A Gretsch experience

Last Sunday was a real treat for me because I played a Gretsch electric guitar for the praise and worship set at church. It was lent to me by a friend who wanted to hear it being played by someone else; he’s in a retro band and plays regularly with his Gretsch, but he had never heard it from a distance. Of course I agreed, and what an experience it was!

I don’t know when he bought the Gretsch and for how much, but when I saw it I could guess that it was worth several thousand dollars (multiply by 51 to get the peso value). It was, he said, a “Vegas” model, although when I later tried to find it in the internet I couldn’t find it, not even in the Gretsch website itself.

It was a red solidbody guitar, with a mahogany body and neck and rosewood fretboard. Its most distinctive feature was the fretboad markers: instead of dots or blocks or strips, it used images of dice in keeping with the Vegas theme (a three on the third fret, a two and a three on the fifth, etc.). It was very heavy, but when I strapped it on it felt very balanced, very comfortable. The strings on it were medium electrics with the third string wound, so it was pretty heavy. But the neck on it was so incredibly silky smooth that the heavy gauge was not a problem.

Unplugged, the Gretsch gave out a refreshing shimmer when strummed or plucked; it was “alive,” and I could tell right off that it was going to sound great plugged. At church I plugged it into a Peavey amp and as I had anticipated it gave a full bodied sound that had an acoustic-guitar ring to it. With the silky-smooth neck and incredibly rich sound, the Gretsch Vegas was quite possibly the best guitar I had ever played.

It’s just too bad that I don’t have a picture to prove that I actually played it. My wife took some great shots, but our digital camera suddenly went bonkers on us and wouldn’t be recognized by our home computer, and I inadvertently reformatted the SD card without realizing that the photos of me playing the Gretsch were in it. And as I said before, a search on the internet for any info or photo of the Gretsch Vegas proved futile, so I’ll have to ask the owner to take some pics of it so you’d know what it looks like.

Suffice it to say that my Gretsch experience was totally awesome (to quote my five-year-old nephew Miggy who lives in Michigan) and that I really did fall in love with it. Too bad I had to give it back, but at least I have the assurance I can borrow it again. Can’t wait!

Blog down!

Last Friday JamBayan became suddenly and inexplicably inaccessible. When I logged on to it I found this message staring at me: 403 Forbidden: You have no permission to access this site on this server. I rebooted my computer to make sure it wasn’t just a glitch, but the error persisted. I began to panic when even the other computers in the Mirror office couldn’t access my blog, and so I texted my wife to check if she could log on using our home computer. After an agonizing few minutes she confirmed the worst: JamBayan was down.

I was concerned because other blogs on Blogger were up, and I began to be really worried when I read on the Inquirer website that the blog of the anti-Arroyo group Black and White Movement was also down – with the same error message appearing when one tries to access it. This was in the aftermath of the arrest of former Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman as she and some colleagues went “strolling” down the baywalk area in Manila wearing anti-GMA black shirts.

Understandably, the inq7.net report implied that the blog’s inaccessibility was linked to Soliman’s arrest, and for a while I began to think that perhaps JamBayan had been brought down for similar reasons. Now as you know, JamBayan is as non-political as it gets: it focuses on guitars and music, and while I may rant and rave every once in a while (especially at how expensive music gear are), the heart of the blog remains the same. With the B&W’s blog down, however, I suspected that perhaps some government agent decided to bring down blogs written by journalists as well – just to make sure.

But just as I was beginning to feel self-important (well, important enough to merit some censorship), JamBayan decided to show up. And about the same time, the B&W blog also became accessible. Now I don’t know if the blogs were indeed pulled out and if government relented when it was reported that some anti-government blogs (and mine, which is not anti-GMA even if its writer is) became inaccessible, but in cases like this I find that it’s prudent to use the simplest explanation: Blogspot (which is owed by Google) suffered a glitch. Which may explain why the inq7.net report on the B&W blog has itself been inexplicably missing from the inq7.net archives.

Dream come true

Every guitar player’s dream is to walk into an old house and find, hidden somewhere in the attic or basement, an old but valuable guitar. The owner, who would be an old but charming lady, would be completely clueless as to the value of the guitar, it having been left behind by her dear husband who died years ago. “That old thing!” she would say. “My husband used to play it every night instead of talking to me. I always hated it! You can have it if you want.”

That dream just became a reality to me, although it’s not an old house I walked into but the shop of a guitar builder here in Davao City. And it’s not a little old lady who owns it but Jingo Rosales, luthier and musician who does most of the repair work on guitars here. And he’s not giving it to me: it’ll be an exchange deal for something I have that he can use.

