Daisy Rock Guitars - I don't know why I'm painting my own guitar. The butterfly series is perfect for me.
This weekend I got it into my head that I want to paint my old guitar (as well as replace the broken switch and the crappy pickups). I also want to learn how to modify guitars instead of being a guitar retard (or guitard) for the rest of my life. Here's what I've gotten done so far:
Gibson Epiphone G-310. The first left-handed guitar I owned and the guitar I used for I Don't Know What I'm Doing. Before this I was playing an upside down left-handed Wayne's World Fender telecaster.
The tools I'll be using (forgot to include the putty knife I used to strip the paint). Heat gun (or pistolet thermique in French), mask, goggles.
Tore the guts out and detached the neck. It's at this point I'm realizing I may never get the guitar back together again without having to cry to a professional who will tease me. I also can't get those metal bridge things out no matter how much I swear, so I guess they're staying in while I do this thing.
I move everything to the garage. Taking the paint off the back is surprisingly easy though it's hard to hold the guitar in place while I heat gun and strip it.
Flash forward a couple of sweaty hours and I think it's more or less stripped. The edges were a pain in the ass. It can still use some clean up, some black remains on the edges, but I'll wait until someone's around who can hold it for me.
So next is sanding. Also deciding if I'm going to do the neck and headstock. I can't find much in the way of instructions for that on the internet and I'm hesitant to try it in case I damage the fretboard. Also I have to figure out what pickups I'm putting in this thing as well as find a replacement pickup switch.
Oh and what color am I going to paint it?
The Infernoptix Digital Pyrotechnic Matrix is pretty much screaming to be used in a live show or possibly as kick-ass road signs.
Forget big screen and flat panel TVs. The Infernoptix Digital Pyrotechnic Matrix is the latest in high-impact visual and audio entertainment. The 96-inch screen employs computer-controlled bursts of fire, in a 12 x 7 array, to create scrolling text, simple animations, freehand sketching (via mouse), and an audio level meter.
Some videos:
I went into a music store the other day thinking I'd buy a Shure Beta 58A mic for live vocals. They didn't have any and I got talked into picking up an Audix OM2. I tried it out with the band last night for the first time and I was seriously impressed, what a huge difference over my SM48 and 57. I can't find many reviews of the OM2 online but so far I'm really happy with it.
Roomba hacked into slightly cruddy musical instrument - the next step I hope is to hack the Roomba into an unstoppable killing machine.
R-F-T Telefunken M16 and Apex 460 Bench Test - two microphones: one $1400 and the other $230, both with basically the exact same insides.
LyricWiki - a wiki of song lyrics. Wondering how long until they get hassled by the feds, but it's a nice resource for now.
Worst gear purchase? - a fun thread full of audio gear regrets. My worst was probably the EMU ESI-2000 sampler where I tried (and failed) to convince myself I was wrong about soft-samplers being the future.
Google Music - word on the street is that Google Music is on the way. I'm wondering what interesting things they could bring to the table.
80s videos - a huge list of links to 80s videos on Youtube. Not just mainstream stuff either, lots of neat alternative stuff. [via]
I Don't Know What I'm Doing is now available for ordering in over 2400 records stores worldwide thanks to CD Baby's new In-Store Distribution. If you need any info on what stores near you will order my album, drop me a line with your location and I'll look it up.
As a follow-up to my recent live sound and Google Notebook posts, I give you my Google Notebook about live sound. I've been researching how to process live vocals as well as microphones and if you care about that then I guess you could read my notebook and follow me around and we could be boring together.
So far I think the consensus is that I need to try my Digitech VX400 again and maybe actually spend some time working on the sound now that I sort of have an idea what I'm looking for.
Google Notebook is still weird. Any page with more than a paragraph of good information I bookmark, so it's got a really narrow focus. Still no tagging bothers me. It's hard to move lots of items between notebooks. The notebooks display your oldest entries first, which isn't what I expect. The URLs aren't friendly. But Google's so smart, it must be a problem with me.
Last night I recorded our practice onto my laptop. I threw a couple of the recordings online here. They're not our best takes of those songs but they're fun.
A billion months after I put I Don't Know What I'm Doing Remixed online for download you can now buy a $5 homemade CD-R of it in the little Brad Sucks Store. That's the kind of organized businessman I am -- ruthlessly capitalizing on every opportunity at my own lazy pace. I actually was toying with the idea of pressing it up or digitally distributing it, but in the end the task of getting permission from everyone, signing agreements and making sure everyone wasn't angry with me seemed like hell on earth. Oh yeah: and if you're a remixer on the CD, drop me a line and I'll send you out a copy. Thanks again everyone.
I have Guitar Hero on the brain. Here are some videos:
These two dudes rock pretty hard.
Ace of Spades is an awesome song, but that's not Lemmy singing, is it? Sad.
A guy gets hit in the head with the Guitar Hero controller and everyone enjoys it.
The Last Guitar Hero: a docu-drama about the dangers of Guitar Hero addiction.
I want to love Google Notebook but it's not doing it for me. The best part is the little browser plugin. It's awesome and functional but makes me annoyed that the other Google services don't use something like this to make them quicker to use. I can manipulate my Google Notebook without manually logging in, but I can't do that for my Gmail or Google Calendar? Lame. And I'm really kind of lost as to what to use the Google Notebook for. For serious info-hoarders the lack of tagging is hard to overlook. Sure I can cram all my little snippets of text into "notebooks", but how am I any better organized than jamming that stuff into a text file (or a blog if I care about accessing it via the net)? And once we get over 10 or so snippets, it gets rough to find what I want. Very weird choice.
the jerker has a posse - Scott joins the Jerker club. I still love mine. And I think I'm about to buy a Dave for my laptop.
Freetar Hero - a fella from my hometown is working on a free version of Guitar Hero that you can use any music with. I still need to try that game.
The other week I did an interview with Mike from GarageSpin. You can check it out here and here.
Free calls to all landlines and mobile phones within the US and Canada - wow, voice over IP just got extremely interesting.