Seasonistas general thread: yakking, joshing, news and pictures

My 2017 playlist. This is what it sounded like inside my head this year:

Filthy Friends - Despierta
Public Service Broadcasting - People Will Always Need Coal
Saskwatch - December Nights
Pond - The Weather
Chris Ardoin & NuStep Zydeco - Savage for That Money
Charly Bliss - Percolator
Trailer Trash Tracys - Eden Machine
Beach Fossils - Saint Ivy
Kristen Ford - Impossible Things
Judah & The Lion - Conversations
The New Pornographers - High Ticket Attractions
The Big Moon - Cupid
The Orwells - They Put a Body in the Bayou
Tristen - Glass Jar
Charlotte Gainsbourg - Deadly Valentine
Dent May - Face Down in the Gutter of Your Love
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Sleep Drifter
The Mynabirds - Golden Age

http://https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbIBa-QYEmc6ym98FJnC4qPupp41-tbIE

the big moon are great! i love their vid for "sucker"!

bird's eye view of my ukelele said:

the big moon are great! i love their vid for "sucker"!

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And on New Years day there will be a SUPERMOON
The moon will be the closest to the earth it has been in the past 70 years.
Hope you have clear skies to see it. We have snow and cloud so most
likely we will miss it.

wee_ginga_yin said:

And on New Years day there will be a SUPERMOON
The moon will be the closest to the earth it has been in the past 70 years.
Hope you have clear skies to see it. We have snow and cloud so most
likely we will miss it.

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LOL yes I saw it this morning @ ~5:30 AM USA EST when the 'call of nature' woke me, and peered out the north-western facing bathroom window and thought it was really odd to see the moon so bright and so low in the sky.

In my half-asleep brain, I mused 'oh yea full moon and/or lunar eclipse something something' and when I woke up later thought maybe it was a dream until just now your post reminded me of it.

I will have to look around and see if there are any pix/vids from NASA or NOAA.

Even though I was still half-asleep, I recall that the moon was pretty intensely illuminated but without my glasses it was all fuzzy.

uke4ia said:

My 2017 playlist. This is what it sounded like inside my head this year...

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This is just great and perfect timing for me...

Thanks for this and especially the YT playlist.

I dont know any of those songs or artists, and have been craving some new sounds.

You have provided me with a great starting point. Kudos to you brother!

I drank champagne last night that was over 50 years old. My late in-laws won a bottle of champagne in a raffle in the mid-60s. They put it aside to save for a special occasion, and it was never opened. By now, it was Schrodinger’s bottle: until we open it, it is both wine AND vinegar. Last night, my daughter Molly (who’s of legal drinking age) decided the time had come to open it. It was flat, but surprisingly hadn’t turned to vinegar. It didn’t taste bad, but Molly and I both noticed a touch of an almond flavor. I Googled and found that vintage-aged champagnes often acquire an almond flavor. So it was drinkable, but we didn’t really care for the taste. We put the bottle aside and opened the champagne I bought last week.

Watching one of Kevin's vids earlier, reminded me how many cables seem to be involved in making and recording music. Saw this brilliant idea on YouTube recently ... I'm certainly going to try it; all you need to do is go to the loo a lot! Thank you, "Mr. Tom"!

Just something I'm working on, needs lots more practice, but thought I'd let you know that I haven't deserted my ukes.

So it's was Christmas last week and my birthday this week and my family didn't really know what to get me so they just chucked money and you know what that means!

NEW UKE DAY

I decided to go for one that I thought about when I ended up getting my Snail but decided not to get because I wanted to actually try a bunch of ukes out in-store. It's a Clearwater Les Paul-esque solid body tenor. I was a bit wary of buying it off Amazon but part of the money was vouchers so I thought why not. I'd seen a couple of reviews saying Clearwater's build quality was good and listened to a couple videos of one of their Strats, so once I checked the shipping time and it was clear it wasn't coming direct from China I decided to take the punt.

It arrived yesterday and I'm really impressed. Looks absolutely stunning, the build seems solid, there's attention to detail, the volume, tone and pickup controls make a genuine difference to the sound, and the tuners have a nice feel to them. There's a couple things I'm a bit worried about but that's because I still know nothing about set up despite 11 years playing stringed instruments. The neck pickup is on a slant, so it's deeper into the body under the E and A strings and that sometimes comes through in playing. Don't think that would be intentional. Also the action's REALLY low at the first fret and then gradually gets higher.

I haven't dug my amp back out yet so I've just been playing on headphones through a Vox amp plug (really cool gadget) and it's a lot of fun to play. And it doesn't disturb the missus when I'm working out a song with "fiddly bits" as she calls them.

I'll post a vid of it tonight for Keith's season, but so far it seems worth the 120 quid I spent.








