I feel like a new member, after the downtime

John Watt

Member
I am newed, or a renewed member, after the down-time.

Yes, I really did feel some anxieties, not being able to visit here.
I was a little worried about what alcaponedudu would think of my review,
and I really felt like reading and typing.
I'm saying reading first just to help make me look like a mutual member,
but I'm sure everyone knows I like to type away about myself,
and all those things I like to say.
I even commented on Facebook where Frederik Magle is.

And for those who don't know the Danish pronunciation,
"Mag" is pronounced mow, as in wow, and "le" as luh.

Is this love baby... or just uh... online... confusion...
guitar solo
 
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John Watt

Member
Hey! If I'm feeling newed, I must have left some past behind.
Here's a photo of me playing my sunburst 1964 Stratocaster in 1970,
and the receipt, showing I made my final payment on my birthday,
five months before Jimi Hendrix passed away.
I had a 50 watt Marshall head with a slanted 8-10 cabinet,
with a Crybaby wah-wah, a Small Stone phase shifter, and a Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face.
That's eight ten-inch speakers.
If I managed to get another one to be stereo onstage, I never would have traded it.
I would have taken the bottom four ten inch speakers out,
and replaced them with a full-range twelve or even a fifteen.
Jimi Hendrix used a Marshall organ cabinet for his bottom cabinet,
and that had a full-range eighteen inch speaker in it.
He also recorded with a big Leslie, even if he never used one onstage.

I always talk about Jimi Hendrix and George Benson,
but here's a photo I always carried in my wallet as a teenager.


John Watt2.jpgJohn Watt3.jpgJohn Watt6.jpg
 
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John Watt

Member
a new and renewable guitar for a newed member

This is so nice, being offered such a great deal for a really nice guitar.
I can even fantasize this is a Fender Stratocaster with deceptive packaging,
such a Fender thing to do.

That's a custom ordered 1972 Fender Stratocaster left-handed tremolo unit plate,
up against the plate of this guitar, to show you it's full-scale.
The tremolo arm with the black plastic is what came with the lefty tremolo,
and I went to Thorold Music to look through a box of used tremolo arms,
and had a choice of two that worked in this guitar, really nice to find.

The seller was asking $90. I gave him $100. He threw in the nice nylon gig bag.
The burnished aluminum piece is something I made to extend the righty horn.
I've been moving and dancing around for so long with a lefty body,
I need the same balance if I'm going to get into playing with this.

That's a Fender Heavy Thick pick.
A company supplies Fender with whites ones and Gibson with black ones.
A Thorold Music employee, where they don't have a Fender franchise,
found these online and ordered them and paid online, selling them to me at his price.
I keep saying those guitarists are too nice, and they are.
The $40 portable amp I want to make this my strolling troubadour acoustic substitute,
wasn't in stock, so I'll be going back for that, also happy to see some new guitars.

And I can't be newed without exposing something old.
That's me in the highest paid band, a trio, playing in Niagara Falls in 1976-78.
Smoky was a recording artist and that's a 1958 Gibson Les Paul.
He had the case, receipt, handbook, strap and warranty card,
selling it to Slash from Guns and Roses before he left for overseas.
He was worried he wouldn't survive a tour as a Bear Records, retro rockabilly act,
and he wanted to give his wife some money before he left.

That's the second left-handed body I built, putting together my own lefty,
and I don't have a photo of the first, using a returned Fender Telecaster neck.
Too bad my custom ordered Redmere Soloist, $2,700, isn't in the photo.
Mark Pendergast, the drummer, always did something to make us laugh every night,
more than a few times.
After I worked with Smoky, when he left, his Mohawk friends started to hire me,
and that showed me a new life with a stronger appreciation of the Niagara Peninsula,
all that it was, and all that it could be for me.
And no... I won't tell you where the wild rice, water chestnuts and sweet acorns grow.

