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Idunno

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Posts posted by Idunno

  1. 23 hours ago, Idunno said:

    Howard and DM, thanks for the greetings.

    Being a stalwart champion of traditional wood guitars, I always looked at composites as a kind of technical attack on the soul of that romance. Then it began to slowly win some curiosity from me, being a slow person to embrace any kind of change, until I convinced myself that there had to be some truth coming from the composite gallery of supporters about its viability as a respectable musical instrument. Now I can confirm at least that much. Tonight I'll put the .011s on and play them out.

    Howard, I have dual citizenship including US and Italian. Croatian is in the making. I'll be traveling to Italy (Palermo, Sicily) for a 10 day reconnoiter to get the lay of the land and a plan for retirement there. Both of my adult sons also have Italian citizenship, through me, and the goal is US expatriation within the next 2 years. I intend to fish the north coast of Sicily and play guitar. This self-contained guitar/amp/oar Enya is the logical choice for that lifestyle.

     

    Hello, Neil. Looking around I see you're still much involved with honing your build skills. The closest I ever got to that was buying a set of StewMac plans, perusing them and coming to the conclusion that I just don't have whatever it takes to complete such a project. While I was studying them I actually picked out the points where I knew I'd lose interest. Where I was confident I saw the joy and where I wasn't I saw the loathing. I decided compromise is a younger man's game. I also have to emphasize that there's a very good probability that all I'd hear from the sound hole is a highly muffled "You're an idiot". That would be a sad moment.  

    My tentative schedule for Italy is probably around September. That's not ink on the calendar yet because I'm inquiring about air BNB's that suit my wants/needs. Will see how things develop.

  2. Howard and DM, thanks for the greetings.

    Being a stalwart champion of traditional wood guitars, I always looked at composites as a kind of technical attack on the soul of that romance. Then it began to slowly win some curiosity from me, being a slow person to embrace any kind of change, until I convinced myself that there had to be some truth coming from the composite gallery of supporters about its viability as a respectable musical instrument. Now I can confirm at least that much. Tonight I'll put the .011s on and play them out.

    Howard, I have dual citizenship including US and Italian. Croatian is in the making. I'll be traveling to Italy (Palermo, Sicily) for a 10 day reconnoiter to get the lay of the land and a plan for retirement there. Both of my adult sons also have Italian citizenship, through me, and the goal is US expatriation within the next 2 years. I intend to fish the north coast of Sicily and play guitar. This self-contained guitar/amp/oar Enya is the logical choice for that lifestyle.

     

  3. Never here, but always near, I've come with some guitar related stuff.

    I recently took possession of an Enya X3 Pro (full size) on a chance that it might be something the ads and reviews report it to be. I say that after filtering out who I felt were noobs attempting to wax knowledge. Enya describes this guitar as all carbon fiber but it doesn't visually exhibit that. The top is the typical black carbon weave but the back & sides appear to be injection molded as a single piece tub with the CF top meticulously bonded to it. The neck appears to be that same plastic used for the body/sides. The fingerboard is black Richlite but the extension over the upper bout is suspended. It does not touch the top. Enya calls it an elevated neck designed to allow total resonance across the top. The guitar is Guild-heavy, which would explain the plastic I suspect is used in the construction.

    Out of the box the action in Martin-esque high, but playable, with a 1-11/16" nut width. I cut the saddle down about 1/16th" and that gave me a very playable neck all the way up. I did not need to touch the truss rod. I normally prefer a 1-3/4" width but I will compromise when it's worth doing so.

    The sound OOTB is exceptionally good. I won't cobble together a mental construct of that for you to slug through. It rings but doesn't muddy essential tonal separation, even when picking up-tempo. Volume is as good as any wood acoustic I've assailed over the years in the first position. It's so respectable a sound I'm casting a cheated eye at my wood guitars. What isn't typical is this soundbox does not peter out as you climb up the neck. It maintains good tonal characteristics, and volume, up the board. I don't know what strings are stock from the factory but can say the wraps at the ball ends are not very well done. I temporarily removed them to cut down the saddle and found sharp ends right at the ball. That's not normal in my experience. But, I put them back on after cutting down the saddle to get the same string before/after sound with the lowered break angle. No change. Now I'll put some D'Addario PB .011's on it to see how well they feed the soundbox.

    The guitar is equipped with 4 presets that can be selected with a single button (poorly) located on the upper waist. They're good for grins but that isn't why I spent the money. That said, they are rather cool and one doesn't need an amp to use them. There's a speaker inside the box. The battery is USB and charged as one would charge any phone. The charging cable is provided, as is a patch cord for an amp. A soft gig bag is also provided and it's good enough for a plastic guitar that isn't as susceptible to dings like a wood guitar is.

