No, a Tone Ball isn’t some new invention to help improve the tone of your instrument. A Tone Ball is merely a fancy name for the dust bunnies that tend to collect inside guitar bodies.

Fretboard Journal ran a story about Tone Balls back in 2006, but Boing Boing picked it up this week.

According to the story, one of the guitar repair men at Elderly collects these things, and has

catalogued dozens of examples by make, model and year of the host instrument.

Interesting hobby…

Pardon me while I get my Collings out and check for Tone Balls…

Fretboard Journal magazine’s online talk radio show last week featured a lengthy interview with Roland White.

They talk about both he and brother Clarence’s music careers and about the new Clarence White instructional book/CD package that Roland has recently published.

Clarence and Roland White are also the subject of an in-depth feature in the current (Spring ‘09) issue of the magazine. Written by music journalist Geoffrey Himes, the article includes some of the same stories Roland discusses in this online interview, as well as a wealth of archival photographs.

Longtime fans of the White brothers will have heard some of these stories about how Roland and Clarence discovered bluegrass music living in Maine in the 1950s, but many new fans may not be familiar with them. Roland tells them so lovingly and in such detail…

It’s well worth the time to give this hour-long discussion a listen.

The editors of Fretboard Journal are trying their hand at internet radio. They’ve recently launched Fretboard Journal BlogTalkRadio.

The show is hosted by the editors of the magazine and will air live every Friday at 1PM PST. Each episode will be archived online for those who are unable to catch the show live. Of course, the talk will center around fretted instruments, mainly the guitar.

The first show, which aired April 3, 2009, features and interview with Martin Guitars historian John Woodland.

Featured guests for this episode: luthier John Woodland (describing the research he’s conducted on Martin guitars) and pedal steel guitarist Jon Rauhouse (Neko Case, Billy Bob Thornton’s Boxmasters). We also talk about the Fretboard Journal magazine and our new Spring 2009 issue featuring Clarence & Roland White.

It’s worth checking out if you’re into guitars. Just click the play button on the widget at the top of this post, and enjoy the show.

The Summer 2008 issue of The Fretboard Journal is set to be mailed to subscribers next week, with a cover feature on Chris Thile. The piece is an interview, conducted by fellow mandolin trailblazer David Grisman, who graced the cover of the inaugural issue of the magazine in 2005.

Also profiled in this issue is resonator guitarist Jerry Douglas, and a lengthy interview with noted guitar builder Jean Larrivee is included as well.

We have spoken highly of this glossy, full color quarterly in the past for its use of heavy, archival-quality paper and for the excellence of the writing and photography.

Subscription and single issue order information can be found on The Fretboard Journal web site.