''HAPPY.NEW,YEAR'' ''2009''

[Deleted]

TO ALL MEMBER'S,,A ''BIG'' HAPPY-NEW-YEAR''FROM'' DOWN-UNDER,,

I,HOPE ALL YOUR ''RESOLUTION"S,come to ''fruision'' .....

''AUSSIE-BARRY''

[5tratocaster]

Thanks Barry,
Happy New Year to you as well as to all members and visitors.
May 2009 be a musical one.
Geoff

[BarryH]

Hi Barry,

A Happy New Year to you as well, I see you've already had yours. We've still got about an hour to wait yet.

Cheers
Barry (H)

[Charlie Hall]

Just back from the gig. Happy New Year to everyone!
Regards,
Charlie

[George Lewis]

Hi Barry, Charlie and everyone,
Hope you have a wonderful and happy New year.
regards
George

[SPIKE]

To Charlie and everyone here:

Happy New Year 2009

[UK Brian]

[glow=red,2,300]Happy new year everybody,

Charlie : I beat you back home at 2:30 good gig,s ?

Brian[/glow]

[Charlie Hall]

Hi Brian,
I was also back home at around 2.30 but had things to do before posting messages.
The gig was fine, although I had a problem with my sound. The guitar that I have been using more recently is the Gretsch 6120-1957 Eddie Cochran replica. I put a new set of strings on it yesterday afternoon and the Bigsby bridge fell off, as usual. The base of the bridge has never been perfectly matched to the archtop of the guitar and I had put double sided sticky pads under the bridge where there was a gap on each side of the bridge to stop the bridge from sliding sideways while I was playing. This worked OK for a while, but last night it felt like almost everything I played was hard work and that the guitar was fighting against me.
Now I am going to remove the pads and sand the underside of the bridge to match the contour of the archtop. I have read about various ways of tackling this task and it seems the general trick is to place sandpaper on the guitar top and slide the bridge sideways back and forth until the contours match. If I leave the bridge underside surface fairly rough I am hoping that it will not slide around so easily. If this works out well I should be able to tell the difference by playing the guitar acoustically.
Regards,
Charlie

[UK Brian]

Charlie : It must be the weather or summat I too seemed to be working very hard to get a decent sound/tone tho, my guitar was fine just the amplification, everything I was doing was as you were finding, work not fun, and I dont enjoy that, mine was not helped by the fact that I was really ill and only just made the gig, !! I am not signing up for this old age thing again ;D .
this week coming I am going to meet up with my old friend Barry from Mold in Wales and try out some amps/pa gear that he uses, I will report on this experiment !!
Also I went into my usual music shop yesterday to buy a jack lead with a speakon connector to try out this theory we discussed, joy of joys he said, "you guitarists are crackers, you use tone boxes/modellers and then put it thro' a guitar amp speakers and color it up again, you are crackers", and then went on to say "you should be using a plain power amp and speaker" this serves to re-enforce both your and my opinion regarding tone, hence this trial in the next few days, I will report, thanks you Charlie for all your efforts and time.
Regards

Brian

[Charlie Hall]

Hi Brian,

Be sure to let us know what the PA sounds like.

I did the sanding job on the Gretsch bridge. It's not perfect after stringing up but there is much more contact area than there was before. I also adjusted the pickups and it sounds much better now.

Another thing I did was to try a temporary string damper between the bridge and the Bibsby tailpiece to stop unrelated overtones, in the form of a long rubber band (the wider sort you would see wrapped round a large parcel from the post office) which I cut and then wove through the strings, under, over and so on , then back again, and again, until I have 4 parallel strips from the same piece. It seems to have made a difference when amplified, and it certainly sounds better when I play the instrument acoustically.
I'm trying to think of a better and neater way to accomplish the same result, does anyone have any good ideas? I can't find anything purpose built on the 'net. I have heard that some players (Scotty Moore was one) put foam under the strings but I don't like the idea of a huge chunk of foam.

Regards,
Charlie

[George Lewis]

Hi Charlie,
Just a thought ... There are all sorts of narrow foam, rubber and felt self adhesive tapes used as draft excluders for doors and windows. perhaps one of these would be suitable ?
regards
George

[Charlie Hall]

Hi George,
Thanks, that's the sort of idea I need. I just couldn't think of it myself.
Regards,
Charlie