TapperMike

What a fine box indeed. You should go in and play one even if you aren't in a position to buy.. I think you'll find the action very satisfying. You might consider upgrading the tuners. They have to cut costs somewhere and usually it's there. I've played more jazz boxes then doans has pills. And even the same model design can sound different with different manufactures or even different brand labels in the same house. A squier strat isn't the same as a strat, Hell strats from fender can sound and feel quite different from one another. In other news my Eddie Durham JX 17 arrived today. Heavenly, I'm giving it a full workout today then I'll give a few review in my blog

Update: the delivery has been delayed one more day. On the plus side of things this free's up my time and energy for more guitar playing and other pursuits.

I expect to love her. She may not be your cup of tea though. The big difference between this one and the jazz guitar you might be interested in is ...The neck. Most jazz boxes have a fairly meaty neck like an acoustic guitar. Moderate (not to high not to low) action and medium high frets like an acoustic. Mine has most of that but it has a "student" neck. It's not as slim as a jem, wizard or tapered SG neck (they have fat and thin varieties) but it's not as fat as the average jass box either. I've already started a draft of the review. It is scheduled to arrive today. It's early in the morning here, I have no plans for the day and I'm trying not to play my other guitars as I don't want to be too played out by the time it arrives.

So here's the update. I've been pounding the pavement looking for work and doing a few interviews. Most don't look promising to pursue further. ....However. I did an interview today at a new as of yet unopened restaurant today that...I walked in confident secure and with a positive disposition. I walked out wanting the job with a second interview scheduled for next week. The restaurants menu is upscale and a form of cooking I'm most familiar with.it's no tavern, diner, sports bar. I walked in needing the job and walked out wanting the job. It's not three hots and a cot type work. Fine Dining cooking something that I've always believed in myself doing and taken great pride in and joy from. In other news... my jazz box arrives tomorrow. It's been a long time since I've had a serious full body archtop guitar. Keep the good vibrations coming. Who knows, I may win the powerball if this keeps up.

Armour Hot Dogs (commercial uncredited)

SpiderMan - Paul Francis Webster and Robert "Bob" Harris.

Hi, That's an earnest goal. I applaud anyone who tries to advance there abilities. How bad do you want it? How willing are you to commit yourself to that end. Only you can decide that. And your decisions will shape the decision and the time it takes to achieve those goals. Blues piano past a certain point of development was called... Boogie Woogie. So in your search for blues piano material check out some boogie woogie. Check out my post here - http://forums.songstuff.com/topic/38934-best-way-to-learn-guitar/

Yes, you have to do eq for stage monitors in order to reduce feedback. Mains usually have to be eq'd differently depending on the room you are working. Much of sound check work for the mains goes out the window when the audience arrives. Bodies filling chairs will have a different impact on the overall sound as an empty house. That's why it's a good idea to bring a sound man (and not just someone good at lifting heavy objects...but that doesn't hurt either) if you can. In regards to the mains. First EQ the speakers before you try to set the levels.. Then setting your levels and individual instrument eq's will be easier to adjust. The aux send goes out to the stage monitors and is set up differently with different mixing and eq then the mains. Setting your monitor levels Eq'ing your monitor levels for feedback

Yikes, Nevada forgot about where you live. I'd say start with pawn shops, move your way up to ma / pa reseller shops and finally if you must go to a big store like Nevada If they have an acoustic listening room try to convince them to set up a small amp in there. Big stores have terrible acoustics and it's hard to judge what the thing will sound like in your home from a huge storefront. First ask what they have in "L5" type bodies and let them know your range is Epiphone Broadway's are essentially "L5's" with only slight differences in the tone. Avoid all the semi hollow bodies/ Also avoid all the regents most are "swingster" which really sound more like rockabilly guitars. Then ask about "175" style bodies. L5's are 17 inch bouts with full (usually three inch or more) bodies. 175's are also deeper bodies with a smaller bout. 175's are more versatile and ar the next best thing once you move away from L5's Bring the tone control up and you have all those Steve Howe yes tones coming through. Like I said previously. I'm not a fan of Ibanez jazz guitars they are just too harsh there isn't any mellow in them. and I'm not a fan of Gretsch for jazz. Your millage may vary. Have a good listen get the feel for the instrument(s) and then feel perfectly comfortable walking away.