Oh yeah! When a friend went to Niagara Falls to audition for Lynn Dee,
she had phoned Smoky to ask her to help her put a band together,
when Smoky hadn't played in a band, seemingly retired.
My friend said I should meet Smoky, someone who played bass notes like me.
Smoky and I got hot jamming together,
and Smoky asked Lynn is we could be a trio for the gig she was offered.
So it was Lynn Dee, Smoky and me for six months, until Lynn toured Ontario,
after he album came out.
Smoky found Mark and we played for more than a year, full time every week,
three and six-nighters, with rez weddings and concerts,
and that first jam was the only kind of rehearsal we ever had.
We liked to visit Smoky and listen to music and decide about songs,
while he did some real cooking. He had a room full of albums.
Some of those reservation bonfires got a little intimidating at first,
until I realized that for warriors, that was part of it, and I got into it.
Jimi Hendrix said he was of Egyptian Nubian descent, with a Cherokee grandmother.
Doing some of his Cherokee and Apache dance moves got me off to a good start.
He visited an Apache reservation to buy the white suede outfit with turquoise,
that he first used at Woodstock. He also visited the Haida of northern British Columbia.
I'm wearing a Haida toque with a salmon symbol on it.

One of my big things about getting a guitar for this new gig,
is about making it decorative, something I never did before.
I've got left-over 1SHOT sign-painting enamel, so it's going to look professional.
I'm thinking a Haida humpback whale of my own design, they don't have one,
with some smaller salmon... uh... helping with the flow.
When I throw my guitar, with Straplocks, up into the air,
waving my arm left to right with the guitar strap, shaking it side to side,
I call that my swimming up a waterfall salmon move.
They way society is today, it's nice to be appropriate onstage, sometimes.
Hey! I'm going back for a toque scan, just so you know.
 

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John Watt

Member
Hey, wljmrbill, that's all the reply I need to keep typing about myself,
but I think you know that.

A local businessman who is part of a growing trend in Welland, and that's voting for me,
has offered me a gig as a strolling troubadour, right across the street from City Hall.
I was being thrown in mental wards during elections so I couldn't get to public debates,
and arrested for defamatory libel and libels, so I couldn't hand out photocopied campaign statements.
That was all about calling Yvette Ward and her fourteen sons and daughters a criminal organization.
Even though some of them are now in jail for life, and others became Hells Angels,
City Council made one of them a city councillor without an election, and without a recorded vote.
That has a lot of people in Welland wanting to vote them out.

Almost everyone in Welland knows me as a musician and a former music columnist for the newspaper.
And everyone knows I've never even come close to being asked to play at the city amphitheater.
When I walk around there with an acoustic, locals say I should be the one onstage,
not the outside bands they pay to be there, giving free music to the people.
Sometimes security has to be there for me, getting threats from those family members.

What really is making people angry,
is knowing my younger brother was murdered by a drug overdose,
and held in a position of rigor mortise to be posed like one of the statues,
that this crime family put up in the amphitheater park as a tribute to canal workers.
Yes, Welland is that bad, being dominated by this crime family for three generations.
Also, because I kept walking around downtown and talking when I was homeless for six months last year,
our member of Provincial Parliament announced she was quitting politics last September.
I was telling people her husband is the founding president of the Vagabonds motorcycle gang.
She even forgot to mention this business as a source of income for her parliamentary disclosure.

I'm not the always happy and singing and playing and doing paintings person I used to be,
that's for sure, and feeling lucky to be alive isn't what it takes for me to feel creative,
but I'm not dead yet and I feel life is getting better and society in Welland is changing.

The first new song I want to get together for this strolling troubadour gig,
is "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley, a very appropriate tune for me as a candidate,
and an easy song for me to riff off on vocally, making up local words for Welland people.
Crazy, I was called crazy, crazy... for calling them criminals...
You'll have to visit to hear the rest, and request for your ears only.

Here's a couple of scans to illustrate that.
Now other people are putting me in their spotlight.
I always use this photo to show me playing my 1964 Stratocaster in 1970,
how I cut away part of the body, and how I play "upside-down".
But this is a newspaper photo of me playing at the first Rose Festival Band Contest.
There were two stages, one for bands to be performing on, the other being set up.
Bands played for half an hour, and it was booked from twelve noon to ten at night,
when a popular local band was hired to close out the show as headliners.

