the gif is 25 years old
The GIF (which I will always pronounce with a hard G, thank you very much), is 25 years old today.
I have seen animated GIF images since I first started using the internet in 1996. It was always there and have never known internet without it.
One would assume that a better image format would have appeared by now for short animations. Nope. The animated GIF, only limited to 256 colors and usually stays on the small side to keep the file size down, still reigns supreme.
Nobody uses GIFs for photos, and hardly anyone ever did. They're only used these days to make small animations with. The PNG format can in fact animate and display more than 256 colors (well more than that actually), but it never took off.
When someone gets an animated GIF just right, it's the funniest thing you've seen all day. It just takes capturing that right moment, or getting that right badly-drawn MS Paint thing going on and making a few frames, and you've got comic gold.
GIF for all intents and purposes is an internet-born thing. It's one of the very old throwbacks to late-1990s internetting that has still survived to this day because it's fun and easy for the most part.
The GIF is also very much a PC thing; it's best appreciated while on a laptop or a desktop computer because it's just not the same on a smartphone. Yes, those phones have animations all over the place, but they're done by corporations and not funny at all.
The thing about the GIF is that anyone who makes one will never see profit, never get popular (not in real life anyway) and it's done solely because it's there.
What you can take from that is that the best things on the internet are never profit-motivated and will work on any computer. This is why the GIF, IRC and forums (the free ones that is) survive. If it's free, fast and fun, it gets used and enjoyed. If not, it dies.
The stigma of an HH Strat
As most who read this are aware, I recently purchased a Squier Bullet HH. Technically it's not a Stratocaster or even a "Strat" because that name is stated nowhere on the guitar. However since it looks and feels almost identical to a Strat, people think it is and that's fine, so I'm calling it a Strat.
I got some minor backlash from the fact I own a Strat with an HH (humbucker-humbucker) pickup configuration in it now. There are some who believe that all Strats should be SSS (single-coil, single-coil, single-coil) only. I'm not one of those people. My belief is that you should play whatever type of guitar you want that gets the sound you want.
I bought the Bullet HH for two reasons.
First, I specifically wanted a Strat with the HH configuration or at bare minimum a humbucker in the bridge position, like an HSS. Why? Because there are certain rock sounds I wanted it for. Single-coils can do low and high frequencies very well, but lack a little in the midrange department. Humbuckers lack on the high end, have a decent low end and much more midrange. It's the midrange I specifically wanted, and the humbucker delivers very well there.
Second, the Strat body shape is my favorite. Not Telecaster. Not Les Paul. Strat. I am most comfortable playing with a true-to-tradition Strat body. For those of you who know my gear, yes I have a Schecter C-1 Classic with an HH setup, and while that guitar is Strat-like, it's just not the same. This isn't to say the C-1 is a bad guitar because it certainly isn't, but the body shape is "very Schecter", meaning not Fender-like at all. It might look similar to a Fender but feels totally different.
There were a few that thought I was abandoning single-coil Squier Strats altogether because of my HH purchase. Not true. I just wanted a humbucker-equipped Strat guitar in my setup, and now I have one.
I've said before that I believe all guitar players should own two guitars with the classic pickup configurations. One in SSS and the other in HH. Even if you get the exact same guitar (which I more or less did) and the only real difference is the pickup type and layout, each guitar will sound distinctively different from each other. Or even if you own two totally different guitars by different companies, that's fine too. Having both to get those different tones is just a cool thing, and that's why I did it.
fix for facebook pages that won't let you "unlike" them
Follow-up to yesterday's post.
I finally found out how to "unlike" those stupid pages that wouldn't let me before. It's because of what's known as redirect pages.
Confused? So was I until I figured it out.
How it's done is like this:
- Login to Facebook
- Go to your profile page
- Click the "likes" box which lists all your likes.
- Click on the page you can't get rid of.
- On that page, look directly under the name of it at top. If it says "Redirected from [whatever]", click that. It's probably the exact same name.
- When the next page loads, THAT'S THE ONE you unlike, and it's finally gone from your like list.
Facebook can be stupid sometimes.
But at least my 'like' list is now cleared like I wanted it to be in the first place.
Rich's big list of Squiers
I only own 3 Squier guitars. However in less than a year I've gone through 6 of them, chasing tone left and right until I finally ended up with what I have now.
It's becoming a common misconception that I still own a whole bunch of Squiers. I don't. Just 3.
Here's how it's all fared out from beginning to present (Note: this does not include any of my other guitars, just the Squiers)
#1: 1989 Squier II Stratocaster (Dakota Red)
Current status: I still own this guitar
My first guitar, bought new for $212 in 1990. I remember the price because the guy who sold it to us lied and said it was used just so my father would buy it. It was new.
#2: 2010 Squier Bullet Strat (Arctic White)
Current status: I still own this guitar
This is the one known as "Banana". My second Squier ever purchased and bought new in February 2011.
