NEW REVIEW FOR THE WASHBURN BA-6 SIX STRING BANJO
Note on picture: I have the truss rod cover off to do some adjustments to the neck.
There are some good reasons to prefer vinyl records, but let's face it, it's also become a marketing gimmick by labels desperate for new income streams in an age where people buy less high-profit items like CDs.
I've been an avid music collector all my life. Like many of you who owned vinyl back in the day, my record collection often took up most of a room. The thin record covers gave us the illusion that the things were as easy to store as books until you filed enough away to go from a few items on your shelf to a large square or rectangle of records as heavy as a bowling ball collection. Which then ended up in milk cartons, crates, or just on the floor.
But that's another subject...what I find interesting is the notion that the vinyl LP is the best way to listen to music in the digital age. There are geeky technical reasons, generally centered around the concept that sound can have "warmth" and so on.
Labels ushered in the era of expensive CDs with promises those would become cheaper but kept prices high by adding extra content beyond the ability of most artists to provide it.
As a result, the CD age inadvertently reverted to the 60s rock era, where artists would get a decent amount of time and resources to produce singles and less to fill out the rest of the album. In this case, it was enough time to fill an album, but extra takes, live cuts, and demos were added to fill out the CD.
In the case of reissues, the music was often dubbed indifferently or in haste and often sounded worse than vinyl.
…in the old days…
When I think of vinyl, a story comes to mind...back in the mid-70s, a friend bought a 2,000-dollar (in mid-70 dollars!) stereo system and proudly showed it off. He went on about balancing the turntable arm and the cartridge needle to bring the best out of an LP. It was also so sensitive that the tone arm bounced around if anyone walked within 6 feet of the turntable.
Then he explained that vinyl needed to be virgin, not recycled (not very green) and that pressings for the general public were of poor quality and didn't fully capture the fidelity of the original master tape.
The sound of that master tape, which contained the music we all later listened to, had to be transferred to a mold that produced the vinyl record.
Depending on a myriad of conditions, the record might or might not indeed transfer the sound successfully. That led to a sub-market of audiophile-level records that properly took the sound from the original master tape, was remixed from this or that tape, or whatever.
Then you had the actual process of putting a needle on the record grooves, which then began the process of wearing out the tracks, which made the sound deteriorate, and of course, scratches on the vinyl that often made a popping sound as loud as the music and so forth.
If you read record reviews from that era, those are full of comments like "lousy pressing," and once you got more than 15 minutes of music on each side, the volume (and clarity) started to drop as the grooves had to be made smaller, thus producing less sound...and leave a record in the sun? Forget it; it became as valuable as a DOS software disc in 2000.
…vinyl…
The whole thing about the vinyl debate isn't really about how good it sounds. A good pressing combined with well-recorded music does create a beautiful product...the point is that a record is a mix that makes the music sound a certain way. That warmth is really distortion and how the sound is transmitted and projected. The appeal of old records is really about how it sounds, not how good it is.
Classical music, for example, depends on warmth. Many acoustic instruments are playing music that, in most cases, was intended to produce blended sounds and textures—that type of music benefits from the lack of separation. Modern Rock, on the other hand, thrives on it. That's how most rock is recorded, with each instrument recorded separately so each element can be manipulated in isolation first, then in combination. Metal music wouldn't sound as powerful unless you took the drums and guitar and made each sound like thunder.
If a digital CD sounds sterile and cold, and it isn't due to the artist lacking soul (or talent), then it's really a technical problem. It all started as a digital tape signal, then transferred to vinyl. That process "warmed up" the sound.
In guitar amps, reproducing that warm sound is standard, even on cheaper amps. If you hear music live, that's probably as accurate as it will ever sound, and any warmth is due to what is used to amplify that sound.
If you like vinyl, it's probably because you like how it sounds on your system. It's a matter of taste.
Are today's CDs better sounding? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on how the music was composed, how good the mikes used to record was, how well the session was produced and engineered, and if the artist can function in a recording studio.
The fairest thing to say is that vinyl is making a comeback because digital hasn't been an obviously superior product. The labels who moved to digital had a massive advantage in that they could have put the entire digital signal of the original master tape or file onto a CD and do more than even the best vinyl could achieve.
