Final Day @ work

An emotional final day at work. Managed to attend to two guitars before leaving. This one had a broken tuning peg & one crooked unit which was better replaced than repaired. Was told it fell from storage. Yikes. Replaced both rows of tuners, good clean up & a fresh set of strings.

This one had a broken nut. No accidents, knocks, nothing. Hammered the broken piece out & replaced with a new nut. Surprisingly, the new nut required no height adjustments. Same thing - thorough cleaning & a fresh set of strings.

Done. The thing I dislike about nylon strings - it took forever to be in tune. 

The people here are very accommodating & looked into my daily workload well. They were generous when it comes to lunch time & did not treat me like a temporary contract employee. To them I was family. It's very difficult saying goodbye to such a community of good people. This is especially true when office politics exist in every establishment but to some people, this is not worth their while. They rather keep one another going because it's quite a journey ahead. Respect.

Unemployed once again.

Chorus-ing

It's that time in (my) life where one steps back & re-visit a detestable discourse only to realize it's actually a missing ingredient to attaining self-actualization. I hate acoustic guitars. OK to be fair, majority of them. Classical guitars rank below this aversion. Those slippery nylon strings are impeding my playing potential more than anything else. Then came this idea to pair the squeaky clean classical guitar tones with the chorus pedal to perhaps give a semblance of hope in embracing this other aspect of guitar playing & hey, presto! Things are actually more likeable now. 

The BOSS CH-1 is, in my opinion, the standard to beat for chorus tones. It's a no frills take on how chorus should sound like. Come to think of it, is there such a benchmark to begin with? But that aside, the CH-1 is simply... good. Some appraisals soon.

Aria C-16

I recently returned this Aria C-16 classical guitar to its owner. Coincidentally, he was my wife's ex-primary school teacher who is my current colleague. It's a small world after all.

The entire fretboard was thoroughly cleaned. I have a feeling it wasn't attended to since day one. Ditto the frets, some of which turned green at the edges. As you can see here, clean frets will give a new lease of life to seasoned instruments.

Strings were dead (left), the wound ones were corroded so off they go. D'Addario Classic Nylon set (normal tension) to the rescue, available at Swee Lee ($8).

I was also given the permission to replace the tuners which had turned stiff due to corroded metal parts. No amount of polishing could save them so replacement was the answer. I believe in lubricating the open gears occasionally to keep them smooth & functional. These are not costly at all, the ones you see here (right) are the Maxtone brand ($15), available at Davis GMC.

I enjoy doing light guitar maintenance time & again. This keeps my interest relevant & I gain important experience & knowledge along the way. All this know how was self-taught, most of it involves common sense & the right tools to see things through. I am the firm believer of knowing what to do with my possessions which include simple plumbing & electrical tinkering at home.