Thinning the hoard
This has been a year of change for me, some of which has included just getting rid of stuff.
When it comes to hoarding, there were three things I was guilty of. Hoarding guitars, hoarding GPSes and hoarding wristwatches.
For watches, I had about 25 watches at my worst. It's down to 17 now, and the plan is to get that number down to under 10 before the year is out.
As for the GPSes, I currently have 6 of them, but did have more. Several have been sold. While technically true I have a legitimate reason to own each, the reality is that I only need 3. One for daily use which is the 51 LMT-S, one as a backup in case my daily fails, and one that operates on two AA batteries if the car charger port fails.
Where guitars are concerned, at worst I had 7. Now I have 3. One Schecter, one Fender, one Squier. The only reason I keep the Fender is because it was an 18th birthday present from my father, and the Squier because it was my very first electric guitar. Both the Fender and Squier don't work and need repair for whenever I get around to it. The Schecter is the only 100% working guitar, and that's all I need.
A hoard is a hoard even if it's small
You may be thinking, "Gee, what you consider a 'hoard' isn't really that much..."
True. The bulk of my watches are just cheap Casio pieces, and they all fit in a shoebox with room to spare. The GPSes barely take up any space. The guitars hardly take up any room either...
...but the practical side of my mind does not like owning things that have no sentimental value. Whenever I start to see stuff piling up and it's not getting used for its specific function, I then question why I even have them. If I can't think of a good answer, it gets sold, traded or thrown out.
Now let's talk about the Schecter
Yes, I still have it. Yes, I intend on keeping it. The Omen Extreme-6 has been serving very well as being my does-mostly-everything guitar. I say that because no one electric does it all, and to search for such a thing is a fool's errand. The closest you can get to is a guitar that does most of what you want, and in that respect, yes the Schecter totally works.
The Schecter has turned out to be the ultimate anti-hoarder's guitar. I totally didn't intend for that to happen, but it did and that's a very nice bonus.
Why is it such a good anti-hoarder guitar? Two main reasons, that being standard equipment and comfort.
From the factory, the guitar comes equipped with a mahogany body, maple neck with abalone inlays, 2-way adjustable truss rod, upper-mid-tier electronics, black chrome hardware and factory upgraded TUSQ XL nut. Everything on the guitar has proper fit and finish.
For comfort, the body is light. How light? Pretty much as light as a semi-hollow. The neck has satin urethane finishing, which I greatly prefer over high gloss. Very, very comfy guitar.
Very few electrics match what the Schecter delivers for its price point. Two that come very close are the Ibanez S521 and Yamaha Pacifica 311 - both of which are great guitars - but still don't give you as much bang for the buck as the Schecter does.
I also never find myself thinking, "Oh, I wish I had [insert-guitar-here], because then I could get the sound I want."
It is very nice to have a guitar where I don't feel I need other guitars just to get specific feel or tonal character. That combined with the fact of it having excellent from-factory hardware, feel and sound makes it the best anti-hoarder axe out there.
Again, I totally didn't intend for this to happen. I thought that I'd get this Schecter now, then pick up something else for what the Schecter couldn't do... but then discovered I don't have to. And that successfully keeps me from creating another guitar hoard. Very cool.
The other two Fender Vintera guitars that are almost winners
While these aren't as good as the Strats, they're still really good... except for just a few minor things.
I'm going to talk about two Telecasters from the new Fender Vintera series, that being the '70s Telecaster Custom in Fiesta Red, and the '70s Telecaster Thinline in Vintage Blonde.
Telecaster Custom
A Tele in Fiesta Red? Pure awesome. But what's not awesome are those skirted amp knobs and the bridge saddle color.
Yes, these are the only two things keeping the guitar from being a total winner. While I understand the knobs and saddles are period-correct, if the guitar had white knobs or knurled traditional Tele knobs, that would look better. And a little splash of gold color on the saddles also really would have worked well here.
Of course, you can do these mods yourself as it would be stupidly easy to do so. All you have to do is buy the parts. A Fender Pure Vintage Tele Brass saddle set is dirt cheap. Or if you want better intonation, the Gotoh compensated saddle set is also quite nice. For knobs, the Ernie Ball chrome plated set is inexpensive and look awesome. You have to buy two sets to get 4, but still, very nice.
Even though the mods are easy, my gripe is that you have to spend some cash after getting the guitar to make it look just right. Granted, the cash spent will be very small, but still, it's annoying you have to do that.
Telecaster Thinline
A Tele in Vintage Blonde? Again, pure awesome. This is a yellow with some transparency so you can see the wood grain through it. Very nice color.
My gripe with this one isn't the appearance. It's price and pickups. The guitar is over 4 figures to get it, the pickups don't have CuNiFe magnets in them, and I doubt the guitar has 1meg pots (probably 500K).
Currently there is no way to get CuNiFe magnet pickups new for a Thinline Tele. The last guy who was making them ceased production due to supply issues. Fender can't make them either, so don't ask.
What you get is the modern interpretation of the Wide Range Humbucker. Nice pickup, but it's not CuNiFe.
This means the extra cost is for the privilege of getting the semi-hollow ash body over the other Telecaster which has the alder solid body.
For me, this is a hard sell, especially for a Mexico build.
Granted, yes there are other Fender Mexico builds that bust over 4 figures. And I understand that the guitar is for all intents and purposes a '70s reissue with 3-bolt plate, bullet truss rod and all. But again, hard sell at over 4 figures.
The Custom is the better buy over the Thinline. Cooler color, less in price, and with some very cheap mods does make it into a winner.
