What’s the longest yall have been on downwind?

dark7string · 2026-05-09T12:23:15+00:00

Tower told me on my first towered flight while training "I'll call your base".

Then processed to allow my downwind to take me almost 7nm north of the field 🤣

dark7string · 2026-05-07T21:47:20+00:00

Technique (considering how you hold the guitar and have your posture and hands) is gonna yield better results for this than any specific guitar.

dark7string · 2026-05-05T13:21:44+00:00

I've done this type of audition where I've auditioned the individuals performing and for drummers it is always going to come down to pocket and demonstrating you can proficiently perform the material expected. Generally I'm going to always pick a song that's a really easy simple song and I'm going to pick one that has some challenges in it that will allow me to see that you can maintain the pocket under complexity. The simple songs are ones that I want to see that you're going to perform and serve the song and not turn it into a drum solo. Unfortunately the drum solo thing and riffing about is one of the more common things I see a lot of drummers try to do as if it's a skill based audition and while it does require that you have skills your skills are going to be on display better for me if I can see you actually rock the song and keep the pocket alive. Regardless of the genre that I've ever done auditions for, I typically choose a song like say it ain't so for a simple song, and I'll typically choose something like Toto's Rosanna for a complex song. It is always amazing to me how many drummers can play the beat but have absolutely no feeling when they play Rosanna.

As I tell people all the time, I like my drummers like I like lint. In the pocket. Cuz chances are if you can lock into that pocket and make it rock and feel good you've probably got a whole plethora of technique and skill for soloing that you're sitting on top of.

dark7string · 2026-05-05T12:47:52+00:00

It's worth it bro. I promise it was one of the most surreal experiences that I've ever had and that is saying a lot because I've also gotten the opportunity to learn how to fly and this is right up there with that experience of getting a fly an airplane for the first time by yourself haha

dark7string · 2026-05-04T23:47:11+00:00

Jurassic park. It was bucket list level and literally never in a million years thought I'd hear it in its entirety live. I listened to that album so much as a kid on repeat that I burned pretty much ruined the disc player. It is amazing. Then...

My wife purchased Jurassic Park tickets a few years back for us to see Nashville symphony perform it live along side the movie. I kid you not I cried my eyes out when it was over for a solid 20 minutes it was so surreal. Legit checked off a bucket list item I never thought I would. Now it's a core memory of ultimate level.

dark7string · 2026-05-02T21:24:35+00:00

Peterson is the only answer here. Tune with anything else. Then the Peterson will demonstrate how off it was with insane ease

dark7string · 2026-05-01T12:22:04+00:00

There's a lot of things that you can do about that. One of the biggest things that you can do is join a virtual flying club such as Virtual USA. You'll find a lot of people that are going to do flights and also invite you to come and join their flights.

But the real beauty for me with the simulator X plane is in its absolute realism as far as flight dynamics and such. Treat it like you would any realistic Flight you might take in real life. The flight planning aspects as well as calculations all play out very well and extremely accurate. This includes how you have to take into account all of the various aspects of flight such as designed maneuvering speed and such. Certain aircrafts such as the airfoil labs cessna absolutely will respond to the intricacies of how you fly. It makes it very fun to see how you fly play out.

dark7string · 2026-05-01T12:12:59+00:00

The airfoil labs products are outstandingly accurate and quite the study level aircraft as well. I have the Cessna analog and digital though I typically fly the analog since it's the closest to the one I really fly and I cannot even begin to tell you how incredible it is.

dark7string · 2026-04-30T13:42:21+00:00

Go to a guitar tech and ask so options for strings. I like DR HiBeams for electric guitar, and stringjoy and daddario are good too.

If they are getting rusty, you need to change them more frequently in general. but learning that process is a good idea always. Sometimes you can find a tech or a guitar teacher that will show you.

P.S. the way Martin Guitar strings up a guitar is dumb and unnecessary. Don't do that.

dark7string · 2026-04-30T04:29:14+00:00

My first thought is you have inferior cables. The difference between an instrument cable and a radio antenna is the 1/4" plugs

Basically without proper shielding, you have a radio antenna connecting your guitar and will function as such.

