Choosing a Bigsby Trem

Currently, I'm in the process of building two guitars; a pink strat with a Wilkinson/Gotoh VS-100N tremolo and black explorer with a Bigsby Vibrato Tailpiece. I've heard lot of negative feedback from people about Bigsbys regarding their weight and tendency to throw your tuning outa-wak. Still, so many great songs feature this classic warble and I feel it'd be a cool tool in my arsenal.

When investing money into any tool, it's important to research and be an informed consumer. I went to all of my local guitar shops and tried a bunch of different guitars with Bigsbys. I'm talking about everything from a tricked out Teli to a $400 Gretsch to a $4,000 Les Paul Custom. I was only looking at how well the bridge worked and why. Here is what I found:

1.) Don't use any thin post Tune-o-matic bridge with a Bigsby. They just aren't solid enough to handle the constant abuse. The bridge on the cheep Gretsch moved up to 1/8" when I depressed the arm. The Les Paul Custom had thick posts that not only gave the guitar great sustain but didn't move and stayed perfectly in tune. The arch-top bridges were solid as well.

2.) You get what you pay for. Since I'm planning on putting a Bigsby on an Explored body I have three choices the B5, B50, B500. The main difference is the B5 is made in the USA and the others are licensed out to companies in Asia. For an extra $100 you can get an American model that will at the very least keep its value.

Some things cannot be unseen...

Morality (Pertaining to Abortion)

I started writing a letter to someone and when I was done felt pretty proud of it.

It seems "morality", a code of conduct much like the Judea-Christian Ten Commandments, plays a big role peoples opinions. I personally do not believe in a god. I believe the various religious texts are more like fables to be learned from rather than facts to live by. In short, very short, I have a similar opinion to Ben Franklin's on the matter. One should try to see an issue from all side before passing judgment. There can be both good and bad aspects of anything depending on how you look at it. Morality is more of a spectrum or gradient than a two sided coin. You can have bright white at one end and a pitch black at the other but there's still a bunch of grey in the middle. I feel this is true to all things in life and try to keep an open mind.

In the debate over abortion there are two sides that don't actually appose each other.

Abortion- The termination of a of a pregnancy by removing a fetus from the uterus.
Pro Life - Anti life?
Pro Choice - Anti Choice?

I doubt there is anyone out there thats totally PRO abortion,

"It's the greatest! Everyone should have one!"

nor do I believe there's anyone totally ANTI abortion,

"No one should be allowed to have an abortion regardless or anything; rape, incest, health, etc." That doesn't mean there isn't, I just haven't met any.

A key issue has to do with the life and death of the fetus. I feel that until the baby is born it is still a part of the woman bearing it. Personally I believe a person has the right to choose what happens to their body. I am a man and will never have to make that choice regarding abortion. It's not my place to tell a woman she can't.

I don't like the practice of instilling fear or guilting someone into doing something. Education is whats important and letting people do what they feel is right for them.

Don't forget, people value different things for different reasons and its ok to be different.

Wedging Table

DSC03060
Originally uploaded by James Haskin

I'm starting to get into pottery, specifically throwing on the wheel. One thing every ceramist needs is a good wedging table. Wedging is the process of needing clay to obtain a homogeneous body with no air inside. It can be a pretty violent process so you need something that can take some abuse. After doing some research I found there are about 5 commonly used surfaces; plywood-canvas, marine plywood, plaster, concrete, and slate.

Canvas stretched and stapled to plywood works ok. I used it in my high school ceramics class. The canvas creates an uneven surface that keeps the clay from sticking. The problem with this method is the clay that stays in the fibers dries and becomes dust. Also, regular plywood isn't meant to be exposed to moisture like that.

Marine grade plywood is $80 for a 4x8 sheet. Need I say more?

Plaster has been used for years but its brittle and you run the risk of pieces chipping and lodging themselves in your clay.

Concrete is porous, strong, heavy, cheap, and you can make it as smooth as you want. However, I don't know what mix of ingredients would be the best this application. I'd thing the kind used for garage floors would work well, but have never tried wedging on it. Also, I've never poured concrete before. Assuming I didn't make a mistake It'd cost me about $30 for supplies and tools.

Slate on the the other hand, meets ALL of the criteria of a good wedging surface. It's porous, strong, heavy, and best of all you can get it for free.

I called around to a few companies in the pool table business if they had any slate with defects that I could have for my studio. Everyone was really nice and I ended up with a great big piece of rock :D

I still need to do a few thing to it, I might cut off the boarder to get rid of those holes, or maybe not. I'll post an update when I complete the table for it.

ebay Auction

I'm auctioning off my 4th Kaossilator guitar on ebay.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330344249569

If you want to be happy...

This is great :]

LED Bow Tie

About 2 months ago I attended my senior prom. My girlfriend wore a beautiful orange dress and I felt that I needed something to set myself apart from the regular crowd. I made this video two nights before prom. I hope to have an instructable up for the LED contest before the cut off date.

Turtle

Last week I was driving home and found this guy working his way across my driveway. I haven't seen a turtle this big in the wild since elementary school. I don't know where he came from but he was a cute little guy, just working his way down the road.

I'm Graduating

I haven't had the time to blog lately because of school. Friday was my last real day of high school. I need go in on Monday and Tuesday to take some exams but thats it. I will officially graduate on June 4, 2009. I'm so excited. Having finnished my two research papers and sent DJ BeatleJuice his Kaossilator I'll have more time to do projects and blog.

Arduinome

So I've been doing research on a piece of hardware called the Monome an open source interface with limitless possibilities. I'm personally interesting in its application in music.

Stretta has some great videos of himself experimenting with the monome. I really think this is going to create a entirely new direction in music synthesis. I find the the concept of playing in "shapes" very simple and elegant with out limiting your possibilities.

Ean Golden over at DJTechTool.com uses the term controllerism.



Most likely because of price and scarcity people have cloned the monome using an arduino. I may look into making one of these someday.