The Replacement Peavey Bass Guitar

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Gandalfe

Amazon had a Labor day sale on guitars so I sprung for this Peavey Bass Guitar to replace the guitar that one of my brothers convinced me his son needed. Well, my nephew was graduating from high school. I did say no, but didn’t stick to my guns. That bass guitar only cost me $50 from a pawn shop—it was such a sweet player with a nice feel. I thought I could find a another one, but alas, no such luck.

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The Millennium BXP 4 Tiger-eye I chose didn’t cost me as much as they are selling it for this week because of a 20% labor day discount. At less than $200 this instrument will never be an heirloom, but it will be nice looking and functional. It’s features included:

    • 34 inch scale
    • Hard rock maple neck with rosewood fret board
    • 2 way fully adjustable torsion rod
    • Basswood body with highly figured quilt maple top
    • Two straight single coil pickups, hum canceling when used together

I liked that it has a passive pickup system which means no more futzing with batteries. It arrived in pristine but unplayable condition. This is often the case with new instruments of any ilk sold by non-music shops. Fortunately my other brother, the luthier, had given me the ABCs of buying a decent instrument. Unfortunately he lives in Texas so getting him to tweak the neck and string heights will be a challenge.

imageI looked for an instrument that I had played before so that I would know how it felt in my hands. This feel is important because if you don’t do this you will often end up replacing the offending instrument which will almost always cost you more in the long run.

I also look for a guitar with a good adjusting rod in the neck. Instruments warp and bend, especially wood imageinstruments. Having an adjustable truss bar gives you the ability to adjust and tweak as the guitar ages. (Pictures: Parson’s Diablo, a guitar whisperer’s dream ride)

There are some good bass guitar adjustment guides out there. Although I have been known to play around with guitars and basses, I am not a player. I am also not mechanically inclined. The price for a basic setup in Seattle is $65 which seems a bit high to me for setting up a new instrument. But what do I know?

If my brother isn’t gonna be in town anytime soon, and I have a need to make this instrument available, I may just have to spring for the setup costs. Or maybe I can get my friend Fran to do it for me.  ;0)

Posted in Guitar, Hobbies, Man stuff, Music Instruments, My World, Toys | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Use Me

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Gandalfe

It’s one of “those” mornings and I’m channeling Bill Wither’s “Use Me”. Watch out!

My friends feel it’s their appointed duty
They keep trying to tell me all you want to do is use me
But my answer yeah to all that use me stuff
Is I wanna spread the news that if it feels this good getting used
Oh you just keep on using me until you use me up
Until you use me up

My brother sit me right down and he talked to me
He told me that I ought not to let you just walk on me
And I’m sure he meant well yeah but when our talk was through
I said brother if you only knew you’d wish that you were in my shoes
You just keep on using me until you use me up
Until you use me up

Oh sometimes yeah it’s true you really do abuse me
You get in a crowd of high class people and then you act real rude to me
But oh baby baby baby baby when you love me I can’t get enough
I and I wanna spread the news that if it feels this good getting used
Oh you just keep on using me until you use me up
Until you use me up

Talking about you using me but it all depends on what you do
It ain’t too bad the way you’re using me
Cause I sure am using you to do the things you do
Ah ha to do the things you do

Posted in Music, My World, YouTube | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Trivia du Jour: Name that Sax

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Gandalfe

Came across this oddity today. Can any name this square-keyed sax maker?

MysterySax

This stumped my friends on Facebook. Let’s see how my WordPress readers do.

Posted in Art, Facebook, Hobbies, My World, Nerds, Photograph, Repair, Saxophone, Woodwind Forum, WordPress | Tagged | Leave a comment

As seen by ~ a work place phenomenon

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Gandalfe

I have been seeing these kind of charts for a while now. It’s mostly done in fun—mostly.

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Part of me wants to do one for my Big Band with the sections being:

    • Saxes
    • Trombones
    • Trumpets
    • Rhythm
    • Director

Maybe I’ll do this in the near future if someone doesn’t beat me to it.

Posted in Humor, My World, Playtime, Work Related | Leave a comment

Marymoor Park

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Gandalfe

imageMarymoor Park is one of the two parks near my house that we can walk to. Every house Suzy and I have purchased has been on high ground and near a park. This park is really a delight.

Besides the concerts, movies, tennis, velodrome and practice fields, there is a very nice walking and bicycling path known as the Burke-Gilman that runs a relatively flat course around Lake Washington.

imageRecently we have been using the lovely off-leash area for dawgs. Our dawgly Amelia luvs the bark covered paths, meeting other dogs, and struttin’ her stuff.

“Doggy Disneyland”, as it is locally dubbed, Marymoor Park is best known for its 40 acres of off leash dog park. This is where dogs can be dogs. Black Labs dogpaddle against Golden Retrievers to see who can get the prize: an old tennis ball thrown by an owner into the Sammamish Slough.

This fabulous former farm is less than two miles from the main Microsoft campus. It is a great place to meet old friends, new friends, possible dates, and new dogs. Doggie parents come from Seattle, and all over the county, to give their pups some good old-fashioned exercise. And, for Suzy and me, it ups our walking distance significantly so that we can get our required miles walked in an enjoyable way.

