There needs to be a name for a piece of advice, given as part of a programme, that almost everyone would not be able to follow, and so, when they complain that the programme “doesn’t work”, the guru can say “Did you do the thing I put in there that I know almost nobody every does?” and you say “No, because almost nobody can” and the guru says “Well, that’s the most important part of the programme”.
In the self-improvement / recovery business, that thing is usually “sleep hygiene”. This says we should go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, and get at least five full circadian cycles of sleep, waking up from shallow sleep. Everyone’s circadian cycle is different in length, and the default number is 90 minutes.
Now think this through. You have to go to work. Starts at (say) 09:00, but it’s best to get there around 08:30 so you get a seat in the open-plan office. Say it’s an hour’s commute. So that’s 07:30. An hour for dressing, breakfast, showering and the like, 06:30 wake-up time. Seven and a half hours’ sleep plus dozing-off time, means getting into bed at 22:30 the previous evening. That means you’re winding down - no exciting TV or we-need-to-talk conversations - around 22:00. You left work at 17:30, were on the gym floor at 18:00, exercised and showered and on your way home at 19:15, arriving home at 20:15, leaving you 105 minutes to deal with life at home. Maybe you caught a movie at 18:30, which stopped at 20:30, so you were home at 21:30-ish, and straight into your wind-down routine. Weekends? You’re up at 06:30 while the rest of the world doesn’t even get started until about 10:00.
What you didn’t do was go to the theatre at 19:30, because that’s letting you out at 21:15 or so, adds fifteen minutes to the commute, so you’re home at 22:30, and oops! Nope.
Sleep hygiene is often incorporated into self-improvement and recovery programmes. Not because sleeping consistently is good for you (though it is), but because of all the things you stop doing in order to sleep consistently. No more late nights. No more parties. No theatre, ballet, concerts, gigs, or Above and Beyond all-dayer’s. No drinks after work. No chasing after potential partners of your preference. No weekend city breaks (what is the point of going to any major European city if you’re not going to party?).
It’s a terrific way for people who want to minimise their contact with the rest of the human race to do just that. I’d love to join you, but pumpkin time comes early for me.
Usually those same recovery programmes will suggest that one spend more time with friends, family and “like-minded people”. Rub that tummy while patting the head of your sleep hygiene.
Also, try sleep hygiene when you have young children. Or you have to deal with your partner’s snoring / restless leg / need to start sharing when you get to bed.
Nah. Sleep hygiene for regular people with actual lives is, well, aspirational.
We’re not supposed to practice sleep hygiene, anymore than we’re supposed to abstain from alcohol and sex. Abstaining from any of those is for people like me who would be far worse off if we indulged. Sleep hygiene, like sobriety, is either a productivity hack (for e.g. athletes) or for messed-up people who need to avoid screwing-up. It’s not for regular people.
Real people are supposed to get tipsy and laid from time to time, and they are supposed to be short of sleep now and again.
What they are not supposed to be is permanently sleep-deprived, running on six or less hours of sleep a day. That has all sorts of horrible effects on our short-term functioning. But sleep hygiene does not, take it from me, have all sorts of beneficial effects on short-term functioning: one does not feel better, one just doesn’t feel worse.
So given the unrealistic demands it makes, why is it included in self-improvement or recovery advice?
So the gurus can blame you for not following the programme when you tell them it isn’t working.
Tuesday, 9 July 2024
Friday, 5 July 2024
Why We Take “Government Advice” - But Shouldn’t
I swear if I read the phrase “according to experts” I will write a letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph suggesting that they ban the phrase, and substitute instead the name, rank, recent relevant publications, and commercial or State affiliations of the “expert”. Something like
Okay. Rant over.
There is a serious side to this. The concept of expertise was philosophicalised (which is now a word, meaning, made the subject of a philosophical investigation or enquiry) by Hubert Dreyfus in a series of essays, in which he laid out a five-level characterisation of skilfulness at a task. It has since been abused beyond belief by HR departments and Training Consultants.
Dreyfus was arguing that the so-called “expert systems” (the ‘computers will replace knowledge workers’ hype of the time) could never replicate the actual decision-making of human experts, becuase truly expert decision-making was highly contextual, used implicit knowledge (in the sense of Polyani’s book with the same title), and could not be distilled into rules.
As a description of how experienced, knowledgeable, organisationally-senior doctors made decisions, he was right. Where he was wrong was assuming that they made better decisions because of it. What little research there is suggests that younger doctors, who are nearer to their up-to-date training, make better decisions than more experienced doctors who have not kept up with the research.
