A Maker of Various Things

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Over the last year or so, I've begun to think of myself more as a maker than a writer or musician.  I am those things, of course, but they don't encapsulate everything I'm interested in.  What I'm interested in is everything, as you may have gathered from this site and my other online outlets.

Since I was a kid, I've always turned from one "passion" to another, throwing myself into it completely, but eventually moving onto the next project.  This may be because of my love of learning in general or, perhaps, the opposite happened and my varying interests fostered my love of learning.

One term I've heard for this is "multipotentialite" as covered in this TED talk:

And while the description there-in surely sounds like me, the name sounds so clinical.  It doesn't seem to capture the creative processes involved in learning a craft by jumping into it and simply  trying (and often failing).

The term "maker" these days mainly refers to the creation of physical objects, I just extend this a bit to include my more traditional artistic pursuits.  Sometimes I make something physical, like designing and wiring a guitar pedal, and sometimes I write music or novels.

This is a long way to go to introduce what I've been up to lately (which I haven't captured on video for my "I Try Things" YouTube series.  Shame on me.)  This will also be, perhaps, a brief glimpse at my illness... I mean superpower.

Toward the end of last year, I began laying plans for a new solo record.  Turns out its been a decade since I put out any original music so I'm definitely due.  Even though I probably have everything it takes to make a new record, I started looking up new equipment because... well for no good reason except musical gear is awesome.

I fell in love with a used guitar that my lovely wife surprised me with for Hanukkah, a shell pink Moniker Reedsdale DC with a natural back.

ReedsdaleDC.JPG

I love this guitar.  It's plays smooth, feels and sounds great, and it's shell pink for goodness sake.  However, I wanted to tweak the control layout.  So I ordered the correct pots (the controls under the knobs) to make the changes I wanted, but while I'm ordering pots I may as well get the fret wire to re-fret my old Strat, right?

Let me back up.  For those who don't know, the frets on a guitar are the silver lines on the neck that ensure that a note is correct when you hold a string down.  There are various parts of a guitar build that are important, but from the standpoint of level of effort and attention to detail necessary, a proper fret job can be the most time intensive process during the guitar manufacturing process.  The frets have to be level with one another across the entire neck, shaped the correct way across the top to lessen buzzy strings, and cleaned up on the ends so they're comfortable to play.

I have an old junky stratocaster guitar that I've used to learn various repair skills over the years.  I refinished from black to brown, replaced hardware, re-wired new pickups and controls, and learned to properly set it up.  But, it had old, terrible, small, popping-out-of-the-fretboard frets on it.  I set about to do the fret job, which is probably not the kind of a thing one should do on a whim.  As I said, I didn't capture the process, but here's the final result:

Neck

Neck

Fret Detail

Fret Detail

Don't worry, this is the sort of a guitar where you can take the neck off and it's not a big deal.

It's far from professional, but even before I put the strings back on it already felt better.  Without walking through all the steps of the process, here are just a list of fun things I got to do as part of this project:

  1. Pull frets out of a guitar fretboard.
  2. Whack new frets in using a hammer.
  3. Use water-thin superglue for the first time to glue the new frets in.
  4. Glue myself to a guitar neck multiple times underestimating the flow of water-thin superglue.
  5. Sand excess water-thin super glue (and presumably skin) off of a guitar neck.
  6. Grind the tip of a pair of end-nippers flat on a grinding wheel so that I could snip the frets close to the fret board.
  7. File frets with a flat file.
  8. Use a sanding beam to level frets.
  9. Grind a flat edge onto a little file to shape the frets without damaging the wood around them.
  10. Polish frets with a Dremel tool.

In all, it was a lot of fun and only took a few hours.  It's got me hungry for the next thing... again, it's about jumping in the deep end.  Over the past couple of weeks I've been collecting the parts necessary, including shaping templates, to build my own electric guitar.  I've already got more than a person of modest means needs, but I don't have one that I've made before.

I'll do better about documenting this process and let you all know how it goes.  And maybe I'll get around to recording that album at some point as well.  Or writing a novel.  Ooh, I've got that old script idea as well.