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Victrola

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Originally Posted by Victrola
Hey Pug,

I know what you mean re; being bored with current mainstream music.....I thought it was just me getting old and cranky, then some younger folks told me they didn't like commercial music either....so I didn't feel too bad.

If you go see Stern, I'd love to read a report on that.....I've never seen him live.


Sheesh.

Between this thread and the 80's music thread, I am totally geeking out.


Victrola,

I will definitely give you a report if/when I go see Mike Stern. I'm actually going to NYC this weekend for the Music Players Live Show which is like a really tiny NAMM event. There should be some good stuff there (exhibitor wise and performance/Q&A wise Adrian Belew-Pat Metheny-Vernon Reid)and there is even a tribute concert to Les Paul at Roseland on Sat. Night.


Pug, I want a FULL report on this event, including the Les Paul tribute!

There is no end to my demands,
V.
 

PugNinjas

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V,

Well, it was quite an eventful day yesterday and here is a breakdown of what I checked out.

Winners:

Zemaitis Guitars : crazy, hand engraved electrics that were incredible to see up close and personal. The most amazing one that I saw was a S22 St/Ring which featured the entire face of the guitar in mother of pearl surrounded by a ring of abalone. Truly amazing. Although I had a little rouble understanding the rep's Asian accent, supposedly each piece of inlay is hand numbered (on the back) so that a complete, finished product looks great. I was surprised to see that the weight was not affected by these additions to the mahogany body; the guitar had a weight similar to a Les Paul. Way too highly priced for my collection, but beautiful just the same.

Best Item At the Show

T.C. Electronics G System: Some cat named Marc Cooper was demo-ing this thing and he showed me everything it is capable of doing. Since everyone was watching at Doug Wimbish and his bass acrobatics, Marc gave me a 30 minute demo. Truly an intelligent item. I won't go into too much detail but it can basically do everything you would want in helping you to create a perfect guitar sound. When asking him about adding volume pedals and such he instantly recommended Ernie Ball :D

Biggest Joke of the Weekend
Ibanez (Ibeenhad) guitars- Big room loaded with tons of instruments....too bad the clowns they hired did not clean the frets on the high end models being pimped. Don't get me wrong, the Artcore series were clean and pretty nice looking but the high end shredder models (there were no Satch or Via models there) were probably the filthiest guitars I have ever seen. A casual glance at the guitars showed literally hazy and crusty frets. I walked out of the room and told my buddies( a drummer and bassist) what I saw and they totally agreed when I said that was ridiculous.

Doug Wimbish I have never heard of him but he was quite entertaining with his demo. He wailed away on his base at the Trace Elliott booth but after awhile it seemed he was just using effects as tricks to get his bass to sound like a guitar. People seemed to groove on him though.

Adrian Belew- RIDICULOUS

Lisa Loeb (songwriting clinic) unfortunately I missed this one but I did manage to see here later on. I felt bad for her because the clowns at VH1 (or wherever they were from) continued to jam cameras, boom mikes, and lights in her face while she was trying to leave the event. She must have hit the elevator 'down' button like 10 times! It was disgusting. One a side note, she is very hot :) :eek: :)

Paul Green's School of Rock the "real" school that was ripped off by Jack Black for the movie, had some insane kid talent. Pretty cool idea that stresses live performance as a group. One chubby little 16 or 17 yr old girl held an impromtu shred-fest in the Peavey room on a Satriani head. Too bad that head sounded like a comb with wax paper over it.......I can't really bury that head because it could have been the cheesy Peavey guitar she was using or just the setting that someone dialed up for her.

Larry Carlton- one of the most laid back cats in the world. Totally cool and a true master of the instrument.

Marshall Room - The Mode Four stack is the largest I have ever seen. It is monstrous and although too large for any need of mine, it does sound excellent.


I did not hit the Les Paul tribute concert because there was some concern as to whether it would actually go on because of poor ticket sales.

I'm still kind of stoked so I will end with this until I remember more.
 
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Victrola

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236
Hey, Pugs,

I finally caught up with this thread -thank you for posting! a few comments.....

Ugh, dirty guitars (hey that sounds like a band name or something) - seriously, that's kind of nasty.

Adrian Belew - I've never seen him live....no, that's not true. I did see him with Projeckt Four a few years ago (T. Levin, Belew, Fripp, Mastellotto).

Lisa Loeb - between that and her doing the cooking thing with BP, she sounds like a very cool lady. It's a shame some media people cannot be gracious.

I did not know that there was a real School of Rock.....The 16 or 17 yr old chubby girl sounds like Chelsea Constable...she hit the news a couple of years ago when she was 13.....she uses Ibanez and Peavey I think. Vai was supporting her for awhile...she played at a Les Paul thing a couple of years ago, and also on stage with Vai and I think Satriani.

A shame about the Les Paul tribute. Was he actually supposed to be there?
 

PugNinjas

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Back in NY
Les Paul was the keynote speaker at the Sat. night event (not the concert, at the hotel where this event was held). Supposedly, Hartley Peavey was giving the intro speech.

I will check with my friend about what happened with the concert, as of Sat. morning they were having a hard time selling tix.

Chelsea Constable sounded awesome, I guess she's a die-hard Metallica fan because she blazed a ton of riffs and licks. I was truly surprised at how much that JSX Satriani head sounded like a comb covered in wax paper. It was probably the setting or perhaps the cheesy Ibeenhad guitar she was using....


Here's some other things I checked out

Dean Markley giving aways tons of freebie's Letterman's Will Lee was there Friday

Jellifish picks I had to get one but have yet to use it :rolleyes:

Line6 tons of gear but too many folks hovering to really check out anything

Burrell guitars interesting curved acoustics that featured the rear of the body curving around the player's hip/side. I picked one up and played it for a few minutes, it seems like it would take a while to get used to and the neck to body balance just felt strange. Plus the high pressure sales cat was trying to jam this guitar down my throat. It was nice but the koa sides and back featured minimum flame and for the price they were asking, I wanted better flame.
 
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