He was, I suspect, over-impressed, as many were at the time, by the confidence of senior medical people. Dreyfus formulated his ideas in the late 1970’s (published in 1980), since when public expectations have risen to the point where today, too many of us have too many examples of friends and colleagues being mis-diagnosed, ignored, and given the wrong treatments and drugs. The NHS has become notorious for its hounding of whistleblowers, and also spending millions on NDAs. We can assume that, if there ever was a time when Consultants were diagnostic giants striding the wards, it is well past.
So the “implicit expertise” Dreyfus described is a myth, but the manner of making decisions he describes as “expert” is surely still with us. I would simply remove “Expert”, with its unavoidable overtones of superior diagnostic performance, from the Dreyfus classification, and add a note to the “Proficient” description that, with time, much of the decision-making and task performance will become more nuanced, seem to be more case-by-case, and almost unconscious. In addition, however, those people have about the same success rate (and its variation over time) as people who make their decisions more consciously.
Dreyfus’ point about limits to the development of AI / Expert Systems still stands. What does not stand is his implict praise for the “Expert” way of practicing.
The lesson of the last twenty or so years, in every profession from banking to public health, is that experts are fallible, and sometimes more-than-fallible. The usual solution is to introduce regulatory guidelines, which will amongst other things, require decisions to be made in a transparent, systematic way that may in addition incorporate compliance with purely political considerations, such as equality legislation. In addition, the lawyers will prefer some kind of documentary proof that these regulatory requirements were followed. This, of course, imposes a bureaucratic overhead of work on the productive staff.
In a technically and legally complex economy, no one person can ever become well-informed enough to take responsibility for all of their decisions. Just as we cannot test every egg for salmonella (nor could we afford the equipment), we cannot understand every tax law, nor everything to do with the working of our cars, let alone anything to do with medical treatment. We have to be able to “take someone’s word for it” and not then become liable for doing so - as long as it is the right kind of person. The principle we need is that competently following “expert advice” absolves one from liability if something goes wrong as the result of the competent application of that advice.
The law define who the “experts” are, whose word we may take on trust. For cars, that is a manufacturer-certified mechanic. For food, it is a licensed retailer. For medical purposes, a GP or Consultant. Within a company, it will be one’s manager, as within the Armed Forces it is one’s superior officer. These people do not absolve one of liability because they are right, but because the law or institutional practice says they do.
On this principle, “Government advice” is not taken because it is right, but because being able to prove that one followed it competently is an absolute defence.
It would be nice if “government advice” was given because it was right, or at least based on the best available evidence and thinking, but of course it is almost invariably wrong. It must be politically acceptable, within the abilities and pockets of most of the population, does not commit Government to spending more money, and is seen to be coming from the “right” sources, which will be members of the Establishment, or, and this is where the trouble starts, “experts” whom the Civil Service are prepared to listen to. The resulting compromises and ideological influences, as well as industry and single-issue group lobbying, almost guarantee bad decisions.
Who should the Government be listening to? One would think, to the people who know most about the issue, who have studied its past and how other countries have dealt with it. Who have recently conducted research about it, and whose papers are cited with respect by other researchers. And whose computer models produce the same answer twice in a row given the same inputs (rather than professors at Imperial College). The “experts”. Who can be cited by Ministers, who are therefore absolved from responsibility. Because they followed the “experts”.
Here’s the Catch-22. If there were a small range of solutions to an problem, that could be packaged up and made available to the public at an affordable price, which would happen if this issue recurred frequently and affected a large number of people, then… well, the private sector would be selling those solutions already and the Government would not need to get involved.
The Government gets involved when the issue is new, infrequently occurring, has a horrendous cost, and there is limited experience and research to draw on. This will mean that there are many competing theories about the causes and remedies, and no way to decide quickly between them. Advice in these cases will require significant technical understanding to evaluate. This is what the Chief Medical and Scientific Officers (and their staffs) were set up to do, but the world has become far too complicated for that to work. And often in these cases, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Sadly, in these circumstances, what Governments need is certainty. Even if it comes from people who have produced appallingly inaccurate forecasts before, and whose social and political agendas are barely hidden under their shirts.
And this is how activists capture Government. Not by attacking Whitehall and Westminster with guns and ammunition, but with policy papers, advice, “research” by fellow-travelling academics, and PR campaigns, that are as certain as they are false, and passionate as they are obsessive.
Hence the need to identify the anonymous “experts” who make eye-catching claims with immediate political relevance.
