Jon Carpenter has been down for maintenance
In few the moments where I haven’t been hawking my worn out flesh for coins, I’ve been too busy configuring my working environment to actually do any work. I’m hoping that the spring is here and that’s going to change – that I’m kind of emerging from a creative, spiritual and emotional period of hibernation.
Guitars have had new straps and been restrung, that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I don’t really like changing strings because they take a while to wear in properly and loose the OTT zinging sound of newness.
I broke two straps one drunken evening of trying to channel the ghost of Rowland S Howard, my renditions of ‘Trouble Come This Morning’ were more physical than the straps could take, so that was that.
Les Paul has had surgery too, a wire had fractured inside the casing, bloody hard to diagnose and the reasons why repeated re-solderings of the socket were having no effect. Pretty pleased to have sorted this one as it was bugging me and it means I’m back up to full strength.
The one thing I haven’t sorted yet is my old acoustic 12 string, that’s still languishing upstairs – haven’t used it in 10 years and it’s missing a bunch of bridge pegs. I’ll get it out and see if I can make it work…
Am starting to get the itch for a new guitar, the last one I bought was the bass in 2006, obviously to fill a pretty big gap in my recording capability. I’m quite tempted by either a Fender Jaguar, a Rickenbacker 330/12 or an ES335. Wonder if doing something radical like going for a Rickenbacker 12 might send my playing in a different direction than the one I’ve become a bit becalmed in.
Can’t afford any of it, mind, but that’s never really stopped me before.
