#31
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Toby et. al.
A great discussion thread that of course Toby started right on target. I think of Rev. Gary Davis and absolutely stunning playing on an out of tune J 200 with ancient strings. While having the 'right' guitar surely helps we mere mortals (my spiffy newest acquisition of a CEO 7 is my example) what Bob Taylor years ago called 'bone tone' from the player is surely a great variable to attend to. |
#32
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Fingerpicking Acoustic Blues/Rag/Folk/Slide Lessons https://www.tobywalkerslessons.com/ Last edited by Toby Walker; 02-07-2018 at 09:11 AM. |
#33
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There is a rule of thought that buying the top of the line Kay, Harmony or whatever is better than buying the low end Gibsons, Martins and such. There is some truth to that. I prefer a Kay Television archtop to a Gibson L-50 even though the Kay cost about 1/3 less when new. I own an early 1930s Oscar Schmidt-made Galiano jumbo (the same as a Schmidt Sovereign) which I prefer over any Gibson LG-1 I have yet to get my hands on.
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"You start off playing guitars to get girls & end up talking with middle-aged men about your fingernails" - Ed Gerhard |
#34
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Yup, there simply are many, many more choices if you buy new/relatively new. You really can get just about anything you want. I'm old enough to have bought "vintage guitars" when they were "inexpensive used instruments". I've had a couple great ones and made some decent money selling them. Most of my current instruments have been made this century and are modeled after older instruments/designs - acoustic/electric guitars, basses, amps - couldn't be happier. They are outstanding! |
#35
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#36
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...great subject and as always a pro perspective is invaluable...when it comes to guitars I love em all....old/new..shiny/dull..pretty/ugly..big/small..cheap/spendy....as long as I can string it up I can find a use for it....and I can play some kind of blues on any of them...
....but!!!...the blues exist under a really big tent and like no other genre I can think of they run the gamut from elegant jazzy representations that take a great deal of technical proficiency to raw stone simple renderings that very limited players can pull off effectively....certainly there are guitars that match up with the type of blues one is playing better than others and I like having a choice...love the old wood but dang i sure like the new guitars I have too...and at the end of the day the better the guitar the more I can do with it... |
#37
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Well, first of all, the best way to achieve the authentic sound of a blues player from the ‘30’s or 40’s would be to invent a pedal that would introduce the hiss and scratch of an old 78 into the signal chain…
I think the use of old guitars to play roots music of any kind is an affectation, but it is an affectation that I enjoy. I just like older guitars, recognizing that they almost always need work including issues with intonation (not to mention bent necks and loose braces). To me the difference between playing a Kalamazoo KG 14 and a Waterloo copy is night and day, not because the Waterloo is a bad guitar, but because the Kalamazoo has so much more life and history in it. I also think the Kalamazoo’s are lighter, but I wouldn’t take that to court. I love the finish crazing, the worn spots from arm rubbing, the heavy pick wear on the top, the divots in the fingerboard, everything that shows years of playing on that old guitar. I don’t think it sounds any better for all of that (though the good old ones often sound great), I just like owning it and being part of the chain of its musical life. And I think the old guitars look better as performing guitars, they add a touch of authenticity, (even though it is entirely artificial). Many professional musicians who own vintage guitars don’t gig with them just because they are too valuable or too frail. But many professional players do play vintage guitars on stage because they love the way they sound (and look). The bottom line to me is vintage guitars themselves make virtually no difference in the way the music sounds. The KIND of guitar does—resonator or arch top or ladder braced or whatever—but whether or not it is old is much less important than the skill of the musician. During the blues revival in the middle ‘60’s those old guys played whatever their handlers came up with. John Hurt’s middle range vanilla Guild has already been mentioned. Skip James played what they gave him, sometimes an old Gibson, sometimes a much newer guitar. The Reverend Robert Wilkins played a ‘50’s D18 at the Philadelphia folk festivals (hardly a blues machine) and Bukka White played a vintage square-necked National tri-cone until he smashed the bridge and cones with his hyper aggressive playing—and they all sounded more authentic than any of the white blues enthusiasts that followed. So give me those old guitars anytime, stupid and expensive though it may be… Rob
