Old Guy

Yes, sir! I have a YouTube Channel, "Old Guy's Guitar Vlog" where I play a good bit. I'm constantly evolving my channel, and am getting much more comfortable playing in front of a camera, too. I'm also getting better on the recording end, as I used to record all digital, but went back to amps recently, and never recorded with a two mic set up before. The first few times I recorded myself, the signal was way too hot and there is some clipping noted. Love and learn! I just sold the Blackstar, and am waiting on a new amp, but am about to put up a video soon of a demo of the Compression pedal I got.

Brilliant!! I love the fact that you aren't trying to speed through and play a zillion notes to fill up space. Great blues breathes. Nice job! If I can give some advice that has nothing to do with your playing at all, it's great to add some reverb or delay to your signal to really give the notes some body and fullness. It also adds a good level of dynamics to your playing. Especially on those pull offs and single note playing. It rounds out the sound. Give it a go. You may really be surprised with the sounds you get.

I enjoyed that very much @NeilES335. Very well played and recorded!

Jut FYI, Zoom is coming out with an incredible little interface which has its own DSP, and will be used as a direct plug in for a PC/Mac. It will let you use a huge variety of amps, cabs and effects from within your PC/Mac and looks like an incredible little piece of hardware. No amp/mic needed at all. Just plug your guitar into the little device and then device into PC/Mac and you can record quietly or through monitor speakers. Has headphone line out, aux line in and USB - C cable out into the computer. Best of all, the price is ridiculous. $100. It's coming out in late March and I fully intend to get one and test it out. When I get it, I will put it through its paces and post a detailed review. Here's a little overview:

They definitely look and sound awesome. Not sure if they are just endorsed by Ola Englund or if he had a hand in designing/building them, but he does talk about it on his YouTube channel.

Bluegrass soloing is not easy! As well as learning the scales associated with the chord changes, I would also record yourself playing the songs somehow and then play them back and practice soloing over the changes on your own. Also, find the melody of the song, and hum it to yourself. Then try to recreate that melody on the guitar by individual note if you can. Play it as simply as you can. That can really help to open up the fretboard for you. Good luck!

Thanks! It has a very thin flame maple veneer on it and the plan is to use a base of brown to bring out the flame, then carefully sand it back. Once that's done, apply a yellow base and then burst the edges with orange. I paint small wargaming miniatures, so I know how to paint, but have never done anything like this before. The "paints" I'm using are water based stains/dyes and once the cap is completely dyed, I'm going to seal everything with a few coats of True Oil sanded and polished. The body will be sealed with Mahogany filler and then a few layers of Tung Oil. I hope to pain just the top of the headstock black and then seal with True Oil as well. At least, that's the plan, LOL.

Thanks!

Part II:

Uploading Part II right now! It'll be in my build thread.

Thanks for the feedback! The guys at Fretwire suggested I glue it as is, as they were concerned that if I filed it down too much, it would change the geometry of the neck to body. I did all the measurements before I glued it to the body and it seems to be to tolerance. Worse case scenario is that if it's not right when I'm completely done, I will steam the neck joint apart and really adjust things after I see what the geometry is with everything together. I agree with you though about it being a weak joint. That is a big concern of mine once all is said and done. I just glued it today, so tomorrow I will see if I need to fill that gap with wood filler. We'll see.

LOL, it's an inside family joke! And yeah, some days I feel 100.

@Six String I was head banging! Nice job!!

@NeilES335 very well done, sir! That was awesome and recorded very well. Great job!

I've been recording myself for a decade and still have this issue. Don't get too hung up on that. Just play and record. You can spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get that take juuuuust right, and it will drive you nuts! I recently did that video of the Suhr Eclipse pedal. I've played "Mary Had a Little Lamb" for YEARS. Used to play it in a band, and could play the song blindfolded. The night I recorded it for the video, no matter what I did, I just couldn't get it right. The one that ended up on the video was my 15th take, I think. I had to let it go and just put out what I had. I still hate how it sounds, but it reminds me that sometimes, letting go is what's in order. Just play and record! That's the fun!

@WATSON43 that was really awesome. Your touch on the guitar is amazing. Well played, sir!

Congrats, Greg!! Always great to get that first gig done and behind you. Awesome stuff!

Here's a vid I did of modifying my Tele. Nothing too crazy, Enjoy!

A legend leaves us. I've only used Tortex picks since starting to play almost 30 years ago. RIP, good sir.

See the trick is to buy inexpensive, somewhat well crafted guitars. Win/win. ?

I changed the title of the thread and will put all my vids in this thread so I don't clog up the forum for every segment. Here's the REAL Part 1, LOL!

Enjoy!

Ahhh, with such a new Lap Top, you should be fine with the OS and the RAM then, unless you have less than 8GB of RAM. Man, I wish I lived closer to you as I would love to help you through the initial DAW pains. Once you get a work flow going, it gets very quick.

This could be a few things. The first to check is whether your PC/Mac has the minimum system requirements. If it does and it still does this, Pro Tools could have been corrupted when you installed it. I might recommend uninstalling and then reinstalling it. The other issue is something that could be with your RAM. If you are running minimum RAM, this can sometimes happen when you are transferring information and the system gets bogged down. This was the reason I eventually upgraded to a new Mac. Once the new OS was installed, my system was running slowly, and poorly, and I stopped being able to run Garageband almost at all. The last thing I can think of is make sure all programs that might be running in the background are shut down. This message happens a lot when AntiVirus programs are doing something in the background and it trips off the program to reset. I hate that, because you have to turn those programs off every time and sometimes you don't even know they are running at all. If you run a PC, check your system manager and close down any programs before you run Pro Tools. Good Luck!!

Will do! Every step will be documented!! It is brutally cold in the NE right now, so I have to wait a bit to sand it down, get the neck right and glue everything in place. I also want to shape the headstock before gluing which will send sawdust flying everywhere, LOL. I'm super excited to try to stain the top. Hopefully, I won't screw it up when sanding as that veneer is only 2mm thick! I have a lot of painting experience but nothing like this.