I got this from - http://www.jackgrassel.com/pages/feedback.html Stuff the guitar with foam rubber or inflated balloons. Bend a wire coat hanger to facilitate installation or removal. Tape up the f-holes. (The tape may ruin the finish). Put foam rubber in the f-holes, closing them. Doug Turner will design foam plugs for your guitar. See them at: www.dougsplugs.com They look so cool you can't tell they are there. I highly recommend these. Glue thin balsa wood painted flat black to the underside of the f-holes. Because of it's permanence, this isn't recommended. Use a metal bridge instead of wood. Use flat wound heavy strings. Place the amp to the left so that your body shields the guitar. Set the amp at a lower volume. Wind more of the string onto the tuning gear stem, adding weight to the head stock and more tension on the nut. Place a thin strip of foam under the strings in the first fret to dampen open strings. Wrap a thin strip (quarter of an inch) of duct tape, adhesive tape, or packing tape around the strings at the first fret, "sandwiching" them between the tape. Remove the pickup covers for a thinner sound. Use a solid body guitar or an arch top with a plywood top if you must play in a situation which causes feedback. Use as little tone enhancement as possible on the amplifier. Start with the tone controls on zero and try to get a sound you like with the lowest possible settings. Turn in the pickup screws on strings 5 and 6 to reduce the volume a little. Since each guitar will vibrate differently and create feedback differently, experiment with all 6 screws, turning them in and out to find the best combination. Joe Leonard told me that Steve Howe turns all six screws in as far as they go. When playing with a band, have the bassist and amp on the drummer's left, put your amp on the drummer's right and then you on the right side of your amp. Your body will be between your guitar and the rest of the band and amps, shielding it. In the venue pictured above, for some reason, the overall sound was better setting up the opposite way. That's my Stromberg with a plywood top. It doesn't feedback. Get the bassist to use as little tone enhancement as possible and play softer. Bass guitars cause more feedback than upright basses. The smaller (an fewer) the bass amp speakers are, the less trouble you will have. Hire a bassist with a focused sound that isn't "boomy". Beware of drummers with shiny new cymbals. If you can be happy with a 10 inch speaker it will cause less feedback than a 12 or 15. The fewer speakers you have, the less feedback there will be. Four 10 inch speakers will cause more feedback than one 10 inch speaker. Use a closed back speaker cab. The sound only comes out of the front. Put your amp on the floor, not on a chair. Aim it straight ahead. Don't tilt it up toward the guitar. Have a luthier put a "sound post" in your guitar connecting the front and the back. Plywood tops feed back less than spruce because the accoustic response is minimized. Holes cut into a guitar top to install pickups result in less feed back than floating pickups. Play softer, beneath the feedback threshold. If the drummer is using clear heads, they may be tuned to a pitch that makes your guitar go crazy. You could invesigate this and perhaps ask the drummer to change his tuning. If that doesn't work, hire a drummer with coated heads next time. David Phillips of Texas uses an accoustic amp with a notch filter. If you don't like flat wound strings, use round wound on strings 3 and 4. Use flats on 5 and 6 where most of the feedback comes from. Try a multi-band equalizer to reduce the sound areas that cause feedback.

