jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

Oh, I didn't really know, or maybe remember they called it a mu chord... that's cute. 1, 2, 3, 5 or 1, 3, 5, 9 if you prefer, so an add9. Like in the intto to deacon blues, a major7 i chord voiced 1, 7, 3, 5 to "mu" v chord voiced 1, 2, 5, 1, 3... what was I getting at? I went full on white middle aged dad for a sec.

From a lyrics-first perspective, I can see the Dan comparisons: many songs are a certain type of self-contained story from the perspective of a fictional character that is not Greep himself... and there's a similar vibe of "misanthropic old dude trapped in a young dude's body".

So are you saying Fagen owns the concept of singing as a cynical and acerbic character? Because i feel like that's a folk and country music tradition with a thru line into early rock, Johnnie Cash comes to mind... Merl Hagard... Elvis... even traditionals like 'where did you sleep last night' and 'house of the rising sun's. Fagen and Becker (rip) are real americana musicologists. Even if you break down some of those weird chord extensions there's a blues hiding underneath. It's really old-timey music that went to LA and got a facelift and a boob job. Hearing it as a kid I thought "what the heck is this?!" As I got into music i realized that these wild lyrics and chords are really just updated everything those guys loved into a slick format that was suited to 70s fm radio.

That said, I don't know if there's a single Mu chord on the album, but someone definitely cranked up the smoothness fader on a few tracks.

Mu chord? I seriously have never heard of a Mu chord, explain. And where is this smoothness fader?

That's an excellent suggestion. @Michael

Yeah, I don't know if I would compare it to steely dan... dan is a whole other level of writing sophistication and ridiculously perfect ensemble playing.

I hope everyone got some shiny new gear... and you better all have a happy new year.

Dave West? YEAH! he was an also ran in the early boutique/custom amp market, like Jim Kelly. Somehow Mesa Boogie, Dumble, Trainwreck, Soldano and Matchless are the only guys from the 70s and 80s who still get props.

Look the sound fools my ears and has for awhile, but it can't fool my hands. An actual amp blazing somewhere I'm the building just connects with me and I play with more feeling and take more risks improvising. The amp just never does the same thing twice so you might as well have at it. If I'm going to use modelled its for layering

I've always been suspicious of dumbles. I don't like goopers, epoxy is glue, it's not for making your product unsetvicable by anyone but you. Howard Dumble's amps are mistly modified showmans withectra circuitry. I've tried a real one at a fancy nyc rehearsal space and it sounded good, really good, but I felt like it choked off a lot of my exoression compared to the trainwreck there. That was an amp to be tamed to be sure, but it never felt like it was taming me. Now that the basic circuits are out there it's easy to see the difference in approach. Its classic old amps but Howard added features and circuitry vs Ken who removed as much as he could without the amp being completely unstable.

the sims keep getting better, but they don't really connect like an amp, and I mean even when you have an amp in the iso booth or you're recording an amp in the big room while playing in the control room. Soon though. Fr some people it'll work... heavy distortion or little to no distortion is great now from the better sims, and they sound pretty close to the real amps once recorded... and I've owned most of those amps.

Oh shoot, forgot to respond but good stuff Jim. I agree about Dove Ellis, the good parts are there but some of it feels less memorable. I saw Magnolia Electric Co reunite the other week and it was a super solid show, planning to see Geese, Nine Inch Nails, and Geordie Greep next year.

I've skipped NIN since the fragile tour, mostly just out of economic necessity. Trent's a great guy though. I don't know all the new guys, but Danny and Charlie were fun to hang with way back when. And obviously I'm an enormous rivet head, but I'm not too cool for nine inch nails like a lot of mudderfuggers my age.

I listened to Geese on From the Basement last night and I enjoyed it so much I've listened to it 2 more times today. I like it better than their studio albums. I might have to catch them live.

You might also like Dove Ellis, who's on tour with them at the moment. There's also a lot of overlap with them and MJ Lenderman fans, but he's a little more like a Gen Z mix of Jason Molina, Wilco, and hints of Dinosaur Jr.

Dove Ellis was pretty great at times and other times kinda blah. The good sh!t was really good, but I gave up after 5 tunes. I was in so many bands that sounded like Lederman in the 90s, sometimes just for a few months lol... a little powerpop, counting crows, toad the wet sprocket... solo Westerberg. I just threw a youtube mix of all his stuff on so it's all over the place. Definitely the most boring, but very appealing. His vocals vary in quality a lot, but I'm glad he doesn't slap a lot of autotune on.

this was one of my favorite things from that powerpop idiom back in the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUGNdD3vfSE&list=OLAK5uy_k-P1W8Zsffh15guZvBho445bbLrynvHP0&index=2

Jon Brion of soundtrack fame with I think one of the jellyfish guys... correct me if I'm wrong. Totally forget now. Brad Meldahl is probably on it too...

thanks for all the music, I'm editing a book and I really need some fresh stuff to get me in the zone, keep 'em comin!