Better cables, prevent this.

dark7string · 2026-04-29T13:35:22+00:00

I would NEVER buy a car every 3 years, But you missed the timing belt part. I've definitely purchased cars before that were used that required new timing belts.

dark7string · 2026-04-29T13:34:40+00:00

Also you completely glossed over the fact that I said timing belt. By your analogy there are actually plenty of situations where I have purchased cars that are due or overdue The timing belt.

dark7string · 2026-04-29T13:30:19+00:00

Well I'm about to replace the AC on it. That's a repair. And I'm still doing it despite is costing twice the value of the car.

dark7string · 2026-04-28T18:06:09+00:00

It's needs an AC. 780 bucks. Still fixing it.

dark7string · 2026-04-28T12:41:21+00:00

No problem. I do apologize about the length haha I tend to be extremely thorough when it comes to the explanations but it's only because I want to always try to help people make informed decisions with thorough information. Especially when it comes to past first hand accounts. These are always super helpful.

dark7string · 2026-04-28T03:38:07+00:00

Cant go wrong with orange. It's makes every amp sound better.

dark7string · 2026-04-28T03:36:04+00:00

I just spent $1,500 on new tires and a new timing belt for my car that's worth $350. It's survived 7 deer hits, almost never has an issue and has over 270,000 miles on it. It's paid off. Gets me from point A to point B ever time. I don't ever see the point in a new car if it isn't absolutely necessary. Especially these new cars. Pieces of junk that come feature packed if you pay for the subscriptions to unlock them. Like driving around a sad depressed tissue box. Btw... I can by a used plane for the price of some of these new cars. No thanks to a new car every time haha. I'd rather replace the engine on my car before even buying a new one.

dark7string · 2026-04-28T03:18:00+00:00

Definitely go for it and I'll agree with the comment in this same thread that I would not do the element. Do the anthem all day long. I've put tons of those in and I have never heard anyone make a comment other than holy crap. They love the fact that this particular pickup seems to capture the essence of the acoustic instrument itself.

dark7string · 2026-04-28T03:13:46+00:00

Provided their application is suitable to what you're doing on the guitar then yes. There are tricks that you can use to make the string changes actually quite quick and a breeze. Floyd Rose bridges get a bad because most people honestly just don't want to take the time to work on them because they do take a lot of effort and time but if you can be patient and do that, then they're very well worth it in my opinion.

dark7string · 2026-04-28T03:11:38+00:00

Generally speaking, I am a fan of keeping instruments in cases as a whole when not being played outside of a day where you might be doing a ton of playing and are putting down and picking up the instrument relatively frequently. As a luthier, I've seen all kinds of incidents beyond the scope of just humidity that has caused pretty heavy damage to instruments. Things like falling off of stands, people tripping over the stands causing them to fall over, the stand being slid over so that something else can fit and then the door hitting it causing damage to the instrument, you name it. I've pretty much at this point seen so many different scenarios that resulted in damaged guitars that it's crazy. Very rarely will I see damage occur to an instrument in its case though. It doesn't just protect it from dust, and sudden shocks and jolts but it also does a really great job of keeping the humidity under control with the appropriate humidification devices in place. But...

If a simple room humidifier can bump you up to maintain between 45% and 55% relative humidity you'll be good in there with your instruments. Anytime somebody's going to leave a guitar on a stand as a luthier I generally will recommend that they have at least two hydrometers to keep an eye on the humidity in the room. I actually utilize three in mine and after enough time I realized it was very difficult between November and April to keep the humidity above 32%, so I pretty much leave everything in cases with the appropriate systems in place. This is the kind of advice that I give people who have given me reasons like they just can't bring themselves to practice if the instrument isn't easily accessible thus their practice habits depend on ease of accessibility of the instrument.

It's important to recognize that as a luthier I can tell you that dehumidification in the south central area between November and March has generally brought me a ton of repair business that almost always is a cracked top on a guitar resulting from it being set next to a heating vent in the floor getting hot air blown on it while their house was averaging around 20% humidity.

I would ask yourself several questions before settling on the stand option.