Electric flatwound guitar strings on a box (jazz guitar) sound entirely different then they would on an acoustic guitar or a solid body guitar. All the videos that I've shown so far the players are using flatwound D'addario Chromes are a nice "midline" flatwound. Round wounds have a tendency to sound harsh on jazz boxes especially unplugged. One cannot judge how a jazz box will sound plugged in by playing it acoustically. More often then not what we hear when we listen to a recording of a jazz box is not the guitar in it's natural state. Most of them sound like ratty Django type playing to my ears acoustically. When we listen to jazz guitar that we are playing we get a compromise of guitar sound coming from the box and amp sound. It's a trick to try and ignore the guitar sound and focus on the amp sound. Otherwise we are so busy dialing in a tone that brings down the ratty high end we lose all the sparkle. Which brings me to the great frustration of all jazz box players....Feedback. Even though laminated tops on jazz guitars reduce feedback they don't eliminate it. You wouldn't believe the howling that can come out of those things. Flatwounds actually reduce but don't eliminate feedback. Trying to point your guitar away from the amp as much as humanly possible helps. Sometimes even when you have the amp in front of you and facing the audience it still doesn't help. There is a big segment in specialty amp makers that have very expensive models which claim to reduce / remove feedback with notch filtering. Honestly the best solution I've found has been. Foam rubber

Anyway getting back to buying a box. Don't even bother with smaller semi hollow bodies. Telecaster Thinlines,Samick LaSalles etc. They have none of the character of a jazz box. Mostly they sound like their solid body counterparts with the mids and lows cut out a bit. When you try to roll off the tone they mostly just turn to mud. Semi-hollow body guitars almost always invariably use a center block of wood. It does several things. Reinforces the body making it more stable. Reduces the air flow making it less prone to feed back. Adds mass to the overall tone making it sound well... more like a solid body. Feedback is a bitch with full hollow body guitars. All that being said the closet you'll get to a full hollow body tone on a semi hollow body guitar is a 335 style Remember we are going for that "L5" tone. Which brings us to our next collection of jazz boxes. The 175's 175's started out being cheap student guitars made by gibson. They caught on like wildfire for several reasons. First.. The price, Second the comfort size and third (most importantly) the laminate (as opposed to carved) top. Back for a time Gibson wanted to control the prices in retail stores. They did so by naming guitars based on ...price. a 335 cost 335 a super 400 cost 400 and a 175 cost 175. i75's demand a very high price mostly because of the jazz legends that all started using them in the 50's 60's and beyond. But much of it is warranted in the tone they produce. They are just as deep as big brothers however don't have the bout. Aside from the George Benson model imho ibby jazz guitars suck. The GB model is a closer representation of a 175 then all others on the market. And it's outrageously priced. New... The best 175 copy you'll find under 1k is the Loar LH 280-C and quite possibly you'd have to go over the 2k mark to find something that sounds near this guitar. Big Boxes Wes Montgomery played an L5 CES any L5 is expensive WM signature model is through the roof. While there are still some important difference to go through aside from the box itself. The box size does have a major impact on the final tone. Full size jazz boxes are still 3 inches deep (on average yet have a 17 inch bout. Wide bouts can make it difficult to play. standing or sitting.which is why Wes is seen playing the guitar in the position it is. These are chair / couch guitars at best. Standing with one is quite uncomfortable even if you take the joe pass low posture If you'll recall I went shopping for a big jazz box and was thoroughly disappointed with the market a few years back. I'm told that the guitar I ordered had low action and a relatively thin neck. We'll have to wait and see on that one. Action on older and even newer recreations of older jazz boxes is high. That's the way they were designed from the 20's when acoustic jazz guitars were originally made. They needed projection and keeping the strings higher afforded that projection. Even as pickups were retrofitted into jazz guitars the tradition of high action remained. Because of the delicate nature of full size jazz boxes there is often more relief required in the neck. It's not uncommon for there to be some "lift" along the fretboard after the 12th fret even with more expensive guitars. I've had to raise the action on my Michael Kelly Phoenix vibe to accommodate this.While I can play with lower action ..once I cross the 12th fret the notes sound rather dead. So heres my quick reviews of full bodied midline jazz boxes. Godin 5th Ave Kingpin Honestly this thing sounds like the real deal 40's box. The rest of the Godins hollow bodies that followed Don't. The action was unbearable for me.Loved the tone of a non cut away guitar hated trying to play it. Washburns Washburn has been making jazz guitars since way back and... I've never been that impressed with them. Same story couldn't play the damn things because the string gauges were through the roof thick and the action was high. The sales guy said that the action seemed low oddly. Loar LH 350 Oddly it's not bright enough I'm surprised that this guitar which is a huge upgrade in box design sounds so dull. You want a jazz box to sound warm but not at the expense of losing it's sparkle. Deans These are blues and rockabilly guitars not really suited for jazzy octaves. Samick. Of the current line-up only the JZ3 was playable to me. It also was the only one even approaching "L5" type tone. Still I think Samick screwed the pooch. The late 80's through 90's (pre greg bennett, not valley art) Samick HJ650 artist series was the finest box that company put out. I played that thing live for years. It was a comfortable "D" shape neck. Not too thick, not too thin and not too wide for small hands like mine. The action was first rate. With thicker strings it's important to have some meat on the neck but you don't need that much. So long as the frets are high enough and the action sits right you don't need that much pressure on a jazz box, But,, you still need a little height for muting. The whole story on floating bridges. First they aren't mounted to the body. The only thing keeping the bridge in place is the strings. Never try to slam chords hard on one of these babies or take off all the strings at once. If you don't know what you are doing you might be taking the guitar to a shop for setup. As mentioned before because of the floating bridge there is a slight (possibly not even noticeable) delay in the time it takes for the sound to be created. It has less "attack" then acoustic guitars, and fixed bridge electrics.. You don't need metal saddles if the bridge is properly compensated. Most are and...(here's the tricky part) most are for a wound "G" string. Prior to Eddie Cochran all electric guitars had wound G strings. Oddly while floating bridges make it easier to play thicker strings they don't make bending easier. Infact floating bridges make it harder to bend strings. The acoustic tone. Even if the top is laminated full bodied boxes are still going to produce acoustic sounds. Acoustically it may not sound desirable. The original jazz guitars sacrificed tone for acoustic volume....more on that soon

