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shawn (at) phantompower.org
May 23rd, 2010
it’s a Sunday audio blog. Here’s a picture of Jen’s new Mac Mini:
Here’s a picture of my new Telecaster:
Here’s a picture of my new (non-working) guitar amp:
Don’t forget to check out GeminiDragon.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 11:41 — 6.7MB)
May 2nd, 2010
Awhile back, I wrote about some of the problems I was having with my Line 6 Variax guitar. I concluded, at the time, that I was going to stick with the Variax, even though I wasn’t completely happy with it. And indeed, I gave it a good try. I spent quite a few hours experimenting with the guitar’s different settings, while connecting it directly to the special Variax port on my Line 6 PODxt Live effects processor. I made some good progress. I had set up a nice clean tone using the Variax Model-T (Telecaster) setting, and a cool distortion tone using the Lester (Les Paul) setting, along with some amp modeling and effects supplied by the PODxt Live. And then, out of nowhere, the guitar started giving me real problems. Read the rest of this page »
September 23rd, 2009
I thought this video was pretty cool:
So I made a video response:
In my video, I talk about guitars I own and guitars I used to own. You may even catch a few pictures in there of me with hair. Download the mp4 version for better quality than the YouTube embed. I’m working on these video compression settings to try and make improvements. Still have a lot to learn in that area.
Podcast: Download (40.2MB)
January 26th, 2009
Things are looking up for this year’s RPM Challenge. I’ve completed my guitar repairs (scratch that off the to-do list), though they didn’t go quite like I’d hoped. Back in 2007, I purchased a Line 6 Variax electric guitar because I was intrigued by the instrument’s capabilities. Of course I could only afford the low-end model, and the low-end model comes with an equivalent neck. I loved the guitar’s electronics, but hated the feel of the neck. Never shying away from an opportunity to destroy two perfectly good guitars, I removed the neck from my old Fender Telecaster (loved that neck!) and made some DIY modifications that allowed me to swap out the stock Variax neck for the Tele neck. I learned later that this isn’t really an advisable move, as the Telecaster has a different body design than the Variax. But, I had already made the switch and things seemed to be going OK. And then I started getting dead frets on the guitar’s low-E string. I made some adjustments to try and fix the problem, but nothing worked. I did some research online and found a great video tutorial on how to do electric guitar setups. I was particularly interested in the video about fret filing, as I believed that’d be the solution to the dead fret problem. It looked easy enough! I ordered some special fret files from Stewart MacDonald and picked up a few other things from a local hardware store. Once I had everything together, I began filing down the frets, and it seemed like I was making progress. The initial dead fret problem was clearing up. But then, other frets started to go and no matter how much I filed, I couldn’t get them to sound properly. Figuring that I had probably hit overkill with the filing, I decided to give in, and swapped the Tele neck out for the original Line 6 neck.
Read the rest of this page »
Line 6 Variax with modified Telecaster neck, on the operating table.