polara

https://nashville.craigslist.org/msg/d/columbia-hamer-usa-standard/7840309731.html I think the asking price is not realistic, but whadda I know?

FWIW every time I've flown Delta with a guitar (a LOT) they're super cool about letting me put in in an overhead or the coat closet. Just as long as you're not boarding in Zone 8, when the space is all gone.

That's an... interesting way to string a tension bar Bigsby.

BIG BUMP for the Earl Slick guitar and a price drop.

That was mine. I'm busily consolidating all my stuff for the move to Sweden, and dumped a few guitars at GC because I've got to sell our condo, a car, six bikes, half our furniture, and also get my mom into assisted living and get her house clean and on the market in the next few months It's a hassle to do all that with a job that has me on the road a lot, and still sell guitars on top The HFC are all cheap bastids I hate the Facebook Marketplace/Craigslist dance of "Will you take a pimped golf cart / Schecter with a cracked headstock / set of rims for an Acura in trade" crap They had a Suhr I desperately wanted and it's 10% off if you trade in That's a cool 25th. The Hameritis around the nut was fierce on that guitar, though. I rescued it from the original owner in St. Louis and apart from being filthy and needing a setup, it was a good guitar. Awesomely straight neck on it. I think I put an extra barrel jack in the case, as the one in there is starting to get loose. It has the original JB/59 pickups, and I got it without a case, so found a generic case that fit will, though it's not a TKL. I'm glad it's in the family. Enjoy!

The Framus is still available... custom shop quality and flamey maple for a grand or so

1) EMG James Hetfield set. They're minty fresh, in a box that says 57/66 set, with all the (unopened) EMG facory wiring, pots, switch, jack. SOLD 2) Pair of Fender V-Mod Jazzmaster pickups, all the factory lead length. $75 PP'd/shipped CONUS 3) Pair of Gravelin "70s" custom humbuckers, never installed. Got them here on the HFC and ran out of projects. 7.6k neck, 8.5k bridge. PENDING 4) Set of Q Pickups Strat pickups with half-n-half A5/A2 magnets, so the A5s keep some clarity on the lower strings but the A2 is more mellow up top. Q Pickups are handmade in Croatia and AWESOME. Never got around to installing them. SOLD

BUMP FOR PRICES SO LOW WE MUST BE GOING CRAZY!

I just did three weeks of dates in South America. I used an SKB with the TSA latches and the guitar survived fine as checked baggage. This case, specifically. I think it's pretty hopeless trying to do what I do in the US, which is smile and offer to put it in a coat closet. Best to just check it and pray.

It depends on where Missus Polara gets a job (biotech). Probably Malmö, but maybe Helsingborg. All very exciting and stressful!

1997 Framus Panthera Pro, made in Germany HFC PRICE $700 + SHIPPING Mahogany body, bookmatched flame maple top, flame maple neck with a cool super-stable mounting system. Ebony fretboard. Trapeze tailpiece, Duncan pickups in whatever spec Framus gave them. This one was built in January of 1997, so one of the very first from the Warwick factory when they re-launched Framus. It has, as you'd expect, a kind of snappy Les Paul sound. Neck is kind of average medium, never gets too fat even at the body, and is finished in some kind of oil or wax "raw feeling" treatment. Weighs, I'd guess, 8.5 to 9 pounds. Not chambered. Has one big ding that was drop-filled so you can't feel it, and a few little signs of wear here and there. Custom shop quality for seven bills? Go for it. Comes in a TKL hard case with Dean logo. 2009 Framus Tennessee Custom Shop, one-off made for Earl Slick, HFC PRICE $1700 + SHIPPING This one is pretty cool. To welcome Slicky to the Framus family, they made one Tennessean with satin white finish, black binding, figured ebony board, aged TonePros hardware, and uncovered mystery pickups. He had it for sale at Spinnaker Music in Connecticut and I got it with some sort of signed thing from him. The Tennessee is 335 sized, hollow with a center block. I believe it is mahogany back and maple top, but as this was a one-off there ain't no COA. Pickups may be Duncan but I haven't checked as it sounds awesome. Slick doesn't look too excited when holding it, but he must have played it a fair bit as it had normal scuffs and pick wear when I got it. This leads to the big condition issue: I think he must have just liet it sit for ten years with no adjustment, as with the truss rod nut backed off to no tension, the neck is straight with .010s. If you use .009s it bows back a little and you get buzzing. Now, if you use 10s, it plays great and sounds great. It has some scuffs but no real dings. There is a very fine crack in the paint, about 1/8" long, behind one tailpiece stud. I suspect ten years in Slick's basement and Connecticut weather changes didn't do it any favors. I am on the fence about selling it, but well. $1700 for a one-off guitar owned by Bowie's guitarist (and the dates line up for him owning it wile recording The Next Day but no way can I say it WAS) that is pretty amazing on its own... I am not inclined to hear lowball offers. But I don't want to move more stuff to Sweden than absolutely necessary.

