I don’t want all of Reddit to come flooding in all at once.

But one thing I’ve noticed is that the entire Fediverse has a lot of instance-specific stuff going on. It’s really a question of finding the right instance for you. For example, I didn’t particularly like mastodon.social as an instance of Mastodon, but I’ve found other instances where I gel with the userbase well. It’s actually made the experience more pleasant.

If you’re willing and able, setting up a Lemmy instance for some specific community is actually a good idea. During my holiday break, I’m going to be working on setting up Lemmy for my town and maybe even a club website that I have been assigned control over. .world will suffice in the interim.

I’m really in the “something completely different” camp at this point.

Part of my motive for upgrading is actual frustration with the Les Paul as a model. I’ll admit that I bought this guitar under the influence of The Velvet Underground and Nico and K-On!, because I was at the tail end of my weeb phase. But after playing it for a decade, I’ve noticed that actually, the Les Paul has some problems as a design:

1. The Gibson headstock sucks. Between the weird angle that makes it more likely to break and, its wide, rectangular shape, and the 3 by 3 tuner setup, intonation is a pain. And the G string is always awful. And as I’ve played this guitar and other Les Pauls, whether from the Gibson Custom Shop, their American mass production factory, or imports, I’ve come to the conclusion that my problems are design related.
2. The short scale length is kind of cramped. I’m finding that sure, bends require less strength, but they’re not so much easier than they are on a longer scale length that it makes up for my very large hands making pull-offs more difficult because my hands don’t have the room they need.

I tend to use a modeler over amps. So making that happen isn’t too terribly hard. I’ve even been taking it in to the guitar stores, because it fits in my music bag.

Yeah, after getting an American Strat and an Indonesian Custom 24-08 in my hands yesterday, I’ve ruled out the Strat. Which is weird because when I started, this shopping, it was the guitar I was looking at the closest. And honestly, I probably could have gotten a good Black Friday or Inventory Closeout sale price on an American Strat, given my timeline.

But I may need to try something from Godin. Which is going to take me into the suburbs, because they don’t have a dealer in town.