Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Bought another Jeep - God help me, it's a crossover


After two previous Jeep Grand Cherokees (plus a rental), you could probably call my wife and I "Jeep people". I'm still old-school when it comes to SUV's - when I was a kid, I did go off-roading with friends, and to me the term "SUV" still means "pickup truck with a roof". A "crossover" is just a big hatchback - very few real SUV's even still exist.

You wouldn't think any of that'd matter in the suburbs of New York City, and crossovers sure are popular these days for urban/suburban folk like us. But this area often has 2 to 3 feet of snow on the ground in winter, and the poor roads have a way of shredding both tires and suspensions in a way that even a decent dirt road wouldn't. When half of a paved road is missing due to potholes, it's worse than not having any asphalt at all. Our PT Cruiser went through three full sets of control arms (the third time, out of warranty, cost us $1,000), our Mini has already popped one tire in the first few months of ownership, and even our current Grand Cherokee has needed some minor suspension repairs.

That Grand Cherokee is now 10 years old. It's served us well, but it's time for it to go. I knew replacing it wouldn't be easy. We wanted something tough but the few pickup-based SUV's left are usually cruise ships and very expensive, so we did look at some crossovers too. Our bank balance only has so many zeroes, our driveway only so much square footage.

We narrowed things down to a few compact SUV's and crossovers based on a combination of price, capability and looks, and we resolved to drive them all. These are the very disparate options we looked at, and the reasons why we considered and ultimately rejected them:

1. Nissan Xterra. This is one of the last "real" compact SUV's and we almost bought one. It's the right size, it's truck-based, has good power, excellent ground clearance and is the only vehicle we looked at with tires we wouldn't need to immediately replace. The problem is that it's just old (last redesigned in 2004), and it gets terrible mileage. We were buying rather than leasing and looking at resale value 6+ years down the line, the Xterra's probably not going to have any. But we liked it, and if we were leasing we might have made a different choice.

2. Mercedes GLK and GLA. My wife's wanted a Mercedes since she was little and we thought we could maybe stretch and afford a pre-owned one, or even a new GLA. I thought I could live with one if she really wanted it. They are nice looking inside and out. But the GLA's just too small and my wife didn't feel any connection to the GLK. And both would have required too many sacrifices from us to afford, especially if we weren't gaga over either one.

3. Nissan Rogue. The newly-redesigned Rogue isn't really that ugly up close, although I still think it's basically a minivan. But it has monstrous cargo space - my jaw actually dropped when the sales guy opened the hatch. Looking back to front is like looking from the back of a 777 cabin up to the cockpit. It's the only vehicle we looked at that matched our Grand Cherokee in stuff-carrying. It drove ok but it is very car-like (a negative for me) and the CVT transmission was pretty annoying. I also didn't have confidence it'd hold up to this area's roads and weather.

4. Mazda CX-5. Everything I read told me this was the crossover to beat - the unsung hero, the sleeper hit you've never heard of because poor Mazda just doesn't have the marketing budget of the big boys. It was supposed to be fun to drive, but on the test drive it felt like pretty much every other underpowered crossover. I drove the 2.5 (the 2.0 is no longer even offered) but still it felt slow. In corners it felt like a big PT Cruiser. It did have good cargo space, but the interior was really chintzy, and even our brand new tester rattled. Its AWD system is also fully automatic and allows no driver input. I do like the exterior, though.

5. A CPO Jeep Grand Cherokee. New Grand Cherokees are out of our price range but pre-owned we could probably swing. Still, even after looking at a 2012 with only 16,000 miles that I thought was a pretty sweet deal, my wife wasn't sold on buying something caked with somebody else's dirt and grime.


THE WINNER!
We ended up going with something we initially didn't even talk about: a new Jeep Cherokee Latitude. Go on, get it out of your system - you get used to the styling. I already think it just looks normal. It's like the first-gen Ford Taurus - eventually every car's going to look even weirder.

Why the Cherokee won:


It's still a Jeep and it's built for stuff like this. Which means it's going to eat New York roads and snow for breakfast.

No, we didn't buy a top-end off-road Trailhawk with "optional Mopar wheels", but:

  • A transmission upgrade to Active Drive II gives you real 4WD (with a "low" mode).
  • The same upgrade also gives you heavy duty off-road suspension and 1" more ground clearance. 
  • You can get it with a V6, and so equipped, it totally smokes its nearest competition. (Not the Xterra, though, which moves pretty good.) This is the real "sporty" crossover, not the CX-5.
  • The interior's almost as nice as the Mercedes' we looked at, minus the wood.
Long story short, while most crossovers we looked at were way more "car" than "SUV", the Cherokee's more of an SUV that just happens to be built on a shared car platform. At least if you get it how we ordered it.

