November 13th, 2024

Homeskoolin’ Volume 359, Tom Bukovac, “The Bitter End”

Chapters
00:00 - Bluesy playing on the Strat
06:07 - What's up, friends! / Playing
07:38 - Some singing (Cops), called the "New York Blues"
10:25 - Name That Lead - $2 / Sam Bettens / Name That for a $1
12:00 - Update / Pontiac GTO / Gibson GA-83s
13:40 - Lesson: Key of E to the V
14:42 - Playing Layla (Rita Coolidge, Jim Gordon, Eric Clapton)
16:04 - Outro / Special Fuck-offs / Playing


Notes
Hey GT and Jedd-o…this sounds pretty damn New York-y to me…you fellas wanna play it at the show?

I can already picture it…

you guys…with your heads back and your feet up on the intermittent monitor wedges…lettin’ it eat while helpless droves of excitement drenched female onlookers with heavy Brooklyn accents swoon and sway….pointing your bolt on necks heavenward in the glowing red halo of a poorly aimed par can …

Here’s a link for the gig we have booked in Chicago in February for all you early bird
https://www.axs.com/events/757974/guthrie-trapp-tom-bukovac-tickets

May 4th, 2024

Homeskoolin’ Bonus “The Most Pimp Gibson Amp Of All Time”

Chapters
00:00 - Robots, bikes, Schwinn, Brett Papa
03:18 - '60 Gibson GA-83S
06:13 - Playing the GA-83S
07:28 - Back in the day (Ebo)
08:05 - Switching center speaker off / Leslie


Notes
If you can stick around through the opening “collage” you can cast thine orbs upon the rarest unicorn of an amp that ever rolled out of Kalamazoo

The 1960 Gibson GA-83S stereo tube amp

6BQ5 (EL-84) power tubes
5 speakers
one 12” and four 8”
stereo “vib-trem”…which is like nature’s univibe….

Uncle Larry has been actively hunting one of these exotic beasts for probably 15 years…previous to this one, he has only seen one in real life in his 55 years on this planet

This was undoubtedly Gibson’s alltime flagship amplifier and certainly their most indulgent design statement in the history of the Gibson amp line-up…they probably made less than 100 of these total …and I’m pretty sure they were all built in 1960

Magical times back in these days…the crazy things that these brilliant engineers were doing with vacuum tubes at companies like magnatone, fender, marshall, valco, danelectro and vox…

Gibson and Gretsch both pushed in all their chips banking that stereo was gonna be the wave of the future…but the future had other plans.