My Father's Hands.

My Father worked a full time factory job but also helped feed the family by gigging since before I was born, even during the depression when paying gigs were scarce.  At his knee I learned my first chords on a ukulele as scarcely more than a toddler, and making music together was our #1 father-and-son activity for life.  Poverty meant that names like “Gibson” or “Gretsch” were nothing more than words in a magazine, photos to dream about. The guitars in my life wore names like “Airline”, "Silvertone", and “Tiesco”.  They were of dreadful quality compared to the ones I have today, but they were all I knew.

Dad was proud of my musicality and in 1975 he expressed this pride with a gift - an Epiphone acoustic dreadnaught in a very high level of trim. With its large block fret inlays, elaborate multilayer binding all around, and glossy rosewood back & sides it was easily the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  He held it out to me horizontally with one broad, labor-roughened hand around the neck and the other at

the endpin.  I reached to take the guitar and my hands touched his as I gazed upon this gift - this passage to uncountable hours making music, cherishing music, living music, of touching and being touched by others in the sharing.

Dad has been gone for many years.  Guitars have come and gone but I still have that Epiphone.  My guitars now are far higher quality than that mass-produced laminated wood beast.  I understand and appreciate the difference between the Epiphone and, for example, a handcrafted Martin but ... me & this Epiphone - we go way back.  I can play the Martin and love those pristine, articulate timbres but only when playing this guitar do I touch my Father’s hands.

May 2013 brought a traumatic eye injury, weeks without employment or even autonomy, and long hours sitting with both eyes closed coping with pain.  Idleness and pain fostered worry and fear.  When the top cornea specialist at the university hospital began using words like “possible permanent damage” my fears skyrocketed.  Surgery has been scheduled.  Eye surgery!  “Possible permanent damage”!  What if my sight never fully recovers? What if I lose my sight completely?  

One day, peeking intermittently through one barely-raised eyelid I made my way to the sofa carrying my beloved Epiphone.  At that moment I wasn’t even certain that I could play at all.  In hindsight that fear seems silly but at the time life was permeated with uncertainty.  I rested my cheek on the upper bout and drew a carefully measured breath, stuffing worry out of the way momentarily.  After a few tenuous notes, inquisitive chords soon grew into some of my fingerstyle staples.  Large position shifts soon came with familiar ease.  Music flowed. Comforting, uplifting, familiar music - my music.

 

My heart!  My breath, my music, still safe and sweet. This guitar - my tool as well as user; slave as well as master; at once vehicle, navigator, route, and traveling companion. Lover, friend, core of my self-esteem, cornerstone of my emotions for 38 years - still mine.
 

Worry faded, and the pain faded with it.   So what if do lose my eyesight?  I’ll still have music. I’ll still make music, cherish music, live music, be music - even if no one else hears or cares.

I will still have this guitar.

I will still be able to touch my Father’s hands.

************************************************************************

© 2013 Raymond Blowers. 

As of December 2013 I am still undergoing procedures and treatment for my right eye.  Although I may never again be able to focus well in that eye it does not interfere with my daily life in any significant way.  My left eye is undamaged. 

My thanks to  Michael Smith at Guitar Center in Tucson, Arizona for being the young man's hand model in the photo above.  

Lovers and Pinup Girls

Do you have a Magic Neck?  I do.

I have an old Tele neck from Stewart-McDonald that seems magic to me.  Since the early 90s I've used it on countless guitars and it fits me like the proverbial “old pair of boots”.   The nut is perfect and the frets are worn just right so it allows some really slick low string action, but the comfy feel isn’t the best part of the magic neck.

This neck seems to improve the sound of any guitar.  Years ago it got the “ ‘51 Deluxe” and pinup girl graphics you see here as part of a Squier 51 project.  

Magic Neck hung unemployed on the wall for several years.  Then in early 2013 I drunk-balled a Xaviere XV-610 on eBay and the rabbit died.  I didn't know it yet, but thus began today’s project.

 The XV-610 is a semi-hollow Telecaster Thinline-style guitar with a 3-way blade selector and a 1v-1t control bank.  Body construction is solid poplar core with laminated maple wings. Depending upon the production run an XV-610 may have the small rectangular string-through hardtail bridge or the large “Tele style” plate with humbucker mounting.  This one arrived in as-new condition.

If the name “Telecaster” conjures images of dense ash bodies and single-coil pups with a tight brassy snap, then “poplar core with laminated maple wings”  probably don’t sound like the right stuff.  For someone accustomed to semi-hollow jazz guitars this composition isn’t so far fetched.  

The Fender Telecaster Thinline had a chambered body and after the earliest production runs it was outfitted with those famous huge warm Seth Lover split-pole humbuckers.  The result was a lightweight, compact, affordable, and highly serviceable alternative to a 335 or 175.

