#okay that's enough tags

[ultipoter]

I think it's actually a crime that Volo is stuck in PLA! Gamefreak should let him roam free and appear in every game from now on. As a treat.

I went so overboard with the tera sparkles, I don't know what to tell you.

[averageludwig]

Miraculous ladybug fan jumpscare!!!! I am here to unfortunately inform you that this show has been my special interest for 5... years now and it's really bad this time. Few art pieces from this week plus a Mid Monarch redesign (show design actually makes me wanna cry Jesus💀) (still a cutie patootie) you have to guess who my favorite character is 😙😙 okay bye

[jsuika]

While the ArtFight is on, I'll send these here.

[captainmvf]

Guhnash Battle but as a Storyboard

[monarchisms]

so, with rt having their anniversary on april 1st, they decided this year to celebrate for 20 whole weeks for their 20th anniversary. with one episode a week on fridays starting in march and ending in july, they've released one-off mystery episodes of their shows and products that have been cancelled, put on hiatus, or otherwise ended naturally. the exceptions are on the spot and camp camp, the former of which is coming back later this year, and the latter having a new season premiere later next year in 2024, both having been confirmed at rtx 2023.

it makes sense for rt to build up such a major milestone by teasing what they're doing to celebrate, but i think the way they've done it is...

not great.

that's why i'm just gonna put what each mystery video is, with links to youtube because the rt site fucking sucks for convenience!

week 1 (march 17th) | ahwu week 2 (march 24th) | rage quit week 3 (march 31st) | million dollars, but... week 4 (april 7th) | achievement h.o.r.s.e week 5 (april 14th) | on the spot (was originally streamed live)* week 6 (april 21st) | master & apprentice week 7 (april 28th) | rt docs (at least, a ~15 minute parody of one from funhaus) week 8 (may 5th) | AH gta iv: cops and crooks week 9 (may 12th) | AH: theater mode (the youtube version got cut down from around 1 hour 40 minutes to close to 30 minutes, which is cringe) week 10 (may 19th) | rt recap week 11 (may 26th) | rt shorts week 12 (june 2nd) | music video: dusk boys: u.f.whoa week 13 (june 9th) | chump (was originally streamed live)* week 14 (june 16th) | immersion week 15 (june 23rd) | p.a.n.i.c.s week 16 (june 30th) | hard mode: uncomfortable guess who?* week 17 (july 7th) | lazer team: boot group (animated video) week 18 (july 14th) | [trailer] a simple walk into mordor: part 2 week 19 (july 21st) | camp camp week 20 (july 28th) | [prologue] red vs blue: restoration (series finale)

an asterisk (*) means there's bonus content for the labeled video that's unfortunately exclusive to the rt site, with hard mode's bonus video being behind a paywall, for some reason

note: the rvb restoration prologue came out on youtube on july 8th, but i chose to keep the date as the 28th because that's when it was supposed to come out. i didn't know it was released earlier on purpose until i was lucky enough to see an explanation from an rt employee on reddit, of all places:

[catwafers]

happy dl-6 day. here’s edgeworth reading fanfiction.

made for @juryzines Steel Samurai zine!

(transcript under the cut)

"I can tell you're suffering," pleaded the Steel Samurai. "I don't want to fight you! Let me help you!"

"Hmph." The Evil Magistrate dismissed the Samurai's plea. "You can't help me. Get out of my sight!"

"I can't just ignore you! Ever since we were kids, I..."

"You don't know me... you don't know about my inner darkness... I don't need your pity!" The Evil Magistrate turned away. The Steel Samurai could swear he saw a tear rolling down the Magistrate's cheek...

"Wait!" the Samurai cried, grabbing the Magistrate's wrist before he could get away, pivoting the man back toward him.

The Steel Samurai cupped the Magistrate's face in his hand, using his thumb to stroke his pointy moustache. "I can't leave you alone, Mag." The childhood nickname sent a pang through the Magistrate's heart.

The Magistrate looked into the Samurai's steely orbs, beautifully shining in the moonlight. The Samurai leaned forward, and gently met the Magistrate's lips with his own.

The two of them wished this moment would last forever.

Abruptly, the Magistrate pushed the Samurai away. "We can't." He couldn't meet the Samurai's gaze. "We're enemies."

"We don't have to be." His voice was soft.

"No... it is our destiny for us to fight. The next time we meet, it will be as enemies."

The Evil Magistrate disappeared from sight. A chilly breeze blew through Neo Olde Tokyo.

"Mag... I..."

