Ready bag

Just in case bag

Just for fun on Saturday afternoon I ended up having to go to the children's hospital to get some emergency repairs done on one of the offspring.

Lucky for us, on a few occasions, there is a handy drop in center to take kids for a quick check over and fix up if needed, and fortunately if more work is required we have Alder Hey Children's Hospital
The staff and treatment at both are excellent but unfortunately you can end up with a both of a delay if your precious charges aren't bleeding out.

Yesterday I spent around two hours, maybe three, in a hospital waiting room.

Its kind of handy to have some basic supplies with you in such circumstances, also you may need to leave in a hurry so it would be handy to have them in one place, just to join the dots leave a small rucksac with the following lying near the door (or hung up neatly if you have that kind of spouse).

Baby wipes
Books adult and children.
Drinks (little cartons of fresh juice with straws, bottle water, coke,)
Food (oat bars, flap jacks,  sweets, chuck some fruit in on the way out the door)
Pen and paper
Pack of cards

For smaller children
Nappies,
Cartons of UHT milk
If you've got rugrats then you know what to add

Also  very useful to have to speed up going out for days out, trips to park whatever, just remember to refill the bag when you've used it

Anyway yesterdays end result: Kid ok, I didn't get some work on a little project done until later, but I did manage to get some of a book knocked off and play a few games of noughts and crosses

Restoration Comedy

Hondo is strumming along nicely,

Bar strings the only thing I've really needed to do is swap the bridge in order to get the intonation set, in simple terms intonation is tweaking the length of the strings so the tuning is consistent along the length of the fret board.

So I need a new bridge, Advantage one, this is a Les Paul style guitar, the bridge is a push fit onto  a couple of pillars so I just need to get a new one. Advantage two, lots of people make and sell arts to fit a Les Paul, in fact you can buy parts to fit most any type of guitar, Strats and Les Pauls being the  most common. So lots of choices for spare parts, I don’t have to break out the 3D printer. Advantage three, it’s called a tune-o-matic bridge, and that sound really cool to me.

So what is the best bridge for a 30 year old LP copy owned by a man on a budget?  Having spent at least 30 seconds trawling guitar forums I head for ebay, a quick search reveals roller bridges which look cool and normal bridges. Back to the guitar forums and I get the impression that roller bridges are good if you have a tremolo arm (also known as a whammy bar) my guitar is mostly armless so I decide to go conventional, there are also dark murmurs that roller bridges suck up tone. Also the term normal bridge covers quite a lot of ground but the sophistications of ABR and Nashville style bridges are lost on me so my purchasing decision is based  on price and will it fit. basically a crude buy one that looks like the one I’ve got for the least amount of cash strategy. The final result 5 pounds from China! That is 5 pounds including postage from Shenzhen China delivered in less than a week, half the cost of a UK seller, ok I don't believe this is the best quality part ever but I'm not sure this even covers the cost of putting something in an envelope.

While I'm looking for parts I start to think about styling my guitar wondering about using black hardware v the pull of authentic aged components, and I’m starting to think about aging my new bridge, I appear to crossing to the dark side.

Finally after all the effort, one vital component buy a guitar stand, I watched Hondo drift slowly sideways and drop to the floor after being propped against the sofa! Fortunately a soft bump and just needed a retuning but...

Guitar Zero
and check out Guitar Zero for the scence of learning
In the beginning
I’d been kindly gifted a Squier Strat by a friend of the missus but had a yen for something different. As an aside what sort of friend provides your musically challenged partner with an electric guitar? Anyway I am more than grateful, the Squier was a lot more fun to learn with than an acoustic and an electric unplugged very useful for practising without drowning out the tv but I had got a yearning for something different. Why? The strat clone seems to be produced in such numbers I think there may actually exist one such guitar for every man, woman and child on the face of the planet. I had walked into  music stores and seen mass ranks of  strat clones.  If a musical instrument is about expression I want a unique voice. Actually I think my musical voice is fairly unique but not that musical.

So trawling eBay for something, electric guitar, different, local and cheap I came up with Hondo

Initial purchase price 30 ish quid. I’d bought locally on eBay because I figured shipping would be too bigger add on to my somewhat limited budget. Typically Hondo is on the limit of the 10 mile eBay closest radius so add 5 pounds of fuel.
£35.00

First impressions, I bought Hondo as a fixer upper, on getting her home,  I replaced the broken string and had a play, then I replaced the rest of the strings as the existing strings felt rough. I think Hondo needs

• A new switch  panel cover
• Pots are scratchy, noisy and intermittent I’m going to have to replace these.
• The pickup selector switch needs a new top.
• The jack connector seem intermittent and noisy
• Playing
• Cleaning

New strings I had lying about I think about cost around £4, I’d bought a pack of three sets sometime ago.
Hondo in my hands, home and playable £39, and on first impressions well worth it.