About downstrokes. ... Before your concern was... to sound more like jazz and not specifically like Wes Montgomery. You are correct I was directing it at ...rhythm jazz playing specifically the earlier years. Though jazz guitar did evolve up to the point of Wes Montgomery some educational practices (using down strokes only for rhythm) are still prevalent in .jazz studies. It's almost a given if you accompany someone on a standard to stick to those practices today. Regarding buying a box... I'm the most particular and judgy guy in the world about jazz boxes having had more then a few misses in search of the perfect one. Oddly I just bought one on ebay and I've never heard it before buying. I can only assume it will sound close to a D'angelico Excel as that is what it was modeled after. So lets break things down a bit. Gibson has basically two necks for hollow and semi hollow bodies. The tapered slim 60's profile and the more rounded neck. More often then not if you are getting a jazz box you'll be getting a "Fat D" neck You are going to have to go out and play more then a few boxes at stores. Get used to clamping down hard on the strings. If anything it will give you an idea for the feel of the neck. No wizard necks on jazz boxes. Great Boxes are expensive. Midline Boxes still cost a pretty penny. If you want a nice midline jazz guitar then there is only one factory in the world where they are produced...Peerless. Peerless produces there own line of jazz guitars and produce hollow and semi hollow body guitars for everyone else. Gretsch, Epiphone, D'angelico to name a few. Peerless is in South Korea. It's the only major manufacturer of hollow and semi hollow body guitars (going on 15 years now) in Korea. It's a safe bet if the box has a made in Korea stamp on it that it was made by Peerless. The guitar I'm getting was made by Peerless. Most Peerless made guitars start at 1200.00 USD and up Avoid the bottom of the barrel jazz boxes. Cort, Turser, Burton. They often have more problems then doans has pills. They also have a tendency of sounding "tubby" Honestly look around for a nice used midline guitar before you reach for one of those. ...more to come

