Sylvia got scared by a soft bass case that I had left in a strange place this morning--in the dark it could have been mistaken for a dog, I guess.
In addition to my own 4 and 8 string instruments:
Think I'm about done fixing the neck and bridge on this acoustic/electric Ibanez. It was seriously jacked. I will miss being able to sit at the PC and learn songs off youtube without an amp or headphones.
Definitely on my wish list.
Next to the Ibanez is one of Steve's basses that I'm thinking might come in handy when the Televators go into an Austin studio next month. It's a Fender (Japan) Jazz Special that combines the best features of the two most popular and long-lived basses in history. He has it strung and tuned for the bottom four strings of a 5-string, so it's got a thin and easy to play neck yet still goes into the deep sub frequencies. Too bad I don't know how to play our songs in this tuning, or if it's even possible. 
This is John's BC Rich 5-string that Rikk has been using in our country band A Beautiful Mess. It's got some electrical issues that I hope have been sorted out tonight. In the foreground you can see the precision Klein Tools fine gauge wire strippers my brother got me for Christmas.
Sylvia hooked me up with an almost exact clone (that was MUCH cheaper) from Northern Tools for the thicker wires, which is the smart way to go. Finer copper strands need finer tools, but when you get into the lamp cord range it's really not a big deal.
Ashamed to admit that in all the years (okay, 3 decades +) that I've been fixing electronics and making custom cables, my toolbox has always held some seriously shitty wire strippers. For precision work I would use an ExActo knife, very carefully and slowly.
These quality tools are wonderful.
I feel like an idiot for cheating myself by being too cheap and using crap tools.
Only bass missing is the most important one--David's Korean Ibanez SR500 that will be used for the vast majority of the Televators studio sessions.
I need to put slightly heavier strings on it and adjust the bridge and neck accordingly in time for our show on March 30 at the Evil Olive Lounge.
Neck truss-rod adjustments take time to settle down, so hopefully I'll be bringing it home from practice tomorrow night.
And with any luck I'll be able to restrain myself from playing it too much, so the new strings will be right at the perfect age for serious recording--not too "zingy" but still kinda bright and responsive.
On the subject of recording, I actually spoke on a conference call to our producer last night for the first time and it turns out that he Google-stalked me and found Views Of Texas.
Besides recommending that I may want to lower my internet profile in the future (don't know how I feel about that) he also had some fun at my expense with the name of my old band The Hitmen mentioned in the last post.
I guess he wasn't told that every single Televator has been in The Hitmen at some point, especially our guitarist who founded the band and was the only one to stay from beginning to end--10+ years.
Good thing my bandmates don't include this blog in their usual web surfing--they had zero idea what the hell he was talking about so the faux pas went unnoticed.
2 comments:
Why on earth would he want you to lower your Internet profile?
No idea. With all the celeb tweeting and FBing, I thought social media was a good thing.
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