Initial 12.2/64 test run

[bad sector]

Initial run on Asus CrossHair IV based amd64 desktop

Generally quite positive, some previously major
impossible-missions overcome such as

- usb wifi quickly set up and usable
- therefore HP wifi printer likewise
- Rosegarden (and its needed support packages) work!

For my money progress is being made toward
assured-outofthebox-essentials namely usb-wifi,
printing & sound, a realm that the 'buntus have been
shining in for some time now.


05-sep-12
=========
- /usr/bin/Xorg "setuid", so as to be able to startx
--------------------------------------------------------
- grub menu looks like shit, with only 8 second timeout
immediately replaced with own boot menu and MBR code.
--------------------------------------------------------
- switch KDE to classic menu!!!
--------------------------------------------------------
/.config folder & /.reahead file STILL *crapped into*
system root by some PUNK-ware, same as before!
--------------------------------------------------------
- *alsa* installed [gotta get rosegarden to work]
--------------------------------------------------------
- *sound* installed [gotta get rosegarden to work]
--------------------------------------------------------
- *pulse* tabooed [gotta get rosegarden to work]
--------------------------------------------------------
with init 3 in boot kernel args, system waits silently
after "Setting up service (remotefs) network ...done"
[must hit enter to press on to login prompt].
This cleared itself after a while.
--------------------------------------------------------


07-sep-12:
==========
- /usr/local/bin/bashers migrated-in (local command scripts)
-----------------------------------------------------------
- /usr/local/bin/ nc & nedit migrated-in
-----------------------------------------------------------
- users created but only initial 'dummy' logged in sofar
-----------------------------------------------------------
- some soundfonts pointed to in Qsynth
it should be impossible to install without at least some
bundled soundfonts i.e. any sound package should make at
least _some_ sound without any intervention.
-----------------------------------------------------------
- Qjackctl starts jack, and Qsynth is also startable
-----------------------------------------------------------
- ROSEGARDEN WORKS!
-----------------------------------------------------------
- Generally speaking system dialogs told to remember root
pasword do NOT (because Wallet is uninstalled?). There
seems to be no other way provided for, nor for the dialogs
to have a life without kwallet?
-----------------------------------------------------------
- PackageKit(?) blocked Yast Software Management launch
several times (internet connection disabled) ...deleted
-----------------------------------------------------------
- *akonadi* deleted (as much as possible)
-----------------------------------------------------------
- usb wifi net setup worked, but only after telling Yast,
which was unable to make it work, to use Network
Manager instead.
-----------------------------------------------------------
- sylpheed mail client installed from source
-----------------------------------------------------------
- Yast failed to scan/find HP wifi printer, had to handfeed
IP to it (setup is extremely convoluted!)
-----------------------------------------------------------
# sofar approx 7.8 gb occupancy ... step image made with dd

[Darklight]

Question is 21.2 a improvment over 12.1 and if so in what areas?

[bad sector]

On 09/09/2012 04:12 AM, Darklight wrote:
> Question is 21.2 a improvment over 12.1 and if so in what areas?
>

For "me" YESSS!

As late as 12.1 I had a bitch of a time to set up usb wifi & because of
that printing too. Sound was problematic mostly on account of pulse but
now I've nixed it and rosegarden works for the first time
'out-of-the-box' although I say that with reservations because
installing additional packages knocked it out again so I reverted to a
previous config for further testing.

I'm posting this from an evaluation install & about the only outstanding
issues at this point are installing python-2.5.5 (won't make on 64
system) and googleearth-5.2 (crashes X) ..it's funny but I have no
trouble at all with these last two on 12.1 :-)))))

By tonight I'll be all migrated with the above issues deferred and will
only have to repeat fire on the portables. The short of the long is that
it shows that a few extra days went into ringing out the wires, nice
work! My 2 cents.

[bad sector]

Quite happy with it, no outstanding issues to speak of.

KDE on this one, Gnome on Debian, XFCE on Slackware.
The last 2 are only for standby & familiarization.

[John Bowling]

There are outstanding issues for me. I had 12.1 with XFCE and KDE3 added,
and did an update. It finished with no KDE3 - an attempt to install it
led to a major amount of things that were not available - it was break
everything or abort. I aborted.

XFCE then wanted to do an update and could not. The error was Failure:
Fail. Tells you a lot doesn't it?

I then did an update via Yast and that worked.

One other problem: My system, in a server case, has four large hard
drives with no room for an optical drive. I tried using DVD drive in a
remote USB connected box. It did an initial boot, and then told me it
could not find CD1. This occured with 12.1 also. To resolve that I set an
unmounted DVD drive on top with cables going to the motherboard. That
worked.

I'm going back to a fresh/formatted install on the / partition and then
all the hours of adding things I need, including kde3. Will it work that
way?

John

[bad sector]

On 09/14/2012 05:48 PM, John Bowling wrote:

> I'm going back to a fresh/formatted install on the / partition and then
> all the hours of adding things I need, including kde3. Will it work that
> way?

That's the only way I've been doing it for a long time, and I finally
let kde3 slip away last year. As for the external DVD I tried that on an
eepc the other day and it worked, it probably depends on the machine, I
haven't tried it on any that have an internal optical disk. You can also
try installing from Live-CD if the install DVD throws fits.

[John Bowling]

It is now working as expected with 12.2 as a basic system. I still have
lots to add. NFS worked with no problems.

I had an eepc that I used for a couple of years. It proved to be
insufficient for the task - physical size. I replaced it with a 14"
laptop which I like a lot better.

John

[bad sector]

On 09/16/2012 08:33 AM, John Bowling wrote:

> I had an eepc that I used for a couple of years. It proved to be
> insufficient for the task - physical size. I replaced it with a 14"
> laptop which I like a lot better.

It _is_ tiny, changing a drive in it is like trying to milk a mouse. I
think I'll velcro tape it to my guitar amp for a new life and get
another one for traveling.

[Aragorn]

On Sunday 16 September 2012 12:30, bad sector conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.suse...

Aha, a fellow guitarist! Might I inquire what guitar(s) you use and
what amplifier? :-)

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

[bad sector]

Oh I'm just a novice, got a Strat & 2 Mustangs but am already lookin' to
_hand-build_ a LP ..can't get rid of linux habbits I guess ;-)))

[Aragorn]

On Sunday 16 September 2012 14:10, bad sector conveyed the following to

Wow, well, hand-building a guitar - and especially a Les Paul-type
guitar - isn't exactly an easy task due to the set (and angled) neck
construction, the carved top, the binding, and all that. :-/

On account of a custom-built Gibson Les Paul-style guitar, you can of
course order one from the Gibson Custom Shop, but that will cost you a
lot of money, you'll have to wait for at least a whole year - and in
some cases, two years - and it'll still be a guitar that's partly built
by machine, because even the Gibson Custom shop uses PLEK machines to
cut the nuts and level, dress and crown the frets, and they use CNC
machines to rout the bodies.

Therefore, a very decent alternative which I have discovered not too
long ago - unfortunately the price is about the same, and I cannot
afford that - is the Ruokangas Unicorn. Ruokangas is a small Finnish
company of currently five qualified luthiers. They don't use any CNC
machines - it's all done by hand - and they have a killer Les Paul-style
guitar, the Unicorn, which you can custom-tailor to your liking on-line
via a Flash application on their website, and it'll even allow you to
get an automated price offer estimate.

http://www.ruokangas.com

Caution: What follows is a long elaboration on my own guitars and
equipment. Readers not interested should click "jump to next message"
from here. :p

I myself have been playing for 33 years now - I started quite late, when
I was 16, and I've never been to any music academy or taken any guitar
lessons - and my first guitar was a cheap Japanese copy of a Fender
Stratocaster. Beautiful guitar - three-color sunburst with a white
pickguard - and sounded okay too, but crap playability and crap
hardware.

I played that guitar for about 10 years, and then I sold it back to the
shop in order to get a price reduction - I still got half of what it had
costed me back in 1979 - on an Aria Pro II RS Knight Warrior, which I
still have to this day. It's a "superstrat"-type of guitar: two single
coils and a humbucker at the bridge, Kahler #2330 "Flyer" vibrato
system, double cutaway, 25.5" scale, bolt-on neck, ash body and maple
neck with a rosewood fingerboard.

Then, in 1993, I decided to buy an Ibanez R-470. It's the same body
shape as the Joe Satriani guitar, but with hum-single-hum pickup
configuration, and it has a beautiful metallic blue reverse sunburst
finish - i.e. the darker part is on the inside. So essentially also a
superstrat. In 1998 I added an Ibanez S-540 to that. The same body
contours and configuration, but the body is tapered, rather than
beveled, and it's made of mahogany with a maple veneer, rather than
basswood, and the pickups are of a different variety.

I also have a 1994 Ibanez TC-530, but this is a guitar that I won in an
entry ticket lottery at a Jennifer Batten guitar clinic. It's not my
style of guitar for several reasons - it has a sound chamber underneath
the pickguard, it has three "lipstick tube" pickups and it has very
small, vintage-style frets. Yet it's a trophy, and Jennifer signed it
for me. (There's a picture somewhere of me kissing her. :p)

Back in those days, I was very much into the Satriani/Vai/Gilbert/EVH
stuff with lots of whammy usage, but in 2002 I bought a Gibson SG
Special "Pete Townshend signature" model with dual P-90s and a
wraparound bridge/tailpiece. I did not really buy this guitar because
I'd be a fan of Pete Townshend necessarily. I mean, I like The Who but
I'm not really a fan.

The main reason why I bought it is because an SG with P-90s had really
hypnotized me back when I was 15 and when I saw it on TV for the very
first time. I had never seen that pickup type before, and I've only
seen a P-90-equipped SG once or twice more on TV ever since then. I
really liked the sound of it, especially through an overdriven Marshall.
It sounded just like Carlos Santana on "Samba Pa Ti", which is of course
no surprise because Carlos played an SG with P-90s on that track.