…current wave…
The current wave of "remastered" music reflects some technological improvements but also shows that the industry will only put out as much effort as it takes to get your money.
Like every era of music before it, digital music has been produced by people with genius, incompetence, greed, carelessness, and blatant disregard for the consumer (I mean, does a refrigerator company try to keep anyone else besides the buyer from using the product), or some combination of the above?
Like a sports team full of high-priced talent that doesn't win the championship, digital music is only as good as those who make it. So far, they've only been good enough to make most people prefer it to vinyl.
Finally, vinyl and CD are superior in sound to the mp3s streaming on your device. The mp3 is a "compressed" file that removes a lot of the signal (or sound), and that was because, in the early digital age, storage space was expensive. Mp3s we're a good way to save space.
Nowadays, a smartphone has more storage and power than a workstation in the 90s, so that's why "lossless" or larger digital files are becoming popular.
So, does a $100.00 vinyl box set sound better than a digital stream of that music? Sure it does, if you have a good turntable and sound system and mainly listen at home.
Plus, do you want to pay that kind of money for a set of music with a bunch of songs that are just practice takes, live cuts, outtakes, and demos?
The definitive answer: It's your money and time; do what you like, and don't listen to critics like me.
- Al Handa
- THE 60s JAPANESE GOLD FOIL PICKUP - A NEW LEGEND OR THE NEXT BEANY BABY? (MAY 2014)
One of the latest crazes in vintage guitar pickups is the "gold foil" type, which was standard on many cheap guitars primarily made by Japanese companies in the 60s.
Information on the pickup is both plentiful and contradictory. In other words, most of what you can learn about it is from Internet sources.
There is one indisputable fact; if you're selling the right one (there are many different variations), you can get up to $300 for it. It's a valuable piece of gear.
Most are just simple magnet pickups with a textured gold foil-like covering with a thin metal casing placed on the top (with the gold foil showing through).
The story about the rising popularity of the gold foil begins like many other guitar fads; the right celebrity used one. As a result, it became fashionable to have one. That type had already been used in a modern guitar, like with the guitarist for the Cure, but it didn't have much effect on guitar fashion at the time.
That fashionable guitar player was Ry Cooder, who's as respected a guitarist, at least among other guitar players, as one can get.
The story begins when David Lindley, another respected slide guitar player, gives Cooder a gold foil pickup. He had it mounted in the middle position on a Stratocaster (which has three pickups), but here's an important point, the third pickup was taken from an old lap steel guitar. That's the one you probably hear more often on his records than the gold foil.
That version of the Stratocaster is now nicknamed the "Cooder Caster."
In a past interview, and I'm afraid I can't recall the publication, Ry liked the gold foil because of what guitarists call its "clean sound," or undistorted tone. He felt that the sound had a sort of open, transparent quality to it.
That's the primary reason he had put in, and that's the main way it's used.
Around the same time, after all, nothing happens in a vacuum; the prices of regular Fender guitars and Gibsons were going up drastically due to collectors.
One of the results was that older Japanese guitars made in the 60s started to become popular as collector items that were both unique and still, at the time, affordable.
I think these two factors combined to make the gold foil pickup popular. That plus the fact that some of the gold foils were made by the Dearmond company, who were esteemed for their pickups on vintage Gretsch guitars (and their own branded models).
The fact that a bigger company like Dearmond made some cheaper pickups for the Japanese models wasn't an unusual practice.
The now famous Buck Owen guitars, which were made cheap at the request of Owens himself, who felt that most of his fans wouldn't afford an expensive custom version, turned out to be very valuable guitars.
The reason?
It turns out that Gibson wanted the contract badly, if for no other reason than to keep the production lines going in its factories, so they became the subcontractor that produced them. So those cheap Buck Owens guitars with the US flag coloring are now expensive collector's items because it's now known that Gibson made those.
Yet another cheap guitar I bought cheap and sold cheap...
So a cheap Harmony brand guitar could have Dearmond-made pickups on it.
In any case, gold foil pickups became very popular. In fact, some people would buy an old Japanese guitar, take off the pickups, and toss the rest of it away.
Since the guitars were cheaply made, that may have been the best fate for some, but there are Japanese-made higher-end guitars that are still in good shape today. It's hard to estimate how many of those were destroyed in the quest to get those gold foil pickups.
