Electric Bliss

This morning, the phone kept ringing while I was doing my morning prayer regimen. Drove me nuts. I finally answered it, and it was Mike. He was going crazy, brainstorming about my new smoker idea, which is this: drill a hole in a Ronco Showtime rotisserie oven and pump in smoke from an external box containing flaming wood.

He pointed something out. You can’t slow-cook stuff in a Showtime oven. The burner has a fixed heat setting, and it’s either on or off all the time.

I hadn’t been concerned about this. The Showtime oven makes nice, tender meat, so I figured I’d be content with using it the same way I do now, but he has a point. Slow-cooking is better.

Here is my answer. Cut a hole in the back of the oven and insert a smoker heating element with a thermostat. You can set the temperature and walk off and not worry about it. Or as Chairman Ron says, “Set it…and forget it.”

This will be a thing of great beauty. Think about it. You make a smoke box from a propane tank, some scrap steel, and a conduit elbow. You plumb it into the side of the oven. You put the smoker heating element in the bottom. You cram your meat in there and smoke it over low heat while using the “No Heat Rotation” setting on the Showtime. Then when you’re ready to eat, you turn the Showtime to “Normal Rotation” and brown the meat.

I felt we should put a hole in the top of the oven and mount a smoke pipe, but that’s just pimpage. The smoke will go in and out just fine if you leave the door cracked.

This could make some really brutal ribs or pork butts or chickens. And it’s cheap. You can get the ovens for $50 on Craigslist. The smoker element runs about the same price. If you spent $150 on this thing, you would be at the upper limit of the price range, and a smart person could do it for a hundred and ten.

Mike was highly disturbed by the prospect of building one of these things. I’m not sure he slept last night. I can tell he’s not going to have any peace until we give this a try.

In other news, my secondhand Japanese Les Paul clone has been delivered and put to work, and it’s amazing. It screams quality, or maybe it’s actually screaming “BANZAI” and it just sounds like “quality.” Using this neck is like dancing on greased glass. The humbuckers (probably Japanese L8000s) have a thick, sweet, almost nasal sound which is addictive. Apart from the dings and scrapes, the fit and finish are perfect. And I suspect the previous owner almost never played it. The finish on the bridge is going, but there is no fret wear. Maybe he just held it in his hands while he danced in his underwear. A lot of guys do that, when they find out how hard it is to actually learn to play.

There are two disappointing things about the guitar. First, it was advertised as a “long tenon” model, which means the neck is supposedly attached the way the better Gibsons had theirs attached. But the tenon is a weird type that has a screw in it. It appears to be very long and solid, but it’s not standard Gibson engineering. Someone has suggested to me that a clever Japanese instrument maker used screws to hold necks in while the glue was soft, so they could be adjusted a little before becoming completely solid. The Matsumoku factory is known for this method.

Second thing: there is a dime-sized mashed place on the edge of the guitar, in back, up high. The binding is a little mooshed, and some wood is showing. This was not clearly indicated in the photos. My luthier says he can make it prettier, but with a polymer-finish guitar, there is a limit to the magic. I just want it cleared up to the point where it doesn’t pain me to see it every time I grab the guitar.

I tried to put a Bigsby on the guitar, using a Vibramate mounting kit. Problem: you have to use a strap pin to hold the mount on, and the strap pin on my guitar is slightly off-center. So another job for the luthier. I would not be afraid to drill a new hole, but I’m going to have to fill a hole and then drill another one right next to it, and that might conceivably require a little knowledge and skill, and I have neither.

I am missing ZZ Top very badly, and this is especially true now that I have a new guitar to mess with. I’m working on SRV’s “Honey Bee” and B.B. King’s “Sweet Sixteen” instead. I’m making good progress. I don’t know if it’s the slippery neck or what, but the up-the-neck intro to “Honey Bee” is not giving me problems. I’m also impressed by the weepy, mournful tone the guitar gives me on “Sweet Sixteen.” Oddly, I prefer it with the Tube Screamer on and the bridge pickup selected.

It looks like Japanese Les Paul clones are great instruments. I don’t know if this thing is as good as a real Les Paul Custom, but it’s so good, I don’t care, and it cost one fifth as much. If I break it or someone steals it, who cares? I’ll Ebay another one. And I’m not afraid to modify it.

You can get new ones. Fernandes still makes Burny guitars, and the top two Les Paul models are still made in Japan. You’ll pay about a thousand to get one in your hands. You won’t be able to try it out first, however.

I don’t know why the Japanese make such beautiful electric guitars and such crappy acoustic instruments, but I’m not complaining.

I love my Chinese Epiphone Riviera, but I’m not so stupid I can’t see the difference in quality between the Riviera and the Les Paul. The necks are equally well set up, but there is something friendlier about the wood on the Burny, and it makes a real difference when I play. I can’t really say why, but the body on the Burny just looks better. The finish just seems classier and less flashy.

I’m wondering if I can have the fretboard on the Epiphone buffed or otherwise treated so it feels a little more like the Burny. And I’ll say one more thing: I would love to see what a Burny ES335 clone is like.

I think I made a mistake when I bought my Vox AC4TV amp. This is a magnificent machine; it has a nice tube sound, and it attenuates to 1/4 watt, so you can make it sound nice without rattling the walls. When I bought it, I looked for other attenuated amps, but I couldn’t find any this quiet. Now I’ve learned about the Bugera V5. This thing goes down to 1/10 watt, and it’s half the price of the Vox. Good info, if you’re currently shopping.

I’m wondering how they do the attenuation. Maybe it’s just a big resistor. If so, I should be able to put a bigger resistor in the Vox. But the Bugera is so cheap, I have to wonder if there is any point.

I’m going to get a Way Huge Fat Sandwich distortion pedal. Maybe I’m stupid, but they sound great in demo videos. I like my Tube Screamer, but how can you resist something called a “Fat Sandwich”?

Time to crank up the amp. Hope I can quit before my fingers get too sore.