Dunlop makes a lot of great guitar gear and in this Boles Blues blog, we’ve previously reviewed the Dunlop Delrin picks and the Dunlop Ultex picks. I don’t use picks much anymore now that I’ve moved on to chord melody and Jazz, but for those days when I need that “pick sound” I really like the Dunlop Jazz Tone 204 and 205 picks a friend sent me.
Continue reading → Dunlop Jazz Tone 204 and 205 Picks Review
If you are a longtime reader of this Boles Blues blog, you know I have a wild history with changing strings. My current World Record for keeping the same gauge strings stood for a good six months: The nickel flat wound Thomastik-Infeld George Benson Jazz Strings GB114. The Benson record fell this week when I gave them up for round wound Thomastik-Infeld Jazz BeBop BB114 strings.
When I purchased my used 1998 Gibson L5 CES, I noticed a few dings and dangs that I wanted to cover up or fix or remove. The seller suggested I go to Stewart-MacDonald online and buy an amber ColorTone marker to touch up the scratches and dings to help make them disappear:
ColorTone Touch-up Markers are supplied in traditional sunburst colors that match the ColorTone Aerosol Guitar Lacquers: Vintage Amber, Cherry Red, Red Mahogany, and Tobacco Brown. They are in a permanent marker (solvent) base and are compatible with all ColorTone solvent and nitrocellulos products. They are intended for touching up a variety of finish problems where the color has been lightened or removed from the instrument’s surface. This can be on an instrument in the finishing process, or any guitar that has been dinged or whose color has been abraded off.
We live in an electrically noisy place. Phantom hums and radio stations and static are commonplace when I plug in my guitars to my amps and begin to wail. I’ve tried noise decimators in the past, but they sucked tone out of the chain, and so I’ve just had to live with turning down the Gain and putting up with that humming and noise.
Then, the other day, a friend of mine recommended the Hum Debugger from Electro-Harmonix. The purpose of the pedal is dead nut simple:
Every musician battles hum in their signal chain. The Hum Debugger turns it into dead silence, courtesy of a little EHX magic. Not a noise gate, and not a noise suppressor — but a real hum extractor. Silence is golden.
I have not always been a fan of Ringo Starr. Of all the Beatles, I liked him the least — for me it was always John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and then finally Ringo. Yet between the two Beatles that are with us now (those being Paul and Ringo), I actually prefer Ringo a bit even though Paul does so much to promote vegetarianism. When I listen to McCartney’s newer music I don’t quite feel the same enthusiasm as I did with his earlier work, both with The Beatles and with The Wings. I was therefore intrigued when I saw that Ringo was coming out with a new album, and that its title was a tribute to one of his best selling solo albums — Ringo. I am happy to report that it is a strong album, albeit short — I will get to that.
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