Why aren't Rickenbacker guitars more popular?
George Harrison's 1962 Rickenbacker 425 just sold for $657,000. George was in a band called The Beatles. You might have heard of them.
Can you buy a new 425? No. Rickenbacker currently does not make one as far as I know. And to be honest, I'm surprised they don't, because it's normally par for the course that any guitar company that has any famous model will produce some modern version of it whether it's a signature model or not. Rickenbacker has chosen not to do that with the 425 for whatever strange reason.
Rickenbacker is a weird guitar company, and they make weird guitars.
Why is the company weird?
Rickenbacker is in the position to make huge money based on the fact so many famous guitar players and bands have used their instruments over the decades. And yet, Ric does not capitalize on this nearly as much as they should. They could easily do so without losing an ounce of integrity, but don't.
Ric is also in a damned good position to release exclusive-run models for particular guitar store chains, such as models sold in Guitar Center only. But Ric doesn't do that either.
If you look at the Rickenbacker web site, it's a joke. The site looks like something that was programmed back in the early 2000s and was never updated. In fact, on first view you would think the company is defunct, but it isn't.
Basically put, Rickenbacker does not act like the storied, very-influential guitar company that's been in business since 1931. Instead, they choose to act like some ragtag outfit that's 20 years behind the times and can barely make ends meet. And I wouldn't be surprised if that's not too far from the truth.
The fact I can buy a Schecter Stargazer right now and not see a Rickenbacker model right next to it when I search online for the guitar is pathetic. When I search "Rickenbacker", the Schecter is the guitar that shows up. I should not see Schecter first when searching Rickenbacker on Amazon, but yet I do. That's bad. For Rickenbacker, that is.
And yeah, Rickenbacker, that means Schecter is getting sales you would otherwise be getting.
My message to Rickenbacker would be this: You are one of the most influential electric guitar brands that has ever existed. GET ON THE BALL AND ACT LIKE IT.
Why are Ric guitars weird?
On the rare occasion you do see a Ric in a guitar store, it will most likely be a 300 series. Probably a 360 model.
What makes the guitar weird you've got this semi-acoustic thing with 24 frets on a 24.75-inch scale set-neck that starts at 1.63-inch at the nut and ends at 1.93-inch at the heel, with 10-inch fingerboard radius. But if that weren't weird enough, it can output in mono or stereo.
For those interested, yes there is a 3-pickup model, the 370. Personally, I'd take a 360 because I wouldn't have much use for the middle pickup on a Ric.
Have I ever seen a Ric in person? Yes, I have seen a few at guitar stores in Tampa. And if I remember correctly, they were either 360 or 370 models. I think the price was somewhere between $1,200 to $1,500, but don't remember the price exactly because I wasn't paying much attention to it really. Why priced so high? Rics are all US-built as far as I know.
What makes a Ric weird if specifically talking about the 360/370 is the following:
24 frets. On a 24.75-inch scale. In stereo. On a semi-acoustic. Let that sit in your mind for a moment think if that's actually useful to you or not.
Your answer is "probably not", but still, a Ric can be useful.
What is a Ric good for?
Rics do have a tone all their own that you can recognize just by hearing it; they are amazingly good strumming guitars. Big, bold-sounding chords in concert with the trebly goodness of the single-coil pickups.
The 12-string version of just about any Ric electric is "that sound" of hippie-era 1960s music. For example, if you were trying to get the sound of the guitar in The Byrds Turn! Turn! Turn!, get a Ric 12-string and you've got it. Instantly.
Similarly, you'll quickly realize there's a ton of '60s music you'll all of a sudden have "the sound" for with a Ric 6-string, specifically on the bridge position.
For me, I prefer vintage '60s Fender over Rickenbacker tone. However, I don't deny for a second that Ric tone was a huge part of popular 1960s music.
Could Ric tone be used for modern music?
Yes, but there's a problem. Ric guitars are hard to come by; that's Rickenbacker's fault 100%. Because of that, Rics aren't seen by younger players, so they never buy them since they were never exposed to the brand.
I'm not saying Ric needs to ramp up production, say to hell with build quality and start flying out guitars left and right.
What I am saying is that Ric really needs a good swift kick in the ass as far as their brand presence is concerned.
Here's a small example: Rickenbacker could work a deal with Guitar Center to have a factory special run, and have nice big posters put in selected GC stores so customers could really see that GC has Rics for sale. What would be on the posters? Total nostalgia. 1960s stuff. Huge hippie-style vibe.
Yes, it would work. I'm sure of it. I'd even use the tagline "Nothing sounds like a Ric!"
I could put together a campaign that would have Rics flying out of GC stores.
Would this get the attention of younger players? Damned right it would. There would be teen players begging their parents to buy them a Ric instead of a car, and many would get them.