When a band pulled out, because a previous band played their songs better,
I was taken home to get my Stratocaster and Marshall with effects,
to jam with other musicians to fill in for other bands that backed out,
and that happened three more times.
The one big jam song everyone wanted to do was "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago,
with a Joe Cocker version of "The Letter", "For What it's Worth", by Buffalo Springfield,
"Down By the River" by Neil Young, "Hey Joe", Jimi Hendrix style...
wait a minute, everything I was playing was Jimi Hendrix style.

The newspaper used this photo of me for the article the next day.
The headliners also asked me to play with them, a great night for me.
My best memory is sitting beneath one of the flatbeds with Bill Nitransky,
to be in the shade, the music store owner who started this, and a second father to me.
He ordered some subs and pop for lunch, and we were laughing about how it was going.
No-one at the Rose Festival wanted to get involved or help in any way,
but Bill said the kids need something and decided to put it on himself.
It was like a mini-Woodstock from the start, a huge crowd,
and Bill, even if he was very generous with everybody, made over $2,000.
That was supposed to be put into a bank account to help with the band contest next year,
but two members of the Ward family, both over 6'4", came to the store and took the money the next day.
The Rose Festival rented a P.A. from a Toronto music store and did it the next year without Central Music.

I had a music column at the local newspaper, twice, and had daily articles.
The "Irene" article is about a play at my former high school.
"Lost shoe adds humor" is a title the editor made up,
and that's as much a reference to her being a well-known ballerina as much as the show.
She did become a professional after high school.


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John Watt

Member
I must be feeling like a renewed man and musician,
and you can blame that on this new guitar as much as anything new I've done.

Here's the font from a new ad I just put up on Kijiji.
That's St. Catharines Kijiji, in "artists and musicians",
if anyone wants to visit there and reply to be up close and more personal.
Vendor Typecaster: that's a new Kijiji persona I was using.
I better stop doing that. It could'a been Vendor Fontcaster.

Oh no! I've only been buffing myself up while rebuffing others, for all these so many years,
and it's taken buying this new guitar to make me want to get together again.
I'm not typing get it together again, because I only want to be in a new band,
with a new pop show-band concept, about dancing, with the ability to jam,
and be creative with all the rhythms all these new dance shows have introduced.
I always describe myself as making sounds like Jimi Hendrix, who I saw in Toronto,
and riffing like John Coltrane to Nicolo Paganini, and so far, no-one has disagreed.
In the symphony world, most violinists are considered a virtuoso when they are 60 to 65.
Young people are hot to trot, but seniors have geriatricks.
As a life-long non-smoker, non-drinker, who has been speaking softly to save my voice,
as vocal coaches told me to do, I'm still confident about my singing abilities.

Starting a new band with a new song-list that can redefine each musician, is never easy,
and here in Welland, I can't think of anyone else who would work out.
That's why I'm putting up this ad, I'm reaching out.
My buffing and rebuffing is being offered gigs but having to say I'm not in a band.
In Niagara Falls, it was always about being a house band.
In Toronto, it was working through ECS, Entertainers Contact Services,
and Taylor-Foates, a Motown satellite agency.
My last peninsula gig was playing with Drastik Measures, owners of Palmgrove Nightclub.
They won the Best Parade Band prize in the Toronto Caribana, their first year in Canada.
Even if I just meet some new friends to jam with, this ad will have been worth it.
The new millennium is in my brain, these new signals they don't feel the same,
it's not very funny, the music that people buy,
'scuse me, while I diss these skies.


as always, John Watt

Now, am I going to get together with some other musicians to jam and see what happens,
or will I just get some font-friendly exercise out of this?
Or maybe not so friendly.
 
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Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
There have been times in my life where I needed a general kick in the rear ... it was time for a change in my church position.

Made the change 19 months ago and totally renewed about my music again - A much more loving and appreciating congregation and a much larger membership (1,250 and growing).

MIMF is once again renewed and operational. It was a tough few days but we all survived and are back here again.

