What's a Stratocaster?

The Strat is probably the most iconic electric guitar. If you see a rock band, there is likely to be a Strat or a Strat clone. They sell from $50 or sixty dollars up to tens of thousands for a custom made or classic model.

Basically the Fender Stratocaster features three pickups and a floating spring tension tremelo system. It was the first guitar in this configuration. It was the first Fender with a contoured body. The  "Comfort Contour Body" is less slab like than the tele.

Starting in 1954, the Stratocaster was offered with a solid, deeply contoured ash body, a 21-fret one-piece maple neck with black dot inlays and Kluson tuning heads.
Strats come in a variety of finishes and colors. I bought mine because I fell in love with the color, agave blue. It has a great neck and I've replaced the pickguard from plain white to a pearlized white like my thinline tele. Mine has a maple neck and maple fingerboard. I love these fender maple fingerboards. They are hard and smooth to the touch.

The Stratocaster features three single coil pickups, with the output originally selected by a 3-way switch. Guitarists soon discovered that by jamming the switch in between the 1st and 2nd position, both the bridge and middle pickups could be selected, and similarly, the middle and neck pickups could be selected between the 2nd and 3rd position. Mine has a more modern 5 position switch.
I love the sound and the feel but I've made three "mods" I added a spring to the floating tremolo so that it is not a floating tremolo anymore. Its what is often called a "hardtail" I don't use wammy's and this stabilized the tuning an feel. I added a new pickguard as mentioned above and finally, I replaced the stamped metal bridge pieces with solid chrome. This was to improve sustain but I noticed little difference.

What's a Thinline?

I have a Fender Thinline guitar. Its one of my favorites. It is actually a regular Telecaster that has been hollowed out at the top bout and has an "F" hole signifying that it is partially acoustic. 

The guitar has a wonderfully thin neck with a hard maple fingerboard and very wide low frets. It is a joy to play and has a very woody tone. It also has a tele "twang" when using the bridge pickup and that balances well with the sweet sounds of the neck pickup. Alone the neck pickup is very mellow and downright jazzy.

Designed by luthier Roger Rossmeisl in 1968 and  introduced in 1969 with humbucking pickups.My 1969 version has two standard Telecaster pickups and a mahogany body. Mike was made in Mexico while a more expensive USA made model is still available. I like the color of my Mexican model. 

I originally bought a Squire version of this guitar. Squire is Fender's lower priced line. I liked it so much that I traded up to the Mexican Fender. I like the color too. 

The guitar is remarkably light and easy to play.

(Paraphrased below from Wikipedia)

The Fender Telecaster was developed by Leo Fender in California in 1950. Solid body guitars had been around for about two decades but did not make much of an impact on the industry.
Fender had an electronics repair shop called Fender's Radio Service where he first repaired, then designed, amps and pickups for musicians. 
Leo built a prototype, a white guitar that had most of the features of what would become the Telecaster. It was a wooden guitar with a bolt-on neck.
The initial single-pickup production model appeared in 1950, and was called the Esquire. Fewer than fifty guitars were originally produced under that name, and most were replaced under warranty because of early manufacturing problems.  Later in 1950 a two-pickup model was renamed the Broadcaster. From this point onwards all Fender necks incorporated truss rods.
The so-called Nocaster was a short-lived variant of Telecaster. Produced in early to mid-1951, it was the result of legal action from the Gretsch company over the guitar's previous name, the Broadcaster (Gretsch already had the "Broadkaster" name registered for a line of drums). In the interim, before Fender had come up with an alternate name and printed appropriately revised headstock decals, factory workers simply snipped the "Broadcaster" name from its existing stock of decals, so guitars with these decals are identified simply as "Fender", without any model name.
In 1951 the guitar was officially renamed as the Telecaster and has been known as such ever since.

Counting the Omer Again....

As a child, holidays came and went. Each had its own rituals and foods. Some I didn't even notice, others were pretty much good for a day off from school. Now that I am older, and have time to think about these things, I spend a little more time wondering what it is all about.

When my dear daughter asked me to write her an Omer counter I had to look it up to find out what it was. I find the idea interesting for many reasons. Most of which it makes the counter, if you choose to be one, congnizant of the passage of time and the season more than ever. It gives us a chance to prepare for the holiday that celebrates G-d giving us the Torah.

