(I Need A PA)

This is what sometimes happens with noise when the house is empty...

Garage-Office Jam

Ok, I am trying to get on a schedule of constructive practice, so everybody knows the best method is to records yourself and publish on social media blogger spot. Behavioral control by guilt and shame, ha, my old Catholic residue. Seriously though, this is the best to keep track of progress (practice really does lead to improvement).

So this early going, very impromptu set (my partner missus was giving a speech) included: Meat Is Murder, Heaven, Farewell Ride, Eminence Front, Dominance and Submission, Death Grip & Crack Pipe, Desperado, Doolin-Dalton, Her Diamonds, Living Proof, Old Country Waltz, Particle Man, Powderfinger, Pumped Up Kicks, Sedan Delivery, Sweet Jane, Tender is the Night, Waiting for the Great Leap Forward, What Is Quicksand, Your Racist Friend, Girlfriend In A Coma/For the Turnstiles.

Pedalboard

I have been trying to get a pedalboard made for my effects pedals for probably a month now. I have been playing almost exclusively guitar rather than bass from just about 2 years ago and had broke out my collected assortment of oddball pedals at the beginning of 2019 following the boot to garage office and switching from acoustics (temp changes aren't good for these) to my electrics (much more durable against the environment).

Everything needed spark, so I was going through old power chords to see what matched each pedal then splicing in through the DC transistor batter connector mostly. I was able to get 3 of 4 operational again, when J.A.S. happened to visit.

My main concern was a lot of noise through this MXR "Commande Series" early 80s overdrive pedal. J.A.S. was very kind and swapped the MXR for another distortion, and suggested I get a daisy chain power supply. They are very inexpensive (I ended up paying like $12) and have a variety of different AC connectors.

Once I got everything powered I had to figure out a design. I had thoughts for a kind of box-like setup with hinges and lids and such, and was eyeballing some solid wood lying around in the garage. I also picked up a roll of Velcro tape, ha, which actually was not one sided sticky tape. This "tape" had hooks on one side and felt on the other (to make a wrap around bind).

So Friday night I used Elmer's school glue and glued the felt side of the Velcro tape on the bottom of the pedals. I already had the 9" x 12" rectangles of green felt for the hook side of the Velcro tape.

I ended up needing to ditch a dinette table at the dump (it was daughter's old one and supposed to go to good will, but during the move she lost bolts attaching all the legs).

The leaf for the table had a nice edge to it going round the out side, so when I chopped it in half the result was a long triangle shape perfect for a pedalboard. Plus is was almost exactly the correct width for the sticky felt pieces I was planning to adhese to the surface.

The only difference from my original conception is that I was planning a "landscape" pedalboard and ended up with a "portrate" layout pedalboard. Turned out to be a fair cop.

The pedals are (clockwise from 7 o'clock):

1. DOD FX65 Stereo Chorus (1985-89);
2. DigiTech DigiDelay Digital Delay (2002);
3. Aria Pro II DT-1 Distortion (1980s?); and
4. Systech Phase Shifter (mid-1970s).

+1 Luck Guitar

Whippersnapper "+1 Luck" Guitar

Whoooo-haaa, the newest addition to the Luminous guitar family... I had been helping Sick Rick in Litigation Trickster mode and he laid on me his version of a Les Paul Jr. copy!

"Whippersnapper" is Sick's own line of hand-made guitars, mostly from kits and necks that Sickness plays around with and eventually finishes. This particular model is "+1 Luck" because Sick Rock found a four-leaf clover and embedded it somewhere inside one of the guitar's cavities.

I have not plugged the beast in as yet, but soon. I am just about over my winter's cold and overdue to records another tuneish (heavy emphasis on the "ish"ness) video.

Happy New Year!

Sssh... New Carlos

Carlos Model 226

The Carlos is dead, long live the Carlos!

Carlos acoustic guitars are products of Coast Wholesale Music which is connected to Kaman Music Corporation and made in Korea from about 1976 until the late 1980s. They are rare, but not highly sought after.

So after the old Carlos steel-string was stolen from daughter's house last January 2018 she mentioned a hard time with it because the stiffness of steel strings. I related that Carlos back in the day made classical guitars and told her I would keep my eye out for one.

