THANKS, bender people !

[piaggio]

Hello, I'm marco from Italy, and I'd like to say thanks to everyone on this forum,
especially the B-bender zone.
in fact I've just put an hipshot on my mexican tele..and I'm the happy one.
If I had not found this forum, I would have never been able to do it...

it's a peculiar hipshot, anyway.
first it got two screws above, that keep it very still.
I don't care of the holes, I will never take it off, I like the way it looks.

then, I don't use the "hipshot" lever : I put a strat tremolo arm in the "tightening screw" hole , and use it like a bigsby palm pedal..it feels very easy to me to keep control, lot easier than using the hip.
no palm muting while b-bending, and that's the only downside.
i put a opened plastic tube around the bar to raise the fulcrum point, otherwise the ashtray would have got in the way of the bar, not allowing to reach the right pitch.

then again, no teflon tube : my tech and friend luca, jointed with a screw a little block of a special material called "barlin", "marrin", some like that, that has virtually no friction at all (and therefore is so hard to shape) and acts like a string tree before the saddle to keep the right tension..

spretzel locking tuners (no string tree) and lots of nut sauce on the nut...and no tuning problem whatsoever.

then..time to learn : it's quite easy to learn the first 4-5 tricks, that, randomly applied to a solo, can give that special country flavour...but a guitarist could easily tell my bag of tricks is still almost empty
jim Campilongo played in my hometown, Pisa, two weeks ago : beside being a fantastic polite and friendly guy he gave us some lessons we won't forget so soon...
the only problem is...no country music in italy . is really an oddball, here...only marco di maggio plays a mean rockabilly.
maybe some traditional italian music, quite similar to basic country ( I,IV,V progression, bass lines going I-V-I-V ) could do...listen here !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJc8R...eature=related

the tone...well, great one : it nails both Don Rich's tiger by the tail solo, and Cornell Dupree intro on Memphis soul stew (to me, the best guitar part ever !)
still wondering if an humbucker, a mini, a P90, or a HD mini strat could get my tone somewhere else... as far as distortion goes, I still like my rick 360 more.
the tele doesn't not seem to react so well to my bigmuff pedal...
I wouldn't be sad to get a sound like that :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vw3j...eature=related

but anyway, thanx everybody to gave me the imput to put a bender on my tele !

[asatfan]

Marco, great twist on the Hipshot! Glad you got it goin' on!