Desert island albums, #15

Arvo Pärt, Tabula Rasa, on the ECM label, 1999.

Moving, mesmerizing, almost perfect.

Arvo himself:

Thankful

Today is the first Thanksgiving Day in 10 years on which George W Bush has been neither president or president-elect. Ten years. I want my 40s back.

More Kinkiness

Desert island albums, #16

Jack Bruce's Out Of The Storm, 1974.


This seems to me the pinnacle of Jack's post-Cream solo career. He did, however, do some extraordinary stuff later as a sideman, specifically with Kip Hanrahan.

Desert island albums, #17

Cocteau Twins' Treasure, 1984.


Cocteau Twins when they were still goth-tinged post-punk. More edge and less, uh, you know, less like what you'd hear while shopping at Gap in 1993. A close second to Treasure is 1990's Heaven Or Las Vegas. Elizabeth Fraser will always be one of the great vocalists ever.

Extreme Awesome

(via Dr. Bérubé’s joint)

Bad kitty

Desert island albums, #18

Together Alone, Crowded House, 1993.


I'm conflicted on this one; otherwise it'd be higher on the list. I couldn't live without any of the Crowded House catalog. I settled on this one (okay, it wasn't that hard) because it really is their best album in that from start to finish every song works within the whole -- and it contains so many great Crowed House tunes. Pineapple Head, Fingers of Love, Distant Sun, Nails in My Feet, Private Universe, In My Command, and Walking On the Spot are among Neil Finn's best compositions. Any four of those would have made any album great. Here, you get them all and more.

Aging a new pickguard

Okay, so I bought this old Mosrite "Joe Maphis" double-neck guitar. (Pictures coming soon.) It had a not so well-made replacement pickguard on it; so I decided to make a new one myself, which turned out quite well. But the new white plastic is WHITE, which is fine, but it looks out of place on a vintage guitar. So I wanted to give it something approximating the yellowish patina that the original would have acquired from 40 years in smokey nightclubs.

Now, you can Google up lots of suggestions for how to do this; e.g., soaking the pickguard in hot coffee, lacquering the pickguard and putting it out in the sun, and burning a few cartons of cigarettes in a homemade cardboard smoker. But nothing is as effective, quick, and non-stinky as spraying with amber-tinted lacquer.

Before I go into details, here's the result atop the remainder of the white sheet from which it was cut.



Now for the details. For lack of spraying equipment, I am restricted to good old "rattle cans" of lacquer. You can get cans of amber-tinted lacquer from Stewart-MacDonald or Guitar ReRanch. But it is impossible to get the right tint with these, because it takes several coats to make the color uniform (not splotchy), and by that time the color is way too deep (i.e., orange). Basically, these lacquers are just too dark for the job, and you need to mix a much lighter tint. So what's an amateur to do?

To the rescue comes the Preval sprayer, which costs $6.75 at StewMac. What you see below is the (detached) spraying unit with reservoir bottle containing some leftover lacquer from the job.



The stuff in the bottle is probably 2/3 lacquer thinner. The rest consists of a mix of clear lacquer and amber-tinted lacquer -- from spray cans -- with a very tiny shot of tobacco brown lacquer (from StewMac). It looks about like a nice amber beer. After a few light coats of this, I got the color I wanted. (Actually I wish I had left off the last coat, so it would be just a touch lighter.)

By the way, I recommend a few coats of clear lacquer as a base -- lightly sanded with 400 grit paper, just enough to smooth out most of the orange peel. And lightly sand the plastic first, too.

If I had it to do over, I'd probably replace much of the thinner in the mix with clear lacquer so it would flow a bit better. Again, ideally you'd want to mix the stuff up like a pro -- not from rattle cans. But this got the job done. This time.

Desert island albums, #19

Bill Bruford's Feels Good To Me, 1978.


A rhythm section of Bruford and Jeff Berlin, some of Allan Holdsworth's best early-mid career wailing, and sublime appearances by trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and singer Annette Peacock. What more could anyone want?

Hagstroms with cat

Final AC15 update

Well, I couldn't help myself. I rearranged (almost) all the ground connections so that they all connect to a bus that connects to the chassis at one point. It worked! The hum is gone. There was also the problem of a noisy volume pot, which turned out to be caused by a leaky coupling capacitor. (Because of the specific design of this amp, there's one place where a capacitor cannot be leaky. And guess where I thought it'd be cool to use an antique cap.)



It's now quiet as a little mouse. It's so cool that I replaced the ugly old cement power resistors with pretty new ones and gave it a sexy blue pilot-lamp jewel -- just to see it smile.

Desert island albums, #20

Fleetwood Mac's Then Play On, September 1969, featuring the sadly ill-fated Green-Spencer-Kirwan triumvirate. Very little Spencer though, which one might say is a good thing.

Speaking of which... The Peter Green Story.

What it's really all about

Shorter Orrin Hatch:

Republicans cannot allow Democrats to pass health-care reform because that would cause people to vote for Democrats in the future.