Greetings, all! Man, have things been busy around here! This morning, as I enjoyed my first cup of coffee, I realized it had been weeks since I posted, so figured I’d better amble on over here and pound out a few words.

I’ve been crazy busy dealing with the main shopping season of the year, as well as preparing for the NAMM show in January. I’ll be representing three companies, including good ol’ RTGC. But boy, oh boy, is there a lot to do to get ready… which is why I started 8 weeks before the show. If you’re in Anaheim for NAMM, I hope we’ll be able to get together for bucket of espresso.

This evening I’m back at Mustard’s Last Stand for Italian Night. Deeper Acoustic – the acoustic version of Deeper Blues provides the entertainment every other month for this special event. It’s always a blast… just about 60 people or so, enjoying great food, great music (I hope!) and lots of wine, wine, wine!

Lane with his RS-6B

Here’s a shot of me with my RS-6B baritone guitar. I call this one Bari Sixgun. This is the second instrument Rick and his crew built for me. The maple is just beautiful to behold and it plays like a dream. Another great piece I’ll be using tonight is an Electroline MMP. I’ve been using this one as a demo for the past few weeks. Monday, I send this one back to the factory, but I wanted to play it one last time.

Another cool thing about tonight is that I’ll be meeting fellow bassist Danny Bryant for the first time. Danny’s got a Model 1 Featherweight bass on its way to him, so he’ll definitely be having a nice holiday! He’s several hours away in the mysterious land of Ohio and he’s bringing his wife out to the show. I’ve got to say, I think it’s REALLY COOL that he’s driving all that way just to meet me!

Total change of subject. Let’s talk turkey trimmings for a minute. Yeah, I know we already had thanksgiving, but lots of folks like to have turkey for Christmas, too. So, let me turn you on to a couple of easy cranberry recipes.

First off, it is supremely easy to make fresh cranberry sauce. All you do is bring 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar to a boil. Then, dump in a bag of cranberries. As the cranberries cook, they will begin to split. The more that split, the more sauce and less semi-intact berries you’ll have. All you do is take it off the heat when you’ve got them where you want them.

I like to do them just after the turkey comes out of the oven so they’re nice and warm for the dinner. Later, they’re great chilled. OK… now to the recipes:

Cranberry Walnut Sauce — This one is so easy a bass player can do it! (I resemble that remark.) Take a good handful of chopped walnuts and fold them into the cranberries. Want more? Fine. Add more. The two flavors and “bites” combine perfectly for an easy way to fancy up the plate.

Cranberry Orange Apple Sauce — This one is only a tad more difficult. Put equal amounts of cranberries, apples and oranges in a blender, skin, rind and all. Do NOT peel anything. Take the stem off the apple, and the “top button” off the orange, but leave everything else. It does help to cut the oranges and apples into pieces, but not too small. Keep blending until you have a (mostly) smooth consistency. You’ll still have apple and orange pieces for texture. This one goes in the fridge to chill. The apple adds extra sweetness that compliments the zing of the oranges. And, again, you have an easy way to fancy up the plate.

Want to totally surprise your wife? Get your ingredients together so you’re ready. Make the COA sauce when she’s not looking and hide it in the back of the fridge. When the turkey comes out of the over, do up the CW sauce. First she’ll flip because you’re cooking. Second she’ll flip when you pull out the chilled COA sauce. Who knows? You  might even get an extra gift for Christmas!

OK. Gotta run. It’s 8 in the AM and I need more coffee. Then I need to tackle my Honey-Do list so I’ll have it out of the way tomorrow. Take care everyone and enjoy the holiday season. That’s what it’s for, right?

Until next time, remember,

Every day you play your guitar is a good day!

Lane

Hi, all. Hope you’ve been enjoying the change in seasons. As we hit the deeper part of Autumn, we see some great activity from our customers and players.

One of our favorite artists, Ingrid Michaelson, performed on Good Morning America on the 19^th of October as part of the Fall concert series and she was really fantastic on her Compass Rose ukulele!  We’re working with Ingrid on a special, signature model of uke right now.

We were honored also to be the “Guitar of the Month” with a Model 1 C-LB proudly featured on the web site of our good customer, The Blue Guitar in San Diego.

