Why Must I Tinker?

 I find it amazing when life runs in patterns peppered with coincidences. Coincidences concocted by chance. Chances challenging logic. Logic lending to tinkering. I started this blog eleven months ago to the day, merely to keep myself out of the winter funk and too-often drunk pattern I fall into when the temperatures dip. And it all started with the Harmony H-804. It turned out to be a fun little guitar. Then, in the middle of the summer it was the Peavey Patriot bass re-fret to regret. That one took awhile, because it was intermixed with travel, including several trips to my hometown, one in which I was hanging out in my friend Josh's studio and there, covered in dirt, dust, mildew and disgust, was a Harmony bass in all appearances being of the same era as the H-804. We had a few beers and marvelled at the time that has passed, and the great times we had being in a band together. I let it slip my mind, but later I had Josh send me a photo of the bass so I could put it in one of t...

Sure, post less than once a month, that's one way to keep friends engaged! I plan on wrapping this one up folks, so the next tinker post may be years from now and involve how to dig my own grave. Or how to build hidden bookshelves for a post-second civil war Christian Nationalist america.  It's been so long I can't even remember where I left off. Luckily I can go back and look at the old post! That's right, I was worried about how much fret height was filed off in the leveling process. I must say, it is just fine, but man did those frets have some flat spots! Which can lead to the same buzziness I was having with nubby frets. There is a tool, of course, which is ridiculously expensive, of course, and one guy in one YouTube video convinced me I could do it with a normal file. Of course, he is a pro and I am a guy with a bass that still has some flat spots on his frets. Oh well. Maybe I'll touch it up more, maybe I'll buy the damned file someday, but in the meanti...

 ...vs. Jamerson vs. Weymouth vs. Dixon vs. Bootsy vs. Watt. Probably Carol Kaye though. This has been a wacky summer. Almost no fishing, and when I did go I snapped my Orvis rod. Again. Almost no mountain biking, due to the daily rains mucking up the trails. Almost no music playing or practicing, due to travel and work and general house projects.  It would give me a great deal of pleasure to finish something other than replacing the wax ring of the basement toilet, so I'm going to at least get this fretless across the finish line, because it is going to be a little easier than the Peavey. The bag of plastic nuts I had for my Peavey (I will be carving out a synthetic bone for that) just so happened to fit the fretless, so with just a little filing it fit right in. A quick bolting on of the neck and I took an old set of strings and strung her up. I should state that this has the absolute worst tuners I've ever seen on a $40 bass, and that's saying something. With some lube h...

  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...

  Yep, that's a naked neck. Let's talk about how I got there, and how it was more than a week ago, and all the distractions. Distraction 1: Fast and Loose BMX jam at Valmont Bike Park. Both a thrill to watch and depressing that I am months away from being a half-century old so I don't even attempt the big boy jumps anymore. Distraction 2: The new Gretsch! I am horrible at regularly practicing the guitar but this one has me motivated. I was happy to put off other projects to change the strings, oil the fretboard, polish the frets and loctite loose threads.     Distraction 3: Pride Month! I had to let my allies know I'm a middle-aged straight white guy with a shaved head who is on their side! Seriously, you genital-obsessed right-wing "religious" nutjobs, leave these folks alone!  Have you ever stopped to think that Christians desire to become angels, and angels don't have genitals? So all Christians hope to transition to non-binary, as I see it.   Dismounti...

 So the Colorado winter gave way to a short burst of sunshine, then a torrent of daily rain unheard of for the region. Like April came and decided to stick around for three months. The streams are too swollen to chase the trout. The trails are too muddy to get out on the bike. Thus: MORE TINKER TIME!!! The newest project:  1985 Peavey Patriot Refret To Regret! This was my first real bass, not the very first that I owned, but the first that I really learned on, gigged on, and knew I would never give up. Even when I bought it well used for $200, it was pretty much ready for a refret. But I just kept hammering away at it, filing away a buzz here and there (who cares when it's mostly punk?) and finally switching to a different bass when I just couldn't adjust it to the wear anymore. The biggest problem? I would have to file the nut slots so deep because of the nubs of fret left that the nut would just split in half under the string pressure. Even Elvis hung his head in shame at th...