Although the poplar/maple composition of the XV-610 may not be as Gibsonesque as chambered mahogany it has a pleasant mellow timbre that is, if not sonically next door, just down the street. 

Under the hood the 610 sports Dream 180s, rather than the more appropriate "Vintage Split Humbucker " also in their lineup.  The Dream 180 isn’t my favorite pickup but it seems to be the default shipping humbucker for Xaviere bolt-ons.  

Frets are adequately dressed and leveled but scantly polished.  Neck profile is a shallow "C" shape with typically Fenderesque width.  Overall the guitar competes quality wise in the Squier-Epiphone market and probably provides better !/$ than either.

What's cool, what's not?  Body is cool. Dream 180s are not.  Neck rates an "OK".  The black-on-black look is just dumpy.

For many weeks The Magic Neck and the XV-610 hung on opposite walls in the same room, studiously ignoring each other like a pubescent boy and girl at the mall.  Then one day the GFS sale page whacked me across the face with not only a fauxtoise pickguard for this guitar, but their “Vintage Split Humbucker - Classic Fender Style” pups as well.  The obvious connection finally happened in my head and more of my dead presidents immediately went flying across the internet.  The fauxtoise guard and a pair of fake Lover-splits were on the way.  Magic Neck would soon ride again. Today's project became a primordial lump in my addled brain.

I'm not a fan of tortoise on black but the native black-on-black scheme was so bland that this was a welcome change.  I'd still rather have black pearloid but haven't found it.

 

Happily the Vintage Split Humbuckers are on a standard sized bobbin rather than the oversized package that the genuine Seth Lovers used.  To my ear the Vintage Splits are a big improvement over the rather metallic & harsh Dream 180s.  I like the way they honor the original sound of the Seth Lover pickups, with a warm and slightly woody timbre and a low-ish “vintage” output.  They present a round velvet-covered bottom and a subtle upper midrange beauty mark that makes them intriguing.  

Dream 180s taste like Budweiser from a can.  

Vintage Splits taste like a microbrew honey lager with a hint of smoke.



Splits aren’t made for your Stetson, Wranglers, suede vest and Tony Lamas.

They are not made for your black tee, black Levi's, and Doc Martens.

Vintage Splits are made for your turtleneck, wool flatcap, and little pointed goatee. Snap your fingers.  Bop 'til you drop.

“Lovers & Pinup Girls” was a successful project.  The guitar looks, feels and sounds good enough for stage or studio anytime smoky, warm and mellow timbres fit the bill.

  ...  but the Magic Neck soon found a higher calling.  *cue mysterious soundtrack*

 © 2013 Raymond Blowers


Later this month Mr.W&theBPF blog will delve into true-n-sentimental story land again.  Look for "My Father's Hands" 12/15/13.

From Fernando Sor to Home Decor

A bonus project edition of Mr. Weller & the Ballpark Franks this month.

I had an aging Yamaha beginner’s classical guitar - a cheap model, all laminated woods.  It was never very good by 2012 it was developing various problems.  I decided to brutalize it for some fun & silly project.  

As a joke I hacked it up and installed a junk humbucker, a Strat trem arm, and glued on a pair of black speed knobs.  I called it “Strausstercaster”.  

Eventually this joke wore off and I asked a group of online buds if they had any ideas for a project.   My friend Jossy Meza Peraza en Sinaloa, Mexico wondered if it would make an interesting decorative shadowbox for spare stings and other guitar-related miscellany.  I decided to try it.

I found a tutorial on removing a soundboard at ultimate-guitar-repair.com .

The tut assumes that you begin with a valueable instrument in need of repair without damage. I had the advantage that this was not a repair job, but neither did I want it to damage it badly enough to ruin the project.  

Off with the joke parts and let the craftiness begin!

According to UGRonline the first step is to gently scrape the finish from the side of the binding all the way around, then pry with a very thin tool to remove all of the top edge binding.   After scraping in several places it became evident that this guitar didn’t have any binding, only a painted stripe. My attempts to photograph this step were fruitless, but from here the trail of photographic evidence is complete enough to guarantee conviction before any jury.

Next : remove the fret at the body joint - in this case the 12th. It pulled out easily with a small pair of nippers.

... then use the empty fret slot to sever the fingerboard at the body joint with an X-Acto saw.

I was instructed to use the household clothes iron to heat the severed end of the fingerboard, after which it could easily be pried away.  

 

 

 

This was true, but oddly you’ll notice it wasn’t the glue between fingerboard & soundboard that softened, it was the glue between layers of the laminated soundboard. 

 

This didn't matter since I wouldn't be needing to re-install the fingerboard.  

 

The fingerboard tail is splintered only because I first tried to pry it off without the heat.

