Ricks 'n picks and other things (12 string)

[jingle_jangle]

Yeah Jim, I have made mezrabs out of hardware store steel baling wire out of desperation when I lose them.
Much thinner that coat hangers...about 20 gage.

The neat thing is that you can double pick with them....really fast too. If they had a tighter tip radius they might work pretty well on the 12.

Mezrabs are made from an odd alloy. They're sort of spring steel, not mild steel, but not music wire, either. My sitar had a half-dozen in the case when I fished it out of the trash, all different sizes. Angle of attack is #1 when you're knocking off those double-picked runs.

Let's see...a couple of toaster pickups to get all of those sympathetic strings, a couple of under-saddle piezos, FG paint, and we're sizzling to the classics...

[Les]

Paul,

I think the good mezrabs are stainless steel precipitation hardening alloy.

Ha....a fireglow sitar. Mine had a rather poor shellac finish over Tun wood. I french polished it and got it looking much better.

I have to tell you a short story from back in the sixties. I couldn't get any sitar to try out. Didn't have any money anyway since I was 16 or so. I did get to try a coral electric sitar in a music store.

So I did this. Up in my room I stretched some strings on a plank and fitted some old tuners. On one end was a fairly compliant "nut". The other end was a jawari bridge like I saw on the Coral to make the buzzing. I fitted a vibration transducer made from a cheap speaker with the cone taken off to the compliant nut. I also fitted a pickup made from an alnico slug and plenty of my prized #40 magnet wire.

I hooked one end to my amp (old 6L6 salvaged from home entertainment console) and the pickup to the mic input of my "Voice of music" tape recorder amp. When I played my Guyatone electric guitar through it....rrrrzzzzzzzzzzz...the strings started singing out like sympathetic strings!!! had to be tuned just right though.

My parents thought I was crazy. I was. All that noise from my room interfered with the Lawrence Welk music and stuff downstairs. Crazy bee buzzing noise. It was one of the few things that would make my mom say bad words.

Les

[wittyair]

For all you finger pickers....when I played pedal steel, I HAD to have Dunlop metal finger picks
for the index and middle finger. They were the ONLY ones that didn't have a little "hump" on the
collar which would invariably get caught on the strings right in the middle of your best solo of the night!

[jimk]

Hey Les,
Great story! Good thing my coffee cup was empty. 'Cause if I had had a mouthful of coffee, I'd have either sent it through my nose, or it would have gone all over the monitor, I was laughing so hard.


JimK

[jingle_jangle]

Les...reminds me of a non-musical story, from the years before I dragged my Dad's old accordion from the bed and taught myself C, F, G7...

I was ten years old and I built an arc lamp from some old "D" cell battery carbons sharpened in a pencil sharpener and hooked up to a Lionel train transformer. It smoked and flickered, but I found a clear styrene shoebox to put over it.

I was happy with my light. But my folks were surprised to find the firemen at the front door, after a neighbor saw what looked like an electrical fire up in my bedroom window.

Then there was the "experimental" pipe bomb I built from a piece of copper plumbing pipe...

[goofyfoot]

......Then there was the "experimental" pipe bomb I built from a piece of copper plumbing pipe...

.....before you joined the SDS.

J-J.....you bad boy! Funny stuff, brah. Thanks for sharing.....Goofyfoot {:=)

[jingle_jangle]

......Then there was the "experimental" pipe bomb I built from a piece of copper plumbing pipe...

.....before you joined the SDS.

J-J.....you bad boy! Funny stuff, brah. Thanks for sharing.....Goofyfoot {:=)

Dave...you're psychic...I was an SDS member, from 1965-68. They started out peaceful and politically astute. The Dem convention in Chicago put me over the top and I pulled out, just before the Weathermen started their terrorism.

[Les]

Paul, I'm trying to imagine an accordian playing SDS member.

You know, I took accordian lessons too! But hey I saw what the Beatles did to all those girls my age. I convinced my folks to let me switch to classical guitar lessons! I just couldn't get a good rendition of twist and shout on my accordian. I was forced to play Lawrence Welk music in recitals. BLAH! HAHAHA

Les (fearing that dunlop metal finger picks will scratch his new Rick)

[Les]

Oh, I forgot....

I may take up the accordian again if the recession gets really bad.

