Playing in the Shambles

It’s a Friday night, rainy and cold. Glenn and Therese invited me to go out with them, go to a bar or two and maybe sing karaoke, but instead I decided to chill out at home and get a leg up on a project or two.

I have this Alesis guitar amp, a Spitfire 15, which gives away the fact that it isn’t so new any more. Alesis changed the name of this line to Wildfire some time ago.

Still, the amp isn’t really all that old. If it were, it wouldn’t have the damned plastic quarter-inch jacks that I have learned to hate so heartily.

It’s a good amp, all in all, but the plastic threads on the input jack got stripped and would no longer hold the metal nut. (Metal on plastic, in a place that can be subject to repeated stress. Brilliant. But I’m venting.)

I’ve had it apart several times, to investigate and then to patch. The input jack is soldered in three places onto a PCB. I finally found an outfit that carries such a jack (thank you, Studio Sound Electronics), and took a chance, going mostly by the picture and also somewhat by the description (which did not say “Alesis”, but was still encouraging). They tack on an extra buck-fifty, IIRC, unless you order at least five bucks’ worth of stuff, and this was $4.95. Of course. I thought about ordering two, but instead I grabbed a cheap set of allen keys. I can’t find the two or three I must have around here that would fit the bridge of my Squier ’57, and the string height has been bugging me. I could have just paid the little bit of extra shipping and spent less money, but for about two-fifty I got something else useful, until I lose it/them as well.

The operation on the amp commenced this evening, and it was a pain in the ass. I do not have a solder sucker, so getting this three-legged monster out of the PCB was not fun. The old jack had started disintegrating, however, which helped me. By first taking it to pieces, I was able to remove it one leg at a time (one of the legs being amazingly, almost magically stubborn). Then I had to engineer a way to clear the holes. Then I lost the new jack, and spent a few minutes searching, cussing, and searching some more. It was way more complicated than it should have been, as such things usually are, and several of my fingers and the soldering iron made very brief contact, but I managed not to burn myself, and at last I got it done.

Naturally I pulled out my guitar to test it, and my eyes fell on the allen keys.

At first I thought none were going to fit, but happily I was wrong, and soon I had my strings nice and low. A long story on that, but this is very sweet–only now I’m too tired to play, having stayed up way too late this morning, and so I’m half-asleep and it’s only a little after ten-thirty.

I set my guitar’s intonation a few days ago, which was a huge improvement. That intonation thing is really all it’s cracked up to be. I might need to double-check it now, maybe tweak the action a little more–it just might need a small truss rod adjustment. But not tonight. At least it’s much closer to dialed-in than it was before. It’s a sweet-playing guitar now. Best of all, I can plug in to my amp without the jack falling inside.

Note to self: thread the patch cord through the handle. It’s a great strain relief. Just sayin’.

Thank God. Another Monday is another MOnday, another day alive. Therefore I’m not complaining.

Last night could have taken a number of routes. It was one of those situations where it was too tough to choose. I could have stayed and watched the rest of the Giants/Packers game with Dad. It turned out to be a tight contest, going into overtime. Having left at halftime, I could have gone over to Glenn’s and jammed, as he really wanted me to do. I wanted to, too. Intead, I choose chose Door Number Three, the excellent absinthe adventure another friend had planned for a long time. We’d talked about it for so long, it would have been a shame to miss out.

So it will be the Giants and the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Okay. The great story line here is that the Giants played the Pats one of their toughest contests the last game of the regular season. I know the Giants have their work cut out for them, but I believe they have reason to feel confident.

This doesn’t mean I’m pulling against the Patriots, though. To see them fall just short of repeating/making history would be rather sad. I can’t help but pull for Brady, Moss, and crew.

edited

It’s a big day in the NFL world. The Chargers take on the Patriots at 2:00, Central time, and the Giants visit the Packers at 5:30. I’ll be over at my parents’ house taking it all in.

Both games are extra-special, the AFC game because of the Patriot’s run at a perfect season (if you follow American-style football you know this, and if you don’t you won’t care anyway, so I’m not sure why I just explained). The NFC game mostly because of Brett Favre, I’d have to say. Well, and the Giants’ brewing Cinderella story, with a Manning still in the playoffs, just not the one most would have expected.

Plus, the Chargers are probably my favorite team, overall, and the Packers my favorite NFC team I guess. I don’t know, I’m not really hardcore about it, but I do like these two teams a lot. The Chargers are probably going to be annihilated, though. The Packers are in better shape, especially at home, but you never know. A New England-Green Bay Super Bowl could be thrilling, and fun to watch for all the story lines that would crop up.

There’s a jam brewing up, I think it’s tomorrow evening, and I’ve been invited to bring my guitar. I’d love to do it, but unless Green Bay or New York starts beating the tar out of the other early, I’ll probably have to miss it. I’m not really much of a sports freak, but of it all, I do like NFL football. This time of year, well, it’s the Championships. ‘Nuff said.

Turns out Bush’s purple hulls are not the pea all, end all. On the other hand, I did wind up eating the whole can.

I was thinking Dad recommended the Bush’s black-eyed peas to me, but now I realize I wuz rong. It was the turnip greens. (I love both black-eyed peas and turnip greens.) The peas are just so-so. Which is good, since it gave me an excuse to eat them out of the way so I can try something else tomorrow.

Potato soup? I still have to break in the crockpot Linda gave me, like, a year and a half ago. Hmmm.

Tonight, I have fried chicken in the fridge (I love cold fried chicken), cornbread, and Bush’s purple-hull peas. And my dishes are washed. I feel almost human.

There’s still a few more touch-ups I’d like to do, but that might never end. The word “finish” is hard to apply. I’m tempted to wax upon a discourse on Voltaire’s “The perfect is the enemy of the good” and the concept of “Worse is Better”, but I’m an ignoramus so I won’t do that to us.

As far as the picture, I’d still like to add a background. Maybe someday. The inking, at this point, is probably out.