Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Discussion of newer designs, copies and reissue offset-waist instruments.
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sal paradise
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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by sal paradise » Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:35 pm

johnnysomersett wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:34 pm
sal paradise wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:30 pm
Just for reference, AFI might be my favourite band of all time… :D

But that might explain it - the Beatles at their best are super melodic. AFI at their heaviest were/are still really melodic. Same as Thrice. I guess I’m just a sellout, so you’re ok
I LOVE super melodic, yet chaotic and fast punk rock (as well as the more viseral stuff) and every single one of my pals don't understand my dislike of AFI. Hell, even I don't understand it!
I think you need to go back & listen to Black Sails again today.
I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion?

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by JSett » Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:38 pm

sal paradise wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:35 pm
johnnysomersett wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:34 pm
sal paradise wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:30 pm
Just for reference, AFI might be my favourite band of all time… :D

But that might explain it - the Beatles at their best are super melodic. AFI at their heaviest were/are still really melodic. Same as Thrice. I guess I’m just a sellout, so you’re ok
I LOVE super melodic, yet chaotic and fast punk rock (as well as the more viseral stuff) and every single one of my pals don't understand my dislike of AFI. Hell, even I don't understand it!
I think you need to go back & listen to Black Sails again today.
My wife listens to it frequently. I'm okay.

I know me and you have a lot of crossover of musical tastes. AFI and the Beatles are not in the intersecting part of the venn diagram though, it would appear :D
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sal paradise
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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by sal paradise » Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:44 pm

johnnysomersett wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:38 pm
sal paradise wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:35 pm
johnnysomersett wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:34 pm


I LOVE super melodic, yet chaotic and fast punk rock (as well as the more viseral stuff) and every single one of my pals don't understand my dislike of AFI. Hell, even I don't understand it!
I think you need to go back & listen to Black Sails again today.
My wife listens to it frequently. I'm okay.

I know me and you have a lot of crossover of musical tastes. AFI and the Beatles are not in the intersecting part of the venn diagram though, it would appear :D
Ok, I’ll let you off because your wife has the correct taste :P

It is quite funny, how bands like Kinks, Beach Boys & The Stones- it’s sometimes hard to recommend a specific album by any of those to anyone who’s not a serious music fan. (If we’re talking Beach Boys- Today! onwards)

With the Beatles, there are 3 or 4 albums off the bat that you could probably get someone to listen to no problem. A bit like the 1st Mama’s & Papa’s album.
I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion?

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by andy_tchp » Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:56 pm

johnnysomersett wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:24 pm
Hahahah. Beatles fans get very annoyed when someone expresses a dislike for them...moreso than any other group in history I've found. Very protective. Especially if you mention Lennon's propensity for hitting women :whistle:

*ducks for cover*

They have a few well-written songs, sure, I just don't like their sound. Sometimes a band should, on paper, be something you love but - for some unknown or intangible reason - can't 'click' with you.
True. Also a non-fan. I think it's mostly the vocals I can't get past but the music itself doesn't resonate with me at all either.
"I don't know why we asked him to join the band 'cause the rest of us don't like country music all that much; we just like Graham Lee."
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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Tue Aug 30, 2022 12:55 am

Ironically, The Beatles seem(ed) like quite a minimalist bunch in the grand scheme of things. If you look at the guitars George Harrison used as a solo artist, it appears the vast majority were ones he obtained as a Beatle, many of which (like his Ric 360/12 and Rosewood Tele) were freebies. Same goes for Paul McCartney who's still playing his Hofner bass and Casino in concert. Lennon's trademark 'shortarm' Rickenbacker was used on his last recordings (I think), though by that time he'd also adopted one of those horrible Rail guitars.

I think those of us hoarding way more guitars than we actually need, possibly for the tone pallette we're going to need to produce that magnum opus we never quite get round to producing, could learn a thing or two from these guys, who undeniably set the benchmark for popular rock/pop music....at least as far as the tools you need goes.

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by sal paradise » Tue Aug 30, 2022 1:49 am

UlricvonCatalyst wrote:
Tue Aug 30, 2022 12:55 am

I think those of us hoarding way more guitars than we actually need, possibly for the tone pallette we're going to need to produce that magnum opus we never quite get round to producing, could learn a thing or two from these guys, who undeniably set the benchmark for popular rock/pop music....at least as far as the tools you need goes.
It got mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread I think- those people who only used one guitar live still probably have/had hundreds.

Harrison & Clapton definitely had loads of guitars, especially considering how many they gave away.

Harrison used loads of guitars really- like the silver series squier on tour.
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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Tue Aug 30, 2022 2:38 am

sal paradise wrote:
Tue Aug 30, 2022 1:49 am
UlricvonCatalyst wrote:
Tue Aug 30, 2022 12:55 am

I think those of us hoarding way more guitars than we actually need, possibly for the tone pallette we're going to need to produce that magnum opus we never quite get round to producing, could learn a thing or two from these guys, who undeniably set the benchmark for popular rock/pop music....at least as far as the tools you need goes.
It got mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread I think- those people who only used one guitar live still probably have/had hundreds.

Harrison & Clapton definitely had loads of guitars, especially considering how many they gave away.

Harrison used loads of guitars really- like the silver series squier on tour.
Yeah, I realise most professionals have many guitars that don't always appear under the spotlights, but many of those could probably be filed under 'just passing through'. Clapton famously tended to stick with one guitar for whatever his new project was*, at least in his early years (though maybe not on all the recording sessions for those projects). I guess the (Harrison) guitars I was thinking of were from his core collection.