Getting back to a few things.... Rudi So it's about Wes Montgomery huh? Well that's a very specific style of jazz. Pick and thumb are entirely different tones. An upstroke with the thumb sounds darker then an upstroke with a pick. If you are one of those that finger picks with the flesh and not nails you'll be able to pull off a "closer to jazz" sound with flesh. You'll still need to stick to the neck pickup and turn your tone way down on the guitar. A lot of WM's tone comes from The man and the guitar. Fat big hands on thick strings with what I would consider higher action. Unlike the rest of us... WM never had to play unaccompanied. When one plays in a combo. doing most "Chord-Melody" gets thrown out quickly as there is another musician to handle the chords and more often then not your stepping on what that musician is trying to accomplish (be it another guitarist or a pianist) Same holds true for the bassist. Trying to pull off a walking bassline and chord or bass and melody steps on the bassist zone. When pianists and guitarists are working out chords in a jazz setting. The guitarist defaults to 3 note comping chords while the pianist works out the extensions / inversions etc The easiest way to get a handle on Wes type playing is to start off with simpler tunes where you can focus on the melody only like ... Simple melody, all octaves with a sufficient amount of sliding into and away from notes. Regarding using a strat.. Neck pickup only turn the tone way down and if you have a grease bucket (tbx) tone control turn that off as well.

I use my strat quite often for jazz but it's for my listening pleasure only. Generally I have old dead strings on it already so...it's not quite the same as flatwounds or chromes but it does dull the tone abit. Strat's have a tendency to sound like rubber bands when you try to play jazz and turn down the tone too much.

A few things to add about the "tone" of jazz. Not only did earlier jazz boxes have floating bridges for greater acoustic projection which results in a slightly more delayed sound with slightly less initial attack) both hand techniques developed because of the characteristics of the instrument. String action was high and string gauges heavy. As a result jazz players would right hand mute before they hit the strings then clamp down as the pick or fingers.. The right hand muting served as a means to reduce feedback from the instrument. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-5qZk7c_xA Thumb or pick If you really want to get a handle on "jazz tone" and jazz guitar. start with rhythm playing and...Downstrokes only Downstrokes had more projection and are slightly darker. Many a novice doesn't pay attention to the correct strum pattern (including myself in my earlier years). In the example above that is more of a western swing pattern. Short, short, Long short. All quarter notes. Trad jazz is more often... Long short, long long or Long short Long short. There often is a slight mute going from the fourth beat to the first even when the chord doesn't change. Back then it was mostly about the guitars action and projection

