I have sent a card out today to an old curmudgeon 🙂 whose birthday it is tomorrow. He plays guitar and increasingly more in the finger-style tradition. How the hell he manages to not knock the selector switch out of position on his Strat I shall never know. I keep f***ing doing that and it’s driving me ’round the bend.

I’ve been drawn to the psychology of having just the one instrument and putting all my energy into that. I play a Strat and it’s set up in such a way that as well as the usual 5 positions via the selector switch (neck, neck/middle, middle, middle/bridge, bridge) I also have a push-pull feature on the volume control.

With the volume control pulled out/up, and in what would be the neck position (which I call 1 and which everyone else seems to call 5*), that gives me just the neck and bridge pickups together. It’s not a Tele sound but it’s very usable nonetheless. The 2/4 position (neck/middle) gives me all 3 pickups in series, so 7 different sonic options in all. It’s just a shame then that I can’t play for toffee!!!

*I have never understood calling the neck position on a Strat, position 5. That’s going anti-clockwise and makes no sense to my mind. Same with Les Paul’s. Why are the volume and tone controls horizontal for each pickup when the pickups are vertical by comparison? It just makes no sense. In fact, why not just 1 overall volume and 1 overall tone plus the selector switch?

A good pal of mine, Pete, has been given a guitar to review on his YouTube channel and in return he gets to keep the instrument. He has already gigged it and seems well pleased. I would imagine though that guitars reviewed publicly are set up in advance of shipping. I have noticed looking around YouTube that the channels where the player has bought the instrument from a website rather than being given one to review, the results are more mixed in terms of the state in which it arrives in. It’s still amazing however how much guitar you can get nowadays for very little cash outlay.

Vintage (company name) guitars are excellent for the money. Their (Vintage) ‘S’ Style guitars, I think they come with a 10″ fingerboard radius. I suppose so they don’t get sued by a certain ‘F’ company. I also love Yamaha guitars, especially their Pacifica range where you get great value for money on their S-style guitars. This is a guitar I covet. Yamaha Pacifica 212V. It features an Alder body and a Rosewood fingerboard. I’m not a fan of Basswood or Poplar for the body or the Rosewood fingerboard equivalents, such as Pau Ferro, Walnut and Laurel. It has a flatter fingerboard radius than regular S-style guitars and the strings are slightly further apart, which I like.

Today, I am learning how to play Harlem River Blues by Justin Townes Earle, someone I had not heard of until listening to music on Jango. Jango is a free music streaming service. When you register on the site, if you like a track you give it a thumbs up and it’s played more often. If you give a track a thumbs down, you never hear it again. I have discovered so much great music through it. I will embed the video to the JTE track I’m learning below plus another to showcase the range of his musical style.

Sadly, he is no longer with us. I wish he was still here. Justin Townes Earle (January 4, 1982 – August 20, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Rest In Peace x

Thank you for reading.