    I will say that Enya is very stingy with literature on this guitar. Most of what I read/heard is from other buyers or promoters. The booklet that comes with the guitar has more to do with Enya's product line that the X3 Pro.

    Total cost to my postal code was $434.00 from Amazon. At the moment I have most of my gear stored while I'm painting the interior of the house. When I have a moment I'll see about getting some music recorded with this thing and post it in the VOM1T thread.

    I expect to be selling off the wood guitars now that I have a worry-free end of life music box. Plans are to move off-shore to a simpler lifestyle and for a guitar player this thing is a big help to that end. 

    Questions?

    • Like 1
  4. Passing thru here to get an eye on the AG forum it's good to see Denny is still popular. There was a time when I parroted every holier than thou negative comments ever conceived for posting on these various forums about the man, and I thought I was a member of the club in good standing on the right side of evil. But, I digress.

    At some point in Denny's experience playing acoustic guitars he decided to take into his own hands the job of making his guitar play the way he wanted it to. I can't remember how many times I've taken my own to store techs for set-ups that were never exactly how I wanted them when I got them back. So, I began getting them where I wanted myself. I think any self-respecting guitarist will eventually make attempts to do that.

    Denny probably got good at setting up his guitar to the extent that he saw an opportunity to turn a buck on his skills by buying up cheap guitars, making them easy playing and offering them for sale with a mark-up to cover his work. My last set-up cost me over 100 (USD) by a good tech. If Martin, et al, offered the same thing a wild guess suggests their businesses would blossom and people would be happy to pay the up-charge.

    Denny got it right but guitarists find him guilty of charging a premium for his work, free shipping and a no-questions-asked return policy. However, they would not squawk paying for the same thing from a technician, minus the shipping. Guitarists tend to be kinda odd that way about Zager for one simple reason - he doesn't make the guitar.

    On an aside, I've had people tell me I have a nice car and I thank them with a boast that I made it myself. Why in the heck does anyone compliment someone on the car they drive knowing they had absolutely nothing to do with its design and build. I'm going use a 2-hole toaster as a hood ornament and apply a Mercedes star to it just to preempt the obligatory insincerity.

    Denny's a businessman and I laud his product. I've never played one. I've never seen a used one in any GC, Sam Ash, M/P store or pawn shop so obviously they're keepers. That's just a guess that owners are satisfied with them.

     

  5. Good post, good spirit and interesting stuff. I can visualize children wandering through the town singing this, sprinkling water in the faces of people they meet, and some of the people ducking saying they already gave (suffered the solicitation) on a previous street corner. I suppose this harks back to one of history's lessons (going forward) about not going out on the first day of the new year to avoid the crazies.

    Re: 2021. Not recognizing it until I can see the trailer. Any mail received in 2021 will be returned and marked: "Return to sender, annum unknown".

     

    Good song and well played, sir.

     

     

    • Like 1
  6. 19 hours ago, Pat Miller said:

    I thought I'd come here because I'm a bit bored at the family event today. I used to post here a lot a few years ago when I had a lot of questions about recoding equipment, but just moved on once I got my answers. There doesn't seem to be a lot of activity here though. I don't know what you mean by PP. 

    Basically, this is the underlying demise of HC. It rose up to become the most popular question/answer mecca. Then it started backsliding when the guitar culture at large no longer needed to spend the time logged in after the questions ran out. That's about the time it devolved into a forum run by cliques, similar to the persona of the current PP, and required heavy-handed moderation. That was a frustrating period exacerbated by the site switching to an unproven platform that failed an already embattled membership in countless ways. It lost its charm with the clique-run membership and went downhill from there until buried by the site admin attempting "great things" by playing the platform shell game and leaning heavily on jackbooted moderation to re-vitalize popularity (???!!!). The original esprit de corps that rallied the site was gone through poor management (captains sink with their ships). But, at least we have the AGF to provide the guitar culture's nerdsmanship needs and TGP to provide for the culture's cool-kids needs.

    • Like 1
  7.  

    8 hours ago, 1001gear said:

    Literally cannot imagine what that might be.  :idk:

    Nor can I. I come here every day or so, don't sign in and look at the Activity report on the main page. I don't sign in because that would populate the report with the nonsense from PP. The site is teetering on the edge of the abyss.

  8. SEO knowledge is useful for some things but it does not ferret out the distinctions between the people who have a desire to play the acoustic guitar, or more importantly, the reasons why they have that desire.

    The acoustic guitar is not easy to play. There are people who try year-over-year to achieve certain satisfying skills with the acoustic guitar but, usually due to a lack of everything required to gain that skill set, it remains elusive. Denny Zager knows that.

