comfy

"Nothing is too good for you baby," he murmurs to his axe,"anything you need, I want you to be comfortable...and happy, I want you to be soooo happy! And secure too....look what I got for you to sleep in!"

you want flies with that?

Sometimes the summer weather in San Francisco is hot and sultry. Not often, but sometimes. When that happens bugs are not blown through the city by the constant seasonal gales, those same gales that never fail to astonish visiting tourists dressed as if they're in Hawaii. Here Tim is using the business end of Wap the Wonder Vacuum to creatively denude the shop of pesky hovering creatures while simultaneously getting some exercise.

miraculous transformation

we get mail and we like it. How else to know (the good, the bad and the ugly) how we're doing? Keep 'em coming...

ready for his close-up

While there is no honorarium in it, it's good business to cross-promote technical information among organizations. By sharing real-world technical information we advance usability across all disciplines (did we just say that?).

In this photo Gary is being interviewed by a team consisting of (but not limited to) an independent photographer, an Ibanez videographer and a phalanx of friendly Ibanez artist relations people. If Gary has butterflies it's but not because he's nervous, it's because he cares.

we've been t00bed!

one of our fabulous clients has taken it upon themselves to post a lovely video on yout00b...this interweb series of t00bz....it looks like it's really going to catch on!

innovation is not a crime

The folks at Scary Creative in Van Nuys sent us a helpful object they call a Fret Mask, an adhesive strip die-cut to exactly fit a fretboard. The point apparently is to eliminate the need to carefully tape off the wood of the board while working on the frets. It's actually a great time saving idea that works very well while simultaneously limiting the amount of adhesive tape that is typically used. Ecologically sensitive and temporally efficient, they're using their powers, for good.

this work takes time...

When Glade rewires a hollow body electric guitar he builds up the harness carefully, outside of the instrument. A wooden plate is fabricated and drilled with holes for potentiometers, switch and output jack in the precise dimensions of the stock electronics. This enables him to fit the harness with a minimum of fuss and be able to make appropriate improvements on the original design. For the Trad* in all of us it's blasphemy, we know, but when a player requires the instrument to be solid night after night, a little improvement over the stock design can be called for.

* - adj. in relating to musicians, the label given to those players slavishly obedient to an original form or design as in: "he's a Hawaiian shirt-wearing Trad surf player and doesn't like all that modern stuff."

I don't care what it does...

...or what it measures. I want my guitar hooked up to it.

This is not an indigenous Vulcan instrument.

This Ethiopian krar found it's way onto Gary's bench by itself. Okay that's not true at all. Actually it's on Gary's bench because the bridge pickup lead is too short. You see, in the course of play the bridge is moved back and forth across the frame-stretched skin. Gary added extra length to the cable that attaches to the pickup to facilitate the constant movement.