The sound of denim is, well not that good.

While I wait with faux patience for my box of guitar goodies to arrive, I thought I’d finally finish off a fuzz pedal I’d been messing with for ages.  In it’s current incarnation it’s called “Denim Demon”, you can see why in the pic.  It’s a copy of a Fulltone ’69 Fuzz and it’s cursed.  It didn’t work after I’d built it.  I thought I’d found what I did wrong but no.  After hours and hours of troubleshooting. No.  It’s totally intermittent, and to add insult to injury when it is working, it doesn’t even come close to my other germanium fuzz in terms of sound.  It will one day be cleansed and re birthed as, well I’m not sure what yet.  I do think it looks kinda cool though so here it is.

Yes sir, thats real denim from an old pair of jeans.  It’s been spray glued to an aluminium enclosure and then had quite a few coats of clear laquer.  Quite the departure from the kinds of finish I’ve given some other FX Pedals like the “Big Muff Pi – Warrior Edition”

 

 

 

 

 

 

or even my “Desert Island” pedal, the “Grunge”

A few obligatory ‘Before’ shots

With a box of new parts making its way from some far away shore to me, I thought it fitting that I should grab a few ‘before’ shots of the guitar that is about to receive considerable surgery.

Stratocaster. Shaken, Not Stirred.

Several days ago one of my guitars, the favourite one, had to go in to the repair guy for a minor, but warrantied repair.  In it’s absence I reached for my other guitar, my first guitar.  A few minutes, a new set of Slinkies and a Havana Club with Coke Zero and I’m plugging in.  It’s nice to play this guitar again.  I’ve been playing this guitar on and off for maybe 13 years, maybe more.  Many a friend has taken their turn to belt out alcohol provoked tunes on it as well.  It feels like a kind of talisman, a tattoo, a constant.  As the tubes in my amp warm up and I run through some of my favourite warm up noise, one thing becomes apparent.  Not instantly like a slap though.  A gradual, then exponentially swollen realisation.  Like waking up and discovering you need to vomit.  

This guitar sounds like ass.  

Less than a year after taking possession of my Australian made Maton guitar, a Mastersound MS2000 Deluxe with Seymour Duncan Pickups no less, I had become accustomed to the sweetest tone I could find in a guitar and now I was finding it hard to enjoy playing my old companion and it’s muffled, ill defined neck and punchy, but trying a little too hard, bridge.  Then there was the handling.  A little research revealed some prior, undisclosed surgery might have gone on.  The tremelo seems to have been replaced with a version with wider string spacing, thus giving the high e string the quite annoying tendency to fall off the fretboard.  All in all though it is of course, totally unfair to compare the two guitars.  Apples to Oranges as they say.  One cost thousands of dollars less than the other after all, but I decided then that I wanted to fix things.  Set things right.  I owed it to my 1989 Squier Stratocaster to bring it back up the level where it’s as fun to play, as it is to reminisce over the times I’ve had with it.

That’s the prologue.  My drink is empty and the ice long gone, so the story of the transformation thats been waiting for more than 13 years can wait a little longer.