The Fret Files: the guitar workshop podcast

[Camazotz Automat]

MV using twitter? whats next noory quits coast to coast ?

I'm afraid that's a twit that will never quit.

[The General]

I'm happy to announce that my podcast is now the greatest podcast in the universe.
Thanks for listening. 

[MV/Liberace!]

The latest Fret Files episode is here:
http://www.ufoship.com/?cat=13

[Marc.Knight]

I'm happy to announce that my podcast is now the greatest podcast in the universe.
Thanks for listening.

No problem.

[The General]

I'm happy to announce that my podcast is now the greatest podcast in the universe.
Thanks for listening.

Actually, a correction is in order.  It's the best podcast recorded in my house.

[Heather Wade]

Actually, a correction is in order.  It's the best podcast recorded in my house.

Go with your first instinct. 

*Hint:  it rhymes with "Universe"

[ksm32]

Frets between frets, bloody guitars.  Nobody wins.   

[Camazotz Automat]

I'm Fret Files binging today, beginning with Fret Files #9.

I'm laughing so hard at The General's frustration in #9 while he's talking about the Flat Earthers and their stubborn responses as they claim that expensive capacitors create audible differences in tone that a human can discern.

Very patiently, yet with some exasperation, The General addresses their obstinate beliefs as if he is speaking to a particularly dense mule.  It goes something like this to the heathens:

"Look, ~Todd~, as I said, I used a selection of different types of caps in my test box, ranging from the very cheap to the very expensive and NO difference... NONE! .... could be detected by ANYONE that had the brains TO LISTEN and not merely talk out of their ass on the internet! Never MIND the fact that very expensive diagnostic equipment was used to PROVE SCIENTIFICALLY that what little difference there is, is so minuscule as to be non existent and definitely not anything that some mouth-breather in Miami could hear with his blown out eardrums! You're arguing with SCIENCE "Todd"!  Do you HEAR ME? It is IMPOSSIBLE TO HEAR THE DIFFERENCE! So come on down to Emerald City and let me knock some sense into your apparently wooden ventriloquist dummy head! Maybe we need to trepan and dowel that blockish freak machine you even dare call a head!"

I am paraphrasing just a little.

I'm also somewhat utilizing the trolling axiom covered in Fret Files #9 that it is always important to USE CAPS WHEN TALKING ABOUT CAPS.

Apparently, such trolls believe that using capital letters for a message's full length will change The General's mind AND negate science as well, so I'm using caps to show how difficult it is to GET IT THROUGH THEIR THICK HEADS that their claims are the epitome of denial and ignorance.

(By the way, General, I think a booklet of Secret Schematics for Strat and Tele Modifications by The General is a fantastic idea/project if you ever chose to put  those dozen or so "weird wired environments" to paper. Tele-kinetics into the Strat-o-sphere, man.)

The Fret Files is a platinum podcast. It can be appreciated by anyone, whether they are into guitars or not, and that's because

A) The General knows of what he speaks and
B) He does it so well.  He's a natural, and so is Mrs. General, when she casually segues with something like, "Let's get back to Charles' wiggly neck."

hahahahahahaha

PLUS, you get to hear The General play guitar. What more could you ask for?

[attachimg=1]

[b_dubb]

Re capacitors - expensive vs regular .... Fret Files has strayed into Skeptoid territory. They had an interesting episode about tube amps that came to mind during the capacitor discussion.

[The General]

Frets between frets, bloody guitars.  Nobody wins.

True story.  Thanks for listening.

I'm Fret Files binging today, beginning with Fret Files #9.

Cam, Red, and B-dubb - Thanks for listening.
Cam, I really appreciated your post.  thanks.

[MV/Liberace!]

The Fret Files is a platinum podcast. It can be appreciated by anyone, whether they are into guitars or not, and that's because

A) The General knows of what he speaks and
B) He does it so well.  He's a natural, and so is Mrs. General, when she casually segues with something like, "Let's get back to Charles' wiggly neck."

agreed.  entirely.  my only complaint about the show is that i wish the host were a non-white.  i would prefer a samoan host.  thank you.

[Camazotz Automat]

agreed.  entirely.  my only complaint about the show is that i wish the host were a non-white.  i would prefer a Samoan host.  thank you.

If you're going to drag Polynesians into this, then I have no choice but to post the following song.

As a law abiding citizen, I literally do not have a choice.

