
TL;DR: You’ve gotta believe in yourself to make things happen.
Bohlinger asks: Is life a cosmic vending machine, or can we manifest our musical goals?
The law of attraction, or manifesting, has been in vogue for a while. I first heard about this semi-spiritual belief that you will attract into your life whatever you focus on back in 2006 with The Secret, Rhonda Byrne’s popular self-help book (and film) that’s sold over 35 million copies worldwide and been translated into 50 languages.
Essentially, positive thoughts and actions reap positive rewards, negative thoughts and actions reap negative outcomes—your thoughts determine your reality. To get there, follow these basic rules:
Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want.
Don’t get attached to the end result.
Stop complaining.
Find ways to elevate your mood daily.
We live in the age of string theory, where spirituality and science meet, so anything is possible. But even if you take out the science and spirituality, I know there is something to this hippie mumbo jumbo. Here’s how it works on a practical level for musicians:
You’re performing a song that has a difficult bridge. You know that the bridge is coming up, and the voice in your head says, “You’re going to mess this up, and you will feel deep, painful shame.” Sure enough, a few bars later, you mess up the bridge.
Here’s how it goes the other way: You have a gig coming up where you are playing that song with the bridge that you always boff, but this time you say to yourself, “Damnit, I am going to finally take the time to learn that stupid bridge and get it right.” So, you spend 10 minutes or 10 hours playing it until you have it right. You play it so many times that when you go to bed that night, the bridge is playing in your head on a constant loop. When you close your eyes, you can visualize your fingers working out the notes. You picture yourself playing it slowly, quickly, with a swing, really straight, then drift off to sleep with the song still looping under your dreams. At the gig, when that bridge comes up, you feel a bit of anxiety creeping in and say, “I got this.” And you are right. That’s the power of manifesting.
“Once a person makes a decision to walk away from the card table, they are not going to win the big pot.”
You can also experience this socially. If you stay positive, look for the good in people and situations, the people around you will tend to move in that direction as well. As an added benefit, staying positive tends to repel chronically bummed-out pessimists, who do not want to hang with people on the up. Misery loves miserable company, not optimistic company. All those Wednesday Addams-types tend to avoid what they consider naive, stupid happy people.
Same goes with a career in music. Interstates 440 and 65 are like conveyor belts, delivering an endless supply of young and old aspiring artists to Nashville to make their mark. In my 30-plus years working here, I’ve seen the wildly talented and the not-so-talented succeed and fail. The only thing the successes have in common is that they do not quit. That does not mean that the never-quitters are going to succeed. But once a person makes a decision to walk away from the card table, they are not going to win the big pot.
Here’s an example: Joe Bonamassa just released a 20th anniversary version of his game-changer album, Blues Deluxe. Bonamassa said, “If you had told me 20 years ago my career would last long enough to see the 20th anniversary of this little record called Blues Deluxe, I’m sure I would have laughed…. Blues Deluxe was my last shot after being dropped by two major record labels and my booking agent.” I have no idea if they had a law-of-attraction mindset, but Bonamassa and his manager, Roy Weisman, went all-in on their own project and turned their ideas into a host of Billboard-charting albums, never-ending tours of sold-out shows, the philanthropic Keeping the Blues Alive foundation, and an incredible collection of guitars and amps.
Maybe it’s manifesting, or maybe it’s just that if you believe in yourself and keep working, you will improve and find opportunities. The harder you work, the luckier you get.
As a kid, I read Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and it changed my life. The bitter protagonist wastes his life living underground, feeding his anger and self-loathing with constant complaints. This is highly paraphrased, but he said something like:
“Only fools succeed, because an intelligent person knows that intelligence and hard work doesn’t matter, you will fail. So only fools succeed because they are too stupid to know they will fail.”
I signed up for this fool’s errand and never regretted it.
Supported by Keeley, Scan the code or visit robertkeeley.com/lastcall for a special offer!
Stompboxtober Day 29 is live! Enter today to win a pedal from StewMac—more chances to win tomorrow!