Weird thing was the dealer had no idea Active Drive II even existed - they learned about it from us. It took us two visits and several hours total to figure out that neither they nor any other dealer around had one on the lot with that option, then probably another hour for them to figure out how to build one to order. (It's quick order package "27J" if you have the same problem with your dealer.)

A marathon of haggling followed that only seemed a fitting end to our 2 month-long search. We squeezed every dollar we could out of our dealer, trying to get them to match a TrueCar price (which I know only applies to in-stock vehicles) and to give us a reasonable trade-in on our current Grand Cherokee. They finally did in the end, but we were at that dealer from 3:30 to 9PM. We are a car dealer's worst nightmare. But we really wanted to make the deal, and we did.

Now we just have to wait for the custom build.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

When taking batting practice, always remember your leather jacket


Just going through my photos from Japan looking for stuff to write about. My wife and I always do a bunch of random stuff that never makes it to the blog. This is me, at the batting center on top of the Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara. Don't ask me why an electronics store has batting cages. Don't ask me why I was batting in the rain in this getup either. That's just what I do.

Nagoya - Japan 10/2014

At this rate, I might finish this trip report before my next one...


I've sort of been to Nagoya before, but never really in the city proper. My wife and I had a day to kill before a concert happening nearby, so we decided to finally explore the city. Obviously, this meant a shinkansen ride - always a high point of any Japan trip!


No green car this time - we weren't using a rail pass and this little day trip was already costing us far too much. I mean we almost didn't even go - I wanted to see Scandal again, but I really did not realize it was going to cost $400 to get there and back until we actually went to buy the train tickets. My wife had to convince me that I'd regret it if we didn't go through with it at that point. We already had third row tickets to the show.

Ordinary cars are still pretty comfortable on the shinkansen. Just a tiny bit less so than the green cars, and you'd better grab the food cart lady when she passes you the first time because chances are she ain't comin' back.


Obligatory Mt. Fuji shot from the train. It is surprisingly difficult to get a good shot of Mt. Fuji while traveling at 160mph. Every single shot I took except this one has a pole right in the middle.


It's the 50th anniversary of the shinkansen and Japan is celebrating all over the place. Signs are everywhere and even the post office is selling commemorative stamp booklets.


Nagoya station.


This is supposedly a very famous udon noodle shop that's in an underground mall near Nagoya station - my wife really wanted to eat here and her brother wanted her to buy some noodles to bring back home. I don't remember the name of this place, but I'll update if I find it again. By the time we left, the line was like 100 people long. (We got there at about 11AM and there was no line to speak of).


My udon. To be honest... I couldn't eat it. It's not my style. The broth tasted... brown. Very brown. Kinda burnt, somehow. The noodles are extremely thick and slightly undercooked, which is intentional - they're supposed to be whatever the Japanese equivalent of "al dente" is. That's what this place is famous for. I just found it kind of unappetizing. I went to McDonald's afterwards.


We didn't have anything really planned in the city but as we left the station and started walking around, we happened upon a ska festival.


It turned out this kind of thing was going on all over the city. I don't know if it was just the one weekend we were there, but there seemed to be free concerts and other outdoor events happening pretty much everywhere we turned. The city seems like a pretty happening town. You don't see this kind of thing much at all in Tokyo, but you could almost turn your head in any direction and see some other outdoor event going on somewhere.


Nagoya TV Tower. I have a kind of obsession with Japan's towers. Every city has at least one, and I always visit them in any new city I go to.


Partial view from the tower. This is Nagoya!


I'm not sure exactly what this is but it looked interesting. There was an event going on here too.


Another view of the tower, and some of the remnants of the various events that were already winding down at that point.

After this we did a little shopping and then hopped back onto public transportation to take us way out to Fujia University for our Scandal concert - you can read about that here if you want.

More soon!

Thursday, December 04, 2014

"7-11 exclusive" beer - Grand Kirin - Japan 10/2014

I feel like I didn't actually do that much new and interesting on this trip to Japan, but I did take a bunch of photos of random weird stuff. One of those is Grand Kirin, a high-end beer that you can only get at Japanese 7-11's:


I'm not sure what "dip hop & aroma brewing" means. It comes in a funky bottle with a funky cap that's halfway between a regular beer bottle cap and a 1980's-vintage pull tab:



It tasted pretty good, although basically like a double strong version of Kirin. It was very malty. That's one thing I've noticed about the Japanese and beer - they love the flavor of malt. Every beer that tries to be premium advertises how malty it is. It's what they think good beer is supposed to be. And this one really is.