I know I've stated this elsewhere.. but here goes. I can;t stand the latency when using amp sims. I also do not like the lack of feedback (even on clean settings) when recording to a daw. While the THR http://forums.songstuff.com/blog/159/entry-1484-review-yamaha-thr10c-the-little-amp-that-can/ doesn't have mic sims it does have both a clean and an effected signal going to the computer. This means that the fullness of the guitar sound dry is present on the dry signal. It doesn't sound choked, sterile or bland going in dry to the computer. What's more in most virtual amps you don't get the "character" of the eq from the original amp. The THR does a great job of emulating the original eq's of the amps. Sure I've got a really nice SampleTank collection from IK. but to me playing around and trying to dial in that "perfect sound" is more of a distraction rather then an ends to a means. Re jazz tones. I'm always in search of more. Much of it comes down to technique first, guitar second, the string gauge you use third and everything else thereafter. IMHO you aren't going to get a jazzy guitar tone out of a jackson or an ibanez. Even ibby "artcore" jazz boxes sound stiff and harsh to my ears. The only ibby barely palatable is the GB to my ears.. Tele's are imho the most underrated jazz guitar out there. So you have a guitar to start with. Next comes...strings. If you are used to playing with 09's or 10's consider going up to 11's 12's or 13's Specifically Flatwounds if you can afford them. D'addario Chromes are good in a pinch Next comes pick. If you are a flat picker (and there is nothing wrong with that) get ahold of some JD jazz III's They are thick but not too thick and stubby. Tone also comes from your pick the thicker the pick the darker the tone. JD jazz picks also make it a lot easier to hybrid pick. The pickup position Usually solo's use only the neck position. Occasionally when backing off to play soft rhythms in the background many will use the middle position. Quite a number of high end jazz guitars only have one pickup for this very reason. The vintage 40's often have a single floating pickup attached to the pickguard above the body with a solid carved top. (more on that for another day) Where you pick along the strings is also important Especially with solid body guitars. If you are use to playing near the bridge work out playing with your picking further down the body like past the middle position, over the neck pickup and along the neck south of the 12 fret. Getting to the tone from your instrument. All the high end jazz boxes use low output pickups (usually Armstrong) for a reason. A lower output pickup has less compression and you get more nuance out of them. Saving replacing pickups you may also wish to consider lowering your neck pick up. In a pinch you can simply get used to turning down the volume on your guitar not going past 8. If you are using standard steel strings consider backing your tone down to 5. Usually south of that things start to get muddy. About amps back in my day of playing out in jazz band settings I would use either my 335 or my Samick hj650 running directly into a Fender Bassman or a Traynor Bass amp (I preferred the traynor as it had a presence control for that little lift in tone. Don't want to use the bright switch. Currently I use the (Fender) Deluxe sim for my more mellow jazzy stuff and the American Blues (fender blues deville) for my more punchier / aggressive jazz tones. Your millage may vary on the next bit of info depending on how accurately your amp sims reflect the actual models through the gain stages and eq settings. Even on an amp not intended to distort with a pre / post or gain / master volume setting compression happens when you apply too much volume on the pre or gain control. Compression also happens naturally when you hit the strings harder. Turn the master all the way up then dial in the gain before it distorts with your eq set flat first. Turn off the bright switch. and just play around for abit before you adjust the eq with everything set flat. Everything before (guitar, strings, pickup) If you have a presence control (which operates at a higher range then simply a treble tone control) try adding some in after you've set everything else up. About reverb. Big full hollow body guitars with carved tops have a natural reverb. Adding reverb or delay on top of either a carved top (which has more reverb and is more susceptible to feedback) is really not a good idea. Great playing but the reverb is ...well too overwhelming. Solid body guitars don't have that feature/affliction of natural reverb coming from the guitar.. A nice small room reverb that sits at less then 5 is sufficient to add body without overpowering or drowning out your other instruments. Tape echo if used with discretion can enhance the tone with soft fuzzyiness. Much of the character of the tone comes from....the floating bridge. Floating bridges add a "pre delay" to the tone as opposed to fixed bridges which have a faster attack. Most, not all my guitars I can carve a usable jazz guitar tone from. When I don't obsess about not near enough (as an example I'm in love with the tone from that Dangelico copy where the reverb is too loud but the tone is stunning otherwise)... when I'm not obsessing on amp settings and concentrating on technique because tone comes from your fingers first. I find I make more music that is satisfying

Trust me, I fully realize that I'm luckier then many. Many of my co-workers were surviving on a wing and a prayer prior to the fire. I can't begin to understand how they are taking it. While I don't have a golden parachute I do have some padding.from working two jobs and not spending as fast as I get it. The positive's I'm taking away from the situation are... One, I've got recent cooking experience. Honestly you wouldn't believe how hard it was finding work in the field after I'd been out that long. Cooking in that type of environment is very demanding and not only I but potential employers thought that I might not be up to the task. Two. It helped me to prioritize my playing. Through my years cooking at one point or another I'd bring a guitar in and play for others or direct my free time to playing live. Before getting back to work I really didn't use my free time as well as I could have. I'd also noticed it had been more then ten years since I performed in front of anyone. The desire to perform led me to concentrating on learning new (to me) songs using chord-melody fingerstyle jazz playing. Something I've dabbled with in the past but never put my full energies into. Since the fire I haven't wasted my free time. I'm both arranging and learning arrangements of jazz standards. It's a nice balance of challenging while not being too much so and I have something that I can use afterwards without having to use accompaniment software or recordings. There are many pluses about leaving the sports bar. While I did complain about the low wage. It forces me to go out and find a better paying job. Had I stayed at Ultimate I would have just accepted the low wage as part of life as I know my employer wouldn't be bringing my hourly rate up. There are many places that pay cooks better (In 02 I was making 18 an hour as a cook, in 05 I was making 12 as a cook at denny's. Ultimate was only paying me 9.50 and telling me to be grateful)

Even though I shouldn't be buying a guitar right now. I'm seriously considering a Samick Artist Series HJ650 I had the standard hj650 with tobacco sunburst finish back in the 90's It was far superior to the Valley Arts versions or the Greg Bennett versions that followed.

