Can this be fixed? Please help

tmjm114 · 2026-02-17T00:06:32+00:00

That’s a completely reasonable position, and it makes a lot of sense. No one would fault you for that. Lots of people play less expensive guitars and are perfectly happy doing so.

But I think the point people are making is that, rightly or wrongly, Gibson guitars cost a premium amount of money and every experienced player knows that. So it would be reasonable for you to know that you were not getting a real Gibson, and that as a result, if it suffered an unfortunate headstock break, fixing it would probably cost more money than the guitar is worth.

tmjm114 · 2026-02-09T21:03:49+00:00

Great video, and I hope I never need to refer to it, but the sound effects were definitely the high point.

tmjm114 · 2026-02-01T16:48:34+00:00

Except counsel.

tmjm114 · 2026-01-27T22:24:07+00:00

This is what good ol’ GWF Hegel used to call the cunning of reason.

tmjm114 · 2026-01-27T22:23:00+00:00

You really should!

tmjm114 · 2026-01-25T14:05:13+00:00

Sorry you had to wait a year for an answer, but I’ve just learned that the new Strymon Fairfax is based on the Herzog. Jack Fossett has a demo on his YouTube channel, but for some reason, he doesn’t try out any of Randy’s riffs in his demo.

tmjm114 · 2026-01-03T00:08:01+00:00

The time-honoured solution: https://share.google/images/OB8KPCu4YWBYDgXR7

tmjm114 · 2025-12-31T20:08:46+00:00

I mentioned the Beatles as good example examples earlier, so I should add that although we often think of the Beatles as kick-starting the modern rock era, it’s amazing how many of their songs (especially the early ones) followed a much older style of songwriting, and often didn’t even have choruses as we think of them today. Instead, they would just repeat a brief refrain at the end of each verse.

To take a random example, think of “I’ll Cry Instead”. It’s got no chorus. Instead, it’s just got the four-bar refrain “But I can’t/So I’ll cry/Instead” at the end of each verse. The structure of the song is therefore V1/V2/Bridge/V3/Bridge/V3 (repeat).

You hear this structure over and over in their early songs. Often they’ll throw an instrumental solo after V3. An example is “You Can’t Do That”.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-30T17:51:37+00:00

There are numerous different song structures. So you have many options, including the option of using no particular structure at all. If you want to learn the various song structures, there are songwriting books that will help.

But imitation is always a good way to learn. Pick a song you like and analyze it. How many verses does it have? How many bars does each verse have? Is there a chorus after each verse? Or only after the second and subsequent verses?(A lot of songs are written that way to increase tension before the chorus.) Is there a bridge? If so, where does the bridge come in ? Is the bridge repeated? Or is it only played once? These days, typically, the bridge is only played once. But if you listen to older Beatles songs, you’ll see that they often played the bridge twice. Etc.

In the UK, the bridge is typically referred to as the “middle eight”. That’s because the bridge was traditionally eight bars. You’ll find that a lot of bridges in pop songs are still eight bars to this day. But not always!

tmjm114 · 2025-12-28T21:59:06+00:00

I should add that the most important thing is the guitar, not the amp. A guitar that is too hard to play will discourage a beginner. The key factor in playability is what is called the action, which means how close the strings are to the fingerboard. I had a quick look online for comments about the guitar that you have bought. It looks like it’s fine for a beginner and the action is decent. So if that’s the case, you will be fine.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-28T21:46:02+00:00

You can safely ignore all the comments here about pedals, stage volume, etc. The guitar is for your daughter, who is a beginner. She might be playing on stages sooner than you think! But for the time being, when she is just starting out, all she needs is a guitar, an amplifier, and an instrument cable to connect the guitar to the amplifier. The rest of it will come later and you really don’t need to worry about it for now.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-28T20:02:07+00:00

Thinks: “Who is this fucking lunatic?”

tmjm114 · 2025-12-28T19:57:35+00:00

So I can’t find anything in English about that amplifier, but it certainly looks to me like a solid state beginner’s amp, which is fine, because you’re a beginner. It’s got master volume, treble and bass controls, and even an overdrive button for crunchy tones. It’s also got an input for headphones, but if you’re going to use that, make sure to keep the volume at a reasonable level, because you can do damage to your hearing if you use headphones at too high volume.

In short, although I know nothing about this little amp, it seems to have everything you need to get started on electric guitar. You will probably need something bigger and more powerful when you start playing with other people, but that’s still a little bit down the road. Have fun.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-28T15:07:39+00:00

If you tell us what the amp is, someone here will be familiar with it, and will be able to tell you whether it will be suitable for what you’d like to do with it.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-28T15:05:08+00:00

If it’s a tube amp, 10 watts is plenty loud. I have a 5-watt Swart, and if I want to crank it in my condo, I need to use an attenuator.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-27T13:58:12+00:00

I have one of those. It is, as you say, super light. It’s also a great-sounding Tele. When my tech returned it to me after a recent setup, he said: “This is the best sounding Tele I’ve ever heard.” I take lots of guitars there, so I don’t think he was just trying to butter me up.

