I love the banjo! There, I said it and I'm not ashamed. Sure the banjo has gotten a bad rap, usually associated with redneck, hillbilly, toothless yokels (thanks Deliverance!), but it's high time for it to step out of the shadows and into the spotlight it deserves. For years now, luminaries like Tony Trishka, Pete Wernick, and Bela Fleck have proved that the banjo is equally adept in musical genres like classical, rock, and pop as well as the traditional old-time and bluegrass. In the right hands, and ears, the banjo can guide you majestically through a maelstrom of emotions as much as any other instrument. Then there is the physical beauty in the construction of the instrument itself. As a lover of all things strings, especially old instruments, I have become enthralled with the banjo and its evolution over the past 2 centuries. From the original gourd with animal skin, to Vega and Paramount revolutionizing banjo hardware and tonerings, to the Gibson Mastertone that became the standard for bluegrass banjo design, to Tom Nechville's complete rethinking of hardware and assembly. I get just as big a kick out of seeing a cool banjo from the 19th century as I do from seeing a nice brand new one! Give me some sweet old-timey clawhammer, some burnin' hot bluegrass picking, or a banjo reading of a Bach piece and I'll eat it all up! And you know what? I'm not the only one. -Mike Mike Sparber has been roaming the hallowed halls of Sylvan since 2004 and is an admirer of all stringed instruments. He moved here from the DC suburbs in 1999 and can usually be found with his wife at concerts around the Bay Area or with his dog, Ernie, at the beach.
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In the past week, the Sylvan employees and myself have decided to start blogging on a regular basis. The objective is to inform our friends and customers of what goes on behind the scenes and to get to know us on a more personal level. We all have, besides the love of music, specific and individual strengths that we would like to share with our peep's. Being the owner/head repairman, I hope to bring imformative pix and how-to knowledge about the world of musical stringed instruments. I also build acoustic guitars and will try to keep you up to speed on my latest projects so that you can see the process of a guitar being brought to life through the many operations that need to be performed.
Last February, my friend/apprentice Greg Weber, who worked at Sylvan for ten years relocated to Portland Oregon to begin a new life. He bought a house, landed a part time job at a very professional repair shop, and has almost completed his at-home shop were he intends to build his own line of Weber Guitars. I thank him for all his hard work in the shop and wish him all the luck in the world with his new endeavors. After Greg left, I immediately started interviewing a number of potential luthiers and am very happy with my selection of Alan Amimoto. He has been with me for the last 12 months and is doing a superb job. He learns quickly, comes in extra hours, and has a high standard for quality workmanship. I would like to welcome him to the Sylvan Music family. I have been working on musical instruments for the past 35 years and have been the store owner for the past 31 years. It's been a good life and a great career. We have a very professional and motivated staff lead by our manager, Michael Sparber. If you have questions or ideas about your musical instruments that you would like answered or discussed, they're always happy and willing to oblige. This blog is more of an introduction, so thank you for listening and I look forward to taking you into our repair shop next time. The electric guitar. What a concept. You grab an axe, plug it in, flip the amp off standby, feedback starts rollin in and... obviously we know what happens next. A chord is struck! Six vibrating strings upset the magnetic fields generated by copper-wound pole pieces, generating a voltage in the alnico or ceramic cores, which is then sent through a cable to an amplifier and BLAMF! You are now rocking super hard. It's pretty cool. When we consider all of the minutiae taking place between the moment of that strum and those sound waves reaching your ears, one may feel intimidated, or maybe just ambivalent, which is totally fine! Many a great guitarist has considered little more than their amp and guitar to rockin results. But wooooah can it be fun to get into all of those micro-processes, or altering your signal with a slew of stompbox effects, or making up your own chords, or, in general, just doing things with your guitar people tell you not to. Try new things, try new tunings, instead of playing out of your bridge pickup all of the time, try slamming the treble on your amp and playing out of the neck pickup. Throw a reverb pedal before your distortion pedal and get scared! Use your pick like a bow, I don't know! There are so many different approaches you can take to this ridiculous instrument; so many unique ways to craft a sound that is more personalized and expressive for the player, but to me it seems like few dare to. So I guess I'm gonna occasionally update y'all with some of my own anecdotal experiences, or ideas I've tried that I thought were neat, alarming, confusing or whatever really. Anytime I hear a guitarist coax something "legit-fresh" out of their instrument, I get a little giddy, and ultimately I hope to get some other players out there to see the versatility of sound available to them. Anyway, here's a dope video of Nels Cline demoing a cool Zvex pedal we have in stock: -Alex Alex works the sale floor at Sylvan Music five days a week. He uses way too many effect pedals and spends most of his time plumbing the depths of sound and annoying his neighbors. There was a time, not long ago, that I avoided pedals like the plague. Being a bass player, I never felt the need to use pedals, and on the occasions that I did try them I was never happy with the sound. I always had the idea that "bass players are the backbone of the music, you aren't supposed to be flashy". My mind was changed when I starting working at Sylvan Music and was encouraged to try out all the pedals. These are a few opinions that I have developed over the 7 or so years of working here. The first thing I would advise is, whenever possible, buy bass-specific pedals. The biggest problem with using guitar pedals on bass is the massive cut in bass frequencies, and losing your low end is counterproductive. Bass specific pedals are made with the bass frequency range in mind so you keep the low end and get the effect as well. My second discovery is that having Wet/Dry controls is almost mandatory. Wet and Dry knobs control the volume of two different signals; the Wet being the effected signal, and the Dry being the clean signal. This way you can dial in as much or as little effect as you like while having your clean level unaffected. My personal rig includes: the MXR Bass Fuzz Deluxe, MXR Bass Envelope Filter, and the EHX Freeze. Feel free to come in and check out these and many other bass specific pedals. -Kevin Kevin is a veteran Sylvan Music employee, with a profound love of usually four stringed instruments like bass and ukulele. He's also an accomplished jaw harpist. You can find him playing shows around town in his folk/rock band Sun Maiden, or his metal band Rat King. If he's not at work he's probably covered in grease working on one of his motorcycles. The world of acoustic guitar pickups is vast and ever-expanding, with new technologies and designs popping up seemingly every week. The most recent pickup design from LR Baggs is The Lyric, which utilizes a microphone element that is attached to the bridge plate of your instrument. A microphone on the bridge plate you say!? That sounds like a load of malarkey. But it’s true! Unlike most internal microphone systems which utilize a highly sensitive mic capsule mounted on a gooseneck (and often pointed directly through the sound hole towards the strings--a highly feedback-prone system if you ask me…), the Lyric is substantially smaller in size and makes use of a “top secret” EQ curve developed by the engineering wizards at LR Baggs which reduces the awkward boxiness usually associated with internal microphones. This is a serious step in the right direction if you, like myself, are looking for the most accurate means of amplifying your high-end acoustic guitar without the hassles of conventional internally mounted microphone systems. Pair your LR Baggs Lyric with their award winning Venue DI for the ultimate dynamic and portable acoustic rig. That’s what I did, and I haven’t looked back. Check out all the great products that LR Baggs has to offer (as well as some killer demo videos) at their website, www.lrbaggs.com -McCoy McCoy Tyler is a salesman at Sylvan Music with an aptitude towards acoustic guitars, amps, and pickup systems. When he's not spouting musical knowledge on the sales floor, he can be found doing some hot picking and sweet singing with his group The McCoy Tyler Band. |