Patches and rallies aside, for the time being t least, I have also been up to quite a bit this week. To be perfectly honest, this week didn't have the best of starts, self-doubt kicked in, and I spent the first half of the week thinking I'd get nowhere in life. Thankfully that disappeared on Wednesday, and the week could return to normality, which was good, especially since I had the first part of my army interview on Friday.
Thankfully it wasn't the real deal, it was a pre-interview in order to sort out my three job choices, since there is only a slim chance of me getting my first choice, I need to have back-up options. I'd also like to point out that I don't exaggerate when I say slim chance, in-fact I think a slim chance would be bigger than the chance I have. I say this because I plan to be a musician in the army, and I plan on entering as a bassist (but I will happily go for guitarist if need be). with there only being three army bands that require a bass guitarist, and each band will only need one bassist, there are only three potential jobs for me, that could be boosted up to nine by adding six guitarist slots (two for each contemporary band), but there are jazz bands which I might be able to slot myself into.
I now have two back-up jobs, I had to change at least one of my original jobs because the staff sergeant interviewing me, didn't want to send me into one of those job choices. This meant he gave me a nice big pile of job briefs to take home, sift through, select three jobs from and rank them in order of preference. The end result (in order of preference) was Musician, Combat Medical Technician and Military Policeman.Army aside, the day before I restrung my bass. I used the thicker four strings of a five-string set (leaving me with a spare G string), and after about twenty minutes of playing part of the nut shot off making a satisfying ping sound. I literally busted a nut. I made a few quick measurement and ordered a new nut from eBay, while I was measuring I noticed that there was enough nut left to raise the string, but not enough left to hold the string in place. I decided to use my engineering prowess and I wrapped duct tape around the strings to hold the thick B string on the remainder of the nut.
The duct tape idea works quite nicely, but I had to put a bit more tape on not long after taking the picture, because the B string only stayed in place for two minutes of playing, I now get fifteen minutes of playing before I have to adjust it. At least I now have another nut on the way to replace my current on. Hopefully my new nut will be stronger, I order a graphite one to replace the original plastic lump.
That bass has a few more problems with it, which should be fixed by the next post. as it stands it an active on-board pre-amp which has died. I don't really know much about electronics, but I do know that the wiring is a mess, and it makes no sense to me, or to Nathan, and so I have decided to remove all the wiring and the pre-amp, and replace everything. I'm even going to replace the pick-ups with the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound P-J set. This will leave me with a pot connected to nothing (I'll ground to that) and an empty hole where the battery should go which I'll fill with a block of lead hopefully adding enough weight to counteract the headstock heaviness of the stock bass. I will at some point also add a set of Schaller Strap Locks, and buy a decent strap.
I have also had a bit more misfortune with guitars this week, this time it was my primary guitar. I've had her tuned down a step-and-a-half for six days, and so when I decided to tune her back up to E standard the 0.011 gauge high E string snapped and struck me on the infected scab on my right middle finger. My finger hurt enough as it was, that string really didn't help. Thankfully the Rotosound set I bought awhile back for another guitar came with a spare 0.010 gauge string, which will suffice for now.
I have now also decided it was time to restring the guitar I got off my brother. I've been putting this off for awhile because the Floyd Rose Floating Tremolo bridge seemed like it would be a ball-ache to deal with, I've also decided to replace the busted pick-up ring holding the neck humbucker in place, I'd like to replace both pick-ups at some point, but I don't really want to do something that will annoy my brother since I don't fully consider the guitar mine. That guitar is now back in her box after a vigourous cleaning, and there she will remain until her new pick-up ring arrives.
Hopefully I can get both of those guitars finished and theoretically, I should be done working on my guitars until June, when my Epiphone and Harley Benton basses get restrung. That is, of course, unless I buy a rolling tune-o-matic bridge, which won't take long to fit.
Anyway, as some of you know, this weekend was the weekend of the 29th annual Frozen Nuts Rally! Naturally as soon as we arrived some woman with a very hoarse voice came up to us and gave us a tongue lashing for something that happened six hours prior to our arrival. One of the lads from the Greedy Pigs started a very loud argument at four in the morning and kept everyone awake for the next three hours while they all shouted and screamed at each other. If you were one of those unfortunates who were affected by their arguing, I have a very strong feeling that disciplinary action will take place at the next meeting, but since I'm not a member of the Greedy Pigs, I can't say anything with any certainty.
Other than the bad start, the rally was quite enjoyable, I was only there for the Saturday, and so I didn't get to the the Jalepenos perform, but I hear they were good. I did however see half of Disturbin' the Peace's performance. I say half because I went outside for a breather during there interval and all the booze, the cold and the fact I had been awake since six O'clock that morning all struck me at once. I just couldn't continue, and so I dragged myself to the tent and slowly drifted to sleep.
I may have missed the half naked sexy girls, I may have missed Disturbin' the Peace cover a Rush song, but I did witness the worst proposal ever, which naturally took place in the middle of a hen party. I then saw (about five minutes later) the newly engaged woman fall over on the dance floor, spilling booze all over the singers pedals and the monitor by his feet. I reached out to help her up, and she gave me a really dirty look.
The bride-to-be from the hen party also randomly gave me, and a few other confused looking dudes, a big hug, while someone followed her with a camera. As soon as she stepped away from me, Dion (Nathan's dad) walked up to me and said "You lucky git, I've been eyeing her up all night." I on the other hand was eyeing up another member of her party, that entire group were wearing corsets, and one of those corsets looked like it was about to pop, so I was eyeing up the owner of that corset.
At some point between the proposal and the band kicking in, the bride-to-be had a male stripper, I get the feeling that he was her soon-to-be husband, judging by everyone's reaction. He didn't do the full monty, but it was still funny as hell to watch. Shortly after that I went to get me and Nath a drink, and on the way back from the bar I congratulated the newly engaged lady, turns out she has a voice that can break glass, I don't know if that's normal or just because she was drunk and/or excited.
I am also aware that none of this post is in chronological order, but the rally has thrown everything out of perspective and so I don't actually know what order anything happened in, I just know within two hours of getting to the rally I had had four different beers in three different pubs, one of those beers was a can I had bought with me, which I drank by the fire.
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