The Ubiquitous Telecaster

The Telecaster -- it's everywhere!


(This is the result of too much spare time and too few Photoshop skills.)

Miscellaneous

Call me a wimp but those medium-gauge strings are gone. They were just too much for my fingers so I switched them out for extra-lights. The fingers were very grateful ...

Stephen Colbert isn't the only late-night TV dude who likes to bang on the guitar. The New York Times stopped by Conan O'Brien's office, which he was packing up for his move to Los Angeles, for an interview and came up with this photo. I spy two guitars and at least 11 cases.


“Music and comedy are so linked,” O’Brien says in the interview, which runs this Sunday. “The rhythm of comedy is con­nected to the rhythm of music. They’re both about creating tension and knowing when to let it go. I’m always surprised when somebody funny is not musical.”

Apparently there once were lots of videos of Conan playing on his show on youtube but the honchos at NBC had them yanked. Still, you can see him busting into "Sunshine of Your Love" at the 3:58 mark on this video ...

John Belushi perpetrated one of the greatest acts of cinematic guitar abuse in "Animal House," as seen in the video below. The singer was played by Stephen Bishop, who had a couple of soft rock hits with "On and On" and "Save It for a Rainy Day" back in the '70s. Bishop had the cast of the movie sign the remains of the guitar and hung it in his garage.

25 Things

A while back on Facebook there was popular pass-it-along-to-your-friends item titled "25 Things About Me." In the same spirit, here are 25 things about me and the guitar:

1. For the first 54 years of my life I never had the slightest urge to learn guitar.
2. I wish I'd started at age 14.
3. I can play four or five songs.
4. If I could magically play the electric like anyone, it would be Stevie Ray Vaughan.
5. If I could magically play the acoustic like anyone, I'm going with Lightnin' Hopkins (right).
6. Pinch harmonics are a mystery to me.
7. When I say I can "play" a song, I'm using the word "play" very loosely.
8. The acoustic Alvarez or the Telecaster? I honestly don't have a favorite.
9. Well, maybe the Alvarez since it was my first.
10. I find instructional books very frustrating. They assume you know more than you do.
    
11. I'm a little surprised and disappointed -- but not discouraged -- that I'm not more proficient than I am.
12. Now that I have an idea of what's involved, I get mesmerized watching a good guitarist work.
    
13. I'm not very talkative but I love to talk about guitars.
14. If I were to get another guitar, I think I'd make it a Les Paul.
15. I'm only kidding when I say my goal is to play on "Austin City Limits" in the next 25 years.
16. I'm not kidding when I say the name of my first band will be Stinktown Willie and the Hard Liquors.
17. I can't -- and never will be able to -- do B chords.
18. Whoever came up with barre chords was a sadist.
19. The second fret should be much wider in order to accommodate all the fingers necessary for an A chord.
20. I still don't get heavy metal.
21. Power chords are a dilemma for me. I feel like I'm cheating when I play them.
22. I'm amazed that a Martin guitar can sell for more than $100,000.
23. Quite often I'm satisfied just learning the intro to certain songs. The intros are usually the coolest part anyway.
24. I love guitar picks.
25. Sometimes I stare at my guitars because they're so darn pretty.

Odds and Ends

I misspoke yesterday in saying that the new medium gauge strings I put on the Alvarez weren't that much tougher on my fingers. After an extended playing session today, I say without shame that I am definitely a lightweight when it comes to strings. These mediums are like playing steel cables. My fretting fingers are traumatized ...

The traditional face-melting rock guitar solo may not be dead but it is in critical condition, says the Financial Times of London. This article cites Eric Clapton, along with Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, as being among the pioneers of the searing, self-indulgent solo back in the 1960s and '70s but says that has given way to more subtle lead play. Nonetheless, the FT says the solo could make a comeback thanks to Guitar Hero, since the video game relies so much on classic rock and heavy metal and kids who like to make funny faces ...

There's a man in Scotland who's looking for a deal on guitar strings. His girlfriend cut the strings on all his guitars because he was cheating on her after he told her that his guitars were more important to him than any relationship. The woman was originally charged destroying property and assault but in the end got off with just an admonishment from the judge ...

Stephen Colbert likes to whip out his guitar on "The Colbert Report" every now and then and his staff gave him a 1973 Martin D41 for his birthday this week. It came from an online dealer in Boulder, Colo., who said Colbert had recently played on the air and then said he needed a new guitar. You can see the previous guitar in this video. Note the excess stringage; everybody wants to be Chuck Berry.

String Thing, Part 2

All this talk of strings inspired me to change out the Alvarez. I've gotten ritualistic about string changing. I line up everything I need -- the strings, the string winder, the tuner, the wire cutters -- like a doctor preparing for surgery and then start operating.

Once again, the patient survived. I went with medium gauge strings this time, instead of the lights, just to see if there's much of a difference. My ears are too unsophisticated to notice much change in sound and the mediums aren't that much tougher on my fingers. But new strings sure me play better.

