| Luthier's Many Labors Of Love: Creator of SoloEtte travel guitars ...
The guitars designed and built by Rossco Wright were once truly unique: a single stick of solid wood, with tuning pegs on the bottom, and a removable framework so the instrument could be broken down for easy transport. The SoloEtte classical guitar was designed as a travel guitar, and travel it did: To space, where one was presented to Russian cosmonauts on the space station Mir in 1995. And to Seattle, where a SoloEtte is encased in the Guitar Gallery at the Experience Music Project next to other ground-breaking guitars. It was a tiny niche in the highly competitive guitar industry, but a profitable one for Wright. At its peak around 2000, Wright Guitar Technology employed about 10 workers who built 100 SoloEtte guitars a month at the company's workshop in a west Eugene industrial park.
Full Test: 2007 Infiniti G35 Sport
Components: "Infiniti Studio on Wheels" is the official name of this stereo system. It features Bose components and is an extra-cost option for the G35. It's included as part of larger options packages — most costing in excess of $3,000 — that offer many desirable features in addition to an upgraded stereo. The system consists of three speakers mounted in each front door including a 10-inch woofer, a 1-inch tweeter and a 3-inch mid/high-range speaker — another 3-inch speaker resides in the center of the dash as well. Each rear door has a 6.5-inch speaker and there's another 10-inch woofer in the rear package shelf. Total speaker count is 10. The upgraded system also includes a Bose digital amplifier mounted under the rear package shelf. Performance: Bose says the goal of this new Infiniti sound system is to deliver detailed, lifelike sound.
'Friends of the band'
Narrow the process down to a simple checklist: gather four or five friends; spike their hair and encourage one to (try to) grow a beard; dim the lights and take photos of them in an alley; give the group a catchy name; and most importantly, create a MySpace page.Voila.A band - ready to lure fans, tour, sell merchandise and sign a recording contract - is born. .
Weezer Scrap Fifth LP, Start Again from Scratch
After an uncharacteristically productive period in 2001 and 2002, during which they released their first albums in five years, Weezer have been taking things relatively slow, perhaps taking extra care to ensure that their long-gestating (and still forthcoming) fifth full-length exceeds the expectations of their notoriously hardass fanbase. Since December of 2003, Weezer had been in and out of the studio with producer Rick Rubin working on new material, to varying degrees of success. However, the band has now scrapped the results of those sessions, in favor of new material they began work on three weeks ago. According to a post on Weezer.com, the group has been in the studio for much of August laying down songs from scratch. The website explained the band's decision to shelve their work with Rubin, stating that it was a "response to [frontman] Rivers [Cuomo] regaining his sense of momentum with his songwriting, and not feeling right about continuing with the incomplete recordings from December." It goes on to reveal: "In effect, the band is now producing itself, as it did on [the prior albums] Pinkerton and Maladroit, but this time they have a wise shoulder to lean on if and when need be.
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