TapperMike

I have quite regularly. http://forums.acoustica.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15075

It looks like an interesting concept. Kind of makes me regret my mixcraft purchase now. The thing I don't like about it so far. "All your base are now belong to us" Apparently you can't store your own work locally or work offline. Everything must be via the Ohm network. Alledgedly they will be releasing a 2.0 for personal storage.

I've had more slow pay/ no pay customers in the web design field then one can shake a stick at. I've just recently stepped down as Super Moderator @ flashkit after having been there for 14 years. Flashkit has been in the hands of many larger companies through the years. At first it was independent, then sold to internet.com. Then jupiter media then Getty and now Quinn Street / Developer.com All the admins take between 50 and 100k per domain name and usually work about 10 to 15 hours a week per domain. There was much promise that I would take on fk as the admin or one of the other domains during the internet.com and jupiter media years. Never happened. most posts were assigned to individuals with little to no previous background in either administration or in the field the site they acted as the admin over. I used to work at a restaraunt as a cook. We went through owners like water. One case was pure nepotism. The owner who had originally been a partner then siezed the biz from his other partners had actually walked into the restaraunt 2 times in 5 years. Upon taking total control he handed the General Manager position to his son. His son that had recently graduated from college with an accounting degree and had three months trainee / volenteer work at an accounting firm. Many B2B operators in the hospitality field go above and beyond to try and maintain good relations with customers. 90 days same as cash, 180 days same as cash. Not only goods providers but service providers as well. Electricians, Carpenters etc. My Employers were not hospitiality people. They didn't recognize thier own customer base. They made bad decision after bad decision which came back to bite them. Then they had a great idea. Lets make more bad decisions and file for Chapter 11. We won't have to pay back all this debt and get a fresh start. So they hired all these companies to do remodling work but they didn't fix things that could cost them the biz like... the air make up ventilation system. They bought more dry goods then they could reasonably go through from sales as well as perishibles that we couldn't move. And they applied and recieved chapter 11 status meaning they didn't have to pay for it all. Many of our suppliers simply bit the bullet and moved on. Which meant we could no longer get quality products (produce etc) from quality purveyors. Carpet installers and Electricians picked our entrance which drove off business. Of what remained they didn't look at the history of sales and the breakdown. Sure making it a big bar and less of a restaraunt did increase bar sales slightly. But it dropped food sales like a rock. Over the 20 years that the place had been a restaraunt there was a balance put in place by the customers. 50/50 Food/Liquor. As soon as that balance titled in either direction long term sales diminished. When they pushed for a larger bar and made it a more open bar food sales dropped like a rock. Bar sales actually diminished as well. So come the big weekend. Our restaraunt sat on the shore of a lake. We would get a lot of business because of that over summer. Unfortunately this happened. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 When the power came back on for everyone else ours didn't. Why? Someone forgot to pay the electric bill. We tried to keep the coolers cold with ice and dry ice but still thousands of dollars of food began to spoil. Once we got the electricity on. The Gas and the Water stopped. Again someone decided they could wait a little longer to pay the bills. We had water cooled walk-in coolers. The food spoiled anyway. The owner didn't want to throw it out. Cometh the Health Department. Five days after the blackout we were still unprepared to serve the public but we did anyway. The health department shut us down for a multitude of no brainers all having to do with the owner / general managers prior decisions. They tried to make last ditch efforts to get things fixed like the climate control for the hoods but no electrician would go near the place due to prior non payment issues. They tried to rent refrigerated trucks from our food purveyors but again no one trusted the company. They didn't own the property and the lease was up. In short they were forced to shut thier doors. We had a staff of 100's I'd been working at that location for 12 years. I could never return to the payscale I was recieving there. I was unemployed for three months and the next job I got was a 50% cut in pay. Six years later new owners took posession of the location and opened a new bar / restaraunt. I'd already been working in the tech field and I'd made a decision not to go back.

The jazz legacy is filled with interpertations. If you copy things exactly as the original it was shunned. The honor was to bring your own gift to the song. Sadly the "Smooth Jazz" movement does not retain the tradition. It seems they have a goal of trying to retain all the character of the original. much like your average cover band.

