It's a Gibson Melody Maker with a "vintage sunburst" finish. It's a modern recreation of a guitar Gibson produced in the late 1950s. The original was considered a "student model", or something to learn with, but they became fairly popular because they were light, good sounding guitars in their own right.
As you can see, there is nothing fancy about them, and I like that lean, hungry look in a guitar. I like fancy ones too, but holy smokes, the fancy ones are so expensive. I'm not a good enough player to justify buying a $2300 guitar, but I think I could spend $379 without feeling too guilty.
I'm one of those weird guitar players that likes a fat neck on the guitar while most of the guitar playing world likes their guitar necks nice and thin. The fatter the neck, the better I like it, and I don't have big hands either. It's just more comfortable and I can play longer with a fat guitar neck.
This Melody Maker has the fatter "rounded '59" profile of their late 1950's guitar, same as my Les Paul Studio. I LOVE the neck on that guitar.
OK. I'm weird. I admit it.
Also, one time I tried to trade picks during a Disciple concert (my FAVORITE band) one night with my guitar hero, Brad Noah. Held up a pick like I use to trade with him, he nodded, and handed me his pick he had been playing with and took mine.
He turned it over and looked at it back and front, smiled, shook his head and handed it back to me. He walked over and got another one from his stage stash and started the next song.
See, I use a teeny-tiny jazz style, teardrop shaped guitar pick. Apparently I'm one of the few people on the planet who prefers them. I have to keep about a hundred of the things around, because I can't play well with a regular guitar pick, it just has too much real estate and it twists around in my hand.
At least I got to keep his guitar pick. Brad's my homey now, I've got the pick to prove it.
Seems like there's always a new lens for my camera, a guitar, or something to catch my eye.
Maybe if I had one single, unobtainable obsession, like Big Sis is with Keith Urban, it would be easier.
Hey, I'm 44, maybe I could claim "midlife crisis" and buy the Melody Maker.
It's way cheaper than a Corvette.
By the way, here's a gratuitous pic of Brad Noah in all out shred mode at a concert I attended.
One of modern life's great gifts is the advent of the home computer.
And as time goes on, the things I want to do, like digital photos and video editing, is harder and harder on a computer.
Our "family" computer is 4 years old, I think, and I bought it through Dell, and the guy on the phone assured me that Yes, it will handle video.
He was wrong. I was never, ever able to download video that wasn't choppy. It was just not fast/powerful enough.
A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a brand new Dell XPS with 2GB of RAM and the speed of the thing is already being taken for granted.
That is, until I get onto the "old" family computer or any of the computers at work.
They seem intolerably slow in comparison to my new one.
Oh, the trials and tribulations of a spoiled man.
3 comments:
The only thing that spoils my love affair with my computer is that the darn thing depreciates even faster than my car. =P
I used to have 2 gibson mauraders that were kind of like that melody maker. They didn't sound too hot so I sold em.
Still a nice looking axe
Dawn, yep, computers are just big ol' paper weights after a few years. At least a car is still worth something if it's running ok. A slow but otherwise working computer is hard to even give away.
Hammer. Ah, the Gibson Marauder. Gibson took a calculated risk to have a Gibson with a bit of a Fender tone. In the process, the Fender fans hated them as "too Gibsony" and the Gibson faithful hated them as "too Fendery."
Go figure. You just can't win sometimes. Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones played them for a while and even endorsed them.
A few years later, a nobody of a young luthier Paul Reed Smith started making custom guitars to fill that very niche, and now PRS guitars are some of the most successful guitars in production.
Like Gibson, and even Fender now, the Paul Reed Smith guitars are pathetically over priced. But I met Mr. Smith at a guitar show in Clearwater, Florida and talked to him for a while and he's a super guy and a world class jazz guitarist himself.
But I still find it funny that the Paul Reed Smith guitars are wildly successful where the Marauders failed. I've played PRS guitars though, they are first class all the way, and they sound wonderful. He really nailed the perfect mix of Gibson and Fender tones.
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