I prefer my Svensksleaze with some tra la la.

That's really pretty. I thought mine was ash at first glance, then I saw it described online as mahogany, which seemed wrong. Japanese sites always said sen.

I imagine @currypowder will be able to give some insight into this. I had some old credit expiring at Music-Go-Round and went to find a cheap guitar for the South American tour. I figure between flights, buses, and walking in Rio, I don't want to be hauling a 10-top PRS or such. I thought I might get a Squier or a PRS SE or an Epiphone, with my top cost $400. Found this Greco GO II languishing in the rack of weird stuff for $397 with an SKB hard case. The pickup selector switch was snapped off. All the hardware was tarnished, dull frets, coated with dust and neglect, ancient strings. But it had "something" about the feel and sounded okay. Pulled the hardware off, cleaned it thoroughly, polished the frets, oiled the fretboard, got the neck straight, new pickup switch, new strings. The usual. It really came to life. Under the dirt it was in great shape, with just a couple dings and no fretwear. From what I can tell it's a 1979, made in the Fujigen factory. Maxon pickups: the mini-toggle does a coil tap to only the neck pickup, which is useful. Sen ("mahogany") 2-piece body, 3-piece maple neck, angled headstock, Kluson-style tuners, medium frets. The vibrato bridge/tailpiece assembly is wild. It's a bit like Brian May's Red Special, in that it's tensioned by what looks like a valve spring, and is super-robust and easy to adjust. The biggest issue with the guitar is that one bridge post has a buggered head, from when someone tried to raise or lower it under full tension probably. Easy enough to move with strings off. It's very warm sounding, almost jazzy clean, and very 70s crunchy with dirt. Very stable tuning, medium neck, not too heavy. Build quality is great, as good as any boo-teek maker, really. I honestly like it a lot, and so it may not be just flipped after South America.

If you don't Spotify it's also on Apple, Bandcamp, etc. This is the thing I started last year with Victoria Real, who's in Buenos Aires. She plays guitar, some keys, does engineering, loops, and sings. Has several albums out and was in Guitar Craft for about ten years, even performing with League of Crafty Guitarists. We swapped a lot of files for a few months, met in Miami to track vocals, and are doing a South American tour (Argentina, Chile, Brasil) next month. More info is on our site: https://aerolinea.band We both have Audient preamp/interfaces and Aston Origin vocal mics, so those were used. For guitars, she played a Sterling St. Vincent, while I played an Oopegg Trailbreaker. We played dry into Ableton or Logoc, and then I ran them through either Native Instruments guitar amp models or Logic's models. I played a Fender Mustang bass. Kellii Scott, most famous for being in Failure but also has been in Veruca Salt, Enemy, Pink, Christina Aguilera, etc. played drums on Dreamer. It's not very classic rawk, I'll warn you. I think you can hear the Bowie, Fripp, Air, and maybe Spoon influences.

Awww, that turned out great! That guitar had so much potential. I just was not up to tackling a major project then, but you did a great job. It's wired normally? When I got it, even the wiring was jacked, with two volumes and no tone.

The video was taken at a live-with-audience recording in Buenos Aires, so we stuck it over the album track. Got tour dates confirmed in Argentina, Chile, and Brasil for January!

I took the pickguard off when I changed strings. It was neatly wired with 500k pots and a Duncan Pearly Gates neck, an APS-1 (Alnico II Pro@) middle, and Pearly Gates bridge. I YooToobed a few sound clips of the Suhr vintage single-coils vs Duncans, and I can understand why someone would do that. Even in the videos, all the vintage-voiced Suhr pickups are quite bright and clear. I guess the pickup swap dropped the resale value, but these pickups in a Strat-style guitar sound good to me, as I've never cared much for the 60s Strat vibe... too zingy!

Missus Polara has applied for a few jobs in Lund, Malmö, and Copenhagen. So it looks like someplace around there. Polara Junior took her uni language test Wednesday, and I guess I go to the Consulate to confirm I'm not completely mad and like sill.

"...who is not a medical doctor, even though he uses the "Dr." before his name..." But a PhD is legitimately referred to as Dr. It's not not the same as an MD. This ain't defending Robert Haas' madey-uppy university, but since Missus Polara has a PhD in biomedical engineering, I'm used to seeing scientific posters and papers with a butt-ton of legit "Dr."s on them.

