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Boy, am I glad I don’t have to worry about that – its bad enough having to change the strings and keep them in tune!
And the documentation – and the problem in the living room that I need to explain to the wife – I think I have another week until the sofa comes back –
June, eh? Honestly, I’m really hoping that we’ve all figured out how we’re going to work with this situation going forward, and start being able to move around the planet more easily before then –
Just wild! That’s a level of talent that is pretty darn rare – great that someone recorded it and they shared it!
I REALLY want to see some finish on that walnut – truly spectacular material –
It was great to get RH to respond so quickly to a forum question – he’s becoming far more comfortable and capable with technology, and my hope is we can start getting into a routine of a zoom Q&A with him included with every future podcast – it may be just a few minutes to check in and answer a specific question, or, if we get a topic which warrants more time, like moon spruce, we can give him the opportunity and audience to teach us all from his experiences –
so – keep those questions and ideas coming!
I don’t know anything about the legals or the permissibles or anything, but if you’re doing it for your own fun, not getting paid, not recording and selling, and not claiming someone else’s work is your own, you should just do what you enjoy as much as you can, and not worry about it.
Wish I could be out there playing music, or listening to someone play music, or even just pumping quarters into a jukebox with friends – but everyone stay safe, stay healthy, and stay upbeat. Happy New Year to all – we’ll plan on a great party next year!
Bird in the hand, indeed! Don’t think old growth means better – it usually indicates material that has grown in a more competitive environment, more slowly, so you probably get tighter grain lines, but that is a visual thing – highly desirable from an aesthetic perspective – but not necessarily indicating the finest acoustically. I’ve played many incredible acoustics that had wider grain, or slightly irregular grain, and they were frequently available at a better price than a similar guitar with the “perfect” grain, which is very desired by collectors –
Richard tries to make sure the material Santa Cruz uses is responsibly harvested, or re-claimed / re-purposed. This frequently means the material is old-growth, but that isn’t what makes their guitars great. Its the fact that they are careful to choose material that has the structural qualities they need to make great acoustic instruments. They do use old mahogany, reclaimed from old furniture or stock that has been stored away for many years, but they also have connections with sources that are responsibly harvesting trees that the the British admiralty had planted a long time ago – to make sure they had the materials they needed to build the warships they felt they’d need in the future. While it is really “plantation” material, the age and quality of the material can easily make it seem like “old-growth” stock. And turning it into great guitars, rather than great warships, seems like a much better use.
It’s easy to fall into the “better” guitar trap, or as Mr Pickett might say – “Don’t let the green grass fool ya” – if you learn that a wider neck, or a shorter scale, or a different body shape really works better for you, then it may be worth pursuing – but something that looks better, has more decoration, has “rare” materials, may not actually sound enough better to be worth the risk of selling or trading away what you have. And – another risk I’ve encountered – if your guitar gets too fancy, or too irreplaceable, or too valuable, you may start to feel you can’t take it out, play at the park, let a friend try out. And that can take much of they joy out of having a great guitar –
Enjoy your 00! Looks like a great guitar, and I’m sure it sounds like it too!
I have no idea about the beginnings – I think when I first joined it was quite late in its history, and well established with a good number of members. But it had a period of leadership issues, primarily because it was all volunteer, and issues of greater importance outside of the forum left some of the administrative and technical issues under-attended, then, in a series of “perfect storm” kind of problems, there was a physical (hardware) breakdown that caused the forum to crash and burn. Much time and energy was spent trying to restore it, then to try and recover some of it, but eventually, it was realized that it was all wasted time and effort. The exact details are unknown to me, but as they say, water under the bridge –
But the loss was felt deeply, and after some agonizing, it was determined that the only course forward was to start from scratch. With a wee bit of financial support from the maestro, plus the pulling in of a great number of favors, a new forum was born – of which you have now joined. It remains a largely volunteer effort, although behind the scenes, a bit more effort has been put into data security, and in front of the scenes, we have our chief cook and bottlewasher who goes by the handle “indexless”, another Richard, who does a tremendous job keeping the bots and spam attacks off the site, and also coordinates and is largely responsible for our podcast efforts. In many ways, he is both the heart and soul of the forum and the podcasts.
I largely interject off the cuff , and come up with fun projects for others to work on, and then enjoy their efforts! I also have a bad (per my wife) habit of searching out and acquiring Santa Cruz guitars – but as my closet space is largely filled, that pasttime has been greatly diminished.
Beyond that, we are slowly re-building our membership, and our content. A challenge with the many, many other online sites that are eagerly working to build membership, but we have something that no other site has to the same degree, and that is players who love Santa Cruz guitars. There is no requirement to own one, but when the desire gets deep enough, that tends to happen. ? I hope that you’ll join us, and maybe I’ll have an idea you could help with!
Interesting – you see a paperclip? I’m using Safari on my iPad, and I get the words “ Edit / Move / Split / “ etc, etc – wonder if there’s a platform / browser / OS distinction?
I tried just copying and pasting everything, leaving the IMG tags out of it, and I think it works fine. There should be an “edit” option across the top bar of your post –
gonna be gorgeous!