Lastly, we’ll be posting a new video from Trout Fishing in America, where Ezra Idlet demos his RS6-Deuce.  The Trout guys are some very talented, eclectic musicians and they started their career over 25 years ago, playing on the streets of Santa Cruz.

I reflect on the broad spectrum of players who appreciate and use our instruments as their tools of expression.  Both Rick & I thank all our players and the shops that support our products.

I’ll see you next week. ntil then,

Stay in Tune,

Barry

Boy, are my fingers tired! I don’t really have blisters (name that quote, though!) but it sure feels like it. I’ve just spent that last six hours over on the Seymour Duncan forum, answering dozens of questions. That on very little sleep thanks to an emergency call from Sweden, no less.

I had a wonderful time, and appreciate my friends at Seymour Duncan setting it up. If you’d like to check it out, you can find the thread here:

Rick Turner Thread @ Seymour Duncan Forum

I’ll see you next week. Until then, take care!

Rick

Greetings one and all! Here’s hoping this post finds you well and happy… and playing a TON!

Last week I traveled to the Nashville area. While there I met with several friends, showing off my collection of Renaissance instruments. (Scroll down a ways to see a video on them.) I also got to check out Artisan Guitars in nearby Franklin. They’re a relatively new Renaissance dealer, but already have a gorgeous RS-6 and a beautiful RS-12B (for baritone) in-house. As we speak Rick and the team are building an RN-6H nylon -string hybrid for them.

Artisan Guitars is in a really neat destination shopping mall. The mall consists of several restored factory buildings, and has a ton of cool, artsy shops and eateries. After visiting I told Barry I thought I’d been transported back to Santa Cruz — it was that cool!

So, if you’re in the Nashville area, take the time to visit the friendly folks at Artisan Guitars, and tell ‘em Lane sent you!

Until next time, remember,

Every day you play your guitar is a good day!

Lane

Welcome to October.  So, let’s all sing now: Autumn’s here and the time is right…for dancin’ in the streets!  We all hope so.  The communications I have with our dealers, some of the best shops in the US, indicate the music business is coming back from a tough summer.  We’re staying busy here at Rick Turner Guitars, building the best instruments we have ever offered.

Upcoming this weekend, there’s the Napa, Calfornia Ukulele Festival at Beringer Winery and we’ll be there showing our Tenor ukuleles with the selections of Music Guy Mike, who’s a guru of ukuleles and a sponsor of the entire event.  We’re bringing our fabulous Adirondack Spruce/Brazilian Rosewood uke bound in ivoroid with herringbone purfling.  We call this one “The Bone” for herringbone.  This is perhaps the most resonant and sustaining ukulele we have ever heard.  We’ll also have an array of our models in selections of woods.  This fantastic event features many of the best pro players from around the world.  If you can get there, I recommend you do.  You can read more about the festivities on this blog.

For now, I’ll wish you plenty of Aloha.

Stay in Tune,

Barry

Greetings, all! I hope this post finds you well and loving life. First, I have to apologize for the lack of blog posts last week. I didn’t realize I hadn’t brought what I needed to post, and our Web Wizard was out of the office last week. (He’s off getting married and honeymooning and such.) So, my bad.

Last Tuesday was my first day in the factory in Santa Cruz. I flew out Monday; Barry picked me up late that night. Barry and I spent the rest of the week in planning and strategy sessions, preparing for Fall. I also had plenty of time with Rick, as well as the shop team – Chris, Jake and Andre. I had shipped my entire Smoke Glass collection (see video) to arrive mid-week. Andre took care of some set-up work on all three, and installed the coil tap in my RS-6 Deuce. They should all be back home tomorrow, as we got them back out the door before I left.

This time around, I arrived bearing gifts for Rick and Barry. I know they are both into hot/spicy food as much as I am, so I gave them each jars of home made salsa, hot sauces and stir-fry oil. Barry told me the hottest sauce was right up his alley. His wife said the salsa was REALLY HOT!! And that was the mildest thing I brought!

Speaking of food, one thing I really love about traveling is the opportunities to try good local restaurants. Santa Crux has enough great places to eat that I’ll get to try new things for a long, long time. This time, we were in the mood for Mexican (I’m from Texas; I’m always in the mood for Mexican!) so we went to Tortilla Flats. WOW! If you’re ever in town, check them out. Their enchiladas are amazing, as is their tamale. In fact, their tamale is the best, creamiest tamale I’ve ever tasted. Seriously. And the Mexican chocolate cheesecake made me shiver, it was so good.