One final note about the Custom. This is one of those instances where the pau ferro fretboard actually works to the guitar's advantage over rosewood. The board color better agrees with the Fiesta Red finish.
Fender Vintera Series has two winners
Fender just released the new Vintera Series. Of the 17 models you can get, two stand out above the rest...
...and they're both Strats.
This is the first time in a long while that I've been genuinely excited about a new series from Fender, even if it's for only 2 models out of the lineup.
Vintera is a new series that spreads across 3 decades, '50s, '60s and '70s.
The '50s lineup is meh. I've seen new-vintage '50s designs from Fender a million times.
The '60s lineup is also meh for the same reason as the '50s.
But the '70s... now we're getting somewhere. This is what I along with many other players have been waiting for.
And what was everyone waiting for? Two things. Cool colors and...
Bullet.. frickin'... truss.. rod.. cover.
Yes, Fender has been making this right along with the '70s Strat. But the Vintera series '70s Strats look way, way better.
Fender even brought back the Mocha finish.
I'd actually have a hard time picking between the sunburst and the mocha because both look great.
At the time I write this, the Sienna Sunburst and the Mocha are scheduled to ship in July.
Why do Vintera '70s Strats look so great?
Simple answer. These are the finishes Fender had in the '70s. The Mocha in particular is very-'70s. If you research actual vintage Fender Strats from that era, you'll see Mocha appear. And now, thankfully, you can get this one without having to buy the vintage.
Is the new one better than the real vintage? That's an absolute yes. The vintage has crappy wiring and crappy tuners. Vintera has great wiring and great tuners.
As you can tell, yes I'm digging these guitars a lot, at least for 2 of them. But they are 2 really great Strats.
One rule to choosing the right guitar tuner
There are many guitar tuners out there, but the better ones have one specific feature that comes in very handy.
Take the Korg GA-50. Very simple with a nice large display, very easy to operate and tunes by built-in microphone (for acoustic guitars) or direct input (for electric guitars). It can output sound itself for tuning by ear, and it has an output jack on its left. It even has a little pop-out stand on the back so you can prop it up when placed on a desk.
The GA50 is one of the best designed guitar tuners there is, no question about it.
There is however one thing about it that I really, really like. The dedicated "FLAT" button.
I mainly play in Eb these days, and the fact the GA-50 has a FLAT button is oh-so nice. It's right there, right in front. Just push a button and you got it.
Clip-on tuners can all tune flat, obviously. But there are two issues. First, the button to make it flat is almost always in the back. Second, the indicator for flat - if the tuner even has one - is tiny and almost unreadable, requiring you to crane you neck towards the headstock of your guitar just to see it.
On the GA-50, you get a button. An obvious button. On the front. And you know when the tuner is set to flat tuning.
The GA-50 may be a cheap little tuner, but it's the thoughtful design of it that really makes it awesome.
Oh, and one last thing to know about this tuner - when playing at home, you usually don't even have to plug your electric guitar in to tune with this. Just set your amp to clean at a lower volume, use the microphone on the GA-50 to listen for notes, and it tunes just as good as when using direct input... which actually makes it easier than using a clip-on tuner.
Using a Garmin StreetPilot i3 in 2019 and beyond
My first GPS was a Garmin StreetPilot i3. I bought it at launch date in August 2005 for $400. Yeah, I paid that much for it. I now own two more i-series StreetPilots, a somewhat beat-up i5 and the i3 seen above in really good condition.
I have updated it to 2020 maps:
Was I able to fit the entire USA into the i3? No, because it's not possible. And that's why I'm putting this page up.
I actually had to buy an old, lightly used 2GB SanDisk memory card just to get this thing to work. I found out the hard way you can't use a larger capacity card, force-format it to 2GB and expect it to work, because it won't. The card has to be the old style SD and not SDHC. You put in an SDHC card, even if it's just 4GB, and the i3 will not recognize it. Not possible.
The i3 only recognizes a maximum 2GB microSD formatted with the FAT16 file system.
This being the case, I squeezed in what I could on the memory card.
I live in the south, so I just cut out the middle northern states.
Is the i3 actually usable?
I only use dedicated GPS for driving, and for that purpose, yes it's usable.
But I'm well aware of the limitations.
Aside from the 2GB cap, there are 2 things to deal with.
First is the GPS antenna. The i3 doesn't have a SiRF chipset, so GPS acquisition is slow. And for cars with specially coated safety glass (like minivans and probably modern SUVs and crossovers), there's no way the i3 can get a signal in one of those cars. In other regular cars, the i3 gets a signal but it sometimes takes a minute or two.
Second is the fact there's no way to enter direct GPS coordinates into an i3. Addresses and named locations only.
Okay, actually that's not true. You can mark locations by coordinate by pressing and holding the wheel button to mark a favorite. But that's only when you're directly at the location you want to mark.
The only way to get coordinate-based locations into the i3 otherwise is by POI Loader or using the BaseCamp software. Kind of annoying to do it that way, but at least it's possible.
Why bother?
I mainly did it for nostalgic reasons since the i3 was my first dedicated GPS.
The only practical reason is that the i-series is the only GPS I know of that operates by two standard AA batteries. Everything else uses a proprietary battery.
The i3 I keep in the house, but I keep the i5 as an emergency GPS in the car. If the phone runs out of battery and the car charger port fails for whatever reason to where I can't charge the phone, I can grab the i5, pop in 2 batteries and I've got navigation back.
Granted, the likelihood of ever needing an AA-powered GPS is very remote. But if it ever did need it, I'd be glad to have it. It's still better than having to resort to paper maps - but I keep one of those in the car too.