'Instruments' Category
Loud farty things ahoy
Things have been a bit quiet on the recording front lately, but I’ve not been sitting around doing nothing…
I’ve dug my tubas out of mothballs and have resumed playing after a 5-year break; I have a good front-action EEb instrument, and a battered 3-valve BBb, which is also front-action, and has quite variable intonation, but [...]Legacy acoustic guitar strings
The ongoing search for a durable set of strings that will sound reasonable on my Taylor Big Baby without costing the earth has taken a really surprising turn.
I was putting in an order at StringsDirect.com, who, incidentally, are truly excellent and almost always have your strings with you the next day. I noticed their Legacy [...]Autoharp Chord Bar Layout
Having looked at this site’s search statistics I seem to be getting some traffic from people looking for chord bar diagrams for the autoharp, although I’m not sure why Google has been directing them here. Sadly, until now the cupboard has been bare! So I thought I’d document at the very least the layout I’m [...]
Elixir Nanoweb Strings - incompatible with heavy picking?
My main guitar these days is a Taylor “Big Baby”; it’s a 15/16 scale dreadnought with an enormous voice for its size. When I bought it, from the excellent World Guitars in Lapworth, it was strung with Elixir Nanoweb strings, and I’ve stuck with them ever since.
Until now.
For years I’ve been a rhythm guitarist and [...]A New DIY approach to the guitar-zither
In a moment of inspiration/madness/gung-ho recklessness, I have dismantled the better of my two guitar-zithers and rearranged all the strings, stabbing myself several times with small pointy bits of metal in the process.
I’d been wondering about doing this for a while, as although the instrument makes a lovely sound, I don’t find the standard [...]