one year

Well guys, today marks one year in China for my brother and I. I am spending it much the way I came into China. I have been very ill for the past several days, in fact I am staying home from work tomorrow. Otherwise it was a fine day, Tom and I got together and went to a 4 star restaurant, he ate fish, and seemed to enjoy it. Imagine going to a nice place to eat and the waiter stands at the table the whole time and watches you eat. Not only that but every now and then they insist on fiddling with the arrangement of things on the table, moving them around and such, constantly filling your glasses. You may think it sounds nice and all but after a while you just wish they would go away.
It seems that both of us have decided to stay for at least 6 more months. I however find it doubtful that I will live in the US full time ever again. It's just not all it's cracked up to be there, of course there are things I hate about China but they are far easier to overlook when you can afford things and live like you want. Now that I have a girlfriend things are even better, things with her could move a little faster in my opinion, but I guess that's the problem with an older guy being with a traditional young virgin. I want the cake and I am damn sure going to eat it to, I am enjoying her presence more and more. You know ladies you hate your period, and you know what we hate it to :)
A few months after coming here I decided I was going to start watching star trek again, not just watching some episodes here and there but watch all of it. I quickly downloaded the last6 series "Enterprise" which is actually the first series, 80 years or so before Kirk. I watched several episodes a night and in a month or so I was finished. I was quite impressed with the holes they filled in and the questions they had answered. Like why did the Klingons in Kirk's time look different to the Klingons in Picard's time, what were the Vulcan's like 80 years before Spock? So while I was on the last season of Enterprise (Season 4) I downloaded the first season of the original series and started in on it right after I was done with Enterprise. I was concerned about how it would transition, but even though there was a 25 year gap between the shows, the transition was good. I finished the original series much the same way I did Enterprise. I watched some of the kirk crew movies that I hadn't seen in a while, and then dove into Next Generation. I did skip about 7 episodes out of 8 seasons on next gen as I had seen them recently on TV or remembered hating them. I also watched the movies "Generations" and "First Contact". I figured I could skip insurrection and nemesis as i own them both and had seen them recently. To make a long story short I am now in Season 5 of Deep Space 9, so that's 2 seasons of DS9 to go, and then all of voyager, not to mention an online series as well. Out of all the star trek I have watched and will watch the original series is still my favorite, it had bad special effects and only half the episodes were really good. But, the camera work was excellent and in all fairness William Shatner was bad ass as Kirk. I would have to say though that one of my favorite characters is Quark from DS9. I will update more on this later.
You guys know I have been playing guitar for a long time, so I have decided to teach you guys a few things about electric guitars and the like. Feel free to skip this if you have no interest, but I am going to try and make it as informative as possible, in this first post about the subject I am going to cover some different types of electric guitars.

