How the other half lives...

For guitars of the straight waisted variety (or reverse offset).
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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by Scout » Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:59 am

I dig Gentle Giant
That was the music of my high school years, so it’s likely that.

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by seenoevil II » Mon Jan 04, 2021 9:18 am

Scout wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:59 am
I dig Gentle Giant
That was the music of my high school years, so it’s likely that.
Was that a pun?

Anyway, I was going make a joke that clearly we are above any such squabbling, however I did notice something interesting (to me at least). The language they used was all about good, better, best. There was none of the (albeit boring) "different tools for different jobs" rhetoric.
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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by Scout » Mon Jan 04, 2021 9:23 am

No pun intended. I didn’t watch the video, I just like Gentle Giant.

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by seenoevil II » Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:07 am

Scout wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 9:23 am
No pun intended. I didn’t watch the video, I just like Gentle Giant.
https://youtu.be/4-MdA0LPXj0
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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by BoringPostcards » Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:18 am

Flurko wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:32 am
BoringPostcards wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:08 am
If you want to really grind their gears, post this video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vMrYSTzqFI8

Make sure to say "Why are we arguing about this guitar, when we could be discussing how this is the single greatest guitar solo, ever performed on an original burst?"

It's Gentle Giant, so it's deliciously subversive to their echo chamber. Retro enough to impress them, but it's prog, and how could you stoop so low?
The song doesn't have a solo on album. It is 100% improvised here and it shits on 90% of their heros. Nobody even knows the guitarist's name. I don't even remember, and I love some GG. Greg?
Ha, I listen to a lot of 70s prog in high school but never got around to Gentle Giant.
The drummer is really interesting in this song, his look and his beats wouldn't sound dated in the current decade !
Can't say that about the singing, which is what really threw me off many prog groups.
Great song and solo though !
Yea, the singing is brutal. I have found versions with it edited out. He is a multi-instrumentalist, who sang because they needed someone to do it.
Look for the live version of Proclamation. A corny song with medieval theme, but there is a section in the middle, where they switch to one of the best grooves I have ever heard. Their drummer is a legend. GG fans refer to him as the most handsome man in the world, because his drum faces are outlandish.
Det er mig der holder traeerne sammen.

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by BoringPostcards » Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:23 am

Larry Mal wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:44 am
schoolie wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:26 am
If you want to create pure havoc, start a thread about how much you admire Greta Thunberg.
Yes!
The magic in subversion, is to make it relatable somehow, so they take in the message subconsciously. 70s music with a liberal swing? Right wing Boomers won't get mad, until it hits them in the face, at which point they're already creaming over the tones.
Leaves them with that post masturbatory shame, that goes deep.

:freako:
Det er mig der holder traeerne sammen.

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by BoringPostcards » Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:31 am

seenoevil II wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:07 am
Scout wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 9:23 am
No pun intended. I didn’t watch the video, I just like Gentle Giant.
https://youtu.be/4-MdA0LPXj0
That one's a gem.

Anyhow, back on topic. When I bought my SG Standard 2013, which were all the hype at the time, I made two separate vids.
I posted a serious one on here using my main rig of expensive shit, and I posted another over on MYSG.com, the sister site of MyLesPaul.com, where I sat in a dark room improvising through a busted up 5 watt battery powered Fender Mini Deluxe with a dying battery. It actually sounded decent, lol.
They acted like I didn't exist after that, even though I had made friendly with them long before that, when researching which SGs to look out for. I know I get pedantic sometimes, but these guys are on a whole other level, mixed with Boomer humour and attitudes. Pull my teeth, please?

Here's the proper SG demo posted here in my NGD thread:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4R_nUbqa5p4

Here's the trolled out SG demo I dropped in MYSG.com:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MRFqSQNiNE8

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by CivoLee » Mon Jan 04, 2021 7:36 pm

Yeah, I'll admit I had a phase where I posted on MyLesPaul a lot (if you notice, the last post in that thread - last I looked, anyway - is me saying I should show it to this forum, and well, here we are). And yes, I enjoyed the Afterhours section while it was there for all members (you needed a Premium membership afterward, and now it's being removed entirely). I enjoyed looking at the guitars enough that I could ignore some of the ridiculous banter about sneaking $4K+ instruments past their wives and having huge collections of firearms, but as time went on I had to protest some of the responses to mass shootings being along the lines of, "it's just part of living in a free society, thoughts and prayers" and of course I got flamed for being "against freedom". I also got sick of the implications posted by some members that after "all that's happened", maybe ethnicities should just remain separate.

