Random Annoyances

As I might have mentioned in my last post, I had my army interview this week, I believe it went quite well, but I can't be bothered to talk about that again, I went through it in my Bronies UK post. I also went through my Valentines Day in that post, and so I won't be talking about that either. I also had my nineteenth birthday on Monday, which went by pretty much unnoticed, I'm not complaining, I hate the fuss and attention that birthdays usually bring.

So surely something worth talking about happened during the week, and in fact something did. A prime example of which is I realised just how much I dislike Floyd Rose floating tremolo bridges. I'm going to point out now that it's not because they are bad in any way, I actually think they're quite clever, and they hold their tuning extremely well. I do however believe that setting them up, and dealing with them is more effort than it's worth.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with that system, in order to change the tuning on your guitar you can't just play around with the tuning heads. Instead you have to undo the locking nut, providing you have one, which most guitars loaded with this system do, then you can play with the tuning heads until you get to whatever tuning you desire, after that you have to undo the back plate, and then you have to adjust the tremolo springs until the bridge is flat (for lack of a more accurate term), repeat those steps as long as necessary, reattach the back plate, redo the locking nut, and then you can finally fine tune.

Doing that was far too much effort when all I wanted to do was set it for C# standard (1 1/2 step down). I also gave it a restring so thankfully the locks on the nut were already removed, but in order to restring you need to cut the bullets off the end off your strings, unscrew a small block from the bridge, insert the string into where you pulled the block from, replace the block and tighten the screw. I'll give it one thing, at least I don't have to hold the string in place at both ends like I do with the Bigsby on my primary guitar, but it's still too much of a pain for my taste.

I shouldn't really complain about it too much though, I've been given a damn good guitar, and so it's worth maintaining, it needed a cleaning, and it also needed a pick-up ring replacing. I might as well change the strings while I'm at it, and if I wasn't awkward, and I was willing to use .010 - .046 gauge strings and keep it in standard tuning, a nice portion of the setup could have been avoided.

I was also nicely annoyed when my precious .011 gauge D'addario string snapped whilst retuning my primary guitar, to make matters worse, I only had a .010 gauge Rotosound string to replace it with, a .010 gauge E string sounds weird when it's attached to a set designed for an .011 gauge E string.

Another annoyance of the week, I was able to start working on that Vintage Metal Axxe bass yesterday, everything had finally arrived. There were two problems, one of which has been solved. the one that has been solved involved one of the screws holding the P-style pick-up in place. It was worn down to the point that a screwdriver would do anything. I sat there for what felt like an eternity with a dull saw (all I could find) turning the once-cross-headed screw into a flat-headed screw. It worked in the end, but I wasn't happy about the whole ordeal. The other problem has put me at a bit of a standstill, the pots I had ordered were too small, so now I need to order some long shafted pots.

I have also been annoyed by things that don't involve guitars. Mostly a few of the things that occurred to me this morning while delivering papers, and the happy memories that keep popping into my head. Yes, happy memories annoy me, this is because of the nature of those happy memories. I'd rather not go into the nature of those memories, but my realisation this morning that the biggest mistake I have made in my life as of yet was going to Sixth Form.

I don't now where I'd be without Sixth Form, But I still firmly believe that that was my biggest mistake, and I reckon it'll be awhile before I make a bigger one. I might be wrong about that, but I don't fancy making another huge mistake any time soon. So those of you year 11 students thinking about staying on for Sixth Form, I'd strongly advise against it, go to a college instead.