The only difference is that his was an early 1960s model and that it was
thus still officially sold as a Gibson Les Paul Special. Gibson only
changed the name to SG in 1963, because Les Paul himself did not approve
of the guitar and did not want his name on it - for several reasons,
including his at that time ongoing divorce from Mary Ford and the fact
that he was supposed to receive royalties from Gibson for every guitar
sold with his name on it, even though he didn't receive any for that
particular model because he had temporarily suspended his endorsement
deal with Gibson to concentrate on his divorce.

Anyway, that SG opened up a whole new world for me because owning and
playing a Gibson is an entirely different experience if you're used to
bolt-on neck, Strat-style guitars. Ever since then I've bought four
more Gibsons, all with three pickups.

The pride of my collection is my 2002 (but 2003-acquired) Les Paul
Standard Mahogany, which has a mahogany top and came stock-loaded with
three Seymour Duncan SH-6 "Duncan Distortion" humbuckers. It is still
my most expensive guitar to date. The other three are a 2001 Firebird
VII - which I bought in 2005 and came straight out of Gibson Europe's
warehouse - and two more SGs. One of those is an SG-3 - a model with
three 57 Classic pickups, which was only in production for less than two
years, just like my Les Paul - and the other is a limited edition SG
Standard with three narrow single coil pickups with blade pole pieces.

I also have an ESP/Ltd F-250 which I impulsively bought the day before
Christmas Eve in 2008 because it affordable, because it was on sale and
because I wanted to buy myself a Christmas present, but truth be told,
I've never even plugged it into my amplifier yet. I feel like I've
simply outgrown that whole hardrock/metal and Floyd Rose whammy thing.
I'm much more into older music now, from when I was a teenager (and
earlier) and I'm also exploring jazz fusion stuff now from the likes of
Lee Ritenour and Larry Carlton.

One of the guitarists who has continued to influence me from back in my
harder rocking days up until and including this very day is Steve
Lukather, the former guitarist and band leader of Toto. He's got
exactly the perfect blend of styles that I like, because he effortlessly
travels back and forth between hard rock, progressive rock, fusion and
jazz.

Anyway, so I currently own 10 electrics, 9 of which that I bought. I
also own 2 acoustics, of which I myself bought one - a half-depth and
Korean-made Ovation Celebrity, with a single cutaway. The other one
used to belong to my younger brother and is a cheap but excellent Yamaha
flattop, now about 28 years old.

As for the rest of my equipment, I've got various effects setups which
stem from an earlier time, but a few years ago I sold my Boss GT-6 back
to the shop to buy a GT-10, and I have to say that this one is a lot
better than its predecessors.

Lastly, I only have one amplifier - although I've had several different
ones over the years - which is a Marshall JCM 2000 TSL 100 head, with a
Marshall JCM 900 "1960 Lead" 4x12" cabinet. It's a bit too big (and too
powerful) for playing indoors, actually, but I bought it at a time when
I was still playing with other people a lot and where I was still trying
to form a semi-professional band that would perform a lot.

So... That's my story. ;-) It's a good thing I labeled this thread
"[OT]". :p

[bad sector]

On 09/16/2012 01:52 PM, Aragorn wrote:

> http://www.ruokangas.com

Even my all-american fender is made mostly somewhere in the BRIC, them
finnish guys look ok, I mean Torvalds came from there no? Nice guitar..
but I can't bloody well leave stock stuff alone, gotta hack what I
didn't build, it all started with a '32 chev & a '56 lincoln engine and
my last stunt is @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsgvwMYn0N0

> Caution: What follows is a long elaboration on my own guitars and
> equipment. Readers not interested should click "jump to next message"
> from here. :p
>
> I myself have been playing for 33 years now - I started quite late, when
> I was 16

I'm 68 .. just starting to shred :-)

> Stratocaster. Beautiful guitar - three-color sunburst with a white
> pickguard - and sounded okay too, but crap playability and crap
> hardware.

I like mine (cause it's still new I guess) but it's like computers, how
many linux users have only one?

[snipped only to improve readabilty]

> So... That's my story. ;-) It's a good thing I labeled this thread
> "[OT]". :p

That's quite a collection, you remind me of one of my neighbours who
showed up one day on his way home with his latest flash in the pan; one
of them WW-I light weight tanks on his flatbed. So I of course asked him
what the %$#^ he had bought it for, said he

"I never had one before!"

On to guitars, this ng gone for a shit anyway..

I intend to buy a LP body and custom 1-13/16" 24 fret neck in china for
about $100, a pair of SHPR2B p-rails for another, and then I'll just
play the rest of it by ear, and oh yeah.. varnish only, I'll leave the
metalflake eyecandy crap alone, it'll be more rat-rod than KDE
travolta-la-la :-)

[bad sector]

On 09/16/2012 01:52 PM, Aragorn wrote:

> The main reason why I bought it is because an SG with P-90s had really
> hypnotized me back when I was 15 and when I saw it on TV for the very
> first time. I had never seen that pickup type before, and I've only
> seen a P-90-equipped SG once or twice more on TV ever since then. I
> really liked the sound of it, especially through an overdriven Marshall.
> It sounded just like Carlos Santana on "Samba Pa Ti", which is of course
> no surprise because Carlos played an SG with P-90s on that track.
>
> The only difference is that his was an early 1960s model and that it was
> thus still officially sold as a Gibson Les Paul Special. Gibson only
> changed the name to SG in 1963, because Les Paul himself did not approve
> of the guitar and did not want his name on it - for several reasons,
> including his at that time ongoing divorce from Mary Ford and the fact
> that he was supposed to receive royalties from Gibson for every guitar
> sold with his name on it, even though he didn't receive any for that
> particular model because he had temporarily suspended his endorsement
> deal with Gibson to concentrate on his divorce.

That reminds me of their song called "A Cottage For Sale", can't
remember the date but they must have done it way before the divorce.
Speak of a spine chilling self-fulfilling prophecy!

But the reason I like the LP body is that it looks like a guitar and not
because I'm more impressed with Gibson than any other competent luthier.
The SHPR2B p-rails BTW do either single, p90 or humbucker and I think 2
of them are plenty enough ;-)

[Aragorn]

On Monday 17 September 2012 04:07, bad sector conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.suse...

> On 09/16/2012 01:52 PM, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> The main reason why I bought it is because an SG with P-90s had
>> really hypnotized me back when I was 15 and when I saw it on TV for
>> the very first time. I had never seen that pickup type before, and
>> I've only seen a P-90-equipped SG once or twice more on TV ever since
>> then. I really liked the sound of it, especially through an
>> overdriven Marshall. It sounded just like Carlos Santana on "Samba Pa
>> Ti", which is of course no surprise because Carlos played an SG with
>> P-90s on that track.
>>
>> The only difference is that his was an early 1960s model and that it
>> was thus still officially sold as a Gibson Les Paul Special. Gibson
>> only changed the name to SG in 1963, because Les Paul himself did not
>> approve of the guitar and did not want his name on it - for several
>> reasons, including his at that time ongoing divorce from Mary Ford
>> and the fact that he was supposed to receive royalties from Gibson
>> for every guitar sold with his name on it, even though he didn't
>> receive any for that particular model because he had temporarily
>> suspended his endorsement deal with Gibson to concentrate on his
>> divorce.
>
> That reminds me of their song called "A Cottage For Sale", can't
> remember the date but they must have done it way before the divorce.
> Speak of a spine chilling self-fulfilling prophecy!

The thing was that Mary couldn't handle the touring and the showbiz
world anymore, and Les was quite the opposite: he had always been a
showbiz man. He explained it in an interview a few years before he died
- it's on YouTube somewhere - and added that he had no hard feelings for
Mary. He understood that she couldn't handle it anymore and that she
wanted out.

> But the reason I like the LP body is that it looks like a guitar and
> not because I'm more impressed with Gibson than any other competent
> luthier.

Well, yes, the Gibson Les Paul model was in essence shaped as a 25%
scaled-down version of a typical archtop jazz guitar. But as a Les Paul
owner, I must warn you that it's not exactly the most ergonomic guitar
shape in the world. It has pros and cons.

One of the pros is the sound, of course. My Les Paul has a mahogany top
and sounds a bit sweeter and darker in the attack than the maple-capped
Les Pauls - those sound snappier in the attack - but the sound of a
(solidbody) Les Paul is legendary, of course.

Not all Les Pauls are solidbodies, mind you. Mine is, even though some
people would not consider it to be because it's got weight relief holes,
but a Stratocaster has a cavity in the back of the body for the springs
of the vibrato system, and nobody has ever said that a Strat isn't a
solidbody. ;-)

All electric guitars invariably have cavities in them, because you have
to house the electronics somewhere. What defines a solidbody is whether
those cavities are functionally resonating or not, and the traditional
weight relief with 9 perfectly round and distinct holes as Gibson
started applying to the Les Paul in 1982 does not functionally resonate.
It's just what the name says, i.e. weight relief.

The thing is that from 1974 on, the lightweight (and real) Honduras
mahogany that Gibson had been using for its guitars no longer was
commercially available, so Gibson and every other guitar manufacturer
using mahogany for their instruments had to start looking for a new
source of mahogany. And they found that, of course, but this new
mahogany was/is a lot heavier than the Honduras mahogany, and at first,
Gibson didn't really care about that extra weight, but then around the
early 1980s you had the whole heavy metal boom with lots of lightweight
and more affordable guitars - most from the Far East - invading the
whole world, with as a result that the sales of Gibson Les Pauls were
seriously declining, with the most common complaint being the weight.

I have played many of those Les Pauls made between 1974 and 1982, and
apart from being very heavy, the effect of the tail-heaviness was also
far more prominent on those guitars. You really had to pull down on the
neck and squeeze the guitar against your body with your picking arm in
order to prevent it from throwing its neck into the air and sliding down
the outside of your leg and onto the floor. The traditional weight
relief - as Gibson calls it now - largely remedied that.