Which is where we came in.
Dr Misha Andry (54), Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Carlisle, a subscriber to the Guardian, a member of Greenpeace and of the National Trust, whose most recent publications have been on the transmission of sexual diseases in gerbils.This sort of thing should be willingly provided by the “expert” and is often available on WIkipedia or LinkedIn.
Okay. Rant over.
There is a serious side to this. The concept of expertise was philosophicalised (which is now a word, meaning, made the subject of a philosophical investigation or enquiry) by Hubert Dreyfus in a series of essays, in which he laid out a five-level characterisation of skilfulness at a task. It has since been abused beyond belief by HR departments and Training Consultants.
Dreyfus was arguing that the so-called “expert systems” (the ‘computers will replace knowledge workers’ hype of the time) could never replicate the actual decision-making of human experts, becuase truly expert decision-making was highly contextual, used implicit knowledge (in the sense of Polyani’s book with the same title), and could not be distilled into rules.
As a description of how experienced, knowledgeable, organisationally-senior doctors made decisions, he was right. Where he was wrong was assuming that they made better decisions because of it. What little research there is suggests that younger doctors, who are nearer to their up-to-date training, make better decisions than more experienced doctors who have not kept up with the research.
He was, I suspect, over-impressed, as many were at the time, by the confidence of senior medical people. Dreyfus formulated his ideas in the late 1970’s (published in 1980), since when public expectations have risen to the point where today, too many of us have too many examples of friends and colleagues being mis-diagnosed, ignored, and given the wrong treatments and drugs. The NHS has become notorious for its hounding of whistleblowers, and also spending millions on NDAs. We can assume that, if there ever was a time when Consultants were diagnostic giants striding the wards, it is well past.
So the “implicit expertise” Dreyfus described is a myth, but the manner of making decisions he describes as “expert” is surely still with us. I would simply remove “Expert”, with its unavoidable overtones of superior diagnostic performance, from the Dreyfus classification, and add a note to the “Proficient” description that, with time, much of the decision-making and task performance will become more nuanced, seem to be more case-by-case, and almost unconscious. In addition, however, those people have about the same success rate (and its variation over time) as people who make their decisions more consciously.
Dreyfus’ point about limits to the development of AI / Expert Systems still stands. What does not stand is his implict praise for the “Expert” way of practicing.
The lesson of the last twenty or so years, in every profession from banking to public health, is that experts are fallible, and sometimes more-than-fallible. The usual solution is to introduce regulatory guidelines, which will amongst other things, require decisions to be made in a transparent, systematic way that may in addition incorporate compliance with purely political considerations, such as equality legislation. In addition, the lawyers will prefer some kind of documentary proof that these regulatory requirements were followed. This, of course, imposes a bureaucratic overhead of work on the productive staff.
In a technically and legally complex economy, no one person can ever become well-informed enough to take responsibility for all of their decisions. Just as we cannot test every egg for salmonella (nor could we afford the equipment), we cannot understand every tax law, nor everything to do with the working of our cars, let alone anything to do with medical treatment. We have to be able to “take someone’s word for it” and not then become liable for doing so - as long as it is the right kind of person. The principle we need is that competently following “expert advice” absolves one from liability if something goes wrong as the result of the competent application of that advice.
The law define who the “experts” are, whose word we may take on trust. For cars, that is a manufacturer-certified mechanic. For food, it is a licensed retailer. For medical purposes, a GP or Consultant. Within a company, it will be one’s manager, as within the Armed Forces it is one’s superior officer. These people do not absolve one of liability because they are right, but because the law or institutional practice says they do.
On this principle, “Government advice” is not taken because it is right, but because being able to prove that one followed it competently is an absolute defence.
It would be nice if “government advice” was given because it was right, or at least based on the best available evidence and thinking, but of course it is almost invariably wrong. It must be politically acceptable, within the abilities and pockets of most of the population, does not commit Government to spending more money, and is seen to be coming from the “right” sources, which will be members of the Establishment, or, and this is where the trouble starts, “experts” whom the Civil Service are prepared to listen to. The resulting compromises and ideological influences, as well as industry and single-issue group lobbying, almost guarantee bad decisions.
Who should the Government be listening to? One would think, to the people who know most about the issue, who have studied its past and how other countries have dealt with it. Who have recently conducted research about it, and whose papers are cited with respect by other researchers. And whose computer models produce the same answer twice in a row given the same inputs (rather than professors at Imperial College). The “experts”. Who can be cited by Ministers, who are therefore absolved from responsibility. Because they followed the “experts”.
