The Ongoing Baritone/ Tele/ Cello Project, Part 7

The original post, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/03/baritone-cello-guitar.html

Part 1, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/05/ongoing-baritone-cello-tele-project.html

Part 2, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/05/ongoing-baritone-tele-cello-project.html

Part 3, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/05/ongoing-baritone-tele-cello-project_29.html

Part 4, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/02/ongoing-baritone-tele-cello-project.html

Part 5, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/02/ongoing-baritone-tele-cello-project_24.html

Part 6, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/03/ongoing-baritone-tele-cello-project.html


So here's where I am so far.  I am close.  Oh so close to finishing this project.  Let's go to the pictures.

In the picture below you can see that I have completed putting the lacquer on the body.  I have then sanded and buffed it out.

Here I am laying the hardware out.

Here I have the pickups put in, and now I need to wire them up.

Of all the weird things, I actually got the wiring correct the first time.  I have it plugged in, and all the electronics work.  

Here's another shot of the body with all the hardware hooked up.

Here, the neck is dry fitted in the neck pocket.

Now comes the fun part.  I realize that I have made a mistake.  The neck pocket is too far to the right for some reason.  I have no idea how that happened.  I can't just throw this project away.  I will have to find a way to do some "creative routing," and fix my screw up.  This is too nice of a project to give up now.  

So hopefully my next post in this series will be how I saved the day, and now have a cool, new guitar.

Who The F--- Is This Guy!

The following story is absolutely true.  In fact, true stories are better than made up ones because you just can't make up the weirdness that is real life.  Right now I am writing this in the morning, and I haven't been to sleep all night.  I am too wired from the weirdness that has happened to me.  Since all this is true, I will use real names.  If anyone has a problem with it, I would like to say that telling the truth is not against the law.

It started out innocently enough.  A local singer that I like named Anna Gavin posted on Facebook that she was playing Sacred Grounds Coffee House tonight.  In fact, here is her exact post.

Anna Gavin: "So if your not doing anything tonight, you should come hear me pour my heart out on stage at Sacred Grounds Coffee shop. If you play guitar bring it and sing me a song!"

Sounds great huh?  No harm there.  Just an artist who wanted people to come out and see her perform right?  So I responded with this:

Adrian:  That's great Anna! You can do that song called "Suicide" that's not about suicide. I totally get what you mean about that "AWKWARD" feeling running into the "ex." You didn't say when you were going on. I'll definitely bring a guitar if requested. Big hugs.

She didn't get back to me, but then again I figured she was on her way to Sacred Grounds.  When I get there she is happy to see me, and gives me a hug. 

I want to say right now that Anna is an extremely kind person.  When I first started playing open mic nights, I was downright awful.  But Anna was really nice to me, and told me to keep on trying and I would get better.  She gave me great encouragement to keep playing.

Anyway, I told her that her song "Suicide" is great, and how I totally related to everything she said in that song.  It really isn't about suicide.  It's about showing up to a place where your Ex is, and how it's suicide if you go, or suicide if you stay.  In other words there's no good choice.  If you stay you will be miserable.  If you go you will have let your Ex dictate your life. 

I was hoping it would be on her reverbnation page, but I'm sure it's going to be on her new album.  That's why she doesn't have it posted yet.  But give her a listen.  She's amazing.

http://www.reverbnation.com/annagavin

Anyways, I get back to the house, flip on the computer, and see this comment under her post:

Gary Osbourne:  Who the fuck is this guy?

First I think, "He's not talking about me is he?"  Then I think, "Why would he be worried about me?"  Then I remember, that's Anna's boyfriend.  I check her regular Facebook page, and see something wrong.  She says she is single.  What?

On Thursday at 9:02PM she changed her status to "single."  As in two days ago.  This made me think, "Uh oh." 

I look at Gary's feed, and I see someone post this:

Jordan:  Hows your relationship counseling going? Lmao!

Gary's reply to that:  Suck it jordan

That conversation was on Feb. 19th.  I guess things hadn't been going so good for the not so happy couple.  So I guess what happened was this.  They broke up two days ago.  I then post that I'll be happy to come see her, bring my guitar, and that she should do her break-up song.  I can't blame Gary for being mad.  It does look rather odd even though nothing has gone on between Anna and I.  In fact, before last night, I hadn't even talked to her for months. 

I just picture Gary as an angry Jason Lee (as Brody) from Mallrats.

Any guy who does the "Who the fuck is this guy?" is great in my book.  Oh, and here's the strange thing.  Even though him and Anna are broken up, his picture on Facebook is of him and Anna together.  Awkward.

I Am A Terrible Painter

I have to be honest.  I am a terrible painter.  Not at painting houses.  Okay, yes I'm bad at painting houses.  But when it comes to wall hanging art, I am pretty bad.  Don't believe me?  Let's take a look.

So you are probably saying, "Those look pretty good.  What's wrong with them?"  Nothing.  Nothing is wrong with them.  You see, that was a trick on my part.  I did paint part of those paintings, but they were mostly painted by my former ex-girlfriend Roxy.  She did the hard part.  As in, most everything.  That's why those look pretty nice.

Ok, now that I have tricked you, I'll cut that out.  Let's see some awful stuff.

This one is called "Symphony."  God what an ugly yellow color.  What was I thinking?

This is called "Aurora Borealis."  The background is kinda okay, but I totally went stupid with the colors. 

This is supposed to be a tree, but let's be honest.... it looks like an atom bomb.  Even my Dad wasn't sure what it was.  So I call it, "Tree or Atom Bomb."  It's terrible either way.

