Bassling blog

Hey are we still going to hang out later?

Naviarhaiku628 – In the dark beyond

Fretless player

Dunno but I feel like maybe I can forgive those people who badly park cars as big as semitrailers, if I think of them as fans of semitones and microtonal composition.

Tuxedo telecaster

Just finished modifying this telecaster with a stratocaster pickguard, Texas pickups and an Artist Bullbucker in the bridge.

I haven't been able to get the split coil to work, so might make the pull pot switch into a Gilmour mod instead.

Bill Callahan on media

If that person could see me in my life, they would not even dream of calling me a craftsman. I picture a craftsman as the guy who’s got his tools all labelled in boxes and shelves and knows where everything is. I’m more of a drunk professor; I like happenstance and coincidence and mistakes. I know nothing about synthesisers, but I’ll randomly pick one and turn it on and start recording. I press some buttons and play something and somehow try to make it work. I’m only precise about writing the lyrics and then the rest of it is more like: throw it at the wall. I don’t know anything about chord progressions. It’s more being open and receiving things from wherever they come from. I feel more like a medium.

My Fender bender

I had an idea to merge elements of Telecaster and Stratocaster designs.

The Strat pickguard looks so right with the Tele body shape and I'm happy to make a mess of a cheap guitar before I try building one.

Chender Meteora

About two months ago I saw my guitar on a Chinese website.

The price was around a third of what I paid for a secondhand model and curiousity got the better of me, so I ordered it.

After a couple of weeks the seller abruptly cancelled the sale, possibly because the discount offered by the site undercut profitability.

I weighed up whether to continue my experiment and decided to buy a different model, rather than a replica of the one I already own.

Yesterday my "Chender" Meteora arrived and there were a number of obvious differences.

The Chinese copy is lighter than my Mexican original, but that's not a bad thing for me.

There's a shiny finish to the neck that is a bit sticky when playing, as well as a yellow hue that seems unnatural in comparison.

One really obvious visual detail was the pickup covers were uneven, they have different heights but also seem to be slightly different sizes as well.

I've loosened the screws and shifted them a little, but it's not quite yet symmetrical.

Otherwise it feels good, with no sharp fret edges and very good intonation.

The electrics are a bit weird, from potentiometer knobs that stick when being turned through to pickups that sound peaky in a way that suggests ceramics.

However, I am happy to change the electrics and will try some fatter-sounding pickups than the nicely nuanced Fireballs in my Fender.

I will also install split-coil switches like the Meteoras normally feature.

As a fan of hand-drawn art and the human touch one experiences from engaging with creative practise, I find the lettering on the large headstock endearing.

It wasn't immediately obvious until I looked at the regular-size headstock on my Mexican Meteora, particularly when you see how the "A" at the end of the brand seems to drift into the background.