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Wow, now that is interesting stuff!
Those links are going right on my Facebook profile. :)
Thanks!

Chris

I'm a piano player coming new to guitar.

I've a nagging question...

I prefer the fatter sound of the thumb. I've been viewing old Wes Montgomery vids on the tube and I'm trying to determine how it's possible to perform upstrokes using the thumb?

Does anyone possess any thumb only study techniques?

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Any thumb only players out there?

The UK's digital music market continues to expand, but record levels of illegal downloading present a serious threat to the country's online music future, confirms a major new report – Digital Music Nation 2010 – published by recording industry trade body the BPI today.

The report, featuring new research from both Harris Interactive and UKOM/Nielsen, for the first time provides a comprehensive picture of the legal and illegal digital music landscape in the UK.

Huge numbers of tracks being downloaded illegally

By volume, P2P accounts for 46% of all tracks illegally acquired across the four main sources, compared to 25% for links to cyberlockers, 18% for MP3 search engines and 11% for overseas search engines.

Harris Interactive calculate that the total number of people in the UK illegally downloading music on a regular basis is 7.7m. It is likely to be even larger given other methods by which music can be illegally obtained, such as e-mail, instant messaging and newsgroups.

In total, Harris conservatively estimates that 1.2bn tracks will be illegally downloaded in 2010 – equivalent to a stack of CDs some 74 miles high stretching well into space. Illegal downloads represent three quarters of all music obtained digitally, when set against BPI's prediction of 370m tracks in total across singles and albums bought legally by the end of this year.

Mark

I thought you might find this interesting, as it kind of gels
with some of your thoughts and comments on being a musician
today and needing a private income.

The Guardian (UK) points out the recently release Berklee's salary survey:

"the study's salary figures for musicians appear optimistic to me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Berklee College of Music is reliant on thousands of students enrolling in its music programmes. The reality facing the majority of its students – and the thousands of music students at colleges and universities across the UK – when they graduate isn't quite as rosy. Once past the first hurdle of actually getting a job, they may find that club gigs often pay nothing at all. Some promoters even demand that you pay to play.

According to the Musicians' Union, 87% of its members are making less than ?16,000 a year. For songwriters, the prospect of making a sustainable living out of writing is even less likely: 90% of PRS for Music members earn less than ?5,000 a year. This indicates that being independently wealthy is a serious advantage if one wants to make music a full-time occupation."

Furthermore, according to a study recently conducted by the UK-based Word Magazine, a majority of charting British pop and rock artists were educated in private, tuition-based schools. The magazine found that 60 percent hailed from schools requiring annual tuition, academic admissions, connections, or all of the above. Yet overall, just 10 percent of the general population enjoys such privilege. Even crazier, just one percent of charting British artists claimed the same pedigree in 1990.

So, instead of bands like the Smiths, Oasis, and the Stone Roses, the current mainstream milieu includes well-reared artists like Lily Allen, Mumford & Sons, Coldplay, Florence Welch and La Roux. Digging deeper, Allen attended the pricey Bedales, at ?9,240 ($14,357) per term, while Welch attended the Alleyn's School, whose per-term commitments push past ?4,430 ($6,883).

As it's revealed 60 per cent of them went to public school... why are today's pop stars so posh?


Behind the music: Want a music industry career? It helps to be rich



--
Alisdair MacRae Birch
Guitarist/Bassist/Educator/Arranger

I played a Brian Setzer model a couple years ago that was great!!!!
I liked the neck and it definitely had that characteristic "twang" or whatever you call it. :)

Chris

Hey John is that you on the myspace site with the Rabid Camel tune?
It's one of the links that came up with your name and guitar. I agree
about Fender and Gibson. At least Fender doesn't make any that look
ridiculous that I know of.



Living and playing outside the box.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Guess most all of these good companies were wrecked by conglomerates.