Thanks. Well for right now... I'm just going to enjoy the break from work sorta.... I still work between one and three hours a day at the software company Everyday that ends in "y" shy of a massive power outage. At Ultimate Sports Bar most weeks were 6 days long with two to three of them being 14 hour days just for good measure. It definitely gave me back my "sea legs" for cooking. Funny what 10 years out of the biz can do to one.

As some of you may know. My tech support job is winding down. Due to both the state of the software industry and personal limitations (no I'm not going to move to india to work in software tech support) I've had to go back to cooking to support myself. Constantly going over the same places with application / resume in hand I finally got a job @ Ultimate Sports Bar in Wixom. I've been putting in long hours and long weeks there at a low wage. Today was my day off.(It's not unusual for me to be called in on an off day) I get a call from the day manager about something minor. Explain the situation and then tell her after I cash my check I'd be in to do some things (because while I'm only a cook in title and pay I also have some managerial responsibilities) Long story short.I show up to work and the place was on fire. It started out as an electrical fire in a dry storage (paper goods) room. Everyone got out safe. The fire burned through the roof didn't enter the kitchen. It's all repairable but I don't think the owner is going to take the insurance money and rebuild. I think he's just going to take the money and run.

I wrote a jazz fingerstyle guitar arrangement of "My Favorite Things" (from the sound of music) Scoring was easy. Performing would be easy if I could get all the way through without looking at the sheet. I found a quite wonderful transcription for "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton it's a soloist arrangement the only problem is...It's in the wrong key.. Now that I'm back in the work saddle sometimes working 16 to 18 hours a day.I find that... Because I have less free time I use it more wisely.

I hated recording dry AND though I've had to on numerous occasions. Even slight feedback can beef a tone up and give it the sustain in the right places. I really like the THR for the simple fact that I can hear the amp sim while playing/recording but don't need to use the amp simon the recording as the THR sends both a stereo dry channel and stereo wet signal to the daw. If got quite a number of great effects in my daws and as vst's they are fun to play with after the fact (recording) and the THR even offers re-amping. One thing I will say about noise gates.....I'll never get used to using one as much as I've heard them used to great effect by others. I can't imagine how one could imagine them sounding while playing I've got a very nice Digitech RP400 collecting some very nice dust. Back in the 90's I got a lot of traction using a digitech RP-10 in the various rock/blues bands and gigs I was doing. It was easy to pull up familiar tones and easy on my ears. I spent weeks and weeks trying to find something satisfying in the RP400 1000's of presets and not an easily identifiable sound in the bunch. On the other hand my korg pandora mini had familiar tones every time I turned around. And yet it was unbearably noisy. I have friends who place setting up effects on a higher plane then playing. They dabble endlessly producing nothing but wasted time and occasionally a good recreation of a "sound" Personally I have no patience for spending all that time tweaking. And it doesn't help that once I've dialed in the magical tone I forget to save it. Mike.

Rob might be the better one to ask about floorboards I like my stuff relatively clean http://forums.songstuff.com/blog/159/entry-1484-review-yamaha-thr10c-the-little-amp-that-can/

Here's my take. Everyone who I know that has made it did so by leaving for the bigtime. Even if they only made it after they returned. The big evil label isn't going to surf bandcamp or soundcloud looking for the latest hot thing. You have to be where they are. You have to know them on a face time not facebook basis. The only way to do that is to be where they are. I'm fairly certain no one has ever made the big time by moving to Buffalo. New York City, Los Angeles, Nashville, Austin, If you aren't moving to where the action is then...what's the point? You may as well entertain the concept of signing up with Taxi http://www.taxi.com/