The Torah, everything you need to know about life in one easy to handle scroll, is an amazing gift and however you believe it came to be, it certainly has had a profound impact on Jews and non-Jews alike.


I found a couple of interesting articles on Counting the Omer. The first is from the blog PunkTorah regarding the counting:

So, what does this all mean to us now? Well, it can mean many things. Counting the Omer can be used as a tool of self reflection. We can take this time to recognize the miracle of the Exodus from Egypt, from the gift of our freedom. The Sages tell us that G-d freed us from slavery in order to give us the Torah on Shavu’ot, so this should be a time of preparation. Counting the Omer gives us the time to learn from the gift of freedom G-d has given us and incorporate it into our lives, to grow one day at a time, taking a spiritual accounting, to make sure that we are heading in the right direction, to look at what we are doing that is right or wrong and to try to make ourselves ready to receive the honor of the Torah.
Counting the days is another way of directing our mindfulness to the passage of time. Be aware of the days as they pass, count them, give them meaning. We have been freed from slavery, rejecting the confusion and idolatry (philosophically, literally, and spiritually) of our own Egypt’s and are being made ready to re-focus our lives.

I guess a good take-away from all of this is that one must make each day count. Make each day worth living for you and the people you love. 

(This is a repeat of a post from a few years ago)

Why is it Called An ES- 175?

The ES-175 debuted in 1949, as an alternative to the expensive carved top models. The name came from its original price of $175. It was the Electric Spanish - 175. Early models came with p-90 pickups, either one or two but in the late 50's humbuckers became standard. Most ES-175's have two humbuckers mounted in the bodies. Some single pickup models were made

I love the color!

but they were less popular.
The combination of the laminated, not carved, top and the humbuckers makes for a rich tone. It is a sound that can not be emulated with a solid or thin guitar.

Nice Inlays

I first got the 175 bug by buying a cheap knock-off. I wanted to be sure I liked the body shape and size. It is a bit too expensive to just buy to try the real thing. After a few months with the knock-off I started to

A Pleck

scout our used ones but they were more used than vintage so I set my sights on a new one - and I looked for a custom shop model because of the great setup. I played several new ones that just didn't do much for me. I guess there is a lot of hand work, making each guitar different. Finally found one in Highland Park Illinois.
Mine is a custom shop model, with two pickups and the trapeze style bridge. It has parallelogram inlays on a rosewood fingerboard. The neck is a bit chunky and mahogany of a one piece design. This guitar has a tune-o-matic bridge that is set in rosewood. As you can see mine is a little more antique
finish than the stock photo above.  It is very easy to play with great action. This may be due the pleck machine that Gibson uses when setting these guitars up after manufacture. 
The model has gone through several body and pickup configurations but the two pickup model that I have is still in production. This makes it one of the longest production runs in the industry.

More Lytro Shots

 As promised here are a couple more Lytro examples. These show how the focus can shift on an image. As you can see the focus can be on any object or place in the picture... Means thinking about images in a new way. The window shot is so much like we actually see that it is amazing.

More about Lytro from their website:

Lytro was founded in 2006 by Executive Chairman Ren Ng, whose Ph.D. research on light field photography won Stanford University’s prize for best thesis in computer science in 2006 as well as the internationally recognized ACM Dissertation award.

In 2012, Lytro released the world’s first consumer Light Field Camera which offers photographic capabilities never before possible, such as focusing a picture after it’s taken, changing the perspective in the picture and creating interactive living pictures that can be endlessly refocused and enjoyed by friends and family online. Lytro was named one of Time Magazine's 50 Best Inventions of 2011, was Popular Science's Innovation of the Year, 2011 and took home the Last Gadget Standing Award and Best of Innovations Award for Digital Imaging at CES in 2012.

More?

So What is A Lytro Camera...

I own one and I'm still not actually sure... It takes a picture like the one below. How is this a big deal? Well, click on the kid's nose... then on the flowers in the left corner, give it a second and you will see the focus change. The picture is an image that can be refocused on demand because it is generated from a different kind of picture engine.  It is quite amazing, easy to use and hare do explain. I hope I'll do a better job after I learn how to use it.


The camera looks like this: About 4 inches long with a big f2 lens on one side and a viewfinder on the other. It has an 8x zoom and is wifi capable. Dumps the pictures to my phone and then stores them for me online if I want. the picture above is a link to their photo sharing website. Because they need software for display it may be a while before you can have them on the wall.

