Some laundry, and hopefully get some rehearsing in, and go for a walk when the rain is supposed to stop for a bit.

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Getting ready to pour a second cup of coffee.

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

Getting ready for the first one.

Incidentally, even after having tried cough medicine, I had congestion and a cough that would not quit. This sounds crazy, but I got up and had steaming hot milk and hot chocolate (no water) and a touch of Grand Mariner, and that did the trick all night. I’ll repeat it later today as it worked almost immediately. Congestion is mostly gone now. Even if it doesn’t work . . . it tastes good.
Cheers!
FSB

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Hello, big guitar. Meet my little fingers.

I managed to go for a walk before the rain started pouring down today. I think tomorrow we're going to start getting some rehearsing going on, since we do have a gig scheduled I think in about 8 weeks or so, maybe less than that. I'm going to be using the Squier Precision with that, instead of the violin bass, which I have been playing a lot of. So, I've had to get used to playing on the wider neck again, as well as the longer scale. In some ways, I kind of wish I got one of those short scale Squier Jaguar basses, instead. It would have made transitioning back and forth between basses a little easier, and playing regular guitar, as well. There isn't much of a difference between the short scale bass, and electric scales.

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Your neck width and length brought back memories of my old 12 string, Paul. I’ve never taken the time to see if there is much variance in a 12 string neck. I think not, but stranger things have happened in that area.
FSB

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Hello, big guitar. Meet my little fingers.

You know, I never looked into the specs of 12-strings. I suspect they'd probably would have some further spacing to compensate for the extra strings. I've only played on a 12-string twice in my life, almost back to when I started playing. Once was a Washburn acoustic that a guitarist I was playing with let me borrow, and a 12-string Ibanez electric in a music store. I remember that was through a Fender Princeton Chorus amp, which I think was their take on a Roland JC-120.

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I’ve never played either a 12 string acoustic electric or a 12 string electric, Paul. But, I did find this for 12s:

1 7/8” at the nut seems pretty common at least with acoustics.

Acoustic 12 strings were mostly introduced with a wider neck.

Some 12 string electrics maintained the same neck as their 6 string electrics (making them, like Gibby, uncomfortable except for those manufacturers’ models that had a stock 6 string wide neck like Rics 660). Comfort is a personal thing of course.

I won’t detail all the 12 string nut widths but Gibson ES-335 has for example 1.570 and 1.580, SG has 1 11/16, LP Traditional 1.75. Obviously, it is likely there will be variations throughout over time.

And now for Fender:
1965 competition for Gibson and Rickenbacker came with the originally designed Fender Electric XII introduced for $349.50. 1 1/2”, 1 3/4”, and 1 7/8” nut widths were optional with neck alterations. That run lasted till ‘69. Fender also made a semi-acoustic electric called the Coronado XII in ‘65 and it’s nut was 1 1/2 “.

In ‘67 Elvis is seen with a Fender Electric XII in the movie Clambake.

In the ‘68 movie Speedway a six string Coronado is used by the King.

FSB

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Hello, big guitar. Meet my little fingers.

Jimmy Page used a Fender electric 12-string, especially on "Stairway To Heaven." I guess a lot of people thought he used the Gibson double neck on it, but that was only so he could pull the song off live. I imagine that double neck would prove to be unwieldy in a studio environment.

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Just got back from a walk. It is very sunny out, but in the upper 20's, so on the cold side, albeit not as bad as the past couple weeks. That's the weird thing about the weather around here, it's colder when it's sunny out, yet warmer when it's overcast and gloomy.

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Reading posts posting a bit and watching Frasier

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Before heading to bed I saw a few white flakes passing by my kitchen window. I didn’t take time to see if it stayed. Thought I’d wait till later this morning. I’m into surprises.
FSB

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Hello, big guitar. Meet my little fingers.

Killing ants at my front porch/doorway. We had a pretty good amount of rain overnight and throughout the day so far. They were rafting and unfortunately for them they anchored in the wrong local. My diabetic uncle lost his lower leg to gang green after being ravaged by ants, no time in my life for that kinda mess.

Went for a walk, did laundry, and had a little rehearsal time with my girlfriend. Tomorrow, we're going to meet up with the guitarist and bash out some songs with him. We have a gig coming up, so it's time to get ready to get ready. I'll be bringing my Orange Terror Bass 1000 head there, and plugging into a Kustom 3 x 15" cab they have at the rehearsal place. I could use the Kustom head, but I want to use my own amp, as it's going to be part of my sound live. I haven't turned that head on in over a year, so hopefully it should be OK (it does have a tube preamp in it that I let cook on standby for 4 minutes, per recommendation from Orange,) but it's been in a relatively climate controlled room the whole time. I have been playing through my Fender Rumble 350 combo, since we've set up the studio downstairs in the office, and been rehearsing there instead of the room upstairs. As it is, we've turned that room into a walk in closet with all of the recent clothes and stage wear we got. We've have plans to convert the old studio space into an extra rehearsal room, where I'll move the Orange stack, in case we want to use it, especially in the summer time, since we have AC up there.

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I’m planning to refine my recording space now that I have more order and freedom of movement to allow me to have better control and flexability. My goal is to be able to just go to the room, sit at the keyboard, traps, electric or acoustic guitar, vocal mics. and record with no futzing about. I’m almost there, but almost still needs some attention.

So today, I will turn attention to tweaking a TCH VoiceLivePlay GTX with Switch 3 pedal and it’s looper. I prefer to vocal harmonize the typical way without synth, but with 500 presets (some similarly duplicated) including guitar effects, it still has some use with the Strat and the acoustic.

I’m still not sold on a lot of the vocal harmonizing pedals, but they have gotten and will get better, and have their place. IMHO. When you need a second or third singer and none are to be seen, the pedal can be beneficial. TCH is pretty amazing for the $, but I prefer it more for live performance and parties rather than for recording; although, guitar effects are useful as is.

After the TCH tweak, it’s on to the Mustang IV tweaks and pedal settings. They work as is and custom presets have been in there for some time. But, now I’m going to go deep to edit presets with bias, cabs, and whatnot.

Incidentally, I set the amp to turn on with no selections (basically empty) for the first preset. I also put the 4 button presets in groups such as Clean, genres Country, Blues, Jazz, Surf, 50s, 60s, 70s and so on. All of this allows me to pedal up and down in groups, individual selections, or off with ease. Unfortunately, memory of each preset within a group skips my memory too. That’s where a titled readout has an advantage. Meanwhile the adjoining 2 button EFX switch does it’s duty.

We have gophers here on the prairies. Now if only I could capture one to complete the setup and do the recordings.
FSB

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Hello, big guitar. Meet my little fingers.

Listening to "White Light/White Heat" by The Velvet Underground, since it's the 50th anniversary of it's release, and managed to get a walk in tonight, and picked up the violin bass for the first time in awhile, since the Precision Bass is still in the case from rehearsal on Sunday night, and the violin bass was handy in reach. To tell you the truth, after playing it tonight, I really missed playing it, and like it over the Precision. It's just a lighter instrument, with a smaller neck, which is pretty quick. It did take some time originally to get used to that, but now I prefer it.

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