Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015 — HNY OM! Yes, and for the first time in many, many years, I did absolutely NOTHING for Straight Key Night (SKN) — beyond a little pissing and moaning about it mentally while doing nebulizer treatments every 4 hours since New Years’s Eve.
I have a case of what we call here in Kentucky “The Creeping Crud.” My head and chest are full of gunk (that’s the medical term for “crud,” by the way), and I’ve been on a steady diet of mucinex and albuteral in an effort to keep my head and chest clear of congestion. And anyone with compromised breathing already knows that it can be a pain in the (butt, diaphragm, chest, insert favorite body part or organ) to deal with. But dealing with it beats the alternative. Been there, done that once already.
I have done absolutely nothing in Amateur Radio since I brought home that 1937 McElroy key in my last entry. In fact, the key stayed in the kitchen until we bulldozed the kitchen in preparation for Christmas visitors. It’s safely in the shack now, but I haven’t touched it beyond moving it.
Have I lost my mojo for ham radio? Well, not entirely, but I have renewed a competing interest — guitars.
My wife this year for Christmas told me to pick out a guitar — she’s promised to buy me a Gibson Les Paul one day (3o years ago). I’ve played guitar for nearly 40 years, but not so you would know it. Mostly self-taught, and I’ve been happy for years to be able to play guitar with my favorite records. I’m a rockstar for 20 minutes a day, usually before bed late a night.
Some 30-plus years ago, I bought a cheap Yamaha acoustic for $35. It was the best $35 I could have ever spent … it was an excellent guitar (I gave it away to someone who wanted to learn – only to have him sell it, go figure). Prior to my marriage I bought a pre-CBS Fender Jazzmaster … it was beautiful, with the three-color sunburst, and played like a dream! I also had a Fender Musicmaster bass guitar (bass guitar was my first love … I bought the bass for $115 from a local music shop with my high school graduation money).
Early in our marriage, my wife and I were in a world of hurt for money, and I hocked both guitars at a pawnshop in Louisville. I think I got $250 for both, including hard cases for each. I never went back to get them, even though the pawn shop guys called me and begged me to simply pay the interest on them. Nope, I let them go.
Big mistake, of course. Any pre-CBS Fender guitar in decent shape today brings big 
dollars. Live and learn, lol.
I have always wanted my old Jazzmaster back, and after my wife told me to buy a guitar, I decided this was my chance — I bought a Jazzmaster just like the one I had. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about the ins and outs of the Jazzmaster and its cousin, the Fender Jaguar — both of those were eclipsed by the popularity of the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster, but I digress.
Since the days I hocked my Fenders, I later bought a Fender acoustic (early 90s) and have played it for years. Some years ago, I picked up a Peavey Raptor Plus EXP stratocaster copy (like nearly every guitar, made in China). Mine had the benefit of being secondhand, and the previous owner did a killer setup on it; low action, great intonation. For less than $100, I got a guitar in near-new shape that plays like a dream. Never got a case for it, it stands leaning against a bookshelf in the shack, ready to jam to my latest favorites on Spotify.
Because I don’t want to wake the whole house, I don’t run thru and amp usually; I bring in computer audio and the guitar to a Behringer mixer, and then listen to the resulting mish-mash via the headphones out jack from the mixer. The 6 channel mixer gives me lots of tone control over the guitar, and it overall it makes for a nice headphone mix for playing along.
RECENT EBAY ACQUISITION. I couldn’t help myself, eBay fever took over my flu-ravaged body last week … my Jazzmaster has been backordered for weeks, and I wanted a new-to-me guitar … something to put under the tree. On eBay I found a Chinese Gibson Les Paul look-alike under the Davison label … it was a beautiful blue finish with a maple top, gold hardware, bound and set neck and with pearloid fretboard inlays. Even if I never played the thing, it is still a beautiful instrument!
This one was used (apparently an in-store demonstrator) with a significant discounted Buy It Now price. I did some research on Davison guitars as well as Chinese-made Gibson Les Paul clones (aka, “Chibson” guitars). The truth is that all but the top-end guitars now are made overseas, and the lower the price, the lower the quality (in general). Translated, that means that any lower-end guitar will probably need some work, which may include fret leveling/dressing, etc.
My Davison Blue Beauty arrived in short order (still waiting on my Jazzmaster), and it was spotless; the description said it will have scratches, etc., but it was as perfect as you could expect. Some initial observations … the frets must need work because one end of the bridge is very high to keep the fret buzz down … open chords sounded ok, but intonation went haywire as you traveled down the neck. No real surprises here — not to say there were none.
The 3-way switch was intermittent and scratchy; I had to cycle the switch several times to get the bridge pickup to play. Adjusting the volume and tone controls, the tone control for the bridge pickup felt like it had no stop — it just spun! After closer inspection, it looks like the pot is just loose. I haven’t fixed it yet, but will. I tuned it and played it some that first time, but put it away once the pot issue arose. I’ll mess with it later this week once I am over this damn flu. My hope is that I won’t need to do much serious setup with the Jazzmaster once it arrives, but we’ll see. I have a nice new hard case for the JM, and I expect I may wind up playing the Peavey most of the time, simply because I have so little in it and if I scratch or ding the hell out of it, no big loss. I plan to treat the Jazzmaster with a little more care than that (at lease while its “new” lol).
Next entry will be about radio stuff, I promise!
73 ES CUL … DE KY4Z CL … DIT DIT