Adventures of a 1968 lefty Fender Stratocaster Reissue (Part 3 - Epilogue)

Last time I wrote about about my lefty Strat, I had decided to leave it as is and sell it.  That was my intent and came really close one time, but unfortunately, the guy had to back out of the sale (nice guy).  I looked into a couple of ways of selling it, but didn't go beyond that and the guitar stayed in its case all these months.

About a month ago, I finally decided to get rid of it, so I took it out to clean it up and see how the strings were holding up.  I plugged it in, and man!  What a sweet sound it has!  I hooked up my Uni-Vibe pedal and started noodling with it, not really playing anything because I am not ambidextrous!  At that point I changed my mind.  I had to keep it and play it!  There is a place close to where I work called San Jose Rock Shop, which is really a cool place, so I took it there to see about the bridge, nut and strings.  They did a great job.  Very thorough and uber professional for a very reasonable price!  When I brought it back home... wow!  It played like a dream.  Very smooth, like buttah!

The positioning of the cable and knobs is taking a little getting used to, but it's not so bad since I don't move around a lot when I play.  It sounds great.

Back in December, I got me an Ibanez GRG120BDX for Christmas.  It is a really awesome guitar that feels and sounds great and is really easy to play (Wizard neck?)!  I may have joined a band as a rhythm guitarist, so if that happens, the Ibanez will be the one I take with me to gigs and use as my workhorse, but last week I took the Strat to practice and it sounded really great!

"Lefty" and "Wrath"

I've been playing the Strat a lot (considering the very little free time I have) and subjecting my poor family to interesting versions of Robin Trower songs!

Here's me taking a break from doing taxes on Saturday, April 13.  In order to just not post an old boring picture, I used a Photoshop 5.0 preset to touch it up!

 So there it is!  Right or wrong I followed my muse and now have a very nice looking and sounding 1968 replica Fender Stratocaster! Yay!

Playing music now? This is how it all began… again!

Here’s to a happy and prosperous 2013!  In many ways, 2012 sucked, but some really cool things happened too.  One of them was that now, in my old age, I started playing music again, and the fact that I’m playing bass (my instrument of choice) makes it even better!  So far it has been great and I’m having a blast.

So, it all started last summer when I decided to bring my electric guitar and bass out of the garage and into my house after many years.  Shortly after that, singer/guitarist/composer Janeen Leah put out the word through a Facebook ad that she needed a bass player to complete her performing band line-up along with a VERY enthusiastic announcement that she had found a lead guitar player and a drummer.  I've known Janeen and her family for a few years and was already a fan of her music.  Her family is great people too.  I thought it was pretty cool that she had a CD out, and had also gone to India to record another one.  I replied to the ad and after a brief, written interview, she graciously invited me to audition by jamming with the rest of her band at the time – guitarist Michael Burke and drummer Art Williams.

I was definitely rusty.  After all, the last time I had played with any sort of regularity had been in the mid 1990’s.  Maybe I was just self-conscious, but I felt that my first forays into non-Heavy Rock bass-dom with the band during rehearsal were less than stellar, but was at least getting things going rhythmically speaking.  I also kept waiting for another enthusiastic announcement “hey! I found my bass player!”, but it wasn't coming.

It wasn't long after those first rehearsals that the first band gig was announced.  August 11, 2012 at The Plough and Stars Irish Pub in San Francisco sharing the bill with Acoustic Blues singer/guitarist Ben Brown (check his stuff out, it’s great!).  The day came and I was excited baby!  Janeen played an acoustic set first since the band only had like 4 songs at the time.  The time came to go onstage and WHOA!!  I was totally thrown off in many levels.  Let me explain: During rehearsal, musicians and equipment are placed in a certain way in the rehearsal room.  After my long musical lay off, that environment during rehearsals is what I clung to – the sound, the cues, “the smells”, etc. – and suddenly it wasn't like that.  Although the feedback I got was that overall, the set sounded good (maybe folks were just being nice to me), I played bum notes and missed cues.  Not that I was really nervous or freaking out, just thrown off.  After Ben’s set, the band went onstage with him and we played a Blues jam.  The familiarity with Blues chord progressions put me more at ease and I had a great time jamming with Ben, Michael and Art.  I think at that particular point as my fingers began to intuitively move around the bass neck again during the jam session, was when I felt that I started to get my mojo back!

The next gig came very soon:  August 17, 2012 at the High Street Station Café in Alameda, CA.  On the bill were Brian McGinty (an old bandmate of Michael) and a James Taylor-sound alike guy named Steve Krause.  I was better rehearsed and thought the songs the band played sounded great.  I was still a tiny bit spooked by the memory of being musically thrown off during that first gig, but soldiered through it.  A few days later, on August 26, we played a set in the benefit festival Music Day by the Bay (my first outdoor festival! Now I know how the Woodstock participants must have felt - minus the brown acid of course), and I think the band sounded even better than in Alameda!

Laying down the bass in Alameda

Shortly after these gigs, after one of the rehearsals, I asked Janeen if I had passed the audition, and she said yes, definitely!  Hey, I had to know, right!

After those early gigs, guitarist Michael Garza joined the band, and keyboardist Robert Scott Stanton joined for a couple of San Francisco gigs at 50 Mason Social House and The Red Devil Lounge.  We’ve been bringing down the house it during live performances and I am having the time of my life playing with the Janeen Leah Band!  I think the band sounds great and has great chemistry.  Janeen, Mike, Art and Michael are superb musicians.  I am very fortunate to be playing with and learning from them.  I am a big fan of them all.  It's really a treat to hear them play every week.

