New guitar, life stuff, and shameless plug

It's been a while since my last post...but alas...I've been pretty busy. Some of my idiot friends have laid down the gauntlet to run the Las Vegas Marathon and I've been training for that. My new job has kept me busy and I'm still trying to keep the music thing going.

The marathon will be interesting. It's a flat course and it won't be too hot since it's in December and early in the morning. I've never run an official marathon before; I have run a number of halfs and I've run the marathon distance but that was years ago. It seems like it takes a lot longer to get in shape these days and a lot longer to lose weight....oh jeez..does that mean I'm getting older? Last weeks 32 km run turned into about 30km because of a minor route miscalculation. I'm running a lot in Stanley Park in Vancouver and the Sea Wall has been closed for a section due to the wind damge that happened last year. So...I had to detour and I ended up short...thankfully. 30km was far enough thank you very much. I'll try to get some pictures up when it's all done in December.

My wife Lee is hiking the Inca Trail as I write this. I'm envious. It's a long talked about, extensively planned, many times delayed trip with one of her friends from highschool. I'm leaving socks all over the floor in my own personal rebellion to her absence.

I just got a new guitar. It so happens that with my position with Graph Tech Guitar Labs there are some perks; namely deals on musical instruments that get painlessly deducted from your paycheque....very dangerous. So I got a Walden G570TB Grand Auditorium (picture above)(www.waldenguitars.com) and then upgraded the saddle and bridge pins to Graph Tech products. I put on a String Saver fully compensated saddle (PS-9280-C0) and Tusq bridge pins. So here's the shameless plug:

The guitar sounded good out of the box - VERY loud and crisp, but a touch thin in the top end. The bass was sharp and defined but the guitar was a bit of a sledgehammer. After replacing the saddle and bridge pins (BTW I went with black unlike the picture and it looks really good)the guitar sounds unbeleivable! I can't believe the finesse and sophistication of the sound. It's very balanced and refined. All the same sound is there but it's no longer a sledge hammer; it's like a fine crafted luxury car...to mix metaphors. I played it far too late last night jsut becouse it sounded so good and today my fingers are sore. Jsut a note about the String Saver saddle: Normally for acoustics I would recommend the Tusq saddle for more brightness, but since this guitar was already plenty bright, I opted for the ever so slightly softer and warmer tone of the SS....and purely for aesthetics I wanted black.

If you're interested in doing the same thing to your guitar just go to www.graphtech.com . Retail on the two upgrades is $10.95 for the saddle and $18.50 for the bridge pins. The guitar retails for a $399.00 which in my opinion represents one of the best deals doller for dollar for a guitar that would be great for beginners right up to a gigging pro who didn't want to bring their $5000 Martin out to a bar.

The other fun thing about the job at Graph Tech is that I've been put in charge of Artist Relations which means that I get to interact with some famous and soon to be famous folks who use our stuff. I'm sure that I'll have some updates on that soon enough.

Played a gig a couple of weeks back for a Korean wedding...they wanted jazz standards. The gig went really well despite the fact that the only English spoke through the mic was spoken by me! I had the very exciting experience of the audience paying very close attention, sighing when a familiar tune was played, and actually applauding!....at a wedding! Ahh if all gigs could be so good...good pay and an appreciative audience.

Another shameless plug:

My CD "Why Aren't You Doing This?" is available for digital download all over the place including iTunes and Napster and in physical form at www.cdbaby.com/colindarling

That's all for now


That;s all for now