StewMac International House of Overdrive Pedal Kit, With Bare Enclosure
The IHOO is based on the Crowther Hot Cake, an overdrive that became available around 1976. It was one of the earliest hand-made boutique effects pedals available. The circuit was designed to be what is now referred to as a “transparent” overdrive. An effect that enhances the player's sound while keeping the original tone intact.
This circuit has undergone many changes since its inception, and we have further expanded on the design by returning to an earlier version most revered by players and removing the buffer, which resulted in a reworked circuit that is true bypass but still retains the charm of the design.
We also include the original LM741 IC chip found in the originals, as well as the TL071 that is found in later versions so you can experiment with which IC best suits your playing style.
Neil’s brother-in-law Billy’s Ovation, before Neil’s repairs.
Reader: Neil Crump
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Guitar: King of the Road
When his brother-in-law passed away, this reader made it his mission to repair his old damaged Ovation guitar as a gift to his niece.
My brother-in-law passed away in March. He was a talented keyboardist and, in his heyday, played in bands that toured internationally. As a musician, he naturally had a guitar—a 1974 Ovation—and a “friend” put an unauthorized abstract paint job on it. That guitar had an extremely hard life: Its top was broken and the frets were completely worn out. As an aspiring luthier, I took the guitar to repair it then pass it on to his daughter. This proved to be a challenging task as I had never done anything more complicated than a basic setup before and I had few luthier tools.
A heat gun and thin spatula knife worked fine to remove the top and the bridge. I did my best to glue the new top halves together—but that left a visible seam, so I put a herringbone center strip over it (to match the purfling I would install later). I had no radius board, so I just clamped the pre-radiused braces I bought and was quite pleased that the new top did have a radius! Once I felt the bridge was sanded perfectly, I glued it down. I then replaced the plastic nut and saddle with bone. A hot soldering iron got the old frets out without damaging the fingerboard. (That said, next time I will clean those slots out better before installing new frets!)
“This proved to be a challenging task as I had never done anything more complicated than a basic setup before and I had few luthier tools.”
I was happy with my progress until I started routing the purfling channel. I had no workbench, and the concave Ovation body made things a bit awkward. While basically “bear hugging” the body with one arm and holding the router with the other, I heard a faint “pop.” The edge of an X-brace had come loose. I was able to squirt glue into the void with a syringe, but the concave guitar body made a brace jack useless (without fabricating a complicated caul). I removed the phono jack and jammed a pencil into the brace, keeping pressure on it with a rubber band. It worked!
Neil gave the Ovation a new lease on life with his extensive repairs, the end result of which can be seen here.
I also learned the importance of channel depth with purfling—I did lots of scraping to get everything flush. I am pleased with the finished product and my niece is so happy! I also put a new label inside the guitar body, with a dedication to her father on it.
Overall, there are multiple wins on this project. I gave tribute to my brother-in-law, made his daughter happy, and learned enough to build a guitar from scratch.
Two horns? It must be a Bison!
Our columnist links a few memories together to lead us to another obscure guitar model—one he remembers from his childhood and came to acquire as an adult.
Do you have any “click and stick” movies that you love? Like when you are channel surfing and see a movie that you’ve watched a lot, and then just watch it again? Lately, for me, it’s been the 2015 movie The Revenant. It’s a truly brutal tale of survival set in 1820s frontier America. My gosh, that movie just draws me in every time. There’s one scene where the main character goes flying off a cliff while riding a horse! He just sort of falls/rolls through a pine tree and lands in the snow … and he still survives! It’s crazy!
It makes me think about an old childhood friend who lived up the street from me. Jerry and his parents lived in an old house on their grandparents’ large plot of land. On one part of the land there was an old orchard filled with all types of fruit trees and pines, and I remember how we would climb to the top of the pines and just roll ourselves down the side, Revenant style! If you fell the right way, the branches would kind of gently let you down to the next, but if you hit it wrong and got in between the branches, you’d be wrecked. It’s like we enjoyed getting hurt, and, of course, when you’re young, you can snap right back. Ah, the days when pain really didn’t hurt. Now I wake up with injuries, for real.
