It’s a girl!

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Samick Greg Bennett Royale 5. A picture from the seller.

I’m all smiles today! There’s a new family member that I am expecting soon! A member to my guitar family that is. A Samick Greg Bennett Royale 5. For those not familiar with the brand, Samick is the name of a Korea-based musical instrument manufacturer, one of the largest in the world.[1].

The best part, at least for me, is that I won this guitar on an Ebay auction for $199.95. Suggested retail price is around $800, but it seems you can find it starting at $560. Well, I just paid for it – so, hopefully I’ll have it in a week or so.

Samick Greg Bennet RL 5 features[2] (Watch Greg Bennett talks about the Royale series)

  • Single cutaway, semi hollow body
  • Bound, arched, select spruce top
  • Bound, mahogany set neck
  • Rosewood fingerboard
  • Gold Grover™ tuners
  • Gold jazz tail piece
  • Shipped with rosewood jazz bridge and gold adjustable bridge
  • HH Duncan Design™ pickups

I’m excited – and maybe you couldn’t care less if you don’t share my affinity for guitars. I’ve bought all my guitars and bass guitars (the total number of which exceeds 30 by now. I don’t count anymore…) through Ebay auctions. All except one. The first guitar that I got in this country, sometime in the 90s (I’ve lived in Greece before…), which was a Fender Telecaster and it was a birthday gift. I don’t think I’ve paid more than $400 for a single guitar, but I did get some pretty good deals for $100-$200. Like this Korean Hamer Sunburst Archtop for $176.87 – and that included a hard shell case! Or this 12 String Schecter Diamond acoustic for $202.49. At first I was a little reluctant. Thoughts go through one’s mind. Like “what condition will the guitar be in”, “will it be as advertised?” Although there have been a couple of cases where the product arrived damaged, my overall experience with shopping for guitars online has been positive. In one of the ‘bad’ cases, the guitar arrived in a damaged box with the set neck clearly and totally separated from the body of the guitar. Thankfully the product was insured against shipping damages. The cost for repair was reimbursed in full.

Anyway, I’m happy for today. I think I’ll sleep like a baby tonight!!

PS. Maybe I have to come up with a name for the new family member. Well, since she’s part of the ‘Royale” series, I think the name should reflect that. How about “Empress”?

- Lazarus

  1. [1] Wikipedia: Samick ↩
  2. [2] Greg Bennett guitars ↩

The Sound of Philadelphia

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Larry Carlton

On my lunch break today, I stumbled across a new (2010 actually) album that’s out by Larry Carlton. It’s called the “Larry Carlton plays the Sound of Philadelphia.” I figured “Larry Carlton = jazz guitar & Philadelphia = this is where we are.” I decided to take a closer look at this album.

Larry Carlton has a backing of some nice musicians on the album. Paul Shaffer (organ), Tony DeSare (piano), Tommy Byrnes (rhythm guitar), Christopher Jackson (bass), Bill LaBounty (vocals), Andrea Valentini (drums), Mark Douthit (sax), to name some. On the album, there’s a lot of melodic arrangements accompanied by a guitarist noted for his technical skill and soulful playing.

Also came across these audio samples (available through the Larry Carlton web site)

Audio Samples:

I’ll Be Around

Could It Be I’m Falling In Love

Here’s a video interview with Larry Carlton talking about the release of his album.

The track Back Stabbers is also available through YouTube.

This is by no means a review of an album. I just wanted to share my finding. If anyone’s interested in the album, it’s available through Amazon.com as a CD purchase or an MP3 download

Switching things around

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OK, so here I am. I’ve missed some sessions, and I don’t know when I’ll be joining the group again. I am happy to see that you guys are using this little corner of the Internet to communicate with each other – which is what it was meant for in the first place!

Alright, since I’m not coming around thesedays, I’ll need somebody to take the initiative to contribute by providing and maybe posting information in regards to the sessions. Maybe like I have been doing at the times when I was showing up? Let’s say, who plays what,  and what tunes you tackle? Let me see those hands go up!!!

From my part, I’ll be providing information about all the paths I cross during my jazz learning endeavors. A “I’m learning jazz” blog in essence. I would like to encourage anybody and everybody else to contribute in a similar manner if they’d like.

For starters, and in order to accommodate these new demands, I switched the forum platform from Joomla to WordPress. In the process, I successfully transferred all user accounts over – I had no luck with carrying over your old passwords. So, I’d like to ask you to log in with the password that I will be emailing you, and then go to your personal settings and change the password to one of your liking.

More to follow – for the time being enjoy this Marcus Miller video clip!

– Lazarus

PS. If you din’t get my email with the password for accessing the forums, use the contact form below to let me know.

[contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"]