The musical group will be playing on the first night of Chanuka, 7 Dec, and somehow the songs that we were originally intending to play have been replaced by other, more uplifting, songs. This means that I'm only fingerpicking one song whereas I'm providing rhythm strokes for another three. As a result, I have decided to use the Stagg Tele; apart from anything else, it will also be lighter to hold. Continuing from my thoughts from a few days ago, I went to buy a set of "nines" that should be more gentle with my fingers.
There is a music store in Bet Shemesh, although it's in an area that I don't
normally visit. As I was in the town yesterday buying meat, I thought that I
would travel another kilometre to visit this store. It's very small but there
are several items that I would like to purchase (it's like walking into a
bookshop for me). There were about fifteen guitars on display: ten electrics and
five acoustics (these were cheap ones). One of the electrics was an Epiphone,
possibly of the famous 335 type, but I didn't have my reading glasses with me so
I couldn't see the model number. There were guitar leads (no need to have
ordered them from another shop and wait several weeks for them to arrive) as
well as guitar strings and all manner of other instruments. I asked for a set of
"nines", as shown on the left. They cost me a few shekels less than the price
that an online seller in Israel was selling, and of course, no delivery
charge.
In the evening, I set about restringing the Stagg. I've seen on YouTube videos where guitar techs don't free strings from the tuning pegs then pull them
through the body; instead they reduce the tension then cut the strings in the
middle. This makes it much easier to extract the strings from the body. Once I
had all the strings off, I checked the fingerboard for dirt. I couldn't see
any but gave the board a wipe down all the same. When I was last at the dental
clinic, I asked for a disused probe: I can use this to scrape dirt off the
fingerboard in the future. I then added the new set of strings. Previously I
would add one string at a time, pushing it through the body then into the
tuning pegs, but the video that I checked yesterday had the tech pushing all
six strings through the body first. I don't think this is any easier, but
there isn't much difference.
For some reason, the lowest string was pulling the nut to the left of the
guitar, and after a moment or two, the nut flew off the guitar. I've never
seen this happen before. So my wife glued the nut to where it sits in the guitar neck
(she's much better than me at delicate handwork like this) and then I hung the
guitar back on the wall to give the glue a chance to set.
Today I carried on threading the strings through the nut via the string trees
and into the machine heads. After threading them (and making sure that the
windings are below the excess sticking out), I cut off most of the excess on
each string. I then tuned the guitar approximately and now I'm leaving it for
a few hours to settle down. I'll retune again in the evening. Apparently nines
go out of tune more often than tens. We'll see.
This day in history:
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 111 | Sleep | Apnea, Anaemia | |
| 654 | Critical week | DBA | |
| 779 | My army service - part one | Israel, Personal | |
| 1361 | E-hour minus 4 | DBA | |
| 1362 | Viva result | DBA | |
| 1444 | My body is like a barometer | Weather | |
| 1558 | Christine McVie, RIP | Obituary, Fleetwood Mac |
No comments:
Post a Comment