You can say the same for most economically large countries.
Capitalism appeals to greed. Communism went in the other direction
and was more altruistic on the surface. Both are pure bullshit. The
money still winds up at the top except in the post war era and into
the 60s somewhat.

There simply has got to be a system the doesn't pray on the baser
instincts of humanity.

Ron

Living and playing outside the box.

The last time I tried to send an attached file it didn't work, so somebody please let me know if these pictures come through.

These are my 2 hollow body guitars. Both were made by the RAVEN company which went out of business, unless you can find one on E-bay. When I bought them, they both cost about $300.00.

The L-5 copy is a little smaller than standard, with a 16 inch lower bout instead of the usual 17 inches. The PRS copy has a small solid block under the bridge, to hold it in place. But it is otherwise fully hollow. I've swapped out the pickups in both. I put DiMarzio Jazz pickups in the L-5 copy, and Gibson's in the PRS copy.

These guitars are not Rolls Royces, but they are Camrys and Accords. They are both professional grade instruments, more than good enough for both gigging and recording.?

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- On Thu, 12/16/10, JVegaTrio@... <JVegaTrio@...> wrote:Guild did

indeed make some great guitars.....

Today both Guild and Gretsch are owned by Fender. Has anybody checked out their new guitars?

This is a fascinating thread, I'm enjoying all the info... Guild did
indeed make some great guitars, but they were overshadowed by Fender & Gibson.
They made some beautiful jazz boxes, my friend Tom Hynes has one he bought
some 30+ years ago, and it's a beauty. Jimmy Wyble's classical guitar was
a custom-made Guild, and that one played and sounded wonderfully. If I
recall correctly, Guild hired a Spanish luthier to make/design their
nylon-string guitars sometime in the 60s, and those are sought-after instruments.

Cheers,
JV

Juan Vega

I have no way of knowing whether this is true, but I heard that initially Baldwin initially was keeping up the quality, only 2 years after they bought Gretsch, there was a fire at the factory, and after that they went downhill.

What I do know for certain is that the model of the Country Gent I mentioned earlier was designed by Atkins and Kramer together. (And yes, it is the same Duke Kramer who later designed an manufactured the basses and guitars with the aluminum necks.) The guitar definitely was made by Baldwin under the Gretsch name. It is a wonderful guitar, vastly superior to the old painted F hole version. I had 2 country gents for a while. One of these and an original from 1967. Since I didn't need 2, I sold the '67 and kept the Baldwin, which was definitely the better instrument.?

Eventually I traded it for a pedal steel, which worked out very well for me, but I miss the guitar.

Some years back, I was at a guitar show where Art Wiggs, who ran Wings Guitar Service, Gretsch's official authorized national service center, had a display booth that included one of these guitars. I mentioned that I had one, and he said it was the best guitar Gretsch ever made.

Regardless of whatever Duke Kramer's attitude was or how clueless about rock music he may have been, or what a bad businessman or arrogant jerk he turned out to be, he did know something about instrument design. Those aluminum necked basses he designed are terrific.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The "White Falcon" kind of says it all.

Guild made some excellent jazz boxes and acoustics back in the day. That was a good American company that had a lot of pride in what they did for an affordable price. Guess most all of these good companies were wrecked by conglomerates.

I don't know about you guys but it seems me when I visit these websites that Fender and Gibson make WAY too many guitars. How many varieties of strat and les paul do you need! Gez.

j

At any rate, Duke Kramer is dead:



This article is not dated. From the math (He joined Gretch in 1935 at age 19, and died at age 88. So 88 -19 = 69 years. 1935 + 69 = 2004), he died in 2004, but the article also states:

Through a special agreement with the Chet Atkins trust, beginning in January 2007, Chets signature will once again grace the pickguards and headstocks of the newly renamed Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body, the 6122 Chet Atkins Country Gentleman, and the 6119 Chet Atkins Tennessee Rose guitar lines.

