We made a trip to two stores I had never been to becuase they are on the other side of the city…and it’s a pain in the but to get there!  here are some shots from the Long & McQuade stores in Oshawa and Pickering Ontario, just East of Toronto:

1. Ibanez makes some pretty fierce looking basses!
2. April showers.  No wait…it’s June!  WTF?!?
3. Third guitar from the right on the bottom of the rack is an Epiphone Nighthawk.  $410 brand new…what a value.  I had one but sold it when I got my Gibson Nighthawk in New York last year.
4. Lefty American Standard…every time I see a lefty Strat I think about how much fun it would be to buy it and flip it over for a “reverse Jimi Hendrix Experience”!  ;)
5. Another cool-looking Ibanez bass.
6. Haha…believe it or not this is NOT a Hofner!  It’s an Epiphone!
7. Limited edition 50th anniversary Marshall 1 watt amplifier.  This is the 80s or 90s tribute model…I have one of the 60s tribute models and I love it.  Pricey but great!
8. I like Larrivees in General, but I go absolutely apesh*t when I see one of their “P” (as in “parlour”) models.  This one is a P-05 - the first one I have seen in a glossy finish (which I like better than the usual “satin”, but it was about $300 more than the last non-glossy P-05 I saw.

So I have never really liked the action on my upside down lefty American Standard Strat.  But the saddles were almost as low as they could go…and and the neck had virtually no relief, but STILL the action was too high.  

And then I remembered something I read on the M&M Guitar Bar blog (if you don’t already follow them, I highly recommend you do…they are experts in the guitar field and have taught me a TON of stuff!) about shimming the neck pocket which tilts the neck back ever so slightly to improve the string height.   So I thought I would give it a try!

Long story short: it worked VERY well!  The action is now extremely low…I might even have to raise the saddles slightly!

Oh also: only AFTER I took of the neck did I remember that most, if not all Strats since the 70s have a little screw you can access through the neck plate which pushes up on the back of the neck - basically doing the same thing as a shim but with no need to remove the neck!  This was called the “Micro-Tilt” system and it was one of the last things Leo Fender designed before leaving the company.  I can never remember the name “Micro-Tilt” though.  I always call it the “Tilt-A-Whirl”…

I was at the 12th Fret in Toronto yesterday and saw these two late 50s Jazzmasters.  

• Left: 1958 Jazzmaster, paint stripped:  $3,000.
• Right: 1959 Jazzmaster, original sunburst finish: $6,000

So: 50% of the value got “stripped off” along with the paint!  

This is a good practical lesson on why you should NEVER refinish your guitar!  :D

2010 Gibson Custom 1960 Les Paul Special Doublecut + and older gentleman (a farmer presumably!) who I got stuck behind for about an hour on the Raglan Road northeast of Toronto!  He about 90 years old…but was driving at 50% of the posted speed limit!  See, I would have thought if you only had a limited time left in your life, you’d want to drive as FAST as you possible could…but apparently not.  ;)

Bargain alert!

I was at the Long & McQuade store in Burlington (near Toronto) yesterday, and I saw this interesting 1991 Fender Strat Plus.  Lace pickups, roller nut, and some nice natural wear and tear.  The neck has a nice tint - it looks like it has naturally darkened over time (rather than it being artificially tinted at the factory).  This guitar has definitely been played for a living but doesn’t look like it has been abused.

Best part of all?  The price.  $699!  What a deal.  700 clams would be a good price on a used American Standard, let alone a 22 year old premium model like this one.  I should have bought it…damn…but I need another Strat like I need a hole in the head, what with the ten other Strats I have lying around the house!  Damn this compulsion to collect!  :\

This is my Gibson Limited Edition TV Yellow ‘61 Reissue SG.  It was part of a limited edition of 100 made for Long & McQuade Canada.  

In photo #2 you can also see my cherished glass cupcake - it’s just to the right of the Epiphone Casino (behind and to the right of the SG)!  It came from this really cool artists’ collective called Williams Mill near Toronto.

The other shots are some scenic views from the village of Niagara-On-The-Lake Ontario from earlier this month.