So, anyhoo… Barry and I were up in the middle of the night so he could get me to the airport in time for my very early flight. I got home in time to rest up for the Danville Foodstock Sunday Dinner the next day. By the time that was over, I was wiped out, and spent the afternoon and evening napping to rest up so I could get some sleep!

Tomorrow I leave for a quick run to Nashville, where I’ll be stopping in to see Artisan Guitars to say hello, as well as meeting with several friends who are interested in various Renaissance models.

In between trips, I’m catching up on messages and basically beating the pile on my desk down as far as possible. I also put together some short videos from the trip, and have already uploaded them to YouTube. You can check them out on the Video page of the site. I’ll post direct links later today when I do the What’s New post for today.

That’s about it for this time around. I’ll see you again next week. Until then, remember,

Every day you play your guitar is a good day!

Lane

Today we added the following videos to our web site:

A close-up sound clip of a Compass Rose Tenor Ukulele

More on Guitar Building with Rick Turner

Rick discussing the Model 1 and Lindsey Buckingham

Ted Porter/Creekwood – live video with Ted on an RS-6

Paul Kirk performing on an RN-6H

Yours Truly, performing Happy Boy on my RS-6 Deuce

Blogs were also posted by Barry and myself

We’ll see you next week with more blog posts.

Have fun… play guitar!

Lane

Greetings from the land of Needsleepistan. The second annual Foodstock Fall Festival is over. While we didn’t make our goal, we still managed to gather a LOT of food and money for the Danville Area Food Pantry. It was a wonderful day, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I still have a lot of work to do post-show. We’ve got to deliver several of the prizes from the raffle, finalize all the numbers, return several things lent to us for the event and more. I also have a lot of video to go through to see what’s worth keeping. And while I wasn’t able to take pictures, others did, and I hope to collect some good shots of the event.

Sunday I drove up to Michigan to take part in a business meeting at a wonderful lake house. If you must have and all-day meeting, this is the kind of setting in which to hold it. Drove home last night, and have been catching up – and catching my breath – slowly. The rest of the week will be spent preparing for my upcoming gig Saturday with Deeper Blues at the Vermilion River Fall Festival. I’ll also be getting ready for my trip to Santa Cruz to spend time at the “home office.”

That’s about it for this week. I see you again next Tuesday. Until then, remember:

Every day you play your guitar is a good day!

Lane

Today, I’ll just say “Hi” and thank everyone who has visited our site over the summer.

There’s new stuff every Tuesday, and I want to hear your comments about it.

Please consider sending us your pix for gallery consideration, tell us some interesting stories via the info.rtguitars@gmail.com address, and help us build the interest for everyone who visits the site.  You’re invited!

By the way, I recently personally converted to Thomastik-Infeld flat wound George Benson model Jazz strings for my Archtop, and they are truly wonderful. I use the .012’s.  The composition materials, the wound third string, and the smooth tone make these the best flatwounds I have ever played.  They make my guitar sooo sweet!  Cowboy to Rockabilly to Jazz, I’m a happy guy.

Stay in Tune,

Barry

Hey now, Labor Day is past us till next year.  I hope all had a restful weekend and are ready to go.  We are.

With September, we really make our first strong effort to launch the RS6 Deuce model.  This new Renaissance acoustic-electric guitar has a very special feature.  A great magnetic pick up is mounted on the upper face of the guitar to accompany this previously piezo driven instrument.

The Deuce adds a Seymour Duncan StagMag pick up, customized by Rick to optimize the response of phosphor bronze strings.  It has a separate volume, tone and coil split from the piezo controls.  This model can be wired for separate outputs for each pick up or blended through one output.  It’s brilliant in sound, unique, and offers an expanded use for the Renaissance steel string.

We’ve delivered a few to our clients and everyone is thrilled with this feature.  Colin Hay (formerly of Men at Work) now performs with this model, as does Ezra Idlet of Trout Fishing in America.  Right now, we’re building one for Janet Robin, too ( LA based singer songwriter). And, of course, as you’ve read in Lane’s blog, he’s using one as well.

We think this is a great new model in our guitar line up and hope you’ll try one out soon.  If you’ve got any questions, please send an email.

Stay in Tune,

Barry