Lytro Light Field Camera

Want to know more? Click on the image above to go to https://store.lytro.com/

John D'Angelico's Guitar

When I was in high school I had a Gibson Johnny Smith model guitar, it was about the top of their line and in 1963 when I got it there were only a few guitars that cost more. Don't ask how I got it, its too long a story, suffice it to say my father respected my taste in instruments. The Johnny Smith Guitar sold for about one-third of what a Chevy Impala cost at the time. 

When I started looking to buy a jazz guitar about 10 years ago, I learned that the Johnny Smith guitar was actually a copy, or knockoff, of a guitar built by John D'angelico in the 1940's. He and his apprentices built about 1200 guitars of various designs. Often the guitars were custom made for specific guitar players. Johnny Smith actually had one of these.

In the 90's, I think, the D'Angelico brand and design was bought by a company and the manufacture of the guitars was moved to Japan. A company called Vestax was commissioned to build them. 

I bought this one used about ten years ago on ebay. It is the pride of my guitars, one of the best playing and sounding guitars I have. The metal is thick gold and the fingerboard is ebony with large split block inlays. They still make guitars guitars of this quality but not many and not cheap. 

This one is an NYS-2 in vintage sunburst. It is a small guitar, a 14" body. This is actually inspired by John D'Angelico because he never made a 14" guitar.  It has a single "Johnny Smith" style humbucker attached to the neck, not the body. 

The pegboard inlays are intricate and beautiful. There is even an inlay of pearl on the back of the pegboard. The classic stairstep design is featured in the tailpiece, truss rod cover and pickguard.

The guitar has worn particularly well, it has a beautiful finish, slim neck and a great sound.

More about John D'Angelico on Wikipedia

A New Guitar With A Fine Pedigree

Ok, so my dear wife is driving down the road and sees a sign that says Guitar Outlet. She tells me and we take a little field trip. I've been stuck in the house for a couple of weeks because of my back surgery and this was one of my first days out.

The storefront is Dean Zelinsky’s Guitar Factory Outlet at 3080 Skokie Valley Road in Highland Park, IL. First, if you have not heard of Dean then you don't play guitar. He is a guitar innovator and has a long history of designing and making great, interesting instruments. Dean guitars was born with his name. DBZ guitars was also his product line. These guitars a beautifully made and have extraordinary playability and sound.

DBZ Imperial

So how did I pick a guitar. It was a snap. Dean designed a guitar that is incredibly thin and has an amazing sound. This solid body guitar is 5/8" at the edges and no more than an inch at its thickest. Its a set neck guitar with a stop tailpiece that is set farther down the body giving the guitar a great feel and lots of sustain and I think a very mellow tone. All the components are top notch and the finish is incredible. Metal is gold and the fingerboard and fret work is as good as any guitar I've played. It reminds me of my custom shop Gibson that was Pleked at the factory. This guitar is so beautiful its really a work of art. Oh, almost forgot. Its light as a feather, well, maybe half the weight of a Les Paul.

Click above to learn more about Dean's Private Label guitars.

Or read about Dean at Wikipedia

A New Fender..........

Fender keeps coming up with these reissue guitars from the 60's and 70's and I am such a sucker for them. As the Fender website says:

The Starcaster® guitar is back. Virtually fabled since its original mid-to-late ’70s tenure, the seldom-seen Starcaster occupies a special place in our history as Fender’s one and only offset-waist semi-hollow electric guitar. Prized decades later by a new generation of adventurous guitarists with a flair for appealingly unconventional Fender style, the Starcaster now returns in fabulous new Modern Player form with greater sound, build and beauty that’ll have you seeing stars.

The Fender Starcaster guitar’s thin semi-hollow offset body has a bound maple top and back, with stylish bound f holes. Its “C”-shaped maple neck has a 9.5”-radius maple fingerboard with 22 medium jumbo frets, black-dot inlays and the distinctively curvaceous Starcaster headstock. Other premium features include full-voiced dual Fender Wide Range humbucking pickups with three-way toggle switching, three-ply black pickguard, four skirted “amp”-style control knobs (volume and tone for each pickup) and an Adjusto-Matic™ bridge with anchored tailpiece. In Aged Cherry Burst gloss finishes.

