Emily Talks About Her Eastwood Astrojet Tenor

Video Transcript

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Eastwood Astrojet Tenor Demo and Review

Welcome to get off set. My name is Emily, and I’m going to talk about something today that I don’t talk, talk about enough and that as Tenor guitars specifically, I’m gonna talk about my very first Tenor guitar. I bought this as a Valentine’s gift. Um, I bought this as a Valentine’s day gift to myself, uh, a couple of years ago in Portland, Oregon at old town.

[00:00:28] Music there that’s a great shop. I love them. They always have the best, the best weird stuff. And you know, I love weird. So this is the Eastwood. The now that’s continued, I should say Eastwood, Astro tenor deluxe. And what’s the Lux about it is that it has a Bigsby. That’s that’s pretty deluxe. And, uh, I’m a fan.

[00:00:51] I, I first got into Tenor guitars reading. I think it was the second issue ever of the, the fretboard journal with Neko case on the cover. I’m a Neko Case fan. She plays Tenor guitars. And when I saw this, I was like, I think I need to give that a tribe, which she always said she liked about them was that she has smaller hands.

[00:01:10] So. Navigating a full scale guitar. The six strings was kind of hard for her and you know, she doesn’t now, but like as far as when you’re learning something, when you’re that frustrated, because it just physically doesn’t seem to work for you, you might get put off of it. So someone recommended she tried Tinder guitar.

[00:01:28] She did, and she fell in love. Uh, now Neko plays most famously this Gibson SG tenor. And obviously this looks like that. But this is not that this is obviously the Eastwood, like I said, a kind of different headstock I’ll take the tuner off so you can kind of see a little bit better. Um, but this is, this is a very odd guitar.

[00:01:51] If you’re thinking of yourself, I didn’t know. Bigsby made vibratos for Tenor guitars. Um, they’re not, this is a regular Bigsby, this is regular guitar bridge and these are regular humbuckers and, uh, they did this to save money and make them more affordable by just using full-size guitar parts versus, you know, doing your own little custom line for tenor guitar, doing a custom bridge or, um, Doing what they do on a lot of their other guitar models.

[00:02:22] Now she’s essentially using a bass bridge, which makes the S the strings a lot more widely least spaced out what I like about it, this Tinder guitar versus the other Tinder guitar I have for Reese wood. Um, and I liked them both, but I like that it’s more like a banjo. Not with which I feel like it just feels more now

[00:02:48] for playing chords and stuff and kind of getting funky. And I feel like the wider, the fretboard gets for the fewer strings. Um, especially if the, if you’re using higher gauge strings, it gets a lot harder to do bar chords and things. And one of the things that people seem to like about, um, Tinder guitars, a lot of who put them in the mandolin tuning and the way you make chords on mandolin pins.

[00:03:10] In my experience makes a lot more sense with a much smaller, um, net with and scale legs. Sometimes those chords can feel a little bit more spread out and the wider, the, uh, the frat board, um, the net with gets. The harder it is to play those things. So that’s what I really like about, about this tenor guitar, especially.

[00:03:32] I wish they didn’t move them out of production. I guess they weren’t terribly popular. Um, I mean, it’s not a perfect guitar. I don’t think the fret board feels like, like the best fret board I’ve ever played. Uh, the tuning machines are, you know, I hate them kind of, uh, It stays in tune, like, okay, but it’s the kind of tuning machine where you tune it and you tend to, you tend and nothing happens.

[00:03:56] And all of a sudden it has a big, a big change in the pitch. And you’re like, well, I would kind of like to be able to dial that in a little bit better. Um, I don’t mind that it’s guitar parts. I do kind of wonder how, if at all. That impacts the humbuckers it’s not the best humbuckers in the world. The bridge is totally fine.

[00:04:17] I really actually liked that bridge for, um, of the XP. It’s a nice little roller roller bridge, and I kind of would like to put one of those on my offset. Tele the knobs are great. The switching works, the wiring works. Uh, the weight is fantastic. I really do like this guitar. Um, a lot. I don’t play it in demos very much because I think that people prefer to.

