November 19, 2004

Meet Little Fretty! Umm, as a guitar player I have absolutely no idea why anyone would use this and it clearly looks like something totally different.
posted by skallas 19 years ago
  • This is just a big inside joke, right?
  • Does it vibrate too?
  • Where do you put the batteries?
  • I always found it amusing to stop halfway through the restringing process to noodle around on the emptiness. But I can't imagine paying for that privilege. And, yes, it looks like something else.
  • He is a smooth skinned, hard foam material engineered to give a pressure resistance when squeezed to build finger playing strength and speed.  His Strings, Nut... uh... yeah.
  • But there was more: Little Fretty is a [...] warm-up and practice hand or play exerciser.   He is a portable, lightweight, full size, [...] with a easy grip handle. He is a smooth skinned, hard foam material engineered to give a pressure resistance when squeezed to build finger [...] strength and speed.  His [...] Nut[s] and ["]Frets["] are molded or raised and his half round back give the 3D feel of the [...] ["]neck["]
  • Diane Schuur has a grip on BB King's, uh, guitar.
  • Aw, man, the rest of it's like that, too. I encourage you to enjoy the power of the [implied] ["mis"]quotation marks.
  • The imagery just goes on and on: When I play for long periods of time, I find that my thumb\area around there on my fretting hand gets sore\tired, because i brace my thumb against the back of the neck of my guitar to barre chord or powerchord. Im thinking either its maybe cuz my guitar's neck may be too small, or im just using bad technique or i lack hand strenght (im not really a strong guy at all). I dont have any other guitars to compare with so i dont know, except my mom's nylon string acoustic which is wide as well as fatter...so i dont know. http://guitargeek.com/chat/showthread.php?threadid=42398
  • Jeeze skallas, now any picture of a hand and a guitar neck seems, well, a little, um...
  • Didn't Pete Townshend once famously say that the guitar is nothing but a big phallic symbol? Maybe this is why there are so few female guitarists out there? Or maybe why there are so many female bass players? *Here all week folks! Tip your servers!*
  • little fretty looks like a dildo. and the woman in the photo... her head seems oddly squished to one side. (ah. now i see. they set the image width incorrectly. feh. fixed-width web pages are SO 1996...)
  • Well, I couldn't find one, but I swear I've seen photos/paintings that emphasize the guitar-like curves of a woman's body (or vice versa). It's easier to find proverbs or quotes about how a woman is like a guitar, but I'd rather not.
  • JAM  AWAY - Jazz, Rock or Country without disturbing your Neighbors, Parents, Spouse, Friends, Fellow Commuters or Musicians. Oh, man, the image of someone fingering this big red dildo-y thing on a 6:30 am commuter train is just priceless. ["Wanker!" I think that's proper usage, right, blokes?]
  • Maybe this is why there are so few female guitarists out there? Or maybe why there are so many female bass players? So size does matter?
  • This is not a joke. It is, however, a perfectly useless piece of shit. Need hand/ wrist strength? Play your instrument. Look, there it is! Want to warm up fast? Have the drummer hit "1" and keep going. Now we're up to goddam speed, right?
  • little fretty looks like a dildo Oh! That's what everyone thinks it looks like. I thought it looked like a banana...
  • Actually, John McLaughlin has just a guitar neck he keeps in a quiver and carries around with him so he can practice where ever he goes. I'm very glad that man hasn't had his stroke yet.
  • Keep him rolled up for those emergency "bathroom moments". What "bathroom moments" are we talking about here? *baffled*
  • alnedra: i refer again to the fact that little fretty resembles a sex toy. "bathroom moments" indeed.
  • Were you thinking of the violon d'Ingres, PY?
  • Is someone in here literally questioning whether or not the guitar neck is a phallic symbol? Do not toy with me people! *rewinds last concert scene of 'Purple Rain'*
  • He is Q-U-I-T-E as a MOUSE Apparently Little Fretty also chews holes in my house. Fuzzy little bastard.
  • But does it play "Stairway to Heaven?"
  • I lived next door to a trumpet player in the dorm one year when I was in college. My build-up was shoved up against the wall my room shared with hers. She had this appalling habit of getting up and practicing on Sunday mornings. She was courteous and only practiced with the reed (I'm told), but I still ended up listening to a freaking kazoo concert on Sundays at a time when $DEITY meant for me to be having a good lie-in after a late night out. So the idea of a silent practice mechanism sounds a little less wack to me than it might to some of you guys. I don't know if Little Fretty would be any good for that--I suspect not--but the idea counts for something. I'm Immigration Lass and I approve of this message
  • Yes, Plegmund, that must be it. I guess I got my instruments mixed up.
  • and only practiced with the reed No reed in a trumpet, I'm afraid. Must have used just the mouthpiece.