I’ve been back to work for two weeks now an already it’s back to full-on busy business. It’s also been cold, dark and snowy. We got a good foot of snow earlier in the week and it’s only been up in the 20’s in the daytime. I’m predicting I won’t see my lawn again until March.
Last weekend Martin came down for a visit. Just before xmas he contacted me asking if I’d like some spare parts for my Rhodes piano cuz there were some for sale on Craigslist. The guy was asking more individually for the parts that I was really interested in — the hammer mechanism, the rack of tines, and the pickups — than for the whole thing, so basically I ended up buying a complete Mark III Rhodes sans legs and pedal and with busted electronics. Martin came down last weekend, and we had great fun fitting the parts back in the original cabinet, destined to be stashed away somewhere until. And Jeannie didn’t even complain!
We spent most of the afternoon jamming, which was great fun. Martin mainly called the tunes, from the songbook of his now defunct band. A good handful of interesting 80’s tunes I hadn’t played before, but totally in my zone, by the likes of Sting and Joe Jackson. While we was visiting he gave me a primer on how to use the multi-effects box he lent me in the fall. And best of all, he lent me his old Stratocaster guitar! Martin mainly plays 12-strings now so he’s not using it. Plus he lives in an apartment and Charlie is at the age where he’s getting into things, so partly is was for the sake of guitar’s safekeeping. I hadn’t really been considering a strat, but hey, awesome!
It’s funny too, because my friend Mark, who years ago sold me my old electric guitar asked if he could buy it back. Which is cool, so I asked him for his thoughts on what to replace it with. His advice was to up my budget a few hundred bucks and focus only either a genuine Fender or Gibson guitar. (“Then you’ll have a great guitar that will keep its value.”) Martin’s strat plays and sounds so much better, so now I have a basic of comparison of what a really good guitar sound like for next time I go back to the music store. And when I sell my old axe I’ll have a little extra money for better new one.