Many years back I was listening to NPR (national public radio) when a string quartet came on and played a Jimi Hendrix tune. I thought wow... that's different. Then I saw this americana band (bluegrass) live playing all these classic soul/funk songs on traditional instruments and in the bluegrass style. They were great. Today I saw this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ3BAF_15yQ Which is a wonderful treatment of the song. What "standard" have you "heard in a new light recently?

Aint No Mountain High Enough - Marvin Gaye / Tammy Terrel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz-UvQYAmbg#aid=P8-pbgHi-YQ

This came to me via facebook. http://www.tickld.com/x/i-wish-i-worked-with-this-manhes-hilarious I used to have my own web design firm, then later a hosting company as well. I threw it all away after dealing with clients much like the client in the article. Getting work wasn't the problem. Getting paid was. If you think that this is limited to design or music, trust me it isn't. Commercial contractors (electricians, remodeling, carpet installers etc) all experience a similar fate when dealing with commerical clients. The clients refuse to pay anything up front then are slow if at all to pay afterwards. Taking a client to small claims court and winning doesn't assure that you'll be recompensed for your efforts. What are your experiences with slow / no pay types for services you have provided?

I actually resent having a facebook account. Peer (Sibling) pressure is why I relented and finally got one. My Sisters constantly coerced and cagoled me into getting a facebook account so we could stay in touch more easily then phone/email etc.I get to look at what foods they are eating and they get the occasional blurb about what's new with me. I also have to oversee my companies fb account which rarely gets any visitors even the staff. Most of our users who want to discuss the product do so in our forums. Nonetheless I do Acknoledge my fellow song stuff members when they provide something of interest to me. Like Tom or Jan. Often times I'm jammed with content that I may only have a passing interest in like "Seymour Duncan pickups" as well as advertising for things I have no interest in while content provided by "friends" that does interest me seems to slip right past my fb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag This is pretty interesting stuff.

Thank You for Being a Friend - Andrew Gold http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN3E9Yyd1HA&feature=kp

They are when they can https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131014/18370824881/why-pulling-music-spotify-only-holds-back-artist-doing-pulling.shtml Several reasons are stopping them When artists remove their music from Spotify they are simply ensuring that they will receive zero royalties from that service. As well many artists are copyright holders but not publishing rights holders. The owner of the publishing rights is the person who gets to decide when or where the content is published. Even if you do have publishing rights its an uphill battle. Do you want zero royalties and diminished listership from not being on spotify?

I think we as artists have a responibility to music itself and ourselves that there be financial value in what we do and that we are compensated for our efforts. Spotify has bent the rules on paying for that content. Every convetional traditional broadcaster pays for the material they provide that you hear on the radio or television. XM and sirius pay for the content they supply. Youtube pays GEMA and ASCAP and BMI and a few other rights management companies (Vevo) for content it uses. If you've ever looked for a video on youtube and saw the .. this content is not available in your country it is because the content is not allowed to be distributed in your country by the publishing rights holder. Shoutcast providers are required to pay as well. However for some odd reason they have to pay more per listen then other mediums. Spotify created a loophole in the law which gives them the option of not paying. Spotify cannot operate a business with negative cash flow. However it has positive cash flow due to the fact it's not paying for permission. That's a bad business model for musicians to operate in. Even if your music is played on spotify you won't get a financial return and you won't get a sale from it. The only hope you ever have of ever making money from your hard efforts is in live performance. Even then as soon as you start riding the touring chain you're screwed glued and tatoo'd. It's a slap in the face to every musician who ever produces professional content. Read more http://derekwebb.tumblr.com/post/13503899950/giving-it-away-how-free-music-makes-more-than-sense When someone places value on music as a reciever (ie a listener willing to pay for it) the emotional bond to the music increases. It also allows the music maker the opporitunity to pay bills and make more. What is the value to the artist even if they get 20,000 hits on a song and no financial gain as opposed to selling 500 copues? Many a musician who has music on spotify have had thousand and thousands of listens and still spotify holds back. It's not good for the musician performer on any level. Spotify degrades the value of all music by releasing everything at dirt values to consumers. Spotify degrades independent artists by giving them an estremely small and unequal amount of money when they do pay out to independed musicians. MTV back in the 80's was the exact opposite of Spotify today. MTV carred a lot of videos of new artists that radio refused to play. In the early years of MTV usually new artists started on mtv then got airplay on local radio and record sales afterwards. Gues what...MTV paid those artists for the videos. Spotify isn't concerned with bringing new material to a new medium and showcasing it. Sure they'll host your stuff but you had better bring your audience to spotify en mass because they aren't going to do that for you. And even then, if you've brought your audience to spotify what is your reward from spotify help them line thier own pockets? Nothing. When I'm listening to music that I like it's usually my paid for mp3 collection. Or it's the radio, or its a streaming service that I know is returning the money back to the copyright / publishing holder. that's great. I'm willing to listen to advertising of paid sponsors. The artist gets paid the sevice gets paid and the sponser has a place to present it's content.