Their later stuff didn't grab me as much, but I considered that a good thing -- these dudes shouldn't be chasing fans in their 40s. I'm really happy to see they've comfortably reached the quit-your-dayjobs stage of existence... and still growin'.

I listened further and the new stuff was doing it for me more, really itself. Maybe not my most preferred listening but it was well done, original and impossible to turn off!

Yes, I like this idea. Having products tied to multiple brands makes sense.

We also have the ability to list gear in multiple categories on the roadmap. For example, my Strymon Flint should appear in both the reverb and tremolo categories, rather than being treated only as a multi-FX unit, as it is now.

This makes a lot of sense on both fronts. Colabs are more frequent... my chorus echo is a chorus, tape echo and spring reverb and I use the fx separately when it's right. It's not exactly a multi fx though, just 3 really specific sounds.

If someone was talking about Geese on here, it was probably me.

Pretty sure it was you... I think I said I would check them out and then promptly forgot but now I'm going to listen to that first record while I edit some prose today.

EDIT: halfway through the 1st album and this reminds of Adventure by Television... a lot. more modern, more disonant, a little less melodic, less of Lloyd's classic rock riffage, a little richard hell vocal here and there throwing back to johnny jewel... some strokes, talking heads obviously, etc etc... a real NYC blender

Saw you had mentioned Geese earlier, you got any thoughts on them Jim?

Are you sure I wasn't refering to actual geese?

Like the bigmuff2, unreleased EHX design built by JHS and now in preorder in different versions by both companies? This kind of co-OP is baffling to my child if the 80s brain. Companies dont work together, they're supposed to eat eachother!

How does Reverb work it?

Whoa. I'm over the IQ hill

Well, it looks like we get one last chance in 6 days.

Its my son's birthday so I'm going to miss b!tchkiss. Life is cruel.

Even though Reverb doesn't own Equipboard, you can think of it like Disney deciding what is Canon for all the Lucasfilm/Star Wars stuff. Fans may love a character from some 90s Shadows of the Empire novel, but if Mickey says it's not canon right now, it's not canon.

So this pearl kit is Legends. Which admin would be Kathleen Kennedy in this analogy?

Yeah, that's good, now let's sort the strats lol

There’s seems to be no way of adding limited edition versions of instruments if the base model already exists right ?

Work in progress, enter discussion here, although I think it's mostly settled already

It will sound almost like a 1:1 clone of stuff you loved, but you'll never fully trust it.

Right, I won't trust a 1:1 clone, that's pretty un rock n roll... I'm not saying it's actually dead but rock is not healthy. I'm sure it'll limp along via some niche acts that are virtually tribute bands and some more 60s to 90s tinged pop that emulates the swagger and sounds while retaining a core of Taylor swifty show biz plasticine. We'll have the odd purist rockabilly outfit make it on the late show if there even is a late show, I guess kimmel is safe. Theres still rock records coming out today... ostensibly. Dead was a strong word. Failing to thrive? I feel like rock n roll is mainly allowed to survive because it sells guitars and peripherals. There's a hodgepodge of shrinking 80s/90s sub cultures keeping it alive like metalheads etc and the MI industry is ok with that.

I watched spinal tap 2 yesterday and it was hysterical. All the gags about Nigel's expanding pedalboard expressed my views about the way manufacturers replaced rebellion with consumerism. The end really said it all though.

You're the 3rd person to ask that this week. Never? Elissa and Bryan have really young kids and I don't think we can all get along for more than an hour anymore. There's not much audience for our kind of thing. I feel like we were in rock music's last gasp... and I kinda sensed it at the time.

I can't speak to the m2, but if its close to the pro stuff then its the best damn thing for the buck. I'm all motu AVB gear in my semi-pro home studio and you can't do better for the money when it comes to noise floor, resolution, internal clocking and transparent line inputs... the 2 mic pres on my 828es are acceptable for a lot of microphone tasks and their DI mode is really good for vintage synthesizers where I prefer the to all my line inputs for 20th century synths and also to a DI in front of my outboard pres or console pres in most instances. THough I have rakcmount and desktop edirol USB midi patchbays, the studio is currently setup with acontrol on the 828es midi in and a misi solutions T8 for distribution and it works fine. Latency for uadio and midi over thunderbolt with 2 units slaved over AVB is super low to the point where I seldom have to use the internal mixer for direct monitoring and plugin synths are close to instantaneous. I also have a focusrite clarett 8pre and some crappy behringers slaved over adat if needed and the quality wordclock cleans all those add-ons up sufficiently that even the behringers don't bother me. I do use good quality adat and BNC cables though. Its a very affordable 34in/56out setup that allows me to track whatever and do complex hybrid mixes or mix in analog with compressors on loops so they're post DAW automation with analog EQ and summing. No complaints. I'm Eyeing the new version of the 828es that has dual ethernet ports as my central hub...

