Shane_B.

Never ask questions when you are talking to the worlds foremost authority on musical instruments. You know ... the ones that work at music stores but don't actually play any instrument or sing. Stopped at a guitar store today. Same one by my house I talk about. Great store. Stopped in to ask about ordering a left handed Fender Acoustisonic since they are "the largest Fender dealer in a 150 mile radius.". Considering it's mostly farm land here, well, moving on ... Before she fully asked her manager how long it would take to get one he blurted out nobody is making or shipping anything. Best you can hope for is April 2022. Haven't been able to get anything since the pandemic started. After 19 years of marriage (23 total together) you would think I would have learned by now (Shane you *****ing moron) to shut the ***** up and say thank you and quietly go in my truck and die a little more inside quietly by myself. But noooooooo. Not me. I said to her but I can get them online. They keep going out of stock and then back in stock again. I wonder where they are getting them. I immediately got called a liar. BP bounced to 200/100. I nicely replied that I didn't want to order them online and I wasn't trying to beat them up on price or anything. I wanted to play it before buying and wanted to get it from them. She checked Sweetwater, GC, Sam Ash. None to be had and she called me out. I told her I know they don't have them but there are 3 people 2 of which are dealers on Amazon selling them. Pound pound pound on the keyboard. "I can't find any on amazon. I have no idea what you are talking about. Our manager is not a liar and if you want one pre order it.". Me, did you search for lefty?. Her, yes. Me, may I look ive been monitoring them for months now. Her, see nothing comes up. Me, please scroll to the top again where your search results start. Oh look ... right at the top, where your search results start. The very first thing that came up in your search is a left handed acoustisonic ... Her, well these people aren't a dealer. I doubt they have them they are trying to scam people. Me, but they sell them on ebay too. 55000 sales 99.5 % positive feedback. Plus there are 2 actual dealers selling them besides them if you click on more buying options. I can have one here by wednesday pay no tax and no shipping but I want to buy from you a local business and dealer. I don't even mind paying tax. Her, you'll have to preorder it and we don't know if you'll ever get it because they stopped making them. As I said after 23 years I should have know better than to prove her wrong and question the #1 Fender dealer in a 150 mile corn field radius. I swear to God. At this point I just want to take my guitars amp and daw and burn them on my brush pile out back. Remember when it used to be fun going to the music store? It was like going to see family. You didn't get called a liar. Nobody said you had no idea what you are talking about. Nobody cocked off to you. I walked out of my mom and pop place many times with thousands of dollars of equipment to test at a job to see if we wanted to buy it. They didn't even blink an eye. Man are those days gone. I am so sick and tired of cocky people and it seems to have gotten worse since the pandemic. People are almost unbearable to deal with. Had to vent. Sorry for the long read.

My wife got one of these for Christmas at work. It completely blew me away. Feel it in your chest bass. Crystal clear highs. It's a tiny bluetooth speaker about the size of a travel coffee mug. I use it all the time. It's technically mono but it sounds great. I listen to XM classic vinyl on my cell and send the audio via bluetooth to the Bose. Blows my mind how good it sounds. https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/speakers/portable_speakers/soundlink-revolve-plus-ii.html

I was in with all older guys with families and jobs. All in there mid 30s and 40s. My mother never in a million years would have let me play in bars and clubs at that age with more "traditional" musician types. She knew them all because my brother was an officer in town too and she trusted them. He still is 39 years later. In my first band two were police officers one was a plumber and the other drove a dump truck and snow plow for the county. I don't know what the 3rd guitar player did but I know he was always too busy to come to practice and barely made it to the shows on time. Played a Tele through a little Mesa Boogie. The one with the EQ built in the front panel. My God could that guy play. We were bad. No idea what he was doing with us. The VHS recorder was borrowed from the police station. It was to be used for interrogations and confessions but we lived in a tiny town and it was still new in the box. Never used except for our band recordings. Lol. The drummer ran the PA and he used to take the line out on the Peavey 600 head and use a Realistic tape deck to record. Same with my second band. The drummer was a different officer in my home town. Same make and model PA and same cheap cassette deck recordings and the exact same VHS recorder. Between the 2 bands I played out almost 16 years straight. All through high school and up until I left NJ. I found out the hard way after working with those more stable even keeled guys that the vast majority of musicians of the weekend warrior ilk are pretty shitty to work with. I've never been able to find anyone reliable since and that's why I got in to recording and gave up on the whole band thing. If I ever did it again it would be a solo gig with my own backing tracks. My wife left for Hawaii again this morning for work. I'm getting the itch to record now after talking about this but have so much to do here. I upgraded to the latest S1 5 and Melodyne Studio when they were on sale. Haven't even had a chance to plug my daw in to download them. I cancelled Sphere.

