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This is what happens when you open the flood gates. It started out with thinking about buying a little above ground pool. Then after edging up to a larger oval pool... Did you know they are more expensive because they require more structural support?!?! Well. A little in ground pool isn't a huge amount more... And then there is the heater... Just a little more to give us a longer swimming season.... Oh a three foit walk around the pool is to small, how about four foot for an up charge. Well the deck is really in bad shape... Maybe we should take it down and put in a patio... That back little bump-out has a single door that opens in, why don't we square it off and put in a sliding glass door which will give us more room in the kitchen.... The kitchen really needs a new floor which connects to the laundry room. We should have that closet taken out, it makes the laundry room more usable... How about new appliances and countertop to finish it off. They're between 15-18 years old and on their last legs. Patio guy says he can give us a good price on fixing up the front porch and walk also... Well since we have the workman coming for the back door and laundry room, why not have him put in that awning over the front door we always talked about.... Oh and replace that front door that was almost torn off in that wind storm last year....
Well actually it's been done for weeks, but this the first I've had a chance to take some pictures to post. As you recall I picked up an American Standard Telecaster to be my FrankenTele.... I lucked out and found a beautiful one that played and sounded great. I almost didn't want to toy with it, but I did. You can see my short troubles with the first whammy bar here. You can see the work order to my tech for all the requested mods here. I did have a little trouble at first. The P90 magnetics were not aligned the same as my Tele so there was nasty phase cancellation. Lollar modified a set of P90's so that they would the rest of the pickups in my Tele and it sounds great. So here are the pictures of the finished FrankenTele. I took it with me to my labor day gig and couldn't be happier with how it played and sounded. I'm really loving the Bigsby B5. If your wondering about the weird bar attached to the Bigsby, it's a Chet Atkins Bigsby arm that I swapped in from Guitar Parts Resource. The stock arm fell right across my volume and tone knobs. I found that when I installed the Chet Atkins bar and reversed the "kink" in it up instead of down, how Chet used it, the new bar felt comfortable and fell in a perfect spot. Enjoy the pictures... Hopefully I'll get some time in the future to post some sound samples of the P90 in this configuration.
Luckily the weather held off.... As you can see from the last picture, we packed up and left just before the rain came down.
This is a panaramic view from the stage as we were setting up. Wish I could have taken this while we were playing so you could see it with the audience, but I had my hands full with a guitar....
Yeah, I didn't think so either...
Yep, I'm thinning the herd. My first "good" amp was a Musicman RD112 100 watt amp with an EV speaker. Musicman stopped making amps shortly after that. I purchased the amp from Nolde's Music Box in Flemington NJ back in 82 or 83. Nolde's is no longer there, but I still have that amp today. The amp has an incredible clean sound and a good distortion channel. These amps were supposed to be Leo Fender's redesign of his original fender amps when he founded Musicman. In reality Leo focused on guitar design while at Musicman, before leaving to start G&L.
I liked the amp so much that I collected a few fixer uppers off eBay over the years. Before I knew it I had four in my gear "closet". (Did I mention I have a beautiful, loving and understanding wife:) Up until a few years ago these were my main gigging amps. Playing in a cover band I became frustrated in the natural trade offs required in a two channel amp with a single tone section. You can get great clean or distorted sounds, but not both. So dialing tone between the two channels is a "zero sum" game. Now I lug around a Mesa Engineering Nomad 100. (Sigh... Yes, they don't make those any more either.) The Nomad was one of the first Boogies with fully independent channels and it gave me all the versatility I needed to play the variety of music I like. Back to the three "friends" I am parting with... First there is the RD112/65. It has a single 12" musicman speaker and runs at 65 watts. This amp sounds good and is, by far, the lightest of the bunch. Next there is the RD210/100, 2 10" musicman speakers at 100 watts. Surprisingly, it has the most bottom end of the three. Finally there is the RD112/100 that is supposed to be identical to the original I am keeping. For some reason, this amp is voiced differently. The distortion channel has more mid range and the highs and lows are rolled off slightly. I suspect this was an attempt in later models to fix the trade-offs I mentioned earlier, but that makes assumptions about the tone curve your looking for in your distortion. So with the expense of my current project and the fact that these babys are gathering dust (and deserve better), I've put them on consignment at the Music Box in Hamilton NJ. The salesman was professional, polite and managed to not totally glaze over as I recounted all of the above. They do a lot of consignment there so I guess they're used to the "old equipment" stories from middle aged guys like me. So if you are interested in old musicman amps, give the Music Box a call.[Sent from my iPhone 3GS - while waiting for Zach's class to finish]