Squier pretty much proved this was a totally possible, totally doable, totally profitable thing.
While I know Squier is the lower-cost brand for Fender, keep this in mind: With really not much promo, when Squier Jaguars and Jazzmasters came on the scene in 2012, they flew out of the stores and fast. In a sea of Strats, Teles and Les Pauls, whammo, there was something different and cool. Jazzes and Jags. The 60's came back with a vengeance. And it worked. Players bought those guitars in droves, as did I.
Rickenbacker has the cool '60s vibe thing going for them. Big time. Anything '60s is known to be a good seller, and Ric is not taking advantage of that. They should.
Gattaca movie review
Gattaca is a movie I only watched because there are certain sci-fi movie nerds who say this flick is one of the best ever made.
Is it? Well, here's my take. And yes it was my first time watching it.
First I'll talk about the one thing that dates this movie. Computer keyboards. This may sound like a huge nitpick, but it's not because there are more than a few times when a computer keyboard is in fact a rather important plot device of the storyline to keep it moving along.
The moment I saw the keyboards used, which were of course using full-height keys, I thought to myself, "Yep. Dated." In 1997 when the film was released, yeah, they were modern. But it's 17 years later they are absolutely not and stick out like a sore thumb.
I could totally tell the film tried so hard to conceal anything in it that would make it appear dated later. That attempt was successful, except for the damned keyboards.
Aside from that, Gattaca is about as perfect as it gets. The flow of the storyline is just right. It is easy to follow along while at the same time being a complicated-in-a-good-way plot. The cinematography is top notch stuff. The CGI used, amazingly, does not look dated, even today.
My favorite character is Jerome. As in real Jerome. However, just about everyone in the movie did a stellar job. My only real complaint is with the Detective Hugo character. Out of all characters in the movie he just seemed to come out of left field with his whole crusty gumshoe thing and... it just didn't seem to fit. It worked, yes. But didn't exactly fit.
Is the Gattaca story one that could become real?
No. The film says that it can, but I don't buy it for a second because I can't ever see genetic engineering going that well.
In the back of my mind, all I can see is bureaucratic crapola getting in the way of the human engineering seen in the movie from ever becoming possible.
I'll put it another way. It is much more likely the engineering seen in The Manchurian Candidate would become real first well before the future depicted in Gattaca. And heck, if you want to get really accurate about it, I'd see the dystopic future of American cities depicted in The Running Man happening first before anything else (I suggest watching that, and don't be surprised when you come to the frightening realization that we're really, really close to that happening in certain cities in America).
Is Gattaca good?
Yes, damned good. I really was interested in knowing how the story would unfold, and the ending, while bittersweet, was satisfying.
One of the best films ever? I can't say that it is. Definitely above-average, true enough. But not in the class of The Shawshank Redemption as far as cinematic masterpieces are concerned, as there are very few films as good as that one. Believe me, there are reasons why that flick scores a 9+ on IMDb consistently while Gattaca doesn't (although it should be noted it does routinely get high 7's).
In the end, yes, Gattaca is above-average good. It's classified as sci-fi, but I seriously dig the fact the movie mainly concentrates on a really good story that purposely puts the sci-fi stuff as a back seat. Stories are what move films along and not tech. Gattaca's story moves along very well. I liked it.
Deep Purple sound on a Casio SA-46 kid's keyboard
A few months back I bought a Casio SA-46, for the reason I wanted a small, dirt simple synth with some cool sounds in it. My reason for getting it originally was because of one sound, a square wave like you'd hear on those old synths of the 1970s. But of course it has organ sounds in it, too. What multi-sound synth wouldn't?
Something like one or two weeks ago I fed the SA-46 through the ZOOM R8's distortion patch. Good, but I couldn't do much with adjusting how much distortion via the keyboard's volume slider.
This time around I tried plugging it direct into my DigiTech GSP 1101, amp simulator on, cabinet simulator on, etc. All of that stuff - meant for guitar, mind you - on.
Me likey. :)
While it was a little "whiny" on the top end, yeah I got a decent Deep Purple sound. I added in some hall reverb for that Made In Japan album sound.
Accurate? I can best answer that with "as well as can be expected", meaning I wasn't expecting a perfect Jon Lord sound from a cheap keyboard. Combine that with the fact I'm limited to just 32 mini-sized keys (you can see me struggle with that in the video) made it a bit of a challenge. But I made it work.
"You play keyboards?"
I've been playing keyboards ever since I was 6. Way longer than I've been playing guitar, which I didn't start on until I was 15.
Quick info on why I don't do keys very often
Modern synth workstations for the most part suck. Very few make synths with keys that feel right, fewer make workstations with interfaces that actually make sense, and even fewer can operate on their own successfully without being connected to a computer...
