One Man Bandito

I found a viola the other day and I love it. I'm just not good at it, yet.

I Found a Viola. I'm not good at playing it. First day with a new instrument. Found it at a pawn shop. It needs a lot of work, but so do I.

I started making this last year and forgot about it. Jess Bradley helped it sound pretty.

Only Happy When it Snows - Garbage Cover, Callie Bradley I never wanna take my Christmas tree down. [Cheesy-as-heck, sorta-parody of the mid-'90s "Garbage" classic, "Only Happy When it Rains" - https://www.youtube....

It warms my little black heart that CAKE (my all-time favorite band, tied with Amy Winehouse and the Punch Brothers) is still making music.

Sinking Ship Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises Sinking Ship · CAKE Sinking Ship ℗ 2018 Upbeat Records Released on: 2018-10-26 Producer: CAKE Auto-generated b...

So my mando has been in dire need of a truss rod adjustment for a few months (wonky climate changes here in Colorado wreak havoc on all things acoustic), and I just got around to doing it today.

Because there is a slight-but-permanent bow on the G side of the fingerboard (which has always made the intonation slightly sharp after about fret 7), there's only so much a truss rod adjustment can do for this, so I've had to tweak the action, etc. to try and remedy it. Even after taking it to the local luthier (who does great work), it's never 100%, because it'd take a much pricier repair than I can budget for to fix it.

However, I figured out, today, that if I hack the bridge (I use the term "hack" loosely/for everything), by pulling the G side toward the tailpiece while leaving the E side where it usually is (intonation on the E side of the instrument is fine all the way up), it helps mitigate that sharpness to the point where it's barely noticeable.

So combining the bridge shift with tightening the truss rod and adjusting the action has virtually eliminated the problem - or at least brought it to a level manageable enough that I don't cringe when I'm up high on the neck. Someday I'll get it fixed for real, but thought you all might like to know about this trick (well, combination of tricks) in case your budget resembles mine.

(The other thing I hacked - see pictures - is a Fishman Rare Earth humbucking guitar pickup with endpin input. That whole installation process took more modification than I was really comfortable with, but man does it sound nice. Nicer than any of the other pickups I've tried on it, anyway.)

A belated Thank You to Yampy's Steamboat Springs and Russell Duplessis for all the St. Patrick's Day fun - you guys are the best!

Ideal wedding band.

Punk Band Reunion At The Wedding - SNL A father (Fred Armisen) reunites with his old punk band, Crisis of Conformity (Bill Hader, Ashton Kutcher, Dave Grohl), to play their song "Fistfight in the ...

Regularly scheduled maintenance.

Off-key Mando Re-stringin' Ditty This string replacement was long overdue. Also you get to see the innards of the jerry-rigged Fishman guitar pickup I squeezed in there.