To the good old days. Your stories are reminicent of the 70's to me. In Royal Oak there were four guitar stores, Music Caslte, Royal Music, Gordy's and Junkyard Guitars. Last time I was in music castle it was hanging on by a thread. No teachers to be found (I actually used to teach there for awhile) I talked with the owner briefly and he claimed business was slow because it was spring. He was the only one there but it also was right around noon on a tuesday.Usually there are always two people working the front. That's where all the kids used to go to look and sometimes buy guitars and learn how to play guitar for the most part. Nice guys, afforfable guitars, the music hub. Royal Music is gone for good. Well intentioned with money have tried to save Royal Music but it drained them. Royal Music was the downtown place to go with a button down look. They too offer lessons and guitars (not that many) but they cater to the band/classical/jazz instrument crowd. Strings, woodwinds, brass.. No one ever got to play the guitars there unless escorted by a parent. The did have some amazing jazz teacher and for a time a fairly good library of sheet music. We had an "open campus" during high school and during lunch I'd often go in and browse the books they had. Usually some gruff guy would grab us and yell "Hey shouldn't you kids be in school" we'd expain then he'd let us go. Once you got past the guard dogs so to speak you'd enter the bookstore area. Cats. They'd have cats roaming the books section. The cats were friendly. Gordy's. Gordy originally worked at a long defunkt place called Meier's Music. It was a commisioned sales staff and they were very turn and burn. If they didn't smell the money when you walked in the door out the door your went. With the exception of Gordy. Gordy would lose money on a sale if he thought it would earn loyalty. I bought my first amp from gordy. A young fella shy on cash who needed an amp bad. Gordy dug out this broken amp sitting in the back. He opened it up and fixed it on the spot. He turned around and sold it to me for $30 back then you couldn't touch the ckeapest of amps new or used any quality for less then $150. But that was Gordy. Gordy had a virtual inventory of everything he had in stock and most of the competitors. If he didn't have it he'd tell you where you could find it and about how much it costed. Gordy knew everyone and Everyone knew Gordy. People would like up only to deal with Gordy at that store and ignore the other sales staff. Gordy was fired from Meier and with a little financing he started his own store just out of town. His store put Meiers out of business. Eventually Gordy moved Gordy's Music back into Royal Oak. The store is extremely small compared to his former ones. Because everyone knows Gordy and I mean everyone in the Detroit area. And most of the other stores are friendly with Gordy. He started "The Guitar Show" It's not namm. It's started off as a classic / rare unique show where dealers would come from everywhere to peddle there stuff and people wanting to sell thier collectables. Stores from all over the country will set up shop for the Guitar Show. Japanese investors come with body guards and suitcases of cash to buy collectables to take home and store in a vault. Guitar Heroes (real ones) would come to the event. Some would do seminars and some would just shop and talk. I had a Gibson 335 that I brought to the show one year that was signed by B.B. King. I wept. I met several big names like Joe Satriani, Stu Hamm, Paul Gilbert, Alvin Lee, Robin Trower and on and on and on. Simply walking around the floor looking at guitars. The guitar show still goes on but it's not the same. It's all flea market first act guitars and it's moved about a half hour away. But only Gordy could have made the Guitar Show happen. As for Junkyard. They came to the scene later and... I have less then favorable things to say about them on a wide range of subjects. Including and most especially selling fakes as real instruments.. They are all but dead and the owner must have an alternative source of income to keep what little of a store there is alive.