So I took a hiatus and moved on to other forums. I decided to go back recently, and posted a thread commenting on the insanity of spending five or six figures on a single guitar when there are starving people in the world (I know some 1959-60 JMs can reach into the five figure range, but they still don't go as high as some Lesters), and while some posters agreed, most of the replies were nonsense about inflation and/or supply and demand or flaming about how I should be happy for them instead of being judgemental (or better yet, calling me a whiny little bitch about how other people spend their money). One guy even showed off his collection of vintage Les Pauls (most of which were varying shades of the same old cherry sunburst finish 90% of LPs come in, though there was a P90 goldtop and maybe a Junior or Special), saying they all cost more individually than his third-gen Corvette and justifying it with "the heart wants what the heart wants". It seems like the MLP ideal is to have a large house in the middle of nowhere or gated community full of guns and guitars, a garage full of restored muscle cars, pickup trucks and a Harley (not just any motorcycle; it had to be a "hog"), while gigging in a blues/classic rock cover band on the weekends.

Me joining that forum in the first place came about when I had an epiphany about ten years ago about, how after years of flip-flopping through different brands/styles of electric guitars, the one that felt the best me at the end of the day was a Les Paul. But beyond owning a Marshall half stack (sort of; it's a Advanced Valvestate and I run it clean, letting most of my tone come from my Boss ME-80), I'm not your typical "Les Paul guy" in the slightest. I think Clapton/Page/Beck are overrated compared to Hendrix/Iommi/Gilmour, and while I appreciate Slash starting what Kurt Cobain finished as far as saving music from Van Halen wannabes goes, the only musician associated with playing a Les Paul more than any other guitar that's ever been all that influential to my own music is Adam Jones of Tool (and even then, I'm not that into Silverburst Customs). The others either never played Les Pauls or just played them alongside other instruments. The things I like about Les Pauls are their solid feel, comfortable scale length, their thick distorted tone and how I thought at the time than they had enough ubiquity to not have many preconceptions behind them. Rock musicians as diverse as Stephen Malkmus and Zakk Wylde (he's a good guitarist even though he's a tool) have played Pauls. Kirk Hammett of Metallica has been playing '59 Bursts alongside his ESP superstrats. Even the almighty Sonic Youth had a few Lesters mixed in with their offsets and pawnshop mongrels. And while I can appreciate a nice honey or tobacco burst, I'm a lot more into solid colors like transparent black or Root Beer (Gibson's name for golden brown), metallic finishes like goldtop, like the one I play (OK, it's actually a Tokai Love Rock, but my bandmates and I refer to it as a Les Paul for the same reasoning people call all bandages "Band-Aids") or off-the-beaten-path finishes like Iguana burst or Tiger Fade.

But I was wrong. If MyLesPaul is anything to go by, the average Les Paul player who isn't a rock star is a jaded older man who thinks any music made or got popular after 1987 is garbage ("The 'c' in rap is silent") and thinks only LPs, SGs, Strats and Teles are "mature" instruments (and PRS guitars, while pretty, just don't sound as good). Not all of them are like that, though; the guys in the Other Single Cuts section (formerly called Other Les Pauls, until apparently Gibson put up a fuss), the section for Tokais, Grecos, Burnys and various other LP copies tended to be pretty cool; in fact, they're the ones who inspired me to get a Tokai since I couldn't afford a "full spec" (gloss finish, bound neck and body) Gibson Les Paul at the time (I still can't, at least not by paying in cash) and I hate the Epiphone headstock. And for a time I thought I might have been wrong about a Les Paul being my favorite guitar as well; the "solid" weight is starting to wear on my back/shoulder, switching between the Love Rock and my PRS SE Standard 24 is a bit jarring due to the differences in neck shapes (the former is like a rounded 50s and latter is a Wide Thin), plus their clean tones are too muddy and "modern rock" sounding (listen to Default's "Wasting My Time" for an example of what I mean); though I usually switch to the PRS for the few times I use a clean tone since it has coil splitting. And the softer attack due to its not-quite 24.75" scale can obscure note definition on faster parts as well. I thought about switching to an ESP Eclipse since they're thinner/lighter and would match better onstage with my bandmate's Ibanez RG. I also thought about making the PRS my main guitar with the Tokai as a backup instrument only. But I ultimately figured I wouldn't be as happy with an Eclipse since I strongly prefer the "pickguard on" look for singlecuts and due to the placement of the knobs, I'd have to get a custom pickguard made. And while I have practiced full sets with the PRS before, it just doesn't feel right for some songs, plus the upper horn design isn't as comfortable. I'll probably just get a lighter LP with a thinner neck, like a Classic, Traditional Pro or Standard 60s.

