Early Christmas

[SeilerBird]

A few days ago I got to thinking about what I was going to spend my next years tax return on. I am so delighted with my new 8 string uke and my edrums that I decided it was time to upgrade the rest of my musical instrument collection. I am spending a lot of time every day playing and really enjoying myself. After analyzing my collection I found four things that I want to upgrade.

1 - I have two guitars, a Fender electric/acoustic and a Chinese superstrat electric with Floyd Rose. Both are in absolutely perfect shape and I like both of them, but I don't really love either one so they rarely get picked up. I decided I could sell both of them and probably have enough close to enough cash to get the guitar of my dreams.  That would be a Les Paul Koa that knocks my socks off:

https://www.musiciansfriend.com/guitars/epiphone-limited-edition-les-paul-custom-pro-koa-electric-guitar/j47292000001000?pfm=item_page.rr1

2 - My Casio keyboard has always been a huge disappointment to me. It has 76 keys but that is not enough. On some songs my left hand runs off the end of the keyboard so I have to transpose the entire keyboard down one octave to play the song. Then on other songs I have to have the keyboard transposed back up. They are a few dead keys now and a few that are not as loud as they should be. Plus a few other things I don't like about it such as the cheap plastic keys not feeling like a real piano. I went to Guitar Center on Tuesday and discovered a few used 88 key synths that have much better action keys. My Casio is basically to old to be worth any money so I will need to come up with at least $400 to get a replacement. Something like this one would do:

https://www.amazon.com/LAGRIMA-Electric-Keyboard-Instruction-Headphone/dp/B07C97WJ1Q/ref=sr_1_21?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1539215235&sr=1-21

3 - My bass drum pedal is the pits. I really love everything about my edrums except the pedal. It is like stepping on an old banana. So I did some searching and settled on the DW5000 pedal. It gets rave reviews and at Guitar Center it was the pedal I liked the best. But it is $200. Ouch. I am really spoiled. My very first drum set in 1961 was a Frankenstein of cheap parts but the pedal was a Ludwig Speed King, the best pedal made at the time. I was shocked when a few years later I noticed that Ringo used the exact same pedal. Yesterday I went to Sam Ash and there on the shelf was a used DW5000 for $99.  So I didn't hesitate to pull out the plastic.

https://www.amazon.com/DWCP5000AD4-Accelerator-Single-Bass-Pedal/dp/B0075J8APQ/ref=sr_1_4?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1539139187&sr=1-4

4 - My amp is the absolute pits. It is a dirt cheap 20 watt bass amp that I think cost me about $100 new. The speaker is shot and needs to be replaced. It has no extras. It has no balls. I found an amp made by Fender that really looks like what I want. It is 200 watts with two 12 inch speakers with a very modern outlook. It has built in Wifi, Bluetooth and an app. So I found one at Sam Ash yesterday and played with it a while. I fell in love. My last serious amp was a Line 6 that costs over $500 and I hated it. Every time I used it I had to get out the owners manual to try and figure something out. It was the most user unfriendly amp of all time. The Fender impressed me for two reasons. Every one of the presets sounded outrageous, which is a lot different than any other amp I have tried. Usually the presets suck. But the best part is the owners manual was not needed. It is the most logical amp I have ever used. I fell in love after about five minutes of playing it. Later on that day I was cruising the Internet and found an open box version almost $200 cheaper at Musician's Friend so I pulled the trigger. Six months no interest and free shipping. It will be here in a few days:

https://shop.fender.com/en-US/guitar-amplifiers/contemporary-digital/mustang-gt-200/2310300000.html

So I am impatiently waiting for Santa to arrive.

[Rene T]

Is this you Tom?

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/32/d6/d5/32d6d55aa0dfcd1b2a5f1923e3c9d7aa.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.pinterest.com/pin/96827460714233551/&h=500&w=319&tbnid=OnbDHYslO35IMM:&q=1+man+band&tbnh=186&tbnw=118&usg=AI4_-kSdjQC-AGipg1ZcX6hnpYJ8KVp0rg&vet=12ahUKEwikm5b3rP7dAhUmh-AKHZxMCHMQ_B0wEXoECAIQCQ..i&docid=QEFzNO6Ma623VM&itg=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwikm5b3rP7dAhUmh-AKHZxMCHMQ_B0wEXoECAIQCQ

[SeilerBird]

Is this you Tom?

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LOL no I only play them one at a time. I used to play guitar and keyboards at the same time when I used to jam with another guitarist in Santa Cruz. I would hit a single note that played a chord arpeggio and then strum the guitar till it was time to change chords. When I was in my last band I played both guitar and keyboards but never both at the same time. On some songs I would strum the guitar till the solo and then switch to the piano for the solo and then back to the guitar. I sometimes wonder if I would have been better off concentrating on just one instrument rather than being a 'jack of all trades master of none'. But that feeling leaves after a few seconds. I enjoy being mediocre on many instruments.

[wackymac]

I would like to apologize to anyone I have not yet offended. Please be patient and I will get to you shortly.

I'm still patiently waiting.

[Tom]

Early congratulations.

I see a lot of ukes with a koa top, but didn't realize they also make guitars with koa.

The digital piano is really nice, although they tend to be bulky and, for my use, non-portable. For now, I'm sticking with my portable Yamaha units, although I drift to (lust over) the digital pianos whenever I'm in a music store.

We had the use of a Fender prior to the band buying a bigger/more expensive system. The Fender was a great amp.

[SeilerBird]

When I was living in a class A with no slides the 76 key was the largest that would fit in. Now I have a larger fiver with three slides and I now have room for the larger keyboard and I am thrilled. My Casio never really impressed me and gave me the feeling I was playing a real piano. Playing them at the music stores the last few days I realized they did give me the real piano feeling. I owned a real piano in the 70s and my BIL has a really nice grand I used to play when I visited my sister. So I kinda got spoiled. Then in 1978 I was able to buy my first synthesizer. It was sold by Paia but it was a kit and I had to assemble the whole thing. That included building the keyboard and soldering all the PC boards. This was before ICs were common. It was a pile of junk. $800 and really hard to play. It took at least 15 minutes to do all the wiring to build a sound. You had a bunch of jumper wires and you started with the digital to analog converter coming off the keyboard and then run it through an oscillator, then into a filter and a shaper and then through EQ and finally out of the synth and into an external amplifier. Then another 15 minutes to build the next sound. And only three octaves. But it was way cool. Now they have hundreds of sampled sounds all built in and accessible by the touch of a button.