Xaviere XV-700 Natural Flamed Maple

I got my first Les Paul style guitar today, in the form of an XV-700 from Xaviere. It’s finished in natural flamed maple on a mahogany body. Xaviere is sold by the Guitar Fetish company, who are best known for their guitar pickups and other accessories. The XV-700 is a very low-cost guitar, coming in at well under half of an equivalent Epiphone, and close to 1/10 the price of a fine Gibson Les Paul.

So is it worth it? I think so. The XV-700 is Xavier’s lightweight LP model, and so there are no weight issues. The natural finish is well done, and while I have no real experience with Les Paul style guitars, the pickups sound good to my ears, playing both clean and with a bit of a growl.

It’s also worth noting that the tuners don’t feel to be particularly high quality; it almost felt like there were some dead spots as I was performing the initial tune up out of the box. Speaking of, the guitar seems to be reasonably well set up, with the action being perhaps a bit high, but not bad at all.

There is one minor issue that I’ll have to take up with Guitar Fetish, and that’s what appears to be a potential problem with the 2 piece neck separating where it joins together.

Overall, the Xaviere XV-700 is a good little guitar, especially considering the price!

I picked up a Fender Squier Affinity Series Special Edition guitar today. It’s a beautiful butterscotch blonde color; the wood grain shows through very nicely. It’s my first telecaster and so far I’m really happy. My initial reaction is that this guitar has more clarity and presence than either my MIM strat or Gretsch 5120 when played through my main amp, a Fender Blues Jr. With a 10% discount, my price was $162, including tax, at Guitar Center. More at flickr.

One thing I love about the internet is how one minute you can be looking for one thing and all of a sudden you’re off on a completely unrelated quest.  It was during one such ramble that I came across videos of these two American icons, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

They recorded an oft-forgotten album together, Nashville Skyline and these videos are from that time period. The respect they had for each other and the enjoyment they got from playing together is obvious in these clips. Plus, get a load of Dylan’s voice. I think Nashville Skyline is the only album where he sang this in this natural, unaffected style.

One Too Many Mornings

Girl from the North Country

This is a very enjoyable song musically, an interesting video with a number of guest and cameo appearances, and it’s especially timely tonight, the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech, and the night Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.

You can view full details of the video, including a list of performers, at this YouTube site.

Artist: Richard Powers
Album: More Important Than Facts

This was a fun little diversion! From Texas Trifles, via a long path back to Eric.

To make things easier to play along, I’ve copied the rules from Eric’s site:

Here are the steps:

* Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

* Visit http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the last quote on the page is the title of your album.

* Visit http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture on the page is your album cover.

I modified rule 2 by dropping an article (”the”) from the quote I used.

I hope the very talented photographer who provided the image enjoys this if he sees it.