Tears in Heaven - Eric Clapton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxPj3GAYYZ0

The fact that it's not stored on your computer eg you don't own it means it is like streamed music/ internet radio. One could call up a local radio station and ask them to play your favorite song and... they just might. A lot of the radio stations I listed to as a kid did exactly that and some independent rock stations do take requests. The fact that it's more[i/] personalized for the listener does not negate the fact that it is indeed streamed content and as such is bound to the same regulations all streamed content is. I work for a company called swishzone http://swishzone.com One of our projects that never got to the state of full deployment was a Broadcast Server. It was like skype + youtube + gotomeeint + messenger + shoutcast and much much more. One of the smaller aspects was "Swish Radio" Which allowed one person to upload video or audio files to the web then create a schedule for broadcast. Just drop the audio into the timeslot and that's when they'd play. As well there were other schema's where people could access there own schedules and take the same files creating a personal playlist we had several other things going on with it much like spotify but those never came to fruition. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYyz_aUbjRM&feature=c4-overview&list=UURmTSxGz2NEOjS3mAoQl-0w We developed apps for both mac and pc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rchBn7hn91Y&list=UURmTSxGz2NEOjS3mAoQl-0w The problem was it wasn't getting any legs because we couldn't sell it as a service to anyone. Development was bogging down our other more profitable ventures and we were in constant fear of some civil or government agency shutting us down before it got anywhere. Spotify tries to hide numbers in order to avoid paying fees. That's all the personalized bs is really doing. Our beta testers loved our service. They were willing to pay to keep it on at much higher rates then icecast hosting costs. Even though hosts are not liable for content stored on there servers by consumers as part of the DCMA we had one very big problem. The company is in Australia which doesn't honor the DCMA. The second big problem was we didn't want to be the internet police in regards to our users. Do they have the rights? Are they paying appropriate feess? As a consequence the demo stations we used ran public domain music. As a user of the service and someone who did some coding for the project. I would put my own original music on the server. Spotify is walking a very thin line legally on the matter and very very open to lawsuits by the artists themselves. However for an artist who's material provided is being used but that person is not being compensated the only option is to pull out of spotify and not be able to sue. Civil suits by individuals are very very expensive and class action suits are even harder to work out because there is usually one in the crowd who will take an early buyout and screw the other pantiffs in the process.

If it is streamed then yes it is like online radio. If you pay for an mp3 from like amazon or itunes as an example you own the rights to play that song anytime, anywhere so long as it's stored on your storage device. If on the other hand a service is streamed you are not paying the license for a permanently stored song. At that point it's a broadcast service even if that broadcast is specifically tailored to your listening habits. It's internet radio. Internet radio has to pay all the same music rights usage as conventional radio. The big difference is they have to pay a higher rate of per listener. Youtube is at war with Gema and a few others and unfortunately everyone is comming out a loser. Youtube uses peoples videos to make money in advertising. Just like Television uses movies and tvs as a vehicle for advertisers. Therefore youtube should be paying back a return to uploaders just like Television companies pay producers for the rights to use shows. And that money is based on the success of the show. I've actually had several youtube accounts and a few of them got some serious hits. Haven't seen dime one. Spotify like Youtube is using people's content to make money for themselves however not giving an equitiable return for the products provided. Spotify like many major labels are pushing away from new material all together even from established artists. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/15/thom-yorke-spotify-twitter

