The Right Tool for the Job!

A lot of my ability to start and complete projects lately has a lot to do with my lovely wife, Stacey, and her love of Elfa storage components from the Container Store!

My little closet guitar workshop was pretty pitiful using left over ikea shelving. It was rickety and unstable for any real work. Plus I couldn't leave a job out for fear it would fall off!

NOW, thanks to aforementioned parties, I have a wonderful place to work, complete with more storage, a place to keep an amp for testing and the right size and height for me to "get the job done!"

Ole #27 Custom "La Cabronita" Tribute guitar gets a Bigsby!

 My beloved tribute (to the Fender Custom Shop La Cabronita Especial) custom built guitar a great upgrade last night... A BIGSBY!!

That's right, not only does it have that great Gretsch Filtertron twang thang goin' on, now it's got that great classic Gretsch/50s/60s surf rumble back vibrato sound to keep all you dudes and dudettes rockin' all night long.

How does it sound? GREAT! Now that I have some great recording equipment, I'll have to get some licks rehearsed (so I can sound like I actually know how to play!) and upload something for all to hear!

The install was really quite easy and the custom bridge that Marc Rutter made me worked like a charm! He put some slots in the tail piece to allow the strings to pass through to the Bigsby's roller bar.

Now next up will be a new pickguard that fits the new MOJO! Black? Tort? hrm... Not sure, but I'm sure I'll post the results here!

This custom guitar also features: (besides the Gretsch Filtertrons, Bigsby B5, Marc Rutter Custom Half-bridge with Bigsby Mod) Fender S-1 grease bucket tone circuit switchable volume knob, a 3-way gibson style Switchcraft pickup selector switch, a polished aluminum electro-socket plug with a Switchcraft 1/4" jack, Sprague Orange Capacitors, 2011 Fender rosewood telecaster neck, Sperzel Locking tuners with pearloid buttons and, of course, Schaller style strap lock buttons.

Now the only other mods I can think to do, other than a new pickguard, is to switch out the trem arm for a "chet atkins" style wire arm and maybe some custom painted hot-rod graphics someday!

My first week with a Zoom R24

I wanted to post my perspective about my decision to sell my M-Audio Fast Track C600 and buy a Zoom R24 Recorder/Interface/Controller.

I worked in an analog studio from 1992-1995. It was set up with some great, albeit old, gear from the late 70s. MCI board, MCI 2" 24 Track recorder to match and much much more. I learned so much.

But since then, I've had a hard time getting back involved in recording using the computer. I am an admitted mac snob and have been using them since '87, they are all I know. So I obviously bought Logic Pro 9 to go with the C600 last year. I had used GarageBand before that, of course.

I just never bonded with that way of working and felt I needed something to bridge the gap, you know, some kind of control surface that gave me that tactile feel. I looked at the Zoom R16 the year before but ruled it out for a number of reasons: did I need 8 inputs? (Turns out YES!) Was Zoom a very good company? I had owned a G2 and thought it was dreadful. (Turns out YES, too!) Did it have good enough pre-amps? (Yup!) Would it be too hard to learn using a tiny screen, no visual on recordings like the computer, etc.? (Turns out NO, not hard & it also turns out that the lack of the "big picture" screen, I'm getting more intimate with my recordings, counting out beats, sequencing drums for the first time since 1992!)