Carlos steel string guitars pop up now and again on eBay, but I only found one classical over the past year (seller looked sketchy with burry photographs, no sales history, and was removed within a day!). Lo and behold just before Christmas I find this Carlos classical guitar for $8o! The instrument had several pairs of cross-marks gouged into the fretboard, but other than that it looked playable.

When the guitar arrived I found the binding was missing from one side, so I took on a project to install some very beautiful decorative binding you can barely make out in the photo. That was a fun job involving Stew-Mac binding glue, 600 grit sandpaper, and lacquer. There was also a chip on the business end of the nut, but strangely enough the intonation is perfect.

Once the craft work was finished I had some voodoo to attend on the Carlos. The magic of my old Carlos steel string was that back in 1992 when middlin son was 2 years old he poured a glass of apple juice down the soundhole when I left the guitar unattended for a moment. I has doused the inside with baby powder to absorb what moisture I couldn't dump out, so the interior had this powdery white patina that always reminded me of toddler Panda.

Although he was hesitant, I prevailed upon middlin son to repeat the scene (ha, although with only a shot glass worth of apple juice this time) and I put in the baby powder. The interior now looks just like the old stolen Carlos and evocates same joyful memories.

Here it is, three days past Christmas and daughter (recently married) hasn't yet made it by for her present. She will probably think it is weird, but that's her dad.😀

Sick Rick & the Rattlesnake Foreskin

I spake too soon...

Here is video imagery of the old Carlos steel-string (also a Yamaha 12-string formerly owned by Sick Rick & myself, being played by J.A.S.) from July 11, 1992, several years prior to SUBNOVA.

The gang is camping on Mount Diablo in California...

Passing of the Carlos...

Sad to report my oldest guitar since the old Squier Bullet has disappeared.

I can't believe I don't have a single picture of my Carlos I bought brand-new right around December 1987 (guitar was date-stamped made in November 1987, so really new). It is the same as the guitar pictured above, although I eventually replaced the tuners with upgraded golden ones probably around 2000. I had the Carlos in the family 30 years, almost as long as Pete's had his Aria Pro II.

The story of the Carlos begins before our original "Lander's Gang" days. While by 1984 we had had some goofball jams (think accomplished sax player Boy with the Bark jamming with very stoned and cranked Deangul, Sick Rick and I on "The Batman Theme," "Peter Gunn"...) and some starts and stops, but never really formed an official "band." Sick Rick at some point lent me his Carlos acoustic for a lengthy amount of time when I regularly ingested meth on my landscape maintenance tour of 1984 and I loved & played it a ton. Mostly on my front porch. Mostly at like 2:00am.

We (Sick Rick, Peterock, Deangul and I) had all worked for Lander's during the summer-fall of '85 and started Lander's Gang band maybe that fall, then by Winter/Spring '86 I was booted from the 'Gang for drunken bass rhythms (or, say, lack thereof).

I started taking lessons and playing classical guitar at Chabot, but unfortunately my classical guitar met it's destructive demise somewhere around late winter 1987. Throughout that year (the classical was replaced, thanks mom!) I learned probably just barely enough to be dangerous and decided by the end of '87 to pick up a steel-string acoustic.

Sick Rick I think had turned me on to a music store over off Alcosta Boulevard in Dublin (Alcosta Music?), and I ended up talking the saleman down from $195 to $175 for the Carlos plus a soft-shell case and bought the guitar on layaway in 30 days (my genius idea of haggling like I had cash then putting money down to hold the instrument).

The Carlos 249 is a dreadnought-style, mahogany finish 6-string which I later learned was actually a low-end Kaman product. When I first brought it home I remember Sick Rick said "You better take care of this one..." (What? Did I have a reputation or something???)

Ha, after marriage and parenthood in 1989 I was not very attentive around the little ones though. When we lived upstairs at the apartments and Panda was maybe a year old (1991), he went out on the back balcony and poured a glass of apple juice inside the Carlos! (Well, acoustic guitars kind of look like receptacles...) I dumped a bunch a baking powder, corn starch, and baby powder inside to absorb the juice and that is why the Carlos from that time always had a poofy white interior.