Long live the Magle forums :)

:cheers:
 

John Watt

Member
Right on Krummhorn! I know I've never experienced a loving and appreciating congregation, no, not at all,
but when you're playing for church members it's about more than just having a good time.

When Magle.dk wasn't on for me, I started fretting about it even more.
Wait a minute! I was feeling some love yesterday.

I took my Strat-style to the library to show a part-time librarian who plays guitar, a high-school kid.
Towards closing, doing a jiz-saw puzzle there, I took it out and started riffing away.
I got into it for over ten minutes before a full-time librarian, and a head librarian, came over.
He said John, you can't be playing that here. I said okay and put it away.
I told him about how the seniors center charges for memberships, and has two rooms with stages,
that they don't use. I said the city hires outside bands to play at the amphitheater, the barge in the canal,
and I've never been able to play there, being the protest mayoral candidate I am.
As I was walking out at closing he called me over.
He said the library was going to have an open mike night for performers, before the election.
The library is in the same building as city hall, underneath it, and I'm getting off thinking about that.
He also said I could practice in a study room as long as I shut the door.

Are you into the self-love Krummhorn? Do you have old recordings of yourself?
It's a little strange for me to read old music columns and newspaper articles,
mostly about music with some Thorold City Hall, when I've changed so much.
When criminal activity sickened me and brought me down,
I could be reading them and thinking I used to write like that?

oh... now I'm so used to hearing the same songs over and over again,
I'm more about riffing off songs than I am about typing about them.

I see those rich folks driving past those poor folks walking by,
I'm going to visit the nightclub and buy everything I tried,
I bought shots for a man in Texas, that's how I met some trans,
I'll see if my friend Sue is there, and let him use her hands.

oh... the stress... the distress... of being onstage again
 

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JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
Bert...I'm Bert. I'm Burlington Berty..............from Bow.
 

John Watt

Member
JHC! I thought I got stressed out when I couldn't find Magle.dk,
but you seem to have completely redefined yourself.
How are you doing? You've been gone for a long time.

Buying a right-handed Stratocaster copy and playing it upside-down,
as I did in 1970, is becoming a kind of reborn experience for me.
The full scale isn't like the shorter scale of my semi-solid-body,
that has 24 slanted lefty frets on the same neck when Fender has only 21.
I've been using the same strings and picks since 1970,
so I shouldn't be surprised, but I am, that I haven't had to get used to it.
It just feels so natural.
Here's a photo with the extension finished.
Now it hangs with the same balance as the lefties I'm used to.
No... I'm not going to say anything about your balance,
how it's hanging, or if that's a long-bow.


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JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
I am fine John but since the break down of MIMF and TC I have had a lot of weird thing happen plus I do not receive email notification of posts from either forum which make it just a wee bit tricky, but I am sure that when we get back to our old server things will return to normal.
I see you have not changed much lol.
 

John Watt

Member
I've been replying mostly to myself for a while now, happy to type away.
There's been a lot of news and entertainment from New Zealand lately,
and I missed commenting on it with you.
I don't get notifications, I just scavenge the entire domain.

I should make a video of me riffing away and post it here.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
Thats funny I thought I was the only one are your settings set to receive immediate notification by email?
 
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John Watt

Member
JHC! Here's the best way to answer your question.
When I first started posting here, after a while, asking an admin question,
Krummhorn mentioned that if I clicked "Forum" there would be more too see than just "Music Forums".
It took a while before I started commenting there.
I set up my uh... uh... forum posting identity, doing some profile, and left it at that.
When I was hot online with my semi-solid-body, even being invited to post in other countries,
I would have been swamped with all kinds of notifications, and I didn't want that.

