Recent content by Amara

No. 4003: "Deluxe" model with "Rick-O-Sound" stereo output, white binding, and "shark fin" triangular inlays on the fretboard. 4003S: "Basic" model with no R-O-S, no binding, and dots rather than triangles. Really, the changes are mostly cosmetic. 4003W: Walnut version of 4003. 4003SW: (Or is...

Amazon had iRealPro as one of its free apps last year on Christmas (!). (That's how I have a copy.) It's worth keeping an eye out again this year.

The Cheyenne I is the only bass that I have GAS for at the moment. They're just gorgeous. I continue to maintain that they're the most beautiful instrument that RIC ever did. I'm not giving up my 4003W, though. Or my Fireglo. :-)

Big non-bass-related time sink, lately: I'm involved with a community radio station in the Catskills, and I'm doing both a music program and a radio drama. The radio drama premiered last night: Invalid Link Removed . It gave me an excuse to snag a nice mixing board for recording, a few mics...

:-( I'm very sorry to hear it. New singer, perhaps? In related news, we have a singer! Or, at least, we have a new housemate who sings, in place of the departing one who doesn't. So, now we have guitar, bass, drums, and vocals in the house; we'll see where it leads.

No, no, no:

Oh, but you didn't get a photo of the 4005? That was the most beautiful instrument Geddy had out all night when we saw them.

Pink shirt, either buttoned down or with a popped collar. Dockers.

I want to do some songwriting, so I picked up a ukulele to experiment with chord progressions without getting guitar cooties on me, and because four is a much more reasonable number of strings for an instrument. So I picked up a ukulele method book, and I don't quite understand the notation...

Any song that interleaves the singing and the playing. Example: "Gimme Some Money" by Spinal Tap.

Heh. There's a pretty good recent Icelandic film about metal, in which the protagonist does just that. She doesn't make an instrument out of the ashes, though. It's not the sort of thing that anyone from the actual Icelandic metal scene would be likely to do, though -- "Bannað að vera fáviti"...

Let your hair grow a little, and wear a black T-shirt with a different metal band's logo on it, jeans, and either Docs or Chucks. When your hair is long enough, swirl it in unison with the guitarists during the solo and possibly the intro. For bonus points, add leather vambraces. If the rest of...

My fretboard is the wrong shade of maple on my new Rickenbacker. The tone is killer, the weight is perfect, it's otherwise a gorgeous instrument in every respect, but they used a really, really yellow-white bit of clear maple on the fretboard that A) contrasts with the maple on the rest of the...

Didn't Sir Paul play a lot of palm mutes? How did he do it? Or did he only do it on the Höfner?

I've had relatively little success in playing palm mutes on my 4003. I either don't produce the right palm mute effect, or mute the instrument completely, depending on whether I apply pressure. Is there a trick? I can make it happen just fine on instruments with conventional bridges.