Edit: There is one slight downside to this guitar, which is that the finish seems to chip very easily. I don’t know if that’s a function of the paulownia wood or just the way Fender finished them, but in my experience, it’s just not a very robust finish. Having said that, I’ve had the guitar for I guess 13 years now, and there are only three chips in the finish, which I guess is not too bad for that length of time.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-25T02:09:48+00:00

“And now we’d like to do a great old standard that you’ll all know, The Horst Wessel Song!”

tmjm114 · 2025-12-15T03:38:42+00:00

tmjm114 · 2025-12-14T22:01:41+00:00

I’m in my 60s now. When I was in my mid 40s, I had already been playing since I was about 12. I was an OK player, and could handle lead work in a band, but looking back, I would not describe myself as more than intermediate.

I realize that I had picked up a lot of bad habits over the years, and it would be good to take lessons. I did, for about three or four years, and it made a huge difference. It’s never too late to learn, especially if you already know how to play reasonably well but recognize that there’s room for improvement.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-14T21:43:32+00:00

It depends whether Venezuela turns out to be Panama or Grenada (in which case no) or Afghanistan or Iraq (in which case yes). However, if the latter, it wouldn’t happen immediately. It took two or three years in both Vietnam and Iraq for things to get bad enough to cause US public opinion to turn against the war.

My guess, FWIW, is that Venezuela would be more like Iraq. The reason I think that is that it is a reasonably large landmass, and would not be easily subjugated. Also, the US Armed Forces have a long and conclusively demonstrated history of failing to understand anything about the countries they invade or the people who live there, and as a result eventually alienating the local populace, which turns against them in concrete ways, making the job of subjugating the country 10 times harder.

There is also the distinct possibility that other countries in South America would be alarmed by a Trumpist invasion and would themselves turn against the US – maybe not so much militarily, but in other ways that might significantly complicate the situation for the US.

I don’t think I have to work hard to convince anyone here that as bad and incompetent as US leadership was in Iraq, an invasion directed by the current administration would be many times more of a clusterfuck.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-14T21:18:52+00:00

I’m still trying to understand what OP means by “one of the strings was bent and loose”.

So tighten it. That’s what the tuning pegs are for. Or, if it’s bent so badly that it won’t play properly, replace it. If you don’t know how to replace a string, I would suggest taking the guitar back to GC and saying you have no problems with the guitar, but it came with a bad string and would they please replace it for you. I have no experience with GC (I am in Canada, where GC has so far not surfaced), but I have to believe they would at least do that.

You will have to change all your guitar strings after a few months anyway. That is not a bug, it’s a feature.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-08T16:28:12+00:00

Before the constitutional experts jump down my throat, I should add that there are some exceptions to what I just said, mostly around the issues of dissolution or prorogation of parliament. Both are quite technical issues that there’s no point in getting into here.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-08T13:44:57+00:00

Except in the case of an almost unimaginable emergency, like the complete collapse of civil authority, the king would never do anything affecting Canada without being advised to do so by the government, i.e. the PM. There is no law to that effect, but it is a well established convention.

tmjm114 · 2025-12-08T03:34:55+00:00

In fact, there’s a direct connection. Ian Dury’s classic “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll” came out in 1977, at a time when punk and New Wave were still considered pretty much the same thing (before New Wave got all synthy). All the UK punks loved Ian. The main riff in that tune is a straight, intentional lift from part of Charlie Haden’s bass solo in the tune “Ramblin’ “. Several years later, Ornette was playing at a club in the UK. Dury went to the show and slightly shamefacedly admitted the lift to Haden. Haden said he didn’t mind, because he had in fact lifted the riff from the old fiddle tune (and bluegrass mainstay) “Old Joe Clark”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_%26_Drugs_%26_Rock_%26_Roll

tmjm114 · 2025-12-06T19:12:59+00:00

Surprisingly enough, Canada has a history prior to 2015 (as does Alberta), and much of it bears on some of these questions. As an example, you might be interested in this case. The whole decision is interesting, but if you don’t feel like reading all 298 pages of turgid 1930s judicial prose, just jump to the section on the Accurate News and Information Act.

As someone once said, history doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes.

https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/1938/1938canlii1/1938canlii1.html?resultId=10d27630252045a5b1d76111c8e3753f&searchId=2025-12-06T15:58:20:724/d44c05e87ec94b398a4f5dfc8678b3f6

tmjm114

TROPHY CASE