Apart from the traditional weight relief, there are also two other
construction methods where wood is removed from the body, i.e. the fully
chambered approach as Gibson started applying to the Les Paul Standard
late 2006, and the so-called modern weight relief, which is still a form
of chambering but instead of two very large sound chambers which cover
almost the entire body, there are now 11 or 12 - I'm not sure on the
exact number - smaller trapezoid sound chambers around the circumference
of the body. Despite the name "modern weight relief", this is a form of
chambering because it affects the resonant characteristics of the body,
and the fully chambered Les Pauls even don't sound like Les Pauls
anymore. It's more of an ES-335 sound.

A traditionally weight relieved Les Paul - i.e. with the 9 round holes,
as on mine - does not sound any different from a non-weight relieved Les
Paul, and certainly not "more resonant" as Gibson's marketing spin
doctors claim on their website, although some purists will claim that
because there is less wood, there will also be less tone. Personally, I
think that there will probably be a greater variation in tone because of
the wood type itself than because of the weight relieving - at least,
when it comes to traditional weight relief. A "modern weight relieved"
Les Paul does sound a bit airier, and as I said, a fully chambered one
sounds more like an ES-335 than like a Les Paul.

So if you're going to build your own Les Paul model, then you must first
and foremost pay attention to the quality of the mahogany that you'll be
using, and then you must decide on whether to apply either weight relief
or not. Without it, a Les Paul will definitely be tail-heavy. That's
why the Ruokangas Unicorn is actually better, because its waist line is
farther towards the tail, and so it doesn't need weight relief to stay
in balance. It's also made from Spanish cedar rather than mahogany, and
Spanish cedar is genetically related to the mahogany tree, but the wood
is lighter and more resonant. It's very much like the Honduras mahogany
that Gibson used before 1974, and at some points even better.

> The SHPR2B p-rails BTW do either single, p90 or humbucker and
> I think 2 of them are plenty enough ;-)

I'm familiar with these pickups, and Seymour Duncan is definitely high
quality stuff. I was pleasantly surprised by the SH-6 "Duncan
Distortion" pickups in my Les Paul. I had rather expected them to sound
like the Dimarzio Super Distortion, which I do not like because it's so
muddy for clean sounds. However, the SH-6 has exactly the opposite
characteristics. It's a bit mid-scooped, with strong emphasis on the
treble, and very strong articulation and bite.

Personally I prefer a three-pickup configuration - I do own two guitars
with only two pickups, i.e. the Pete Townshend SG and the ESP/Ltd F-250
- because of the middle-and-bridge sound, which you, as a Strat player,
will be quite familiar with. That's my favorite sound, and I miss that
on a two-pickup guitar. A three-pickup Les Paul is stock-wired so that
the middle position of the switch - which is different from that of a
normal Les Paul switch - selects the middle and bridge pickups together
- the other two positions are like on a two-pickup Les Paul.

I had thought about having my Les Paul rewired with a couple of
push/pull pots so that I could get more sounds from it, but all things
considered, I'm a bit squeamish of giving an expensive guitar like that
out of hands. Gibsons are finished with nitrocellulose lacquer and
that's very vulnerable to scratches and dings. So I've decided I'm just
gonna keep it all stock. That has its charm too. ;-)

I do have heavier strings on it than stock, though. The ones that were
still being made in 2003 - it was only made from late 2001 until about
mid 2003 - came with .010-.046 strings, but the ones made before 2003 -
and mine is from 2002 - came with .009-.046. I use .010-.046 on all my
other Gibsons, but on my Les Paul I've put .010-.052, which is known as
a "light top, heavy bottom" set - it has the plain strings from a .010
set and the wound strings from a .012 set.

I also recommend Elixir Nanoweb strings. I've used D'Addario for almost
20 years - I tried various string brands before that - and D'Addario is
definitely very good, but once you've started using Elixir you will
never go back again. They sound as good as D'Addario, they cost about
50% more, but you get about 4 to 5 times the life out of them.

It's simply incredible. You can play them continuously for hours on end
and days or even weeks in a row, and they still look, feel and sound
just like they're brandnew, fresh out of the bag, including that typical
chime that you can only get from playing a fresh set of strings and that
normally disappears again after having played for a couple of days, a
few hours a day. No string lubricant needed, no squeaky sounds when you
reposition your fretting hand, no tarnished look and feel. Just a slick
feel, ever-shiny strings and awesome tone. ;-)

[bad sector]

On 09/17/2012 08:27 AM, Aragorn wrote:

> few hours a day. No string lubricant needed, no squeaky sounds when you
> reposition your fretting hand, no tarnished look and feel. Just a slick
> feel, ever-shiny strings and awesome tone. ;-)

Thanks, I'll try them strings next time

I was planning to experiment (it's all I've ever done I think) with
canary wood because it's brittle and quite vibrant, so is the lowly
BC-Fir but that one will also split in two just like that. To give this
some meaning, I figure that if I made a baseball bat from canary it then
every hit would literaly knock my head off too, now that's kickback!
That said I also look at the length of the neck compared to string-span
over the body and I'm sure the neck conducts 70%+ of the figurative
ground-wave traffic and plays big in frequency handling. The body work
perhaps has more effect on the audible accoustic or air dynamics
themselves. The neck also has to transmit bigtime, a glued one is like
trying to play ping-pong underwater, it actually sucks energy out of the
wood, and so do the mickeymouse screw jobs. A single piece integral neck
is probably good but a very hard act to follow so there again I'm
looking to innovate like metal adapters and metal-2-metal coupling.
Finally if metal contact is a good thing at the bridge it can't be bad
at the nut either.

The 3-pickup setup is overkill from my perspective which will never be
that of a pro player. On the other hand 3 pickup "profiles" in each of
two gives plenty to switch around. At this point I know too little
about mike wiring but a basic 3-way to select from 2 mikes and another
one to select both mikes to either one of their 3 modes will approximate
what I'll try.

All of this needless to say will come second to actual playing as that's
what I want to learn instead of becoming a luthier ;-)

[Aragorn]

On Monday 17 September 2012 18:32, bad sector conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.suse...

> [...] That said I also look at the length of the neck compared to

> string-span over the body and I'm sure the neck conducts 70%+ of the
> figurative ground-wave traffic and plays big in frequency handling.

Hmm, no... The neck (and the way it has been joined with the body) does
play an important role in sustain and tonal color - a maple neck sounds
brighter, a mahogany neck sounds warmer, and then there's also the
fingerboard material which has similar effects on the initial attack of
the note - but it's mainly the body that colors the tone.

Just look at the difference between a solidbody, a semi-hollow or
chambered body and a hollowbody.

> The body work perhaps has more effect on the audible accoustic or air
> dynamics themselves.

No, again not correct. A hollow or semi-hollow body is said to "push
air" around, but what actually happens in such constructions is that the
wood is thinner and will resonate along individual patterns with regard
to the other sections of the body.

So the top will resonate differently from the sides and they will in
turn resonate differently from the back. All of these vibrations then
interact with eachother. Some will enhance eachother and some others
will cancel out eachother due to opposite phase, and because the
vibrations spread throughout the wood differently than in a solidbody
construct - i.e. the vibration has to reach the back by way of the
sides, and they receive the vibrations through the top (and if
applicable, a center block), which receives the vibrations by way of the
bridge and tailpiece - you get a kind of reverberation effect.

Now, compare that to a solidbody guitar. The vibrations are sent into
the body by way of the bridge and tailpiece - and of course also the
neck, which also applies to the hollow or semi-hollow designs - and
there is no reverberation, because there is consistency in the
construction. It's all single block of wood, regardless of whether it's
comprised of multiple blocks and a separate top and whatever else have
you.

Quite a different sound, as I'm sure you will agree.

> The neck also has to transmit bigtime, a glued one is like trying to
> play ping-pong underwater, it actually sucks energy out of the wood,
> and so do the mickeymouse screw jobs.

That is not correct. A bolt-on neck design - while it has its merits on
account of guitar repair and/or after-market replacement necks - tends
to suck up tone because there isn't sufficient contact between the neck
and the body. Quite often, bolt-on neck guitars also have lacquer in
the neck socket, which also ruins the tone.

A glued-in neck has much better contact between the body and the neck,
and a greater contact surface, especially if a long neck tenon is used,
which reaches into the body all the way beyond the neck pickup socket.
On such guitars, the pickup cavities are only routed after the neck has
already been glued into the body, and as such, part of that neck tenon
still extends underneath the neck pickup cavity. The special glues they
use for such a construction make sure that the vibrations are not muted.

> A single piece integral neck is probably good but a very hard act to
> follow so there again I'm looking to innovate like metal adapters and
> metal-2-metal coupling. Finally if metal contact is a good thing at
> the bridge it can't be bad at the nut either.

I have two neck-through guitars - my Gibson Firebird VII and my ESP/Ltd
F-250 - but I can't say that this construction method yields a better
tone than a "set" - i.e. glued-in - neck construction.

What does play a role in the decision to go with a neck-through design
is the fact that the strings will be attached to a single piece of wood,
which offers more consistency on account of intonation in light of
temperature changes. On account of sustain however, there is virtually
no difference at all between a neck-through and a set neck.

In terms of constructing the guitar, a neck-through is of course the
hardest and most labor-intensive method, which is why such guitars are
generally more expensive, and why most guitar makers shun this
construction method. The problem is even bigger if you're going for a
Les Paul-style guitar, because of the angle between the neck and the
body, which is needed to accommodate the carved/arched top and the tune-
o-matic bridge.

This neck angle also needs to be precise, because it defines the balance
between high frequencies and sustain. A Gibson Les Paul normally has a
4° to 5° angle, depending on the vintage.

> The 3-pickup setup is overkill from my perspective which will never be
> that of a pro player.

Oh, but I'm not a pro player either. It's not about getting /more/
sounds, but about getting /sounds that you can't get/ from a two-pickup
set-up. Like I said, whenever I play a two-pickup guitar, I miss the
middle-and-bridge sound, because that's my favorite sound.