I will say that there's something about Japan that always temporarily turns me into a heavy beer drinker. Generally, their beers are just a lot more drinkable than ours - including our alleged imports from Japan! They're very clean and fresh tasting but they still have a lot more flavor (of malt, mostly) than our beers. And people drink them at all hours, everywhere - it's not necessarily weird to get on the train at 9AM and crack open a beer. (Though it does somewhat depend on the kind of train.)

Anyway, more random stuff soon!

Wednesday, December 03, 2014

Kimura Kaela's KAELAND "Poppin' Park" - Yokohama Arena - Japan 10/2014


This is probably going to be kind of a rambling show report since it's been more than a month since I got home, but I'll try to share my experiences as best as I can.

My wife and I have been Kaela fans since close to the beginning - I've written about her here before. She was huge for a while in Japan - basically as big as any of the big Japanese pop stars that for some reason are more famous than Kaela in the States. Not many people even in Japan can go just by one name - say "Kaela" there and everyone knows who you're talking about. Ayumi Hamasaki had nothing on Kimura Kaela back in 2006 or 2007. But Kaela was as much rock as pop (and she started in an awesome garage band, which Sony would prefer you didn't know about), so she's got a lot more street cred than most of the country's pop divas.

It seemed like she sort of fell off the face of the Earth for a while - Wikipedia seems to show that she's been releasing stuff pretty regularly but it also shows that not many people have been buying her recent albums. (The last one I bought was "+1".) I think she basically stopped doing any PR or much touring - she was in full-on mom mode for a while after getting married and having a kid or two (I honestly don't know how many, haven't been following her lately).


She announced two back-to-back shows at the quite-large Yokohama Arena that happened to coincide with us being there this year, and people went nuts. Both shows sold out really fast. This was billed as a 10th anniversary "greatest hits" kind of show, and I also got the feeling it was almost like a soft comeback. Like she was announcing to Japan that she was ready to be a full-on star again, with all that that entails.

We managed to get seats to the second show when they opened up the last level of tickets, and they were pretty crap seats:


We knew that going in though. We were actually in the second row of the top level, but there's a big wall between levels so we felt kind of like we were watching the show from outside. The show was really happening below and in front of us. Everybody in our section was totally lame; the entire first level and floor were fist-pumping, jumping maniacs, but the whole row in front of us just sat motionless through the show and most of the rest of our section did too.

That photo should also give you an idea of both the size of the arena (it holds 30,000 people - though probably less for this configuration - and it was eventually full) and the size of her stage setup. It was easily the biggest indoor stage I've ever seen in person. It was almost absurd, and out of scale with reality. She was so high up that I actually felt bad for people in the front, because there's no way they could see anything except a black wall. Just look at how much higher the edge of the stage is than the crowds' heads. Kaela did use that full width, though, and the stuff on the sides lit up during the show - it was pretty impressive.

That photo is the only one I got inside because it is of course completely prohibited to take photos at Japanese concert venues and many announcements were made to that effect, worded so sternly that they made my wife laugh. (Something like "your camera will be confiscated and your memory card destroyed".) I really wish Japan would catch up to the US in this area - it's free marketing, guys!

We got there a bit late and of course all the good merchandise was sold out. They had XL size t-shirts! Never have I seen this at a Japanese concert. I would have totally bought and rocked one of those shirts. But I had to settle for a towel, which ended up not even getting used. Kaela apparently doesn't have any "towel songs" like some Japanese bands do, which I didn't realize.

Kaela seemed to arrive a bit late (from the sound of it, by helicopter) and the show started about 20 minutes late as a result. I don't recall any big entrance, I think she just ran out onto the stage in the darkness and then the lights came up. Her outfit was 100% tie-dyed, which was supposed to be "pop" according to her but all I could think of was 1970's Cher.

As for the show itself, here's a set list I found elsewhere (small pic of her in the tie-dye outfit at that link too):

01.Butterfly
02.リルラ リルハ
03.Ring a Ding Dong
04.L.drunk
05.Ground Control
06.Twinkle
07.OLE! OH!
08.Jasper
09.リリアン
10.You
11.ワニと小鳥
12.A winter fairy is melting a snowman
13.sweetie
14.Snowdome
15.キミニアイタイ
16.What ever are you looking for?
17.STARs
18.マミレル
19.Make my day!
20.BANZAI
21.Magic Music
En1.Today Is A New Day
En2.sonic manic(新曲)
En3.Super girl
En4.happiness!!!

