Days of Teshuvah, 2010
August 31st, 2010Plus Guitar Stuff
Thought I should remind everyone that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are on the way: September 8 and September 18, respectively. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish new year (one of them, anyway), and Yom Kippur is the day of atonement.
The “Days of Teshuvah” started on August 11. This is a time when Jews reflect on their sins and turn from them. They believe God determines their fate (“inscribing” it) on Rosh Hashanah, and he “seals” it on Yom Kippur. Then they’re stuck with it for the coming year. The High Holy Days or “Days of Awe” run from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur.
It’s a good time to repent and resolve to do better. Christians aren’t subject to the entire Jewish law, but when is a change of heart a bad thing? And it serves to show respect and solidarity. Many mainstream churches are contemptuous of Israel and the Jews. It can’t hurt to set yourself apart from them.
I have been invited to visit my friends at the Messianic synagogue for their High Holy Days stuff. I am trying to get the other Armorbearers to go.
I got a number of comments about guitar amps. Right now, I’m trying out a Fender Super Champ XD. This is a 5-watt tube amp with some newfangled effects built in. It plays well at low volumes, and the effects are not bad. It’s a keeper. It’s loud enough to gig with, and even if the effects are not the best available, they’re very good, and they serve as a cheap and convenient introduction to the world of effects. And if you combine this thing with a channel-switching pedal and a distortion pedal, you can probably leave your other pedals at home.
It also simulates the sounds of certain classic amps. That’s a great feature.
I should have gotten this thing on day one, but I didn’t know what I was doing. The Vox is very nice, however, and so is the Bugera 5V I got.
I am considering getting one or two more Japanese Les Pauls. I am learning that no matter how versatile a guitar is, it’s a pain to use the same instrument for everything. It’s easier to have different guitars for different sounds, and there are enough Japanese bargains out there to make this an economically feasible idea. I would like to get one with single-coil pickups, and I’d like to put Bigsbys on all of them.
I may as well confess: I bought a “History” brand Les Paul. This is a magnificent Fujigen instrument with a bookmatched top. I got an insane price. Some crazy person bought it in 2005 and kept it in a closet in Japan and didn’t even take the film off the pickups or pot and switch covers. It’s not “like new.” It’s “NEW.”
Japanese guitar prices are going up, so this is the year to buy. Although the upcoming Obama Depression may change that.
I ought to go play some high-end Gibsons. As it stands, I think the Japanese guitars are probably better. Not “nearly as good” or “acceptable,” but better. The workmanship is perfect, they use excellent materials, and Gibson taught them how to do everything, so there are no trade secrets or patent issues to keep the Japanese in second place. I’ve shown my two Japanese instruments to good guitarists, and one of these guys wanted to buy one of them, so my impressions seem to be right. But I haven’t touched a real Gibson, other than my Blueshawk, in a long time, so I may be wrong.
I seriously doubt it. A Les Paul is just a board and a neck. If the action, intonation, and pickups are good, what could be bad?
It’s sad that American quality control is so bad.
I’ve been checking out Japanese Yahoo auctions. The problem with this is that you have to find a deal so good you don’t mind adding around $225 to the price, for service fees and shipping. The deals do exist, though.
I found a truly astounding instrument on one site. It’s a History brand clone of the Gibson ES295. That’s a hollow gold top guitar with P90s and a Bigsby. Thank God, someone bought this guitar the day I decided to inquire, because otherwise, I would have had a major temptation issue.
I don’t feel bad about buying nice used guitars, because it’s like buying stock. The money doesn’t vanish. You can get it back, often with a decent profit. New guitars aren’t too bad, if they’re well-known brands. Accessories and amps, you usually get hammered on. But not always. Sometimes they get discontinued, and then everybody goes nuts trying to buy old ones.
I figure it will be a waste of time trying to get a good deal on a Japanese instrument a year from now. Party while you can.
August 31st, 2010 at 3:21 PM
I bought a Japanese Epiphone Les Paul a few months ago, and it’s better than any Les I’ve held or played from Gibson USA made during my lifetime.