For it is the law. 

Behold. The Wizardry of Iz:

[Camazotz Automat]

After hearing about James Best dying yesterday, I was checking out his film/TV history and came across this great photo of him on The Andy Griffith Show, playing a beautiful old electric guitar.

[Camazotz Automat]

I made up the beginning of a joke that maybe The General can complete someday:

A lac beetle walks into a pawnshop with a banjo ...

[zeebo]

Anyone ever get pain in your inside left elbow?  I think it's tendonitis, and it keeps coming back.  It hurts bad enough to make me stop playing for weeks at a time.  I play a classical nylon string guitar with pretty high action which I think contributes.  (Wondering if maybe switching to electric might help but I like the simplicity of acoustic instuments.)

I think maybe I'm holding the neck too tight, or at the wrong angle, or something else I'm doing dumb since I never took lessons.  I had a phys. therapy guy tell me it was like "baseball elbow" (as opposed to the "tennis" variety), if that helps.  Thanks for any ideas.

[The General]

Anyone ever get pain in your inside left elbow?  I think it's tendonitis, and it keeps coming back.  It hurts bad enough to make me stop playing for weeks at a time.  I play a classical nylon string guitar with pretty high action which I think contributes.  (Wondering if maybe switching to electric might help but I like the simplicity of acoustic instuments.)

I think maybe I'm holding the neck too tight, or at the wrong angle, or something else I'm doing dumb since I never took lessons.  I had a phys. therapy guy tell me it was like "baseball elbow" (as opposed to the "tennis" variety), if that helps.  Thanks for any ideas.

My whole body aches.
Beer in the summer, wine in the winter.
On bad days, whiskey.

Hope that helps.

[analog kid]

Anyone ever get pain in your inside left elbow?  I think it's tendonitis, and it keeps coming back.  It hurts bad enough to make me stop playing for weeks at a time.  I play a classical nylon string guitar with pretty high action which I think contributes.  (Wondering if maybe switching to electric might help but I like the simplicity of acoustic instuments.)

I think maybe I'm holding the neck too tight, or at the wrong angle, or something else I'm doing dumb since I never took lessons.  I had a phys. therapy guy tell me it was like "baseball elbow" (as opposed to the "tennis" variety), if that helps.  Thanks for any ideas.

Another possibility might be cubital tunnel syndrome. That's if you lean on your elbows for significant amounts of time, which pinches the nerve. It can manifest in a lot of ways, including elbow pain or numbness/pain in the elbow, hand, etc..

[zeebo]

My whole body aches.
Beer in the summer, wine in the winter.
On bad days, whiskey.

Hope that helps.

Not really.  Drinking just makes me want to play the blues, which further aggrevates the problem.   

[zeebo]

Another possibility might be cubital tunnel syndrome. That's if you lean on your elbows for significant amounts of time, which pinches the nerve. It can manifest in a lot of ways, including elbow pain or numbness/pain in the elbow, hand, etc..

Hmm thanks, I'll check into that ... I do have a history of long stints crunching on computer keyboards, which may be related.

[The General]

I made up the beginning of a joke that maybe The General can complete someday:

A lac beetle walks into a pawnshop with a banjo ...

I thought up an ending, but it's so dirty that I'm ashamed to even mention it here.

[ksm32]

True story.  Thanks for listening.

True story. I had to listen to the fret files through the pictured set-up for one episode (long story).  A 300 watt Sunn bass head through a M1922 cab. I bypassed the carl martin of course. Guitars sound Great through this with the pedal.

Fret Files Sounded great like this.

[MV/Liberace!]

hey, general.  my friend's guitar and/or amp make a hideous buzzing sound, and the severity of the buzz seems to be affected by his position in the room when holding his guitar.  even with his amp plugged into my isolation transformer (the cleanest power i can provide), the problem persists.  any ideas?  is this a common problem?  sounds like ass.

[The General]

hey, general.  my friend's guitar and/or amp make a hideous buzzing sound, and the severity of the buzz seems to be affected by his position in the room when holding his guitar.  even with his amp plugged into my isolation transformer (the cleanest power i can provide), the problem persists.  any ideas?  is this a common problem?  sounds like ass.