A couple of those songs are new - she announced her upcoming album "MIETA" at the show. One of the new songs was pretty good, but the other really sounded like Katy Perry.

(I don't only mean that in a bad way. Her voice sounded great at this show, with amazing range and perfect pitch. I detected no auto-tune or lip-syncing either.)

But she also played pretty much all my favorite songs except for the Tamio Okuda-penned "Beat" and "1115". She didn't play any guitar at all as she used to do when I followed her more closely, but that's alright. I understand she's a pop star now and this was also the "pop" version of the two Yokohama Arena shows. The previous night was titled "Rockin' Zoo" and who the hell knows what went on there, it could have been a full-on orgy of punk complete with a mosh pit and Kaela smashing guitars and spitting up blood on stage for all I know. (Hey, time was she might have actually done those things, and she does still wear NOFX patches on her hat.)

In fact my favorite song of the whole show was "Jasper", which is weird because it is practically disposable as a studio track. You never know what's going to sound good live. First, it's got a really driving beat that really builds in intensity in person - you can feel it. Second, they really kicked up the light show at this point in the concert - pretty sure this was when they first broke out the lasers. And third, she's just got this really mesmerizing way of moving. I actually kind of forgot how good of a dancer she is in general. She's got a style that's all her own; she dances like she's made of rubber or something, like she's boneless.

She of course did a few long MC's and told a bunch of jokes and made the crowd laugh a lot, because one of the things people like about her is how weird she is. She bantered back and forth directly with audience members a bunch of times, which was unexpected given how much the stage separated her from everyone. I think she even dealt with a heckler at one point! It sure sounded that way anyway, but she dispatched him utterly with a series of smiling one-liners. She never looked phased.

Oh, but she did cry at the end. I feel like it wouldn't be a proper Kaela show if she didn't. On the one live DVD of hers that I own - "Live Scratch" - she bawls uncontrollably for literally about four minutes.


Anyway, there will be a DVD of both of these shows too, no doubt separated somehow to milk the most money out of us customers. It was actually announced at the show, so I'll be watching for it pretty soon.

03/25/2015 UPDATE!

The DVD/Blu-ray is out!


And Victor Entertainment has released this trailer/preview:


They don't show it there, but yes, Kaela did play guitar during the "Rockin' Zoo" day. That first night had so much more energy than the show we went to! I really wish we'd gone on both days. Our "Poppin' Park" show did have more of my favorite songs, but it was super-mellow compared to day one.

Monday, December 01, 2014

My blog is whole again

This is a quick housekeeping note. I posted a while ago about splitting my blog up into several sub-blogs with distinct themes, rather than this random collection of stream-of-consciousness musings about everything and nothing. Well, it ain't happenin' - just caused me too many problems. In fact, most of the posts that I had split off are now back here where they started.

I wrote some new posts in the meantime at those other blogs and while the posts from Tech Purist are now integrated here too (scroll down and/or backwards), I'm not sure what to do about some of the others. They may not all get reposted.

Some things just weren't meant to be, I guess.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

My new toy from Japan

I'm still planning to write something of a trip report from my latest sojourn to my favorite island nation in the Pacific - I've just been a little preoccupied lately, mostly with work but a little bit with this:


A couple of the kids in my wife's family had PS Vitas when we were in Japan, and after seeing them playing, I couldn't resist. I am just a 40 year old kid, after all. (And I've been a gamer all my life.)

I hold weird allegiances when it comes to games, and I never even considered buying a PS Vita before. I've always owned Nintendo handhelds (up to the DS), and it pissed me off to an irrational degree when Sony announced the original PSP. The PS Vita I just wrote off as soon as it was released. But seeing people actually playing games on the system in Japan, along with the huge displays they have for Vita games and accessories at places like Bic Camera and Yodobashi (in contrast to the tiny little single shelf GameStop might devote to the system here), I just had to have one.

I picked up Powerful Pro Kun Baseball 2014 and Puyo Puyo Tetris while I was there - two franchises I know well. Puyo Puyo is usually sold as "Puyo Pop" here, and Powerful Pro Kun Baseball is the big-headed but surprisingly realistic baseball franchise that had one US domestic release on PS2, but is a long-running series in Japan.

I've since picked up Hot Shots Golf and have Persona 4 Golden on order - one nice thing about the Vita in the US is that the games are ridiculously cheap. And I'm far enough behind that I can buy all the older games that are even more heavily discounted.

