Why Must I Tinker?

  So there are distractions, then there are things of another order, problems you drop everything to take care of no questions asked. It turned out I had to spend an extra week taking care of my mom, which butted right up to my scheduled Portland getaway with my two lifelong BMX buds.  One great thing about going home to Ohio is getting to hang with some of my old friends and bandmates, including one of my favorite humans in the world, Josh, who happens to be a kick-ass musician and owner of... What!?! The bass version of the Harmony guitar I tinkered with in posts past!?! I somehow restrained myself from begging him to sell it to me, then spending twice as much on shipping than it could possibly be worth. With the momma all straightened out and me all stressed out, I flew from Detroit to Portland remarking to the woman beside me during landing, “Wow, it’s not burning at the hands of Marxists like Fox news told me.” And it’s not. There are tent cities in all the large munici...

 What?!? Did you think I'd let a bass carcass go to waste? Remember my sacrificial lamb? Perhaps it can be resurrected! The Bass Gods work in mysterious ways. Quite a few fret pulling videos on Youtube end with a fretless conversion. There must be tens of thousands of poor basses leaning against the back of closet walls, remembering how they once had precision note-making abilities in their youth, much like I sometimes dream of once again having long lustrous locks of hair hanging in my face or trailing behind me as I sprint my BMX towards a jump.  Fretless or not, one thing all the advice had in agreement was that you did not want to leave frets out for long, because the neck would bow in their absence. I don't know how true that is, but with the summer starting and the humidity in more flux than usual, I wasn't going to risk it.  One video mentioned using polystyrene strips often used by model train hobbyists, because they flex less than wood filler or wood strips. I al...