Dunno if you can see the pickup issue on that last picture but opinions are appreciated.

Looks sweet Ryan. Look forward to hearing you rocking out on this one. Re the pick up, are they adjustable with the two screws?( They look like screws to me). And is the action so low you are getting fret buzz? Are you used to a higher action on your ukes? The action usually gets a little higher doesn’t it from first fret onwards? . There are loads of YouTube vids on setting up guitars out there so you have that option of you have a few tools or want to invest in some. The other option is take it to a guitar shop and see if they do set ups. Isn’t SUS close to you? Good luck anyway. I also had NUD yesterday but alas it’s for my son, not for me

Cheers John. It is two screws on the pickup, I'll see if I can raise that up later on. No fret buzz that I've heard yet, guess I'm just wary of the set up where it's an Amazon uke. Intonation seems fine to me as well so maybe I am being picky.

RAB11 said:

Cheers John. It is two screws on the pickup, I'll see if I can raise that up later on. No fret buzz that I've heard yet, guess I'm just wary of the set up where it's an Amazon uke. Intonation seems fine to me as well so maybe I am being picky.

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Yes, stop being so picky and play the bloody thing!

One Man And His Uke said:

Yes, stop being so picky and play the bloody thing!

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I would but it's frowned upon in the work place!

I managed to find a pre used Clearwater just prior to Xmas, & my pickups are the same, so I guess there is a reason for the slanted one.

I checked mine out using a Honeytone mini amp, but only got around to plugging it in to my Microcube last night.
Needless to say, I had to try out the various effects & how they sounded on steel strings.
What I did discover is that I need to be a bit more careful how I lift my fingers off at the frets, I got a few accidental pull offs.

Have fun with yours.

RIP Ukulele Mike Lynch, A very sad loss for his family and the Ukulele community. Mikes/channel tutorials seemed to be the first port of call when you just started out and was definitely the main man of explaining things simply and in a language that most of us could understand. He was a very big part of my ukulele voyage in the early days for sure.
Big thanks upstairs Mike, :cheers:

mythinformed said:

RIP Ukulele Mike Lynch, A very sad loss for his family and the Ukulele community. Mikes/channel tutorials seemed to be the first port of call when you just started out and was definitely the main man of explaining things simply and in a language that most of us could understand. He was a very big part of my ukulele voyage in the early days for sure.
Big thanks upstairs Mike, :cheers:

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He'll be missed, that's for sure.

mythinformed said:

RIP Ukulele Mike Lynch, A very sad loss for his family and the Ukulele community. Mikes/channel tutorials seemed to be the first port of call when you just started out and was definitely the main man of explaining things simply and in a language that most of us could understand. He was a very big part of my ukulele voyage in the early days for sure.
Big thanks upstairs Mike, :cheers:

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Mine too.
He was so generous and a great teacher.
He will be missed.

ryan, my squier tele geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetar has the same thing going on with the pickups, but the other way around, they are closer to the higher-sounding strings. the set up on the pickups on your (lovely!) uke looks like it's intended to give a (for a uke) bass-heavy sound*, perhaps to compensate for the lack of bass strings, and hence give the uke a more guitar-y sound. with keith's uke being the same, it's obviously intentional. as john says you could adjust it with the screws, but personally i'd get the hang of how it sounds, as is, first, you might find you really like it and it's set up the best way.

how low is low for the action? how many millimetres at the nut and the 12th fret?

*it looks to be high g though? with high g, you'll still be bumping up the c string with the pickups like they are, but to really get maximum bass ooomph you might at some point wanna go low g? there's some useful info of strings for the risa LP-style tenor uke, which must be pretty similar to yours in design, here...

http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com...-need-help-with-strings&p=1580173#post1580173

ALSO - was just plinking on my jupiter creek solid body electric bari uke, and the single (neck) pickup on that is slightly higher on the bass side, and that uke is totally the cat's pyjamas, and very very nicely set up, so i think it's all good with the clearwater

Thanks Lynda!

Definitely changing it to Low G ASAP, I need it for the sort of songs I wanna play on it

That's a relief on the pickup, and what you say definitely makes sense.

It's weird. I used to need a pick all the time when I used to play electric guitar, a few years fingerpicking/strumming on the uke has meant that a pick on this feels a bit clumsy now.

I'll post a picture of the action later and compare it to my other ukes I think. It does seem pretty low, but there's no fret buzz I've noticed.

Edit: just posted a vid on Keith's season. At the start and end I do some fingerpicking on the two high strings and I don't get much of a sound out of it. Strumming is fine though. I set it to the bridge pickup but keep strumming over the neck one as I would on a normal uke. May have to try strumming/picking over the bridge pickup for a more even sound.