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 UKII.... I finally get it.
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Mr. Ovation |
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| I've owned several UKII's and for some reason, over the years, any time I've attempted to play one I found the results limited.. Not sure why, probably me and choosing settings and setups that while familiar to me, were not compatible with making the UKII sing. Damon's performance of No More Tears by Ozzie put the bug in my ear a few years ago that maybe I needed to revisit, but mostly figured the sound he was getting was.... well... because it was Damon and he's played a UKII since forever... Well tonight, about 5 hours ago, I pulled out a rather special (to me) UKII. It's black, original dual-jack stereo/mono, with pickguard, bowtie inlays, etc... I plugged it into the Rockman X-100 sitting on my desk, tuned and started playing along with some fun tunes. Only Happy When It Rains (Garbage), Machinehead (Bush), then I just started rolling through my iTunes selections. I began to notice that I didn't miss my Tremolo. I then noticed that any rock song from the 80's and 90's the tone seemed to lock right into what was playing without any adjustments. Basically the only settings I used all night were a fairly standard full-on Rockman sound, a clean sound, and switching between the neck and bridge pickups and occasionally backing off the tone control on the guitar a bit for rhythm parts.. Then things started to get wierd... in a good way I think. I got to Boston on the iTunes list and played Smokin and Piece of Mind and Something About You. Never really played those before but rather than being like tunes I never played, they were sounding more like tunes I just hadn't practiced. I continued with Aldo Nova, Blue Oyster Cult, Offspring, Minnie Driver (yeah... that one surprised me too) and they were all coming together like old friends yet most I had never played before other than to noodle with. When I got to Ozzie and I Don't Know, and Crazy Train... both of which I have played before... it REALLY started to get strange. I actually stopped Crazy Train and re-attempted one of the full scale runs (I'm sure Randy actually did real scales) and it sounded ok. I mean I mashed it, I've always kinda a faked it through those runs, but they sounded good. They were wrong, as I was just frantically just trying to pick in time without any real regard for nailing the notes... and it was ok. Maybe not in front of an audience of guitar players, but I've certainly played worse.... and gotten paid for it.. What the hell was going on here.??? Well when I got to Pink Floyd I had to go for Comfortably Numb. Why not.. I've never even tried to learn the chords before. Was it great?? no... not by a long shot... but it didn't suck.. I was bending notes and locking them right into place and decided at that point I really need to figure out what strings are on this guitar. Would I want to play ANY of the tunes I played tonight in front of anyone, or with any other musicians in the near future... absolutely not. But on a scale of 1 - 10 of how did I play, most were around a 4 with moments of 7's and 8's... but mostly in the 4-5 range. Yeah, that sucks... but on a "strange" guitar, playing tunes, some of which I have never even thought of playing before, I totally expected to be equal to a 2's and 3's at the most. I certainly wasn't expecting to play FIVE HOURS STRAIGHT !!!!! I haven't even picked up a guitar more than 2 minutes to test it or a piece of gear in many months. So I just wanted to say... I now "get" the UKII. The neck plays like my Moser custom guitars. I even caught myself doing this flat-finger thing with my left hand that I've only seen Damon and a few others pull off, and I have never attempted. I wasn't attempting it tonight either but just noticed I was doing it on some of the faster metal songs where fretting 2 or 3 strings is all that's needed. It was just easy because due to the strings and the setup... there is essentially no action on this guitar, and no string buzz either. The tone of the UKII pickups seemed to blend with everything I was playing. Just listening to the guitar without any accompaniment sounded ok... nothing special really, but as soon as other music was added, it's like a little engineer locked it into the mix. A couple of times I stopped playing to listen to the cool sound I was hearing only to find out that sound was me, not the recording. I guess the most ponient observation is that I went for 5 hours.... without even reaching for the non-existent tremolo bar. Of the 100's of guitars I have owned and played, less than 20 don't have a trem. When I played in bands... the "non-trem" guitar was just on stage as a backup, and maybe for one tune. My Viper I use to just flex the neck sometimes if it wasn't modified with a tremolo. Kahler Pro is my choice, but I have mostly Kahler Flyers on everything. Well.. I guess I made my point. I've apparently been missing out all these years. Frankly even when I was in bands I don't recal EVER playing 5 hours straight.... ever... So the bottom line... The UKII.... Doesn't suck...  | |||
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| moody, p.i. |
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| Damon67 |
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Joined: December 2006 Posts: 6994 Location: Jet City | |||
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| muzza |
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 Joined: August 2005 Posts: 3736 Location: Sunshine State, Australia | |||
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| Mr. Ovation |
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| Mark in Boise |
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| muzza |
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Joined: August 2005 Posts: 3736 Location: Sunshine State, Australia | |||
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| MusicMishka |
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| CrimsonLake |
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