> On the other hand 3 pickup "profiles" in each of two gives plenty to
> switch around.

I take it you are referring to the P-90 sound, the humbucker sound and
the rail sound? Well, you can take that further, even, by adding
series/parallel switching for their humbucking modes, and even a phase
inversion switch for when you've got both pickups on.

Jimmy Page had a very intricate wiring on his #2 Les Paul, which allowed
him to switch the pickups from series to parallel to single coil, to
reverse the phase between them, and even to put both pickups in series
with eachother.

> At this point I know too little about mike wiring but a basic 3-way to
> select from 2 mikes and another one to select both mikes to either one
> of their 3 modes will approximate what I'll try.

Please also note that an electric guitar pickup is not a microphone. In
fact, it is designed around speaker technology, used in reverse. ;-)

> All of this needless to say will come second to actual playing as
> that's what I want to learn instead of becoming a luthier ;-)

Well, when I was a teenager, I read something in an advertisement in a
musical instrument magazine once which has stayed with me since then.
It said something along the lines of...

"John McEnroe will still hit a ball with a $10 tennis racket, but
John McLaughlin on a $10 guitar is an abomination."

If you're only just learning how to play, then stick to your
Stratocaster for now, because that's an awesome guitar and it has great
playability. Don't think about building your own guitar yet just now,
because you might screw it up, and if it's not properly built, you will
become discouraged from playing.

Take it from me. I have played a guitar with terrible playability for
10 years, because I didn't even realize how terrible its playability was
until I compared it to other and more expensive guitars. And I was
often discouraged. But at least now, if I'm not having my day when I'm
playing, I can't blame it on the guitar anymore. ;-)

[bad sector]

On 09/17/2012 01:06 PM, Aragorn wrote:

> Now, compare that to a solidbody guitar. The vibrations are sent into
> the body by way of the bridge and tailpiece - and of course also the
> neck, which also applies to the hollow or semi-hollow designs - and
> there is no reverberation, because there is consistency in the
> construction. It's all single block of wood, regardless of whether it's
> comprised of multiple blocks and a separate top and whatever else have
> you.

I'm in no position to disagree ;-)

Six months ago I didn't know what an LP was or that semi hollow was not
the same as chambered. But I gues I was thinking more of solid body
guitars. This morning I was resting my chin on the strat while picking
some notes just to test the tuning and noticed quite a bit of
amplification. Then I realised the gaaawdawful implication i.e. that my
head must be half empty!

> A glued-in neck has much better contact between the body and the neck,
> and a greater contact surface, especially if a long neck tenon is used,
> which reaches into the body all the way beyond the neck pickup socket.
> On such guitars, the pickup cavities are only routed after the neck has
> already been glued into the body, and as such, part of that neck tenon
> still extends underneath the neck pickup cavity. The special glues they
> use for such a construction make sure that the vibrations are not muted.

My grandfather was a cartwright and made his own glue, it dried to
become like glass. I haven't seen glue like it since.

> I take it you are referring to the P-90 sound, the humbucker sound and
> the rail sound? Well, you can take that further, even, by adding
> series/parallel switching for their humbucking modes, and even a phase
> inversion switch for when you've got both pickups on.

That's what I mean, somewhere along the line it becomes overkill, like
the mustang-III amp with 100 presets. It's hard enough to keep track of
a dozen. The three available pickup modes are single/p90/humbucker or at
least that's how I read the ads.

> Well, when I was a teenager, I read something in an advertisement in a
> musical instrument magazine once which has stayed with me since then.
> It said something along the lines of...
>
> "John McEnroe will still hit a ball with a $10 tennis racket, but
> John McLaughlin on a $10 guitar is an abomination."

So would I be with a $4k LP at this point in time ;-)

But I must show some promise though because my dog comes right over when
I sit down to practice ...but then after 10 minutes he just flocks
right off.

[Aragorn]

On Tuesday 18 September 2012 01:21, bad sector conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.suse...

> On 09/17/2012 01:06 PM, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Now, compare that to a solidbody guitar. The vibrations are sent
>> into the body by way of the bridge and tailpiece - and of course also
>> the neck, which also applies to the hollow or semi-hollow designs -
>> and there is no reverberation, because there is consistency in the
>> construction. It's all single block of wood, regardless of whether
>> it's comprised of multiple blocks and a separate top and whatever
>> else have you.
>
> I'm in no position to disagree ;-)
>
> Six months ago I didn't know what an LP was or that semi hollow was
> not the same as chambered.

Well, a lot of the nomenclature is manufacturer-specific. Gibson
reserves the moniker "semi-hollow" for what other manufacturers
typically call "semi-acoustic", i.e. a guitar body made from thin,
laminated wood, which is bent into shape and then glued together like a
box - just as on an acoustic guitar or a hollowbody jazz guitar - but
with a solid block of wood running from the neck heel to the tail of the
guitar.

For all intents and purposes, the fully chambered Les Paul Standards and
Studios are semi-hollows as well. The only difference is that instead
of using thin, laminated wood, they are cutting the back, sides and
center from a single block, and the top is solid, with a curvature which
is not due to bending but due to carving. If you look at the Ruokangas
Duke model in its semi-hollow version, you will see that it is
essentially built the same way as a fully chambered Les Paul, with the
only difference being that it has F-holes.

Les Pauls with what Gibson calls "modern weight relief" are also
chambered, but they have more wood in the body than the fully chambered
ones, so that type of guitars is typically referred to as "semi-solid".

And of course, the ones with what Gibson calls "traditional weight
relief" - i.e. the 9 round holes - are often referred to as "Swiss-
cheesed", and there is lots of confusion there, caused by people who
just don't get it themselves. A lot of that confusion stems from
Gibson's own deliberate misinformation on their website.

See, when they made the decision to suddenly start chambering the Les
Paul Standard from mid-2006 on - most people don't even know that this
is when it started, because most think that it started with the 2008 Les
Paul Standard - there was a lot of negative reaction from die-hard Les
Paul fans. After all, the Gibson Les Paul Standard had been an iconic
solidbody guitar for over five decades, and the Standard was the direct
successor - or if you will, an evolution - of the original Les Paul
Goldtop, which only came to be because Les Paul himself wanted to have a
solidbody guitar.

Well, that is to say, Les Paul already approached Gibson with this idea
in 1945, but Gibson - or more correctly, CMI, which later on became the
Norlin Company and which was Gibson's parent company up until 1986 - had
arrogantly and mockinly sent Les Paul home again, calling his "Log"
prototype "a broomstick with a pickup on it", but in 1948, Gibson hired
Ted McCarty, who would become president of Gibson in 1950, and who was
very much aware of Leo Fender's own endeavors in Fullerton, California,
and Fender's first (and quite successful) Broadcaster, which would later
on become known as the Fender Telecaster and which was thus the world's
first mass-produced solidbody guitar. So it was Ted McCarty who managed
to convince CMI/Norlin to contact Les Paul again to talk about building
a signature solidbody guitar for him, and by 1952, the first Gibson Les
Paul Model (with its Goldtop finish) was a fact. The finish was not
actually gold but rather created by mixing bronze particles with a clear
coating.

But so anyway, the Les Paul Standard had always been Gibson's iconic
(and bestselling) solidbody guitar, and suddenly Gibson had decided that
it shouldn't be a solidbody anymore. This outraged a lot of Les Paul
fans, and that's why Gibson started putting up a spin about how they had
in fact already been doing that since 1982, by referring to the
traditional 9-hole weight relief as "a form of chambering" and then
further blowing up that lie by claiming that the traditionally weight
relieved guitars "sound acoustically louder" and "add an airiness to the
midrange". Those are properties of a fully chambered Les Paul, but not
of a traditionally weight relieved Les Paul. Yet, people are highly
suggestible, and some people started going like "Yeah, I can hear that
it's a little more resonant", when judging the sound of a traditionally
weight-relieved Les Paul, which is of course absolutely bogus.

Either way, although some people really liked the new, chambered Les
Paul - either because they were already looking for that type of sound
(but from a more compact body than an ES-335) or because they were
simply too young to understand (or care about) the history of the Les
Paul, the true Gibson Les Paul fans remained angered, and so Gibson
introduced a solidbody Les Paul Standard again in 2007, under the name
Les Paul Traditional. It's in essence a Les Paul Standard as they were
made in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the traditional 9-hole
weight relief, 57 Classic pickups, "speed" knobs instead of "top hat"
knobs and the pickguard mounted on the guitar at the factory; from
around the year 2000 or so, Les Paul Standards with sunburst finishes
over highly figured maple tops came with the pickguard, mounting bracket
and screws in the hardshell case, but without that the holes were pre-
drilled at the factory, so that the customer could/can choose whether to
mount the pickguard or leave the guitar like that.

While the chambered Les Paul Standards appeared to sell pretty well in
the USA, the Les Paul Traditional seemed more popular elsewhere, and so
for 2012, Gibson has again revised the recipe for the Les Paul Standard,
by replacing the full chambering with what they now call "modern weight
relief", a more minimal form of chambering which blends the resonant
characteristics of a chambered body with the larger wood mass of a
traditional Les Paul and bring the tone and sustain a little closer to
that of the originals again. But the Les Paul Traditional is still made
with the traditional 9-hole weight relief and remains highly popular.
Gibson has in the meantime also changed their pricing now so that the
Traditional and the Standard cost exactly the same.

