MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2023 10:23 am Yeah those straight tuners on a reverse Firebird look so badass.

I'd said earlier I'd buy an affordable Firebird in a second, $649 seems totally reasonable, and I almost bought one on a whim last night. But then I thought 1. a big piece of mahogany is probably going to be too heavy for my feeble shoulders, and 2. I know I'm going to hate the gloss finish, so it's likely to end up just sitting on a stand not getting played. And I can't afford $649 for something just to look at.

But if I *could* I would, and I'd get that V and a korina explorer to go with it.

They look cool until one tuner breaks and you have to replace the entire expensive set.

I had a stop tail Gibson Firebird V for about 8 months and it was the most rock sounding guitar ever. Neck felt and played perfectly. Unfortunately I found the geometry of the guitar awkward as hell and it neck dove worse than an SG.

I still want a 1-pickup guitar with a Firebird pickup though. Badly.

jirbling rake wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2023 12:53 pm 1: Get Reis-like with a power tool and weight relieve it

2: There's always time to learn the art of shinebreaking these over-glossy new guitars. The perfect hobby for one's elder years, as you pass the winters

Yep, thought about both, but I've already taken up dyeing and assembling partscasters as my new hobby, I've got plenty to do in that dept already, if I'm gonna spend money on an off-the-rack guitar, I specifically wanna NOT do any of that stuff. That $650 would buy me yet another neck/body combo from Warmoth, or this is also a fine idea:

for that $650 get two super paranormal models that are now on sale on fender's site.

and of course I have too many guitars already...

In the 80s at some point Gibson bought Steinberger guitars and threw together some stuff that was all 80's with Steinberger Floyd Rose-alike trems and EMG pickups, and one of them was the made in Korea "Epiphone by Gibson" Firebird 500:


About 20 years ago I bought one of these as a project. It was gutted of everything but the tuners and pickguard and came like so:



I did not know exactly what I was doing (still dont) but I cut a mahogany plug for the trem hole, stripped off the awful poly finish, and made it into a useable guitar again. It was pretty cool.

That guitar was like "wow I feel so much better now, thanks doc".

jirbling rake wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2023 12:53 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Wed Dec 06, 2023 10:23 am I'd said earlier I'd buy an affordable Firebird in a second, $649 seems totally reasonable, and I almost bought one on a whim last night. But then I thought 1. a big piece of mahogany is probably going to be too heavy for my feeble shoulders, and 2. I know I'm going to hate the gloss finish, so it's likely to end up just sitting on a stand not getting played. And I can't afford $649 for something just to look at.

1: Get Reis-like with a power tool and weight relieve it

I support anything reis-like but with a firebird that will neckdive something fierce and how the geometry is, a weird position to support it.

I love firebirds

Per the (possible) M500 that popped up in the ebay/CL thread... my rock band played two relatively big shows this past weekend (opening for a much bigger band) at a venue that's recently re-opened in town with a souped up PA and nice lights. The headliners are a pretty large band—as many as 14 or 15 people on stage at some points, ~10 of whom have vocal mics up, so the PA was stretched to capacity and a lot of the weak spots in the install were showing up on the first night. Not every day that they're getting down to the inputs in the 50s etc... subs weren't working for our set and they only managed to sort it out 10min before the headliners went on.

Anyway, saw some IG videos of the first night and noticed my vocals weren't cutting at all with my usual live mic (sE V7), so I figured what the heck, and brought my M500 to the show. I mean, it is nominally a "live vocal mic" right? Anyway, our sound person and the house monitor guy were both pretty skeptical that it would make any real difference that they couldn't address through EQ and a better soundcheck, but I plugged it in and immediately both of them did an immediate double take. It sounded noticeably crisper, clearer, and punched through the monitor mix with ease. I'm not going to get in the habit of bringing it to every show we play, but it legit solved a problem and sounded fantastic.

tl;dr the M500 is a really, really, really, really good mic.

^ And you performed live through a ribbon mic which few people these days can claim. Pretty cool.

Also of note: Sturgill Simpson's famed psych country record was recorded with an m160 on vocals.

It was definitely a ridiculous flex, but I'll take what I can get tbh.
The headliner's FOH tech was like, "WHOSE IS THAT???"

Bad news gear development ;_;

I recently (maybe 1.5yrs back?) bought two Drawmer 1960 mic pre/compressors from a studio that was going out of business. Both had been in storage for a long time, but they turned on and passed signal, and they were priced super low ($700CAD ea). I used them once or twice, noticed a bunch of little things that needed to be dealt with (scratchy pots/phantom not working on one/dead VU meters), so figured it was worth taking them in for a full recap/service etc. I assume it had never been done. Spent another $700CAD on bench fees for the two boxes. Fired them up, one worked great, the other was a little sketchy. Didn't think much of it, used them again a few weeks later, the sketchy one was even more sketchy. Emailed the tech, and took it back in. This was May of last year.

Turns out something went catastrophically wrong inside one of it, he's had the box for 8mos. There's smoke damage, one of the PCBs partially melted, and it's turbo fucked. I think it's turned into a headache he'd rather not deal with and I'm fairly certain that I'm going to end up with a doorstop and another bill. He was in contact with Drawmer's service department and their response was basically "we've never seen or heard of this happening, there's no way this could've happened." They didn't offer any remedy.

The service tech working on it is extremely good, and well-regarded. He's one of the few locals that will touch 1960s as they're apparently quite fussy to work on. If he's not able to get it up and running I fear it may be a write-off.

Very excited to have flushed $1K+ down the turlet!

So sorry to hear about that 1960 - I remember you posting about getting that. Studio stuff is a killer!