    Zager eliminates the one key physical thing that impedes motor skills development and that's manipulating the acoustic guitar. He makes it physically easy to play and that in turn garners a market share of sales. Simple truth is many people are turned off by the playability of factory-produced guitars that have high action. Martin is among the worst for that because their philosophy is the player will make the changes to suit him. This assumes the player is a player and not a noob needing something that doesn't task him from the outset. Denny Zager knows this. He answers the noob's needs up front.

    I've read many Zager reviews by people claiming years of experience with the acoustic guitar, naming high-end makers and then contrasting them as distant seconds to Zager's guitars for playability, followed by championing the sound and quality as being equal to or better than (insert name brands here). The message in those claims is they are not experienced players. They are noobs who have been noobs for many years and will probably always be noobs. But, they have discovered an easy playing guitar like it's a vein of gold running through their property and are vocal about it, not realizing they are also publicly admitting their inexperience with the instrument but overtly claiming the opposite. The tween-lines drama tells the real story and Zager knows this is marketable. Smart guy.

     

    • Thanks 1
  9. No problem. Make the video and dub the narrative in later. That I've seen, only James Goodall sports a start-finish video of his son making a guitar. The comments, as I recall, criticize him for not wearing a mask so make sure you have your chemical warfare gear on and properly secured for those who'd complain about being hung with new ropes. Ervin Somogyi has a couple videos capturing his dialog about woods, his selection of them, the principles of the sound box and an inarticulate allusion to his capacity for managing its voicing. It's interesting but he does not visually detail a build in video. One things-fer-shur, it'll make you better at planning the start, progression and completion of each step. Trust me, I know. 

    Anecdotal - I have to capture each work order that comes into the shop I work at in pics and video from the time they arrive to the time they leave. A hydraulic pump, about the size of a basketball, gets stills taken from every angle when it arrives. Then it's tested to ascertain it's condition (in airworthiness-speak: state of repair). A video is taken of that to capture all parameters of the test. The test is punctuated with vocal call-outs before, during and after the test. If it fails the test, a disassembly comes next with pics of the progression, pics of each part dimensionally measured and recorded on a master list of constituent parts, and so on, including steps during the reassembly to capture critical check-points of the build. A final test is performed in similar fashion to the incoming test, with vocal call-outs. By the time all is done and the pump is returned to the customer in airworthy condition, it's been completely cataloged in writing and visually in digital records, annotated appropriately. We are paperless. All work is performed in compliance with the manufacturer's maintenance manual for the parts we maintain. The visual file for each work order is available to respective customers, and national authorities, upon request or whenever it becomes necessary to visually assist them in understanding the nature of failures and related corrective maintenance. So, you might consider each of your builds as purchases from customers and visually document their progressions in video.

    Then again, nah. It's a PITA.

  10. 22 minutes ago, kwakatak said:

    Yup. I gave them three strikes. I view my warnings as gaslighting so I won’t give them the satisfaction of wasting any more time on them. At this point, I’d rather just start a blog or an Instagram Story or even a YouTube Series. 

    Good point. You might say that's the site's overall persona. Garbage in, garbage out.

     

    I bought a set of plans from Stew-Mac for an OM a few years ago. Just re-discovered them today. Hmmm...maybe getting that YouTube series going is a good idea. I could use some  pointers and motivation. Might be retiring in January and make a build a bucket list first project.

  11. On a more positive note, looks like you're gaining some momentum and experience as a builder. My mother-in-law, residing with us now going on 4 years, is pushing me to get into building. We chit-chat about various topics and she seems keen on setting me up with all the tools, materials and spirit for building but she doesn't quite understand the nature of it. You have to be genuinely engaged at that level. Pretending to be able to play one is kind of a fool's game but that shoe fits. Pretending to be able to build one? My feet aren't that big.  

  12. 22 hours ago, kwakatak said:

    Tell that to the mods at AGF. They have been not been so understanding. They are so uptight over there that even if I type in "****" they assume that I'm not following the rules. yesterday I posted a new thread about a social media app that is popular with people born after 1980 and they assumed I wanted it to go political even though I clearly said is so many words "please don't discuss anything political about the app I just want to know if you see any value in it as a form of self promotion" but they deleted the thread and PM'd me with a warning saying that I was being sneaky about trying to post a political thread. SMH. Whatever, boomers.

    Pretty much my experience with a particular moderator. As is his M.O., he got all threatening and full of himself with me over his own twisting of my post so I told him to perma-ban me because I was tired of suffering him and all the nancies over there.

  13. 7 hours ago, catscurlyear said:

    Hi deepend,i did wonder about the bronze strings  working with a regular electric guitar pickup ,would it or won`t it ?, but i was suprised at how well the strat pickup did work in that situation, i mean it out performed the pick up that was intended to be put in the soundhole,so the only place that is going is in the bin(trash ).

