Duke,

     I'd love you to explore this tune.  The head is very interesting; I believe you do that move with the picking hand that simulates the trumpet mute moving on and off the horn.  There's alot of passing chords underneath the vocals I've never been able to quite nail down.

Slim

I'm a fan of that tune as well.

The video looper is released.  To set a loop

1. click on the A / B button to set the start point

2. click on the A / B button a second time to set the end loop point 

That sounds great about the Joe Pass.  I have smaller hands .. so the smaller body and shorter neck should fit me well.  

Great story about the winery .. wish I was there!

I'm pleased to announce we upgraded the video player to add keyboard controls  

• up / down arrows controls volume
• left / right arrows seeks 30 seconds .. so you can rewind to replay a lick / riff
• spacebar for play / pause
• f goes fullscreen

The Joe Pass, with a 16 inch lower bout, is a bit smaller than the other recent, affordable Epiphone jazz boxes, like the Emperor Regent and the Broadway. It also has a slightly shorter scale (24.75 vs 25.5). To me these factors make it easy to wrestle with. On blues band gigs, I can switch from my Strat to it without feeling like I have to make a big adjustment as to where my hands and arms are positioned.  The acoustic tone is great, and the volume is fine for practice, but the electric tone is, to me, fatter and richer than the bigger Epis. I'm not sure why this is, maybe because the bigger ones have that split tailpiece that accentuates the high end. I think another part of it is the rosewood bridge, which is why I didn't switch it out. Of course this is a a matter of preference, but I think the rosewood bridge gives it a woody  40's tone. I'm from SF, and one time I played a gig down in Merced, a couple/three hundred miles away. My wife came with me and the next day we took a long drive into the foothills and ended up at a winery in a small town. The woman working there had a fiddle case open behild the tasting bar and we talked a little. She was practicing her filddle tunes when no one was in the place. I went out to the car and got my Joe Pass and backed her up between tastes of wine. So you can use it acoustically in the right circumstances! 

This is the original version of Cookin with my 80s band The Pleasure Kings. We did several takes and the producer ke

pt going over the same peice of tape to save money. So what we ended up with was the worst take we did of the song. But the worst take was still quite good. You should have heard the ones that got away!

Mike, mine is surprisingly good, but honestly not good enough to replace a good acoustic or to do acoustic gigs with. Otherwise it meets all my needs for electric jazz and blues.

Mike, thanks for posting this. I remember when this GP issue come out. I played it over and over. Great tune !

@Roger & @Bruce .. I'm going to have to check out a Joe Pass guitar.  I've always wanted a larger hollow body guitar.  How's the acoustic tone?

@Corey .. Yeah, that parlor guitar your playing looks really nice.  Great tone.

Here's a video of Cookin' .. Duke Robillard & Jimmie Vaughan .. 1986

My favorite new piece of gear is my new Evans RE200 amplifier. It's small, light and has 200 watts of power. It's solid state but has unusual extra tone controls that give you tube like sounds and it's got tons of clean headroom. I bought it for jazz but used it on a blues recording session a few days ago and it sounded great! Responds well to a distortion pedal also! Check out their website....... 

Sure cookin is a good one!

Hey Duke! I love a tune from one of your earlier albums called Cookin'. Great song. If you get around to it, how about a lesson on Cookin'?  Thanks

I am in love with my Epiphone Joe Pass. It's only about a year old. I followed Duke's advice and found one that just felt the best  to me and had it professionally set up. I replaced the floating bridge with a Gibson tune-o-matic. Plays great and sounds great. What else matters?

Lately my favorit piece of gear is my gernandt parlor guitar that you all have seen me playing in the lessons.  I really dig it.  It is made by Bob Gernandt of Bryson City, NC.  He makes all kinds of guitars, mandolins, mandocellos, dulcimers...and more.  Check him out at gernandt.com and tell him I sent you.

That is a hard question to answer. I have several guitars, and for very different reasons I like them all a lot. Just about the same is true for amplifiers, though I don't have quite as many amps as guitars. The guitar I've had the longest is a little Guild F20 acoustic that has a great big sound. The guitar I got most recently is another acoustic, built by Terry Scheffer, a friend and great luthier. It's based on a Martin OM, sounds and plays really well and has beautiful woods and inlays. The electric I've had the longest is a Strat '62 Reissue built in the 80's. The lacquer has turned kind of ugly over the years but it plays and sounds fantastic. Another one I've had for years is an Epiphone Joe Pass that I put P94 pickups in. I also swapped out the tailpiece that came with it for one that is more like an ES175's, and removed Joe's fake signature from the pickguard. It is a great sounding blues, classic rock and jazz box with great action and these days I gig with it a lot. It's about 15 years old and I've used it on a lot of gigs, but it has a poly finish that looks almost new. I guess I went overboard a little here. 

My favorite is the Roland Street Cube.  I like the fact that you can get a lot of good tones at room volume .. and switch so easy between them.  The sounds isn't as good as good tube amp .. but it's close enough and so easy to flip on and dial in a new sound (at the right volume) .. that it's my go to amp.

I had it a little loud on the video below .. so some of the distortion is from my laptop mics.  Enjoy.

As we're entering the Holiday season I thought it would be a good time for each of us to share a little about our favorite piece of gear.   It can be an amp, software, effect pedal, tuner, looper ... you name it.  So the question of the week is

What's your favorite piece of gear and why?

Corey's Everybody Ought to Change Part 2 is back up.   Sorry for the issue and enjoy.

Sorry about that.  We're working on a bug ... and it affected Part 2 of Corey's lesson.  We should have it fixed in the next couple days.  When we do I will update this thread.  

Yeah .. it's a great lesson .. I'm having fun working on it too!  Thanks for your patience.

Came back to work on part 2 of Corey's lesson and it was gone. did I dream it?

Hi All .. we're working on a looper for the video player and posts.  It should be ready in a couple weeks.  You can see our early prototype here

http://1songbook.com/mediaelement/demo/loop.html

You can loop three ways

• click on the A / B  points
• dragging the A / B points
• clicking on a button to loop a certain section (in this case the intro)

The idea is you would be able to click on a button or link next to a riff / chord / tab .. and the video would automatically go to that point and loop it.

Would be great to get your thoughts and feedback.  Thanks.

Mike

It's a personal decison to me. A comprimise between sound, playability, overall feel/vibe and tone for me. Often for me one instrument may have a sound I love but I don't dig the feel. Some archtops have too thick a neck or are too thick bodywise. It's a personal thing. It's always somthing. if a guitar is too deep my stomach gets in the way! LOL! I'm a very fussy guitar player. It comes with old age. Duke

Sound is always my first concern and secondly, if the instrument will allow me to play as good as I can. I have small hands so many guitars are a compromise to my playing ability. It's always a compromise of some sort for me.