A while back there was a discussion on what it's like to write music in Collaboration. John's response pretty much mirrors my own. Everyone waits around for me to do all the actual writing then pats themselves on the back later. I had this situation recently that really sticks in my crawl. I was at this forum and someone had done the initial work for a 12 blues jam. He laid down drums, bass and guitar all very sampled and very boring but I wanted to be part of the project so I went in and started actually writing a melody as opposed to just soloing. And then I added a solo and some fills. Someone else takes the work mixes it and then show cases it as being all their work. I still want to jam. So I take up the next round. I write the guitar parts I add the drum parts complete with solo's and fills charting it all in notation and using a drummer vst. I add a bass and guitar parts but I try to leave it as open as possible so that others can jam on it. A couple of guys do just that. and then... They go around taking all the credit. So I do a couple of other songs but I start initiating a CC share and share alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en_US Crickets. I'm producing better material now then when I first started. It's actually better presented for users then methods used prior to my joining the collabs. But I'm getting no response for my material because I'm requesting they acknoledge my efforts if they wish to share it with the general public. No one wants to touch my stuff. I don't have aspirations of doing backing tracks for a living. simply because I don't see it as a money making venture. I still want to do the online jam thing but I'm not liking where this has lead.

Apple is in many ways just as bad. Let's say you buy an itunes song of a specific artist. The first time they "may' pay the artist anythin you buy hte same song even in a different format you pay apple and apple doesn't pay the artist.

Your direction is what is messing up your thought logic. Locrian is the 7th degree of the major scale. Superlocrian is the locrian mode of the melodic minor scale. Start with your melodic minor scale right out all the notes so you know the names and functions of the harmony. Because there is no sense in playing a scale mode that you cant play against a harmony. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myg09BlviOU

Way cool.

In regards to buying online. I've bought four guitars online and I knew (for the most part) what I was getting into. Parker P44 via Sweetwater. This was new and reasonably priced. The "P" used to designate make in Korea. Absolutely amazing. It arrived completely setup no extended frets. Stainless Steel frets. The action and intonation was right as rain out of the box. And....And it was in tune. Sweetwater is a musical instruments retailer that knows it's products and knows it's clients. Amazon is really to big to give a crap. While it is a bolt on and doesn't have that super tech fretboard super slim neck profile and carbon graphite stuff going on... For the rest of it this thing is pure parker. It was propably 40% under conventional brick and mortar store pricing and it was and still is a honey sweet guitar. For awhile I was jamming with like minded guitar collectors. We often try each others guitars out for a little. Every one of them had the jaw dropping experience when they played mine. One who had never played a parker before bought the identical model after playing mine. None of the local retailers had it. Raven West 450 - Direct http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff309/ernieisley/DSC_0071.jpg Mine has a vine inlay. Again amazing guitar. Raven West guitars is basically this small luthier shop that farms out the heavy lifting to Korea then adds the finishing touches here in the states. The action was perfect out of the box. The thing was close to being intune. The intonation was perfect out of the box. It did require a little break in time to polish the frets. Nickel frets. Frets come in all types of strength from very soft nickel to harder composites up to hardened stainless. I accidentially dropped it hard and I nicked the 24th fret. It's a fix that could be handled at say... music caslte in short time for about $30 Rondo SX Furrian. Umm yeah looks pretty. Started off being okay and I thought I could fix what I saw as being no brainer smaill stuff but two months later all hell broke out on the neck. Fender Telecaster Blacktop - Musicians Friend / Ebay.$319 USD free shipping. I got mail order Musician's Friends catalogs back in the 70's For a lot of musicians especially those serving in the armed services musicians friend was the only way to get any equipment. I've mostly shy'd away from Musicians Friend. This guitar is new. It was being sold with a flaw. The model I have msrp's for 700 and usually is sold around 600. The neck appears solid. The frets are stainless steel (which I love) and are flawless. The action is a bit high and I need to intonate. For a guy such as myself who knows how to do this stuff it's fine. For someone that doesn't know all guitars are not created equal and having the finishing touches applied at a reputable guitar store it may not be. For most manufactures it would be hell doing the final setup work. And that would be expressed in the price of the product at time of sale from the manufactuers. Retailers both online and brick and mortar would need to carry on that price to consumers.