But this is a fantastic system. It's well on its way to being my favorite portable system ever, already. I'm neither ready nor willing to trade physical controls for a phone's touch-screen, and the Vita's dual analog stick controls are the best ever in a handheld. Ditto for the screen, ditto for the graphics, which are easily at PS3 level quality in a freakin' handheld system.

Oh, btw, with the yen now at 115 to the dollar, it didn't make sense not to buy a system in Japan. And they have it in funky colors! (Mine's a new "Slim" model, though it's in a clear case in the photo above that makes it look chunkier than it is.) We just have boring black over here. No wonder the system's not doing well in the US.

Friday, November 07, 2014

Finally - the Haruna "Skullsilver" Telecaster reviewed!


Closing out my reviews of the three Scandal signature guitars is what for me was the holy grail - Haruna's "Skullsilver" Telecaster! See my earlier reviews of Mami's Stratomaster and Tomomi's Bluetus.

HARUNA'S SOUND
The first time I saw Scandal in person, I was shocked by how thunderous Haruna's tone was. You get this a little bit on the albums but her sound is just murderous in person - it shakes your whole body. This doesn't usually come through even on their own live DVD's.

Mami plays higher up on the neck and mostly uses her bridge pickup, which gives her a trebly, twangy sound. Haruna's sound is bassy and powerful - in person it's like a kick in the gut, but that's hard to reproduce on video. Haruna's sound is the foundation of the entire band, and it's a lot heavier live than it is on the albums.

Haruna's said in interviews that she intentionally picks guitars with humbuckers for that thick sound. But after debuting at Budokan in 2012, the signature "Skullsilver" has become her main guitar. She always opens and closes shows with it, and she uses it for all but a few songs. Mami and Tomomi, by contrast, seem to only play their Squiers as much as they're contractually obligated to. Of all the signature Squiers, Haruna's is the most iconic simply because she really plays the hell out of it. It's rare these days to see her without it.



DESIGN AND PICKUPS
The design of the Skullsilver Tele seems loosely based on the Blacktop Telecaster but with a 21 fret neck and a basswood body. It also has witch hat knobs with numbers facing the right way, which the Blacktop does not, and oddly enough Haruna's prototype doesn't either! (Hers uses amp knobs; the production Skullsilver Tele uses aftermarket guitar knobs.)  Otherwise, though, the production guitar has the same unique "backwards" control plate and the same pickup configuration.

About those pickups - Fender's spec page lists Blacktop pickups as "Hot Vintage Alnico Humbucking" pickups, and these at least look the same. It's possible Haruna's using the stock Blacktop pickups. These guitars are part of a marketing deal with Fender so they'd want to keep them at least looking stock, but the high output of these pickups do match her sound.


This is the contents of the box from Ishibashi. Guitar, allen wrenches and product card, and mostly useless Squier gig bag that's good for storing your guitar in the closet and not much else.


Haruna Tele Dark Silver Sparkle. More on that color and finish in a minute.


The guitar removed from its protective covering. The plastic had started removing itself from my pickguard, so I immediately took it the rest of the way off. Incidentally, the plastic used in these pickguards is extremely soft and will scratch if brushed by a stiff wind. This is definitely not the case with Haruna's own guitar, but mine became unsightly after only a few weeks of playing. I haven't yet found a replacement that fits either - if you're curious, the Blacktop pickguard does not.

DAT SPARKLE FINISH
I was happy to see that there were no major finish blemishes or other problems with the look of my guitar. I saw one of these hanging on a wall in Japan with what looked like a damaged skull decal under the clearcoat, and I've heard from others who have had minor problems with theirs as well. Sparkle finishes are not easy or cheap, and in a $400 guitar it's almost amazing to get one this good. Mine is completely perfect - I see a couple spots in the photo above where it looks uneven, but that's just my shadow on the guitar. It's a surprisingly flawless finish.


Here's a closer look. It probably goes without saying, but in case you're new to electric guitars, all of Scandal's signature guitars are clearcoated in poly. (I'm not sure if it's polyester or polyurethane, but there's not much distinction there.) This is typical of cheap guitars - it's an easier top coat to apply than the more traditional nitrocellulose, which has a more refined look.

It's hard to see above but the bridge saddles are all actual Fender bridge saddles. That makes me wonder if the bridge itself is too - I don't have enough experience with Teles to know for sure. My old Squier Standard Strat definitely did not come with Fender saddles or a Fender bridge.

I've been lucky enough to see Haruna's own guitar in person three (update: four!) times. I wouldn't say the production model finish is an exact match, but it's closer than I imagined when I saw the initial PR photos vs. the real thing.