Here’s the Catch-22. If there were a small range of solutions to an problem, that could be packaged up and made available to the public at an affordable price, which would happen if this issue recurred frequently and affected a large number of people, then… well, the private sector would be selling those solutions already and the Government would not need to get involved.
The Government gets involved when the issue is new, infrequently occurring, has a horrendous cost, and there is limited experience and research to draw on. This will mean that there are many competing theories about the causes and remedies, and no way to decide quickly between them. Advice in these cases will require significant technical understanding to evaluate. This is what the Chief Medical and Scientific Officers (and their staffs) were set up to do, but the world has become far too complicated for that to work. And often in these cases, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Sadly, in these circumstances, what Governments need is certainty. Even if it comes from people who have produced appallingly inaccurate forecasts before, and whose social and political agendas are barely hidden under their shirts.
And this is how activists capture Government. Not by attacking Whitehall and Westminster with guns and ammunition, but with policy papers, advice, “research” by fellow-travelling academics, and PR campaigns, that are as certain as they are false, and passionate as they are obsessive.
Hence the need to identify the anonymous “experts” who make eye-catching claims with immediate political relevance.
Which is where we came in.
Thursday, 4 July 2024
Tuesday, 2 July 2024
Apple’s Computational Photography Strikes Again
These iPhone cameras can verge on the hallucinatory now and again. The detail in this photograph is way greater than it was in my eyes at the time.
Friday, 28 June 2024
First Guitar Lesson
It’s been a long time since I got in the car and drove anywhere except the local supermarket or Richmond. I choose one of the hotter days of the year to do it, and there were works on a road which is notorious for not moving very quickly at the best of times. I made it to the tutor’s place about fifteen minutes late. Fortunately his schedule was not rammed.
We had an introductory chat, and he made approving noises about my Epiphone Les Paul - it does look good. I plugged into a solid-state Marshall (which had a far better clean tone at conversational volumes than my Katana) and we set off on Samba Pa Ti. We had settled on it during our back-and-forth of messages.
This is the first time in many, many years another person has been in the room while I played.
There are many reasons for having a tutor, and many more lessons to be learned than which notes go in what order. Some background: classical music has definitive scores because composers wrote what they wanted playing. The score is the music, all the rest is interpretation. Jazz, rock, folk and most everything else by contrast does not even have a definitive recording. There’s the album version, the version on the later release of out-takes, four versions on You Tube, and the legendary version they played at the (insert name of concert hall here). Very often in these genres there is no sheet music, and if there is, it can be unreliable. So even today, if you want to learn a song, sure look for the sheet music, but you may well find a good recording and learn from that. It’s what the younger jazz players did in the 1950’s.
If you have perfect pitch or a well-trained ear, and an amount of patience. My tutor has a well-trained ear. I made a note to get back to doing ear training.
There are other things as well. Until then I had only suspected that the chords in pop-music sheet music were… ummm… directional. My tutor was quite clear that the scores and tab charts available on the big-name sites such as Ultimate Guitar had enough errors to be an actual waste of time. (I rather like the look of the regular notation on MuseScore, and they are having a June Sale. I may do that.)
Teachers today are very different from they were when I was a pupil. They go in for making encouraging remarks, instead of saving the grudging praise for Christmas. Mine was no different. At the end he told me I was (by the standard of the pupils he has, granted) a “good guitarist”. I’m going to interpret that as meaning that my technique and knowledge of theory is enough for rock ‘n roll. (Which actually has quite high standards these days.) Which I will take as meaning I should concentrate on the music, rather than learning yet more scales or chords.
I came away with four bits of homework: unison bends; ear training; using my third finger to make a barre in the middle of the fretboard; polishing Samba Pa Ti.
The next lesson is booked in.
We had an introductory chat, and he made approving noises about my Epiphone Les Paul - it does look good. I plugged into a solid-state Marshall (which had a far better clean tone at conversational volumes than my Katana) and we set off on Samba Pa Ti. We had settled on it during our back-and-forth of messages.
This is the first time in many, many years another person has been in the room while I played.
There are many reasons for having a tutor, and many more lessons to be learned than which notes go in what order. Some background: classical music has definitive scores because composers wrote what they wanted playing. The score is the music, all the rest is interpretation. Jazz, rock, folk and most everything else by contrast does not even have a definitive recording. There’s the album version, the version on the later release of out-takes, four versions on You Tube, and the legendary version they played at the (insert name of concert hall here). Very often in these genres there is no sheet music, and if there is, it can be unreliable. So even today, if you want to learn a song, sure look for the sheet music, but you may well find a good recording and learn from that. It’s what the younger jazz players did in the 1950’s.
