Attention Gaptoothed Turntable Owners!

[JKL2000]

Buddy Guy was on the Leonard Lopate Show (Public Radio) and he said as a kid he had an old record player that had no needle. But he figured out if he stuck a straw from the broom between his teeth and held it against the groove, he could play the record.

I command anyone who has a turntable and can get a straw from a broom between their teeth to try this and report back on how it worked. You know you have to try it now anyway, right?

[enpdllp]

It would be much harder to replicate Guy's feat with a recent LP since the grooves on a 78 recording are slightly larger than the ones on a 33 1/3 or a 45.

It appears that when Buddy Guy was a kid he could give MacGyver a run for his money. According to legend, Guy made his first guitar at age seven using wood, his mother's hairpins, paint cans and screen door wire for the strings.

[JKL2000]

Sorry - back when I had a turntable, I had some of my parents old 78s, but I guess you're right!

RE: Guy's early instruments, in the interview I heard, he said he had some kind of two-stringed instrument that I guess he'd made, and a guy (someone from his future record company or something) heard him playing it and bought him his first guitar. Maybe the two stringed instrument is what he made out of wood, hairpins, etc. Anyway, it does sound like he was pretty inventive.

[Dave (in MA)]

When I was a kid, a friend demonstrated that he could play a record by turning it with one hand and holding a needle in the groove with another, using the ELP b-side Humbug as the chosen victim.

[Adm.Kirk]

Seriously, I think Buddy had a diddley bo. Probably a wire or two, maybe, strung up in a door frame with something pushed up under it for tension.

Speaking of Guy, his new live album, Live at Legends, is awesome.

Bill

[JKL2000]

When I was a kid, a friend demonstrated that he could play a record by turning it with one hand and holding a needle in the groove with another, using the ELP b-side Humbug as the chosen victim.

I used to do this too - if you stuck the pin through the bottom of a disposable plastic cup, the cup worked as a nice little speaker.

[Progbear]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RUwy4UEDzQ

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MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")

"'Thin Thighs For Your Man.' But I don't *like* men with thin thighs" --Daria

N.P.:“The Language of Life”-Everything but the Girl

[Chain]

http://sphotos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/418032_10151311281757208_73545127_n.jpg

[Dave the Brave]

I heard Les Paul tell an interviewer that his first experiment at electrifying a guitar was done by sticking a 78 RPM gramophone needle into the body of a semi-acoustic guitar and tried to improve on it, but found that there was too much feedback and electrical problems.

DtB

[Dave (in MA)]

If it skips you could always throw a nickel in the cup.

[Garyhead]

EVERYONE knows a copper penny produces a warmer analog-type sound than the cold-sterile sound of a nickel! |)