Very common problem.  The problem is specifically that single coil guitar pickups also make excellent antennae and allll that stray RF flying through the air gets picked up by the pickups and sent to the amp as 60 cycle hum.  Neon lights and fluorescent lights really particularly make the guitar hum bad. But it comes from everywhere... the cell tower down the street, the wires in the walls, the sun... it's inescapable unless you want to build a Faraday cage for him to stand in while he plays.  The solution that was pioneered in the 50's was to use two coils for the pickup, that were reverse wound and reverse magnetic polarity.  These pickups are called humbuckers.  What this does is quiets the hum by cancelling out the signal through phase reversal.  So, I'm assuming that  your guitar player has single coil pickups, and not humbuckers. 

Shielding the guitar internally can help, but really not that much since the source of the hum really is the coils of the pickup and not the wiring in the guitar.  Those of us that just love the sound of single coil pickups simply live with the hum and learn to manipulate it to the best of our ability.  (Volume down when not playing, finding a position to stand where the hum is the least, no gain or distortion which just boosts the hum to insane levels...)  They do make 'noiseless' replacement pickups that have significantly less hum, but to my ear have lackluster tone.   

It is possible that there is a ground problem with his guitar and/or amp or a simple problem like he's using speaker cable between the guitar and amp instead of good quality shielded instrument cable, but if it's just a little hum and the guitar itself is significantly louder than the hum, it's really probably just standard run of the mill 60 cycle hum that plagues all single coil guitars.

Hope that helps.

[ksm32]

hideous buzzing sound, and the severity of the buzz seems to be affected by his position in the room when holding his guitar.

P90 pickups  Don't know what your friends are but p90's can hummmm so bad that sometimes you can actually hear the buzz even while the guitar is being played.

[MV/Liberace!]

Thanks general. I'm going to pass all of that along to him.

[b_dubb]

After hearing about James Best dying yesterday, I was checking out his film/TV history and came across this great photo of him on The Andy Griffith Show, playing a beautiful old electric guitar.

I believe that is a Fender Jaguar, right?

[laserjock]

Or possibly a Jazzmaster (they are similar shaped, the Jag has fancier settings).

[laserjock]

I have a question for the luthiers:

My BIL, for Christmas, got me a guitar (I used to play well, I'm relearning now).  It's a lovely instrument, an Epiphone Cherryburst "Les Paul Standard".  We got it for cheap because it had been repaired, the heck had broken off from the body and was professionally gluid back in place and the store guarenteed it.  The sustain and tone is fantastic, within 5 minutes of picking it up I was already in love (I've had some truly good guitars over the years back when I had money, including a Guild F412, a 60's Stratocaster, and a custom build Tele Thinline styled guitar with curly maple.  At first, when the shop owner handed it to me, I frowned because I expected the guitar to feel and sound dead, but it's great.  I didn't know about hide glue until his podcast, but the repair person must have used it, is there a way to know for sure?  What I can say is that this guitar is a really decent instrument, despite not being American made and being a true Gibson.

If I call into the show, is there a day when I should call?

[The General]

I have a question for the luthiers:

My BIL, for Christmas, got me a guitar (I used to play well, I'm relearning now).  It's a lovely instrument, an Epiphone Cherryburst "Les Paul Standard".  We got it for cheap because it had been repaired, the heck had broken off from the body and was professionally gluid back in place and the store guarenteed it.  The sustain and tone is fantastic, within 5 minutes of picking it up I was already in love (I've had some truly good guitars over the years back when I had money, including a Guild F412, a 60's Stratocaster, and a custom build Tele Thinline styled guitar with curly maple.  At first, when the shop owner handed it to me, I frowned because I expected the guitar to feel and sound dead, but it's great.  I didn't know about hide glue until his podcast, but the repair person must have used it, is there a way to know for sure?  What I can say is that this guitar is a really decent instrument, despite not being American made and being a true Gibson.

If I call into the show, is there a day when I should call?

The only way to call in to the show is to leave a voice mail.
I can use the above question in the podcast, but the short answer is no... not really an easy way to tell if hide glue was used but an educated guess would be no.  I think you just have a decent Epiphone there.  They do accidentally make decent guitars from time to time.

[MV/Liberace!]

the general has noticed some episodes of the fret files showing up as incomplete recordings in itunes.  can any of you check in itunes and confirm this?  i'm particularly interested in the latest fret files episode, in addition to the gabcast and spec sheet.

i could check myself, but i really hate the thought of installing that itunes dreck on my machine when there are already other people who have taken that plunge and can save me the spiritual harm.