I first saw it last year lying in one corner of the shop, covered with dust, ignored by people who probably were unaware that an old piece of wood like that would be worth anything. It had no hardware – no tuning keys, bridge, pickups, tone controls – but its shape caught my eye: it was double horned archtop, with two f-holes, very thin, and very old by the looks of it. I cleaned it with a rag and saw in its headstock that it was a Hofner, but I was dismayed because a portion of the back had already become unglued. Jingo, however, assured me it was easy to repair; besides, the rest of the guitar was solid and could be restored.

When I got back home I logged on to the Hofner website and found that the model it most closely resembled was the Verythin Standard. There were significant differences, however: the Verythin Standard has a tune-o-matic bridge similar to a Les Paul’s, whereas the guitar I found did not have the holes necessary to install such a bridge system (which meant it sported a tailpiece). The fretboard markers were also different: the guitar in Jingo’s shop had pearl inlays laid out in strips, whereas the Verythin Standard had more modern-looking dots.

I thus surmised that the guitar I found was the original model, produced (according to the website) in 1960, so I searched for it in the net. After some misses I finally found a site that showed what the original model looked like. It turns out that the original was called Verithin (with an “i” instead of a “y”), and it has since been updated by Hofner to a more modern look that is more appealing to new players (mainly by losing the archtop style metal tailpiece in favor of the tune-o-matic style). But the original model is lovely in its own right (just take a look at the photo at the beginning of this entry), and for someone like me who has always dreamed of owning a vintage guitar but could never afford one, it was indeed a dream come true to find one that’s within my means.

Jingo and I will work on the Verithin over the next few months. A friend of mine is bringing in some good tuners and a proper archtop bridge from the US, but Jingo will fashion a tailpiece out of rosewood (which I think will look better than metal). We’ll also put in regular humbuckers until I can afford to get better ones. The frets are a little worn so I will probably have it refretted, and I will probably strip off its red paint, sand it, and just stain it for a natural look.

I am excited about this project, and I will keep you posted on our progress until we finally complete the guitar. If we do it right, the Verithin will probably become my main guitar.

More tricks

A computer worm at the office network and a hardware malfunction at home forced me offline for the better part of a week, which explains why I haven’t updated this blog in quite a while. But things are back to normal now, so here’s my continuation of the previous entry, in which I had said I would share with you a few techniques that are part of my “signature” sound, the sounds that I am known for. Let me say that these are in no way original creations of mine, but since only a few guitarists use them, I’ve made them my sound.

• Volume swell. Simply put, a volume swell takes away the initial “attack” or the sound of the finger or pick striking the string/s, leaving a sound that’s akin to a violin or flute. It’s easy to do on a Strat because there is only one volume control and it’s close to the strings: wrap your little finger on the knob, turn it all the way down, strike a string (or more), then turn the knob up. It takes some practice to do this, but it’s really very simple once you get the hang of it. It’s not as easy to do on other models like the Les Paul, and it is impossible on acoustic-electric guitars that have the volume control on the side. For these, a volume pedal (pictured at right) is necessary: simply turn off the volume, strike a string, then pedal up. It’s especially satisfying with the acoustic guitar because it’s such a foreign sound to the instrument and listeners really don’t know what to make of it.
• Harmonic slap. I learned this from Phil Keaggy (well, not personally; I saw it in his DVD). Again it’s simple but it takes practice to perfect: just slap the strings with one finger of your right hand (the strongest one, which is not necessarily the forefinger) about 12 frets (that is, one octave) from the chord you are currently fretting. You’ll get harmonics (a chimy, bell-like sound that’s one octave higher) of the whole chord, plus a percussive rap. You can try slapping over other frets (especially the 5th and the 7th) until you get a harmonic, and I find that it actually differs from guitar to guitar. Electric guitars will naturally give out the most harmonics, and they tend to be more complex. Acoustic guitars, however, can still give great harmonics.
• Note-for-note harmonics. I already mentioned harmonics in the previous blog entry, but I also said it is such a rich sound that it will take another entry to explain it. In the last entry we just discussed the plain harmonics that can be coaxed out of the 12th (the strongest ones), 5th and 7th frets, but these give only a limited number of notes. In actuality you can get harmonics from any note, and you do this by damping a string exactly 12 frets higher from any note with the forefinger of your strumming hand and then striking the string with another finger in the same hand (I use my pinky; Philip Tarroja, who showed me this technique but would not teach it to me, uses his ring finger; Phil Keaggy uses his thumb). It’s a little tricky to master this since you need to look at where you are placing your right hand, leaving your left hand to itself. A little mastery of the fretboard is thus essential.