Notes from the Director

November 2011

Nothing like the smell of woodsmoke in the air to get your Autumnal emotions rolling. Halloween was a mere blink of the eye  (geez I do miss the former regularity of the Frank Zappa Halloween Concerts – RIP Frank) and you know what that means. CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and more,  all across the country, have broken out Christmas decorations whilst we’re dreaming of turkey, football relatives whilst nicking a few Butterfingers and Baby Ruth bars from the leftover Halloween jar. But I digress – there a few guitar shows remaining so keep an eye out for those. MORE IMPORTANTLY – it’s time to break out your humidification for those acoustic instruments. Don’t Forget!!!

SPRING 2011

Summer is just around the corner!

After what has been a very turbulent and stormy spring, many of us are looking forward to a warming trend with less rain, less erratic weather and maybe a little beach time or possibly a little down time from the 9-to-5. Read more

Time to get a little atmospheric tone for your signal chain. Courtesy of the kind folks over at The Guitar Broker, we’re putting the classic Dunlop Roto-vibe up from grabs.  Read more

Pack your stuff, we’re oscar mike…

Wait, no, don’t pack anything, just breathe, maybe read a book and we’ll do all the packing.

The What : Gbase and all its stuff is moving to some shiny new servers and updates to our entire infrastructure. We’ll have solid state drives (wicked fast), the latest Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008, .NET Framework 4.0, oh, I’m getting woozy.

The Why: A hosting environment is a bit like a house, you unpack all your stuff into it and get accustomed to where everything goes and who the neighbors are. But these houses age quickly and across town there are new houses with skylights and better sidewalks. Moving is a hectic process, but have you seen the new bathtub?

The When: From the evening of 3/24/2010 to somewhere around the morning of 3/26/2010. Moving our stuff only takes a day but the post office takes forever to deliver visitors to our new address (that’s dns propagation for the geeks).

The Panic Button: Please let us know if you run into any persistent problems, we’ll do our best to get them resolved as soon as possible. Just send an email to help@gbase.com and that’ll create a “ticket” in our help desk that won’t go away until you are satisfied.

I’ll be posting status here throughout the move, check back if you need more info.

Thanks!

James
Gbase Web Sherpa

WINTER 2009 -  Happy Holidays – I hope this Gazette finds you filled with the spirit of the impending holiday plus a dose of  G.A.S. for extra measure! There’s nothing quite like it when it comes to the holidays because not only will you inevitably stumble upon dozens of pieces of gear you’ll want, but now you have a legitimate excuse to inform your loved ones know just what you’d like to find nicely gift wrapped at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Read more

IT’S AUGUST ALREADY? Holy Fuzzface? How did that happen? Well time flies when you’re having fun and although the weather in the Northeast has been a little less than cooperative, it’s still been a great summer. We took in some good music at Grey Fox, saw Springsteen, Crooked Still, The Steeldrivers along with some good local music. Never seems to be enough time to get to do the many things on the ole’ list.

Not only is it August already but it is the 40th Anniversary of one of the most iconoclastic music gatherings ever Read more

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of Frankie Moates on July 20, 2009, Atlanta Vintage Guitar owner and a long-time friend of Gbase and many Gbase dealers. Below you will find his obituary as it was listed in the local news in Acworth, GA. To Sign the guest book - click above Frank “Frankie” Moates Jr. of Acworth, GA died, Monday, July 20, 2009. Mr. Moates was a graduate of Marietta High School and attended Georgia Tech. He was a quarterback at Marietta High School on their football team. Frank was the owner of Atlanta Vintage Guitars and a local blues musician. He was part of the music ministry at the First Baptist Church of Woodstock and The Midtown Bridge Church of Atlantic Station. Frank was a Harley-Davidson enthusiast. Survivors include his wife, Debbie Moates of Acworth; three daughters, Frances Moates of Acworth; Heather Moerschel & her husband, Paul; Holly Addair & her husband, Dan all of Ft. Myers, FL; father, F.E. Moates, Sr. & mother, Jean Moates both of Aragon; sister & brother-in-law, Cathy & Chuck Walsh of Sunset, SC; three grandchildren, Thomas Moerschel, Jack Moerschel and Stefan Moerschel all of Ft. Myers, FL; several nieces and nephews. Frank was preceded in death by a sister, Karen Durret. The future of Atlanta Vintage Guitars is uncertain. Thank You for your support over the last 20 years. Thank you in advance for your patience and your prayers as we move forward. Spouse Debbie, family friends Ty Phillips and Kriss Arbury are going to do their best to return phone calls and answer emails. Please continue to keep the Moates family in your thoughts and prayers. Thank You and God Bless,

Gbase hits the road this spring, with stops in some new exciting new territories for our staff. Our efforts this year will be introducing Gbase to brand new sets of eyes as well as meeting up with some new dealers. We’re currently speaking with numerous Drum and Percussion dealers in an effort to introduce Gbase to a new marketplace…..Drummers!

