Post by theinvisibleman on Sept 23, 2017 19:54:22 GMT
I began a thread in a popular American-run guitar forum at the end of Spring about my guitar refuge in the next county, a place in Sussex I've been visiting for a year and where all Summer I was playing guitar on the beach at 5 most mornings, sometimes 4.30. I don't get to play at home much, living in cardboard flats and being enduringly bashful so these sessions were a great relief.
I got banned from that forum due to... well, I'm sure you've used that forum too, it's easily done, if you've got a sense of humour, a conscience and a mind. I enjoyed the encouraging response I had got though, beforehand.
I'm back in that town for ten days but the beach isn't quite practical for the moment. I've found somewhere else, a bench on the edge of a cliff. Why not, I thought. A bench on the edge of a cliff... guitar practice... smashing. It's a peaceful spot I've enjoyed for a year. I headed there very late today and couldn't expect much practice time, rambler-wise. After twenty minutes engrossed in setting up this cheap Hudson parlour guitar, sitting on the grass at the cliff's edge, a guitar that will not wake up without medium strings, I heard a voice behind me say, "Why isn't that man playing his guitar daddy?" I turn round and there is an enormous extended family of twenty or so on and around 'my' bench. "Ask him," the dad says, smiling. A female family member suggests I play for them...
I explain my disposition and they have a bit of a laugh about it and say they will soon be out of my hair.
There was only one more interruption as such, and I don't mind really, though I'll see if I'm not too hungover to get down there at 6 tomorrow.
i was on the verge of getting shot of this guitar, finding I couldn't get a 'me' sound out of it. The neck set was dire, just over a milimetre of saddle at the bass end sticking out of the bridge and a folded up piece of plastic under just the treble end, with the action still 3mm/ 2.5 mm. I've replaced the NuBone-like saddle and nut and shaved the bridge a little bit, knowing you can go too far with that, but I don't think I've done harm. Then I thought I'd put a magnetic pickup in and use it with lighter nickel strings, which wasn't bad but not something I'd be using plugged in for some time yet, having found place I'm working towards a very belated open mic debut. I made a pig's ear of the job, drilling one hole too far from the pickup cable, a hole now covered by a pickholder. i'm going to make a more matching pickholder from wood once I've sourced a piece. Some might have paused the job and soldered on longer cable but I didn't fee like waiting.
Today I found being perverse was the key to finding this guitar's optimum sound. At the cliff edge I gave its neck an almost nylon string-like neck relief but tuned it to open B. It's come to life quite nicely I think. Lower tunings have compensated the two hundred quid parlour sound to an extent, and the medium strings and Tommy Emmanuel-unfriendly relief have given the guitar a perversely stiffer but 'right' feel. I've got two better guitars but this one has won an eleventh hour reprieve. For now at least - there is a warning that the cliff edge isn't stable. The bench is the right side of the fence but I had somehow pushed by middle aged frame over it for my session.
Yeah, anyway, hello. I'm going down the pub now for three Whitstable Bays and.a Jamesons and soda. Probably some nuts as well. I won't have a burger, no, not tonight. I'll have a burger and a vegetarian pizza on the last night, at 3 am on the beach, hammered and full of my latest blip in enthusiasm for the guitar.
I got banned from that forum due to... well, I'm sure you've used that forum too, it's easily done, if you've got a sense of humour, a conscience and a mind. I enjoyed the encouraging response I had got though, beforehand.
I'm back in that town for ten days but the beach isn't quite practical for the moment. I've found somewhere else, a bench on the edge of a cliff. Why not, I thought. A bench on the edge of a cliff... guitar practice... smashing. It's a peaceful spot I've enjoyed for a year. I headed there very late today and couldn't expect much practice time, rambler-wise. After twenty minutes engrossed in setting up this cheap Hudson parlour guitar, sitting on the grass at the cliff's edge, a guitar that will not wake up without medium strings, I heard a voice behind me say, "Why isn't that man playing his guitar daddy?" I turn round and there is an enormous extended family of twenty or so on and around 'my' bench. "Ask him," the dad says, smiling. A female family member suggests I play for them...
I explain my disposition and they have a bit of a laugh about it and say they will soon be out of my hair.
There was only one more interruption as such, and I don't mind really, though I'll see if I'm not too hungover to get down there at 6 tomorrow.
i was on the verge of getting shot of this guitar, finding I couldn't get a 'me' sound out of it. The neck set was dire, just over a milimetre of saddle at the bass end sticking out of the bridge and a folded up piece of plastic under just the treble end, with the action still 3mm/ 2.5 mm. I've replaced the NuBone-like saddle and nut and shaved the bridge a little bit, knowing you can go too far with that, but I don't think I've done harm. Then I thought I'd put a magnetic pickup in and use it with lighter nickel strings, which wasn't bad but not something I'd be using plugged in for some time yet, having found place I'm working towards a very belated open mic debut. I made a pig's ear of the job, drilling one hole too far from the pickup cable, a hole now covered by a pickholder. i'm going to make a more matching pickholder from wood once I've sourced a piece. Some might have paused the job and soldered on longer cable but I didn't fee like waiting.
Today I found being perverse was the key to finding this guitar's optimum sound. At the cliff edge I gave its neck an almost nylon string-like neck relief but tuned it to open B. It's come to life quite nicely I think. Lower tunings have compensated the two hundred quid parlour sound to an extent, and the medium strings and Tommy Emmanuel-unfriendly relief have given the guitar a perversely stiffer but 'right' feel. I've got two better guitars but this one has won an eleventh hour reprieve. For now at least - there is a warning that the cliff edge isn't stable. The bench is the right side of the fence but I had somehow pushed by middle aged frame over it for my session.
Yeah, anyway, hello. I'm going down the pub now for three Whitstable Bays and.a Jamesons and soda. Probably some nuts as well. I won't have a burger, no, not tonight. I'll have a burger and a vegetarian pizza on the last night, at 3 am on the beach, hammered and full of my latest blip in enthusiasm for the guitar.