“The action was way high and the fret ends were sharp. It was basically a painful affair.”
So why am I talking about my click-and-stick movie and stupid childhood escapades? Well, let’s get back to memories of my old friend Jerry. First, the house he lived in was so old that it had real wooden siding, but it hadn’t been painted in forever so the exterior took on a worn, faded, haunted house vibe. Second, his carpet was so tattered that it was being held together with duct tape. Lastly, I remember his dad had a cool, old electric guitar in the living room. His dad would let me play it sometimes, and I remember that it actually hurt to play! The action was way high and the fret ends were sharp. It was basically a painful affair. Not falling-out-of-a-tree painful, but as bad as it comes with guitars. It had the label “Conrad,” and young Frank didn’t realize that he’d be looking for that guitar again one day. I mean, it did have four pickups and lots of knobs and switches!
Made at the old Japanese Matsumoko factory in the ’60s, this Conrad Bison 1233 has four pickups and a 27" scale.
Years later, I would discover that his was a Conrad Bison guitar. The model came in a few different configurations, but the four-pickup design was designated as the 1233. Primarily featuring a lovely sunburst, these Bisons were made at the amazing old Matsumoku factory in Japan and were imported by the David Wexler Company that was based in Chicago. Matsumoku always had a good supply of aged wood, and many of the guitars made there are resonant and built well. The Bisons first appeared around 1966 and had a rather good run into the early ’70s.
Simple volume/tone knobs are paired with preset solo/rhythm switches that power alnico magnets. There’s an on/off switch for each pickup, and the sound really covers all the bases. Thumpy lows and crisp highs are all there. And, the pickups handle fuzz and distortion with ease. The Bisons also came in one- and two-pickup configurations with a normal scale, but the four-pickup ones have a longer, 27" scale, which is common for Matsumoku-made electrics.
So there it is: pain, survival, American frontier, Bison, haunted houses. It all sticks together like a duct-taped carpet. Click and stick, baby!
A 1000-watt speaker cabinet crafted for musicians who demand power and precision. Sunn Amps intends to reinvent the standard 4x12 configuration with the introduction of this new cabinet.
The Sunn Amps DoomBox is built to accommodate both guitar and bass, offering an impressive 1000-watt handling capacity—making it the first commercially available 4x12 cabinet with such high power handling. With four specially designed 12” drivers rated at 250 watts each, this cabinet provides clean, unrestrained sound levels that can maintain power integrity across all frequencies, ideal for high-volume performances.
Inspired and developed using feedback from artists and bands who rely on the depth of lower tunings and high volume genres, the DoomBox was engineered to meet the unique demands of professional musicians looking for a robust, high-efficiency cab that can translate the raw power of their sound without compromise.
Premium Craftsmanship and Materials
The Doom Box cabinet is crafted from solid finger-jointed Baltic Birch plywood, ensuring both durability and tonal clarity. Each cabinet is constructed by hand in the U.S.A. using original 1930s machinery, the DoomBox reflects Sunn’s historic commitment to quality, contrasting with some of the mass-produced, MDF-based cabinets on the market today. The cabinet’s aluminum basket, ferrite magnet, and custom Sunn weave Tolex with a custom grill design complete its professional-grade build.
Technical Specifications:
• Power Handling: 1000W
• Inputs: 1 x ¼”
• Impedance: 8 Ohm
• Drivers: 4 x Sunn 12S250
• Construction: Marine Grade Baltic Birch
• Dimensions: 29.25” X 30” X 14”
• Weight: 107 lbs
• Price: $2399.00
With clear low-end punch, even sound response, and ample air movement, the Doom Box ensures that every note reaches the audience with clarity and power. This cabinet is a game-changer for musicians who need high-performance, road-ready equipment that enhances their unique sound.