That's awesome. The first song I learned to play was Misery by The Beatles. I remember having this little red paperback book called The Pocket Beatles. It was really hard to keep open and I used to wedge it under the front edge of our TV to hold it open. My mom would yell at me for sitting so close to the TV but I didn't even have it on. Eventually it fell apart and I still have some of the pages but most are lost. I was 13 when I did my first gig. Private Halloween party at a local dance hall. 150 people there and I was terrified. And of all things I played keyboard. We already had a drummer, 3 guitars, and a bass. It was messed up. When we practiced I played guitar because the lead player would never come. Live I played keyboard. It was really odd. There was a recording of that night but the guy who had all the tapes died and it's all gone now or at a good will in TN somewhere. He recorded everything and video taped a bunch. I was lucky to get copies of 5 of the videos but the rest are gone.

I'm sorry to hear they were stolen. I'd be out of my mind. My old friend/drummer has our old band practice tapes. He recorded every practice. We were together 9 years and practiced 2 to 3 times a month. They are in boxes in his attic. Hasn't touched them in 23 years and he won't give them to me. I despise shit like that. I'm obsessive compulsive with personal recordings. I have hours of tapes of my early high school buddies and me singing dumb/vulgar teenage stuff. I'd die if anyone ever heard them. But the crème de la crème of them all is the very first recording I did when I was 12. I did Bungalow Bill by The Beatles. The "zap" and all. Hah. It's just on regular cassette. I should transfer it before tragedy strikes.

Wait. Darn it. This is good too. I'm not very good at this game am I. ?

You're killing me. Lol. That's a great song and an awesome sounding recording. I have the Rhino Records CD remastered country hits set from the 60s with this and dozens of other. Direct from the original recordings before the cd loudness wars. Great sounding stuff.

To clarify, I'm not putting Gibsons down. The main difference that I've noticed is the necks are thinner on Epi's. I have big hands and they fit better on the smaller necks. It's the same reason it's getting harder to play my Martin and I want to replace it with that Fender Acoustisonic modelling guitar with the slim Tele neck. I've always wanted to try one of those new style necks that are tapered I think? Thinner to thicker at the top or something like that. Never seen one lefty though.

By luck I've come across more lefty Gibsons and Epi than anything else. Every time I've always preferred the Epi. I played a stripped down lefty Epi LP Studio one time. Probably the best feeling and best sounding guitar I've ever played. Love my Epi Sheraton II. Last I checked they don't even make them lefty anymore. IIRC correctly it was $250 with Epi branded hardshell case. They just wanted to dump it. Used like new. In fact it was the last thing I kept that I bought at G.C. in Overland Park Kansas 10 years ago just before I was forced to move here due to work. Have I mentioned in this thread how much I miss IA? ?

There must be something wrong with me because I could never warm up to anything Gibson. SG's, LP's, Acoustics. I had a Deluxe Black Beauty Lefty. It felt great but I could never get a good sound. I bought it sight unseen from my local guitar shop back home in NJ. They called me and said it would move fast so I said I'd take it over the telephone. That was a thing we used to have hanging on the wall. Had a loud bell that went off when you had a call coming in. Anyway .... How often do you see an 83 lefty deluxe. Everyone who looked at it said it sounded great and was 100% original and wished it was a righty and they would buy it. I sold it online through a big place in Lawrence KS for $1200 iirc? To someone here actually. Can't remember who. On the old forum. The one I still regret to this day passing up was a lefty John Lennon Signature Rickenbacker. Very very rare guitar. Couldn't afford it at the time.