The over-arching point I was making was that if even the most popular, best-selling band ever could survive with a relatively modest cache of instruments, what's your excuse???**



*To save the pedants time, I realise he switched from the SG to a 335, possibly via others, with Cream.

** That's the plural 'you', not 'you, Sal Paradise'.

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by Nevets » Tue Aug 30, 2022 10:46 am

I've been going the opposite direction in the last few months. There are some cool guitars out there I want to try. Not a lot, but a few and most are inexpensive (e.g. Squier paranormal series). I have the money, the space and the time so why not? Life is short. I look at all of my collection as only temporary anyway. Someday they'll all get moved along to a happy buyer. Save one or two that will follow me to the nursing home maybe.

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by ainm » Tue Aug 30, 2022 11:43 am

johnnysomersett wrote:
Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:09 am
Having less often forces creativity. Sometimes the way out of a creative rut isn't to buy something new, it's selling the 'crutches' and learning how to wrangle new sounds out of stuff you already have.
I play ancient/medieval lyres. The most strings I have on one is 9 - most have 6 or 7. Lyres are all open strings so I definitely have to get creative, especially on the 9-string because it's a beast of a barbitos with a hide resonator and takes forever to tune/stablise. It doesn't matter how creative I get, there's a ceiling beyond which it's impossible or highly inconvenient to change the fundamentals of that instrument.

It's way easier to change the musical range and sympathetic resonances of an electric guitar, but the most fundamental parts of the instrument - the pickups - can also be limiting and can't be swapped on a whim. Is it more miminal to spend a lot of time with a soldering iron in hand or to pick up a different guitar that someone else prepared earlier?

I love the Nirvana and I can dial in pretty much any of their tones on a HH Jag, but let's take Teen Spirit as an example. If you've a keen ear, you'll be frustrated trying to nail that tone on a Jag. I learned it's a 25.5 inch tone and to pick up my Strat when I fancied committing one of the ultimate guitar playing sins. Later on I discovered that it was recorded on a HB Strat and mostly played live on a Strat too. To cover the tones from one band, I need two guitars. I like more than one band and have my own tones to cover too.

You can survive on one guitar if your goal is to play some tunes. If you consider tone an interesting dimension of your musicality, you can definitely expand things by broadening your technique. It's no different from a playing a lyre, though - there's a ceiling to the tonal range of any one instrument and sometimes you need a new instrument to realise the sound you hear in your head. Electric guitars are complex instruments, but they're not universally complex from one guitar to the next.

Who hasn't picked up a different electric guitar and instantly wrote something new and good? IMO, that's because there's something inside the player that the other guitar wasn't allowing to develop. Not because it was a bad guitar - a lot of the time the new guitar is objectively worse - but because it was a different instrument.

Buy all the guitars 🤣🤣🤣

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by JSett » Thu Sep 08, 2022 9:29 am

9 months after starting this thread, I'm still failing

Image
Silly Rabbit, don't you know scooped mids are for kids?

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by fuzzjunkie » Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:05 am

johnnysomersett wrote:
Thu Sep 08, 2022 9:29 am
9 months after starting this thread, I'm still failing

Image
Practice minimalism viscerally through other people’s gear. I look at pedal boards and gear posts and rarely think “I want all of that, it’s perfect!”

The more guitars or the bigger the board, usually the fewer the items I would want for myself. 16 pedals on a board, erm, maybe 2-3 of them I would pick. (Zhivago is the exception, I approve of 90-100% of his gear choices)

So, for your example; just based on looks and category of the item and not whether it’s a superior example, I would pick the Inca Jazzmaster, the Coronado, the Jag Bass to cover my likes, and probably the acoustic over the lapsteel, even though I rarely play one it would be nice to have around. The rest can go.

Viola! I pared your hoard down to four guitars!

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by JSett » Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:23 am

fuzzjunkie wrote:
Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:05 am

Practice minimalism viscerally through other people’s gear. I look at pedal boards and gear posts and rarely think “I want all of that, it’s perfect!”

The more guitars or the bigger the board, usually the fewer the items I would want for myself. 16 pedals on a board, erm, maybe 2-3 of them I would pick. (Zhivago is the exception, I approve of 90-100% of his gear choices)

So, for your example; just based on looks and category of the item and not whether it’s a superior example, I would pick the Inca Jazzmaster, the Coronado, the Jag Bass to cover my likes, and probably the acoustic over the lapsteel, even though I rarely play one it would be nice to have around. The rest can go.

Viola! I pared your hoard down to four guitars!
My boards are super minimalist these days, I've done well with those. Out of those guitars I could lose, without too much regret, the Mustang, Danelectro and lapsteel as none of those see much use. The Uke is just for fun really and doesn't count IMHO.

I keep on/off'ing with selling the Mustang.
Silly Rabbit, don't you know scooped mids are for kids?

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by javier-san » Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:26 am

johnnysomersett wrote:
Thu Sep 08, 2022 9:29 am
9 months after starting this thread, I'm still failing

As my boxing coach once told me, "the path to perfection is more important than perfection itself".

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by Larsongs » Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:42 pm

johnnysomersett wrote:
Thu Sep 08, 2022 9:29 am
9 months after starting this thread, I'm still failing

Image
My friend, you are not failing! You’re on your way to Guitar Nirvana! True Enlightenment! Ommmmmmmmmm……

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Re: Gear minimalism as a thought process...

Post by JSett » Fri Sep 09, 2022 11:12 pm

Well, I'm finally going to move on the FireStang and maybe lose the Danelectro (see FS section). Neither see much use...not enough to warrant keeping them at least.
Silly Rabbit, don't you know scooped mids are for kids?

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