can't recommend motu highly enough these days, the saber converters are great, particularly the D to As. You have to spend way more to top these interfaces. I prefer the playback sound to the UA apollo line, which I find to be a bit colored and flat... if you don't need all the apollo DSP bells and whistles, and I don't, go motu at this price point.

For the first pass, we’ll follow Reverb’s structure since it provides enough differentiation for a standalone page. Anything beyond that would require building a custom taxonomy for every individual guitar model, which is something we can tackle later. This approach should still eliminate most of the duplicates and give users a solid way to find the specific model they’re looking for.

I get all hot and bothered when you taxonomize!

We’re already moving in this direction by letting you include year and finish in artist submissions, and we’re actively cleaning up duplicate items that differ only by finish. We’re about halfway through solid-body guitars at this point and reviewed roughly 5,000 pages last month.

Skywalker will not become a jedi.

Giulio is also developing additional methods to identify duplicates systematically.

systematically or automatically?

It’s a large project, but the progress has been steady.

yes my master.

this was recorded at WXPN or Cabrini college for radio broadcast:

https://soundcloud.com/james-marchione-1/9-4-07-ls-limit_02-01?si=e3f729a65ad34190926e71fd730c872a&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

and the 1st performance of Love Slut at RnR in the meat packing district NYC... someow my sound got a bit lost even using a marshall plexi+4x12 and a dual showman driving 2 marshall 4x10s? probably too loud? you couldn't film dead center because we created a mosh pit that night:

https://youtu.be/EXszFV4EadM?si=vzR4cfzCTWPTnvzE

we couldn't do an album version because Hadaway hated how we used is song in the bridge and withheld rights... but we played it live

and the demo from when I was 25 or 26 and elissa was probably 17, we had to beg her into 18+ venues

https://soundcloud.com/james-marchione-1/loveslut-demo-2004?si=6150f38aeda04d45ad1c73838ae2852a&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

I was a house engineer back then and we would just dip into studios after hours and cut everything we came up wth... oh to be young again

WHAT DOES SME STAND FOR???!!!

Subject

Matter

Expert

no kidding, I really had no idea and don't think of myself as an expert on a lot, just a loud mouth with a photographic memory, although in my late 40s its faltering

I'm ok with this.

WHAT DOES SME STAND FOR???!!!

WHO DOES NUMBER 2 WORK FOR!!!!!!

yep should've said full nitro on the standard!

satin and faded are still nitrocellulose lacquer, the difference is about number of coats, polishing/sanding and clear coating :-)

all good...

to the tune of tiny dancer: so hold my beer now edgey dancer... gibson only nitro lacquers... I miss my old tweed gibson lancer... because I'm not a pedal stacker

Ken, bud, what does SME stand for?

c'mon! I wanna know!!!!!!!!!!

if you want a les paul platinum studio or whatever I have just buy one, its unpopular... about 800 to 1200 clams. I played a numebr of them before buying one. I was short on funds when I played them in person and then bought one sight unseen from seattle and they all play the same. QC was great on this metallic LP studio. Its a really nice guitar, but HEAVY, near or over 9lbs usually. It works though despite 7.5 to 8.5 being ideal LP tone range range according to most cork sniffers. Maybe its not heavy and my back is just middle aged though.... hmmm.

satin and faded are still nitrocellulose lacquer, the difference is about number of coats, polishing/sanding and clear coating :-)

I will say I've noticed a similar trend with Lonestar, Lonestar Deluxe and Eric Clapton Stratocasters, but have already submitted a bunch to be merged. Will probably go back over and make sure I didn't miss any.

