Author Archives: cleek

Tested: Where Does The Tone Come From In An Electric Guitar?

This guy thoroughly A/B'd a nice guitar against a series of ever-more-minimal guitars to see if he could figure out which factors are relevant to an electric guitar's tone.

I'm usually pretty cynical about this stuff, so I was thinking it's going to be: pickups and the kind of wood used in the body and neck and fingerboard - pickups definitely make a difference just because some are 'louder' than others; I assume woods resonate differently; fingerboards would absorb/change tone too, etc.. Body shape? Meh. Finish? Meh. Pickup height? Just a volume thing. Bridge metal? Meh.

But even my list of what I thought matters was too big.

They're Burning Books in Tennessee

True fact.

Last week, McMinn County made news when the school board voted to ban beloved graphic novel Maus — a Holocaust story told with anthropomorphic mice and cats — due to instances of swear words and nudity. While the vote happened in early January, it went viral following a report from TN Holler.

Last night, Mt. Juliet pastor and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Greg Locke decided to turn it up a notch by organizing an old-fashioned book burning. The books included millennial staples like Harry Potter and Twilight — hits of the early Aughts that were targeted by Christian book burnings back in the day.

In a sermon preceding the bonfire, Locke described beefing with "Free Mason devils" and said "I ain't gonna be 'suiciding myself' no time soon." Locke also said people aren't mad that they were burning books, but mad because of the books they were burning — implying that his critics, even other pastors, were devil and witchcraft supporters.

Another Message To You, Rudy

Two judges reportedly walked off the stage in protest after Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was unmasked as an exiting costumed contestant during a recent taping of Fox's The Masked Singer.

"Deadline hears that as soon as they saw Giuliani, judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke quickly left the stage in protest," the site reported Wednesday night. "Deadline hears that while Jeong and Thicke exited (they eventually returned), fellow judges Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger remained onstage. They bantered with Giuliani, a controversial figure for pressing what is widely derided as a baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from his client Donald Trump."

The incident occurred during last week's taping of the first episode of Season 7, according to Deadline. The episode isn't expected to air until next month, and the site declined to reveal "which costume Rudy wore or what his swan song was."

Heart Of Gold

Neil Young has threatened to remove his music from Spotify because he believes the streaming company enables podcaster Joe Rogan to spread “fake information” about vaccines.

In an email to his record label, Warner Records, Young said Spotify “has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform.”

“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he wrote. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Hell yeah, Neil Young.