Miles Davis - Miles In The Sky (1968) full album - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6eZHnIA__A

This is one of Miles Davis' early proto-fusion efforts, and the players are all legends (Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock on electric piano, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums).

"Miles in the Sky" is the kind of fusion record that really appeals to me right now. It's a "quiet" record anchored by electric piano, which is the same thing that draws me to Chick Corea's first Return to Forever album. It's more jazz than r&b, and not really rock at all, given the lack of electric bass and guitar.

What you really have in "Miles in the Sky," besides a slightly funky Miles who you can really hear with this instrumentation, is a showcase for the grooves of Hancock, Carter and Williams, and a showcase for Wayne Shorter.

Then on the second track, the Wayne Shorter composition "Paraphernalia," guitarist George Benson appears, yet the track has more of a traditional jazz vibe than the last, featuring an acoustic piano instead of the electric. Benson folows the stunning Shorter solo (which is quite long, in case you were wondering) with a literally shorter solo that sits firmly within the groove of the record, leading into Hancock on the piano with the rest of the group dropping out entirely as he works the form of the composition.

Miles always worked with the best players. He was never about raw technique and obviously wasn't intimidated by those who were the strongest players out there.

I've gone all this time being a guitar player and never before set the intonation on a guitar. It's mostly because my Gibson ES-175 has a wooden compensated bridge, and all you can do is move the whole thing forward or backward (and also side to side, but I digress). You don't generally do any intonation adjustments on acoustics, though luthiers can work a little magic with the nut and bridge saddle.

My 1979 Fender Lead I has a strong, thick neck that has never needed a truss rod adjustment, which is a good thing because getting to the truss-rod screw means loosening the neck from the body.

The Fender Lead's six-saddle hard-tail (meaning no tremolo) bridge is somewhat Strat-like, though it doesn't have springs between the intonation-adjustment screws and the individual bridge saddles. In lieu of those springs are nuts that hold the adjustment screws in place.

I had my little wrench to loosen the "lock" nuts, a Phillips screwdriver to turn the adjustment screws, and a clamp-on electronic tuner to check the pitches. I was set to go. I didn't even use an amp.

I've tried to set the intonation in the past, but I was never terribly successful. This time I used the cheap clamp-on tuner to compare the 12th-fret harmonic vs. the fretted note, and I went down the line and set all of the strings.

I also figured out that it's a lot easier to turn the screws (and you won't strip the heads) if you detune each string until it is slack before you make an adjustment at the bridge, then re-tuning the string to check how close you are to matching the pitches at the 12th fret. Words to live by: Don't adjust intonation at pitch!

Before yesterday, the guitar was out of tune as I played up the neck. Now that I have the intonation set, I will be playing it a lot more, and I might even "fill out" the extra Lead II pickguard I've had for years, turning the single (but super-versatile) humbucker Lead I guitar into a two-single-coil pickup Lead II-style guitar. With this change, the neck pickup sound should be closer to what I'm looking for, which is a jazz tone like Ed Bickert gets with his Telecaster. The hard-tail bridge of the Lead I, with the strings anchored through the back of the body, brings it closer to the Tele vibe. I wouldn't say that the Lead models sound like Strats or Teles (the Lead I sure doesn't), but I'll report back if I ever do swap out the pickguard and electronics for the Lead II-style setup.

Again, what I wanted to say was that after decades as a middling player, I never before did a full intonation setup. I really needed it and am too cheap to pay for it. So I'm glad I did it, and now I can really enjoy the Ernie Ball Power Slinky strings I've had on the guitar for some time. I have a couple more sets -- one pure nickel, the other nickel-coated steel -- in the wings, and I love the sound of this .011 set on the guitar.

The top 8 Van Halen songs:

1. (tie) Runnin' With the Devil
2. (tie) Jump
3. You Really Got Me
4. Ain't Talking 'Bout Love
5. Panama
6. Dance the Night Away
7. Hot for Teacher
8. Beautiful Girls

These are the guitar strings I'm using right now.