Same here. Ergonomically they're pretty much perfect, but the trad Strat sound is too wiry and spiky for me, especially on the bridge pickup. Obviously there's an industry built around super-strats so that's not a concern any more, and the number of builders, from Temu to Tyler, means you can buy endless Strat-shaped objects, with endless types of wood, bridges, and electronics, at any price point. This one manages to keep a bit of the clarity and airiness I like in the Strat sound while having more warmth and midrange. But what really gets to me is the feel. I guess it's the combination of tight tolerances, really good wood and parts, and lots of time spent on the final finishing. It has a "fun" quality that's hard to explain, and hard to find.

I had been doing a good job prepping for the 2025 move to Sweden. Lots of housecleaning, lots of giving stuff away, moving investment accounts, put my resident visa application in months ago, and am starting to get rid of music stuff. But Saturday morning Missus Polara and I stopped in Guitar Center to get a pair of powered speakers to rent for Porchfest. And in a stand next to the rentals counter was a powder blue Suhr Classic S, with HSH pickups (chrome covers on the humbuckers.) I picked it up and strummed it as we waited. Damn. Yeah, I got it. I Googled the serial number and it was originally like so... ...but it now has chrome humbuckers in the bridge and neck positions. The pickguard is perfect in terms of fit and matches the vibrato cavity cover, so I SUSPECT it had been bought, the buyer wanted more "oomph" and so sent it to Suhr to be modified, as they come routed for HSH anyway. Then, after apparently playing it once... sold it to Guitar Center. Not a scratch or smudge on it. The size of the neck is very nice, not as small as a Music Man, not as chonk as a 50s Gibson. Finish is flawless, neck sits perfectly in the pocket, and the frets are polished and rounded at the ends like nothing I've ever seen. When I change strings I'll see what the pickups are, but I suspect Suhr vintage-y something because the volume and overall tone is pretty consistent in all five positions. Beefier in bridge and neck than a Strat of course, but it's not as if the guitar changes personalities. Wasn't cheap, but no more than a new Eastman. I've literally never touched a Suhr before, but this one, when I picked it up, just spoke to me. Took it straight to the gig, and Missus Polara siad she'd never seen me having so much fun playing.

That is amazing! Your careers sound like they would make a good book. In 2025 doing original music means that unless you're an "entertainer" backed by big dollars, you'd be financially better off stocking shelves in an Amazon warehouse. I suppose I'm now sort of "touring" for a living, as I'm at about 700,000 miles on Delta and do 20 or 30 round trips a year. But I've been very lucky professionally, and working for a wealth advisory firm has helped me understand how to invest with some success. Missus Polara and I hit our "number" in 2023 and while we feel too young to retire, screw it. Today I read that Chris Hoy, six-time Olympic gold medalist, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer at 48. We don't know how many healthy days we are given. I love my family, music, art, and nature more than my career, and every Monte Carlo simulation we run gives a 99% chance of retiring well. For me, "touring" is going to be traveling to interesting places, punctuated with playing music for a few locals.

I can't wait to see the results! I got that guitar from a Music-go-Round for... well, next to nothing. It had been very thoroughly played over the years, and my original idea had been to simply get it functioning, and my kid had a bunch of hexgonal stickers lying around so... it was better than the rattle-can black it came with. I am VERY happy to see the love Kiz has put into this, even if it looks like a mad project in the Herzog sense...

https://spillmagazine.com/spill-video-premiere-aerolinea-what-moves-you/ A few deets for y'all. Victoria and I have been writing and recording together for about 18 months. She has several albums out as Victoria Real, and is a badass player: studied under Robert Fripp doing Guitar Craft for a few years in Spain, and performed with League of Crafty Guitarists. We co-write everything. We recorded the instruments in our home studios and sent WAVs back and forth. I mixed in Logic Pro, and then we met in Miami to do vocals. One track has live drums by the amazing Kellii Scott (Failure, Veruca Salt, Pink, Christina Aguilera) which he recorded in LA. Gear. Let's see... she played her Sterling St. Vincent, and I did everything on my Oopegg, and for amps we either used Logic's plug-ins or Guitar Rig. We both have Aston Origin mics and Audient interfaces for vox. I played my Fender Mustang bass, and some stuff was samples of stuff we recorded in the wild, like trains or machines. In the video I'm playing a Kauer I was trying out, but I'm back to the Oopegg now. We did the video in Buenos Aires in an old mansion. Nico was a fun director to work with, but man those smoke machines get to you after a while. The entire album comes out November 28, and we have another video dropping in November. We also did a live-in-studio-with-audience performance in Bueno Aires, which was professionally filmed, and we should have that from the editor soon: the photo below is from that performance. Started booking dates for a South American tour in January 2025. As I'm going to be walking away from the corporate world soon, I figured I could either get into golf, buy a boat, or pretend to be a touring musician. The last option seems most fun.