The blurry shot was taken from the car as we were driving through the vineyards and orchards of Niagara.  I’m not sure what the purple flowering plants are…I don’t think they are grapes, but they seem too purple to be cherries…I guess it will always remain a mystery…  

The “tree” photo was taken out in back of the Shaw Festival Theater in Niagara-On-The-Lake.  We were there to see a production of Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan” and we were wandering out back during intermission.  But I didn’t take this photo for the tree itself…  Do you see something in the field, way back in the distance just to the right of the tree’s trunk?  Yes…exactly…it’s some guy!  He’s just out there in the field!  By himself!   And he doesn’t look like a farmer to me…  We were out there for about 15 minutes, and he didn’t move at all during that time.  WEIRD!

Fender American Vintage Reissue ‘62 Custom Telecaster FSR in Sherwood Green.  Such a lovely, and unusual, colour!

You know when a Martin guitar is this fancy, it’s gonna cost you!  

The model code on the Long and McQuade price tag (see photo #4) is always fun to interpret.  The model number, on top, is “GPCPA1” and the abbreviation below tells me it’s a Performing Artist Series (“P. Artist”), Grand Performance (“GP”), with Adirondack spruce (“a-dirndak”) and Madagascar Rosewood (“Mad RW”), with cutaway (“W/Cut”).  

Interestingly, I looked up the GPCPA1 on the Martin site and it is a discontinued model.  http://www.martinguitar.com/guitar-care/care-guide/inactive-models/item/929-gpcpa1-madagascar-rosewood.html?Itemid=6

Here is an experiment I did this evening with a single shot of my Gibson Custom ES-330, where I have applied different Photoshop* effects to it. I call the series “Ten Gibsons”!

Toronto, Canada, May 7, 2012.

*By “Photoshop” I of course mean “Picasa”, which, aside from being free, is also about a technically complex as I am capable of getting.  By which I of course mean “not very technically complex at all”…  :D

The odds and ends leftover from Tuesday Guitar Shopping on April 17.  Nothing too amazing here, but man would I love to get myself one of those Custom Shop Historic SG VOS reissues… problem is I already have 4 SGs (3 of them in Cherry!) and the Historic Reissues tend to START at $3,000!

The first and last shots are from my last road trip and were taken along Highway 401, the main highway between Detroit, Toronto, and Montreal.

Toronto, Canada, April 18, 2012. 

The French poet Jean de la Fontaine (1621- 1695) once said “Rien ne pèse tant qu’un secret”, which means “Nothing weighs more than a secret”.

I can’t help but think that if de la Fontaine were alive today, and a guitar player, he might have said “Rien ne pèse tant qu’un Les Paul”!  :D

Here are some shots of my 9.5 pound “Traditional” Gold Top!

Toronto, Canada, April 16, 2012.

I love the new Tele so much.  2007 Fender American Vintage Reissue 62 Telecaster FSR, Sherwood Green Thin Skin.

Toronto, Canada, April 1, 2012.

Some amps on sale at Long & McQuade Mississauga, Feb 2012.  I love that little Marshall!  Probably the only way I will ever have a Marshall “stack”!  :D

Saturday night guitar maintenance begins this evening with restringing and checking the intonation on my 2010 Fender Custom Shop ‘63 Stratocaster Relic!  

I use Rotosound “Yellows” (10’s) on all my Strats and Telecasters (I use 11’s on my Casino, my ES-330 and my Les Paul Special.  I use 12’s on my Rickenbacker 325!). 

I used to try and change strings at least once per month on all my guitars…which may sound like a lot, but when I was gigging full time I would change them every 2 to 3 days!  Of course I ONLY had 2 guitars back then…  

Anyhoo…like I said, I used to try and restring each guitar once a month, but as I collected more and more, I found that I don’t need to.  When you have a few guitars and use them all the time, the strings die fast…when you have more than 2 dozen, you can’t possibly play all of them enough that the strings require changing every month. So nowadays, they get changed every 2 to 3 months!  :D

Toronto, Canada, January 28th, 2012.