It’s been a while since the guitarsophist blog has had an update.  I have been busy with my other blog, Teaching Text Rhetorically.  But I have a new/used guitar–an Epiphone Casino.  Here it is in all its cherry red glory:

2006 Made in China Epiphone Casino

I also have a new amp, a Boss Katana 50.  More on the new amp later.  However, because of the new amp, I happened to tell my friend Craig that I might be looking for an archtop with humbucking pickups, maybe an ES 339.  Well, Craig is retired and he loves looking for guitars, so unbeknownst to me, he went on a search.  I was at a luncheon with some of my wife’s colleagues when he called me from the Guitar Center in Oxnard.  He said he had found a guitar and had sent me a video.  I said I was busy and I would look at it when I got home.  He said, “Don’t you want me to put something down on it or something?”  At that point I knew that he thought it was magical and didn’t want it to get away.  Craig is really picky about guitars.  If he thinks its magical, it is.  So I told him to buy it.  It turned out to be this Casino.  I was really looking for a smaller guitar with humbuckers that was not a Les Paul.  This is a big ES 335 style guitar with single coil P-90 pickups.  But I fell in love with it the first time I played it.  Craig was right.

Casinos are famous because all the Beatles except Ringo had one, and Ringo is a drummer.  The Casino sound is all over Revolver and Sgt. Pepper.

Today we got together to jam.  Craig is playing his Epiphone ES 175, a big box jazz guitar, through a Fender Pro Junior III.  I am playing the Casino through the Katana 50.  Craig is playing all the big jazz chords and the walking bass and all that good stuff.  I am playing an improvised lead.  Here is a version of “It’s Just My Imagination.”  I am playing with both pickups and with a little boost on the clean model in the amp.

We didn’t have a vocal mic, so you have to just imagine some of the vocals.  This next track is a quick improvisation just before we packed up.  No rehearsal, everything made up on the fly:

This is the neck pickup with a little boost on the clean model.  We were having fun.  Everything is recorded in Reaper for Linux with two mismatched cheapo mics aimed vaguely in the direction of the amps.