I've been a strat player all my life and I've probably owned more than are on my "had" list. They're more alike than different. You can hand me most any strat and I'm cool with it. I prefer a soft V or a boat neck but the flat stuff is okay, the so-called C, whatever. I prefer the classic bridge over the 2 pin 'cause the beauty of 6 screws is its easier to stiffen up if you seldom use the vibrato, and stiff springs with the rear of the bridge in a flatter position yields better note transfer and stronger tuning stability... and I'm not afraid to put some arm into my wang bar use. I'll bend a neck with my left or headstock dive a non-vibrato guitar, don't care, I'm not precious. The 2 pin has to float high by design, more tension throws it off so 3 springs with conservative tension. I can rock either version though. I like hardtail a lot too. Like, sometimes you don't need a wang bar??? I grew into the telecaster later, but I love my teles... most stable guitar ever. So I'm a fender-f@cker. I'm not loud about it, but I am. All my fenders but 1 are highly customed out. Just little tweaks to make them their best selves and make my job as a player easy. A fat strat or big apple or whatever, that's a variation, no slanty bridge PUp, but whatever. There's bucker sporting teles too and one or two with a set neck. Strat and tele pickups sound fairly similar and fender could never wind a humbucker. There's better and worse or whatever in the singles, but that's due to material quality and care and only you can hear it LOL. I care, but my audience never has.

I would love to reduce strats and teles down to a few variations by country of origin.

Let me think this over. 'Faded' and 'sstin' finish variants may be significant because the thin coat of lacquer tends to wear off fast of you gig under stage lights regularly... that's significant to me.

Our resident Gibson SME has arrived. Thanks for joining in, Jim!

SME? Simian Manufacturing Expert? You can have a CNC router and a couple chimps build an LP studio... sure! Why not?

but, yeah, I've been known to play some gibsons, for sure. I'm pretty conservative with guitars and amps. A good fender or gibson type model into a fender, marshall or vox is usually okay by me, so I know a lot about those guitars and amps at a micro-level. All that simplicitly requires everything to be functioning at its full potential.

Putting aside the complication of all the limited, faded, special, plus stuff for a moment, what's your take on what to do with the 13 or so vanilla LP Studio entries?

before I put that aside, take for example my LP studio platinum, that model appears at first glance to just be a special finish. But wait a sec; it's got an ebony fretboard with no inlays and a really flat radius, also an extra wide nut/neck like a classical which required different cutting, deep/fat neck profile (ITS BIIIIIG, it might have a long tenon too, I forget now, but there's no other gibson with a neck like it), stock grovers, stock burstbuckers, stock 50s wiring scheme, etc etc (they did an SG special but its less distinct since there was a stock SG special in that finish but with stock appointments, however the platinum has all the LPs features). Back on topic...

Should we break down the vanilla LP Studios into 5 or 6 different eras (e.g. 1983-1989, 1990-1997, etc), or put them all under "Gibson Les Paul Standard" like we're starting to do with 1954-1983(ish) Strats?

I like the idea of eras usually, like what I did when I tried to organize the fender amps. However, that experiment failed miserably. I think this issue will require admin intervention. We need a redesign with a drop-down menu listing all known LP studio variants that we update regularly. This concept goes along with the finish drop-down we've bandied around in modsquad.

EDIT: I've been playing guitar almost as long as there have been studio model les pauls. On the whole they are largely the same thing.., and while they vary some things periodically (like pickups, neck shape or whatnot) they're the same instrument: short tenon neck, no binding anywhere, dot inlays, tulip tuners, mediocre pickups, 300k pots, modern wiring... back in the day the neck profile varied from guitar to guitar to varying degrees each year and usually the titebond was over applied to the neck joint causing issues at the heel as they age LOL. At some point they probably went from rosewood to roasted maple fretboards, but I could be wrong. I wouldn't buy a non-custom-shop gibby these days... things took a sharp dive before my son was born.

Let me think this over. 'Faded' and 'sstin' finish variants may be significant because the thin coat of lacquer tends to wear off fast of you gig under stage lights regularly... that's significant to me.

y'know, I always stayed clear of studiologic... my logic (pun intended) was that controller and synth companies buy their keybeds knowing that fatar makes a great keybed, they don't even bother trying to top them so can fatar really make a better controller or synth? there's way more to it than a keybed. I flirted with a studiologic sledge purchase but ultimately decided not to get one because I felt worried the keybed would be the best made part...

I’ve yet to have any guitar that I considered beyond saving, but certainly some that weren’t for me.

I've always been lucky with guitars too...

Happy thanksgiving everyone @gchiaren @michael @jimmarchi1 @hashimoto @pkennethk @shiba_inu_jedi @edgedancer etc.

back atcha, hope your long weekend's been great so far!

Hey Jim! My Hannah Montana guitar was a real turd. I spent more money trying to make it playable than the guitar cost with no luck. I hold on to my gear, but ultimatimateky gave that turkey away. Cheers! ~m

That turkey feels unsurprising... on the other hand I see the appeal of getting on stage with a hannah Montana guitar...

Name change complete.

That's a really cult model like the marauder. Not many people bond with the nighthawk.

Ok but... I kinda want a Marauder 😝

I teched a marauder once, gibson could not do a bolt on. I had to make a shim... also the nut was screwy. It's a really badly made guitar