If you have perfect pitch or a well-trained ear, and an amount of patience. My tutor has a well-trained ear. I made a note to get back to doing ear training.
There are other things as well. Until then I had only suspected that the chords in pop-music sheet music were… ummm… directional. My tutor was quite clear that the scores and tab charts available on the big-name sites such as Ultimate Guitar had enough errors to be an actual waste of time. (I rather like the look of the regular notation on MuseScore, and they are having a June Sale. I may do that.)
Teachers today are very different from they were when I was a pupil. They go in for making encouraging remarks, instead of saving the grudging praise for Christmas. Mine was no different. At the end he told me I was (by the standard of the pupils he has, granted) a “good guitarist”. I’m going to interpret that as meaning that my technique and knowledge of theory is enough for rock ‘n roll. (Which actually has quite high standards these days.) Which I will take as meaning I should concentrate on the music, rather than learning yet more scales or chords.
I came away with four bits of homework: unison bends; ear training; using my third finger to make a barre in the middle of the fretboard; polishing Samba Pa Ti.
The next lesson is booked in.
Tuesday, 25 June 2024
Finding A Guitar Tutor
I had my first guitar lesson a few days ago.
I have been looking at guitar tutors in my area. There are a couple of websites they all seem to use - tutorful.co.uk and musicteachers.co.uk - and Google found me those.
The tutors are mostly younger (which is ‘under 35’ to me), offer roughly the same range of subjects, and have varying degrees of experience playing professionally and of teaching. All very solid, I felt, but something was missing.
I didn’t want to do ABRSM - I sat my last exam in my twenties and have no intention of doing any more - and I don’t want to learn jazz either. Music-school jazz is journey-man’s music: an all-purpose technique to make familiar sounds over the chords of any song. Which is not to detract from the considerable skills required, and the musical creativity of the very best of the musicians. But that’s the point: all the rest of them cats sound the same. If I want to learn some obscure chord changes and the weird scales that go with it, I can get the music and
Then I ran across one tutor who mentioned “becoming a competent songwriter”, and all doubts left my body. Yep, even if I never actually write a single darn song, that’s what my aim is. I’m a writer of words, not a speaker of them; I’m likely a writer of music (my heavens that sounds pretentious) rather than a performer.
Having found a tutor, you send them a message describing briefly what you are looking for, they reply and you back and forth for a bit, until one of you pulls the trigger and suggests arranging a lesson. So that’s what we did.
More of this to follow.
I have been looking at guitar tutors in my area. There are a couple of websites they all seem to use - tutorful.co.uk and musicteachers.co.uk - and Google found me those.
The tutors are mostly younger (which is ‘under 35’ to me), offer roughly the same range of subjects, and have varying degrees of experience playing professionally and of teaching. All very solid, I felt, but something was missing.
I didn’t want to do ABRSM - I sat my last exam in my twenties and have no intention of doing any more - and I don’t want to learn jazz either. Music-school jazz is journey-man’s music: an all-purpose technique to make familiar sounds over the chords of any song. Which is not to detract from the considerable skills required, and the musical creativity of the very best of the musicians. But that’s the point: all the rest of them cats sound the same. If I want to learn some obscure chord changes and the weird scales that go with it, I can get the music and
Then I ran across one tutor who mentioned “becoming a competent songwriter”, and all doubts left my body. Yep, even if I never actually write a single darn song, that’s what my aim is. I’m a writer of words, not a speaker of them; I’m likely a writer of music (my heavens that sounds pretentious) rather than a performer.
Having found a tutor, you send them a message describing briefly what you are looking for, they reply and you back and forth for a bit, until one of you pulls the trigger and suggests arranging a lesson. So that’s what we did.
More of this to follow.
Friday, 21 June 2024
PRS NF3 SE and Other Thoughts
The PRS NF3 SE was officially released this very day (19/6/24). It’s up for order on Anderton’s and GuitarGuitar. Every YT guitar channel has a review. I’m going to enter it for new product launch of the year 2024. Man, PRS’s marketing people are slick.
Everyone reviewing it said almost the same thing about it - which would okay if they were just talking specs, but they also said the same things about it. Almost as if the PR company sent them a press kit, or they were all watching each other, and nobody wanted to disagree. From what I gather, the PRS online media relations people really seem to know what they’re doing - way better than the Big Two. (And none of the other guitar makers seem to give a darn if anyone reviews their gear.)