[frostiecake]

Lazy doodles of SDV cats+friends ocs

Bea is mine!

Aya is @potatoaiisle

Meg and Ebony is @megmischief

[crossrole-undertaleau]

MY WALL OF ART (help I am almost out of room)

Lol this is only some of my favorite art (more recent stuff is on the side with the stay determined poster I made)

[zerootherian]

Kylar asking PC (Mike) if he can smile considering he rarely smiles so much

[cemeterysquids]

just got my wisdom teeth out and now my mouth feels swollen & awful. so naturally i draw siffrin about it

[ultipoter]

Volo's little laughs in Pokemon Masters have me in iron grip, I simply had to illustrate how I pictured them

the humming is so good. It's so good.

[averageludwig]

yamza dump ,,, again,, They are literally all i draw now a days help 😭shouts out to ao3 writers feeding me content of them 🙏🏽 might draw art of one of my fav fics soon who knows

[chillincreative]

why does "nightcore" mean "fast and high-pitched"? whose night is that meant to reflect? rats?

[halibellecter]

Yes, my freelancer oc is a medic.......

.......but don't worry, she isn't a very good one.

[ada-barisi]

HELLO IS ANYONE STILL ACTIVE IN THE BARISI WORLD I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS???????

[the-takosader]

So, What Next?

Yeah, the title says everything: what's next in my adventures with guitar? Well, there's a few ideas on the table.

And by "a few", I mean "I've got 5 total ideas and they're all fighting for dominance." I wish that were false, but here we are.

So, let's list each one, front to back.

Fender Marauder build

Attempting to recreate John Lennon's modded Les Paul Jr. from a kit

Gretsch Country Gentleman build

Telecaster Bass VI build

Getting (and subsequently modding) an Epiphone Casino.

To fuck with logic and sensibility, let's go from the bottom and work our way up. Also, warning to everyone: this is going to be a VERY long post.

Epiphone Casino mod

You might recognise the Epiphone Casino from when I talked about my first project on here: the Fretless Stratocaster (which I'm hoping to refinish at some point).

The Casino is what I wanted to work with originally as a kit, instead of the Strat that I ended up using. However, I discovered something: you can't actually get a thinline hollow-body guitar as a kit because it's likely (not 100% on this) too niche of an interest for a first - or second-time builder.

This, as you could probably guess, was a massive disappointment to 16-year-old me, but now, 2 years later, I've kinda stopped with the whole "kitbash" thing. I know I listed the LPJr. kit build above, but that's gonna be a hell of a thing to do. More on that later.

Anyway, why would I buy instead of build in this case? To answer that, we need to talk about parallel universes the feasibility of making a fully hollow guitar, from scratch. Also capitalism.

So, what does building a hollow-body guitar actually entail? Well, I'm glad you asked, dear reader, because, as it turns out, quite a hell of a lot goes into building one. First, you have to have a veneer press. Yes, seriously. Why? Because you'll never get a solid top on a guitar that looks like this:

Now, this isn't to say that there aren't solid-top electric semi/fully hollow guitars out there. I'd venture to guess that Höfner do a bunch, just because they do both violins and guitars & basses. In fact, I know the Violin Bass (500/1 my beloved) has a solid spruce top, just because I've spent way too much time checking Thomann to see what they have in stock. But that's neither here nor there.

The Casino has a 5-ply maple body. Yes, five. That's 5 sheets of wood for the top, sides and back, which are pressed into formation to make the Casino. If I remember correctly, the top is made of a veneer sandwich of maple and poplar. I could be wrong, or I could be thinking of what Gibson have done. Either one is possible.

Anyway, where does capitalism come into this? It comes in when you ask "How much would all of this cost?" The short answer is "more than it'd be worth to do it." Not only do you have to find how to press veneers together in such a way that you can make the arched (yes, the top is pressed into its arch, it's not carved out) top, but you also have to source the equipment required to do so, and the veneers themselves. It's way too much hassle, money, and general effort for what would generally be a one-off build.

So that's why I'm not approaching the Casino from the angle of building it. Now, onto what I'd actually do to the thing.

Y'ever wonder why Gibson/Epiphone never stuck a PAF in the ES-330/Casino? I have! There's no definite answer to the question, sadly. In my personal opinion, I think it's because they were too scared to try it. It could, just as easily, be that they tried that, and came to the conclusion that it just didn't work, but I personally prefer the idea that it's the former, because Gibson haven't done shit in terms of new stuff. And before you reply with "What about the Theodore," may I remind you that that was stuffed in McCarty's desk for a reason (that being that it's fucking ugly jfc Gibson).

