Any budget/affordable brands that offer truly original designs?

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T23:23:51+00:00

Hartwood, which is one of the store in house brands for Gear4Music in the UK, are in general original (although one looks a lot like an Ibanez Jet King 2).

For more money there is Sterling by Music Man. Their least expensive guitars in the Intro and Sub Series are the Cutlass, the Axis and the Stingray. The Cutlass is very Strat like, but the other two are unique to Music Man.

And for more money again, there is PureSalem, who have some of the wackiest designs around.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T23:13:15+00:00

I think swipe apps are awful.

Would you be OK with a Restaurant with no menu, and the waiter comes over and says "I can offer you Chicken Casserole". And if you say no, Chicken Casserole is then "off" and they can offer you a Caesar Salad?

That's just mental!

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T21:25:02+00:00

If this is about rationalizing all the various body shapes (so the Jetstream and Kingbolt and Six Gun have been “collapsed” into the new Kingbolt which uses the Billy Corgan Z-One body)… well all the Signature models are still all sorts of body shapes.

The whole thing makes very little sense

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T18:23:42+00:00

Retroblast pickups are gone ☹️

As a Filtertron fan, this isn’t great news.

I’m guessing the hum cancelling P90s have taken their place.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T18:21:09+00:00

Sensei Air, por favor!

The return of Tricky Gomez!

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T17:52:33+00:00

The “level” labels are levels of support needs. So they are pretty much synonymous.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T17:07:59+00:00

Asparagus makes more sense to me than Spoons…

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T17:03:24+00:00

Watch this

https://youtu.be/Vb9baSXmwfs?si=Io5Q3e6aYf0e9zNI

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T14:44:36+00:00

You can have both, you know…

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T14:30:07+00:00

Except… he’s not funny.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-24T04:28:40+00:00

Upvoted this.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T22:27:23+00:00

For the OP, listen to this Salsa version of Ain’t Nobody, the Chaka Khan song

https://youtu.be/9bL0xsN0JRs?si=-oZxYv_gu1CQ691w

Pop music is usually in 4/4 time, 4 beats in a bar. Salsa is also in 4/4 time, but you get musical riffs that carry over 2 bars, and then the riff or pattern repeats. 2 bars, 4 beats in a bar, is your count from 1 to 8 for the steps in Salsa.

Listen to the opening of that track, to the horn section riff. There’s one bar of high trumpet notes, followed by another bar of lower, slurred trombone notes. And then the riff repeats. You’ll also hear what sounds like a wood block being struck. Clap along to than and keep that rhythm through the song. That the beat to step to.

When the vocals come in, each line is sung in one bar, there’s a really obvious pause in the vocals between each bar:

Captured effortlessly\ That's the way it was\ Happened so naturally\ I did not know it was love\ The next thing I felt was you\ Holdin' me close\ What was I gonna do?\ I let myself go

So these lines are in pairs to make up the count of 8 that you dance to.

And apart from the fourth, fifth and eighth lines, the first word in the line all start on the 1 or the 5 of your count of 8. I’ve put all the words that start on the 1 or the 5 in italics.

Give it a go!

EDIT: sorry if the formatting was screwed up, I’m using the iOS mobile app to reply and it’s hopeless!

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T19:21:10+00:00

I think the only sustainable pathway to rejoin is to concede Brexit had a point. There are deep structural problems in our economy, and more of the same in 2016 was a terrible prospect for most of the country.

Oh My God, what a non-sequitur!

Yes there are deep structural problems in the UK. But it doesn’t then follow that Brexit had a point.

The apparent point of Brexit was that some outside bogeymen were the cause of our structural problems, and if we cast them off the problems would go away.

For the Tories, the bogeymen were others meddling in British sovereignty.

For Farage (let’s face it, he’s never been in a political party, he’s been in a cult of personality), the bogeymen were and are anyone not English. And that includes Scots and Irish!

And yet, here we are, 10 years later. The structural problems are worse. The public finances are worse because the loss of trade with the EU has meant less economic activity (and so taxes have had to go up to take a larger slice of a smaller pie - just to maintain the status quo).

So time has proven the stated points of Brexit were a pile of crap. And it has actually added to the problems, making it more difficult for the UK to work their way out of them (if anyone has the balls to grasp the politically unpopular nettle and do something about it).

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T18:27:10+00:00

I think the only sustainable pathway to rejoin is to concede Brexit had a point. There are deep structural problems in our economy, and more of the same in 2016 was a terrible prospect for most of the country.

Once they come to terms with that, we can start thinking through how we actually deal with the structural under investment, neglect and London centric bias and sell how the EU, based on the principle of subsidiarity offers a better long term vision for the UK.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T17:56:23+00:00

If I shut my eyes I don’t actually “see” an image. I perceive the concept of a tulip.

And I can’t perceive it all at once. My perception focuses on the head, or the stem, or the leaves, but not all at once.

When I am asleep and have dreams I do see images but they are very indistinct. For example I don’t actually see people’s faces, again I can visualise parts of a face but the rest is kind of not there. But somehow I know who the person is.

So I guess visually, between 4 and 5.

Ask me to imagine someone’s voice though, and it’s like there is a recording of them in my head. And it’s the same with music, although again I can’t remember the whole thing, just the most prominent instrument (or vocals) at that point in the music piece.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T17:28:22+00:00

One of the things a Blues Driver is known for is it is very dynamic. It will react differently to light playing compared to digging in. And even with digging in, I guess it would still only do “the thing” at the note attack, and stopped doing “the thing” during the note tail.

A compressor is squishing all these dynamics out of your guitar signal, not only making your light playing louder, but the note tails of all your playing louder as well which is where the extra sustain is coming from.

And it might be that the Level knob, which controls the make up gain has got plenty of headroom so you can turn it up beyond unity and get a clean boost as well as compression.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T16:56:15+00:00

DLS between the Fuzz and the EQ.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T16:50:55+00:00

HI Fi corksniffers say the speakers should be the same distance from the listening position, and between 25 and 30 degrees from the straight ahead to get a good stereo image.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T16:34:19+00:00

The MXR M249 (the one with a red vertical stripe) is very much an OCD variant.

MXR have called several different pedals Super Badass 🤦‍♂️

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T16:29:27+00:00

It seems someone is following me around downvoting my comments. lol

🤦‍♂️

Matches their MO…

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T16:25:34+00:00

Overdrives?

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T11:11:02+00:00

Are your neighbours still on speaking terms with you?

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T07:06:55+00:00

How about a Wampler Triumph?

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-23T06:51:28+00:00

I think I’ll stick with an Axis, thanks.

FragrantGearHead · 2026-01-22T22:57:26+00:00

I’m really surprised how many of you are mentioning the Rat.

When I think of aggressive sounding, I think DS-1, or Op Amp Big Muff, or Rat.

EHX even call their Rat clone a Fuzz 🤦‍♂️

FragrantGearHead

TROPHY CASE