Enter, 2009

Happy new year.

My NYE was nothing short of dull. Didn't go out, no parties, nothing. Nada. Nope.

I spent it watching films, drinking 50% proof whiskey, and listening to some music.
I also went to work on the zentar, my signature guitar. The zentar is kinda cool in that i designed/buit the thing around 10 years ago or so.. and still have the original body from the prototype.

Two things i wanted to fix: the neck & the wiring. The zentar is in it's 3rd incarnation now, and as such will feature a fretless neck, so i can play the lovely eastern scales (or maqams). Problem is i defretted a regular neck (with the help of my old man) and made a rough job of it, and filled up the gaps with super glue and laquered the neck. Naturally it's been a long time since i've done that kinda work and i did a pretty sloppy job... So i kinda went about fixing it today.

A fretless neck must be completely flat and smooth, and the problem was that although i'd sanded the laquer down after applying various coats, it was still uneven. So i sanded it down some more today.. it's flatter and better now, still needs abit more work though....

Other issue was the wiring.... The zentar is a fairly complicated wiring job, since it features 5 pickups no less (don't ask...). I hooked up the scratchplate live and ground wires to the ground of the guitar body and the live and ground of the jack... plugged in............BUZZZZZZZZZZZ.........usually when a guitar is buzzing it's ass off...it's a ground issue.. and when you're getting buzzing as loud as the signal itself... it usually means you've crossed the live with the ground.... So i take off the jack from the body unsolder the ground.. try again.. no sound... okay.. so now i KNOW i stupidly wired the thing up back to front (i wired up the jack 5 years ago, not recently... so that's my excuse).

After re-soldering the wires, plugged in...still no sound... hmm... so i turn up both volume knobs and hey! sound!

there's an issue though.. firstly in that the volumes are independant and the humbuckers or single coils should work even if one of the other is off.... and as far as i can tell the humbuckers aren't working either.... so i'll probably have to re-wire them since i'm not sure what's wrong, and i didn't do a stellar job anways 5 years ago....

once i've taken care of those... Zentar MKIII baby...

I've been taking that lucid dream Binaural beat dose for 3 days now, it's weird, i always doze off at around the same part... don't know if that's just a mega coincidene or what. Tonight is the last night i'll be doing it, since i'm curious to try others now.

Anyways, it's january 1st.. and i don't feel different, or compeled to act different, to set resolutions or anything.. it's bizzare... i've never felt so disconnected from life...

Either way i do intend to focus more on reading, learning about the middle eastern stuff properly (now that i have some books!), working on my musical studies, developing my guitar playing to the next level, and working on my new album and projects.

Call all that resolutions if you will... i certainly wouldn't... because i will actually do them all.

Well i'm off to give my brainwaves a tinker...