Even yesterday I had a short debate with someone on YouTube who said
that those Les Pauls are not solid because of the weight relief holes,
and he kept on putting it like that despite the fact that I had informed
him that no electric guitar is ever completely solid then, because all
guitars must have cavities for the electronics, vibrato springs (in the
event of a Strat-style vibrato or a Floyd Rose) and the pickups. I told
him that a solidbody guitar is defined by the fact that the cavities in
the body may not be functionally resonating, but he kept on going about
his mantra that it wasn't solid. People are people, you know? ;-)

Nevertheless, Gibson does still use the full chambering approach on most
of today's Les Paul Studio models. But that is not something a die-hard
Les Paul fan will be upset about, because the Les Paul Studio was only
introduced in 1983 and is somewhat of a stepchild. It doesn't have the
fancy body and fingerboard binding or figured maple, and its pickups
aren't even as good as those of a Les Paul Standard, although some
Studios with either Burstbucker Pro pickups or P-90s were made.

> But I gues I was thinking more of solid body guitars. This morning I
> was resting my chin on the strat while picking some notes just to test
> the tuning and noticed quite a bit of amplification. Then I realised
> the gaaawdawful implication i.e. that my head must be half empty!

No, but your skull is hard enough to serve as a resonator for the
soundwaves reaching your ears. Even your mouth and nose cavity act as
resonance chambers, and they are directly connected to your inner ear.

This is quite prevalent in nature as well. Just look at the principle
of echolocation as used by bats and cetaceans.

>> A glued-in neck has much better contact between the body and the
>> neck, and a greater contact surface, especially if a long neck tenon
>> is used, which reaches into the body all the way beyond the neck
>> pickup socket. On such guitars, the pickup cavities are only routed
>> after the neck has already been glued into the body, and as such,
>> part of that neck tenon still extends underneath the neck pickup
>> cavity. The special glues they use for such a construction make sure
>> that the vibrations are not muted.
>
> My grandfather was a cartwright and made his own glue, it dried to
> become like glass. I haven't seen glue like it since.

I'm not sure on what adhesive Gibson uses these days. They refer to it
as "Franklin Titebond 50", but I don't know what it's comprised of.
They do let it harden for quite some time, though.

>> I take it you are referring to the P-90 sound, the humbucker sound
>> and the rail sound? Well, you can take that further, even, by adding
>> series/parallel switching for their humbucking modes, and even a
>> phase inversion switch for when you've got both pickups on.
>
> That's what I mean, somewhere along the line it becomes overkill, like
> the mustang-III amp with 100 presets.

Yeah, but that's one of those "modeling amps". It's all digital stuff.
I'm not a fan of that. My BOSS GT-10 effects processor is also digital,
but for an amplifier, nothing beats good old tubes. ;-)

Of course, tube amps are high-maintenance compared to solid state amps,
but the tubes just add to your sound. They become part of your
instrument, actually.

> It's hard enough to keep track of a dozen. The three available pickup
> modes are single/p90/humbucker or at least that's how I read the ads.

Yes, but that's just courtesy of the 4-conductor wiring of the pickup
itself. Switching to parallel mode or reversing the overall phase of
the pickup is easily done with a few extra push/pull pots.

>> Well, when I was a teenager, I read something in an advertisement in
>> a musical instrument magazine once which has stayed with me since
>> then. It said something along the lines of...
>>
>> "John McEnroe will still hit a ball with a $10 tennis racket,
>> but John McLaughlin on a $10 guitar is an abomination."
>
> So would I be with a $4k LP at this point in time ;-)
>
> But I must show some promise though because my dog comes right over
> when I sit down to practice ...but then after 10 minutes he just
> flocks right off.

Many moons ago - in the mid-to-late 1980s - I had a Siamese cat that
would try to chew my guitar cable when I was playing. I was still
playing my cheap Japanese Strat copy back then, and of course, it had a
whammy bar. It would go out of tune if you used it for anything more
than a light vibrato shimmer, but I regularly tried doing Van Halen
dive-bombs on it.

One day, my at-the-time girlfriend and I were sitting at the table, and
the cat walked up to my guitar, which was in a stand. It put its head
against the whammy bar and went "Meeeeooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww!" My
girlfriend and I were rolling on the floor. :p

[bad sector]

On 09/18/2012 07:01 AM, Aragorn wrote:
> On Tuesday 18 September 2012 01:21, bad sector conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.suse...
>
>> On 09/17/2012 01:06 PM, Aragorn wrote:
>>
>>> Now, compare that to a solidbody guitar. The vibrations are sent
>>> into the body by way of the bridge and tailpiece - and of course also
>>> the neck, which also applies to the hollow or semi-hollow designs -
>>> and there is no reverberation, because there is consistency in the
>>> construction. It's all single block of wood, regardless of whether
>>> it's comprised of multiple blocks and a separate top and whatever
>>> else have you.
>>
>> I'm in no position to disagree ;-)
>>
>> Six months ago I didn't know what an LP was or that semi hollow was
>> not the same as chambered.
>
> Well, a lot of the nomenclature is manufacturer-specific. Gibson
> reserves the moniker "semi-hollow" for what other manufacturers

Gee, that's an outstanding heads-up on the LP technology slugfest, I'm
keeping it for a reference! I also looked up that finnish Ruokangas
shop with the NASA-budget prices, their LP 'knockoff' is around $6k with
shipping and all! They do let you chose a few things but not enough for
my liking, anyway those exponential prices are completely out of my
game. Beyond cost some other reasons I'd be inclined to make my own are
a few givens that I'm not likely to change

- a strat type offset head
- s strat type bridge/vibrato
- a 24 fret neck
- an all maple neck with dot inlay (perhaps big dots)
- a bolt-on neck
- a relatively smallish body not far from the
strat (a tele is too big & a rib buster from what I hear)
- the pickups mentioned earlier (until surpassed)

I had thought of an LP "kit" but even those don't have what I want so by
the looks of things somewhere down the road I'll have to start gathering
the storm and maybe finding my old router bits even.

The "sound" I'm after but which I was not really aware of early in the
game is probably LP because of the humbuckers' better sustain. Here's
three utube numbers to illustrate, none use single coil pu's (just be
careful with the last one, I think the guy's into sniffing something so
hard you might get some off the monitor ;-)
The first one does use the pickups I want

zSBXUfSyPP0 aXZGt5tCWeI otMdu59vumQ

Otherwise the LP just means a smallish classical guitar 'shape' tyo me,
while in terms of the "sound" I've read some blurbs to the effect that
air just makes for too much feedback and I'm still looking for a good
youtube piece that illustrates all the effects that might interest me. I
also noticed that Mark Knopfler went over to LP's quite a while ago but
I wouldn't know how much of that was conviction as opposed to...

[Aragorn]

On Tuesday 18 September 2012 14:53, bad sector conveyed the following to

alt.os.linux.suse...

> On 09/18/2012 07:01 AM, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday 18 September 2012 01:21, bad sector conveyed the following
>> to alt.os.linux.suse...
>>

>>> Six months ago I didn't know what an LP was or that semi hollow was
>>> not the same as chambered.
>>
>> Well, a lot of the nomenclature is manufacturer-specific. Gibson

>> reserves the moniker "semi-hollow" for what other manufacturers [...]

>
> Gee, that's an outstanding heads-up on the LP technology slugfest, I'm
> keeping it for a reference!

Glad you found it useful. ;-)

> I also looked up that finnish Ruokangas shop with the NASA-budget

> prices, [...

Well, it's all hand-built boutique stuff, with the best of the best
components. A lot of labor goes into building one of those, and they
have to make a living too. ;-)

> ...] their LP 'knockoff' is around $6k with shipping and all!

Again...: hand-built, and the best possible components available.
Stainless steel frets, locking tuners, locking bridge and tailpiece,
strap locks, custom-wired pickups and the finest timber and lacquer.

> They do let you chose a few things but not enough for my liking, [...

That's not quite correct. Their guitar configurator application allows
you to outline the most important features, but they do allow you to
further fine-tune your choices via e-mail correspondence. Of course,
that's going to cost you extra, because one/off solutions always require
far more work. Templates will have to be made, new finish colors must
be concocted and first proofed on some test surface of the same wood
type, etc.

> ...] anyway those exponential prices are completely out of my game.

Okay, that's fair enough.

> Beyond cost some other reasons I'd be inclined to make my own are a
> few givens that I'm not likely to change
>
> - a strat type offset head
> - s strat type bridge/vibrato

If I may add a little personal experience to this one, I've always had
guitars with vibratos on them up until I started playing Gibsons - well,
my Firebird VII also has a vibrato tailpiece - and I can assure you that
vibrato systems always run away with your sustain and tone. The reason
for that is plain and simple physics: they contain springs, and springs
absorb vibration.

If you emphasis is on sustain and tone, then you should go for a fixed
bridge set-up. A wraparound bridge - and there are some very good
designs with individually adjustable saddles - is the most resonant one,
but a tune-o-matic bridge and separate stop tail are /almost/ just as
good.

Another aspect is that a guitar with a vibrato system is always a pain
to tune up; you tune up one string and all others will drop in pitch
because of the change in tension on the vibrato, causing it to tilt
towards the neck and thus lower the tension on the other strings.

Likewise, if your playing includes unison bends or the typical bluesy
full step bend, immediately followed by a note one minor third up on the
adjacent higher string, then you'll find that when bending the first
note, the fretted note on the other string will drop in pitch because of
it.

> - a 24 fret neck

Again a personal remark here, albeit that many guitarists share this
opinion with me. With a 22-fret neck, the neck pickup sits exactly
under the harmonic node of the hypothetical 24th fret. This gives the
neck pickup a particular harmonic sweetness.

With a 24-fret neck, the neck pickup sits farther towards the bridge -
this is also the case on a Gibson SG, which normally only has 22 frets
but of which the neck joint precludes that the neck pickup would be
positioned right at the end of the fingerboard. So as a result, the
neck pickup won't have the same harmonic content anymore and won't sound
as sweet anymore.

> - an all maple neck with dot inlay (perhaps big dots)

Okay, no argument there if that is your preference. Maple sounds
brighter than mahogany and a maple fingerboard adds snap, but personally
I would then choose either a maple neck with a rosewood fingerboard, or
a mahogany neck with a maple or ebony fingerboard.

