Are you not infotained?! WEAK NOTES!

Work: They’re reasonably confident the project is a go. But not quite. I’m about to get quite militant regarding getting a contract with an end date and some sensible notice in it. Sigh.

On the bright side, one of my previous clients reached out to find out if I’m free, which is always nice and affirming.

In “work I can actually do”: My jazz bass project has come along nicely this week. The new Fender Player neck is fitted with Gotoh tuners, seated and the nut has been roughed out and it’s already a world better than the Squier one. Who’d have though truss rods were important?

More revolutionary has been a new Jazz Bass wiring harness from Jame’s Home of Tone. I asked him to do one up with series/parallel switching on a push/pull for the tone pot. Not only have the superior components made it sound better (even with the current Squier pickups it’s got a more pleasant mid-range) but running the pickups in series gives you a nice fat humbucker-y sound that’s almost more Musicman than JB. That alone might be the killer upgrade for this thing.

Still, I picked up up some Toltec pickups in an auction for an unbelievably cheap 40 quid (although I’ve had to order some new covers because the pole spacing is different). I’m intrigued to try them - reviews are few and far between, but they look reliably vintage spec’d and they seem well made. Hopefully they have a little more nuance than the stock Squier ones. (Although they’re better than their original wiring allowed them to be.)

I’ve got a new none-more-black pickguard coming. Also, while it’s setting in I’ve noticed that the saddle for the G-string wont go any lower so I need to slightly shim the neck to get some clearance. So in a week or two there will be a dismantle/reassemble project where I’ll finalise all the bits. I’m considering matte-ing the body finish with some paint prep pads too - it’s a bit sticky under the forearm. I did that to an Epiphone Les Paul a while back and I love it. Looks worn in without being a cheesy relic finish.

In other news, I need a new drill. It took me all afternoon to drill 16 pilot holes for the tuners because the damned thing no longer hold charge, and it doesn’t look like Bosch make those batteries any more. Ggggngh.

I’m a bit on the fence with the new Doctor Who - last night’s one was a good mystery box, but both episodes so far have suffered from classic Russell T Davies hand-wavey endings (although he substituted his usual “power of love” for the “power of non-binary”, which was a nice touch after all the schtick Chris Chibnall got for saying the doctor was non-binary).

Theory: Alexander Armstrong will be the Bernard Cribbins of my son’s generation - seems a properly nice bloke, he’s got the same sort of ubiquity on TV (especially variety/comedy) that Cribbins has in the 70s/80s and most importantly he’s got a distinctive voice that narrates a popular children’s TV show (Wombles v Hey Duggee) so his entire manner is embedded into the child during their early language acquisition.

Re Who though - I’m mostly looking forward to Ncuti Gatwa coming in. He was soooooo good in Sex Education, can’t wait to see what he does with the Doctor and that spiffy new TARDIS.

I was supposed to be in Nottingham last night, at Rock City (which I haven’t been to in decades) watching Billy Bragg with my wife. Celebrating our wedding anniversary, no less. Plan was to drop the kid off with a proximate grandparent, get a hotel, do some day drinking, dinner, socially aware rock and roll, lie-in, chill out… the works.

Alas, the kid got into some drama/choir programme thing at school which has sporadic rehearsals on Saturdays so our planned romance/debauchery deferred to familial responsibilities and the tickets went to waste. Which I suppose is very “marriage”. I’m unreasonably angry about the whole thing though, particularly as a bunch of the other parents of kids who got into this thing seem to treat it as optional (you’re supposed to commit to X Saturdays over the academic year). But our chance to do youthful debauchery is gone, and those chances are few and far between. The next anniversary to fall on a weekend isn’t for five years.

Latter part of this week has mainly been a recurring head cold anyway (another shared family activity) so I’m not sure how much debauchery we could have managed.

Goals achieved from the previous week:

  • Build-a-bass Workshop: see above
  • More running / More health: started strong actually, but further attempts have been largely wiped out by a cold the past couple of days. So hunkering down today for some life giving roast lamb and lots of vitamin C

Goals for the coming week:

  • Shift this crappy cold thing
  • Argue about contracts

See you next week. Same bat time, same bat channel.