Haruna's own guitar has big sparkle flakes, which makes it almost blindingly bright in direct light. It's like a mirror when it catches the light right. But those big flakes are harder to do, and consequently more expensive. For the production model, Squier seems to have gone with smaller metal flakes on a grey base, which dulls the finish a little bit but keeps costs down.


OTHER LOOK & FEEL
The front of the headstock. The maple is nicely tinted and, like my other two Scandal guitars, they picked a nice tree from which to cut mine. It has a much classier overall look than my Squier Strat.


Back of the headstock complete with Haruna's stamped signature. I'm guessing these are the same Gotoh-made Kluson-style tuners used in both my American and Japanese Jazzmasters. (It looks like there's a tiny chip right at the middle bottom of the headstock above, but it's actually just a spec of dust.)


Here's one annoyance - Squier used rusty fret wire to fret my guitar! I'm going to need a fret polishing before this thing is even fully playable. It's also a bit unsightly just hanging on the wall. Again, as I mentioned in my Bluetus review, I don't expect high-end specs or features in a $400 guitar, but some basic quality control would be nice.

If you're interested in how I dealt with this, check out my Planetwaves Fret Polishing System post.

The neck itself is surprisingly chunky. I'm not sure how this compares to the real thing and I'm not normally a Tele player, but it's almost a Gibson-like neck profile. I personally prefer a flatter neck profile and I'm surprised if Haruna really prefers such a fat neck with such small hands, but every guitarist has their own tastes. (My wife is the same - small fingers, fat guitar neck. I don't get it.) The guitar itself also feels quite thick and brickish, which I don't remember other Telecasters I've played feeling like, or at least not to this extent. It feels like it would make a really good life raft in an emergency. The body is at least contoured on the back for comfort (like the Blacktop).

The fretboard radius looks like 9.5", which isn't my favorite radius, but it's common to most modern guitars.

FINISHING UP
This is the one guitar with Gibson-style humbuckers that I own and I'm glad to have just one. Give it some distortion and it sounds like a pointy metal guitar (or a Les Paul) but without the 80's styling. And it does sound very much like Haruna really sounds when played loud enough and with enough distortion.  (And the right kind - see my OCD below!)


Scandal tribute concert at my house!

I doubt any of these signature models will take over from my Jazzmasters as my own main guitar, but I am happy to have them. They really look very close to the real guitars, and they all play well in their own right depending on what you're after. They do all have some minor QC issues and interesting specs married to mostly low-end hardware and electronics. They are beginner guitars that look really cool and mostly sound good (I'm still iffy on Mami's bridge pickup, which is supposed to be that guitar's big selling point). I think they're all good values even without the Scandal connection, but as a fan, I almost feel like the band themselves are here whenever I look at them. I'm a happy collector!

UPDATE 04/06/2015: Shock and horror!


I keep discovering weird random problems with all of these Scandal guitars. The latest one with the Haruna Skullsilver Telecaster is this - notice that one of the ferrules above seems empty? The string end has literally punched right through the ferrule and is now resting against the back of the bridge. It seems to have been this way since manufacture, since I've never changed the strings and the A string appears to still have its original "wrap" around the tuner peg. They did this at the factory, and nobody bothered to check or fix it.

I've got some new ferrules on order, but this is a serious annoyance that I shouldn't have to deal with. I've never heard of a ferrule failing like that.

UPDATE 05/08/2015: Fixed.


First, this is a normal ferrule on the left, the defective one on the right. They somehow made it that way, and nobody noticed it when they strung the guitar up in Indonesia.


I had to try two sets of replacements before finding one that fit. (For the record, American Standard Tele ferrules are too small.) I ended up buying a cheap set from Ebay that were listed specifically as 8mm. They're a little more chrome than the nickel they should be, but I don't really care, and if I ever sell this thing, I'll keep the originals in case anyone wants them.

Incidentally, getting the original ferrules out was a bitch, and getting the new ones in was too. I finally jury-rigged a system made up of the straight part of a thick wire hanger, which I cut with a Dremel, and a rubber mallet. I then removed the bridge and tapped the ferrules out from the front. Some of the new ones fit the existing holes perfectly, but a couple required shaving the inside of the hole a little bit (again with the wonder-tool that is the Dremel).

Well, anyway, everything's sorted now and this is finally a playable guitar.

05/09/2016 UPDATE: I sold my original Skullsilver (the one detailed above) as part of the full set, and wanting to still have one Scandal guitar, I bought another from the second production run. One change is that the standard gig bag is much better now.


That's Skullsilver #2 in the new gig bag. I'd call this gig bag actually usable. They may have done this because there was no special run just for the Kitty store this time, with the upgraded gig bag featuring the Scandal logo. (See my Mami Stratomaster post.)