I go with playing. The jack connector is an easy solve, I’m used to a strat style where the jack is protected the Les Paul style is exposed, buying a lead with a right angled  plug makes things a lot better. Addition to investment 3 quid, delivered pretty much next day, for stuff like this eBay rocks.
Total so far £42

Having convinced myself I need to pull the potentiometers and replace them, I spend some time researching replacements and find that standard pots from the local Maplin are close but not quite what are needed. This is in comparison to some eye watering figures for replacement Les Paul wiring harnesses with real “tone”. I discover that I can get what I need for around 2 quid a pot, plus postage.  But it’s Sunday and in a fit of I want to do something now I buy some switch cleaner, an aerosol of magical solvents and other agents and spray the pots, basically squirting the magical elixir into a gap in the posts to shift dirt and clear the passages. End result three pots are smooth and 1 has gone from scratchy to slightly iffy. Pot replacement can wait. Can of magic potion £4
Total so far £46  although given there must be 50 odd squirts left in the can maybe £42.10

It’s late, it’s Sunday night and I have one last thing on the list job nagging. I need a new cover for the back of the switch, proces online not bad, but the size seems wrong, so I figure I could probably cut a piece of plastic to fit make a neat job etc. I end up cutting up the top of a plastic ice cream carton and PVA glue it in place, a superbly botched switch cover to finish round one  of the restoration.

Before

After quality workmanship

Sometime in the future pot replacement

redefining inappropriate

Blatant sexism

Puerile humour

Pointless reworking of an old song

But I laughed my socks off (I'm also a couple of years late to the party as usual)

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/t6HSlZBNwUQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Best gear review ever

And I quote:

Reliability & Durability: Been drink spilage, fat chicks sittin on it and still looks brand new. I use it almost every day and never had a problem with it. Had it almost 2 years now, still goin strong. // 10

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/guitar_amplifiers/fender/frontman_15g/index.html

It's a long way to the finish line

Something I read somewhere about parenting

"It's a marathon not a sprint"

A top tip from another parent

"Pick your battles"

I'll come back to this, but it rings true just keep nudging things in the right direction

Geeks, guitars and midlife crisis

I’ve recently started to learn to play guitar

An activity which, given an impending x0th birthday screams mid life crisis. well it would scream mid life crisis if I was allowed some decent amplification, could afford some decent amplification,  had more understanding neighbours, currently it sort of mumbles midlife crisis out of a beat up practice amp of dubious pedigree

And I have discovered a community of geeks, and I am inclined to believe guitar geeks make Apple fanbois look like balanced, objective individuals.

For example a typical forum conversation may go
“I have just bought a brand X what do you guy think”
Where brand X is a guitar of low quality crafted in a sweatshop from old pallets and with electronics of a quality to make Lord Sugar blush.

“Wow they are superb my first guitar was a brand X, it was stolen by a roommate in college and I wish I still had it”
First guitars are like first sexual experiences, usually better in hindsight

“Nah they are total pants you want to get a brand Y. “
Where Brand Y is an equally pants el cheapo guitar that puts out on a first date.

“They both suck, you should have got a mega brand custom”
price differential just keep adding zeroes

I think I have found a new home..

I might need an apostrophe

Got the title right I think, changed "Dads  Underground" to "Dads Underground Bunker"

somewhere dads can escape to whine, bitch, ramble on and whatever

Meet Hondo

Hondo is a nigh on 30 years old Les Paul copy, born in 1983 in  I think in Korea or Japan. She has had a troubled life, her last owner stopped her being thrown in a skip, and had her neck straightened and other work done, she does not appear to have been played in ages.

Courtesy of the wallet draining engine that is eBay I paid 30 odd quid for something that was due at one point to hit the skip which I guess goes to show the power of relative values.

Hondo was bought as a project, having  a playable guitar  is one objective, learning basic maintenance another, Also for various reasons I wanted something other than a strat clone.


As part of the project I’m going to try and keep a record of costs, my objective is a playable electric guitar on a budget and I always find it surprising how the little costs add up.  I’ll also try to track simple fixes, partially so I can find them next time I need them and if this is useful to anyone else great,   There’s an American term “shade tree mechanic”  that I think basically means an amatuer or at least not  full on professional, anyway I like the term so perhaps “shade tree luthier”. A less grand explanation might be I’m learning to bolt things on and off guitars.

Disclaimer, great title for a song BTW, I know less than zero about fixing guitars, all advice found on the internet should be treated with a pinch of salt. What appears to work for me now may not stand the test of time. Read and draw your own conclusions, product endorsements may or may not have been paid for (I should be so lucky).

Also I know i have a couple or more people I could probably get advice from, sometimes I just need to make my own mistakes

The title of this blog, what's getting posted and why.

I titled this blog around 6:00am one morning whilst lounging on the sofa with lap top doing some too early in the day parenting. Basically making sure a small child didn't damage themselves or the property after they had woken up and refused attempts at returning them to sleep.

My thinking, possibly confused by sleep deprivation was to blog bits of parenting advice, notes, ideas whatever. I had the feeling there was a lot of advice for women, some what less so for men, Also that the current environment was against a lot of things men could teach to children.

That was the plan, time passes and I have a couple of other things I'd like to blog about so what follows might be a bit random.

3,2,1 and I'm back in the room.

I keep flirting with blogging, because I like writing, but never quite doing it because, I don't know who is going to read my nonsense, and the internet is forever but opinions are very temporary.

Anyway here is take two on a blog I'd first put up to mutter random things about fatherhood, fathers and children,