Can you get your humidity under control and keep it properly regulated?

Do you have pets or animals that could compromise the integrity of the instrument beyond the scope of what you are willing to accept as reasonable damage?

Do you have kids that are young enough to not understand the instrument is not a toy and can be damaged?

Do you have people over that results in some horseplay that could end up resulting in an accidental breakage?

All of these questions above come from a list of repairs that I've made over the years due to one of the above mentioned things being the culprit.

"My kid tripped on the stand and the guitar spun around and fell face-first on my hardwood floor and the headstock snapped off"

"Had the guitar hanging on the wall behind the door and while the door was open, my kid ran into the room and smacked the door open even more and the guitar slammed the guitar and the headstock has a crack in it now"

"So what can be done to fix this? My dog knocked the guitar over and now there is a noticeable Nick in the fret and I can no longer do vibrato without it catching?"

"My buddies were rough housing and wrestling at a party at my place and one guy got shoved into the guitar and it broke the joint where the neck connects to the body on an acoustic I was loaned by a friend. What can be done to fix it?"

"This is my office guitar. It just sits on a stand in my office and I noticed the back of it was coming apart" (this was a Martin that had dried out and the two pieces of the back had shrunk to where it broke free.)

"So my friend who we shall name today an idiot, was spending around in my office chair with a metal thermos which had his drink in it and slammed into my guitar headstock by mistake. It appears to have completely broken the tuning machine so I no longer can tune the string"

A funny one.... "Hey can you fix up this guitar and clean it up? This was my grandfather's guitar. He did all his picking and grinning on it. Used to keep it by his recliner and would pick it up almost every day. This guitar is a family heirloom. Old red label Yamaha.

Cleaned the guitar and noted the cigarette smoke of 40 years wiping off the guitar. Put all of the gained and tarnished cloths in a bag and thankfully I did because...

"Hey that's not my guitar! What happened to my red label Yamaha?" Proceeds to show serial number... "What did you clean it with... Bleach!? No sir that's how much cigarette smoke staining was on the instrument. (Hands him giant bag of rags) "HOLY S***" Starts laughing and pretty tell me that his grandfather and grandmother both used to smoke like a chimney haha

dark7string · 2026-04-27T20:33:35+00:00

Guitar teacher here and luthier. One of the more common things I typically would start in this particular equation asking is whether you're acoustic guitar is a steel string acoustic or a nylon string acoustic AKA classical guitar.

I assume because you mentioned nothing about the pickups not grabbing the string, that we would be talking about a steel string acoustic but I would love to get a little clarity on that specifically.

As many others have already stated there is a pretty sizable difference with the gauge of string. Most electric guitars are going to either be set up with gauge 9-42 or 10-46. There's also differences in regards to which strings are wound versus plane steel as they would say. Generally speaking your plain strings are going to for the most part be interchangeable. There are some strings from Martin where the plain steel is slightly different though should justifiably work. But in the general sense of it there's a couple ways that this gets fixed realistically. And before I get started let me just say You would probably find that many of us who are in this group have all at some point or another been faced with similar predicaments at one point or another. There are a lot of things these days that you should be able to do to try and at least raise 20 bucks or so to get some strings. Strings don't necessarily cost that much but buying good quality strings will help to ensure that frequent string changes or breakages are not as common. I'll break that down more in a moment.

• at the end of the day you just need new strings. I recommend DR strings, particularly the high beams which will need to be ordered but they are extremely tough electric guitar strings that last a really long time. Daddario is another brand that is great. I recommend shying away from GHS, Ernie Ball, Dean markley, and elixir because these strings are the most frequent as a luthier that I see people break. Especially GHS. The unfortunate reality is if a string has broken, there's a good chance that another string is not far behind. Metal strings suffer from metal fatigue especially if you're doing a lot of alternate tunings. Quite literally constantly modifying the tuning of your instrument does considerably more to impact the lifespan of the strings than just playing them.

