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For Recordame, just think about the third…that’s the change from maj7 to -7. And going from the -7 to the 7b9, a fourth up, the G to Gb is the important bit.
It’s one of my favorite tunes – why didn’t we ever play it?
I’ve been using the D’Addario NS capos designed by Ned Steinberger mostly. I don’t lose them as much as Shubbs bc they clamp on the headstock and stay in tune decently well.
My favorite Shubb is also a brass 12 string I’ve had since the mid-eighties. I have a bunch of Shubbs and they’re all good.
Jam guitars – that is, those that I take to local jams where stuff gets swapped and borrowed – get Kysers.
A design I want to like but which I just don’t care for is the Thalia. The idea is great but they feel clunky.
And the weirdest one is the plastic Bird of Paradise, which works great except that the clamping mechanism wears out over time.
WANT
OMG
WANT
I’ve played 2 SCGC archtops and each was better than the other. A 15” natural with deco inlays would be perfect….
After installing a few of them, I’m also fond of the Ultra Tonic. I’ve installed it both with superglue and with 3M tape; the difference is nominal, IMO. I like the ability to tune it to the guitar via DIP switches, and the fact that it’s passive.
Planning to try the new Baggs bridge plate transducer – I have had passive IBeams in guitars for years and they work very well if the volume levels aren’t too high.
My cost-is-no-object system of the moment is the Trance Amulet MVP Phantom system – no batteries and remarkable sound. It’s very expensive, though.
I too would like to play an SCGC 12-string IIRC, one of the performers at the 40 or 45th celebration had a 12-string OM, and even amplified it sounded great.
I want to play one of the 15” natural-finish archtops someday…..a small archtop tends to be super-focused and direct while warm. Apparently, there aren’t many of them.
I’ve pared back to essentials, more or less, with acoustics. The ones that remain cover the spectrum and satisfy on just about every level. [ editorial note: Yeah, I know, I want an African Blackwood copy of my OM, but the point remains….GAS is never satisfied, ultimately].
I still have far too many electrics – people have gifted them to me, and I’m not sure what to do with them when they’re gifts, even if I don’t use them. I use a tele, a short-scale, set-neck 2-humbucker franken-tele, and a pair of strats, one alligator-ized with a blaster and some other bits; everything else gathers dust.
Getting rid of all of the big amps – the big marshall, The SVT, the bass stack, et cetera – proved a relief. Small amps can do the same things, and they can be miced or DIed, and can be carried by normal humans. Big stacks are for people who are willing to carry them, who haven’t learned (yet) that size doesn’t matter*… 😉
All of this talk about winnowing down and thinning puts me in mind of a Zen koan written by Bob Aitken, the Honolulu-based Zen roshi and writer….in the koan, someone asks Zen Master Raven “what happens when you die?” and Raven thinks for a second and says “I give away my belongings.” Works for me.
* the marshall stack was sold to a 14-year-old girl….
Let’s be grateful that Richard taught as many people as he did.
His work has been foundational to the lineage of builders, not just in the US, but worldwide.
We got hit in Fremont; the creek rose and came over the banks in a couple of places. Got through it but ‘twas unsettling.
I concur with iim7V71M7; the 000-12-fret is probably as close as you’ll get in the SCGC line unless they do a custom one-off 0000 12-fret body with extended upper bout a la other similar 12-fret models. Having played the Martin 12-fret 0000s that Gruhn’s ordered in the past (like the one in the video), I think they sound great, though they’re right on the edge of uncomfortably large for me. .
Hank has an SCGC 12-fret 000, which by all accounts sounds great and checks off all the sonic and playability boxes; it’d be worth talking to him to get input on that. I’ve got Daniel’s Mauel 000-12, which is a big instrument of the same size…..12-fret 000s move a lot of air and are pretty big, even compared to dreads.
In general, I’m not especially a fan of putting 12-fret necks on 14-fret bodies….doing so gives up air mass that (IMO) is part of the sauce that makes a 12-fret sweeter (and may add volume), and it gives up upper-fretboard reach that I use (I know, playing over the body is a learnable skill, but cutaways are easier). The aesthetics, are, of course, personal – chacon a son gout – but not my cup of tea.
There IS precedent for a 12-fret neck on a 14-fret body. James Patterson did a bunch of 12-fret necks on 14-fret 000 bodies in the 70s, and Martin (and I think SCGC) did the same for Norman Blake. So it’s out there.
But my question is why do that with an OM Grand, when you can have more fret access and just as much power with a 14-fret neck? What would you gain that you wouldn’t get with a 12-fret 000 with extended upper body?
