I am scared. I am nervous. I am sure nothing will go wrong but it doesn’t matter.
My baby, aka my oldest guitar, is going to the doctor, aka a repair shop, tomorrow.
I think it needs frets. We’ll see what our friendly neighborhood Luthier says about it, but on the phone today he agreed that it probably needs frets.
Yikes!
I’ll be dropping my baby off at the doctor tomorrow at 11:30. Fingers crossed.
I wasn’t going to talk about this until it happened but now it’s not happening so I guess I’m in the clear.
Over the last few months we had been saving money to get our cellar re-finished. We need new floor tiles, new wall board, new dropped ceiling frame and tiles, new ceiling lights, and some electrical upgrades. There was also hopes of walling off the laundry nook and adding a new closet.
We had a dollar figure in mind and we started talking to a contractor about an estimate. The guy was super psyched and his attitude was a little infectious. I was getting a good feeling about the whole thing.
He sent his estimate tonight. It was our dollar figure times three. That hissing sound you hear is the air escaping my balloon.
Shit.
I Googled “luthiers near Boston” and this was one of the things that came up. 40 or so Luthiers to research. I didn’t count the Guitar Centers. They’ve let me down once.
I also may have just sent a message to Gibson’s repairs department. Wiring, frets, and a nut. What would that cost me? They also offer a service that they call “total restoration.” I’m going to be honest here and say that I drooled a little when I read that. I also asked what that entails.
I’m not doing any of this until COVID-19 is dealt with. I’m likely not doing any of it even then, but we’re in quarantine so why not fantasize a little?
I came out of a meeting today and there was a voicemail on my cell phone. It was Guitar Center. My Les Paul is ready to be picked up! WOOOHOOO!
Of course I can’t get up to the store until Friday… Booooo. But it’s all finished so again, WOOHOO!
Come Sunday’s rehearsal I will have a Les Paul with a high output bridge pickup and the ability to use the neck pickup by itself. Next up is bringing the ES-335 into the shop for some routine maintenance. I just need to get the pots cleaned and some of the connections re-soldered. After that… a Floyd Rose tremolo bar on the Stratocaster? Maybe.
Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with my step kids, niece, nephews, family, or any actual people. Don’t let the next sentence or the title fool you.
My poor baby is in the hospital!
Translated from guitar nerd to English, I put one of my guitars in the shop today. I have used a soldering iron in the past, but I have no confidence in my abilities so when I want work done I have to outsource it.
I took a ride over to Guitar Center in Nashua, NH today and dropped my Les Paul off at the repair desk. I was nervous, but the repair guy put me at ease by telling me my guitar looked exactly like his. Hopefully he will treat it with the same respect.
*Robert wipes away a tear*
I took it in for two things. One repair and one modification.
(Why did this picture bring out every spec of dust?)
First, see the little switch in the bottom left? The one labeled Rhythm on one side and Treble on the other? That switch selects which pickup is active. The pickups are the two gold rectangular things with the six flat head screws. When the switch is on the Treble side it’s the pickup on the right, next to the bridge (commonly known as the bridge pickup). When it’s on the Rhythm side it’s the pickup on the left, close to the neck (commonly known as the neck pickup). When the switch is in the middle, both pickups are on. I bought this guitar in 1990 and through all that time the switch has never gone into the Rhythm position. You can push it there, but it doesn’t catch. I am getting the switch either fixed or replaced. Whichever gets the job done.
The second thing they will do is just a modification. I am getting the bridge pickup replaced. When I bought the guitar in 1990 it had two after market pickups. From day one I had wanted to replace them with the closest I could get to the stock pickups that would have come with the guitar when it was made in 1978. That would be Gibson Classic ‘57’s. I think it was 2006 or so that I finally did it. Larry installed them for me (he also fixed the bridge pickup’s tone pot which had never worked. He tried to fix the pickup switch but was unable to. That’s why when I dropped if off at the shop today I had a new switch in the case). The pickups sound okay, but they were a little disappointing. The tone is a little on the trebly side, and the output level is pretty low. The stock pickups on my ES 335 Pro are Gibson Dirty Fingers models. Those suckers sound incredible. I am replacing the Classic ’57 Plus pickup in the bridge position with a Dirty Fingers.