It's a simple thing that would impress only a beginner like me but when I get the strings all in place and stretched out and in tune, I get a real sense of accomplishment. Probably like a medical intern whose patient survived, even if it was just a tonsillectomy.

Not to take issue with the master, but maybe Chuck Berry could use a little advice on string management. He's notoriously cavalier about the way he treats his guitars (he considers them tools and just checks them as baggage when flying) but look at all that excess stringage in this poor quality screen grab from youtube. The man's lucky he didn't lose an eye.

If only he had let me take my wire cutters to those strings. It would have been my greatest contribution to music.

The complete video is here and the overly long strings come into view around the 37-second mark.

String Thing

The old folkie Dave Van Ronk once said, "God has a way of telling you when to change your strings." Apparently He tells different players different things about string changing and lets some, like me, decide on their own.

That's one of the burning issues in the guitar world -- without divine guidance, how often should you change strings? The correct answer seems to be: whenever you want to. It's been written that a set of strings has a playing life of 12 hours, which doesn't sound like much of a lifetime to me, before they go dead. But it's also been written that Eric Clapton's road manager says Clapton never changes a string unless it breaks and supposedly there is a woman performer who's gone years without changing because she likes the sound of rusty guitar strings. So as is often the case with guitar-related things, whatever works for you is fine.

Strings go dead and lose their tone and brightness because of the build-up of sweat, oil, dirt and various other forms of finger gunk between the coils. There are various cleaners on the market to combat this problem. As noted earlier, I'm not real hard on my strings so I try to get my money's worth out of them. I go with the Elixir coated strings, which are more durable -- and consequently about twice as expensive -- and I try to keep my hands clean.

When it's time to change again, I'm tempted to try these Knucklehead Strings out of Spanish Fork, Utah, just because it's hard to resist such distinctive packaging and branding. And they come with an extra high-E string.

Face the Random Music

Let there be random music from the iPod and let it have a slight old-fashioned R&B flavor.

• "Murmur Low," Pinetop Perkins
• "The Nothing Man," Bruce Springsteen
• "Down in the Valley," Otis Redding
• "I'm Not That Kat Anymore," the Bottle Rockets
• "Do You Miss Her," Stacie Collins
• "Tin Pan Alley," Stevie Ray Vaughan
• "Almost Grown," the Animals
• "The Frog," Sir Guy
• "Modern Art," Tom Russell
• "Susie Q," the Rolling Stones
• "Just Like Me," Paul Revere & the Raiders
• "Honky Tonk Women," the Rolling Stones

Loose Change

What has four strings instead of six and really big "tighteners" on the headstock but isn't a guitar? That's right -- a bass. The excellent Guitarz blog came across this listing on eBay, which proves that I am not the most uninformed person in all of Guitardom. The seller apparently thought she had quite a rare guitar since it only had four strings. I like the prospective buyer who asked if he could get a one-third discount since this guitar didn't have six strings ...

I'm still amazed by what you can find on youtube. My dad referred me to these videos of Texas bluesmasters Lightnin' Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb performing live and there are many more. These two both have nice close-ups of the finger-picking, including Lipscomb using a pocketknife for a slide and working with two fingers bandaged together on his right hand ...

Suggested reading: Jim Normandy, one-time hippie commune kid turned big-time banking executive, now is in the guitar-making business.This Portland Oregonian story (thanks for the picture) says his beautiful aluminum guitars are starting to catch on with bands like My Morning Jacket and Eagles of Death Metal. They come in different colors and finishes and have a reputation for good sustain ... In a bad economy, what's the market for vintage guitars like? The Los Angeles Times says it's still expensive -- even six-figure expensive -- even though there are bargains to be had.

Father & Daughter Jam

I once jokingly referred to my daughter as my guitar protege but that no longer applies. On some levels she's surpassed me.

She signed up for a guitar class at her high school this semester and told her teacher she wanted to do it so she could exceed her father's playing. You can imagine how extremely gratified I was to be such a source of inspiration, even if she just wanted to embarrass me.

But I'm not embarrassed, of course. Just proud of her. So far she's mostly doing single-note picking, which comes fairly easy to her because she knows how to read music after several years of chorus. (Reading music is another thing she can do that I can't, along with speaking Spanish fluently and earning a second-degree black belt in tae kwan do.)

She's finding chords a little trickier, partly due to having small hands, and has yet to get past the my-fingers-hurt-too-much barrier.

The class sounds pretty good; perhaps I should audit it. She's learned some scales (and taught me one), a little Spanish number, a blues progression and done a little coffee house-style jam based on a blues scale. On the side, she taught herself that Celine Dion song from "Titanic" just for fun.

Sometimes we get our guitars out and she shows me what she's learned lately. Mild jamming ensues, followed by a paternal smile.

She's not sure how far she wants to go with the guitar but with this quick start, I have to invoke Satchel Paige's maxim about not looking over my shoulder because someone is surely gaining on me. I'm also afraid to look ahead because she may already be out in front.