This is the only gig bag you can get with these now. It just has the regular Squier logo, but it's a nice bag.


I'm not sure, but I feel like something's different about the finish. It may just be that a larger number of flakes in this one are standing up at odd angles, which leads them to look black unless the light is hitting them just right. (You see some of these in the photo above.) But I also feel like I see more grey in this finish. It's a little less striking than my original one, somehow.

I also don't remember my original one being quite so noisy, like it's missing some kind of shielding that the first one had. I'll need to take care of that if I ever decide to play this guitar enough to even take the plastic off!

Then again, it doesn't have the quality control issues of the first one. There's just a lot of variation in these in my experience, including what I've seen on my trips to Japan. Maybe you'll get one with an amazing finish and some defects, or no shielding and no defects, or an imperfect finish but perfect sound. It's just kind of a crapshoot with this Indonesian factory.

Sunday, November 02, 2014

Tomomi's signature Squier Jazz Bass "Bluetus" reviewed!


I've finally received both of my remaining Scandal signature guitars! I'll be reviewing them individually, to let me dive a little deeper and post more pics of each. See my earlier review of Mami's Stratomaster here.


Tomomi's "Bluetus" seems loosely based on a Squier Vintage Modified Jazz Bass, although it's kind of an amalgam of several different sub-models and has regular vintage (not "modified") Jazz Bass knobs on it. Like the other Scandal signature instruments, this bass made its debut at their Budokan show in March of 2012, and it's been a staple at their concerts ever since. I saw it in person again just last month at their show at Fujita University. She doesn't use it for every song - unlike Haruna with her Skullsilver Telecaster and Mami with her black Strat, Tomomi doesn't really have a "main" bass, and if she does it'd probably be her navy blue Fender Precision Bass. But she still uses Bluetus often.


I started out as a bassist, playing in bands in high school and even recording a couple self-produced albums on bass and vocals. But it had been close to 20 years since I sold my embarrassing old Cort P-Bass (it looked exactly like this but with a lot more duct tape holding it together) before buying a second-hand Epiphone Thunderbird Bass a year or so ago. I've been exclusively playing six-string guitars in between. That Thunderbird was a huge disappointment - so uncomfortable and poorly balanced that I sold it as soon as Scandal's signature models were announced, knowing I'd be buying all three come hell or high water.

I can already say that as a "cheap" bass, this thing's about as good as it gets. It might even be my favorite of all the Scandal models. It feels like coming home.


THE SHIPPING PROCESS
Ordering this thing was a saga. Long story short, I had to ship both this and Haruna's Skullsilver Telecaster to my in-laws in Japan, who held them until my visit a couple weeks ago. My wife and I then had to take them to the post office ourselves to ship them to my house in the USA. This is the condition the box arrived in - I was a little worried when I saw it because I know these guitars are packed to pretty much just flop around in the box - there is nothing much holding them in place. The entire top third of the box was bent, and the bottom was crushed. Gee, and I wrote "FRAGILE" on it and everything! (I'm convinced that makes the USPS treat a box worse.)


WHAT'S INCLUDED
Above you see the contents of the box. Everything was fine. Squiers aren't really Fenders but they are Fender designs and Fender designs don't break. They're tanks. I ordered mine from Ishibashi and they included a point card (which I technically can't use from the US - they changed that policy a while back) as well as a cheap Squier gig bag that'll protect the bass from a stiff wind and that's about it. That foam bag it shipped in provides more protection - and it's ripped! Only orders from the Kitty Web Shop came with the nicer heavily padded Scandal-branded gig bag and strap.


The product card. Tomo Jazz Bass Sky Blue!


FINISH & CONSTRUCTION
The bass unsheathed. My first reaction upon seeing it was that this is a far more beautiful bass in person than I expected! The color really pops without looking cartoony; it's more tasteful than I thought, and it has a depth to it that you don't expect in a "cheap" bass. And while competition stripes are always pretty polarizing, I happen to like them, and they are not some new thing Tomomi invented. Fender introduced them in 1969. Tomomi's actually very traditional in her tastes.


The back. It is a Squier so it's not strange to point out that the finish on this otherwise simple paint job is perfect. If you look very closely at the right angle, you can see the body joint - it appears to be a two-piece body. (You're not seeing that above - that's just a reflection of my wall and ceiling.)


The matching headstock. (The color is actually the same as the body; the light was a tad different.) If there's any complaint I might have with the finish, it's here. It's a little hard to see and in fact I didn't notice it until later, but it looks like whoever painted it was using a brush meant for the side of a house. The paint's very uneven and it runs over the edge onto the sides in a bunch of places. But again, hard to really notice unless you're looking.