Posted in Dog, Health and wellness, My World | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

PGSQ: A little Ragtime Music on the Weekend

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Gandalfe

imageThe Professor Gadget Sax Quartet is a labor of luv for me. But we really don’t practice enough. Work, family, and other band commitments are constantly getting in the way. That said, this is our Labor Day performance at the wonderful Ballard Locks Summer Concerts hosted by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

We do have fun and I like to think that we are better musicians for the work we do in the sax quartet. Every part is exposed, every instrument heard, and there is no place to hide. If I was a perfectionist I wouldn’t ever show these videos around. But at each performance I get approached by people who played in high school, are thinking about returning to music and were very impressed.

Some of the people who talk to me are musicians in other bands. Last night a fellow wanted to know what our setups were because he said our intonation was very good. He also wanted to know if we were using stiff reeds to make the higher notes easier to play in tune. I told him there wasn’t a jazz mouthpiece in the bunch; we were using #5 or so openings and Meyer and such mouthpieces.

I’m off to my Monday sax lessons with the professor, Ray Guyll. He has reviewed what I’ve posted and will work with me to improve my performance. My goal is to play as well as each of these fine ladies did in the concert. They are very solid musicians.

Posted in Heros, Music, Sax Quartet, Saxophone, WCB | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

My ‘79 Trek Needs some serious road time

Posted on September 3, 2011 by Gandalfe

Since I started using a scooter to go to work, I have not ridden my Trek 710 10-speed very much. So this Labor Day I’m thinking of taking a spin down the fabulous Burke-Gilman trail. Starting in Redmond, it’s a very tame ride with very little in the way of hills as it winds around picturesque Lake Washington.

My bike is turning out to be a bit of an oddity now-a-daze. I expected that curiosity and crowd-drawing ability with my ‘57 Schwinn Wasp, but not my modern ‘79 Trek.<smile> Not only is a ten-speed bike a bit of a rarity around these parts, but it has a way cool seat that was designed by a NASA scientist. All though it never sold well, it is the only seat I’ve ridden that cured my TB (tired butt).

DSCF0761 DSCF0763 

DSCF0764 DSCF0769

I also moved the shifter from the down-tube location that I used all the way through college to the handle bar location. The rack is from the 70s and I threaten to get a slicker, black, nice looking one but I don’t ride enough to justify the expense. The AARP water bottle used to make me laugh, but not so much any more. I immediately removed the kickstand from the bike when I purchased the Trek because it was just an excuse to make the bike fall and added unnecessary weight to the bike.

imageIt more fun to ride with a friend, but as I didn’t plan ahead, I probably will be going alone with my trusty cell fone at the ready should anything like a flat tire or such come up. I used to carry tools with me when I commuted regularly but I don’t do that on bike anymore. I also use a puncture resistant inner tube that seems to have increased the distance between flats significantly.

It’s gonna be warm this weekend, so the ride in the morning would be just the thing. Maybe I can join in on the Fremont Solstice Parade bikers next year.  Surprised smile

Posted in Bicycles, Hobbies, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Artist Boris Vallejo

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Gandalfe

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Here is one of my favorite fantasy and erotic subject painters that I discovered in the ‘90s.

Boris Vallejo (born January 8, 1941[1]) is a Peruvian-born American painter. He immigrated to the United States in 1964, and he currently resides in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He frequently works with Julie Bell, his wife, painter, and model.

Vallejo works almost exclusively in the fantasy and erotica genres. His hyper-representational paintings have graced the covers of dozens of science fiction paperbacks and are featured in a series of best-selling glossy calendars. Subjects of his paintings are typically gods, monsters, and well-muscled male and female barbarians engaged in battle. Some of his male figures were modeled by Vallejo himself, and many of his later female characters were modeled by his wife. His latest works still retain heavy fantasy elements, but lean more towards the erotic rather than pure fantasy themes. ~ Wikipedia

Posted in Art, Culture, Erotic, Man stuff, My World, Nude, Too Spicy for some | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Big Band Dreams and Schemes

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Gandalfe

ShazDanceHaving started and run two big bands to date, I’m currently luvin’ my Microsoft Jazz Band. For the upcoming 2012 season though big changes are in the mix. First, I finally have a functioning brain trust  committee and one that is invested in making the band something to rave about.

So what’s in the works for next year? Here are some of the things we are working on:

    • New branding and name. I want to separate the band from the recordings and rep based on being a new band with a very small following. And we want the name to be unique and soul grabbing. We have the concept in mind and now we need to codify it.
    • Theme song. As part of the branding process we have selected a unique un-copyrighted song that we can use as our them song. When people hear this song in Seattle, we want them to think of this band.
    • New regular venue. If we operate out of a monthly gig at a nice dance hall we will start to generate a group of faithful followers. This really is a stretch goal for us. But other bands have done it successfully.

We are making our way through some new book defining charts and conducted a reading session this week at practice. My nominated chart was Basie’s “Sleepwalker’s Serenade”. It was met with a hardy Yes! So it is in the book. Enjoy.

Cut taken from “The Complete Atomic Basie” CD available at Amazon.com.

Posted in Band Management, Big Band, Hobbies, Jazz, Microsoft, MJB, Music, My World | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Playful Sax Girl

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Gandalfe

This picture by Fernando Meyer (Flickr) is interesting on a number of levels. It’s a nice shot taken at a unique angle that has me wondering how fun it would have been to setup and take this picture. Fernando has both a sense of imagination and adventure.

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Click on the picture to see more of Fernando’s photography.

Posted in flickr, Humor, Photograph, Saxophone, Too Spicy for some | Tagged | 2 Comments