We’ll miss Lance McCollum

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

On February 1, 2009, Hank Mauel posted the following message on Usenet news group rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic:

It is with great sadness that I write of the passing of Lance McCollum. He suffered an aortic aneurism early Sunday morning. He was rushed into emergency surgery at Auburn Faith Hospital but the damage was too massive to overcome.

Please pray for his wife Dawn and their children in this hour of need.

There will be no memorial sevice per his wishes. He will be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea over the Southern California area he surfed as a youth.

He will be greatly missed by a broad group of people, myself at the top of the list. He was a friend, mentor, musician, luthier and all around great guy.

Please direct any correspondence to my email and I will forward it to his wife, Dawn, at the appropriate time.

Hank Mauel
Mauel Guitars

Lance was a devoted family man, a fearless artist, a consummate craftsman, a mad adventurer, a passionate enophile, a compelling conversationalist. His guitars added a real measure of beauty to our shared world, so we – all of humanity – are richer for his time and energy.

If you’re not familiar with Lance’s work, you can see some examples at his web site, which was designed by his daughter.

Lance was a regular at our guitar parties, and his guitars were often the stars of the event. You can find pictures of Lance, his wife Dawn, and his guitars in the picking party pages.

Lynn and I will miss Lance, and our hearts go out to Dawn and the kids.

Fran

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About the Blog

    Howdy, my name is Fran Guidry and this is my Homebrewed Music blog.

    I play Hawaiian slack key guitar and recorded my solo acoustic CD at home. Most of the recording information I find on the internet seems focused on bands, drums, multitracking, and so on but my main focus is recording solo acoustic guitar. Lately I’ve been enjoying video recording along with audio, so that shows up in the blog as well.

    I’m also a guitar nut. I love big ones and little ones, handmades and factory guitars, cheap ones and expensive ones. So I’ll be sharing the fun of exploring guitars as well, along with the challenges of amplifying acoustic guitars for live performance.

    Welcome!

Philosophy

    My recording philosophy is pragmatic, skeptical, not super critical. After all, the performance is by far the most important component of a track, and every aspect of any recording is a matter of taste.

    But I do like to know “about stuff.” Back in hifi days I learned about double blind testing. I learned that we humans can easily hear differences that don’t really exist. The more I’ve learned about our human auditory system, the more I’m skeptical of what people say they hear, especially if they claim that a particular microphone or preamp or cable has some magical property.

    I’ve only been recording since 2001, and when I started I found the usual places on the internet. I sought advice and accepted it, thought I would improve my recordings by using more expensive equipment. It didn’t work.

    Two things that did seem to lead to better recordings were experience and room treatment. Getting an appealing sound is the combination of many small details, and learning those details only comes from experience. Amd the sound of the recording space is obviously a big factor.

    I’ve only recorded seriously using digital technology, but I remember trying to record rehearsals and gigs back in analog days. I don’t have any nostalgia for analog recording and playback systems at all. I think even low end digital systems can capture marvelous recordings. So when I look at gear, I look for good specs: low noise, broad flat frequency response, wide dynamic range, low distortion. I’m not interested in colorful components, mics and preamps with a sound, I want the sound to be the sound of my guitar.

    But the last word is that I’m just learning and I hope you find something useful in my posts.