Okay, okay, enough with the drummer jokes, but yes, we’re speaking to many of the key drum dealers from across the globe as a way to expand the Gbase audience. Here’s where you’ll find us in the coming few months. If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop in and say “hey”:

Chicago Drum Show -  May 16th & 17th -Kane County Fairgrounds, St. Charles, IL

The London International Music Show - June 11th thru 14th – Excel, London, England

Grey Fox Music Festival - July 16th thru 19th – Walsh Farm, Oak Hill, NY

Gbase.com heads to PA – Greetings one and all – I was lucky enough to travel to lovely Nazareth, PA, home of C.F. Martin & Co. -  you must make a point to stop by and take the tour. It’s a guitar players dream.

In all my years of traveling and cruising around the country, I’ve never had the pleasure and now I’m glad that I finally took the time. It’s a walk thru the past and present. Still filled with craftsmen and women, right along side the many technological advances that factories have to implement in order to remain competitive. More importantly, I finally got to visit the birthplace of my ’70 D-28!

The first thing that strikes you, when you walk onto the factory floor is how clean it is. I mean, it’s a factory, right? But it’s squeaky clean.

The second thing is the smell. It has this kind of ethereal, mystical smells of outdoors – kinda of like woodsy, new guitar smell. Hard to put into words but it’s quite intoxicating. Our tour guide said that they should bottle it. It would most definitely be a big seller.

Our first stop was the Custom Shop. All the major guitar manufacturers have taken on this project and Martin is no exception. Guitar Players can work directly with Martin on a guitar customized to their specifications. The Guitar on in right is a very interesting project. Martin purchased this 60′s era guitar and rebuilt it, soup to nuts.  This conversion is a work of art. It’s been completely redone and looks and plays magnificently (yours for only $50k). They had a wall of equally impressive custom built instruments.

Our next stop was Martin’s most impressive wood warehouse. Encased in a climate controlled environment, keeping the wood at a delightful 50% humidity, necks, neck blanks, and more wood than you can shake a Tiple at, is stacked and stabilizing in the controlled environment. Rows and rows of wood, some in various states of production, others, just waiting for their chance to become a portion of the next great Martin Guitar.

Martin has a receiving team that checks in the wood and reviews it by quality and grain. They also prepare it for its next phase in production. For some woods that means drying. They several drying kilns on-site, to help stabilize the many  in different types of woods that they utilize in their production process. With so many traditional wood building materials becoming more and more difficult to obtain, Martin has been experimenting with more exotic materials to offset the shrinking supply of certain types of woods.

When you pull up to the Martin factory, there is no doubt that this place is big……really big. But when you go inside, you begin to appreciate just how large this production facility really is (that and you can walk until your feet hurt and you still have to walk some more to get out). It’s a non-stop labyrinth of space; lots and lots of space. One could easily get lost amongst the many different departments, hallways, paint booths, warehouse locations and other unknown caverns of space. I found myself asking our tour guide “Haven’t we been here before?” Only to get a chuckle and a smile, as we moved onto another portion of the tour (i’m such a knucklehead).

The X-Series Martin has been quite successful for Martin, if not simply indicated by the amount of factory space occupied by the many departments dedicated to its production. The top picture shows flats of necks drawn onto “Stratabond” material, which is many layers of this material, glued upon other layers. Then these necks are milled perfectly smooth for fitting onto one of their 36 different models of X-Series Guitars.

There are many different production processes that have been mechanized. This certainly helps keep Martin competitive in an increasingly difficult market but there are still many tasks within the creation of a guitar that have not transferred well to machines. Therefore, craftsmen and women are still quite abundant at the factory. Take for instance, the rosette – as guitar players, we may take this slightly decorative addition for granted. But to watch the woman install this delicate trimming with such grace and agility, it’s truly a craft and something to watch. Clearly, she makes it look much easier to do.

I always thought that the tops and backs of guitars, when labeled “matched” meant that they were from the same piece of wood. That’s apparently, not always the case. In higher end instruments, this can be true but matching really comes from the eyes of a trained specialist. This specialist compares hundreds of wood blanks and finds pieces that “match” up and can be used to make the back of an instrument, so that it looks uniform in appearance and grain. Sounds easy on paper but in practice, it’s much more involved. This can be the difference between what makes a guitar look spectacular or like something you’d like to use to row you across the pond. How about a  somewhat humorous reminder, hanging on the wall at Martin where they select the wood:

The production process seems never ending. In discussing this with our tour guide, depending on the model and materials used, a Martin guitar can take anywhere from 4 weeks (X-Series) to 16 Weeks (Custom Shop) to complete.

Unfortunately due to time constraints, I started dragging down our tour group. My picture taking was becoming a bit of a drain. I kept holding up the group and we were on a schedule. I have tons more pics and will gladly post them. I have a few pictures of some Ovangkol Guitars;  from early in their production life that are really sweet – to near completion. I had never heard of this type of wood before but it’s indigenous to West Africa. The color is a smokey brown/yellow with some green thrown in for good measure.

If you’d like me to post some more in this regard – shoot me an email or post here in the blog and I’ll do so shortly!

To see more of this expansive and wonderful tour, our good friends over at Premier Guitar Magazine have done an exceptional job of capturing the entire event on video. You’ll have to view several Parts (1 thru 4) but it’s acceptable version, if you can’t get to Nazareth yourself.

Don Dawson