D
Dragon
Large and Scaly Mixing Maniac
Cool topic, guys...just found it.
OK, first things first: the business about "rectified" probably refers to an engineering tweak that those in the know do to vacuum tube amps: instead of using the regular filament transformers (which put out AC current at 60 Hz) to heat the tube filaments, you can rectify it, turning it to DC, which removes the 60 Hz hum.
My first guitar was a little acoustic piece of drek. I instantly wanted an electric, of course, and bought a Japanese red rocker-looking axe at an auction place on Cortlandt Street in NYC for maybe $18. It looked so great to me at 14 but the strings were like cheese slicers. All I can tell you is that I developed calluses real fast!
My next guitar was a three-pickup Kay (another thing we have in common, S8-N!) in nice blonde wood. I modified it by adding an extra jack so that our vocalist could plug his mic into it, as our band had very little in the way of amps at that time. In fact our drummer played on jar lids.
One day I went crazy, stripped everything off the Kay, and repainted it in day-glo orange. I used that guitar for years and loved it because of the incredible low action. Unfortunately I never realized that the intonation was nonexistent and I never really felt good about my playing because I always sounded "off"...well, it wasn't me, it was the damn guitar! So let that be a lesson to you, don't use crappy equipment.
In my case, it's probably lucky because I thereby avoided a career as a rock musician which would have probably killed me with AIDS or drugs or something.
For one of my "major" birthdays ending in zero, my wife bought me a new guitar. It's really not that great either, but had a humbucker which I decided I had to have on all future axes. But it was good enough that I realized I wasn't half bad after all, and that got me back into playing and jamming.
It didn't take long before I decided that life was too short not to get some good equipment. I proved to myself that I was worth a Les Paul by trying an Epiphone version and a Gibson version and wanting to throw up after playing the Epiphone and wanting to kill for the Gibson.
OK, first things first: the business about "rectified" probably refers to an engineering tweak that those in the know do to vacuum tube amps: instead of using the regular filament transformers (which put out AC current at 60 Hz) to heat the tube filaments, you can rectify it, turning it to DC, which removes the 60 Hz hum.
My first guitar was a little acoustic piece of drek. I instantly wanted an electric, of course, and bought a Japanese red rocker-looking axe at an auction place on Cortlandt Street in NYC for maybe $18. It looked so great to me at 14 but the strings were like cheese slicers. All I can tell you is that I developed calluses real fast!
My next guitar was a three-pickup Kay (another thing we have in common, S8-N!) in nice blonde wood. I modified it by adding an extra jack so that our vocalist could plug his mic into it, as our band had very little in the way of amps at that time. In fact our drummer played on jar lids.
One day I went crazy, stripped everything off the Kay, and repainted it in day-glo orange. I used that guitar for years and loved it because of the incredible low action. Unfortunately I never realized that the intonation was nonexistent and I never really felt good about my playing because I always sounded "off"...well, it wasn't me, it was the damn guitar! So let that be a lesson to you, don't use crappy equipment.
In my case, it's probably lucky because I thereby avoided a career as a rock musician which would have probably killed me with AIDS or drugs or something.
For one of my "major" birthdays ending in zero, my wife bought me a new guitar. It's really not that great either, but had a humbucker which I decided I had to have on all future axes. But it was good enough that I realized I wasn't half bad after all, and that got me back into playing and jamming.
It didn't take long before I decided that life was too short not to get some good equipment. I proved to myself that I was worth a Les Paul by trying an Epiphone version and a Gibson version and wanting to throw up after playing the Epiphone and wanting to kill for the Gibson.