> - a bolt-on neck

Not exactly the best option for either sound or sustain, and you must
also keep in mind that the bolts will allow the neck some play if you
use the vibrato system a lot.

> - a relatively smallish body not far from the
> strat (a tele is too big & a rib buster from what I hear)

A Stratocaster isn't a particularly small-bodied guitar either. The
Ibanez guitars I have are smaller in body size.

> - the pickups mentioned earlier (until surpassed)

Those pickups are very interesting choices. They're still fairly new,
but I have a feeling they're becoming more popular rapidly.

> I had thought of an LP "kit" but even those don't have what I want so
> by the looks of things somewhere down the road I'll have to start
> gathering the storm and maybe finding my old router bits even.

Well, if I may give you some advice, I would recommend you to check out
ESP's Eclipse series of guitars. ESP proper guitars are custom shop
instruments, and Ltd is their mass production brand (with production in
Indonesia and Korea), but ESP itself is Japanese and they are definitely
far more affordable than Gibson.

The Eclipse - which exists in both ESP and Ltd versions - is a Les
Paul'ish body style, albeit thinner and smaller. They normally come in
a dual-pickup configuration (with humbuckers) and they have highly
playable necks - I believe they are available in either 22- or 24-fret
versions. They also have a comfortable ribcage contour on the back like
a Stratocaster, and they sound very good. Stock wiring is a three-way
toggle switch, dual volume controls and a master tone control.

Even if you decide not to custom-order an ESP, then you might still want
to buy an ESP (or Ltd) Eclipse and exchange the pickups for your choice
of Seymour Duncans, with perhaps push/pull pots to select the different
sounds.

> The "sound" I'm after but which I was not really aware of early in the
> game is probably LP because of the humbuckers' better sustain.

Humbuckers do have more sustain than Fender-style single-coil pickups,
but the difference is rather small. Most of the sustain of a Les Paul
comes from the body and the neck, and its set neck construction.

> Here's three utube numbers to illustrate, none use single coil pu's
> (just be careful with the last one, I think the guy's into sniffing
> something so hard you might get some off the monitor ;-)
> The first one does use the pickups I want
>
> zSBXUfSyPP0 aXZGt5tCWeI otMdu59vumQ
>
> Otherwise the LP just means a smallish classical guitar 'shape' tyo
> me, while in terms of the "sound" I've read some blurbs to the effect
> that air just makes for too much feedback and I'm still looking for a
> good youtube piece that illustrates all the effects that might
> interest me.

Personally, I like the sound of a chambered or semi-acoustic guitar, but
on another guitarist than myself. :p For my own musical expression, I
prefer a solidbody. It's what I identify with as a guitarist. :-)

And yes, a semi-hollow or full-hollowbody tend to feedback a lot at
higher volume pressures, especially those with sound holes in their
tops. That's why BB King's signature "Lucille" guitar doesn't have any
F-holes in it. Earlier on, when he was still playing a regular ES-335,
he used to put towels in the guitar through those F-holes to prevent
unwanted feedback.

The thing is that the sound pressure from the amplifier's speakers
enters the body through those sound holes and then gets trapped inside
the body, causing the top to resonate uncontrollably. Definitely not
what you want.

> I also noticed that Mark Knopfler went over to LP's quite a while ago
> but I wouldn't know how much of that was conviction as opposed to...

Actually, he didn't switch to Les Pauls. He has always had a couple of
Les Pauls - vintage ones, from 1958 and 1959, and he also has a Gibson
Custom Shop '59 Reissue - and he uses them for certain tracks [1], but
he also still uses his Stratocasters and even a signature Suhr - those
are also hand-built guitars - which is a Strat-like guitar with a
humbucker in the bridge position and single-coils for the middle and
neck positions.

He's also still got an endorsement deal with Fender going on for a
signature Mark Knopfler Stratocaster, which is a Fender Custom Shop
replica of the red Stratocaster which he used on "Sultans Of Swing".
The original was built from a 1957 body and a 1962 neck, and Mark
Knopfler had fitted a five-way pickup selector switch to it himself,
because Fender only started fitting five-way switches to the Strat in
the mid-1970s. "Sultans Of Swing" was played using the middle and
bridge pickups together and set the standard for all clean Stratocaster
tones from there on. ;-)


[1] Among others, he uses a Les Paul on "Brothers In Arms" and "Money
For Nothing". I've also seen him use it live (with an orchestra)
while doing "Going Home", also known as the theme from "A Local
Hero". On the recordings however, he uses a Stratocaster for that
song. Conversely, I've also seen him play "Money For Nothing" live
on his Suhr guitar [2] during a performance - I forgot where it was
because this was a very long time ago, but it could have been in
South Africa - where the Dire Straits rhythm guitarist was
temporarily replaced (due to him having become a father) by none
other than Eric Clapton.

[2] He also played "Money For Nothing" live once on a Steinberger
headless guitar with dual humbuckers.

--

[Will Honea]

bad sector wrote:

> But I must show some promise though because my dog comes right over when
> I sit down to practice ...but then after 10 minutes he just flocks
> right off.

That got a chuckle! We had one German Shephard who would do the same when
the wife got her violin out - but he would try to "sing along" on certain
pieces and howled like a Banshee if she hit a sour note. Ann finally banned
him to the back yard when she practiced - everyone hates a critic ;-)

--
Will Honea

[bad sector]

You should really write a book; did you play pro in a band or maybe on
your own?

On 09/18/2012 10:33 AM, Aragorn wrote:
> On Tuesday 18 September 2012 14:53, bad sector conveyed the following to

> If I may add a little personal experience to this one, I've always had
> guitars with vibratos on them up until I started playing Gibsons - well,
> my Firebird VII also has a vibrato tailpiece - and I can assure you that
> vibrato systems always run away with your sustain and tone. The reason
> for that is plain and simple physics: they contain springs, and springs
> absorb vibration.

I have little need for them, it's only for that 1/100 times and then the
Floyd style is enough for me, but I noticed that most LP's I saw had no
whammy at all and the players didn't seem to be dead.

> If you emphasis is on sustain and tone, then you should go for a fixed
> bridge set-up. A wraparound bridge - and there are some very good
> designs with individually adjustable saddles - is the most resonant one,
> but a tune-o-matic bridge and separate stop tail are /almost/ just as
> good.
>
> Another aspect is that a guitar with a vibrato system is always a pain
> to tune up; you tune up one string and all others will drop in pitch
> because of the change in tension on the vibrato, causing it to tilt
> towards the neck and thus lower the tension on the other strings.

My strat has not needed a retune for months, except for major
tempertature changes which I found otherwise very (pleasantly)
surprising. I had bought a noname hollowbody months earlier, it had to
be tuned every day and one guitar player in the familiy suggested I just
kill myself in shame for having dragged it into the house. It was that
POS that really forced me to buy a strat.

>> - a 24 fret neck
>
> Again a personal remark here, albeit that many guitarists share this
> opinion with me. With a 22-fret neck, the neck pickup sits exactly
> under the harmonic node of the hypothetical 24th fret. This gives the
> neck pickup a particular harmonic sweetness.

I've heard people cite exactly that reason as a negative though i.e.
they like not having the pickup in that (according to them) mushy
region. When it comes to deep guitar expertise I'm so poor I can't even
change my mind so I don't really have an opinion on locating the pickup
under half length resonnance. But I do have an idea to make a neck
that's completely usable all the way to a point where no more room for a
joint exists and then make a joint in that non-existing space :-)

>> - an all maple neck with dot inlay (perhaps big dots)
>
> Okay, no argument there if that is your preference. Maple sounds
> brighter than mahogany and a maple fingerboard adds snap, but personally
> I would then choose either a maple neck with a rosewood fingerboard, or
> a mahogany neck with a maple or ebony fingerboard.

I don't see how the fingerboard interrupted by all the fret cuts could
possibly do anything except bad accoustics. I'm thinking of railroad
inspectors hitting the wheels with hammers to detect cracks if you ever
saw one of them in action. Now if one of them wheels had section sawcuts
filed with whatever I think they would not sound the same as a healthy
wheel! What I would do on my prototype instead is try to glue frets onto
the now completely integral neck wood so as to preclude it being even
partly segmented. I have about half a dozen such ideas and with every
thought the urge to build gets more overpowering. I look at it this way,
keeping eyecandy crap right out of the picture for an initial testbed,
using surface mounted hardware and such obscenities, I'd be below $400,
it wouldn't matter if it looks like shit ;-)

>> - a bolt-on neck
>
> Not exactly the best option for either sound or sustain, and you must
> also keep in mind that the bolts will allow the neck some play if you
> use the vibrato system a lot.

I have a radical idea that goes beyond bolt-on, it may not work, but
I'll try it.

>> The "sound" I'm after but which I was not really aware of early in the
>> game is probably LP because of the humbuckers' better sustain.
>
> Humbuckers do have more sustain than Fender-style single-coil pickups,
> but the difference is rather small. Most of the sustain of a Les Paul
> comes from the body and the neck, and its set neck construction.

That's news to me, good to know. I thought the humbuckers were the main
attraction.

[Aragorn]

On Sunday 23 September 2012 05:04, bad sector conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.suse...

> You should really write a book; did you play pro in a band or maybe on
> your own?

I have never been a professional - in the sense of making a living out
of my music - but I have been in several bands, and of very eclectic
nature.

I formed my first band when I was still in highschool. We started off
as a duo - myself on lead guitar and the other guy on acoustic rhythm
guitar and synthesizer - but then later on we were joined by another guy
from our school on bass, and then later on a drummer, who was a lot
younger than us.

The band temporarily took a break so we could focus more on our
college/university education, and when we reunited after several years,
we had another bass player. Later on, a singer was added to the band as
well - originally the other guitarist (and keyboard player) did most of
the lead vocals, and I myself used to do the lead vocal on two of the
songs that I had written. I mainly wrote only the music while the other
founding band member wrote the lyrics, but on occasion we would each
write complete songs - music and lyrics.

