry that they didn't do "Electric Eye" at the Concord show.
  11. Originally Posted by slight-return Quick distinction here - copyright exists (automatically) at the time of fixation. What we are talking about here is REGISTRATION of a copyright claim. It's not so much "get the copyright" as it is "register the copyright claim" Right. You don't need to register the copyright in order to be protected, but you do need to register it in order to bring a lawsuit, and you need to register it prior to the infringement or within 3 months after first publication of it in order be entitled to certain kinds of damages (statutory damages & attorneys' fees) in the event you do bring a lawsuit. Otherwise you'd have to prove actual harm. There are other advantages too, like the registration is very good proof of your ownership of the work (i.e. proves you created it first, etc.) You should register the work as soon as is practical in order to get maximum protection. But you can do it after you send out demos. You can do the "poor man's copyright" in the interim -- put a CD of the work in a sealed envelope and mail it to yourself. Leave it sealed, and the postmark is your evidence of the date of mailing. Not as good as registration, though, just a backup.
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