a-ha! doing some guitar maintance today, discovered a a little screw with “14R” on it inside of my parkwood hybrid. Seems to be an attenuator for the piezo pickup~ played around with it and got the piezo to be at a similar volume to the electric pickups 
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Finally used the Katana GO today and its great!
The sound quality is much better than I expected. Compared to the Positive Grid Spark, this sounds much better.
I do wish the Katana Air wasn’t so expensive because that would be more enjoyable to play without the wires, but I’d never pay that much just to practice.
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Well done!
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I just ordered a Katana:Go as well to replace my Fender Mustang Micro. It‘s not like I really need either, but sometimes it‘s nice to play on the sofa or somewhere outside with that simple form factor and a set of decent headphones. Figured the Go will give me what I most miss on the Micro - which is control over the signal chain.
Let‘s see how it goes, should be here by next week the latest.
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Interesting, I see it has Bass amps as well! I may have to look into this a bit more. Would be great to have one device for both!
I got one and started a little thread if your interested- its very good…
Boss Katana Go -Guitar/Bass headphone amp - The Lounge / Other Gear - Elektronauts
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A new gear day for me recently! All the pedals here and the amp, picked up locally for a deal
Its been really great to have a tube amp again 
and a delay / looper to practice with. All the pedals are the FX loop.
I’m really loving the Supro sounds with the Strat ~ here’s the first recording I made from this last week, using the preamp out (noise is a ground loop issue)
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Ive recently ended up with a lot of time on my hands and sat down to learn theory from scratch.
My biggest issue initially is what order to learn things however I think im now kind of on track and have a range of courses to pick and choose topics from. I find one course can be easier to follow / understand then another but on another topic vice versa.
Ive noticed many courses briefly touch on the Major Scale eg show one pattern but on the Minor / Major Penta go through all 5 patterns. Clearly the Major Scale is fundamental for Western music theory but is it fair to say learning all 5 patterns worth it if likely to use Pentatonic instead?
Also with the Major scale I have already come across a little conflict of 3 note scale pattern vs 2 note scale pattern (which I believe is more linked to CAGE system if learning this also).
Any thoughts on this appreciated.
On another note - I left University over 25 years ago and this is the first time ive properly studied since. Ive clearly lost braincells as feel so forgetful at times 
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Always love your soulful playing, well done once again!
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NGD: Vintera II Mustang
Price was about $880 at time of purchase. I’m not the best person to evaluate setup jobs, but the action, setup, neck, short scale, etc. combine for a pretty comfortable playing experience. With a radius of 7.25" this fingerboard is the roundest I’ve played, but I didn’t notice any obvious impact on my playing, other than the slightly higher action to be expected compared to that of my Strandberg which has a 20" radius.
After watching this review, I was looking forward to playing with pickups set out of phase, and I was not disappointed. I’m loving this sound for funky playing
The racing stripes appear to be painted in - they’re not decals or anything, and cannot be felt by one’s hands. Tremolo is fun to play with without any obvious tuning issues. I’ll get an Allen key for it at some point, to tighten it just a tad.
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You’ve got music theory and then you’ve got systems to conceptualise and organise the fretboard (often in standard tuning).
When you speak of patterns and positions, that’s more the latter than the former.
When it comes to music theory proper, my recommendation would be to learn about scales, the physics of a note/pitch and eg its octave (what happens with a sounds frequency when you pitch it up one octave etc?) — from there learn about intervals (the distances between two notes and how those distances affect sound & feeling). From there look at how scales are constructed with intervals (eg Major scale / minor scale etc etc). From there you could progress to chord theory.
When it comes to organising the fretboard, me personally I don’t recommend the CAGED System. I feel it brings quick results at first but ultimately serves as a crutch to never properly learn the fretboard and gain freedom across it…but YMMV.
I also prefer 3-note per string systems, because you have a chance to build some consistency for the fretting AND the picking hand across all six strings. But the stretches between notes in a scale are bigger so at first it might seem the harder way.
