A world wide web of LIES

Today I finally got my money’s worth from the all-day Saturday pass ($2 for unlimited bus rides).

• 20 Red South: downtown to campus, for pizza and witnessing whimsical conveyances
  
• 100 Yellow South: campus to Savoy, for the viewing of latest “talkie” film involving masked adventurers
• 100 Yellow North: Savoy to Target (this is practically the entire length of this route, from the southernmost to northernmost and took about an hour)
• 20 Red South (again): back to downtown
• 50 Green East: downtown to easternmost edge of Urbana, ostensibly for more grocery shopping but mainly I was engrossed in my reading material and kind of aimless
• 50 Green West: back home (downtown)
• NEVER DOING SOMETHING LIKE THIS AGAIN

Actually, I had an idea once, when I was driving all up and down the Olympic Peninsula. I’d be out in the middle of nowhere, and there’d be a bus stop sign there. Western Washington has a whole mess of different local, county, and community bus systems, so I wanted to see how far I could get, starting in downtown Seattle. I could get pretty far into the Peninsula, for sure, and heading north and east I could probably get close to the Cascades.

BLARGH, so in all this trying to get baritone strings to work hoo-hah, I realized a couple things. First, if I just got a set of strings for a 7-string guitar (with the low B that the kids so enjoy), I could use that and just leave off the high E. Then I realized that once I did that, I would have just had the same nearly tuning I used to use, which was 4 semitones below my current one–and used regular guitar strings, no less. So instead, I just got a regular set of strings, and then a really thick low E (.058), since the store didn’t have any low Bs (.062). It pretty much works.

SO–the old tuning was DGDGAD, and I used it quite a bit, but then I got bored and dropped the lowest D down to a really floppy C, and then put a capo on the 4th fret. This turned out to be a goldmine, so I restrung the guitar to not have to use a damn capo: EBF#BC#D (For that F# I have to use a D string, and then I use two Bs for the B and C#).

So I have this guitar. Or is it a baritone? Or is it a 6 string bass? The latter two terms I’ve always thought were interchangeable, but it seems this is not the case. I’d been using what D’Addario called “guitar/bass” strings, made for things like this one and Fender’s Bass VI. They’re like guitar strings, but an octave lower. Fun? Yes, but the two lowest strings sound like pure butt.

It was then that I had the idea of trying baritone strings, which are halfway between the guitar’s and bass’s range. I have tried many sets, and all of them are too short for my Teisco’s unfeasibly long neck. Hence, the literal anger/rage concoction that is my current emotional state.

After yet more research, I discovered that it was I who was ignorant, and not the rest of the world. Guitars have a neck scale of around 25 inches. I previously thought baritones and basses could be anywhere from 27 to 30 inches. Turns out baritones are around 30 inches, and basses can be anywhere from 32 to 36 inches. Guess what scale my “guitar/bass” thing has? Hint: the same one as a bass.

Some notes

Robert Smith used a Bass VI extensively while recording Faith, aka the Best Cure Album EVAR.

I’ve had this thing for almost exactly ten years. I saw it in a shop in Seattle. The pickup switches used to be the kind you found on Wurlitzer organs, but I kept knocking into them, so I had them replaced.

After years of no information at all, I eventually found out this was made by Teisco Del Rey. This guitar may be the lost cousin of mine.