I learned a lifetime of things buy hanging out at music stores. Everything from basic's of guitar setup, fret dressing and polishing and more. Granted much of it I could learn in a short while surfing youtube for tech videos. While most of my experiences in guitar stores have been favorable not every guitar store deserves my hard earned cash. GC is a terrible place to work. Low wages, piss pour managers. They buy the junk stock from suppliers. Then don't even inspect it on many occassions before selling it to the customer. This has actually happened to a friend of mine I was there at the time. I tried to get him to check a few stores before making that all important second guitar purchase. He says to me no he wants to buy from GC because it's an established brand name as opposed to the mom and pops. We go in he picks up a guitar and says "I want this one" doesn't even play it. Sales guy says sure. I stop things in motion and sit down with the guitar and amp. I start to recognize irregularities in the guitar, and tell my buddy to actually play it before he buys so he can get a feel for the neck. He thinks I'm being an arse. He plays it...acknowledges that the frets are uneven and buzzing like mad. So we go through a few guitars of the same model till we find the "right one" The sales man takes the guitar in back to box up the guitar and draws up a reciept. My buddy and I both don't bother to look at the reciept. Cash out , go home. We get to his place and.... It's not the same guitar. The sales guy swaps guitars in back and writes up a reciept for a different guitar. A serious switch and bait. The guitar he actually sold my buddy was a "close out" which meant no refund or exchange. Not the only occurance of something like that happening at that Guitar Center in or guitar centers in general. For a long time GC's were keeping ma and pa stores busy with repair work. Because they'd pull turn and burns. Customers would also get problem amps effects etc at "deep discounts" which weren't reall a discount the way GC used financing to rob customers blind. \ When one buys from a reputable ma pa some things that don't seem important really tend to add up. http://musiccastle.com/mainFrame-1.htm lives up to its promise everyday. They test everything before it goes out on the floor. They never pull a bait and switch. They set up every guitar before they hang it. New and used. It's funny, back in the 80's I bought this signature guitar from them on special order. I was there the day it arrived and paid for it in advance but they wouldn't let me touch it till they had gone over every inch of the guitar. They also do a six month follow up on guitars. the climate goes through all sorts of changes here. the first year of a guitar the neck can bow and back bow. Bring your guitar in after your first six months and they'll do a neck adjustment reset the action and intonate all for free. They also offer a first free lesson with first time buyers. This is good for the store, good for the teachers and good for the kid who just got a guitar but hasn't learned anything yet. They have a local amp tech commissioned out for all electronic repairs. Very reasonable if you've invested a great deal of money into an amp, pa, keyboard and don't want to throw it out when something can easily be fixed. They also have rentals. If you are just starting out as a performing musician PA gear costs a fortune. Rather then take out a huge loan for a slow career start you can rent equipment from them. I've rented from them in the past and the equipment worked right as rain at very reasonable rental costs. They have layaways. 90 days same as cash. They also buy (though it's not a good idea to sell something to a guitar store) used equipment. They warn people up front first "you'll make much more money selling it on ebay then selling it to us,,,etc Music Castle earns my respect every day. It's a drive to go there and they are small. They don't carry fender brand products and I really really wanted a tele. If this same tele was available at Music Castle I would have bought it in a minute. Music Castle is does things differently then other stores. The sales staff are salaried, not commissioned and not minimum wage. They don't turn and burn costumers which is common with commissioned sales staff. While I could go on and on singing praises about Music Castle I could go much much further about bad shopping experiences at other ma/pa retailers. Lawsuit fake gibsons, fenders, prs, ricks that carry the brand name but were not manufactuered by them. Intimidation and much much more. Those type of retailers don't deserve my or anyone else's business and I'm happy to say many are gone (though a few still remain) Going to music castle used to be a bi-weekly experience for me. Talk with the guys, play some guitars, buy strings and picks. Share knowledge. I can't do that anymore. I haven't lived anywhere near the store in over 20 years. I pass Six other guitar stores just to get to them. And when I'm in town I usually don't have anything else to do there. As well I'm without car. The nearest guitar store (which I'm not a fan of) is ten miles away. I'm not going to walk 20 miles in the snow for a set of strings.