Looking around here to see where I posted is a nice way to look around and read new things.
Talking about this thread being about a newed me, here's a new photo.
As soon as I finish here, I'm going to clean up this space and make it into a music studio.
I'll set up my 70's Traynor 100 watt powered mixer with 120 watts worth of stereo speakers,
so I can play standing up and blend in with CD's and the radio, jamming along.
Pete Traynor made mixers with both mike and quarter inch jack inputs,
so if a guitarist or bassist blew their amp or speakers they could plug in and keep playing.
I paid to get it cleaned and install a new volume control, working as good as new.
Pete Traynor was a kind of friend who worked as a music store repairman when I met him.
There's a story there.
I'll set up my custom ordered Electro-Voice speakers in cabinets I built, on stands,
with my Marshall stereo pre-amp based amplifier system, just to look good.
It's been in sleep mode for so long it might not wake up.

I invested in, not a facial recognition system, but a property recognition app.
I can look at the photos you posted of your back yard and find you in a heartbeat.
It's an election year in Welland, and I'm receiving criminal activity against me already.
I might need to appscond to your place.
yeah... here's a scan to illustrate that.
If I'm going to do photos, here's a bike-hike world along Lake Erie.
That's where I wish I was.

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John Watt

Member
oh... oh... it's like finding a piece of wood that was lost behind a shelf, hundreds of years ago,
in a museum dedicated to a master violin maker... and friendly staff let you take it for your own build.
When I first bought pickups from DiMarzio they only made three different models,
a P.A.F. Humbucker, a 1957-'58 Gibson copy, a Super Distortion, an original humbucker and a Fat Strat.
The Fat Strat was identical to Fender single coils, except it was louder to blend with a humbucker.
DiMarzio was the first to use machines to wind pickups so they were identical,
and became the biggest pickup supplier for guitar manufacturers.

When I made a left-handed body I made an experimental pickguard.
It had two Fat Strats, middle and bridge like a Fender, with a neck humbucker, the P.A.F.,
and the Super Distortion was between the bridge and middle Fat Strats.
I wired it so it worked like a Stratocaster or a Les Paul or any combination.
After a while I stopped using the Super Distortion,
and a humbucker by the neck with two single coils for middle and bridge became my configuration.
Let me explain why I have the humbucker by the neck, when putting it at the bridge is so ordinary now.
When Mr. George Benson took me backstage to help me decide about playing left-handed,
we were trading his 1955 Gibson L5 back and forth, and I talked about my dream guitar.
That was having a humbucker for lead guitar and single coils for rhythm.
Mr. George Benson said that the best place for a pickup would be the middle of the neck,
where the strings have their widest vibration and you can get the most pick and finger action.
Since you can't do that, having one at the end of the neck is the best.
Ever since, I've only found that to be true, as was the rest of all of his advice.

When I made my experimental pickguard, I bought cream-coloured humbuckers.
I had black covers for the single coils, that blended with the black plastic pickguard,
and I thought seeing the two humbuckers made it look more like a two pickup guitar,
not wanting to look all jammed up with electronics, even if I was.
I had two volumes, two tones, two mini-switches, and eventually, a 9-volt pre-amp.
Hey! I've got a photo of that guitar here in the library. I'll dig that out.

When you see the cream coloured pickup in this scan,
you'll see how it's worn away around the edges on both sides,
and that includes using clear epoxy to keep them built up so I don't expose the coils.
This is my ideal pickup to use for my semi-solid-body guitar, my instrument.
It's made to be magnetically weakened, back in 1977, and it's what I've used ever since.
I've got the same Fat Strat pickups I bought at the same time, and they're all I've ever used.
You can imagine that these pickups, using them to build up my amp system and effects,
aren't something I want to change, having everything I want already, including every confidence.
But my semi-solid-body has such wonderful wood, without a pickguard and hardly any electronics,
I can't put this worn-down and cream-coloured pickup on this new guitar,
and it doesn't match the black single coils, black bridge pieces, and other black hardware.
I phoned DiMarzio and talked with the tech who mailed me two letters, all those years ago.
He endorsed my semi-solid-body, and when I phoned to ask about another P.A.F. humbucker,
he said they didn't make that model any more and recommended the Anniversary model,
saying it was a modern remake of that pickup.
Do you think I've been able to find one, for over ten years?
And don't think I can afford to just order one, when it could cost over $150 plus shipping.
The second pickup, the black one, is a DP 103, the Anniversary humbucker.
I found a guitar on the side of the road and saw the pick-guard had been, uh, customized,
and when I took it apart look what DiMarzio pickup was there, a DP 103.
I tried various settings in my scanner, but this is the best it can do.