It’s utterly beautiful (incredible bookmatched quilted figuring), and plays and sounds a dream.
The original pickups weren’t great, but the previous owner had them changed out for Gibson USA BurstBuckers. You couldn’t get a better sound out of a Les.
The best part though? I paid $350 (for what was originally a $1400 guitar).
August 31st, 2010 at 3:31 PM
Signed & sealed are 2/3rds of the formula. Delivery is on Hoshanah Rabbah, the last day of Sukkot. Hoshanah Rabbah is considered Yom Kippur for gentiles.
A noteworthy story is that the 10 Nazis hanged at Nuremberg were executed on Hoshanah Rabbah with Julius Streicher’s final word being “Purimfest.” (I own a copy of the issue of Newsweek where this is reported.) This clearly parallels the 10 sons of Haman. There was supposed to be an eleventh execution, a transvestite who committed suicide, paralleling the daughter of Haman who, according to midrashic literature, committed suicide. These executions were by hangings, not firing squads. The Book of Esther notes that Haman and his sons were executed “al ha-etz”, on a tree, or wood. The name of the U.S. military executioner was Woods.
Probably more accurate to say that one’s “potential fate” is inscribed on RH. During the period between RH and YK, making amends with those made in His image is paramount as God can judge us for our intents and favorably if we aren’t perfect but heading in the right direction. On the other hand, no amount of fasting or chest-beating will atone for doing wrong to another person. Tshuvah is a 3-step process: recognition, regret and reparation of damages when applicable.
Fate isn’t fixed. Otherwise, free will would be negated. There’s a sound theological argument that no fate is pre-ordained, that a full teshuvah effectively results in the creation of a different person, for whom there is a very different fate.
I once knew someone who seriously contemplated suicide. The person went to a lecture by Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski (tons of his books on Amazon) and spoke with him afterward. He asked the person if it was wrong to kill a stranger. The person replied, “Yes”. Then Rabbi Twerski said the person had no right to commit suicide.
Each RH, I approach God with an attitude of “Don’t stick a fork in me, I’m not done, yet.”. The primary danger is an attitude of spiritual complacency or entitlement. If you aren’t worried, you’re probably nowhere near taking your spiritual growth seriously enough or anywhere close to getting to your spiritual potential.
Our souls are put into corporeal bodies in order to accomplish a spiritual and physical mission. Paying dues to a congregation hardly suffices. Prayer (in Hebrew, the word l’hitpallel is reflexive) is weak unless we try to emulate the Divine and be His agent here on earth.
We were given a user’s manual. At the Pearly Gates we may reasonably expect to be given an oral examination to determine how much we accomplished… or did we spend our days blissfully distracting ourselves, confident that we thought we joined the right team.
August 31st, 2010 at 7:26 PM
Dont overlook the Explorer it a good guitar too.
September 1st, 2010 at 5:42 AM
Steve, have you considered getting a 12 string acoustic and/or any of the older (30+ years) Ovation guitars?
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:07 AM
Buying guitars is probably more like buying a house, complete with the example of the current market.
September 2nd, 2010 at 10:32 AM
I’m not sure why you would comment on the guitar market when you don’t know anything about it. You should pick a classic guitar and see if you can track the used price from 1980 to 2010. Bubbles don’t last 30 years.
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Virgil, the only Ovation I ever played was a new one my friend bought in 1980. At the same time, I bought a 1966 J200. When we compared, it was like comparing a Stradivarius to a cigar box with rubber bands for strings. After that, I didn’t have much interest in Ovations.
September 2nd, 2010 at 3:31 PM
You always assume I don’t know anything. That’s unnesecessary and very mildly unfriendly. I wasn’t casting asspersions on your purchases. Just like houses, guitars have an inheirent purpose and value as an instrument. So, like houses, if the historical trend of decades of steady growth suddenly craps out, you’ve still got a guitar with inheirant value and usefullness. Win win.
