Old Radios

Well, yesterday it looked like spring was here to stay, and today I woke up to sleet bouncing off the sidewalks.  Go figure.  So I bring you a cozy scene appropriate for this brisk evening: a duck comfortably ensconced in his study, bathed in the warm glow and sonorous tones of an old, vacuum-tube radio.  To be honest, this drawing is a little more off-kilter than I was planning on, but sometimes tired muscles act of their own accord, with little regard for right angles.  Perhaps my subconscious is back on a Chagall kick.  But back to the old radios.  Compared to transistors, vacuum tubes are fragile and terribly inefficient.  They are shorter lived and usually more expensive to replace (at least nowadays).  But oh, the sound!  To this day, guitarists prize tube guitar amplifiers over solid-state ones for their superior tone, for the smooth, "organic" way they break up into distortion when pushing their tubes outside of the specified operating parameters.  And vacuum tubes seem to me the last link between the visible mechanical world and the theoretical electronic one.  You can't see electrons bouncing around inside a vacuum tube any more than you can see them inside a transistor.  But you can imagine them.  You can see the plates, the grids, the screens, the filaments that heat the tubes.  It's all on display inside the glass.  And you can fathom just how it all works, even though electrons are invisible to the human eye.  I like the way a vacuum tube device doesn't just turn on, lickety-split.  It takes its time as the tubes warm up and begin to glow a soothing orange-yellow.  Listening to the radio becomes a ritual.  And relaxation in a cozy room at the end of a long, cold day is an important ritual indeed.

Funny-shaped Electric Guitars

Since I first picked up an electric guitar at age thirteen, I have been smitten with the instrument in ways that I can't explain to anyone but fellow devotees without sounding seriously, unhealthily obsessive.  I love everything about the electric guitar--the solidity; the feel of wood, lacquer, metal, and plastic; its smooth curves; its balance in my arms; the incredible range of sounds that can be coaxed and wrenched from the instrument.  One of the things that makes the electric guitar so interesting to me is the nearly limitless range of shapes in which it can be made.  An acoustic guitar needs to follow certain design parameters because its shape directly determines its ability to amplify the sound of the strings.  But an electric guitar relies on magnetic pickups and amplifiers for this, so it is freed to take on any shape you can imagine.  There are too many examples to mention, but some models of note are the Gibson Explorer and Flying V; the Ibanez Destroyer, Iceman, Xiphos, and JEM; the Peavey Mantis and Vandenberg; the B.C. Rich Mockingbird and Eagle; and of course custom guitars made for Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick (some with up to five necks on one instrument) and Billy Gibbons of Z.Z. Top (have you seen the white furry guitar?).  It's safe to bet this will not be my last post on the electric guitar--it's a lifetime love affair.