You would think that this craze would've died after a few years. After all, not all of those players will use that gold pickup like Ry Cooder did.
In fact, the opposite happened. The gold foil pickup became even more popular, as the things had a distinct sound even at rock 'n roll volume levels.
Guitar players kept the original Teiscos, Kay's, Harmony, and other cheapies and put the pickup in other guitars like Fender telecasters.
If you look at the numerous videos on YouTube of guitarists demonstrating their guitars with the gold foil pickups, very few of them use those like Ry Cooder does.
Most use them like cranked-up Gretsch guitars. This makes sense to me. Most of the gold foils have a bright, crunchy Dearmond sound, and that company made pickups for Gretsch for years.
There is an irony to that because there are plenty of modern Dearmond gold foil pickups on the market that are much cheaper and, I think, have more output and sound better.
Now that's what I think. But, unfortunately, on the discussion boards, it sometimes degenerates into cork-sniffing debates with all sorts of reasons why the older ones are better than the new and vice versa. In truth, both sides are right and wrong.
Like probably more than a few guitar players, I got a hold of an old Japanese guitar myself with the gold foil pickup. I guess I just had to know.
I compared it to an old Crown Kawai-Tiesco, a mahogany body telecaster with a 70s-era Demarzio distortion humbucker in the bridge, and an Eric Clapton signature model Stratocaster.
I immediately put the two Fenders away; the gold foil to my ears wasn't even close. However, it did have more output and brightness than the Crown, and the gold foil had beautiful clarity and power at rock 'n roll volume.
However, the Crown had a cleaner, more crystal-like clean tone, similar to a Fender Jazzmaster, and at high volume, had more of the late 60s and early 70s Stones sound.
The gold foil, to my ears (and for accuracy, I should note that I was using the "slim Jim" version most popular for mounting into telecasters), seemed more suitable for roots rock and rockabilly and trash guitar like Link Wray. Not bad at all, either.
I didn't bother to do much on the slide since on the few occasions I use one, my approach and technique are nowhere similar to Ry Cooder's. However, I did do some light single-string slide riffs, and I would have to say, I think it does have that glassy transparent sound he liked so much.
I should add that a Dearmond guitar with the more modern gold foil pickups can get the same sound if you set the amp correctly.
So, on the one hand, some have criticized the use of the pickups as simply a fashion due to Ry Cooder. It certainly has made the pickup a lot more expensive than it should be.
On the other hand, I lean towards the opinion that while Cooder may have made it popular to use one again, the tangible result is that an old classic pickup has found new life again. Some of the more famous boutique pickup makers are now making their versions of gold foils.
It may have started as a fad, but it's now become one of the standard options for guitarists to shape their sound.
Note: If you're interested in hearing how that old Japanese-made Crown guitar sounded, here's a cut called "Juke Joint Medley" on my YouTube channel that features it.
- Al Handa
- WILL STREAMING DESTROY THE MUSIC INDUSTRY? THE FAIRY GODMOTHER FANTASY (JUNE 2014)
Note: It's evident that in 2022, streaming didn't destroy the music industry though it has cut profit margins, which is probably the same thing for the artists and labels. But this reprint is a good look at attitudes in 2014.
One of the biggest trends in digital music is streaming, and it's had such a noticeable effect on digital download sales that even Apple has bought a streaming service to incorporate into iTunes.
I've read a few editorials about it being "free" music, a few famous musicians complaining about the low royalty rate, and statements that it will destroy digital sales (which destroyed CDs which destroyed vinyl LPs which destroyed 45s which destroyed 78s, etc.).
I doubt it will destroy the music industry, which always makes apocalyptic claims about any change in music trends that it can't control.
Streaming is really just a new form of radio, but one where listeners can choose songs, and probably just like old-time radio, it will never make many musicians wealthy by airplay alone.
I've read statements by musicians who were very critical of streaming, but the views are similar to those made anytime a musical era is beginning to change.
One thing to keep in mind about streaming; It's not a big business yet, the royalty rate isn't very high, and one big streaming service doesn't bother with royalties. It's an industry that needs to grow up.
Like I said in earlier blogs, we're probably back to the age of singles, where airplay simply publicized a song, and musicians made most of their living from live performances.
