Loud, Bad Guitar

Back in March I wrote about wanting to shift from guitar to bass. Since then I went ahead and made the jump, picking up a beautiful, used Yamaha bass at a ridiculously low price given the materials and workmanship. (For more on why I chose a used instrument, read my Eco Guitar Ponderings post from back in 2010). The choice of a used instrument was easy compared to the back-and-forth thinking that I did about whether to get a standard 34" scale bass or to opt instead for either a medium scale (32") or short scale (30") bass to give my aching wrists a break. I've written a few times before on this blog about guitar scale length and its relation to pickup placement and fret placement, tuning, and intonation . It's a topic that I'm pretty comfortable with in terms of the underlying physics and how they make the instrument sound and play. I've also gone through a couple of months in the past when I was unable to play much because of shoulder and wrist pa...

Otherwise known as bass... Yeah, it's been a long time since I had anything to say here. Professional life has gotten more involved and with the dissertation done there's less need for distraction and blowing off steam with awful riffs. As a result, the Hagstrom has been somewhat neglected. Still, we went to see Amon Amarth and Enslaved a few weeks ago and I found myself in the mood to play again. Except that when I thought about the concert, I kept coming back to how I spent the whole time this time mesmerized by watching Grutle Kjellson and Ted Lundström playing. This seemed strange to me because Ice Dale is the quintessential guitar action hero and Johan and Olavi are themselves amazing players. Then I got to thinking about other shows we had gone to see. Opeth: I love Fredrik's playing and Mikael is the most entertaining host in metal, but during the actual songs I end up, more often than not, watching Mendez and his side-to-side headbanging as he jams out on that Ja...