solid maple vs. stainless steel

Maple wins.

The owner wanted to use Schaller strap locks on his beautiful Gibson ES 355. He couldn't use the stock Gibson strap button screws with the Schaller buttons because the screws are too wide. He replaced the stock screw with a stainless steel #6 screw which, it turns out (and among other things), was too long. As the owner recounts the sad tale, he didn't pre drill a pilot hole in the solid maple block and, of course and in hindsight, the screw snapped off. That's where we come in.

Acts of God and other Mysteries

There are many ways a guitar finds its way to us, and many stories. Stories create their own set of questions, ones that, without the ur-story, would not have been asked in the first place. In this case, one of those questions is certainly: "Is there no other place besides the bathroom to store your guitars?"

Taylor T5, RMC Piezo Pickup install with 13 pin Roland/Axon output for midi conversion.

with this device in my guitar...

...I should be able to see through time.

Guitar Tech-ing for Billy Bragg

The wonderful and outspoken Billy Bragg came to town to play a solo show at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass followed by 2 nights at the Great American Music Hall. While in town I was hired to guitar tech for him. Billy came to town with his stage manager and get it done guy Vaughn and his "able to dial up great sound anywhere" long time engineer Grant. My job was to be sure the guitars were always in tune and ready to go from sound check to pack up. The other job was to be sure they went home with at least as much as they showed up with. Everything went great and I saw some great performances.

The Devo Potato Chip, Cloud electrical problem.

We had fun working on this blast from the future. Devo was in town for 2 days and had a frozen pot issue.
The little circuit in there controls the flashing blast off lights that comes on with the pre-amp. What could go wrong?

Happy Halloween!!!!

A few random shots

we're just going to leave this right here...

two great tastes that don't necessarily taste great together

When it comes to Gibson guitars one may well think of innovation, occasional brilliance, and a remarkable musical longevity. And one may well think of Moog Music as equally brilliant and an organization comprised of fearless risk takers. If we add these two together it stands to reason the results will be orders of magnitude beyond what either entity might accomplish on their own.

Not so. Here Mr. Bill T. has kindly requested that we remove the perfectly enormous motherboard and wire the late 1970's era Gibson RD Artist as a simple two humbucker solid body electric guitar; the kind we are all so familiar with. Mr. T. would like the instrument to be a player. Sometimes the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.