Mike Stern!

On the flight back from Munich to the States I saw one of my all time heroes: MIKE STERN!  I have been a major fan of his since he showed up on the cover of  Guitar Player magazine in the 80's. Mr Stern is an amazing jazz musician who plays guitar in a variety of styles that are melodic and passionate and funny and clever and informed. I spoke to him briefly on the plane and while waiting for our bags and found him to be a very nice man and a gentleman.  I thanked him for all the music and inspiration as well as all the time he spends on planes and in taxis so we can wake up in our cities and see him and then go to work the next day. He even wished me well before he left the baggage claim area!

It is amazing when you meet one of your all time heroes and he is just as nice a person as you expect him to be! Maybe even nicer! Dreams do come true (sometimes even on a plane from Munich!) I was thrilled for days!

Final project: Esquire conversion (rewiring and all)

So this one was a lot more involved, and I stayed up later then I should to finish. I will restring it later with new strings and try it out later, but now (finally) to sleep!
:)

Restoring the Blackguard

Next project:
Restoring the black pickguard to my butterscotch Squier Telecaster and "unstealthing" the neck pickup. The hard part actually was rebalancing the neck and bridge pickup volumes!

But it really sounds glorious again (I had earlier replaced the stock pickups with DiMarzio Area T pickups)
:)

Unwinding, or P bass pickguard replacement

I decided after a long day to unwind by replacing the pickguatd on my Squier P bass with a faux tortoise shell one (no turtles were harmed).

It was fairly straight forward: just unscrew the old one, move the controls to the new one, drill some new screw holes (none matched up) and then attach the new one.

I like the new look!
:)

Stealth Esquire

I decided to replace the black pickguard on my Telecaster with an Esquire pickguard (the Esquire has no pickup in the neck position. I wanted to still be able to use the neck pickup, so I "stealthed" it. I lowered it into the body of the guitar. Then I used the old black pickguard as a template to drill the 3 extra screw holes I needed in the white one. Then just screw it in place and VIOLA, a new look!

Cool,eh? And if I get tired of it, just 10 minutes to set it back the way it was!
:)

(Clearly, I spend too much time alone!)
:)