#3: 2001 Squier Stagemaster (Galactic Purple)
Current status: Traded
This was the time when I decided I wanted a humbucker guitar in my setup that was specifically made by Squier or Fender.
The day I bought this October 2011, I had intended on buying a Squier Bullet Strat HSS, but I saw this and thought it was cool, so I bought it. Purchase price was $110.
I got rid of it because I found out she had a 12-inch radius neck, which doesn't agree with my hands - although I did appreciate the HSS setup it had. It was a very nice and very well-built guitar. It was also the first I ever owned with a reverse headstock.
#4: 2012 Squier Cyclone (Lake Placid Blue)
Current status: Returned for defects
Once I found out the Stagemaster was a 12-inch radius (which answered why it didn't feel right to me when playing it), I sought out another Squier with a humbucker in it. The Cyclone was just released.
The Stagemaster was traded for this and it was ordered in the store since it wasn't in stock. When it arrived, there were paint defects, so I had to send it back. I never took it home, because when I found the defects in-store, I sent it back right there.
#5: 2012 Squier Cyclone (Lake Placid Blue)
Status: Returned for defects
The replacement Cyclone arrived, and it was even worse than the first one. Paint defects and neck dents.
Squier had just released the new 2012 Vintage Modified series, so I decided to go with one of those instead.
Like the first one, I sent this one back right there in-store.
#6: 2012 Squier Vintage Modified Stratocaster (Vintage Blonde)
Status: Returned for defects
This guitar was a huge pain in the ass to get because I was given the runaround for months until it finally arrived. I was very happy to get it when it did arrive - until I found a paint chip in front of the bridge. Sent it back.
Given the fact I waited months for this thing only to discover a paint chip, you have no idea how much that ticked me off. Were it an off-the-shelf thing, I would have dealt with it, but to wait months only to get something that wasn't perfect after already receiving two bad guitars beforehand, and well, you can imagine how ticked off I was.
#7: 2012 Squier Vintage Modified Surf Stratocaster (Sonic Blue)
Current status: Traded
I only took this guitar because it was all Guitar Center had in stock where I could have a tech personally inspect it for defects before taking it home.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with this guitar, build-wise. Paint was correct and all hardware was correct - but I hated the sound of the lipstick pickups. I simply couldn't use them for anything.
In an act of desperation, I took the pickup set and electronics out of my '93 USA Strat with the busted neck and put them in the Surf. It worked, but I still wasn't getting the sound I wanted out of it.
I decided to deal with this and make do, but then the bent steel vintage saddles really started ticking me off. You can only adjust those things so much, and I missed the level of adjustment I could get out of block saddles. It was at that point I said "screw it, this thing has got to go and I have to get a guitar that has all the specs I want".
#8: 2012 Squier Bullet HH FSR (2-Tone Sunburst)
Current status: I still own this guitar
And here we are at the Bullet HH I just bought.
I find it a bit ironic that I had to buy another Squier Bullet model just to get what I wanted in the first place.
This guitar was the exact same price as the Squier Bullet Strat I bought in 2011. It's an HH setup, looks great, plays great.
It did arrive with a volume knob that didn't work right. Took it to a shop and had it fixed for 10 bucks. Other than that, no defects.
The money I lost?
If I were to tally up all the costs involved getting to where I am now from Squier #3 to Squier #8, I lost about 75 bucks.
Why so little?
The trade from the Stagemaster to the Cyclone(s) was an even swap, and Guitar Center ate the cost on the VM and the VM Surf after that. When I traded the VM Surf in for the Bullet HH, I actually got credit for that since the Bullet was worth less new.
The cash I lost was basically in the gas it took to drive to Guitar Center so many times. And the 10 bucks I spent on the volume knob fix for the Bullet HH.
So in the end, it was the price of the original Stagemaster + gas spent driving all over the place + a 10-dollar cheap fix for a grand total of $185 to get to where I am now.
Now if I had bought each guitar individually with no trade-ins and no store credit, then oh yeah I would have spent a ton more. But I didn't.
It's easy to assume I blew through a ton of cash considering all the Squier guitars I've been through in less than a year, but the bulk of it was all returns and trade-ins.
Am I done buying Squiers?
For now, yes. I am so done it's not even funny anymore. I will only buy another if something drastically goes wrong (like a major hardware failure or one of the guitars breaks or whatever).
2012 Squier Bullet HH FSR demo and review
It's NGD (New Guitar Day) at the Menga stronghold. Gone is the Surf Strat and has been replaced with the Squier Bullet HH.
A few things out of the way up front.
It's probably true you've only seen this guitar in black, as in black body with black pick guard. There are in fact two other colors available, Candy Apple Red and 2-Tone Sunburst (pictured above).
The guitar is available just about anywhere.