...which is part of the reason I decided to buy an SA-46. It connects to nothing. No memory card slot, no MIDI. It doesn't even have stereo sound. When you play one, you are forced to deal with it as-is, so you have to come up with ways on your own outside of the synth to make it sound better.
Things keyboard players don't want to hear
The Jon Lord "beast" tone is nothing but a straight Hammond B-3 organ signal into a Marshall guitar amp. That's it. No magic involved. No special whiz-bang crapola involved. You take the raw signal, wire it to a guitar amp (preferably with a Celestion speaker), juice it up, and that's it. After that, it's all in the fingers...
...which is where most keyboard players fail and fail hard.
A lot of synth guys fall into the same trap guitar guys do, where they think if one throws enough money at technology, they will magically get that Deep Purple Jon Lord tone.
Wrong.
Synths have been able to accurately recreate Hammond organ tone since the 1990s. Digital technology made that possible. Everything after that is all just useless bells and whistles.
Yeah, that does mean you can take an Ensoniq SQ-1 or Korg M1 or Yamaha SY99 from the 1990s, run it through a Marshall or just about any other guitar amp, and ta-da, "beast" tone with a plain ol' digital organ patch.
It also means you could get a new Casio CTK-2300 (it has full-size keys) and do the same thing.
When you want Jon Lord beast tone, you have to think like a guitar player. An electric guitar on its own sounds like crap. Plug it into an amp and add a few effects, and it sounds great. With distorted organ tone, same frickin' thing. It's not rocket science.
After tone is achieved, it's about expression
Give a crappy guitar player a brand new, perfectly-set-up Gibson Les Paul USA Standard, and guess what you end up with? A crappy guitar player with an expensive guitar that still sounds like a crappy guitar player.
Give a crappy keyboard player a brand new Roland Jupiter-80 (which by the way is one amazing badass synth), and he'll still be a crappy keyboard player with an expensive synth that sounds like a crappy keyboard player.
It's very common to see keyboard guys dump many thousands of dollars into synth gear. I did the same back in the 90s. My Ensoniq SQ-1 Plus was three grand when new. Yes, really. I know what it means to spend big money on expensive gear, so it's not like I haven't done it. The last big purchase I made was for the Alesis Fusion 6HD, which I still have. That cost me a cool grand. It has a nice big ol' layer of dust on it now from being unused and sitting in a corner.
No matter what big money is spent, it means nothing without the ability to express yourself on the keys. If you tighten up when you play, can't get loose and can't express notes with fluidity, no amount of money spent on gear will fix that. Not now and not ever.
I can express notes even on a dinky little Casio SA-46 run through an amp simulator, and pull off one seriously big, in-your-face sound...
...and so can you. If you play keys, it's not about the tech and hasn't been for a very long time. It's about the expression. You learn that, and you'll find you can get "beast" tone out of just about any synth, even with one that has little mini-keys on it that runs off 6 AA batteries.
Why I don't like PRS guitars
There are certain guitar companies out there who have very little concerning a guitar I'd actually want to own, and PRS is one of them.
One of the very few models PRS offers I'd consider owning is the S2 Mira in Tobacco sunburst with dot inlays on the neck.
Is there a "bird" inlay version? Yes, unfortunately. Why unfortunately? Because PRS overuses bird inlays and they're just not cool anymore.
The Mira is one the very few PRS designs that does not look like a bad copy of something else, nor does it look generic. Mira has some good flavor to it. It's not overdone nor underdone and strikes that just-right balance to it. I think it's good even though the blade selector looks like a tacked-on afterthought (it should've been a toggle).
But I wouldn't buy one. Why? That leads me to my first point.
Everything PRS makes is too expensive for what it is
The cheapest non-signature model is the SE 245, which is nothing more than a boring, different-looking Les Paul.
If I wanted a Les Paul copy, I'd buy an Agile AL. That guitar is under $250, has better colors and full binding on the body and neck. And even if I put $200 worth of upgrades into it, it's still cheaper than the SE 245.
To concentrate on a different model with a Floyd tremolo system on it, there's the SE Custom 24, which is over $700. Also, just so you know, if you buy one without the Floyd, it's still over $700. That's not exactly a good deal.
Why would anyone bother with that nonsense when the Jackson SLX Soloist X can be had for $100 less is beyond me. Heck, you could even go under $400 new with a Dean Custom 380 Floyd. Or if that's not your thing, with Schecter you can stay just under the $450 mark and still get your Floyd-Rose system.
My point is that there are many guitars under the PRS price point where you get way more for your money.
And for anyone that says "you get what you pay for", do you really with PRS? I don't think so. Not with SE models, anyway.
PRS guitars have no distinctive tone to them?