However, when they played it? Everyone made it sound different. One reviewer was playing it through a setup almost as clean as a Roland Jazz Chorus, others had some edge-of-breakup, others did a here’s-clean-and-here’s distortion. And it sounded different every time. It didn’t seem to have a sound of its own on which to build other sounds. (And yes, I have liked the sounds of other PRS’s.)
For those who don’t know, a Les Paul sounds like a Les Paul, whether it’s made by Gibson, Epiphone, PRS or anyone else, and whether you’re playing it clean, dirty, at the neck, at the bridge, or whatever. The double-humbuckers have a unique depth and oomph of sound. At the other extreme, a Strat sounds like a Strat no matter who makes it and how it’s played, and it has an neat, clean edge to its sound. Every other solid-body guitar is in-between those two. (And sure, in a blind test no-one can tell the difference between a Russian acoustic ukulele and an American-made Les Paul through a Marshall stack, but that’s just science…)
On paper, I liked the idea of the NF3 SE. SE means it’s the sub-£1,000 version, NF3 refers to having three narrow humbucking pickups. It’s an S-style body with a five-way selector switch. During most of the reviews, I could tell the difference between bridge and neck positions, but I wasn’t sure I could notice the change from one position to the next.
As I’m learning my way round the effects in the HX Effects - what works, what doesn’t - I’m coming to see the guitar as a note-generator, rather than the origin of all tone. In that sense, what matters is the strength of the signal and the overtones it generates.
The day before the NF3 SE reviews, I had three guitars on my list: Fender / Squier Jazzmaster; PRS John Meyer SE; PRS NF3 SE. That has gone down to two now. Amps, if you’re wondering, are between a Fender Blues Junior or a Roland JC-22. At low volumes, the amp can’t be used to get “tones”. So the idea is to have a clean amp (or studio monitors or FRFR speakers) into which to push already messed-up signals from the effects units.
I do think about gear upgrades, but every time I get even close to buying anything, I have a serious session with the HX Effects and get better tones out of the current gear.
Right now I have some monster tones - but that’s another story.
Everyone reviewing it said almost the same thing about it - which would okay if they were just talking specs, but they also said the same things about it. Almost as if the PR company sent them a press kit, or they were all watching each other, and nobody wanted to disagree. From what I gather, the PRS online media relations people really seem to know what they’re doing - way better than the Big Two. (And none of the other guitar makers seem to give a darn if anyone reviews their gear.)
However, when they played it? Everyone made it sound different. One reviewer was playing it through a setup almost as clean as a Roland Jazz Chorus, others had some edge-of-breakup, others did a here’s-clean-and-here’s distortion. And it sounded different every time. It didn’t seem to have a sound of its own on which to build other sounds. (And yes, I have liked the sounds of other PRS’s.)
For those who don’t know, a Les Paul sounds like a Les Paul, whether it’s made by Gibson, Epiphone, PRS or anyone else, and whether you’re playing it clean, dirty, at the neck, at the bridge, or whatever. The double-humbuckers have a unique depth and oomph of sound. At the other extreme, a Strat sounds like a Strat no matter who makes it and how it’s played, and it has an neat, clean edge to its sound. Every other solid-body guitar is in-between those two. (And sure, in a blind test no-one can tell the difference between a Russian acoustic ukulele and an American-made Les Paul through a Marshall stack, but that’s just science…)
On paper, I liked the idea of the NF3 SE. SE means it’s the sub-£1,000 version, NF3 refers to having three narrow humbucking pickups. It’s an S-style body with a five-way selector switch. During most of the reviews, I could tell the difference between bridge and neck positions, but I wasn’t sure I could notice the change from one position to the next.
As I’m learning my way round the effects in the HX Effects - what works, what doesn’t - I’m coming to see the guitar as a note-generator, rather than the origin of all tone. In that sense, what matters is the strength of the signal and the overtones it generates.
The day before the NF3 SE reviews, I had three guitars on my list: Fender / Squier Jazzmaster; PRS John Meyer SE; PRS NF3 SE. That has gone down to two now. Amps, if you’re wondering, are between a Fender Blues Junior or a Roland JC-22. At low volumes, the amp can’t be used to get “tones”. So the idea is to have a clean amp (or studio monitors or FRFR speakers) into which to push already messed-up signals from the effects units.
I do think about gear upgrades, but every time I get even close to buying anything, I have a serious session with the HX Effects and get better tones out of the current gear.
Right now I have some monster tones - but that’s another story.
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