“Flying into Los Angeleez” to quote Arlo. Disneyland just below. The Traveling Wilburys – part of photographer Neal Preston’s gallery: Some really BIG guitars were on hand. Collings head Steve McCreary with Greta. Martin displayed these, along with dozens of others. Gator’s mascot considering masticating… And a view of the crowd.
We made our annual January trek to Anaheim, Calif., for the music merchants’ trade show. Here are some photos: Holding some of my books in the Hal Leonard booth: In the Collings Guitars booth with (L-R) Peghead Nation’s Teja Gerken, Portland fingerstyle virtuoso Eric Skye, L.A. session guitar ace Mark Goldenberg (Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, etc.). Greta at Laguna Beach during the Upper Midwest Arctic Vortex.
I’ve had fun attending and performing at several Luthier events this summer. I was the steel-string demonstrator at the GAL (Guild of American Luthiers) convention in Tacoma in July; and a performer, teacher and demonstrator at August’s SBAIC.com in Santa Barbara. At GAL I performed 40 seconds of my arrangement of “Water Is Wide” 33 times in a row – on 33 different guitars! The luthiers wanted to compare apples to apples, hearing the same player play the same piece on all the guitars. Next time maybe I’ll play O.C. Smith’s “Little Green Apples”… In Santa Barbara I had a […]
I received a question recently from a player with smaller hands about purchasing a steel-string guitar that fits him. I had a couple of thoughts that I passed along: Small hands suggest a couple of things to me concerning guitar size: 1) a 1-11/16″ width neck (many are 1-3/4″ now); 2) a short-scale neck; meaning a 24.9″ neck length – approximately – instead of the more standard 25.5″ (approx). Short scale makes the strings more supple and reduces lateral stretching a bit in the fretting hand. 3) a smaller body size; Martin 0, 00, and 000 guitars, for example, are short scale, […]