General Music Chat

and while we're talking about how long our........

Why does Ted Nugent play his crap on that beautiful Byrdland??
To get his signature feedback and sustain during solos?
I don't know. But I think that they aren't taking full advantage of the tonal palette

i'm sure being able to send them into fb mode is a big part of it. but the other thing to consider is that those gtrs have a VERY short 23 1/2" scale.... a full inch shorter than Gibson's most common 24 1/2" scale.

the necks on 'em are not only short but they're very skinny front to back, so cramped scale aside...they are very "fast playing" instruments. the design came from Billy Byrd and Hank Garland (hence the name.....Byrdland) and being jazz cats they wanted the shorter neck to play big stretched out "jazz chords" w lots of extensions.

they're also not very fat in terms of body depth, maybe like 2" or sumptin...but they are wide bodies at 17". for those of you who ain't played a 17" archtop ....that's a big gtr!

i have two 17" archtops....nice gtrs that i ain't never getting rid of....but man.....they are BIG gtrs.

i got to play THREE Byrdlands of different vintages a few yrs back in a very cool vintage gtr shop (sadly no longer there) in Bradenton FL. i'm not a big fan of their shorter scale, but they were some seriously vibey instruments! and as the saying goes....i wouldn't kick one outta bed.

My very old Tele Esquire is one of the two easiest guitars to play that I've handled. The other was a Gibson Melody Maker we originally thought was an early LP.

I've got a very nice Strat but these days for guitar I mostly play the Firebird. Maybe because I play bass in a band and like a bigger neck but there's more, the play-ability is outstanding and the sound is to my battered ears, the best available. I mentioned it parenthetically in a piece I wrote, "...The open D chord rang like a great golden bell."

Which is how it sounds to my synethesiatic ears.

For a couple of years I used that and my partner in musical crime used a PRS. It was kind of nice to get two radically different sounds that weren't LP or Strat.

Talbot

Jook

It's a V with the very small pickups my brother swears are Jimmy Smiths. I don't know really. It's white and everything about it done just right.

It did take a couple string changes and a couple setups before it stopped being cranky and stayed in tune.

Talbot