The Gibson Les Paul

"The Gibson Les Paul is one of the most recognizable solid-body electric guitar designs in the world.[citation needed] Developed in the early 1950s, the guitar has become one of the most enduring and popular musical instrument models ever produced. Its design has been left virtually untouched for over 50 years. The Les Paul model represented a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and pop star, electronics inventor, and accomplished jazz guitarist Les Paul. In 1950, after the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson Guitar president Ted McCarty brought guitarist Les Paul into the company as a consultant. Les Paul was a respected innovator who had been experimenting with guitar design for years to benefit his own music. The significance of Les Paul's contributions to his Gibson guitar design remain controversial. The book "50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul" limits Paul's contributions to two: advice on the trapeze tailpiece, and a preference for color (stating that Paul preferred gold as "it looks expensive," and a second choice of black because "it makes your fingers appear to move faster on the fretboard", and "looks classy -like a tuxedo)." The Les Paul guitar line was originally conceived to include two models: the regular model (nicknamed the "Goldtop"), and the Custom model, which offered upgraded hardware and a more formal black finish. However, advancements in pickup, body, and hardware designs allowed the Les Paul to become a long-term series of electric solid-body guitars that targeted every price-point and market level except for the complete novice guitarist. This beginner guitar market was filled by the Melody Maker model, and although the inexpensive Melody Maker did not bear the Les Paul name, its body consistently followed the design of true Les Pauls throughout each era. Beyond shaping and body design, there are a number of characteristics that distinguish the Gibson Les Paul line from other electrics. For example, in a fashion similar to Gibson's hollow-body instruments, the strings of Les Paul guitars are always mounted on the top of the guitar body, rather than through the guitar body, as seen in competitor Fender's designs. The Gibson also features a variety of colors, such as Wine Red, Ebony, Classic White, Fire Burst, and Alpine White. In addition, the Les Paul models offered a variety of finishes and decorative levels, a diversity of hardware options, and an innovative array of electric pick-up options, some of which significantly impacted the sound of electric music. For instance, in 1957, Gibson introduced the "humbucking pickup" which revolutionized the sound of the electric guitar, and eliminated the 60-cycle noise (hum) which had previously plagued amplified guitars." (Information Courtesy of Wikipedia).
I have owned a Les Paul or two, and they are a fine instrument, although they aren't really the instrument for me. They are very heavy and thick, and they don't feature the same cutaways that the fender models do. I am not a very good guitarist in some ways and I really need to see what I am doing. With my pronounced belly it's almost impossible to see the guitar while I am playing and that is a disadvantage. Humbuckers are nice because they don't make to much noise, but to me they always sound like a wet towel over the amp and really with only two pickups you can be very limited tonally, i much prefer some of the thinner and lighter Les Paul copies, and with a little rewiring the pickup problems I have with them can be remidied to a certain extent. I also find the necks on most Gibson style guitars to be a little large for me, my hands are getting a little arthritic and the reach doesn't work for me. Many people love how they feel, and at one point so did I, but these days Les Paul's just make it hard for me to play, it's important to note that they make a double cutaway version as well with the two horns instead of the one.

The Gibson SG

"In 1960, Gibson Les Paul sales were significantly lower than they had been in previous years, so in 1961 the model was given a completely new body style that was thinner and had 2 sharp cutaway horns that made the upper frets more accessible. The neck was slightly heavy, which made it tilt downwards. The neck joint was also moved up about 3 frets. It was felt the new design could compete with the popular Fender Stratocaster, another benefit being lower production costs than that of the previous model. The guitar was advertised as having the "fastest neck in the world", due to its slender neck profile and virtually non-existent heel. The newly designed Les Paul was popular but Les Paul, whose namesake was carried over from the previous version, did not like the new design and asked to have his name removed from it. His reasons were simple: He thought the new neck joint was not as stable as the previous models, and didn't want his name on something that could break. Gibson renamed the model the "SG" which was short for "solid guitar". Even though Les Paul's name was officially removed from the model in 1961, the plastic Les Paul nameplates (positioned between the rhythm pickup and fingerboard) were in abundance in the Gibson factory and SG models having these nameplates were built and sold by Gibson up to the end of 1963." (Information Courtesy Wikipedia)
Over my guitar playing lifetime I have owned one very rare SG, it was a 1962 model I got from my cousin James. It was the model that had the pickguard and Single coils, but still very similar to the one in the picture. I was carrying it and a bunch of other things up to my room one night and dropped it down a few steps, the neck snapped right off at the joint, it was literally beyond repair, so I suppose Les Paul was right about that one. It was sad to because my father and I had worked so hard to refinish it. Other than the new shape the guitar has almost the same electronics as a Les Paul, but it is thinner, lighter, and has cutaways. For me it's a much more playable instrument. If i were going to buy another Gibson style instrument again it would be an SG. I do however think this is kinda an ugly instrument. But, it is one of the only ones in the Gibson line I would own.