But yeah, this is the main plan: get a Casino, take out the old P90s, and put something like these things in there. Best part, the dogear covers are curved for such use!

Okay, Moving On.

The Telecaster Bass VI

This one is slightly more unique than the Casino build.

So, you remember the Cherry Telecaster XII build? Yeah, the one that required the use of a separate guitar body. I haven't got rid of that original body. It's still sat, waiting to be used. So, what's the plan?

I have some spare parts that I was so graciously given, including a set of tuning machines, a set of Telecaster pickups, ash-tray and saddles. These will all get used in the process of building the TB6. But you might be wondering - what about the neck?

Y'see, the interesting thing about this is that I want to gain experience in building guitars, not just cobbling together kits and calling it a day. I want to learn how to make a guitar from scratch. Part of that, in turn, means learning how to cut and shape a neck, and how to actually do frets.

This is where the kitbashing was supposed to end. However, I got kinda invested in the whole Lennon Les Paul Jr. thing, and that's my hard cutoff point in this case. I hope.

But enough about that, what does this actually entail?

The build entails constructing a neck from scratch, mainly, and modding the remaining pieces in order to smoothly fit the spare parts. That's it.

There's also the deal about finishes, personal touches and all that funk, jazz, and funky jazz, but the main thing to keep in mind is that this is kinda a one-off, and I'll most likely make shit up as I go. That's why this section is so much shorter than the previous one.

Next on the list...

Gretsch Country Gentleman build

This one is a shelved build, but still on the list.

The Gretsch Country Gentleman (numbered as the G6122 by Gretsch) is the signature model of guitar for the late Chet Atkins, one of the most famous American country guitarists of the mid-to-late 1950s.

It also costs, brand new, US$3,499. As much as I like the sound of the guitar, I don't want to even touch that price point, because JESUS CHRIST that's expensive. So what's the next best thing? Why, building it, of course?

Here, we run into the same issue as with the Casino: materials and methods being really expensive. But where the Casino costs less than a grand, this costs US$3,499. In this case, it's worth it.

The Country Gentleman has more documentation, as well as features, so let's run through those:

Bigsby B6 vibrato tailpiece

2 Filter'Trons (TV Jones Classics, in this case)

Mudswitch

Pickup selector

Standby switch

Flip-up foam mutes

Roller bridge for added tuning stability

ElectroTone body (thinline chambered hollow body)

Zero fret

Grover Imperial tuners

For a non-guitar nerd, that might sound weird. Let me break it further down.

The mudswitch has 3 options: no tone circuit factored in (bright as can be), ~9 on a tone knob, and ~5 on a tone knob; the standby switch cuts the signal from the guitar when you don't want your guitar making noise (like in between songs on a live set); the flip-up mutes allow the simulation of palm muting while not needing your hand to constantly rest on the bridge.

As for the rest of the features, they're not exactly important, and also, did I mention that this was a shelved project? The whole reason is that there's a little too much required work for right now.

Next!

Attempting to Recreate John Lennon's Les Paul Junior from a kit

This one is far easier, because most of the leg-work is already done for me.

Firstly, there was a recreation of his Junior back in 2007, done by Gibson themselves, so I can at least take from that to recreate it to my tastes. Secondly, I've a kit to bash this out of, so I can do most of the work without worrying about the rest of the guitar.

One small issue, however - this is the real thing:

Image source: https://www.mattsguitar.shop/en/vendues/gibson-custom-les-paul-junior-john-lennon

Now, you may be wondering, "Hey, um, what the fuck's that pickup in the neck?" That, my friend, is a recreation of the first electric pickup Gibson ever made: the Charlie Christian pickup.

It's technically the ES-150 pickup, designed in 1936, and gaining its common name through the wholesale adoption by famous jazz and bebop guitarist Charlie Christian. Sit back, folks, this one's a doozy.

The original pickups were built using 2 cobalt steel bar magnets, as AlNiCo magnets weren't widespread knowledge at the time, and were used to not only hold the pickup together, but also keep it attached to the top of the guitar. Remember, this was Gibson's first electric pickup, the P90 wouldn't be invented for another 10 years.

They were also wound with an incredibly thick gauge of wire: 38awg. In comparison, modern pickups are wound with either 42 or 43awg. It's not like extreme wire gauges weren't common at the time - Rickenbacker were using 53awg for their pickups for a long while. The only reason they stopped is because they hand-wound their pickups, and 53awg is such an incredibly thin wire, it's prone to breaking with incredible ease.

