Hole in the wall P.A's Place

Well its been a long been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. <Name the song and band bonus point for which album it came from. Answers on a £20 note.

Guitars; well i now own 2 strats! 1st one is the one featured on earlier blog. My 2nd is built up of the parts i owned, got given and bought. The Body i had owned for some years and bought for £25, over the years i had toyed with various ideas, natural wood (walnut) to an aborted purple. Pic below during the stripping stage and the finished result. It plays damn good as well, other parts Neck donated free, decals £4.50, loaded scratch plate £12.50, trem unit £10, Big F neck plate £15, big F tuners £15. I also now own a Telecaster neck donated free (thanks Tom) i have a Floyd Rose trem unit that was fitted on my original strat copy, set of tuners. I now need a body looking on ebay for a cheap telecaster body as i want to hollow it out and fit the Floyd Rose trem, electrics wise i'd like to go with a set of humbuckers but this may be a little too expensive so i may just look for a cheap loaded tele body to hollow out. Method will be simple, i'll just hollow out for the back with a router then fix a skin over the back with filled and sanded it won't be visible. Not sure if to cut "f holes" into the front, too many ideas and too much time on my hands.

I was doing a search online for some information on a certain make of guitar, "Marlin" they made copies of popular ones like the Stratocaster etc. they also made thier own versions, i used to own a "Marlin Sidewinder" Strat based shape but instead of the 3 single coil pic-ups, the Sidewinder had twin active Humbuckers, it played like a dream so much so i had it poached from me by my mate Tom who fell in love with it after borrowing it to try out on a gig. I didn't mind it was too good of a guitar for a drummer to own, Tom still owns it and plays it regularly on gigs.

So anyway i had come across a Marlin bass guitar it was copied off the Fender Precision or the Fender Jazz however the Marlin had 4 controls and a selector switch i checked on ebay none for sale so i googled it, no images and the net was mainly full of references taken from forums. i clicked on a few links and ended up reading stuff from forums, what a bag-o-shite these idiots type, some guy had posted a question regarding a Marlin Strat copy, i.e. quality of build, performance, and all these so called musicians ripped it to shreads slamming the Marlin as nothing but rubbish and telling the guy to throw it in the nearest skip. i doubt most of these idiots have never even held a Marlin guitar let alone played one, at the end of the day you could give the cheapest made guitar to the likes of Ritchie Blackmore and he'd play it and make it sound brilliant, hand these forum snobs and knobheads a custom built Fender Strat with Roland pic-up and gold plated strings and they'd play the intro to "Smoke on the water" (wrongly by stumming barre chords where as Ritchie plucks the strings). Anyway this Marlin question was still active in this forum so i signed up and posted a response, telling the guy that as long as it tunes up and plays like a guitar the name on the headstock is not important, and is probably better built than a lot of "name make" guitars, knocked up in some sweat shop in the back of beyond and have Fender slapped on it and a price tag to match, i told him about my "Sidewinder" and told him don't ask a forum full of snobs about budget price guitars.

Needless to say the forum page lit up with comments demanding to know what guitar i own, so i listed off my collection, which shut some of them up but some knobheads still wouldn't accept that Marlin could make a guitar worth playing so i told them of my Marlin Sidewinder and how a guy who owns an original 60's Fender Strat fell in love with it and bought it off me, they couldn't get their collective rock filled heads around this, so i asked the question, ok be truthful who on here has actually ever played a Marlin? None of them! People read stuff and log it in their heads they over hear conversations but never actually check things out. It reminds me of the time "Dream Team" came out the movie starring Michael Keaton i was in work telling someone how funny it is when Joe jumped in on the conversation "its just a rip off of "one flew over the cuckoos nest" i asked why so? Well its just is its the same story line, "hmm apart from both being based in a mental asylum i couldn't see any match, "have you seen it?" i asked, yeah, ok tell me the story line, he couldn't basicaly he'd not seen the film its just what he had heard or read.

Paying top money is no guarantee for anything, i own a Pearl export drum kit, its a mid price drum kit but i love it, prior to that i owned an Aria Royal kit, which is a budget price drum kit, but with time and know-how i had that kit sounding just as good as any. Now some years ago Tom asked me to go along to watch his band rehearse and see if i could give their drummer a few pointers, i went along the drummer had a "Drum Workshop" kit, now a DW was the big thing at the time kits ran in £1500 upwards, having said that, this kit sounded shit, he had taken it out of the box set it up and started to play, the snare was a million miles away from being set up correct, add to this the kid didn't have a clue about drumming, Tom introduced me to the kid and said "if you need any advice Pauls the man to ask" the kid just blanked me so i left him to it. Tom asked me what i figured on his playing, i said to Tom, in truth, hes a waste of time, he has no feel for drumming and is too arrogant to ask advice. Fair play to the kid he was trying to do things right paying for drum tuition trying to read drum music, but when your playing covers of the Shadows songs its all about feel.

Right, Room; decorating done, floor laid, down lights fitted, full wall shelving unit built, temp desk being built (i'll change the top at a later date).

Guitar update; i bought a "Freshman" acoustic guitar its a beauty i've called her Marilyn as shes blonde, beautiful and a great shape.

i have a full week off and i've found all the bits for my bass guitar, and my strat copy, i think its time i rebuilt these.

End of updates.

new pictures to be posted soon.

Well been away from this space for a while, where have i been? friggin around on facebook, wasting my life away, working, more work and so on.

My son moved out into his own place and at the moment i'm making plans for what to do with his room, its looking favorite that i'll be moving my study in there the attic is great just too cold in winter too hot in summer, at the moment i'm stipping the walls, dismantling the computer desk i built for him all those years ago. Plans include rewire for the sockets and lighting i want split lighting, coloured down lighters but i also want a light/fan for the centre of the room. after which patch up the plaster and decorate and lay new flooring. Question is what i move into there? Computer, guitars, amp, 4 track recording unit, Hi-Fi, massive CD collection, its only a small back bedroom. I have the blockhouse at the side of my house, i built this myself many years ago from 300 breeze block, i've since fitted double glazed windows and a uPVC door (courtesy of Camerons, well whatever contract we where working on at the time) anyway in here i plan to have my drum kit set up, well the electronic kit but via a small amplifer and then i can use my real cynbals. This is for when i get my new 4 track recorder to replace my old faithful Fostex cassette unit i can get back to working on my songs flesh them out a bit more.

I need to find materials for my new computer desk i have some good ideas for building as opposed to buying one and adjusting everything to suit. Theres a unit near our office that cuts granite to size, but as i sit here and look at this desk granite would be a waste as u can't see my desk top for the stuff stacked on here, monitor, speaker system, printers etc. etc. smoked glass? reclaimed oak? i want something different, typical me i can never go the easy route.

My guitaring, well i'm enjoying playing as i have a beautiful 12 string that makes my simple ditties sound so rich, i need as new 6 string acoustic as my old "Encore bowl back" sounds rather poor compared to my Epiphone 12 string, i had a beauty of a guitar "Aria Elecord AE-100" i say had while i was still in the band the guitarist pestered the life out of me to sell it too him and i eventually gave in, i since found out he went and traded it in shortly after prying from my hands, i'm so pissed off about this i never wanted to part with it in the 1st place, and for all my searching i have never spotted another like it.

Right enough of my ramblings i can't wait for my new recording unit gimme something to do apart from sitting here typing and gaming.