Anyway, there's a heads-up, as ambiguous as it may be.

best,
Bobby

Hi Brian,

I talked with my brother today and got some of this stuff straight. The
guitars were never built in Cincinnati. Some of the Baldwin guitars were but
he thinks not all of them. They were re-badged Brithish made Bournes only
assembled here in the states. He said that the New York built Gretsch's
guitars built by Fred Gretsch were indeed nice guitars but after Baldwin
bought the name the quality dropped dramatically.

That is how I remember it. I didn't chime in to contradict you, as I never worked for the company, but being a New Yorker around at the time, the Cincinnati story did not ring any bells. I remember that when Baldwin took over Gretch, the quality spiraled down the tank. I felt the same way when CMI took over Gibson, which was around the same time. Martin was one of the few companies which didn't suffer this fate (they kept the company in the family), but Gibson, Gretch, and Guild, while in the hands of a conglomerate, never again made guitars of the quality that made them famous. Fender has come back, and Heritage has picked up the ball dropped by Gibson, so maybe there's hope - we'll "C". I'm not a fan of Chinese instruments made with C&C machines, but that is the way it's probably all going to go.

He also reminded me that Bucky Pizzarelli played Gretsch's in those days. He also said that near the
end of their demise they started building better instruments but by that
time the handwriting was on the wall.

After George van Eps's 7-string was destroyed at a party, Gretch put their model of it into production at George's request. And, for a production line instrument, it was very good - it was no Benedetto, but it wasn't $30k, either.

The idiot that really drove them into the ground was a guy named Duke
Kramer.

I wonder if this is the Kramer who was responsible for the guitars bearing that name. There's another company which started out with a bang (for a while, they were the no.1 selling solid-body in the world), and was totally driven into the ground through financial irresponsibility in a few years time.

best,
Bobby

On 16 Dec 2010, at 00:58 , Brian Kelly wrote:

One thing s for certain and that is Duke knew absolutely nothing about guitars. He couldn’t tell one end from the other as far as I could see and he wasn’t a player by any stretch.

Well, he was a saxophone player. That may explain something. :-)

Mike

No, Duke is definitely who I am thinking of. I was standing in a stairway when Duke bragged about laughing off George Harrison. I think he was some sort of production manager as well but his background I am sure was in sales. I am pretty sure he was never the plant manager but no matter for one reason or another he had undue power around there. I am sure that Paul and Chet had high opinions of him since Duke thought that Chet was all there was to Gretsch and kissed Chet’s ass for years. He loved them and Cal Collins too but he had no use for any rock-n-rollers at all. He was still calling the Beatles a fad until the late 60’s. One thing s for certain and that is Duke knew absolutely nothing about guitars. He couldn’t tell one end from the other as far as I could see and he wasn’t a player by any stretch. Why anyone would have a good opinion of him in regards to anything having to do with guitars just blows my mind. It must have been a mail order business because if you knew him you knew what was up with him. I can’t think of a single person who actually knew him or worked with him that thought he was a capable person to deal when it came to guitars.

Jimmie Webster I don’t remember by name but I think I know who you are talking about. I can’t remember the guy who ran their engineering department either although I knew him very well at the time. It’s been a long time ago at this point and I wasn’t taking notes either.

The White Falcon with the gold glitter binding was an abomination. That’s the only one I remember.







From: Mike Detlefsen
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 11:58 PM
To: jazz_guitar@...
Subject: Re: [jazz_guitar] Re: Jim Hall Custom



On 15 Dec 2010, at 22:41 , Brian Kelly wrote:

The idiot that really drove them into the ground was a guy named Duke
Kramer. He was the stupidest, most clueless and arrogant clown there ever
was. He had no idea what he was doing. He was a salesman that somehow
wound up with way more power than would seem possible based on his talent
and skill.