Some artists become rich in every era, and whether they're conscious of it or not, that's still the fantasy of quite a few musicians in this present age.
…make a wish…
It's the fairy godmother fantasy, but in industry terms, it's called "being discovered."
In it, you play your music, some A&R guy finds you, the record company signs you and gives you a massive amount of money, promotes you, then comes stardom, and then the drugs, women, mansions, and the means to hire bodyguards to keep the public that made you a star away from you.
Not to mention the full power of a wealthy record company behind you, dishing out payola to make sure your song becomes a hit, money for publicists, and legal protection from your mistakes.
And if the record company was honest, you got regular royalties from your sales and airplay. In some ways, it's a unique system.
No guitar company takes a piece of your action once you buy their product. Unfortunately, the music industry has been like the newer software industry as it restricts the use by the buyer, and in the case of music, wants a fee for any public use every single time its product is played, even by kids in a school musical.
Kind of like a laundromat; to use the washer and dryer, you have to keep popping in the quarters, but in this case, you own the appliances, and no one else is supposed to use them.
That was the success fantasy, and to a large degree, it was true for a lucky few.
The reality was that the record labels were, in fact, choke points or gatekeepers. Thousands of artists spent their own money making demos, sent them to A&R departments who would listen to maybe the first three cuts, pick a few from that group for development and sign them to contracts.
Most would receive a large sum of money. Still, virtually all of it was an advance against future royalties, and the group was expected to cover the expenses of making the record from that money.
If the record became a hit and made the advance back, the artist would get more money. However, if the record flopped, the artist still owed that advance, and it became an enormous debt instead.
At that point, if you were lucky, the record company would write the debt off and own your music. If it was a less wealthy label, you could find yourself playing disco, or whatever was popular at the time so the record company could try to recoup its investment.
The philosophy behind this was that even if there were hundreds of failures, a few would become massive hits, and that subsidized the losses.
I don't think there's any solid evidence that this was a superior system of getting new music to the public.
Suppose an artist disappointed the company, which could mean getting only a gold record instead of platinum. In that case, a music catalog could quickly sink into obscurity from the label's apathy (and stay the property of the record company). The music would stay in the vaults because it wasn't profitable to release it.
Some of the 60s artists, like Tom Rush, figured it out early and began releasing independently. Without all the overhead, they found they could make a comfortable living releasing their music even without the benefit of massive sales.
The web and digital age changed that to a large extent. An artist could bypass the demo stage, which could cost the artist a lot of money, leave them obscured, and instead take their music directly to the public.
The trade-off was that you were on your own. There isn't a company investing considerable money in promoting you.
...distribution...
What transformed the digital age wasn't the MP3s. It was the change in distribution. No matter how big the record company was, it was always at the mercy of the distributors, who always held the real power in the industry.
Walmart, for example, accounts for a massive percentage of national record sales and can dictate to the record company how it released a CD and even make them change the lyrical content. That's truer now since so many other record stores have closed.
Once distribution companies formed that could take an indie artist's music and get it on digital sites for a small fee, the old industry model began to break down.
Digital distribution is a viable model; most of those companies don't take a considerable cut of an MP3 sale like a record company would. If an indie artist sells a .99 song, they get most of it.
...streaming is another matter...
Streaming is different; it works like radio. The artist gets paid a minimal royalty every time song is played, and only if it's played. Of course, if you have a publishing deal, that royalty rate can be higher.
There's no record company dishing out payola, perks, and sometimes even women to ensure the DJ plays your song. For one thing, there aren't many DJs left in the radio industry, and most are talk show hosts.
So it goes without saying that you're not going to get rich through streaming. However, if streaming gets as pervasive as radio, then the amount of money an artist will get might go up.
...new...
The whole thing is still very new. At some point, famous artists or record labels will probably get the streaming industry to put in a different model, perhaps an on-demand system for certain songs.
The traditional record industry didn't benefit most musicians, so any changes in the streaming industry will probably not help the indie artist either.
One thing that does seem inevitable is that we won't see as many rich stars, and it'll be harder for the average musician or artist to make a living off recordings alone, even if the odds of their music being heard improve (if they promote themselves).
...troubles...