Those are the two reasons I brought the guitar to Guitar Center today. While I was there and talking to the repair tech, I added a third job. This one is a repair.
See the hole in the finish there? That’s been there since the day I bought the guitar. As I was looking at the guitar sitting on the counter while the tech was filling out the work order, I couldn’t take my eyes off the hole. I am 100% positive that it is much worse than it was in 1990. What I am not 100% sure of, but what my gut feeling is telling me, is that it is worse than it was three weeks ago at the last Lizardfish gig. I feel like the pace with which that hack in the finish is growing is accelerating rapidly. The tech is going to do a repair on it. It won’t look the same as the finish surrounding it, but it will stop it from getting worse. That’s all I care about. That repair is going to take a couple of weeks and it will cost about as much as the other two combined. It will be worth it though. For some reason it jumped out at me today as something that needs to be taken care of right now. No more waiting.
So my poor baby Les Paul is going to be at the doctor’s for two weeks or so while it gets all fixed up. I am going to miss her, and I am going to worry about her. I wish she had a cell phone so I could call her and check in on her every couple of days.
Please please please please please let my baby come home in one fully functioning piece.
As a guitar player who is also a prog rock fan and an obsessed Rush fanatic, I have always wanted to get my hands on one of the Omega guitar stands Alex Lifeson uses on stage. You know, the stand that he sits his acoustic guitar on to so he cam play it without taking off his electric? Here’s a really bad pic of it, taken from the back row…
and here is a really bad pic of it with that lute thingie he played on “Workin’ Them Angels”…
And here’s another really bad pic of him actually playing the lute thingie while still wearing his Les Paul…
You can see why such a thing is beyond awesome for a nerdy prog loving guitar player, right? It allows you to play both electric and acoustic guitars on the same song without having to stop playing to take one off and put the other one on. It’s a pretty ingenious device.
I swear I used to see ads for them in guitar magazines back in the 80’s. Omega Stands. I never considered buying one then because I never had any money. I also never owned a decent acoustic guitar. When I started playing in a cover band back in 2003 I started poking around the internet looking for them but any search for Omega Stand just brought up pictures of Alex Lifeson playing “Closer to the Heart” or “The Trees”. I never had any luck.
Until today!
I found one for sale on sweetwater.com, a site I have to admit never having looked at before. It’s a K&M Performer Walk Up Guitar Stand – Acoustic and if it didn’t cost an amazing $300 I’d be pulling out my credit card and ordering one right now. I won’t though, because I would probably never ever use it. Even though I am playing in a band again, it would still be more trouble than it’s worth. It would just be a fanboy expense that would be better to be used for other things. Like repairs.
Both of my Gibson guitars need work. The pick up switch on the Les Paul Custom can’t select the neck pickup. It can do bridge, it can do both, but it can’t do neck. Also, the tone pot for the neck pick up doesn’t work. There are similar problems with the ES-335 Pro. The pickup switch works in all three positions, but there is something funky with the neck pick up. Either a wire is lose or there is so much dust that the contact is being blocked. There’s also lose/dirty connections for the tone pots as well. The big problem with the 335 is that the neck is slowly pulling off of the body. Either it broke off once before and wasn’t pushed in all the way when it was glued back on, or the glue is slowly, slowly, slowly giving up the fight. The neck broke off of my Les Paul once too, back in ’98 I think. That was terrifying. Even the repair guy I brought it to was afraid to work on it. It took him forever, but eventually he fixed it, and did a really good job too. It’s like new.
It turns out that the little guitar shop near my house does repairs. I was optimistic at first until I read their website. It says they do major and minor repairs. That’s good. It lists off some of the things they do. Wiring is on the list, which is good. Broken necks are not on the list, which is bad. The disturbing thing is that the list includes string replacement. Yeah. Maybe I won’t go to them.
Inside the Red Head's Head 