This one is especially awful.  After I did this I knew I should stick to painting corral reefs.  It's called, "On the back porch."  But this should be on no one's back porch.

This isn't too bad.... except for the aborted fetuses trying to escape from it.  It's called "Warm Water Reef."  But there's nothing good about it.

This is called "Unstrung."  I know what you're saying, "Well, that one's not too bad."  Well that may be true, but it's nothing that a freshman art student couldn't do during a week in art class.

Now let's look at three I have just painted recently.

"Jackson Pollack Threw Up On A Corral Reef."

"Hot Polyps."

"Deep Blue Tang."

All these show the same thing.  Not only do I not have talent.  I have the same un-talent.  I kind of do the same bad thing over and over again. 

This leads to the same question, "Are you going to keep painting?"  Yes.  Yes I am.  I am going to keep at it for some reason or another.  When I figure it out, I'll let you know. 

The Ongoing Baritone/ Tele/ Cello Project, Part 6

The original post, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/03/baritone-cello-guitar.html

Part 1, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/05/ongoing-baritone-cello-tele-project.html

Part 2, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/05/ongoing-baritone-tele-cello-project.html

Part 3, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/05/ongoing-baritone-tele-cello-project_29.html

Part 4, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/02/ongoing-baritone-tele-cello-project.html

Part 5, http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/02/ongoing-baritone-tele-cello-project_24.html


I hate sanding.  Everything goes up my nose, and makes me sneeze.  And particularly Pau Ferro.  It's a poisonous wood, and it's an even bigger pain in the nose. 

This leads me to the Tele Body.  I've done all the cutting I could on it.  I have been sanding on it for a while.  I didn't bother taking pictures of me sanding because that would be pretty boring.  But, I have completed my sanding, and have moved on to the staining.

Let's just get to the pictures.

The stain looks a little dark.  Once it completely dries it will lighten up.  Then, once the poly finish is put on, it will have a clearer look to it.  More blogs to come once more work it done.

My Four Strats

I have way too many guitars.  I know there are a lot of hungry kids in China who don't have any guitars, and I have too many.  In fact, I have four Stratocasters.  However, they are quite different.  Many people wonder why I have so many guitars, so I'm writing this blog to explain why.

Here's the rundown.

Up first is my Squire Strat, made in China, and it cost me a whole $79.  Here's the funny thing.  It's probably my best playing Strat.

The fun part about this guitar is that, I didn't mind messing around with the electronics and such since it is a Squire.  I put in a push/pull overdrive pot so I can get an overdrive without a pedal.  It will engage at the touch of my finger. 

I also switched out the pickups to some pretty cool pickups.  I like trying some of the new guys on the block, so I put in a blade pickup in the neck, and a Belcat bladed humbucker in bridge.  I added my favorite Dimarzio Blue Velvet in the middle.  It's a very versatile guitar.

Next up is my 1993 Fender Mexican Strat named Smokey.  I call him that since whoever owned him before me smoked like a chimney.  It put this strange smokey patina on the body.  You know how cigarette smoke will put a tarnished yellow color on things?  Well this has that tarnish all over the body, but it's really heavy in the curves of the cutaway.

I traded out the original pickguard for a black one.  This has a Fender Alnico 3 neck pickup, a Dimarzio Blue Velvet middle pickup, and an old Dimario PAF pickup in the neck.  It has a really neat vibe to it.  I got this guitar in a trade from a good friend.  It needed some cleaning up when I got it, but once I got it up and running, my friend questioned whether he should have traded it to begin with.

Next up is my 2006 Fender Mexican Strat. 

I got this at a pawn shop in 2007.  Since this was a 2006 Strat, that should have tipped me off.  Unfortunately, the neck on this one is kinda wacky, and I have to set the action up a little higher to make all notes playable.  I would have sold or traded it, but it's hard to sell or trade a Strat that doesn't play so well.

However, I went ahead and replaced the pickguard to a tortoiseshell colored one.  I changed the pickups to all Dimarzio pickups.  True Velvet neck/ FS-1 middle RW/RP/ Heavy Blues 2 bridge.  It's not as versatile as some Strats, but it sounds great in all positions.

Next up is the Strat I put together years ago.  In fact, it was back in 2000 when I started putting this guitar together.  It took me 9 months to get the parts.  Actually, I slowly got them as I got the money to do so.  I also got some good deals that way.

I guess you can see from the awesome paint job that this is no ordinary guitar.  In fact, back in 2000 it run me $1080 to put it all together.  That includes $300 for the wicked paint job.  But it has everything on it I could want. 

However, I ran into one problem that I did not expect.  The guitar is made of all maple.  That makes it insanely bright sounding.  Then, on top of that it has a Floyd Rose tremolo, and that makes it even brighter.  I have had trouble finding the right pickup combination to put in this guitar.  I actually like a bright sounding pickup, but everything I put in this guitar was just too bright. 

I have just changed the pickups in it.  Right now it has an Artec bladed pickup in the neck/ a custom wound Texas Special in the middle/ a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates in the bridge.  The Artec is the first neck pickup that I really like in this guitar.  It is bold, not overly bright, and actually has the bass come through.  Along with the strong single coil and Pearly Gates, that makes this guitar an extremely versatile guitar. 

Generally, only the bridge pickup was worth playing.  Despite me putting all this money into this guitar, I never really played it.  So now with a change in pickups, I think I will be playing it more. 

So that's my story of the Strats I own at this moment.  They are like children.  I love them all, and don't really have a favorite.  They are all a little different, but fun to play.  I also suspect that more will find their way to me.  I know I shouldn't.  There are children in China with no gutiars after all.