So, that’s how it got started again.  I am meeting great people and other great musicians as well.  I feel like I continue to get my chops back and enjoy coming up with cool bass lines to complement Janeen’s compositions plus other tunes we play.  So thank you Janeen for letting me do something I am passionate about and allowing me to contribute!

Rocking it out at Hayward's The Bistro on January 4, 2013

Next time I’ll hopefully write about another project that is starting to get off the ground, The Art Williams Experience!!  Actually it’s not what it’s called and Art would have a fit if he found out I called it that, but hey! He has no computer so; we’ll call it that for now!

What do you think?  We'd love to come out and play for you!  Your help finding gigs would be awesome.

Adventures of a 1968 lefty Fender Stratocaster Reissue (Part 2 - the final chapter!?)

Well, it took me long enough!  :)  Well, to the point.  After my last post, I spoke to several people whom I consider experts in the matter, including a luthier, a guitar manufacturing guy, a guitar sales guy and someone from another shop.  A good friend of mine also helped me with the research and was basically told the same thing by the folks he spoke to: that the guitar should be left untouched.

I really tried to find reasons to keep it, but unless I learn to play left handed, it's probably best that the guitar goes to someone who will play it and enjoy it (and who can play left-handed as well!).

I still think the two guys I spoke to originally were pretty sneaky and dismissive.  True, they didn't have to be helpful since they're in the business of making money, but I think there's more to being a business person than that.  A few days after my original experience, I talked to a very reputable luthier in the area, and he in essence told me the same thing as the other guys.  The difference was that he actually took the time (about 20 minutes of his time) to explain to me why the modifications I wanted to make were more complicated than what I had thought, and he also went into detail on what it would take to make it work (at a significant expense) but basically, unless one's making a living playing in a Hendrix tribute band or something, in the end it's best just to leave the guitars as they are.  He explained things to me very clearly and in terms I could understand.  He didn't get any business from me at the time, but who do you think I will think of when I have guitar repair needs or when I am in the position of recommending someone?  There were other people to whom I spoke who were very nice and respectful.  They offered their respective services and depending on how this goes, I will definitely take them up on it.  However, I still won't be going to that original shop anymore!

There were some happy things that came out of this experience.  First, since I was itching to play, I went to the dark depths of my garage to retrieve an old Ibanez Electric I got back in the early 90's and that had sat, neglected for years!  I cleaned it up as best as I could, got new strings and now I have a wonderful-sounding electric guitar again!  Very soon, I will be taking it in for a nice guitar tune-up, and guess where I'll take it?  I also went and retrieved my old bass from a closet, wiped it clean, got new strings and got into playing it again!  I also have a nice Ibanez acoustic guitar that needs some repairs, so I'll be dealing with that, hopefully very soon.

Even though I'm still a little rusty, my bass playing apparently was good enough where I think I may have joined a band!  (we've been rehearsing once a week for about a month, and I * think * I got the job).

So all's well and I hope the lefty Strat finds a good home.  In the meantime, it'll be here, safe with me!  :)

Pics of my axes will be coming up soon.

So, what do you think?  Do you think I'm doing the right thing?  Any further advice?  Also, check out the band links and tell me what you think (it's not me in the recordings obviously), but we'll be playing some shows soon starting this coming Saturday.  Pretty exciting!

Music Store / Repair Shop Adventures of a 1968 lefty Fender Stratocaster Reissue (Part 1)

A short while ago, I got this beautiful 1968 Strat reissue (made in Japan, 1993).  Very nice lefty guitar.  Thing is, I'm a right-handed player.  No matter though.  I can just restring it, flip it and play upside down.  I'm certainly no Hendrix, but Hendrix did it (well, he played right-handed guitars upside down).  I'm perfectly aware about design issues, pickups, necks, knobs, pickguard etc.  Being mainly a finger-style bass player and acoustic guitar player, it actually quite works (playing a lefty upside down) given the way I play.  I just need a couple of adjustments made to the bridge and the nut.  I don't need any high precision adjustments, just enough to make the guitar more comfortable and playable.  I'm not gigging or anything, and just play casually at home.  Slam dunk, right?

I've been a customer of Music Unlimited in San Leandro in the past and had been very happy with their service.  They were very helpful the times I visited, so it was the first place I considered going to.  I went in and showed it to one of the guys there.  This guy at first feigned ignorance about my guitar and suggested that it might be a fake even after I told him exactly what it was.  He gave the impression at first that they just didn't want to do the work as he was presenting obstacle after obstacle to try and talk me out of it.  He then said to wait for another other guy.  After the other guy said my guitar was "a real Fender" and after I told him what I wanted done, he, instead of working with me, started asking me how much I had paid for it, what kind of investment I had on the guitar, and if it had any sentimental value to me.  Then both of them mercilessly tried to get me to instead trade it in for another guitar (any guitar! even the low-end Squiers and unknown brand guitars!) on the spot while offering me a ridiculously and insultingly low trade-in price. When I finally asked them if they could just do what I originally asked, they were very dismissive and not encouraging at all.  It was clear to me that they didn't want my business.  They just ignored me after I told them I didn't want to trade my guitar in. I didn't even feel like returning to buy strings!

It was a very unfortunate experience because one wants to support small / independent business, but those guys just made me want to stick to the Guitar Center instead (not a knock on Guitar Center mind you).

So now I'm actively looking for a local place where I can take my guitar.  Hopefully "Part 2" is going to be the happy ending of the saga of the bridge and nut!

Have you ever been treated like that before?  Have you been in a similar situation to mine?  Any advice?

Here's a not-so-good picture of a great guitar: