Links and Miscellania

What if you're a classical guitarist wanting steel strings with a wide neck?  The best way to go with that is the Takamine F-312 s (see pic), which is out of  production. It's not cheap either, but well worth the price. Actually, once  a person owns this guitar, it's unlikely that they would ever sell it. You can't  go wrong with that guitar and well worth the effort to shop around for it,  including using eBay.   The old Martin 0-16 , which the F312 s copies, cost  a minimum upwards of 2 grand.  It's essentially a classical guitar made for  steel strings.   If you have 2 grand to spend, consider the Takamine EF740F S . But what if you want a big bodied guitar or even an electric guitar with a  wide neck for less than $2,000? I experimented by stringing just 6 strings on an old, cheap Guild 12 string guitar. It panned out to be a successful procedure yielding a wide neck guitar with steel strings, wh...

Do you know how long your index finger is? When you don't have a ruler or measuring tape, you can measure lengths, widths, diameters, and thicknesses by using your index finger as a ruler. It's amazingly quick and surprisingly accurate. Look at your index finger with the palm of your hand open and facing towards you. It turns out that from your index fingertip to the first joint is about one inch. Measure between the first and second joint, from one crease in the skin, or line, to the next. Again, it's almost exactly one inch. It turns out that the finger is about  3 inches long.  But you'll have to measure your own fingers to find out the precise measurement between each line on your finger. Discover where the lines on your  finger are exactly at inch intervals. Why do this? It's extremley 'handy' to know these dimensions to be able to measure objects when you're in a hurry and you don't have a tape measure or ruler, for example,...

Ben Franklin wrote of felicity, as in the enjoyment of life. With that same goal in mind, let me address one little dimension in the felicity of relationships. That would be music criticism among friends and relatives. This goes for all kinds of arts. Experiencing art is one of the graces in life. It involves active esthetic and intellectual, as well as cultural elements in the individual. That's quite a complex formula for anyone, in any locale or age. So, because all folks are different, they will appreciate art and music differently. If we're to live a life with the aim of promoting felicity, then we must tolerate other people's tastes and preferences. One of the qualities of being an acquaintance, or friend, or relative, is that the things we say to each other are stored in our memories. There's no controlling that. We remember. And because of this, we should try to limit our criticisms of art and music to positive statements...

Normal guitar strings (Low E, A, D, G) are wound with bronze. However, there are occasionally on the market, gold wound strings. Not pure gold, but gold alloy. Pure gold is too soft, and way too expensive. Gold alloy does the trick. Gold wound strings offer benefits over bronze. First is that they bring a fuller, richer sound to the lower strings. You'll notice it immediately. It's pronounced and beautiful. It improves the sound of an acoustic guitar, and any guitarist would want that. Second, they're impervious to the corrosive action of the oils, dirt, and acids present on the guitarist's fingertips, which react with the bronze, causing them to corrode. By avoiding this corrosion, gold strings stay fresher and continue to deliver a rich sound for a much longer time. The fingers don't have that disgusting bronze stench after a session. And your fingertips won't turn black. As I glance over at my Takamine F312S, I'm reminded that the gold...

The technique for lighting cigars is different from cigarettes due to the difference from in diameter between the two distinctly different types of smokes, and the burning properties of their wrappers. The wrapper for a cigarette is bone dry paper. It burns immediately. The wrapper for a cigar is a tobacco leaf, that hopefully, isn't too dry. The diameter of cigars are larger than cigarettes, and although some cigars are very thin, the genuine cigars aren't. The diameter of a cigar, or ring size, is larger that the flame of your match. Cigars can be improperly lit, meaning usually, that some portion of the end of the cigar lights, and burns, while other portions are yet to be lit. This leads to a malformed coal, affecting the flavor, and could lead to runs or tunneling. You don't want that on a smoke that cost you from 3 to 15 dollars. God knows how poor a showing it is to light a perfectly good cigar in front of your friends, or at the smoke shop, and mes...

Clean your sharpening stone. Sharpening stone clogged up, black with grinding dust and grime? Melt the blackness away with ordinary waterless hand sanitizer, sold in almost any supermarket, and a paper towel to de-clog your stone. This revives your stone with little effort, and is also effective for your ceramic rods.