I believe you may be thinking of Jimmie Webster, not Duke Kramer. Duke wasn't involved in sales, he was more or less the plant manager, while Jimmie handled the artists and sales end of things. Duke has a very high reputation among Gretsch aficionados (as well as both Chet Atkins and Paul Yandell) and for years was the only source of Gretsch parts after Baldwin shut the Booneville place down (after the second fire took out production capabilities).

Jimmie Webster was the guy who came up with the Tone-Twister, the tuning fork bridge, the string mutes, and several other worthless "improvements." He was responsible for the stereo White Falcon, as well. That may be good or bad, depending on your tastes. :-)

Mike



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On 15 Dec 2010, at 22:41 , Brian Kelly wrote:

The idiot that really drove them into the ground was a guy named Duke
Kramer. He was the stupidest, most clueless and arrogant clown there ever
was. He had no idea what he was doing. He was a salesman that somehow
wound up with way more power than would seem possible based on his talent
and skill.

I believe you may be thinking of Jimmie Webster, not Duke Kramer. Duke wasn't involved in sales, he was more or less the plant manager, while Jimmie handled the artists and sales end of things. Duke has a very high reputation among Gretsch aficionados (as well as both Chet Atkins and Paul Yandell) and for years was the only source of Gretsch parts after Baldwin shut the Booneville place down (after the second fire took out production capabilities).

Jimmie Webster was the guy who came up with the Tone-Twister, the tuning fork bridge, the string mutes, and several other worthless "improvements." He was responsible for the stereo White Falcon, as well. That may be good or bad, depending on your tastes. :-)

Mike

Yea, a lot of the early years Jim Hall played one of the mid 50's mahogany ES175s. I believe it was the year after the one I have, which would be like 1955/or 56, that had the two P-90 pickups instead of just the neck one. A lot of his recordings were done with that and there are lots of pictures of him playing it. Pass and Herb Ellis played similar models as did Kenny Burrell when he was very young. It was a common production guitar at the time

I read an interview with Hall where he said he still loves his 175 and it "gets better and better every year". Like old Martins, that Mahogany really starts sounding mellow after about 30-40 years. I wish I could do justice to mine. My brother gave it to me and he bought it for $100.00 used in the 60s.

I didn't say anything bad about the Monkeys. I just said Gretsch made me think of them.

j

Mike, John,

Other than very early on Chet did a lot of stuff besides country and the last twenty-five or thirty years he did almost none.

I talked with my brother today and got some of this stuff straight. The guitars were never built in Cincinnati. Some of the Baldwin guitars were but he thinks not all of them. They were re-badged Brithish made Bournes only assembled here in the states. He said that the New York built Gretsch's guitars built by Fred Gretsch were indeed nice guitars but after Baldwin bought the name the quality dropped dramatically. He also reminded me that Bucky Pizzarelli played Gretsch's in those days. He also said that near the end of their demise they started building better instruments but by that time the handwriting was on the wall.

The idiot that really drove them into the ground was a guy named Duke Kramer. He was the stupidest, most clueless and arrogant clown there ever was. He had no idea what he was doing. He was a salesman that somehow wound up with way more power than would seem possible based on his talent and skill. I think the management who were of course piano guys from Baldwin looked to Duke to tell them what would sell in the market and he didn't have a clue so he just made it up as he went along. He hated rock music and put rock musicians down a every turn. He was about as hip to what was happening in the world as an old shoe would be. He laughed off endorsement deals with George Harrison, Joe Walsh and Bill Wyman and then realizing that the worlds had passed him by he panicked and signed the Monkees. That's Duke Kramer.

There's more but I think I will stop here. I have no plans on becoming an historian on the Gretsch guitar brand. I would like to see one of the New York built Gretschs.





Brian

On 15 Dec 2010, at 16:55 , john wrote:

Atkins was an amazing talent and probably the greatest single country guitarist that ever lived.

Oddly enough, I’ve never thought of him as a country guitarist, just as a guitarist. He never sounded particularly country to me, but then I didn’t start listening to him until the early sixties.

Mike