Two terms describe PRS tone better than anything else. Either the guitar is voiced flat, meaning as if an EQ was set dead middle (all sliders flat, which is where the term comes from), or voiced "vintage", similar to the Seymour Duncan Vintage Blues humbucker set.
Flat does not mean "bad", but rather generic. Many guitars are voiced that way in an attempt to appeal to the widest amount of players possible. The problem by doing that however is that you end up with a guitar that has no tonal personality to it whatsoever, as in you end up with something sounding generic and boring.
"Vintage" is a very overused term to describe guitar tone, but it basically means a lower-output pickup with higher treble, higher midrange and less bass response.
I've never heard any recording of a guitar in my life where I thought, "Yep, that's definitely a PRS."
Many PRS guitars are borderline kitschy in the way they look
Take a Paul Reed Smith P22 model. Color options include Lemonburst, Grayburst, Charcoal, Whale Blue, Orange Tiger and several others.
Almost none of the finish options fit the guitar correctly. A lot of "almost there" colors, but not quite, because the finishes were purposely made to look expensive. To achieve that look, PRS went all stripey, put the stupid birds on the fingerboard (of course), stuck a dark headstock on the end, did not color match the back and then called it a day.
When guitar companies do that "try to look expensive" thing, you end up with kitsch. If you don't know what that word means, it means questionable aesthetic value.
What PRS does with certain guitar models of theirs is ride the fine line between looking totally awesome and totally stupid.
The Mira is one of the few instances where PRS didn't go stupid, and instead created a functional, well-designed, elegant guitar - even if it is overpriced.
The P22 on the other hand is where things get real stupid; the guitar panders to those who feel that if something looks expensive, it must be good. As any guitar player worth his salt knows, that's rarely the case.
My best way of describing the P22 is PRS "pulling a Gibson", where they concentrated more on appears-to-be-exotic crapola rather than just making a proper guitar that doesn't look like ugly furniture.
And no, not all P22 finishes are kitschy. The three that aren't stupid are Antique White, Black and Gold Top. But of course, those colors are the most difficult to come by.
The burst finishes look like a cheesy zoo brochure, again with the whole "pulling a Gibson" shtick.
What finish would make the P22 really pop, so to speak? A non-striped, non-flame, no-quilt 2-color sunburst, as in the same 2TSB finish that's on the '56 American Vintage Strat reissue. The P22 would take to that finish very well and make it look like the high-end instrument it's supposed to be.
PRS does know how to do a burst correct when they don't do all that flamey/stripey/quilty crapola.
Is PRS dead weight?
Some believe the brand is past its prime as the go-to guitar that players want.
The largest indicator I'm seeing that PRS doesn't have much of an impact on players anymore is from the lack of YouTube videos on them.
Oh sure, you'll find videos aplenty of stores selling the guitar with their demo videos. But how many player videos are you seeing with PRS these days? Not many. You'll see tons of player videos with Fender, Squier, Gibson, Epiphone, Jackson, Schecter and so on... but PRS? Not really.
For the PRS player videos I do see, most are older PRS models and not newer ones, because those are the only ones players can actually afford.
What really strikes me as odd is that PRS is a brand sold in Guitar Center. According to the GC web site, there are 136 different kinds of solid-body PRS guitars being sold there right now. I can assume from that the brand is selling, but YouTube tells a different story because I am simply not seeing player videos there anywhere near as much as other brands.
Player videos on YouTube, as in guitar playing videos by regular people, will tell you real fast whether people are buying a certain brand or not. PRS doesn't exactly make a good showing.
Dirt cheap clip-on lapel microphone
In a few days I'll be receiving two dirt cheap lapel microphones; the total cost for both is 5 bucks. The price lists for $0.01 + $4.99 shipping. 5 bucks. Yes, there is a listing where you can buy just 1 instead of 2, but it's not even worth it because the cost comes to almost 4 bucks, so for 1 extra buck you get 2. It's smarter to do that anyway just to have a backup if the first one fails.
Why am I mentioning this? Because I'm considering starting back up the vlog again. That, and my laptop does have a microphone port on it, so I can use the 3.5mm plug.
A periodic complaint, or rather insult, I would receive in YouTube comments for the vlogs is that wearing a headset in a video was stupid. The insult didn't say "stupid" but rather other colorful words. I figured if I'm going to give the vlog a go again, I might as well use a lapel microphone so it's one less thing YouTube commenter idiots will complain about.
Just about every commenter who complained about the headset was some dopey gamer who wears a headset w/microphone themselves when gaming. Irony at its finest. Whaaaaatever.
I got a couple of cheap mics on the way. Hopefully they'll work out. I'm not expecting awesome sound quality. But I'm quite certain it will be far better than my laptop's internal microphone, which is absolutely awful.