When everyone in the store started to gather around as I got into some upside-down guitar playing,
working an Am chord variation with a driving bass and moving melodic elements,
Steve, the owner of Steves' Music, came down from his office and asked to try the guitar himself.
Afterwards, when I talked about building a new lefty, he offered me any pickup at 50% off.
I chose that years' special model, a retro pickup, the closest he had to an original P.A.F.
Now I can use that for my second semi-solid-body. Everything I need is here, for the first time.
That includes replacing all my guitar building tools that were stolen.

When I plugged in and started to play the red Strat, the volume was cutting in and out,
I was hitting the cord so much. When I first played a Stratocaster upside-down,
I used an L-shaped jack so it wasn't in the way so much, but this time,
I decided to go all the way and carve the input into the side with the slanted curves.

And here's a couple photos of the studio, now that it's starting to work for me.
If you were sitting beside me, and I started to talk about building some new guitars,
I could be saying this is just some free old man talk, and not have this much to say.
If I thought I heard the conductors' sticks of Frederik Magle tapping away in the distance,
looking at me like I'm riffing away too much... I'd edit myself a little... yeah...

So much of my musical self has been redefined, re-invented, newed with my favorite parts.
Now I just have to make them look the best they have ever been.
I wannabe an onstage earitant.


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John Watt

Member
I took the cherry Strat to the big box drug store down the street,
and when I pulled it out of the gig bag I caused a scene in the beauty department.
I asked for a colour consultant, and this woman picked the best one right away.
That was about buying some nail polish to touch up the input carving.
I'm calling it a cherry Strat because black cherries has always been my favorite thing to eat,
but the nail polish was called "Ruby Ruby".
I cut back the tremolo arm so it just pokes out between my fingers for control,
and leaves me room between the middle pickup and neck for pick and finger action.

I finally shaped the wood I installed inside the body so the tremolo block had something to rest on,
and set up the tremolo with the light action I need.
The tremolo was at an angle compared to the body, so I had to angle the wood I installed.
After shaving it down, I used a piece of sandpaper to be as precise as possible.
I'd let the tremolo unit push it like a sanding block pulled by springs,
until the same tension with the sandpaper was felt across the block.

I scanned my Haida salmon toque and printed it out.
That's just a piece of paper sitting there until I do something more permanent.
That's covering up the right-handed cord input.
Here's the best photos from my Canon and Sony cameras.

Now, I know some long-time Magle.dk members are going to be flustered, if not filibustered,
when I finally put up a video of me playing an electric guitar.
I've been asked by local musicians to show if I've still got the fast fingers,
so my first video will be fast single, double and triple note riffage,
ending with a song about speed, yeah... I gotta sing that song!
My second video will be using distortion and a Crybaby wah-wah,
and then no distortion and the Crybaby, getting mellow, if not conversational, with it,
and for that, it will be like singing in the drain, the battery drain, that is.

Oh no!
Once again, Magle.dk is featuring a guitar innovation that has never ever been seen before.
Carving a Stratocaster cord input into the slanted right-handed side to make it a lefty.
If I was in Denmark I don't know if I'd get a group hug or be dog-piled.


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John Watt

Member
My personal evolution revolution keeps on going and going every day...
taking new things and working them into my rebuilding and visual experience...
yes... it's so nice, especially at my old age, having something new that's the best ever.

I went to Dollarama and bought a $1 black plastic student school folder,
thinking I needed something thicker to cover the old right-handed cord input chamber,
so I wouldn't be poking a hole in the paper when I was playing.
I thought I could decoupage it with some Minwax Polycrylic, but as it dried it warped,
and the paper started to deteriorate, the black edge pulling away in some spots.
For the first time I thought hey, why not use some transparent sign vinyl lettering tape,
what you use to pull the words off the backing and transfer them to the desired surface.
It was old, me not making signs like that any more, just saving it to help make art stencils,
because it was see-through, looking at my painting and drawing on top of it.
It's low-tack to begin with, just for one vinyl lettering use, and it's old, so it's even less sticky,
not even pulling acrylic paint up off the surface.