The music industry's troubles aren't happening in a vacuum. Some changes are affecting other industries. That affects the payout too.
In the last few decades, entire categories of jobs have disappeared or gone overseas. As a result, people are making less money everywhere, and the money that sustains a rock star's lifestyle comes from that pool of people.
When times are tough, everybody makes less, and musicians who forget that their income depends on spending by ordinary people can think some new industry is ripping them off, like streaming.
They forget that being a musician isn't a service sector or regular hourly wage job. In the real world, it's a sales job. Music is created, and the artist has to convince the consumer to buy it.
...golden age...
The last few decades were a golden age for music, it made many people rich, but it just might be that we're no longer in an era where lots of rockstars can make several times more than a doctor (with a lot less work and liability).
Technology moves very fast, which means in an industry like music, which is very technology-driven, there will be periods of upheaval. So it won't be clear what streaming means to the music scene for a year or two or if it's simply a transition to another more sustainable model.
The MP3 download era eventually stabilized into the iTunes model, for example.
The streaming era has only just now begun in earnest. So judging it on what's happening now is shortsighted. The royalty rate is low because the industry is new and only starting to get established; what it pays out if it becomes the dominant form of music distribution remains to be seen. The traditional music industry paid as little as it could get away with, and streamers may not act differently.
Imaginative indie artists have always been the ones who studied the trend and adapted to it. That's a model that's never changed. Also, many artists and labels gamed the system (which is happening in streaming too).
Looking at it positively, the opportunity to hear your music has never been better. Significant changes bring big opportunities, and it's wiser to look for those than sitting around waiting for the fairy godmother.
- Al HANDA
Here's an update on each of my Vella books:
The Quitters
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B09PC3L6PC
It's the first book, and after ten months, it's finally developing an audience, and the stats are trending upward this month. I think it's due to the blog and the new book/music video short format I'm using for its promotion. I’ve moved the plot lines away from potentially over technical descriptions of playing live to more emphasis on the personalities and in particular, the main character Nym. Also, some of the romance elements are now coming into play.
It's at 31 episodes, though as an ebook, we're talking maybe 15 traditional-length chapters. I'm keeping the format episodic and short, kind of like a weekly TV show, which works for Vella but will need to be restructured for the ebook.
I, Ivy
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0B3RCBT4D
The story got off to a decent start, but I didn't notice that as it's obvious now that the daily totals on the Vella dashboard can differ or not jibe with the monthly or overall total, which have to be accurate as those numbers determine the royalty and bonus payouts. I'll be paying more attention to this one in November, as it’s being read more than I thought. The latest chapter, Ivy’s view of the efforts by a human to give her a pill should strike a familiar chord.
The Forbidden Lost Gospels Of Murgatroyde
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BJ2TW4P1
This is a new one, though it'll be the most familiar to blog readers. I'll be changing the format of the blog in November, and putting the Lost Gospels here will allow me to fully expand that line of humor and satire in a way that simply being a blog feature doesn't permit.
The Boogie Underground Think Tank: How To Survive The End Of Civilization
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BG6LNXTG
This one is a revival of an old humor column I ran in my old "Delta Snake Blues News" publication in the 90s and 2000s. The slant is about survival in the upcoming hard times, but it really will be topical and cover subjects that are offbeat but relevant. The next one coming in a few days will be "How To Shop For The Perfect Expert," which obviously will be a humorous commentary on the use of experts in general.
The Adventures Of Queen Khleopahtra: Ruler Of Egypt, Time Traveler, and Literary Detective
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BJC122G7
This is another new one and will be a fun fusion of the old "Peabody and Sherman" cartoon, which was about a time-traveling dog and boy, Robert Graves' often satirical take on history, and the old "Fractured Fairy Tales" cartoon that used to be featured on the "Rocky And Bullwinkle Show."
I chose Khleopahtra as the main character because it will offer the widest range of literary situations to explore, and I happened to have a cool drawing of her and liked the idea of expanding the character. After reading the first episode, you'll agree that the possibilities are endless.
In the latest episodes, we meet Achilles and the poet Homer, who will become recurring characters!
I Can Make It To Christmas by Mark McGraw (of Handa-McGraw International). F IPlease check out and listen to Mark McGraw’s Christmas single from his album on Bandcamp,Can