As time went on I rarely picked up the Carlos because my band stuff was all bass until the 1995 demise of Ripon that John and I jammed in. Although in perhaps late 1993 to early 1994 I jammed a couple-three times on the Carlos with Peterock at his space behind Romley's (attracting his life-long partner). And in April 1994 J.A.S. treated Sick Rick and I to Pink Floyd's Divisional Bell concert and the tour sticker I acquired ended up adorning the Carlos's soundboard for about the next 15 years.

Somewhere during 1995-96-97 Reverend Bill and I formed the little two-piece, SUBNOVA, where for maybe as long as a year Reverend Bill played 5-string Yamaha electric bass and I played the Carlos through all kinds of metal and distortion effects using a Seymour Duncan slip-in pickup placed in the Carlos's sound-hole. Fun but weird. I don't know that Reverend Bill and I ever performed actual songs - mostly just some kind of rhythms we grooved along to.

Ok, then 1998 to 2004 - THE DARK TIMES. I mean really dark, alcoholic drinking black-out dark. The 4-5 music memories I have from this period ("wasted jam" at Sick Rick's place in Santa Rose/buying acoustic bass day of my dad's funeral/trying to record Ripon tunes at The Outlaw's/my last drunken jam at the house with Sick Rick, J.A.S., and a lent drum set), only one involved the Carlos. In 1998 my cousin Dave from Cleveland came out and he jammed on the drums and I jammed plugged-in electrically on the Carlos. Had a good take on Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" I remember.

Fast forward to 2010 and my daughter is heading off to college in San Francisco. You can't go to college in San Francisco without a guitar, right?

Well, the Carlos by this point nearly 25 years old needed some work. I had already added new tuners, but the soundboard was rising up in a bulge below the bridge which screwed up the intonation. Sarky, a guitar tech at Ingram & Brauns here in Pleasanton, put a shim under the nut and somehow got the action and intonation set. Abs carries around the Carlos as she moves from place to place around the City and it becomes, as guitars are wont to do, a little instrument for random visiting folks to play during parties and other get-togethers. (Abs, like her dad, ended up preferring bass guitar and has a nice Peavey bass.)

Now, it's December 2017 and Abs' car radiator fan bearing goes out and I schlep up to South Lake Tahoe to fix it. Abs is at work so she leaves the keys to her place for me under a bowl on her patio table. Inside, and all by myself, I spy the Carlos case! Have a nice little 10-minute jam which was my first on the Carlos for probably 7 years... but also my last.

Abs' roommates over the next couple weeks move out over altercations with her landlord and on January 2nd Abby returns from Pleasanton to Lake Tahoe only to learn that she is living alone with some weird dude from Idaho. On January 4th Abs returns home from work and Idaho dude tells her he "had" to take $9 from her bedroom because he needed gas money to get to work. Abs informs me and her mom about this on the 5th and we are like "You need to move out of there."

I head up Last Saturday (1/6) and we move all the big stuff. Dude had reimbursed $10, but Abs is still bothered this dude went in her room when she wasn't there (seriously, the dude's bedroom is downstairs and there is nothing upstairs except Abs' bedroom and an empty bedroom - absolutely no reason to even be up there).

By the time I get there Abs has moved the Carlos case and ... it seems a little too light. Sure enough, guitar is gone. Abs checks the whole house and the Carlos is nowhere to be found. Last seen maybe shortly before Christmas when Abs had friends over and someone was jamming.

Weird, ha, unlike Sick Rick and J.A.S. who barter their guitars all the time I have never sold any of my personal guitars. The ones gone have been given away (my first guitar no-name Bullet bass copy; Ibanez RG570 "Yes" guitar; Cort B4 bass; the Carlos 249), lost (Squier Bullet bass), destroyed (a classical guitar), or stolen (Yamaha BB1000s neck-thru bass). Har, now I only have one guitar that predates sobriety - and not by much - the acoustic bass I bought in 2002 after my dad passed away. Weird.

Anyhow, hug yer instruments a little closer (sounds kinky I know) because all this material stuff will eventually pass like, uh, tears in the rain, eh.