There are a few more minor imperfections around the guitar, like sloppy cutting of the pickguard and some good old fashioned dirt around the edges, like whoever installed it forgot to wash his hands first. Nothing that couldn't be fixed by removing it and just sanding a bit, I'm sure. But this is the kind of corner that gets cut in an Indonesian Squier - you wouldn't see this (or you'd hope you wouldn't see this) in a more expensive model. I don't expect maximum refinement in a guitar like this, although simple cleanliness would be nice.


Of course the back of the headstock has Tomomi's signature (stamped, not real). My headstock had gear oil all over it when I first tried to take this photo - I cleaned it up and everything seems fine. Seems they just lubed the tuners a little too much at the factory.

I do like the maple they chose for my neck and headstock - it has some interesting figuring.


PICKUPS AND HARDWARE
Bluetus comes with Duncan Designed JB-101 pickups that are meant to sound "vintage", whatever that means in a bass. (To be honest, I don't think there's a hell of a lot of difference in how a modern Jazz Bass sounds vs. a vintage one.) Squier uses these in some other specific models of the Vintage Modified JB. They sound pretty good to my ears, and basically Tomomi-like. That said, they are not what she actually uses. (Note that hers don't say "Duncan Designed" and I seriously doubt she'd be using them with a different cover. She'd be using something a little better.)

The bridge saddles are height-adjustable but the action on mine was just right from the factory - a few weeks later it did need a little truss rod adjustment (no doubt affected by the dry, harsh winter we're having) but then it was back to normal. I have long and violent fingers, so I like medium action on basses (low action would just make for a lot of fret buzz). The Vintage Modified JB's have a neck radius of 9.5" and Bluetus seems to match that. I hate anything over a 7.25" radius on six-string guitars but I like a flatter fretboard on bass - flatter radii are better for single-string playing, not so good for chords.

My main six string guitar is a Jazzmaster. I like (and am used to) the offset body shape, which is made to be comfortable playing sitting down - when standing up, it just looks cool. If it wasn't for Scandal, I'd have probably sold my disappointing Thunderbird and bought some kind of Jazz Bass anyway. Granted, it'd probably have been a low-end Fender rather than a high-end Squier, but honestly, I doubt there's any real difference. The Made-in-Mexico Fenders all use the same poly finish as the Squiers, along with the same electronics and very similar hardware. They charge a little more for the name. You've got to move up to an American model - and spend a lot more money - to get something noticeably better in any objective sense. But then you wouldn't have the cool color scheme!

I'm gonna close by answering the only two questions that really matter, which are:

1) How does it compare to Tomomi's own Bluetus?

2) Is it a good bass in its own right?

The answer to the first question is that it certainly looks pretty much right, judging from the three times I've seen the real thing. The color looks dead on, the finish looks the same. If there is a noticeable difference, it's that the fretboard is actually somewhat darker on the production model. Hers actually has a couple chips in the finish from use that look like the way poly chips, so I think she's even got the same clear coat. That said, no doubt she has high end wiring, hardware, shielding and electronics underneath.

It's a pretty awesome bass in its own right too. Even if you're not a Scandal fan, I think your head would turn seeing this hanging in a store - but it's not so crazy or specific that you couldn't use it in pretty much any band. It's really comfortable as all Jazz Basses are, it's well balanced, and it sounds like you'd expect a Jazz Bass to sound. I'd totally gig with this bass - I've gigged with a lot worse!

I have a feeling this bass probably sold the least of the three Scandal guitars just because fewer people want to play bass. That makes me feel kinda bad for Tomomi, but on the plus side for you, it might still be a little easier to find this one than the others for that reason. If you can still get one, grab it!

MARCH 2015 UPDATE: After sitting in its gig bag all winter, I picked up my Bluetus to find that its neck had bowed badly. The early truss rod adjustment mentioned above should have been a red flag - the maple used for the neck in this bass is way too soft and was probably wet when the bass was manufactured. After a professional setup it's playable again, but it'll never have the low action of a high-end Fender.

Well, it is a cheap bass. But this is a little disappointing.

About This Blog

This is increasingly not a blog about Alphabet City, New York. I used to live in the East Village and work on Avenue B, but I no longer do. Why don't I change the name if I'm writing about Japan and video games and guitars? Because New Yorkers are well-rounded people with varied interests, and mine have gone increasingly off the rails over the years. And I don't feel like changing the name. I do still write about New York City sometimes.

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