Last year I posted here about why its not really possible to get a guitar in tune. I heard from a friend today about tru-temperment fret boards which may actually make it possible! Some anecdotal posts in guitar forums indicate that you can play barre chords all the way up the neck with one of these and remain perfectly in tune.

In (somewhat related) readings during lunch today I also found this site and I remembered another conversation with some friends recently about the difference between a 440Hz A and 442Hz A. Can you hear the difference between 440Hz and 442Hz?
http://www.tedrounds.com/mp3_files/A440.mp3
http://www.tedrounds.com/mp3_files/A442.mp3

Even if you can’t discriminate the difference between them when playing them one after another, if you play them simultaneously you’ll notice the interference pattern (listen for a waa waa waa sound). This is another way I was taught to tune an electric guitar – while playing a harmonic note on the 12th fret of the lower string, play a harmonic on the 5th fret of the higher string and listen for the interference pattern and tune until the waa waa slows down and disappears. (I’m not at a guitar right now and while my fingers would remember the right frets, my mind doesn’t so if thats not right please correct).

I’ve been looking into getting a new amp to replace the old Peavey Backstage Plus that I’ve been “making do” with for almost 20 years. The old 35W Peavey looks like a 1987 model. I got it from my brother for pretty cheap sometime around then, and a few years back I replaced the original speaker with a 9″ Pyle Driver, but it worked well for a looong time.

Recently I’ve been getting some buzzing sounds from it and the knobs need a serious dose of tuna-lube, and I decided it was finally time to retire it.

The hunt
I started looking for amps a couple months back and got some really good information from my buddy Todd of the Trespassengers and I immediately ignored it all. Well, that’s not true, as you’ll see. One of the things he suggested was that I look at the Mackie SRM450s which I did.
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I caught a Stevie Ray video clip from Austin City Limits tonight on Google Video which got me thinking about when I saw him play live. It’s been so long now that frankly, I was starting to think I had imagined it. After all, I don’t seem to have a ticket stub from the show (I recently scanned a bunch that I had found in an old shoe box) and I was starting to think that my memory of him doing a gig in the SUNY Oneonta gym (I went to Oneonta for two years before transferring) was wrong – why would he play in a stinky college gymnasium in a tiny state school in upstate NY? I have journals from all the way back to 1980 – so I started looking for an entry to settle the matter.
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I’ve made it a point since last year to visit the Web Gallery of Art at least once a week and discover something new by digging into it’s vast archive of paintings. Images are hosted on servers at the Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I’ve been concentrating on images of musicians, downloading my favorites and adding the associated text. It’s been a great source of new desktop wallpapers at work, too!