One last point I felt I need to bring up (or maybe not, since this could end up getting too sociopolitical) is the cooler/more tolerable members at MyLesPaul tend to be from places outside of the US. I've noticed this in other music forums as well. That doesn't say much for American musicians.
Last edited by CivoLee on Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by seenoevil II » Mon Jan 04, 2021 7:55 pm

Thank you for this ethnography. Now I don't have to join them to find out. Man, that sounds horrendous.

I think we're the NPR of guitar forums. Broadly liberal, in love with with nuance, enjoyed by nerds.
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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:01 pm

People here are funny.

No one there is funny.

"Dude, a girl this pretty could have THREE eyes and I'd STILL be love struck."

That's not at all funny.
Back in those days, everyone knew that if you were talking about Destiny's Child, you were talking about Beyonce, LaTavia, LeToya, and Larry.

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by HarlowTheFish » Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:26 pm

@OP, I don't wanna derail your thread, but if you want a lighter LP that's more traditional, look at the old Standard Series Eclipses -- there's a bunch of older ones (mine's an '03) that are literally a Les Paul but thin and with a nicer (IMO) neck, down to the body shape and control layout. Much nicer tops than any non-showpiece Gibson too. I got mine for around a grand, and I've seen them for that as recently as ~6 months ago (quilty dark red top just like mine), but the cheapest one on Reverb right now is $1600, solid black, and kinda beat cosmetically.

Having played a few CS Gibsons, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that even used and abused, one of those Eclipses is gonna be a better player than any Gibson under 5 figures, and most over that. I really gotta redo the wiring on mine, it deserves to get played more.

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:40 pm

I was on the Gear Page over the weekend and was in a discussion about whether or not Gibson's "quality control" was terrible or what. I don't get all worked up about it, I usually just mention that I have bought somewhere under 50 Gibsons and have never found one of them to have any of the "fit and finish" things that the internet would tell was constant.

I really don't care to argue about it, I just feel that maybe there's some third person who might be reading the discussion who might genuinely believe that Gibson was putting out nothing but crap unless they see a counterpoint. Like, just go ahead and order your guitar from Sweetwater already... you'll be fine, if not deal with it, don't worry about what a bunch of people on the internet say.

Anyway, then some character made some point about how there's a group of people that tell nothing but lies and those people are liberals so I told the guy that he was a dumb asshole and I was admonished for it.

Quite rightly, also. I mean I put the guy's comment in a quote and said he was an asshole knowing that this would get attention. It was my way of calling attention to it without having to be a snitch, because snitches get stitches. Better that both of us end up in the hole than to get a rep for being a snitch to the guards.

So I'm in the hole on the Gear Page and I'm going to God damn stay in the hole until they let me out. I ain't saying nothing.

That's the difference between OSG and the Gear Page. Snitches get stitches over here.
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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by CivoLee » Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:50 pm

HarlowTheFish wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:26 pm
@OP, I don't wanna derail your thread, but if you want a lighter LP that's more traditional, look at the old Standard Series Eclipses -- there's a bunch of older ones (mine's an '03) that are literally a Les Paul but thin and with a nicer (IMO) neck, down to the body shape and control layout. Much nicer tops than any non-showpiece Gibson too. I got mine for around a grand, and I've seen them for that as recently as ~6 months ago (quilty dark red top just like mine), but the cheapest one on Reverb right now is $1600, solid black, and kinda beat cosmetically.

Having played a few CS Gibsons, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that even used and abused, one of those Eclipses is gonna be a better player than any Gibson under 5 figures, and most over that. I really gotta redo the wiring on mine, it deserves to get played more.
Yeah, I looked at those during my "maybe an Eclipse is better for me and the kind of music the band I'm in is playing" phase, but I got turned off by the shallower body. I should've mentioned that another thing I like about LPs is the thicker body. I know you can get full thickness ESP Standard Eclipses, but they are even harder to find.

And there's no need to feel like you're derailing things. We can talk about Les Pauls/other singlecut electrics here as well as some of the douchebags that represent them on the internet.

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by HedonismBot » Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:38 pm

Just today I was trying to find information on how a particular line of LPs is different from its predecessor. Read an entire thread about the specs: "lawyer grade" flame tops, expensive feel, ditching standard LPs in favor of custom shop (these are just a couple grand more and they look so much better, c'mon man) and so on and so forth. NOTHING about the sound qualities! Some people just buy 'em Les Pauls for the bragging rights.

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Re: How the other half lives...

Post by andy_tchp » Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:41 pm

seenoevil II wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 7:55 pm
Thank you for this ethnography. Now I don't have to join them to find out. Man, that sounds horrendous.
Whenever the 'darkest corners of the internet' gets mentioned they're actually referring to that forum.
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David McComb, 1987.

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