We started off as a kind of progressive rock band, but the other guy's
musical preferences quickly seemed to be headed more into a kind of
experimental punk rock with far less intricate musical arrangements.
Eventually it also turned out that the band as a whole was not willing
to move forward and become semi-pro, and that the other guy's ego was
beginning to dominate the band. He too didn't have the ambition to go
semi-pro or improve upon the technical aspects of making music.

My songs were getting more complex and guitar-oriented, but I found that
they were increasingly scrapping my songs from the playlist when we were
rehearsing for a gig, and eventually, after a quite successful gig, the
other guy - by whom I mean "the one with whom I founded the band when I
was 17" - asked me to leave the band. I was shocked, but I saw no
reason not to comply. He had already talked the other band members into
siding up with his views, and I knew that it was going to be pointless
to stay in a band with people who do not want you there.

From that moment on, I started practicing more at home, and I began
realizing that the band had been holding me back, because they didn't
want to grow, neither as a band nor as individual musicians. I was now
free to explore musical avenues which were not possible within the band,
and to become a technically much better guitar player. This was when I
became strongly influenced by the likes of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai,
and although I lack practice now and I've also moved away from the hard
rock'ish, heavy metal'ish playing style now, I could already play
several Satriani and Vai songs back in the 1990s.

I have tried to start new bands and I have been in other bands as well -
both as a permanent member and as a stand-in lead guitarist - but I
guess none of them were either suitable or serious enough. In the late
1990s I was a member of a cover band for a while, doing classic rock
covers.

The last band I was in was not really a /defined/ band, but rather a
public jam session band, where you had a small core of musicians who
were almost always going to be present at every session, and a number of
irregularly attending musicians. Everyone was welcome to come and jam
along. There were definitely fireworks going off on my first session
with these guys - some of whom I knew from having talked to them at a
café. Unlike most of the "guests", I stuck with them the whole night,
and we were all having a great time, moving in all kinds of musical
directions, from funk to rock to jazz to blues and everything in
between.

The thing however is that most jam sessions that I know over here of are
just typical blues jams, where it's mainly the guitarists who take
turns, and who are generally competing with eachother, showing off their
riffs and licks. Kind of a gathering of alpha males. Now, I'm not an
alpha male myself, but I /am/ a male, and put an alpha male next to me,
and I will behave just as competitively. That's a leftover from having
to compete and fend for myself in highschool.

The jam context I was referring to higher up and which I participated in
for the better part of 2003 was different. We had all sorts of
musicians there, and everyone was considered equal and equivalent.
Nobody was trying to be a leader or an alpha male. Someone would simply
start a groove, and someone else would pick up on that, and then the
others would all pitch in, and we all took turns at lead and rhythm.

On occasion, just for fun, we'd do some cover songs as well. There were
two jazz classics that we did free interpretations of at almost every
gig - "Sunny" and "Summertime" - but we've also done more mainstream
rock/pop stuff, e.g. Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon", Kiss's "Sure Know
Something", The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and "Message In A
Bottle", et al.

Sure, you had some showboats dropping in every once in a while, and even
one guy who brought an Eric Clapton songbook with him and then played
nothing but Clapton songs, singing all the time and playing lead guitar
when he wasn't singing. The other musicians didn't appreciate that,
because that was not what we were there for. So in the end, the
showboats/egotrippers would do a number of songs with us but were then
kindly informed that we weren't there as their personal rhythm section,
and they would then just go sit in a corner and have a beer, or pack up
their stuff and go home.

Sadly enough, due to an outrageous display of disrespect towards us by
the owner of the venue where these jam sessions took place, the whole
thing ended abruptly in November 2003, and although we would on occasion
still run into eachother at restaurants or cafés, we all sort of went
our own way from there on. It's a pity, because we did make some great
music together.

> On 09/18/2012 10:33 AM, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> If I may add a little personal experience to this one, I've always
>> had guitars with vibratos on them up until I started playing Gibsons
>> - well, my Firebird VII also has a vibrato tailpiece - and I can
>> assure you that vibrato systems always run away with your sustain and
>> tone. The reason for that is plain and simple physics: they contain
>> springs, and springs absorb vibration.
>
> I have little need for them, it's only for that 1/100 times and then
> the Floyd style is enough for me, but I noticed that most LP's I saw
> had no whammy at all and the players didn't seem to be dead.

Exactly. And you can get nice pitch bending effects with the use of
effects devices as well. Not quite the same of course, but the option
is there.

>>> - a 24 fret neck
>>
>> Again a personal remark here, albeit that many guitarists share this
>> opinion with me. With a 22-fret neck, the neck pickup sits exactly
>> under the harmonic node of the hypothetical 24th fret. This gives
>> the neck pickup a particular harmonic sweetness.
>
> I've heard people cite exactly that reason as a negative though i.e.
> they like not having the pickup in that (according to them) mushy
> region.

Then your experience is exactly the opposite of mine. Most guitarists I
know actually prefer the neck pickup to be sitting under that harmonic
node.

> When it comes to deep guitar expertise I'm so poor I can't even change
> my mind so I don't really have an opinion on locating the pickup under
> half length resonnance.

Actually, it's 3/4 of the scale, not half. The 12th fret is the one
that's halfway of the scale length. ;-)

>>> - an all maple neck with dot inlay (perhaps big dots)
>>
>> Okay, no argument there if that is your preference. Maple sounds
>> brighter than mahogany and a maple fingerboard adds snap, but
>> personally I would then choose either a maple neck with a rosewood
>> fingerboard, or a mahogany neck with a maple or ebony fingerboard.
>
> I don't see how the fingerboard interrupted by all the fret cuts could
> possibly do anything except bad accoustics.

No, it doesn't work like that. The fret and the bridge are the primary
transmitters of string vibrations into the wood of respectively the neck
and the body. The fret material and fingerboard wood species are the
secondary transmitters at the neck side, and the top wood species is the
secondary transmitter at the body side. These are things which affect
mainly the attack phase of the sound, and the actual neck wood and body
wood underneath the top (if they are distinct) are what most of the wood
tone comes from.

> I'm thinking of railroad inspectors hitting the wheels with hammers to
> detect cracks if you ever saw one of them in action. Now if one of
> them wheels had section sawcuts filed with whatever I think they would
> not sound the same as a healthy wheel!

The frets do not interrupt the fingerboard material. They are glued
into that fingerboard material and there is still enough of the material
left between the fret and the actual neck wood.

> What I would do on my prototype instead is try to glue frets onto the
> now completely integral neck wood so as to preclude it being even
> partly segmented.

It wouldn't be segmented at all. It's just an aspect that ads tonal
coloring to the envelope of the sound.

>>> - a bolt-on neck
>>
>> Not exactly the best option for either sound or sustain, and you must
>> also keep in mind that the bolts will allow the neck some play if you
>> use the vibrato system a lot.
>
> I have a radical idea that goes beyond bolt-on, it may not work, but
> I'll try it.

Are you by any chance referring to a neck and body center made of one
piece, which can be inserted and attached to different bodies? If so,
that approach already exists. ;-)

>>> The "sound" I'm after but which I was not really aware of early in
>>> the game is probably LP because of the humbuckers' better sustain.
>>
>> Humbuckers do have more sustain than Fender-style single-coil
>> pickups, but the difference is rather small. Most of the sustain of
>> a Les Paul comes from the body and the neck, and its set neck
>> construction.
>
> That's news to me, good to know. I thought the humbuckers were the
> main attraction.

No no, definitely not. A humbucker was initially designed to "buck the
hum", by essentially using two single-coil pickups wired in series and
out-of-phase, but with opposite magnetic polarity, so that only the hum
gets canceled by the phase inversion, while the opposite magnetic
polarity brings the actual guitar sound back in-phase.

What makes a humbucker have slightly better sustain than a single-coil
is that the magnetic window that the string crosses through is wider, so
the pickup registers more harmonic content and more vibration. That's
why there is a perceived increase in sustain in the electric signal.

However, the Gibson Les Paul was introduced in 1952 and was initially
equipped with Gibson's P-90 pickups. These are single-coil pickups, but
they are a bit wider than the typical Fender-style single-coils, and so
they do sound warmer/fatter and more powerful - they also have a lot
more windings. Work on a humbucking pickup design to eliminate the
50/60 Hz hum started around 1955 - both at Gibson at at Gretsch, but it
was Gibson who filed for the patent, which is why these pickups were
called PAF ("patent applied for") - and only first appeared on the Les
Paul in 1957, both on the Goldtop - which at that stage still simply
bore the name "Les Paul model" and on the Les Paul Custom.

The Les Paul Custom was then initially sold with three PAF pickups - a
two-pickup model became available again later that same year - and the
Goldtop had two pickups. In 1958, Gibson slightly redesigned the neck
profile - it became somewhat slimmer - on the Goldtop and replaced the
golden finish with translucent sunbursts, and that's when they also
rebranded it from simply "Les Paul model" to "Les Paul Standard", albeit
that the word "Standard" did not appear on the guitar itself and the
headstock silkscreen still read "Les Paul model".

[bad sector]

On 09/23/2012 11:58 AM, Aragorn wrote:
> On Sunday 23 September 2012 05:04, bad sector conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.suse...

>> When it comes to deep guitar expertise I'm so poor I can't even change
>> my mind so I don't really have an opinion on locating the pickup under
>> half length resonnance.
>
> Actually, it's 3/4 of the scale, not half. The 12th fret is the one
> that's halfway of the scale length. ;-)

that was a typo :-)

>> I'm thinking of railroad inspectors hitting the wheels with hammers to
>> detect cracks if you ever saw one of them in action. Now if one of
>> them wheels had section sawcuts filed with whatever I think they would
>> not sound the same as a healthy wheel!
>
> The frets do not interrupt the fingerboard material.