Thanks! But to be brutally honest I'd be too embarrassed to let you hear most of it. It's all pretty bad. One of these days I'll run across somebody local that has one.

I'd be more inclined to go with Paul McGowan's new studio. It's quite a story they have with the equipment and brain power/people behind the scene's. https://www.psaudio.com/octave-records/

? RIP

I still have mine too but it won't work with the old 4 track tapes. My 488 (iirc) is still like new. I took very good care of it. Demagnetized the heads before and after I used it. Cleaned the heads and metal with alcohol and the rollers with distilled water. Learned real fast working on printers and copiers to never use alcohol on rubber. Cleans it really great and dries it out and makes it smooth and slick. If you use Studio One you can transfer the tracks and line them up. I did that with quite a few of my masters. On my 8 track it only has 4 outputs so I had to do them in groups and line them up in S1. It only works if you have drums on 1 track. Transfer in small groups using the drum track as a timing anchor in each group and align the groups using the drum tracks as the alignment references. Works like a charm.

Nice. I'll be there in 20 minutes. The reason I know any of them will work is I borrowed one from a guy I was in a band with up in IA. It was a completely different model but was a 4in 4out and it worked. Problem was at the time my audio interface only had 2 inputs.

My brother and I did an entire Christmas album on it. I wanted to transfer the tape to my daw and fix stuff but I doubt it will ever happen. Im not paying 800 bucks for one.

Yepper. 6 inputs 4 tracks. Tapes recorded at normal cassette speed. I found this pic on ebay. This is it or very similar. I thought the knobs were stand up not flat like this but I could be wrong. It was over 30 years ago. I do know it had mechanical play/record/ff buttons. You could hear the loud clack at the beginning and end of recordings. Any tascam 4 track that records at normal tape speeds will play the tapes but I need one with 4 outputs. The smaller ones had 4 in but only a stereo out. It was my brothers recorder and I ended up using more than he did. It stopped working and he threw it out. I was pissed.

Seriously though that's pretty scary stuff. CA and a few other states banned the sale of everything above a console quality gaming PC. IOW ... buy a PS or Xbox or no game for you! It's only a multi billion dollar industry. Let's just lob that off at the head. Hah. ☺

I have a whole box of cassettes I recorded on one of those. I want to transfer them all to my daw but I no longer have access to a machine. The one I used was a 4 track 1:1 speed unit with 6 inputs. Wish I could find one.

I read California just banned gaming PCs because they use too much power. I imagine DAWs and other "non-essential" PCs will follow shortly.

I'm still on 4 and I love it. Been thinking of upgrading to 6 this fall when I have more free time. I like the tape deck part of it. I don't remember how I did it but I used it to capture just effects for a vocal I did one time. Running your vocals through an amp with distortion yields great results too. You can do all kinds of great things with G.R. ?

I agree. I don't know why I posted it. Shock over the wall of Kustom amps I guess. Hah. They did an entire heavy rock album IIRC and this was one of the tracks. Pat Boone is great too. And a good man. A rarity in the music biz I would say.

When I bought that Mustang amp from G.C. I had to order it. The demo model I tried at the store here in K.C. (Overland Park to be exact) looked like it was dragged behind a truck and they wouldn't give a discount on it so I ordered a new one online. Their warehouse is here in K.C.. I was supposed to have it in 2 days and it didn't show up and no tracking. I called and asked if I could pick it up at the warehouse since I lived so close. The guy says, "What the hell do you want it so bad for man?". And that was the last time I bought anything from G.C.. and I never will again. And I returned the amp once it eventually did show up. On that note the guy on Amazon has 5 more of those lefty Acoustisonic's I've been itching to get. Now to decide if I should beg my wife for approval or forgiveness ... I'm sorry you guys are having to wait for this stuff. It sucks and the longer it gets bounced and transferred around in this boiling heat the worse it is.

I guess I'll grab me hat. I love some of these 'clunkers' you guys are posting. ☺