Re: NAD: Vintage Fender Content
We are hoping to get some more recent videos up on the youtube thing here soon, just have to figure out which of our impending gigs will work best for video taping. Baring that, I think I might try to record a couple of our shows with our little zoom handheld, so at least some audio clips will make it out. As far as the speakers go, yeah, I'm a bit worried about how they will sound for my guitar, but I've been thinking about going head/cab anyway, so if I got a cab of my own, I could get speakers that would work with her amp or whatever head I go with. And yeah, it came with a George L jumper cable they had in the shop we bought it from.
Her fiddle pickup is quite funky, it's called
The Band. She used to use a Fishman V-200, which was ok, but never great. Whichever side of the bridge it was on sounded way too loud and distorted (in a bad way). She moved the V-200 over to the viola, and got The Band. It's a low output transducer, and gives the most accurate reproduction of her fiddle's natural sound out of the 4-5 pickups she's tried. It looks really funny though. Apparently they make them for Cello and Bass, and they can be worn as belts. There really aren't that many options for fiddle pickups widely available, Fishman only makes 2 pickups in a total of 3 models, and LR Baggs only makes 1.
The store that we bought it at is really cool (
Link), he's primarily an acoustic instruments store, but he's gets some nice vintage electric stuff in from time to time. I keep going back to play his 63 and 66 strats. But like I said, mostly acoustic stuff. He had a $215,000 Lloyd Loar mandolin in there a few weeks ago that lasted about 3 days before someone bought it. And he's constantly handing me banjos or guitars and saying, "What'dya think about this one, Matt?" And I'll play it, be blown away and ask what it is, "Oh, a prewar D-28," he'll say, or "A 1932 Gibson Banjo, the tone ring is worth $20,000" at which point I'll quietly hand the instrument back. He's got a lot of great stories too, just a cool guy. Plus his son is in our band.
The best part is, she wasn't looking for a new amp. She got a big tax return and wanted to do something fun gear-wise, but she doesn't use many effects, and buying a new fiddle isn't as satisfying as buying a new guitar (according to her), and she was fairly happy with her old amp, so an amp wasn't really considered. Then we walked into that store today to meet someone for a completely unrelated matter, and I saw that and said "you're fiddle would probably sound good through that thing." So we went home and picked up her fiddle and went back. I'm still a bit in awe of how good it sounded, and it has me seriously considering saving for a Bassman (or Bandmaster) of my own.