September 2nd, 2010 at 3:41 PM
It seemed to me that you were taking me to task for being stupid enough to buy into a bubble. That’s not something you should say without backing it up. If you were saying buying something of real value is always a safe bet, then I misunderstood, and I apologize.
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The prices of old Gibson electric guitars are probably grossly inflated, but Japanese guitars are still somewhat underpriced. In fact, you can still get unbelievable deals if you look.
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In my opinion, the Obama Depression is the only thing that can make the market collapse entirely, and even if that happens, as you say, a guitar is still a guitar, and it probably won’t lose a higher percentage of its value than my other possessions. If we have severe deflation, however, I would wish I still had the cash.
September 3rd, 2010 at 7:13 AM
No! I was absolutely not calling you stupid! Sorry for the misunderstanding, and thanks for the gracious apology.
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As an excercise for the other readers: And if your guitar never had saleable value again, you’d still have an object of beauty that could be used to bring you and others joy.
September 7th, 2010 at 9:53 PM
The guitar market, like the housing market, has different strata.
There’s the high-end rare / vintage market, which has experienced a bit of a bubble recently (but has already come back down a bit — check the price trackers in the front of recent years’ Vintage Guitar Price Guides). But those guitars are still worth a lot more than they were even 10 years ago, and will still command high prices for years to come because they’re increasingly hard to find and the market for them is among people with serious money to spend, who will always be around in some form or another. It’s kind of like the high-end housing market, which didn’t crash anything like the low/medium end market in the last couple years, but just contracted a bit (or in some local markets, the rate of price increases just slowed).
I’ve also been tracking Japanese Gibson copies in recent years — bought myself a Greco “Mint Collection” Les Paul Custom in 2007 for about $800, and they’re going for more like $900-1000 lately. But I just missed by a couple years the time when you could snap up guitars like that for $400-500 because nobody (including myself) knew how good they were. Now the secret’s out, and those guitars are becoming collector’s items in their own right, within a niche of players who are aware of them. They’ll probably continue to creep up steadily.
Would still love to pick up a Japanese copy of a ’58-59 ‘Burst, or a goldtop, or a Les Paul Special or Junior double-cut w/ P90s, but prices on those are creeping up lately to where they’re not as much of a bargain anymore compared to a USA Gibson, or even a used USA Hamer, which are just fantastic guitars. My Hamer Special with P-90s is really nicely put together, but it’s from a year when the necks were really thin, which fatigues my hand — it’s probably going up on the market once I find a suitable replacement P90 guitar with a fat neck, like a different year Hamer.
And Gibsons have had inconsistencies and quality problems, but they can still make some great guitars. I have an ’81 Firebird Artist II that’s in need of a fret job, but really nicely put together with a great neck apart from the fretwear, and a beautiful figured maple top that’s flamey but subtle. And my ’82 Explorer 2 CMT has one of the best necks of any of my guitars — straight, fat, and with nice jumbo frets but very little wear. That one is also gorgeous and well put-together, also with a subtle figured maple top. Both of those were from the years when Gibson was owned by Norlin, which many compare to the years when AMF owned Harley-Davidson — i.e. Gibson’s darkest hour. Even then, they could make some good stuff.
I’ve not tried the Super Champ XD. But a very nice solid-state practice amp is the Vox Pathfinder 15R. I picked one up for $40 on Craigslist and love it — shortly after I bought it sold the Vox Valvetronix practice amp with all the models and effects.
I found all the models, effects, etc., to be too much of a pain to set up, and unnecessary for home practice anyway. If I want to hear effects, I’ve got the pedalboard I use for band practice & gigging, with discrete knobs and footswitches for each effect so I know exactly what each one does and can make changes on the fly between songs or even mid-song. Messing with multifunction controls (“turn the knob to adjust tremolo speed, then hold button 1 down while turning the same knob to adjust tremolo depth, and then hold buttons 1 and 2 both down while turning the same knob to adjust reverb,” etc.) is for the birds.