On the Gibson ES-175 electric archtop, I'm moving away from flatwounds for the first time. At least three players I admire, Pat Metheny, Joshua Breakstone and Bruce Forman (all links go to their string choices), are using roundwounds on their archtop guitars.

You do get some finger squeaks, but the sound of the lower four wound strings is much clearer. I guess you can say it's more defined -- less "smoky" maybe. Whatever you call it. The guitar is sounding better. (in case you were wondering, my flatwounds of choice were D'Addario Chromes -- the .013 set, and I usually replaced the higher two strings -- the .013 and .017 -- with an .014 and .018).

I'm using the .013 set of Ernie Ball Nickel Wound strings -- the pack with the eagle on it. I'm also sticking with the .013 and .017 in the set instead of opting for the slightly heavier replacement strings:

On my Fender guitar, a 1979 Lead I (though for some reason the serial number says it's a 1981), I actually used D'Addario Chromes flatwounds -- the .012 set -- for a long time. Way back in the past, I used .010 and .011 roundwound sets: Ernie Ball Slinkys, GHS Nickel Rockers (before I knew there was a difference between pure nickel and nickel-plated steel).

The .012 flatwounds were definitely too big for the nut on the lower couple of strings, though the extra tension didn't affect the neck at all. That 1970s Fender neck is a single piece of maple with no added fretboard and a skunk stripe behind it to cover the truss rod, and it's super strong. I have never needed to adjust the truss rod.

I wanted something slightly lighter. Strings that would fit in the nut slots without any filing, and a clearer, less-boomy, more defined low end.

I picked up a set of Ernie Ball Power Slinky strings, which start with a .011 high E and tend to run slightly lighter in the lower strings than the usual .011 set.

The strings have been great. Returning to roundwounds on both my Gibson and Fender is like I'm playing two new guitars. You can change your sound so much just by changing strings and picks -- two of the cheapest things in the guitar world.

Slinkys are nickel-plated steel, and I do have a set of this same gauge made with pure nickel windings called Slinky Classics. Pure nickel is supposed to be more subtle than nickel-plated steel. Maybe they'll sound better. But I like this current Ernie Ball Slinky set so much, I don't want to make the change.

I don't need a .052 or .054 for the low E (like Ernie Ball's Skinny Top Heavy Bottom and Beefy Slinkys), and this set is balanced very well for what I want.

Here's what the Ernie Ball set looks like:

My Yamaha flattop guitar -- it's probably 5 years old at this point -- has a solid top and is a "solid" guitar all around. It's put together very well and is pretty tough.

The guitar shipped with Yamaha's own custom-gauged set of .012s -- roughly equivalent to light-gauge strings. I think the strings were phosphor bronze, which tend to have a longer life.

I probably should have stuck with .012s when I changed the strings, but I decided to go up to a medium-gauge set that begins with a .013. I went for Ernie Ball Earthwood 80/20 bronze strings.

They sound amazing, and they're cheap enough that I don't mind changing them sooner.

This was my first time changing flattop strings. I've changed strings on electric and classical guitars hundreds of times -- I even do the thing where you tie the nylon strings to the bridge.

But bridge pins? I was a bridge pin virgin. I had the bridge-pin puller on the end of my string winder. One of the pins popped out with such force that it hit the ceiling. After that I made sure to block the path with my hand. I did have one of the pins edge out a bit after I tightened the string up. But I got it done.

I'm not a fan of bridge pins. It's just the tension of the pin and the angle of the string tension holding everything together. I'd prefer an archtop tailpiece. That I can deal with.

I also had to crank the truss rod quite a few turns after I replaced the .012s with .013s. I started with quarter turns, but I had to keep cranking and cranking, loosening the strings in between adjustments. I thing I have it right now. I got tired of cranking after awhile. It plays well and sounds great.