I think fender has model interpertations of each neck. For strats they have the "shallow C" the "standard C" the "modern C' and then what I like to call the U shape (like the 50's tele's) and the "V shape" Each shape seems to have some variance with model. My 80's Strat Plus has a shallow C neck with an ebony fretboard. It's the smaller thinner fender neck design found on "squier" Strats. If you are used to playing a bigger neck you would hate it. A buddy of mine has a "modern" Strat that's less then a year old with the HSS combination. He's got a "Radial C' Which is not that different from my bolt on Parker Fly. At the nut the width of the fretboard is smaller and the back of the neck is about the thickness of a standard "C" neck As you move up the fretboard the neck gets wider across the fretboard and thinner in depth. I'd never gotten accustomed to "fat necks" or any sort. Even this tele seems a little fat in comparisson to almost every guitar I've had. Fender is in an odd position with regards to guitars. They own too many brands. They used to own much more http://www.fender.com/brands/ And they have way to many variations in their own lineup http://www.fender.com/guitars/ (at least in my opinion) which oddly makes the purchasing decision harder. While I was obsessed with thin necks in my early years I've quickly found extremely thin with 24 fret necks isn't the best way to go either. Here's a pick of the new tele - This will be one of the few guitars I intend to modify myself. The Alnico 5 humbuckers are fine within themselves. I get all those classic Jeff Beck Blow by Blow / Wired sounds out of the box. As well as all the Pete Townsend Tones. But I'm looking for something that is characteristically warmer. I can do much tech stuff myself. Replace pickups wiring etc. The only thing that really scares me is replacing frets and swapping necks. It will prolly be at least a year before I even think of doing all that.

It's been almost a year for me but prior to that several years had passed. I buy my strings online because they are cheaper and I don't have to drive anywhere. The last 5 instruments I purchased were also online for conveinence. It didn't used to be that way. When I was a kid I'd hit many stores in a month. Some of them were so inviting that I let the others go and simply shopped where my friends and co-workers worked. Times were different back then. One store had a bar with stools for the regulars next to the guitar tech's bench. We'd sit around talk about music and life and watch repairs being done. Much more interesting then birds in the part. During the hieght of my musical career and financial success I would spend money like mad at guitar stores. Easily dropping over 1000 on music stuff. It was free money. The bills were all paid I had a nest egg safely inplace and life was good. I'm sure my 60+ guitars wouldn't have lasted long if I were married. They didn't last but that is another story. While my attention turned to trying to build a studio in the late 80's early 90's I'd still cruise the stores checking out guitars on the odd afternoon. In the 2000's I even went back to an old music store haunt to take lessons again. Simply to have a real jazz cat who could keep up with me and jam. Last year while looking at jazz boxes (which later I decided against) I noticed something very odd. There were only a quarter as many stores (maybe less) then there were not only 10 years ago. Guitar Center had a little to do with that. And the internet moreso. The other thing I notice is that stores where it was a time honored tradition to stand around and talk the talk were all about pushing a sale or pushing you out the door even though the store was near empty. Do I feel guilty about putting guitar stores out of biz by shopping online? The truth is I'm unsure. A lot of my friends who are now former teachers guitar store salesmen and techs are out of work. Because stores no longer could support them. Then again "collecting" guitars used to be a rich mans game. Most guitarists would have two guitars unless they hit the bigtime.

So the update is. The tele arrived today, two days earlier then expected. I'm going to have to spend some time on setup as expected. The intonation wasn't set and the action is a little high for my liking. The relief seems about right. I cannot believe how big this thing sounds for a telecaster even with humbuckers. It's fuller and slightly warmer then what I've heard on youtube videos but that may be thier amp and settings as opposed to mine. The neck pickup is more "edgey" then I expected. It still has great body. Which is odd to me as it's sporting 9's I plan to go up only slightly to 10's. The wieght is heavier by about two pounds (not sure about the specs) Apparently manufacturers don't agree about what a "C" neck should be from model to model or year to year even in the same company. This is by far the one of the thickest "C" neck I've ever played. It's also wider then most guitars I've played. I'm not complaining. I'm loving bending notes on this neck with it's 9.5 radius and medium jumbo frets. The frets "seem" to be set lower then other medium jumbos I've had in the past. It's my 77 american standard strat neck reborn