ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

IS THIS A GUITAR FORUM OR AN AUNT AGONY COLUMN? www.tdpri.com  is where the enthusiastic/passionate/fanatical fans (of which I confess I am one) of the Fender Telecaster guitar meet to discuss all manner of things about their object of love. It is the world’s largest forum on the Telecaster guitar with hundreds of posts every day on such esoteric topics as: three-saddle bridge or six-saddle bridge, the battle is over. The difference between a 53 Tele and a 54 Tele is more than  skin-deep, or Fret wire sizes for my 52 Butterscotch Blackguard. [I forgot what TDPRI stands for]. But some of the posts on TDPRI are hilarious, and read more like an Aunt Agony advice column for the lovelorn. Here are sample posts gleaned from TDPRI: 1. Is something wrong with my Tele or is it me? 2. Can anyone be a one-Tele man? (Not that I am having other thoughts) 3. After 20 years with a Les Paul, I dumped it for a Tele. No regrets. 4. Is modding (modifying) a Tele sacrilege? Urgent. Please help...

Above: my 2008 Nash 52 Telecaster. Weighing under 7 lbs because the wood is dry, and fitted with Lollar pickups, it is extremely easy to play. Even without an amplifier, the guitar rings loud and clear and with sustain- a testament to the quality of the wood and the build.  I am a fan of relic (artificially aged) guitars, especially Fender Telecasters, and I love how some of the makers of Telecaster type guitars describe the degree of relic-ing . Nash Guitars  www.nashguitars.com  calls them 'Distressed Guitars' And describe their degree of distress thus: Light Distress= Church Gig- as in when you only use it to play for your church. Medium Distress= Working Man; a working musician's tool . Can't be new and shiny but has to be in good playing condition. Heavy Distress= Louisiana Roadhouse'- Look like it probably has smell of stale beer and cigarettes on it and spent nights playing the Blues in some Deep South joint. Extreme Heavy Distress* ...

Believe it or not, guitars breathe, and they do need to breathe if they are to sound good. Take out a guitar that has been kept in its case for ages, especially an acoustic guitar, and pluck the strings. It will sound muffled and stifled. The ringing sustain with clear overtones that you expect from a good guitar will be absent. But leave the guitar outside its case for a few days, in a place that's not so humid, and there will be a difference in the sound. Good wines breathe, and so do guitars. The type of finish (paint) used on a guitar is a very important factor in its ability to breathe. Many vintage guitars sound great because they do not have thick coats of paint but were au naturel, or had only a thin coat of paint followed by a top coat of nitrocellulose lacquer. The ban on nitrocellulose lacquers (for health or environmental reasons I think) and the fashion for guitars to have custom colors like Shell Pink, Pacific Blue, Candy Apple Red, etc resulted in guitars that could...

The type of guitar on which a person plays jazz is usually an Archtop, a big hollow-bodied guitar that gives the fat, mellow tone typical of a jazz guitar. [for picture of an archtop, see my previous article on Eastman:Made-in-China jazz guitars]. Although no one can argue that archtops give a superlative tone for jazz, they do have one problem: feedback. That hollow body is very prone to feedback, and makes an expensive archtop [those with the carved instead of laminated top] become like an uncontrollable thoroughbred horse when playing in a live band situation. Trying to do some inspired playing while that big wooden body is vibrating underneath you, and could at any moment suddenly turn into a howling monster is impossible. Also, archtops are great when you are playing alone or in a very quiet small band setting. At open jamming sessions, in noisy clubs, and playing with drums and horns, archtop tones, though sweet, cannot cut through the noise. A Fender Telecaster, on the other ha...