Late friday, set off home with a great deal of fatigue in my heart (just physical, mind - Janeiro keeps my spirits up) and tried to wrestle with wether or not to pop into london again to get the new Warwick fretless fixed.
Yes, you heard right.... fixed.
I dunno, maybe it's a sign of the times. Warwick must be one of the best mass-manufacturers of quality bass guitars, I've seen an article on their factory and it's impressive, keeping the human touch in the finishing and set-up after a lot of good high-tech machinery does the grunt work horribly accurately (which is why they feel so well put together). With that in mind, I reckon couriers have struck once again. Remember my amp-head and how it was totally trashed by TNT.... I reckon this poor warwick got a right doink in transit to the Bass Cellar in london.
Basically, dodgy volume control. The back pickup (much beloved of mine, I love a nice jazz bass type honk, especially through a humbucker) kept winking in and out, and had a fizz setting in between :)
Fortunately I worked out how to demo the problem (i.e. reproduce it for the shop) and the Bass Cellar were more than happy to fix it there and then - I went home with a working bass. Good show. But it was a pain in the arse to have to go into london again just to get a birthday present fixed (there were other things that happened that made it worthwhile - excellent thai lunch thanks to the sublime Nic! - and lots of shopping in other places which made things interesting in a sunny autumnal london stuffed with tourists. Trafalgar square's a lot nicer than it used to be...
The possibility of this type of saturday was not on my mind as I drove home... I just thought I'd have a nightmare trying to get the bass fixed and not have it for days and days!
Musically.....
The weekend was dominated by me working on some transcriptions I found in a Jaco book of some pieces I've always wanted to play, but as ever only one of the transcriptions seems to be up to scratch. The work someone did on "Blackbird" seems immaculate, and "Chromatic Fantasy" looks good and sounds great (only abour 25 bars in so far), but the transcription of "Donna Lee" is completely out in places, which is a pity. I know the main part of that really well but have only ear-trained the first few bars of where Jaco bugs out and really starts soloing freely, but the transcription of the part I know and can play up to speed (so I know it sounds right) is really badly out in places, so I've got little confidence in the solo parts.
Pity someone couldn't have run it by Jaco.
Never miind, another rehearsal tonight, and I've got the full compliment of basses with me. Roll on winter proper so I don't have to keep bringing 3 full-weight (these are heavy babies) basses up several flights of stairs for the day so they don't fry in the car...
Our first Uni tour gig is on thursday 20th: down in Farham. Nice and close to me, it means I can go home en route, I think ( I'll have to check that! ).
Practise tonight should be great: I've got all my gear, and T the KBP is comin' up. And I've got new music on the pod! Woohoo! Oh yeah, Nic got a colour pod in london for far less than Amazon is charging: they're clearing the shelves for the arrival of the video pods. £179 for a 20Gb colour full-sized pod, not too shabby - £30 less than last week!
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