The Great Guitar Store In The Sky

A mostly chronological list of all the guitars I've sold, lost or smashed over the years (OK, I probably haven't lost very many).

1976 or so--Began noodling with my uncle's gut string guitar that he picked up on a trip to Mexico. Took it home one day, layed it down on the floor, and stepped right through the top one morning when I jumped out of bed. Guess I still owe ya one, Uncle D...

1978--Picked up a Yamaha FG-Series acoustic, though I can't remember exactly where. May have been Royal Oak Music in Royal Oak, Michigan. As you will see later on, I bought a lot of guitars in Royal Oak...

Played this right up through college until it was replaced by a Washburn acoustic/electric. Stuck a bunch of Avery polka-dot labels on it one day when I was bored. Lived in my parent's garage for over two decades until I got over my sentimental feelings for it and tossed it in the trash.

Somebody came by and pulled it out of the trash soon after and drove of with it.

1980--Bought my first electric--a new beige Magnum Les Paul Copy also from Royal Oak Music. Worst $208 my parents ever spent. Even though I was still just a kid, I knew this was crap even back then.

Never played right, or sounded good, and it was beige! Beige is not a rock and roll color! Had single-coil pickups hiding under humbucker covers. Did I mention it was beige?

1983--Traded in the Faux Paul for a real, honest-to-goodness, 1961 Gibson SG/Les Paul at Rock City Music, in, you guessed it, Royal Oak.

This was a very early SG that someone had routed out for humbuckers to along the way. Had the bright idea of removing the replacement "Badass" bridge and mounting a period vibrato unit instead. Guitar was never much good after that.

To be continued...

The Death Of The Mixtape, Or Why iPods Suck At Parties

Even as recently as a few years ago, I would usually put together a collection of rockin' tunes every time we had a few friends gathering at our place. For years and years, they were usually recorded to cassette, and I was always careful to maximize the levels to tape to facilitate smooth transitions from one song to the next.

Maybe there was something about the natural tape compression, or the inherent limitations of the media, but I never remember having to adjust volume levels or EQ settings once the tape was rolling.

However, I have a radically different experience these days when I set up a playlist on my iPod to use our parties.

I'll admit you can't beat the convenience of being able to endlessly reshuffle and add or delete songs to your "mixtape" on the fly. Laying down a good mixtape used to take hours; now I can get my iPod to do the same thing in seconds.

But the main problem I have with the iPod is the variation of audio levels and frequency response from one song to the next. Even using their "soundcheck" feature, it still seems like some songs on the playlist are barely audible, while some are overbearingly loud. Additionally, some songs now seem to have an overabundance of bass, while some sound flat and lifeless when sequenced consecutively on the playlist.

As a former audio engineer, I know that every recording is different, and that some CDs today are mastered to maximize every dB that they can squeeze onto the disc. But there has to be more to it than that. For some reason, the process of converting a CD to an mp3 file seems to subtly change the original file in such a way that amplifies the differences between recordings to a significant enough degree that they now become noticeable when played back-to-back.

As I said earlier, you can't beat the iPod for flexibility, or ease of use. But Apple needs to figure out a way to let us enjoy ourselves at our own parties, without having us get up every five minutes to turn the volume up or down on our stereos, or roll off or boost the bass on every other song we hear.