The Fender Telecaster

"The Fender Telecaster, also known as a Tele, is a typically dual-pickup, solid-body electric guitar made by Fender. Its simple yet effective design and revolutionary sound broke ground and set trends in electric guitar manufacture and popular music. Introduced for national distribution as the Broadcaster in the fall of 1950, it was the first guitar of its kind to be produced on a substantial scale. Its commercial production can be traced as far back as the spring of 1950, when the single- and dual-pickup Esquire models were first sold. From that time to the present, the Telecaster has been in continuous production in one form or another, making it the world's senior solid-body electric guitar (Duchossoir, 1991, 11-15). The Fender Telecaster was developed by Leo Fender in Fullerton, California in the 1940s. Prior to its creation, the solid-body electric guitar had been created independently by several craftsman and companies, in the period roughly between 1932-1949, but none of these guitars had made a significant impact on the market. Leo Fender's Telecaster was the design that finally put the solid-body guitar on the map. The initial production model appeared in 1950, and was called the Esquire. Fewer than fifty guitars were originally produced under that name, and most were replaced under warranty because of early manufacturing problems. In particular, the Esquire necks had no truss rod and many were replaced due to bent necks. Later in 1950, this single-pickup model was discontinued, and a two-pickup model was renamed the Broadcaster. From this point onwards all Fender necks incorporated truss rods. The Gretsch company, itself a manufacturer of hollowbody electric guitars, claimed that "Broadcaster" violated the trademark for its Broadkaster line of drums, and as a newcomer to the industry, Fender decided to bend and changed the name to Telecaster, after the newly popular medium of television. (The guitars manufactured in the interim bore no name, and are now popularly called 'Nocasters.') The Esquire was reintroduced as a one-pickup Telecaster, at a lower price. Leo Fender's simple and modular design was geared to mass production, and made servicing broken guitars easier. Guitars were not constructed individually, as in traditional luthiery. Rather, components were produced quickly and inexpensively in quantity and assembled into a guitar on an assembly line. The bodies were band-sawed and routed from slabs, rather than hand-carved individually, as with other guitars made at the time, such as Gibsons. Fender did not use the traditional glued-in neck, but rather a bolt-on. This not only made production easier, but allowed the neck to be quickly removed and serviced, or replaced entirely. In its classic form, the guitar is extremely simply constructed, with the neck and fingerboard comprising a single piece of maple, bolted to an ash or alder body inexpensively jigged with flat surfaces on the front and back. The hardware includes two single coil pickups controlled by a three-way selector switch, and one each of volume and tone controls. The pickguard is Bakelite (later plastic), screwed directly onto the body with five (later eight) screws. The bridge has three adjustable saddles, with strings doubled up on each. The guitar quickly gained a following, and soon other, more established guitar companies (such as Gibson, whose Les Paul model was introduced in 1952; and later Gretsch, Rickenbacker, and others) began working on wooden solid-body production models of their own. The Telecaster was important in the evolution of country, electric blues, rock and roll and other forms of popular music, because its solid construction allowed the guitar to be played loudly as a lead instrument, with long sustain if desired, and with less of the whistling 'hard' feedback (known in sound reinforcement circles as 'microphonic feedback') that hollowbodied instruments tend to produce at volume (a different kind to the controllable feedback later exploited by Jimi Hendrix and countless other players). Even though the Telecaster is more than half a century old, and more sophisticated designs have been coming out since the early 1950s (including Fender's own Stratocaster), the Telecaster has remained in constant production. There have been numerous variations and modifications, but a model with something close to the original features has always been available." (Information Courtesy Wikipedia)
I Have never had the priviledge of owning a full fledged Tele, but I did own a copy called a lindel with one pickup. The tele is still a great guitar, very simple, very easy to play, work on, and there are tons of pickup options for them now. Notice also it is very similar in shape in some ways to the Les Paul. This would be a great first guitar for anyone and the "Squier" versiosn can be had for under 150 bucks. This really was the first solid body electric to be available to the masses. Leo Fender was a smart guy.
Well I hoep you found the info helpful, will post again soon.