Solo Setup
Here’s a pic of my live solo-show setup as I was getting ready for a nursing home gig this week at Mukilteo Memory Care…a lovely assisted living facility. We had a great time!
Here’s a pic of my live solo-show setup as I was getting ready for a nursing home gig this week at Mukilteo Memory Care…a lovely assisted living facility. We had a great time!
My new Ibanez Artcore Expressionist AM93 (Thanks Sweetwater!) with my added RMC Poly-Drive 1 electronics (Thanks Richard McClish & RMC Pickups!) for Roland GR-55 synth access. Ahhhh…. Can’t wait to start playing it nonstop! ??
Thanks to my day job I got to spend a week in San Diego during the huge cold snap and ice storm much of the USA has been enduring during the first week of December. Hey, it’s not even officially winter yet per my calendar. What happened to “global warming”? When I was a kid, the “experts” back then were warning of a new ice age….maybe they were right after all. Or maybe this is just typical earthly climate variation and we shouldn’t freak about this stuff, but just get on with life. Anyway, it even affected southern California with the temps dipping down to an unbearable 59 degrees causing the locals to don sweaters, scarves and winter coats.
I was able to escape from the conference room dungeon long enough to make a trip over to Carvin Guitar and Pro Audio. I posed for this pic just seconds before the rain started coming down.
Dear Santa!
The axe I “axually” liked the most is the semi hollow body hanging in the center right above my shoulder. It is a Frank Gambale FG1 Semi-Hollow Carved Top Guitar. It is an orange burst on quilted maple with an ebony fretboard (you don’t see that much these days) and is even available with an RMC pickup and synth access, a piezo pickup plus a C22B bridge pickup and a Frank Gambale designed FG22N neck pickup.
Some nice basses in waiting too.
This guy has an awesome head of hair. I’m talking about the dude on the right.
The worst part of the trip was when I ended up at the receiving end of a 2 car rear ender and the two rear enders sped off and did “hit and run”. Because I was on 911 immediately I got the license and description and the cops got the offenders a few minutes later as they were stuck in San Diego afternoon I-5 “gridlock”. I hear it is a one year suspension for hit and run in California. “So you had a bad day?”
in modifying my brand new Fender Modern Player Marauder to install the Roland GK-KIT-GT3 permanently, internally in the guitar. Last year I wrote about my first venture into GK land and how I installed the Roland GK-3 external pickup on an Epiphone Dot semi-hollowbody guitar.
Per Roland’s product description:
This kit includes all parts for permanent installation of a GK-3 Divided Pickup into an electric guitar: a GK-3 Divided Pickup, circuit board, switches, power indicator LED, 13-pin connector, wiring and hardware. Professional installation is required.
UPDATE: Since the above picture was taken the S1 and S2 buttons have been recessed so they are below the surface of the guitar to avoid accidentally making a change mid performance!
First here is my video….wow, I surprised myself….I am actually getting a little better at camcorder action and iMovie editing….and then I have transcribed below my 40 steps from my spiral notebook to install this unit. Due to YouTube’s rules, I had to split this into two parts to stay under their “10 minute rule”:
Part 1
Part 2
Since this is what I did specifically for my Fender Modern Player Marauder all of the steps might not apply to your guitar if it is not a Marauder or you decide to wire things differently than I did. By the way, there is a great resource on all things related to V-guitar and DIY guitar projects at the V-guitar user forums site at www.vguitarforums.com.
Finally, here is a tune I recorded using the Roland GR-55 for the cello portion and along with a mic’d ukulele. Or Click here to check out my music!