Anyway, because the pickup uses such large magnets and large wire coils, it's actually rather inefficient. Due to this, it only averaged out a DC resistance of 2.5-4k Ohms, with examples of 1.1-1.5k Ohms being very common.

Now, that's all fine, nor is it my issue. My issue is with the pickup that was used, because he somehow found a lefty pickup??? and he put it in the neck position upside down?????

Okay that needs explaining. How do I know it's a lefty pickup? Because it has this little notch where it'd pass under the B string. You'll find the same sorta thing on a Strat pickup, the pole under the B string is much lower than the others. But the thing about this is that the gap just... goes under the A string instead??? Either John got real lucky, or he asked Gibson to make him one. And either way, I cannot find one that could replicate that, which is why this build is an attempt at a replica.

Okay, last, but CERTAINLY not least.

Fender Marauder build

This one is much less of a doozy than the pickup and the Les Paul Junior. Let's dive in.

First, I need to explain one concept - the offset guitar body. Leo Fender, by all measures, was Fucking Insane by guitar standards. In a good way, that is. He designed the Fender company's biggest guitars just on the concept of improving through feedback. Take the Stratocaster for example: that was designed based on the feedback of wanting:

a vibrato system that could do what the Bigsby could, then return to tuning with ease.

individually adjustable saddles.

a more comfortable body than the slab of the Telecaster.

That's where the Strat came from, but where'd Leo get the idea for this thing, then?

In short, it was Leo getting further into the whole "improvements" thing. Larger pickups for a more defined response, a lead/rhythm circuit that emphasised an individual pickup in the switching, with which the volume and tone became pickup-specific, and a vibrato that was, in theory, easier to use and produce, meaning no need for back routing.

And y'know, he didn't get rid of everything from the Strat. He kept the body contours, the individually adjustible saddles, but he made one interesting change: the body wasn't aligned anymore. Notice the parts where the body curves inwards, around the waist of the guitar. That's the offset.

And, to his credit, the Jazzmaster was the first example of the offset guitar, with the biggest competitor (Gibson) not making a response until 5 years later, in 1963. Their response, being the Thunderbird bass and Firebird guitar, were the first example of a reverse offset, where the lower half of the guitar is more prominent than the upper half.

It was also designed by Ray Dietrich if you're wondering why it looks so off for a guitar. It's barely even offset!

So anyway, the Jazzmaster was the first of many offsets that Fender produced. There was also the:

Jazz Bass

Jaguar

Bass VI

Mustang

Electric XII

Marauder

Now, most of these have become mainstays of the Fender/Squier line-up over the years, except for that last one - the Marauder. Why? Because the Marauder never saw full production, and all the prototypes ended up going into the personal collection of Quilla "Porky" Freeman. A few have appeared here and there since then, but the model never got its time in the limelight.

Oh, sure there was the Modern Player Marauder back in 2010, but good golly gosh, wouldn't you believe it, that got none of the unique features!

Let's compare what it could have been to what it ended up as.

The Type II (2 different images because of the different headstocks)...

And the Modern Player.

Yeah, it's not exactly a competition between them in terms of features. It got done dirty with the reisue.

In case you're confused:

The Marauder was to have individual 3-mode pickup switching, but got shafted with this 5-way blade switch

Planned to have a Mustang vibrato, but got a 6-screw Strat-style trem. I know the Type 1 prototype had the Strat-style trem, but come on, you could stand to at least give it something more unique.

Was to have a lead/rhythm circuit and a standby/kill switch, and got neither one.

Yeah, the Modern Player Marauder holds nary a candle to the prototypes.

So what's my plans for this build? There's many things in my head related to this, from finish and colour to what I'm going to make it with to whether or not I want to make this kinda Red Special-ish with a zero fret and a floating tremolo, or just use a Mustang vibrato.

I do, however, know what I want to do with the pickups! I have a third pickup from the person who gave me the pair of Telecaster pickups, a hot-rodded Broadcaster bridge pickup, which you can probably guess where that's going. However, what about the other 2 pickups?

As the middle pickup, I was thinking a Burns Tri-Sonic (the same pickup as the Red Special), but I'm not sure on the neck pickup. Maybe a Wide-Range Humbucker? Or maybe a PAF copy? It's a series of long and hard thoughts in this case.

So yeah, that's everything! Keep in mind that this is always subject to change. You'd be surprised what goes on in my head to do stuff like this.