[00:04:40] So you guitars that they can relate to a little bit more and demos, but I’m going to play this through my hotcake, into my strive and rubidium some. And it’s kind of talk about why I love Tinder guitars. Even though I grew up playing six strings, I feel very comfortable with six strings. Um, I don’t feel like I need my hands.

[00:05:00] I don’t feel like my hands are too small, but I do love playing the tenor guitar, especially when I’m in a creative rut. Anytime I am in a creative rut. What I really love to do is just pull back, pull back everything, use fewer effects, um, use less. And that kind of forces me to think more creatively. I’m not falling back on, on other things to sort of like fill in holes.

[00:05:29] Um, it’s just becomes once again, it’s just me and music. And no distractions and having only four strings, I don’t feel very limited at all. Especially if I’m playing in a more traditional tinner style tuning for this, I have this, this hitter just tuned in Chicago style, which means it’s like the four highest pitched strings on a guitar.

[00:05:53] So E B. G and D so I could play an open.

[00:06:08] I mean, I can play solos on this thing.

[00:06:29] One thing I do want to say that I dislike actively about this guitar is that the dots are like mandolin dots. So I have dots at three, five, seven, 10, and 12 instead of nine and 12, which so confuses me. And I really don’t like that at all. Um, there are some other things that are just coming up, kinda playing around with today.

[00:06:53] Uh, just trying to train myself again, to, to learn solos in different way. Maybe. And kind of understand them a little bit better.

[00:07:23] yeah, just, I do have to rethink about what I’m doing sometimes. And sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s not

[00:07:51] The other thing is learning to bend. Away from you yourself when you’re on that, that lowest string

[00:08:17] I also think that these are generally that they’re generally pretty good for like some, some funk stuff.

[00:08:50] Or 1999,

[00:09:00] not the fullest sound in the world, but

[00:09:17] They just kind of play some little like a new wavy kind of stuff, or just some are not necessarily new wavy, but I always liked to just kind of leave the low E alone when I’m, when I’m playing. I typically live, play with a basis and I don’t want to step on their toes. And they’re just stuff I love doing, like, like this kind of thing.

[00:10:15] so I, I gave with this guitar.

[00:10:35] Maybe you get some marshal sounds going

[00:10:46] That sounded bad, but it’s fun.

[00:11:34] Just having fun with it. Yeah. And like relearning songs you’ve learned in other, in other realms for other reasons, refiguring, how to play a solo that you’ve been playing forever. Um, I think it just is something that can keep your mind sharp. And like, this is not the best guitar in the world. You can see it, it doesn’t stay in tune very well.

[00:12:00] It has these really terrible tuning machines, maybe the worst I’ve ever I’ve ever had, but, you know, I paid for this guitar and my own money. So.

[00:12:13] So on a reverb or something. I do want you to understand that that’s hitting machines are bad, but that’s an easy enough, easy enough fix, right.

[00:12:54] There we go. Alright.

[00:13:00] Okay. I think I stole that from them. Joel. I think, I don’t remember. I took that from somebody big. It was a ton of whatever you call it, federal demo. I remember that. Um, but yeah, that’s just enough of me yammering. I think about. About this guitar. I’ll go through the pickups really quickly. This is the, um, this is the neck

[00:13:40] already.

[00:13:58] well, if you are interested in taking up a Tinder guitar, mine, I recommend checking out reverb.com. Please use the link in the video description. And we get 1% back by on reverb.com. It doesn’t cost you anything extra. And if you make some awesome music with your Tinder guitar, uh, put it up to the interwebs via via distro kid.

[00:14:24] Um, use the link in the video description to save 7% on your first year of district kid. Normally it’s just 20 bucks. Anyway, if you use that link to sign up, it does help support the show we do get, uh, is an affiliate link. So we get a little bit money back. Um, and what else do I have to say? I do love this guitar despite his flaws and have any ideas of things I could do to mod this.

[00:14:49] Uh, I mean, switching out the pickups, probably eventually I keep saying that, but anything else, uh, hit me up in the comments and let me know what I should do this guitar. Cause I would love to love this guitar even more than I already do. And as long as it mud. Makes me play a guitar more than it’s worth it.

[00:15:10] That’s it doesn’t matter if I play it more. It’s worth it. Yeah. So thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding until next time. My name is Emily goodbye.