I tried some LePages contact cement, and it didn't want to stick to the plastic, and it was messy,
so I used some LePages white glue and it's still glued on.

Feeling more like a manufacturer than an artist, scanning, printing, cutting and gluing,
got me thinking about my friend and his Digital Design business, printing out commercial stickers,
for businesses, business products, and custom work for personal recreational vehicles.
I hiked over and asked him about computing a Haida influenced salmon design I would draw,
something more horizontal, that would work on the flat sides of my semi-solid-body,
and have some to stick around the top sides of this cherry Strat.
He described his computer processing format to justify his price, saying 40 to $50,
as computer time, and seeing they would be so small he could print out a lot as quantity.
I'll be doing that. I'm looking forward to doing the artwork.
The semi-solid-body is such a personal and individual invention, I want it to be all mine.
I'll do a local yellow perch Haida style, maybe a humpback whale, to add some variety.

This semi-solid-body will be the best guitar I ever had.
With this cherry Strat, it will be the first time in my life I've had two electric guitars.
And when I finish the second semi-solid-body, I'll have three.
Oh! I just caught a rush up my arms while I typed that.


cherry Strat 3.JPG
 

John Watt

Member
Just when it seemed I was back on a roll here, with no rock to pull me down,
last night, trying to find the forums, I only got an error notice.
Suddenly, flashes of Magle.dk being down came upon me, my evening felt lost,
until I realized other pages were working, so I listened and felt as musically involved.
That turned out to be a good thing, because I decided to look for a song I want to do,
working out the chords for "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley.

After watching and listening to a few different versions, this one became my favorite.
This is Gnarls Barkley at "Daryls' House", Daryl Hall from Hall & Oates with his weekly online show.
It's very rewarding to hear a group of mature professionals play a song and get to the heart of it.
The guitar style is a basic picking on the beat, no r'n'b strumming here,
and if you want to consider it an upgrade, you could pick it like "Every Breath You Take" by the Police.
Someone commenting on You Tube said Daryl is 70 years old. I don't care. He's still getting into it,
and I'm still getting off on it.

verses, Cm at the third fret, Gm at the third fret, up one fret to G#, down to Gsus to G
break, C at the third fret, up to G#, D# at the third fret, down to Gsus to G
Sometimes, you can go from the Gsus to G and share that with Bb, working a 6th,
or play Cm at the eighth fret with Gm at the sixth fret

"even my emotions had an echo"... very nice...
"my only advice, child, is just think twice"... it took more than that to get into this song.

If someone could explain to me how to embed a video, that would also be part of the new me.
Others have tried, but I have yet to get it to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxmtQvrWUps
 
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John Watt

Member
I'm going for my first green shot.

I should have known.
If I've got a guitar it's got to be the kind of guitar I want to play.
The cherry Strat with it's translucent red that lets you see some wood-grain,
and this illuminated sign plastic that's a translucent green, are tree colours.
And even if I'm calling it my cherry Strat,
I know I'm going to paint a lot of little green maple leafs blowing around all over.


green shot.jpggoing green 2.jpg
 

John Watt

Member
I'm going to be installing a 1972 DiMarzio P.A.F. Humbucker by the neck with two late 90's DiMarzio single coils.
I've never thrown guitar parts away before, having pickups I don't want to use for myself.
Parts I don't want to use also includes old volume and tone controls that have to be worn out,
and probably burned out from all my over-heated soldering over the years, yeah... going back to 1972.
I'm going to use a part from my 1964 Stratocaster, wanting to feel some contact high with those years.
Should I have said maintain the vibe? This is very experiencial, that's for sure.

Maybe I should look at some opera threads here,
so I can find some appropriate words to say when I bury those old guitar parts.
non-recyclical ad depositis canna-use'em tossagonna!
Time to break out the fizz, take a whiz, and wonder what kind of world this is.
That's usually what it takes for me to want to write a song.

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