I'll play it at the airport with blind man glasses and a tin cup.

Les

[jimk]

Oh, I forgot....

I may take up the accordian again if the recession gets really bad.

I'll play it at the airport with blind man glasses and a tin cup.

Les

I already do that with my fiddle at the local Farmer's Market. Except I don't have to pretend!

JimK

[jingle_jangle]

Paul, I'm trying to imagine an accordian playing SDS member.

You know, I took accordian lessons too! But hey I saw what the Beatles did to all those girls my age. I convinced my folks to let me switch to classical guitar lessons! I just couldn't get a good rendition of twist and shout on my accordian. I was forced to play Lawrence Welk music in recitals. BLAH! HAHAHA

Les (fearing that dunlop metal finger picks will scratch his new Rick)

When I first got into HS, I (being the good Polish son of good Polish parents) really hankered after a Cordovox. This was basically a medium-grade Italian accordion with the key contacts of a combo organ built-in. It hooked via two thick umbilicals to a tone generator cabinet (with 66 tubes!!!) and another, identical-appearing, amplifier cabinet.

The sound was pretty good, and because it was mostly electronic and had a swell pedal, you didn't have to pump the bellows when in electronic mode. (To hear one, listen to "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis and the Playboys). It cost MORE than a VOX Continental back in '64. But if you were playing polkas, it was THE accordion to have. Fat chance for me, however.

My locker partner at St. Pat's HS in Chicago, Chris Wolski, played one in a pickup school combo, called "The Patsmen", which morphed into "The New Colony Six". Chris left and my neighbor Greg took over keyboard duties, playing first a Cordovox and then a Continental. Their first charted song, "I Confess" features the old Cordovox, and after that it was the VOX.

When I became a HS junior, my girlfriend at the time played accordion, too. And she was a babe; no thick glasses or facial hair...

Moral: When in Chicago...

[goofyfoot]

Oh, I forgot....

I may take up the accordian again if the recession gets really bad.

I'll play it at the airport with blind man glasses and a tin cup.

Les

Les.....When you score that accordion and aren't using it, may I? Reduction-in-force notices are goin' out to Socal teachers! (Actually, I'm safe.....for now.) Regards....Goofyfoot.

[Les]

Paul you're right!
I youtubed Gary Lewis and saw rock(kind of), accordions, and pretty go go dancin' girls!

I'll be darned.

You know I lived in Chicago up till 7 years ago (well ok Evanston)...

Jim do you have a tin cup though?

Dave I don't think we had better use a tin cup. With this massive stagflation we will need a tin VISA remote satellite card reader.

Wait Paul there may be a problem with this accordion thing.
I DO have thick glasses and facial hair!

Les

[goofyfoot]

......Then there was the "experimental" pipe bomb I built from a piece of copper plumbing pipe...

.....before you joined the SDS.

J-J.....you bad boy! Funny stuff, brah. Thanks for sharing.....Goofyfoot {:=)

Dave...you're psychic...I was an SDS member, from 1965-68. They started out peaceful and politically astute. The Dem convention in Chicago put me over the top and I pulled out, just before the Weathermen started their terrorism.

Paul, I remember reading accounts of the SDS convention (Chicago, June of '69) shortly afterwards and how the Weatherman faction within SDS took control of it. At first, I got a really propagandized view of the situation as I read "The Stars & Stripes," newspaper of the U.S. Armed Forces. I grew up in Tokyo and Okinawa, the son of a father who worked in DoD Intelligence. (Okinawa was the logistical supply command center for the Indochina War. Also, B-52s flew from Kadena AFB on Okinawa and from Anderson AFB on Guam on their bombing missions.) Anyway, I was able to access additional resources from servicemen rotating into their assignments on Okinawa from Stateside. But yeah, things started gettin' hotter, a lot hotter, after that SDS convention. IMHO and despite the war, things began to really unravel domestically after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. This year marks the 40th anniversary of each passing. I'm still reeling from the impact of those tragic events. Drove by the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. the other day and kept musing, "What if, just what if RFK had not...."

....And the beat goes on. I'm curious. Did you happen to keep any copies of SDS's "New Left Notes" by chance? On second thought, you don't have to answer that. Peace, out....Goofyfoot.

[Les]

Cool.

Ricks, picks, and politics

IT RHYMES!

Les