    The non-ferrous metal used in the wound strings will not be sensed by the magnetic flux field of a typical pick-up. But, all wound strings use a steel core and the p'up will definitely sense that part of the string and put it in the signal chain. The question to ask is if the steel cores are of such a gauge (mass) to be sensed in a balanced fashion with the other strings. If not, some EQ'ing will be needed. But, all wound strings can be manipulated through the chain to bring a pleasing sound. It's only when silk and steel is encountered that the bass strings are un-sensed.

  14. On 4/1/2020 at 8:46 PM, kwakatak said:

    Hi everyone. My intent was to pick this back up in the spring and I have. I traced my Larrivee OM again and cut out and routed two templates (out of bitch plywood this time) which will be used to make a bending form. 
     

    I also sharpened my blades and trued the soles on my planes and got to work planing the black walnut back and sides to a thickness of .1” for the sides and .11” for the back. I also inlaid a zig zag back strip in the back. 
     

    Finally, I traced the templates and cut out a rough outline on my little Ryobi bandsaw.  I did this so that I could better measure the thickness close to the center strip and have less material to have to plane away with my No. 5 bench plane. 

    6A37C06A-9219-46EB-A204-6805CFE9AEE0.jpeg

    2C4EF720-4FE9-47C1-B10D-99A0CD8ED19C.jpeg
     

    I’m contemplating on what to do next. I’m set to brace the back but feel like I should focus on the sides. If I do the latter, I want to make another mold from birch plywood because the MDF didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped and the material is not as easy to work with as plywood is. I’d also like to make a steam box instead of using a hot pipe or nylon heating blanket. 
     

    What should I do?

    I'd probably focus on the equipment and obtain/fabricate it to my satisfaction, meaning it will do what it was designed/intended to do within an acceptable degree or error, before going into the construction of the guitar. But, that's me. I can fly but prefer to tinker with the mechanics of flying, meaning I'm much more interested in the mechanisms of flight than I am in the dynamics of it. This necessarily involves tools, fixtures, jigs and other equipment related to the scope of building and maintenance. I design and build stuff to that end and it's so much more interesting and rewarding than maintaining a compass heading at Angels 5.

  15. Well, there you go; hawking the various synth products - instead of instruments - and then feel stripped naked by the digital boyz when they take their toyz one-up on you. Can't have it both ways. The human mind is being supplanted by algorithms of itself by people who have chosen to cast off the raw experience of being human. Technology did that. Real musicianship is over.

  16. I wouldn't conclude it was actually produced on the date Kamen signed the label. I wouldn't even conclude that he signed the label on the date recorded on it. "Yo, Chuck, can you manage to be here every day so we can get your signature and date for every guitar we produce each (freaking) day?" I don't think ol' Chuck was given to flying an office chair waiting for labels. He probably just signed and dated a bunch of them, or signed them and then someone else affixed the dates after. His job was on the golf course, no doubt, where important people conduct important business.

    Let's guess: the 277 might be the Julian date (day number 277), which falls in the month of October (10-4-1978) your guitar was completed on. Number 93 could represent the 93rd guitar produced between 10/1/1978 and 10/4/1978, including all models or just the Adamas 1687-8, leaving yours #93 produced on day 277 (10/4/1978).  Our good buddy Chuck signed and dated a bunch of labels in June and the shop just used them up without a care to what the date was on the label.

    Or, it could be a batch number and yours was #93 injection molded bowl of the #277 polymer batch mixed for the year 1978. 

    Or, it could be an astronomical fix of coordinates for the position of the USS Enterprise on that day.

    • Like 1
  17. I am an accordion player' date=' and it is a beautiful instrument.  It really carries the stigma of being a "polka" instrument even though there are a lot of other styles of music that can be played.  I personally hate polka, so this is a bit discouraging.  Anybody else noticed this?

    [/quote']Though I enjoy polka, I can see where profiling can be tiresome. As with any instrument there are uses and then not so much. I only play acoustic guitar but you won't find me within earshot of any bluegrass music/event. For me there's music and then there's excesses of it for the sake of excess, or so it seems to me to be the case. Blow pipes of all stripes, including accordion, normally assault my ears with their unmitigated staccato of shrillness if not tastefully imparted in a mix. Aside from perhaps the uilleann pipes and the flute I can't sit and listen to solo performances of most wind instruments, especially harmonica, without cringing. The accordion is one of those instruments when outside the polka genre. It's a party music squeeze box to me and not to be taken too seriously outside that context. For you, though, that's the point of your discouragement. You're fighting the conventions of tradition. I wish you luck changing that convention. Sometimes we are defined by the instruments we choose to play and not by the music we choose to play with them.
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