Home from the hospital!

I'm very excited. Puccini the Japanese mandolin is home. I picked it (him?) up today for $69 and backpacked it home, swaddled in a Harvard sweatshirt. Only the best for my antique wallhangers. The guy I picked it up from in the repair shop greeted me with, "Oh, YOU'RE the one... uh, do you actually play this thing?" Fortunately, his questions were not provoked by the state of Puccini so much as the discomfort of playing bowlbacks in general.

I barely looked at it in the shop, thinking I wouldn't be able to see what they had done, anyway. That turned out to be only partly true. The tuners, well, they could have just blown the dust off them and I wouldn't know. But they definitely did some substantial gluing on the back ribs and a good cleaning and oiling overall, leaving the mother of pearl fret dots shining like the moon and the face of it a little more golden. The back varnish is not even dandruffing as much as it was before. It looks funny to me with its shiny new strings, but it's back up to some kind of playability. I have no intention of ever getting it re-fretted (the frets do have substantial wear). It's not as if anyone's going to gig with it, for god's sake.

Awesome! Another instrument I can't play! :) Photos another day.

Time's a-wastin'

Or it will be when I get my soldering iron. I am zeroing in on some circuit-building projects -- classes seem to be rather pricey and hard to find, so I may just sail in and start reading and building cheap projects. Here's one pedal I've found that looks like a winner. Circuitry's easy enough -- I have my old breadboard to test circuits before I solder them, and I wish I'd kept my old physics lab book for practice -- but having to worry about doing it well enough to keep the sound clean is another thing. Not to mention the enclosure and all that other stuff I never had to worry about before. You should see my final lamp project for Physics 15b. It looked like a train wreck with a light bulb hanging off.

Flight of the bumblebee

My guitar has developed fret buzz. It is severely annoying. I assume that either I have already killed the guitar somehow, or, more likely, that my strings have broken in and are vibrating more, and therefore whacking the frets at midpoint. I'll probably just suffer through till I feel like restringing, which will solve the problem temporarily. A heavier gauge string would probably really solve the problem... I'll think about it.

Get thee to a bookstore

If you're a Wilco fan, and even if you're not, rush to read the Fretboard Journal cover article on their secret loft in Chicago, guitar nerd paradise. FJ is a gorgeous, expensive magazine with fantastic articles about, well, fretboard instruments, players, and history. I indulged in one for my train ride to Wisconsin, and did not regret it.

Cmin, my Everest

Took another run at the glass mountain of Cmin today, slipped off and settled for Asus.

Sigh.

In the hospital

Puccini went to the shop today to get fixed. Namely, to have a rib reglued, exterior bottom veneer glued down, fretboard cleaned, one set of tuners removed and wood smoothed so that they will screw down flat, and finally new strings. Total damage likely to be about $60 for labor and whatever the strings cost, say $12 at full markup. Not bad. I was prepared to hear about $100.

The diagnostician, a friendly guy named Eric, took one look at poor Puccini and said, "Oh, this has been in water." I was wondering what the heck kind of varnish Suzuki could possibly have used that could flake off. Honestly, it's like dandruff. If you so much as hold it in a playing position, your shirt is covered with little flakes. There's no help for it; even if I felt like ruining it by stripping and refinishing, it's got so many little ribs on the back (think a pumpkin with many segments) that it would be a nightmare. He also pointed out to me that there are little holes showing below the tuner mounts, suggesting that the tuners, though quite old, as their ivory buttons show, may not be the originals -- which in turn suggests that the mandolin may be even older than 1945, the only date I have.

However, the structure is sound, even after being examined internally with a little dentist mirror -- that amused me no end. I expect to get it back in a week or so.

In the news

Apparently I'm not the only one sick of Aerosmith. I can't seem to get away from those headlines. I love Aerosmith as much as the next '80s child, but does anyone really think it's a huge tragedy if they don't perform together anymore?

Also in the news is Taylor Swift. I watched her SNL monologue and mostly thought to myself damn, the girl has long fingers. She can wrap right around for the thumb on the E string. Forget getting any tips from watching her... I'll have to do some youtubing.

Movin' on up

The strumming is improving, the fingering is improving... and I'm sick of playing Aerosmith. It's fine to warm up with, but I'm trying to play some fast-paced songs now, and ones with difficult chord combos. "Hammer to Fall" is a good fast one. All A, D, and E, but the constant A/D/A/D ad infinitum is excellent practice for me. I still don't hit the D chord all at once -- I lay down my fingers on the B and G strings, then stick the middle finger down on the e string.

Others in frequent rotation now are "Hallelujah," "Desperado," and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." I also went back to "No One But You," which is much harder now that I'm playing every chord instead of only the ones I know. Funny how that works.