Here is my Ernie Ball Earthwood set:

So, what did I play today? I have been working on "How High the Moon," but today I worked on the chords for "Waltz for Debby." I'm very, very slow. That's what I'll say about it.S

I got a bottle of Dunlop Ultraglide 65 String Cleaner and Conditioner and tried it today on my flattop strings, which happen to be an 80/20 bronze set from the Ernie Ball Earthwood line. The strings are not the most resistant to dirt and corrosion, and they are nowhere near so far gone that they need changing but weren't exactly out-of-the-package new.

The Dunlop 65 appears to be a very lemony oil, and it easily went on the strings with the spongy applicator, after which I wiped off the excess

The strings were cleaner, and a lot smoother. I definitely recommend this stuff. Clean strings aren't the worst thing, and this stuff makes it easy.

Back in the day I used to use rubbing alcohol to clean my strings. That can be drying, to say the least, if you get any on the wood of the neck, and it certainly doesn't make the strings feel smooth. This stuff from Dunlop is a lot better.

A bottle costs somewhere between $5 and $7 -- about the price of a set of strings. It's worth it.

I found this picture of my 1976 Gibson ES-175 in my 2016 photo folder. I now remember taking it to show my new guitar-playing friend Dave Green what the guitar's pickguard looks like so he could compare it to his Japanese-made ES-175 copy.

Here you see much of the guitar's body. What pegs it as a 1970s Gibson archtop electric? It has chrome pickup covers and a chrome tailpiece (as opposed to nickel, which tends to age, albeit gracefully) and "witch hat" volume and tone knobs. The nickel covers -- made famous on the rare and pricey PAF (Patent Applied For) humbuckers -- tend to age, albeit gracefully. I believe Gibson introduced the "witch hat" knobs in the late 1960s. Earlier Gibson electrics came with "top hat" or speed knobs.

You can't see it here, but the neck is made of three pieces of maple (as opposed to a single piece of mahogany on earlier models) and includes the thickened "volute" near the nut, meant to strengthen the neck at the point where many Gibson's suffer from catastrophic breaks.

All three of those things contribute to neck strength: maple instead of mahogany, laminated instead of one piece, volute instead of no volute. The volute was unpopular and eventually discontinued. It doesn't bother me. I kind of like the "feel" of knowing I'm at the end of the neck.

The bridge on this guitar, for this year of production (1976) is a bit of an anomaly. It's a compensated rosewood bridge, the kind that Gibson had been using for decades on its archtop guitars, both acoustic and electric. I call it an anomaly because one of the changes Gibson made on the 1976 ES-175 is switching from the traditional wooden bridge to a metal Tune-O-Matic like you would find on a Les Paul or ES-335.

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I've never been a big fan of Chicago, the band. I've heard this song before and had no idea it was by them. But I really like "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"

You can learn a lot about archtop guitars by going through the "sold" archive at Archtop.com. You can see descriptions and photos of hundreds of actual instruments. It's a valuable historical and educational resource that is really helping me learn about Gibson archtop guitars. What's missing? The prices. For that you need to look at the current inventory list.

What makes these Archtop.com lists so valuable is that there are so many examples of real guitars that have sold. The measurements show how the various models changed from the 1920s and '30s to the present day. They could turn the archive into a book, and I'd buy it.

Swing guitarist Jonathan Stout lays out his philosophy on swing music, the guitar, Charlie Christian, Allan Reuss, REALLY old Gibsons and Epiphones, X-bracing vs. parallel bracing and more on his Swing Guitar Blog and Campus Five YouTube channel.

His latest video was recorded on another YouTube channel because he made it at Norman's Rare Guitars in Tarzana. where Jonathan plays Harold Arlen's "It's Only a Paper Moon" on a 1929 Gibson L-5 acoustic.

Jonathan is a wonderful guitarist who explores three distinct "directions" on the guitar: swing rhythm on the acoustic archtop, swing-style chord-melody on the same instrument and Charlie Christian-style swing-to-bop soloing on the archtop electric.

They really are three different kinds of playing -- watch Jonathan's videos and see what I mean.

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