Pictures? I thought you'd never ask: 

 

Books I've Read - 2013

This is only the second year that I have kept track of the books I read. I believe that I might have missed a couple but I believe I enjoyed them all. Hardly enough hours in the day for me to read. With less driving back and forth to Wisconsin I seem to have less time to read.

1.     Mad River - John Sandford
2.     Poseidon's Arrow - Clive Cussler
3.     Cuba - Julia E. Sweig
4.     The Faithful Spy - Alex Berenson
5.     The Ghost War - Alex Berenson
6.     The Silent Man - Alex Berenson
7.     The Midnight House - Alex Berenson
8.     The Secret Soldier - Alex Berenson
9.     The Shadow Patrol - Alex Berenson
10.     The Fear Index - Robert Harris
11.     Fatherland - Robert Harris
12.     Enigma - Robert Harris
13.     Pompeii - Robert Harris
14.     The Last Jihad - Joel C. Rosenberg
15.     The Jerusalem Assassin - Avraham Azrieli
16.     Unintended Consequences - Stuart Woods
17.     The Empress File - John Sandford
18.     The Devil's Code - John Sandford
19.     The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
20.     Hanged Man's Song - John Sandford
21.     Silken Prey - John Sandford
22.     Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
23.     Inferno - Dan Brown
24.     The Passage - Justin Cronin
25.     Zero Hour - Clive Cussler
26.     Red Sparrow - Jason Mathews
27.     The Tombs - Clive Cussler
28.     The English Girl - Daniel Silva
29.     The Holy Thief: A Novel - William Ryan
30.     The Darkening Field - William Ryan
31.     The Twelfth Department - William Ryan
32.     The 9th Girl - Tami Hoag
33.     Never Go Back - Lee Child
34.     The Hidden Order:A Thriller - Brad Thor
35.     The Lions of Lucerne - Brad Thor
36.     The Path of the Assassin - Brad Thor
37.     Doing Hard Time - Stuart Woods
38.     The Quest - Nelson Demille
39.     The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
40.     Black Cherry Blues - James Lee Burke
41.     A Morning for Flamingos - James Lee Burke
42.     A Stained White Radiance - James Lee Burke

Reading:The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabelle Wilkerson

Getting Near The End

As some of you may already know, I will be terminating my employment with Cardinal Stritch University as of the end of this month. It has been a wonderful part of my career. I started at Stritch in the mid-80's under Jim Kasum and Linda Simmons. Meeting these two people was probably the best thing that ever happened to my career. They were both wise as scholars and as people. They helped me mature as a teacher and guided my way while I was at Stritch.

As part of my Masters program in Computer Science Education, I did a bulletin board. This was before the internet and when telecommunications was something for airlines and big corporations. We logged over 50,000 calls before we shut it down and went all internet. It was suppose to be my Grad project but I never gave it up, until the internet made us.

Here is the brochure that I used when I went to professional conferences to hawk our program and the board. This was so cutting edge that many people could not get their heads around what we were talking about.

SIE 1988HORIZ.rotated.rotated by jmsklar on Scribd

SweetWater.com is my new Favorite Guitar Store

I just bought a new guitar, ok, my friends and family know that's not a big deal. In this case I bought it from a new store. SweetWater. They are in Fort Wayne Indiana. Here is what is so neat about them. They act like my new guitar is a big deal. They talk to you on the phone like a person and then behave as if you are valued. Where do you find that kind of service online.

They offered to set it up and put my brand and guage of strings on it. Not only did they set it up and restring it, but they sent me pictures of my actual new guitar. They must have a guitar portrait studio. 

And the service.... Unbelievable. Bought it on Monday, arrived on Wednesday with my gauge and brand of strings and all set up and ready to play. Not just restrung but actually set-up. Spot on intonation, pickups adjusted. A pleasure to play right out of the box. These people are incredible. If you need a guitar, give sweetwater.com a peek, they deliver in many ways. They even threw some candy in the package for my grandchildren.

This guitar is just like my first electric guitar. Originally Fender wanted to grab jazz guitar players with a special circuit just for Jazz. Now later in my life it has a great set of my favorite features, including the belly cut for my past middle age middle. It also has single coil pickups and a great look. This model has a little hotter pickups than the original but it still has that single coil pop that I love. It also has that great jazz circuit, just like I remembered it. Thanks Sweetwater.