It's strange to think that it's Sunday evening, last I checked it was still Wednesday. Instead the sands of time have continued to flow, leaving me behind, but now I shall sit back and wait for the sands of time to flow since I have just renewed my WoW account and I'm now waiting for it to install.
Slightly more importantly, my copy of Hand. Cannot. Erase. should arrive tomorrow, and I can't wait to listen to it and also to watch the DVD. I love Steven Wilson's previous album, and I expect good things from this one.
As a final not, I thought I'd let you know that I've come to terms with my Floyd Rose floating tremolo bridge, but I'm still going to try and avoid them where possible.
Showing posts with label Floyd Rose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Floyd Rose. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 March 2015
Sunday, 15 February 2015
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.
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.
Sunday, 24 August 2014
HEAVY SMEGGING METAL!!!!! (and various other genres)
I'm just going to be frank and simply say that this week hasn't been particularly good. In fact it's welcomed my old friend depression back into my life with open arms, and even decided it was time for me to feel ill. I do however have at least one good thing to say about this week, so instead of returning this blog to it'd old ways of documenting my depression, I'm going to focus on the cool bit.
This week came with four gifts, first and foremost being my brothers entire CD collection which includes quite a lot of CD's I was also given the CD cabinet to stick everything in. Included in the CD collection are some albums I've been wanting for quite some time such as The Wall, Moving Pictures and Dance of Death. Unfortunately I haven't found Master of Reality or Killer yet, but I've only briefly scanned. I have however found a signed copy of Dirty Diamonds by Alice Cooper, so I'm not complaining.
The next gift I received was a customised 100 watt Marshall amplifier. It's had the mesh kicked in, but it's had the capacitors replaced meaning it works at an obscenely high volume without having that annoying "Signature Marshall Hum" which I'm not a big fan of. There are however two problems with the amp, firstly it doesn't do quiet, so It very loud and quickly deafens you when you stand in such a small room (like my own), and secondly it doesn't work without the pedal board.
Coincidentally the pedal board was the third gift, annoyingly it isn't Velcro'd down so the pedals move a little, it has also been customised to smeg so that nothing is as labelled. It does however include a distortion pedal, a wah-wah, a delay pedal, a tremolo pedal, a flanger, a volume, and another random pedal which is used to turn on the flanger and tremolo. It's a lot of fun to use, but it's experimental and it doesn't provide the sounds I want which is a shame. There is also a compressor on there which is permanently active to stop the amp from exploding, and also a foot switch for controlling the amp (which has been customised to smeg like the pedal board) .
The final gift, is my favourite, it's an ESP LTD MH-201, it's such a nice guitar featuring most of what I like about guitars. It features 24 frets and a floating tremolo bridge, which is perfect for some of the songs I've been wanting to use, since my other guitar has 22 frets and a Bigsby bridge, and unfortunately you can't dive-bomb with a Bigsby. That guitar is a lot of fun to play with, and it has been set up so perfectly, but there are a few minor imperfections in it's finish and feel.
Thanks to my gifts I don't think my neighbours like me much anymore, but screw them, I'm a musician they aren't meant to like me. Anyway I'm not sure how long the guitar, amp and pedal board will be in my possession since I'm only supposed to be looking after them. I'm actually surprised I was able to convince my brother to let me look after the ESP let alone everything else, which he sort of just dumped on me, I was however, expecting the CD's, and there are a lot of good ones in that selection.
This week came with four gifts, first and foremost being my brothers entire CD collection which includes quite a lot of CD's I was also given the CD cabinet to stick everything in. Included in the CD collection are some albums I've been wanting for quite some time such as The Wall, Moving Pictures and Dance of Death. Unfortunately I haven't found Master of Reality or Killer yet, but I've only briefly scanned. I have however found a signed copy of Dirty Diamonds by Alice Cooper, so I'm not complaining.
The next gift I received was a customised 100 watt Marshall amplifier. It's had the mesh kicked in, but it's had the capacitors replaced meaning it works at an obscenely high volume without having that annoying "Signature Marshall Hum" which I'm not a big fan of. There are however two problems with the amp, firstly it doesn't do quiet, so It very loud and quickly deafens you when you stand in such a small room (like my own), and secondly it doesn't work without the pedal board.
Coincidentally the pedal board was the third gift, annoyingly it isn't Velcro'd down so the pedals move a little, it has also been customised to smeg so that nothing is as labelled. It does however include a distortion pedal, a wah-wah, a delay pedal, a tremolo pedal, a flanger, a volume, and another random pedal which is used to turn on the flanger and tremolo. It's a lot of fun to use, but it's experimental and it doesn't provide the sounds I want which is a shame. There is also a compressor on there which is permanently active to stop the amp from exploding, and also a foot switch for controlling the amp (which has been customised to smeg like the pedal board) .
The final gift, is my favourite, it's an ESP LTD MH-201, it's such a nice guitar featuring most of what I like about guitars. It features 24 frets and a floating tremolo bridge, which is perfect for some of the songs I've been wanting to use, since my other guitar has 22 frets and a Bigsby bridge, and unfortunately you can't dive-bomb with a Bigsby. That guitar is a lot of fun to play with, and it has been set up so perfectly, but there are a few minor imperfections in it's finish and feel.
Thanks to my gifts I don't think my neighbours like me much anymore, but screw them, I'm a musician they aren't meant to like me. Anyway I'm not sure how long the guitar, amp and pedal board will be in my possession since I'm only supposed to be looking after them. I'm actually surprised I was able to convince my brother to let me look after the ESP let alone everything else, which he sort of just dumped on me, I was however, expecting the CD's, and there are a lot of good ones in that selection.
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