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2003 Martin OM-42, K&K's 1932 National Style O, K&K's 1930 National Style 1 tricone Square-neck 1951 Rickenbacker Panda lap steel 2014 Gibson Roy Smeck Stage Deluxe Ltd, Custom Shop, K&K's 1957 Kay K-27 X-braced jumbo, K&K's 1967 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Nashville 2024 Mahogany Weissenborn, Jack Stepick Ear Trumpet Labs Edwina Tonedexter |
#38
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Hey the resurrection of a zombie thread!! But it is a good one. I honestly prefer the feel and sound of an old, well played guitar that has seen it's fair share of life. However I do agree with Toby that the old vintage guitars can be problematic especially if you're touring or gigging a lot with them. I have come across a few new guitars that have the feel and sound of an old guitar. If you're looking for a real bargain, it's hard to beat an Ibanez AVC6DTS. Those guitars just feel and sound much older than they are. I recorded two of my CDs with mine (the Honeysuckle Breeze CD is with my '59 J-45). And then at the end of last year I stumbled across my Martin 000-17 and dang it just feels (and sounds) like a vintage guitar. To my ear it's very Gibsonesque in tone. I haven't played the other models in the 17 series but I would expect the same from them.
Also regarding the comments that it is possible to record now with vintage equipment, you are correct. We have a studio here in Bristol, TN named the Earnest Tube that is using the old vintage equipment and making some very authentic recordings. But my point in the original statement is that the recording process back in the 20's, 30's and 40's created a lot of that old vintage blues tone that we love and you're not going to hear that playing in your living room. Yeah you can track down one of these studios and reproduce the sound on your own recordings but you're not going to hear it live. This is a great discussion, I've really enjoyed it!
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'59 Gibson J-45 "Spot" '21 Gibson LG-2 - 50's Reissue '94 Taylor 710 '18 Martin 000-17E "Willie" ‘23 Taylor AD12e-SB '22 Taylor GTe Blacktop '15 Martin 000X1AE https://pandora.app.link/ysqc6ey22hb |
#39
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I play Nationals (modern ones) and a couple of Republics (great instruments) and my favourite of all is one of my Republics! So go figure! It's not even the best Republic I own but boy does it shout it out!....Instrument and gear snobs I have no time for...it's the music that matters! |
#40
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Last Saturday I went out to an open mic. I had talked to the guy who runs it earlier in the day and knew he was planning to put his 1930s Regal, which has an action so high you could pass your hands between the strings and the board, in open tuning and play slide. So I decided to try and outdo his wreck with one of my own so brought my early 1930s Oscar Schmidt-made Galiano jumbo with the collapsing top in and in bad need of a neck reset along. Strange night made even stranger when a local peace officer in full cop regalia stopped in to listen. Figured at first we were going to get a disturbing the peace ticket. We went on for hours playing everything from Searching the Desert to St. James Infirmary to Three Wooden Crosses to Wipe Out (to take advantage of one of the rare instances a drummer sat in). The next day I kept hearing that in all the time this open mic has been going on this one had a bit of magic to it others lacked.
Not saying it was the old guitars but something pushed us. My fingers though felt like hamburger the next day.
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"You start off playing guitars to get girls & end up talking with middle-aged men about your fingernails" - Ed Gerhard |
#41
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU4S3G4_rJo
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Faith Mars FRMG Faith Neptune FKN Epiphone Masterbilt Texan Last edited by AndrewG; 03-11-2019 at 04:41 AM. |
#42
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Here's a blues tune played on a "vintage" Taylor 114.
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#43
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Once the strings get old enough, they all sound about the same.
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