Next the soundboard itself is removed using more heat and a putty knife.  UGR recommended grinding the corners on a putty knife until they were round.  I used an old putty knife from my tool shed, unmodified.  The first insertion of the putty knife was made slightly more difficult by the fact that the guitar had no binding and so I had no “shelf” to help me begin, but still the soundboard came off much more easily than I expected.  A few minutes with iron and nearly 1/4 of the circumference would loosen with one pry and tug.  It only splintered when I got to the edges of the warmed area.  Soundboard removal took less than 30 minutes.

 

With the soundboard gone the project became easier to visualize.  The 2 lower back braces seemed to make logical locations for internal shelves.

 

 

The braces would support the back edges of the shelves. It occurred to me that the interior binding would serve nicely to hold up the ends of the shelves, negating any need for added shelf support.  My first expense for the project was a new wood chisel ($9.99) to remove chunks of top & back binding strips to make slots for the shelves.

 

At Lowe’s Home Improvement store I found finish-sanded shelving in the “craft wood” dept that was the right width, acceptably thin and available in 24-inch lengths for $2.65 apiece.  This photo also shows a can of Minwax stain I bought but did not use and subsequently returned for refund.

 

 

The shelving slid nicely along the notches in the edging to rest on the tops of the back braces.  I fixed them in place with ordinary hide glue.  I also glued-n’-screwed a salvaged top brace under the leading edge of  the lower shelf then used that widened surface to glue-n’-screw the guitar bridge into nearly its original position.   

I wanted to have strings on the finished piece.  I chose ball-end strings because they would be  simpler to install, and since the fragile structure would not allow the strings to be brought to tension traditional tie-end strings wouldn’t be applicable.  Ernie Ball ball-end classical strings at $6.99 were the cheapest ball-end nylon set at the Tucson GC.
 

Unfortunately when it came time to install the strings I realized I had mistakenly attached the bridge upside-down!   

 

 Not just screwed on, of course, but GLUED-n’-screwed!  The bridge was on backwards to stay and the piece was never intended to be playable, so I just slid the strings down through the stop-block and looped them back over the top toward the headstock.
 

I applied barely enough tension to keep the strings from hanging slack.

 

 

 

... and there she hangs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is unique, useful, and certainly fits my decor.  Total outlay less than $24 & under 2 hours’ work.

In retrospect I wish I had put more thought into the location of the shelves to leave a bit more room between them.  Many string packages will not fit onto the bottom shelf standing up, though a few of the boxed types will.  Despite this one small disappointment, I like it and I'm glad I did this.

Thanks, Jossy!

 

© 2013 Raymond Blowers

Man's Best Friend(s)

I was diggin’ into a Telecaster recently, working up some riffs and groovin' on the inspiration one gets with a good guitar.  Of course I brought riffs to this party but y'know ... so did the Tele.  I’m sure many of you have felt inspriation from the instrument itself, when music pours forth that you didn't plan and had never played before.  If that stuff didn’t come from me where DID it come from?   From the Telecaster.   The Tele made it happen in a thrilling symbiosis of player and guitar.

The Tele never ceases to amaze me - it almost feels alive.  Subtle nuances in my input bring thrilling hyper-responses.  Yes, she does what I tell her but adds more from  within herself.  The word "responsive" is inadequate to describe a good Tele.  She feels attentive, adrenaline-filled, intently focused and alert.  At times I can almost feel her heartbeat and breath. Sometimes I feel that if I dropped her she would bounce and jump happily back into my arms.  
 

This thrill is difficult to communicate to someone who hasn’t experienced it.  I have been hoping to find a way to make it understandable to people who don't live guitar.  
 

 

One day I happened to be in an hall where a dog handler and his Border Collie were scheduled for a show later that day.  If you’ve never seen a working Border Collie in the flesh you’ve probably seen them on television.  They were warming up, getting accustomed to the hall before the show.  The dog was catching and fetching and negotiating obstacles, hyper-active and hyper-alert.  She responded with enthusiasm to even the smallest signal from her human partner.  He patted his chest with a barely visible motion of one hand and she jumped into his arms, wiggling all over and kissing him.

THERE!

I had found my analogy!  THAT is what it is like to play a Telecaster. The more I watched, the more I saw parallels between the Man-Collie team & the Man-Tele team.

For November this humble blog will point out just a few of that ways that a Telecaster is like a Border Collie.

 

 

 

 

 

See? you’re getting it already.

Tele and Collie are always ready to play, and they don’t need a lot of fancy equipment to have fun.

 

 

 

Tele-Collie is at home with country folk ...

 



but can easily be as suave as he wants to be ...

 

 

or as uptown as he needs to be.

 

Tele-Collie loves to wow the crowd ...

 

but when needed, will GET ... DOWN to business!

Tele-Collie can move the masses

  

 

 

 

 

and Tele-Collie has been doing all of this for many generations.

 

See? A Telecaster IS just like a Border Collie!

 

 

December’s  Mr. Weller blog will bring you a sentimental true story about how a cheap guitar can be more valuable than gold.