#gibsonj50 #gibsonj-50 #guitardiscoveries
Robert Cassard plays his 1964 folk-rock icon, the J-50 from Gibson of Kalamazoo. With excerpts from Fire & Rain and From the Beginning, see and hear how this vintage guitar handles finger-style and strumming with equal grace.
Robert Cassard shares guitars, gear and tips to make you a better musician.
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Hi, my name is Robert Cassard. I'm a lifelong guitar player, singer-songwriter, producer, and music fanatic. I create Guitar and Recording Discoveries videos with a simple goal: to make YOU a better, happier, more confident musician!
In 2018, after more than 40 years as a pro musician, I started sharing my experiences through easy-to-understand RU-vid videos - giving you shortcuts to de-mystify playing, singing and recording.
My "day job" is as a video writer/producer/director. Often it's hard to balance my need to earn a living with my desire to share the pure joy of music through the RU-vid videos I make for free.
Your ongoing support means the world to me and encourages me do more of what I love - sharing musical discoveries to help and inspire you! I invite you to become a "Guitar Discoverer” by signing up on Patreon so I can keep providing you the most value I can. / robertcassard
Learn more about me, my music and my videos:
www.guitardisc...
Check out my band Cosmic Spin’s website:
cosmic-spin.com/
Partial Transcript:
Hi, I'm Robert Cassard. Welcome to my studio lounge for a series I'm going to call Guitar Discoveries. I've been playing guitar a long time and in that time, I've learned a lot about guitars, the way they play, how to select them, little secrets, tips, tricks that I really want to share. This is a lifetime of musical information and a lot of happy accidents.
I wanted to kick off with my best, dearest, old guitar friend. This is a Gibson J-50 from 1964. It's one that I bought with my own money back in about 1977. Spent all of $350 bucks. Money I earned from playing in a band. So, music money went to support my music habit.
Back then, I was a huge fan of a lot of singer-songwriters. James Taylor, Cat Stevens, people along those lines. I'd been watching James Taylor in the Sweet Baby James era playing a Gibson J-50.
A Gibson J-50 is a J-45, but with a natural finish. I like seeing the grain of the wood. Spruce top, mahogany back, sides and neck. Rosewood finger board, rosewood bridge as well. It used to have an adjustable bridge, but I had that replaced when I had a pickup system put in.
I tried all kinds of guitars and when I picked it up, I felt the bass in me, and this had old strings on it at the time. I played it against all kinds of guitars, many more expensive, and this was the one that just captured me. I've played it on stage countless times, even plugged it in to electronics, played electric tones with it, and it just handles everything incredibly well. Played it on countless recordings. My own albums, albums I've produced for other people. The thing that amazes me is that it just always seems to fit well in the mix.
This is a slope shoulder dreadnought, right, so it's kind of a big guitar, but it's not huge one. It's not jumbo even though it's got the J in the name. What else do I love about it? I think for me, one of the memories it has is that when I originally started playing guitar, I didn't know a good guitar from a bad guitar. In fact, my first, my very first, guitar was a literally reject guitar that had been purchased with green stamps. So, I had nowhere to go but up from there.
I played that guitar. I learned to play with a guitar that had strings about a half inch off the frets and never played in tune. So, having that be my first experience with a guitar, anything was going to feel easy. Unfortunately, when I first went to buy a "good guitar", my first legitimate acoustic guitar, it was probably about 1972 or '3, I went out and I got an Epiphone, made in Japan. That guitar was always a little bit stiff. The action was low down here, and then it got high at the top. I didn't know that you needed to get a guitar set up.
When I finally had money built up from playing electric guitar and double bass in a band, it was time to get either a Gibson or a Martin. This one really spoke to me. The minute I played it, I just thought, that's it. Even today, it just has this certain tone. You can attack the thing or play mellow and it plays well all the time. A Gibson J-50 is sort of a best kept secret in a way because a J-45 from the same era is probably going to cost you quite a bit more.
12 сен 2024