I think they do, but of course I may find out if & when I throw myself
at a prototype. Look at the railway wheel again, it sounds ok when whole
and integer. Cut groves into it around the perimeter, fill them with
epoxy or some 'different material' and I think you will lose something
of the sound. The guitar frets are fixed via the underlying rib or
whatever they call it for which groves must be cut. That's when the
transmitting neck integrity takes a hit I think. These frets are not
under such physical demand that modern glues could not fix them to the
neck wood just as well without ribs. I'd also be curious to find out how
much influence the neck section has on transmission. A deeper section
being more rigid would likely transmit better but then somewhere along
the continuum playability would start suffering and the mass would also
start drowning out any gain.

> Are you by any chance referring to a neck and body center made of one
> piece, which can be inserted and attached to different bodies? If so,
> that approach already exists. ;-)

No, it would still be a bolt-on in a sense but with a different approach
to fixing the body and the neck together.

> However, the Gibson Les Paul was introduced in 1952 and was initially
> equipped with Gibson's P-90 pickups. These are single-coil pickups, but
> they are a bit wider than the typical Fender-style single-coils, and so
> they do sound warmer/fatter and more powerful - they also have a lot
> more windings.

I didn't know what p-90's really were. This adds to my understanding of
those other pickups that do p-90's, humbuckers, or single-coils on
demand. What is a P-Rail, these new pickups are an offshoot of the
P-Rails aren't they?

[Aragorn]

On Sunday 23 September 2012 23:00, bad sector conveyed the following to

alt.os.linux.suse...

> On 09/23/2012 11:58 AM, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> On Sunday 23 September 2012 05:04, bad sector conveyed the following
>> to alt.os.linux.suse...
>>

>>> I'm thinking of railroad inspectors hitting the wheels with hammers
>>> to detect cracks if you ever saw one of them in action. Now if one
>>> of them wheels had section sawcuts filed with whatever I think they
>>> would not sound the same as a healthy wheel!
>>
>> The frets do not interrupt the fingerboard material.
>
> I think they do, but of course I may find out if & when I throw myself
> at a prototype. Look at the railway wheel again, it sounds ok when
> whole and integer. Cut groves into it around the perimeter, fill them
> with epoxy or some 'different material' and I think you will lose
> something of the sound. The guitar frets are fixed via the underlying
> rib or whatever they call it for which groves must be cut. That's when
> the transmitting neck integrity takes a hit I think. These frets are
> not under such physical demand that modern glues could not fix them to
> the neck wood just as well without ribs.

Well, no, there is no problem with the frets on a neck that doesn't have
a separate fingerboard. Fender's first guitars were like that, and they
do still offer this on just about all of their current models.

Colloquially, it is referred to as "a maple neck", but all Fender necks
are made of maple, of course. What they mean is that instead of a
separate fingerboard, the frets are directly embedded into the maple of
the neck.

Still, if you think that frets will impede the effect of a separate
fingerboard, then you are mistaken. Most guitar makers offer separate
fingerboards - Gibson for instance has been doing that on all of their
guitars ever since the beginning, with the exception of the Zakk Wylde
Les Paul Custom, which has an unfinished maple neck and fingerboard,
albeit that I don't know whether it's a separate fingerboard - because
of the fingerboard material ads tonal coloring.

Rosewood is a very popular fingerboard material, because it has a warm
and yet clear sound. Ebony is also a popular choice on certain Gibson
(and Gibson-style) guitars because it is a very hard and dense wood -
which further enhances the rigidity of the neck - and it has a brighter,
snappier sound, albeit less snappy than a maple fingerboard. Stevie Ray
Vaughan's #1 Stratocaster had a /pao/ /ferro/ fingerboard.

> I'd also be curious to find out how much influence the neck section
> has on transmission. A deeper section being more rigid would likely
> transmit better but then somewhere along the continuum playability
> would start suffering and the mass would also start drowning out any
> gain.

You mean the cross section, aka the neck profile? Yes, the thicker the
neck, the more sustain and the warmer the tone. Just about every
guitarist will agree on that.

Personally, I like the "fat C" shape of my Les Paul's neck. It's not a
thin neck, but it feels pretty comfortable for my hands and has good
sustain and tone. Gibson refers to it as a '50s profile, but the truth
of the matter is that a real '59 neck was beefier, not to mention an
early '50s neck. They do however call it a '50s profile to distinguish
it from the '60s "slim taper" profile, which is a shallower "C".

>> Are you by any chance referring to a neck and body center made of one
>> piece, which can be inserted and attached to different bodies? If
>> so, that approach already exists. ;-)
>
> No, it would still be a bolt-on in a sense but with a different
> approach to fixing the body and the neck together.

Brian May's self-built guitar has a bolted on neck too, but it has a
very long neck tenon which slides into the body very deeply, and it is
attached to the body by two screws at the back of the body itself.

>> However, the Gibson Les Paul was introduced in 1952 and was initially
>> equipped with Gibson's P-90 pickups. These are single-coil pickups,
>> but they are a bit wider than the typical Fender-style single-coils,
>> and so they do sound warmer/fatter and more powerful - they also have
>> a lot more windings.
>
> I didn't know what p-90's really were. This adds to my understanding
> of those other pickups that do p-90's, humbuckers, or single-coils on
> demand.

A P-90 is a single-coil pickup, but unlike with Fender single-coils, it
does not employ magnetic pole pieces. The pole pieces are just iron,
and they connect with two magnets at the base of the pickup. They are
also wound far "hotter" than Fender single-coils and they have a wider
magnetic window.

> What is a P-Rail, these new pickups are an offshoot of the
> P-Rails aren't they?

The P-Rail is pickup made by Seymour Duncan which has a humbucker form
factor - so it will fit into any guitar routed for standard humbuckers -
and which is a combination of a P-90 single-coil pickup with a "rail"
single-coil pickup. It allows for either the P-90 or the rail to be
used on their own, or the two of them together in either series (i.e.
humbucking mode) or parallel.

A "rail" pickup uses a single or double "rail" (or "blade") magnet
instead of separate pole pieces. The advantage of using rail/blade
magnets is that you get an uninterrupted magnetic field spanning all six
strings, so that there is no loss of tone/volume when bending strings,
which, if you bend closely to the neck pickup, moves the vibrating
string out of the magnetic window of traditional pole pieces. The
downside is that rail/blade pickups are sometimes said to have less
articulation when playing chords or arpeggios.

Concretely, in the P-Rail, the rail-type pickup has a narrow magnetic
window and will sound more twangy/jangly, whereas the P-90, when used on
its own, will sound darker and warmer, with more punch and drive. I
think that using the two of them together in series wiring will provide
for some interesting sounds due to the asymmetry between the two bobbins
in size and windings, but I've never actually heard them myself, so I
can't really tell.

[bad sector]

Speaking of laptops 12.2 is giving me problems on the asus g73.

There are assorted kernel panics like...

12.641119 kernel BUG at
/home/abuild/rpmbuild/BUILD/kernel-desktop-3.4.6/linux-3.4/kerenel/timer.c:1085!

14.489237 Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt

about 6 different kinds in all

I can install, and have tried different methods like runlevel 3 only but
none will boot except maybe once out of 10 tries, or never.

The disk is a WD-1tb 11.4, 12.1 and Debian-5.0.6 are on it and booting
fine.

any ideas?

[graham]

Is there a spelling of kernel as kerenel in a script or is this your
spelling in this post?

[bad sector]

it was a typo, as I soon enough had an opportunity to verify ;-)

I REALLY don't understand, two days I've been pissing around with this
and it looked like it would never work. Did a fresh install this morning
and it too was acting up all over the %$^$% place! I tried the failsafe
mode and it crapped out too, time after time until I added "splash=0 and
3" to the canned failsafe kernel arguments. That worked for a while
until it too bombed. Nouveau or nvidia, grub or grub2, device-id or uid,
I was ready to become violent. Then I installed some more packages and
things improved, soon removed the 3 and the splash=0 as well. Before
there was 'normally' one of maybe half a dozen kernel messages
associated with the lockup but they're all gone, now it's firing on
every cylinder ... me, I'm completely lost.

[bad sector]

It's back, the g73 gets them every now and then. When it does a few
reboots fixes. Could this be a matter of the disk not having spun up?

[bad sector]

On 10/17/2012 12:11 AM, bad sector wrote:

> It's back, the g73 gets them every now and then. When it does a few
> reboots fixes. Could this be a matter of the disk not having spun up?

& it's back again with a vengance & starting to behave like this JOhny
Cash song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsUM7V6Ku_8

read "again, and again!"


Box: Asus-g73sw (i7)
OpenSUSE-12.23 (64)
Most updates applied

I just had to boot 20 times to get into my installation

Here's a typical last-message

http://www.trixtar.org/tinkerings/grab-bag/Asus-g73-oss12.2-lockup.jpg

[bad sector]

I should perhaps add that now both hard drives are 1tb WD. I did have
12.2 installed with relatively few problems on a 1tb drive when it was
the #2 drive and booting took place from the then #1 500gb (also a WD).
No idea if this is causal or not, but I noticed the difference as a
definite peculiarity. The present and object installation has been
re-installed multiple times with no improvement so it's unlikely to be
just a case of 'bad install'.

[bad sector]

The problem seems to be the Western Digital 1tb disk

model WD10JPVT-00A1YT0
Logical & physical sectors size both 4096

I cannot install 12.2 on this disk if it is already partitioned.

First deleting all partitions and using the Suse installer to partition
the disk ends up with an installed system but it cannot be booted
because it runs into a kernel panic.

If another disk is used as the bootable one but one of these 1tb's
happens to be also 'just conected' in system then the chances of another
kermel panic on boot are excellent.

Furthermore, if the problem disk is removed following a failed boot with
such a kernel panic due to the presence of one of these disks and
rebooted with only a good disk used, even then one more kernel panic may
well occurr before a good boot.

Has anyone installed 12.2 using one of these disks (NOT those that show
a logical sector sizer of 512 & only the physical as 4096)?

Has anyone installed 12.2 on any disk using 4096 for both sector sizes?