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Steve & Me


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Some of you longer in the tooth will remember Steve. He was very active around here once and a right hand man to John for quite a while too.

 

I had arranged to visit a music shop in Exeter. We decided to meet up there in the city.

 

I drove down from Portsmouth (3 hour drive) and he took the Train up from Torquay. I phoned him when I parked.

 

Where are you?

Dunno. Where are you?

Not sure. Lets meet by the Cathedral.

 

I finally found the Cathedral in howling wind & driving rain. I walked all round the place and didn’t see him. I entered the building. Once in I couldn’t get out the same way! Steve didn’t seem to be there. Once I found an exit I called him again.

 

Where are you?

Under some scaffolding.

Well you’re not under the same scaffolding I’m looking at.

 

I looked around and saw him waving from across the green. He was wearing a bigger hat than mine (damn!)

 

We exchanged hostilities and had a bit of lunch in a large Inn by the town centre. As we waited for the food, Steve actually handed me a card. I was touched. I had no idea he knew of my birthday last week. I opened it.

 

Inside was a Christmas card.

 

After this we moseyed down to the music shop. We set about trying lots of guitars. At the end of this text is a brief account of 3 of them.

 

 

 

We kept this up most of the afternoon before deciding to head back home. Before leaving, we had our photos taken inside ProjectMusic.

 

The next day, Steve sent me copies of the pics.

 

My return message was:

 

Got the pics. Pretty good but I’m pretty sure you have used Photoshop to make me look older, uglier and fatter.

How I laughed!

 

Now that I’ve settled down again can you please post the unmodified ones? Thanks awfully.

 

 

His reply was:

By the way! You'll notice how devastatingly handsome and debonair I look in those photos! And young and slim and handsome! 

 

You will have noticed that he didn’t deny it?!

 

 

 

 

The quick account of some guitars we tried.

 

Godin Kingpin: 2nd hand. Great condition. Matt black electric acoustic.

 

Playability: Absolutely superb. A pleasure to play. Great action and smooth silky feel. Its light and comfy too. Steve gave it a definite thumbs up.

 

Sound: Indifferent. Not particularly loud acoustically. When amplified we experimented with volume & EQ for several minutes. Incrementally increasing the bass, mid & treble in small increments and in different proportions.

Not once were we rewarded with a good sound.

It wasn’t a bad sound. It was just uninteresting. It most certainly had no jazz tone credentials at all.

Signal processing would certainly improve things, but it’s not a gigging guitar IMO. Even at low volume it was feeding back.

For me at least then, it was not something I could consider either as a working nor a fun instrument. It doesn’t matter how well it plays, if it has no tone to commend it, it may as well be made out of cardboard. Shame too. It looked nice.

*

Ltd EC-401VF (Les Paul copy). Chunky & not far off the weight of a Les Paul. Also similar is the all mahogany construction and 24.75 scale. Seymour Duncan PUs are a nice touch.

 

Not at all bad. Coped with the scale better than I thought.

Playability: pretty good

Sounds: Pretty good also.

It looks every inch a Les Paul right down to the sunburst finish & flamed maple top. In my hands it’s a foreigner, but as a multi-cultural guitarist and an EQ opportunities employer, I celebrate diversity. Steve took to it like a duck to water. He’s of the Gibson school of course.

 

Fender Mexican Strat. HSS configuration. To my way of thinking, if it’s got a humbucker on, it aint a Strat. As a former long standing Fender user, I found myself far less tolerant of diversity here. It felt just as I remember though. The fingerboard may have been slightly nicer than my old maple neck, and the string tension was kinder too. Otherwise it was the same old girl I dumped in ’97. She sounded gorgeous though. They all sound lovely.

 

Thats about it.

 

The last time Steve and I met up was in 2009. I have found a copy of the account which I probably posted up before. I'll re-post it in the next message.

 

I hope this picture works ok here...

 

post-128-0-15527600-1424971797_thumb.jpg

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This is from 2009:

 

My visit to Devon.

 

Jan was on her annual visit to her son in Philadelphia. I decided to try visit Steve and see a bit of Devon. I booked a 2 night stay at the Edgemoor Hotel

http://www.edgemoor.co.uk/  near Bovey Tracey. Its called the Edgemoor because its on the Edge of a moor; Dartmoor to be exact.

 

Steve turned up the next morning. He had a bigger hat than me but I didn’t care. He had a more colourful shirt too. That was slightly harder to ignore.

 

Steve insisted on driving. After experiencing some of the lanes we used, I was glad he did. He drove us up to Dartmoor Tor. I think it was Hound Tor.

 

So what is a tor? Well it’s not how Americans spell ‘tour’. A tor is a rocky outcrop, and there are hundreds of them all over the moors.

 

Without another soul in view, we parked up & advanced on the tor. I paused at he base but Steve tore up the tor like a mountain goat. I followed as best I could. My balance is pretty good but Steve’s is excellent. Now and again I had to use my hands as well as my feet, but Steve kept his hands in his pockets. All the way up I was wondering how the hell I was going to get down again.

 

The last little bit (the summit) meant leaping across a cleft. I may have done it ok, but wasn’t prepared to risk getting wedged down there if I didn’t. Steve of course did it without breaking stride. Once at the top, he stood there silhouetted against the horizon like some neolithic athlete scanning the landscape for his next meal.

 

Dartmoor blows everyone away. I am not talking figuratively. The weather can be pretty fierce. It changes constantly, as does the sky and the light. It’s also quite appealing. Its as if the dramatic landscape needs dramatic weather to set it off properly (complement it).

 

I was relieved to find that descending the tor was a lot easier than I imagined. A couple more people turned up as we were leaving.

 

The bridge. We discovered (well, Steve discovered) a bridge that appears in a lot of pictures of Dartmoor. We decided to sketch it. Steve carefully drew one pillar whereas I attempted the entire thing using the whole page of A4.

 

Steve’s sketch was classically figurative. It had enough detail to form the basis of a painting. By contrast; my sketch was altogether more radical, wild & aesthetically challenging. Steve glanced at it, then looked up and did a 360 degree scan of the watercourse. “What bridge are you drawing then Rude?” 

 

At this point I decided to get a picture of the pair of us to mark the occasion. We would stand atop of the larger bridge. I clamped my camera to a road sign with a gorilla-pod and set the self timer to 10 seconds. I eventually got the shot set up properly. Unfortunately the shutter release button is alongside the on/off switch. I switched the camera off. I then repeated the exercise only to switch the camera off again.

 

OK, it was going to be third time lucky. This time the shot was properly set up, focused and composed. All I had to do was trip the shutter release & clamber up onto the bridge alongside Steve. I did. The camera was blinking as it performed the count down. There we were leaning on the wall striking a casual pose. With 2 seconds remaining on the self timer, Steve’s hat blew off. He chased it down the path & the pic I got captured the moment of panic nicely!

 

The trouble I think is that Steve’s hat was too big for all practical purposes.

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Steve! Is that you old man? You look very 25 with that hat ;)

 

 

Great stories you guys. Love these!

 

Mahesh

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I'm the handsome guy on the right Mahesh! I was quite surprised to look at the photo and discover my mate (Rudi) had been replaced with an old vagrant! 

 

It was a fabulous day out playing some lovely guitars! And wearing some outrageous headwear! :)

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But you'ld have to be crazy going out wearing a hat like that !? :eek:

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