Ultimately you should learn to “see” the fretboard in different ways so that you can leverage the best organising model for the thing you want to play.
I quite like Frank Vignola’s “Modern Guitar Course” (I think it’s called) on Truefire and the principles shared in the book “Advancing Guitarist” by Mick Goddrick. The latter suggests starting on one string only and learning to play different scales on that single string and make music with that (eg play along to a backing track). Once you know the string well with mind and muscle, move on to the next string and so on.
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Thanks for the reply and recommendations - I will take a look.
The course I am following at the moment goes something like this (copied and pasted first half chapters) and I guess it is a blend of like you say theory and systems but it presumes you know all the basics eg not teaching you how to finger / strum a regular chord
1 Musical Alphabet
2 Music Staff (basicalls)
3 Knowing the Fretboard
4 The Major Scale
5 Rhythm Basics
6 Triplets, Swing, and Advanced Tuplets
7 Meter and Time Signature
8 Audiation and Melody
9 Key Signatures and Enharmonics
10 Scale Degrees
11 Triads
12 Movable Chords *
13 Diatonic Major Chords + Roman Numerals
14 Writing Progressions in Major
15 Soloing with the Pentatonic Major Scale
16 Suspended Chords
17 The Minor Scale + Diatonic Chords
18 Writing Progressions in Minor
19 Soloing with the Pentatonic Minor Scale
20 Ear Training Intervals and Chords
I have learnt a fair bit about the fretboard notes / octaves and major scale after a few days and kind wish I did this 15 years ago rather then just follow tabulature.
PS - this kind of kickstarted last month after trying to learn piano.
Noted what you say about the 3 note system
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3-note major scale patterns are great for economy picking, hammer-ons, and pull-offs. That was the only way i practiced the major scale for a while.
Later I put in some work on practicing the 5 major scale patterns found in CAGED, as well as the 5 pentatonic patterns that are part of those 5 major scale patterns. I eventually found there is no need to practice C major pentatonic and A minor pentatonic scales separately as they are actually the same scale. It’s nice to save time.
I feel like I’ve gotten more mileage out of the 5 pentatonic patterns than the CAGED major scale patterns when it comes to improvising. Part of it is because I’ve embraced blues and R&B vocabulary and there’s no avoiding the pentatonic if you want those flavors.
However you really do want to be able to identify where the scale degrees are - eg. the 3rd, the 7th, etc. - if you want to advance in your music theory. That’s where learning the major scale patterns can help.
One lesson that I picked up at Pickup Music that is nice for bridging between CAGED and 3-note scale patterns is the 3-2 pentatonic pattern - it’s based on the observation that as you play the pentatonic scale you can alternate between 3 notes and 2 notes as you go up strings - and same of course when go down. It’s a quick and easy way to get used to moving up and down the neck as you play the pentatonic and lends itself very nicely to the kind of double-stop licks you may have heard in blues, R&B, rock, etc. I see other websites/YT videos also teach the 3-2 pattern.
One long term goal is to learn where all the major scale notes are on the fretboard. CAGED is a popular way to get there. Reading music is another powerful method, but less popular because not many guitarists like to read music. I get it - when I started reading music, it was a real chore to see the note on the sheet music, then hunt for it on the fretboard, then move on to the next note, hunt for THAT note, etc. In any case, the more note locations you learn on the fretboard, the less latency between pitches you hear in your head and playing them on the guitar.
That all said, I really like this app for drilling the notes of the fretboard
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Are these any good? Their website is so hyperbolic that it makes me suspicious…
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as far as I know kegeratorz is really happy with his and I’ve heard some unassociated mirrored opinions about the second version as well. It’s possible they threw it down a flight of stairs for this incarnation but my assumption is that it’s an improvement on an already decent product. Not cheap though.
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I have the OG and it’s pretty good. My only gripe is its low output. Will eventually get a Dream 65 but in the meantime the Simplifier does the job!
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low in headphones or low in general?
Headphones are good, DI and main outs are on the low side. Only an issue if recording in to line input like OT. Ultimately used the headphones for recording with no issues!
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