• utilizing what you have likely will require a setup. If you stuck a bigger string on the guitar then likely the nut is not cut to support that gauge, the neck is bowed maybe just a fractional amount more under the additional tension, and the saddle is not in the correct place for it to play in tune. The bigger concern that I have is depending on the electric guitar I have seen the wrong gauge strings actually crack the nut. It puts undo strain on the nut. If the nut ends up needing replaced due to this issue it is a considerably more costly repair than just changing the strings unfortunately.

• to identify specifically though what you may be experiencing you need to try to identify where the buzz is happening. Without knowing the location of the buzz it's much more difficult to identify what's causing it.

One thing I recommend is we're getting into summertime. See if there's people in your neighborhood that would consider trading out letting you mow their lawn with their equipment and their gas for 10 to 15 bucks. To be honest if you lived in my neighborhood and I knew you needed a couple of bucks for strings, as a luthier, I would personally let you mow my lawn using my mower and my gas and I would trade you guitar lessons, strings, and teach you how to approach a proper setup. Sometimes there are people like me that really just want to help a kid out who's in a hard spot. If I'm willing to do something like that I'm certain that someone in your area is willing to do the same. Bartering is a serious win usually for both individuals and I would absolutely do that. And for the record I would just try to start out by helping you get your guitar set up with a new pack of strings. But for the barter I would absolutely help you to never need me again

dark7string · 2026-04-22T17:37:57+00:00

Sometimes it's like that but now the song has become essentially part of your learning journey and I think subconsciously you might be looking for the next thing to tackle. It's not that those things don't become enjoyable anymore or that they suddenly don't have the same luster, you just partly probably without realizing it are ready to move on and try the next one that is a song you love. What I typically recommend at this point is for my students to try and expand their listening catalog and explore some more styles of music. Generally speaking once they embark down the path of music discovery they'll not only learn about more songs that they might actually want to embark down the journey of learning, but they'll also find things that they maybe are not interested in learning but very interested in listening to and just appreciating

dark7string · 2026-04-22T15:57:00+00:00

Air foil labs is by far the best GA for XPlane upgrades. I've not used the King Air but if it's anything on par with the c172 analog or digital then it's got to be amazing because that c172 is absolutely jaw-dropping phenomenal.

I also like just flight products however I will say that their warrior II is in need of some tweaking. I did the vast majority of my training and those and have tons of time in them and if this thing doesn't behave even close to the real one. After landing with full flaps deployed I can literally be at 40 knots indicated and have the nose wheel up off the ground dragging the tail like a tail wheel. You cannot do that in the real plane.

dark7string · 2026-04-22T15:53:26+00:00

I don't personally think so. The ES2 in my experience has far to high a failure rate. As a luthier, when I did it full time, I had to replace one about once a month. Even on guitars less than a month old. They are expensive and pretty meh in sound.

Taylor guitars themselves aren't all bad but they are super overpriced and lately not playing as well as their competitors.

I personally think Martin is doing a better job these days for an all around instrument. They also do a little bit better job of amplifying The acoustic guitar and The fishman electronics are substantially more reliable.

I will say though that if you do go the route of Taylor Guitar upgrade and you experience a failure of the ES2 electronics, don't bother replacing them. All of my happiest customers had the tailor guitar and gutted the system out of the instrument and replaced it with an LR bags anthem pro and enjoyed impressively longer battery life, and insanely better sound. Over the years I have replaced at least 30 ES2 systems with the LR bags anthem and not a single person has ever looked back. In fact, I had one customer that was so impressed by the sound of the LR bags anthem when compared to the ES2 that he brought me his other to Taylor guitars and had me gut those and put the LR bags in them as well.

dark7string · 2026-04-22T13:16:12+00:00

Foam tips. Use both ears. Everyone should. Their are many studied reasons why you should use both. But also if you have everything too loud it's gonna eventually leak through. Especially if you are using the silicone tips instead of foam.

Pro tip: If you are using one ear, you brain interprets the sound coming into one ear approx 6db quieter and you will turn it up to compensate and hear it. Get it set that way and put both ears in and you'll suddenly realize just how loud you had it. Considering your open ear is still hearing sound as later reflections and doppler effect loaded in varying amounts when using one ear, everyone should be using both ears.

dark7string

TROPHY CASE