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Uh... my nut fell out.

filed under:guitar

Well, more like slipped out.

I was playing guitar today and noticed that my low E string was a little closer to the edge of the neck than I remembered. Sure enough the glue joint had failed and it had slipped in it's notch. It's an easy fix, in fact all I'm doing now is waiting for the glue to dry. The hard part is making sure that both sides of the nut are equally flush after clamping.

It's probably been loose for a while and my sustain and tone should improve.

Speaking of tone, this weekend I went by Atex Electronics and picked up a 1458 dual op amp chip. W00t!!! Sounds like fun, huh? Well my DOD OD 250 has a 4558 dual op amp chip in it, the vintage 250s had a 741 single op amp chip in them. Keeping up? Ok, the 1458 is essentially a dual op version of the 741 so replacing the 4558 with the 1458 makes it sound like the original design.

This is actually a pretty cool thing for 2 reasons. Numero uno is now I can set my amp's eq for a good clean sound now as opposed to just setting the eq to make the OD 250 sound good. IOW, now both clean and OD 250 sounds sound good. It also makes the effect sound more vintage-closer to the sound I hear in my head. The second reason is that I was able to throw the 4558 in my Tubescreamer clone and replace the crappy one I had in there.

EXCITING!!!

Yeah, well just be glad I didn't load the post down with pics of naked chips.

What band?

filed under:music

Words are objects of sound that confound me. I know the power, but I don't have it. Yet here I am, making ready to write lyrics for songs to come.

Rueben, though not bowing out of the band with words has essentially not joined through inaction. I was really depending on him for his words. I can come up with music all day long. But words... even if I find a subject I can never find my meter. Still, if I don't write the lyrics for my music to be songs, who will?

I'm still looking for a bass player but I've already had a couple of heavy nibbles for the "other guitarist" position.

Orders?!?!?!?!?

filed under:guitar, effects and gretsch

I've not been ignoring this place or the rest of the internet, but I have been playing a lot more guitar.

I finally got my Gretsch amp back a couple of weeks ago and running it through it's paces trying to see how it works with the rest of my rig. So far I've discovered that it likes pedals, has a nice punchy tone with a tight low end and that gets a little dirty when cranked. I say a little dirty because it stays pretty clean even at full volume. Clean or dirty it really has a tone that is totally unlike anything else I've heard. The amp has a built in reverb that is kind of toy like. It's not a huge, wet Fender style of reverb, more like a reverb that'll do in a pinch. It also has a tremolo that I had never heard until I got the amp. It's a great little tremolo that sounds almost exactly to the box you see to the left.

This little gem is my version of the "Electronics Australia" Tremolo circuit printed in EA way back in the '60s. I found the schematic and layout at runoffgroove.com and built it point to point without a printed circuit board. A couple of guys at work saw it when I took it by to show it off, were impressed and asked me to make them one.

Uhm... whah?!?!?!

So I'll be working on a couple for profit. The whole problem is that I don't know what my time is worth. I can get all of the components for one pedal for about $30 US and I'm thinking about selling for $70 or so, but I almost feel like I'm charging too much. Almost.

I'll build these 2, put fake serials numbers and my sig on the inside and be done with it.

And just so I can set the record straight, I am not accepting orders.

Not much, you?

filed under:life

It's been a while since I last updated. Life has happened but nothing worth going back to blog about.

Today the boy and I were in Borders. He was there to meet a possible bass player for a new band, I was there as transportation.

We got there early and I made for the coffee and he went to the music to wait for the bass player. I waited for my coffee for a about 10 minutes and the girl the boy was meeting still hadn't showed. As I was sipping wondering what else to do with my time I saw them walking up to the store. They seemed like nice enough people but you could tell that they felt out of place at the book store. Not stupid, just that they didn't belong. Like "the word" made no impact on them. I let the boy have his meet and wandered about trying to find something interesting.

For some reason I ended up in the poetry section. Now when I say poetry section I mean 3 shelf sections full of poetry books which is quite a lot for RedneckNeoCon Central. Right away I ignored it all looking for anything by/about John Keats. I've been interested in Keats since reading the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. Simmons actually used Keats as a character(s) and referred to his poetry a great deal. I wanted the book pictured because it is complete but it also has some letters in it. That is what makes this book special. Sure, the poetry is great, but the letters really show who the man was.

So after looking at every poetry book they had I left the poetry section empty.

The boy's meeting was over and I met the girl's parents who seemed nice enough. I offered up Casa De Pi for rehearsals, then we left after a few minutes of casual conversation.

We listened to PiL's Second Edition on the way home.