actually, fuck it.

when i say the black one (they both say epiphone on the headstock. the red is an sg copy, and has those high gain punk pickups so i keep the action low on it and the strings thin on it. the black one looks like a coronet, but it was custom built partly out of ibanez parts. it's basically a coronet neck on an ibanez body. i picked it up in a used shop. great neck, but low gain pickups - which are better for jazz. so i keep it with thick strings to get some good sustain.) is set up for jazz, my concept of jazz is kind of abstract.

i do use the black one for a lot of hybrid chord/lead work. the black one is really my main guitar. i just put it through a few pedals to get the pickups a bit more hot. i just picked it up for the first time in a few weeks and it is soooo much more smooth to play, there's no comparison...

i've thought about getting a jazzmaster. it would make it easier to get some specific sounds, although i can generally get whatever i want out of the combination of the two. they're not cheap guitars, though. and i've usually always had a few $10 guitars i keep around for beyond fucked tunings and other weirdness, although i had to destroy the last one because i got a shock out of it and i don't have one right now.

it's too late for today, i need to get ready to get to detroit. this is the first time i'm actually going to do a thing in detroit. i'm going to be walking from the tunnel up woodward to the magic stick to get boris tickets, and i don't know how long it's going to take to get back to trinosophes so i want to give myself lots of time. the show isn't until 8, but i want to be out of here by 4. and i need to eat and shower...

but i will probably at least experiment with the black one over the next few days to see if i can get the tone i want out of it.

still counting on the nut, though.

gah....

i let it sit for the night to let it set and it's come back buzzing like crazy on the bottom string.

i'm not convinced it's the truss rod. it's just the one string, to begin with. and it's a little weird to think the frets just jumped up overnight sort of thing.

the fact that i can get the buzz a bit better but not gone entirely by raising the action suggests to me that it's probably the nut. and, in fact, the nut is actually even broken. but it's been broken for ten years. it's weird that it just developed the buzz now.

i can't really use the other guitar for the track because it has very thick strings and high action. the black one is for jazz and blues; the red one is for punk and metal. they're set up that way and it can't really be mixed up much.

i'm going to have to switch the nut out first. if i still can't get the action right....i'll have to fuck with the truss rod. i don't want to do that...

i wanted to get a guide track down today because i've got other stuff lined up this week. this is going to come in two mixes. the first is a raw version that is going to be exactly what the thing sounded like as i was writing and practicing it in 2001. the other is going to be a more formed version.

i'm hitting oneida tonight, and then i'll have to do laundry and groceries and shit tomorrow. saturday, i want to go down and buy some wood, and sunday and maybe into monday i'll be building shelves. getting that down would have felt good...

but, i need that low string to get the one-track version i want. i probably won't be able to get the nut in until the middle of next week.

so, i took a google walk up randolph and gratiot to trinosophes, and it just looks like downtown-anywhere to me. any downtown area is a little creepy; this doesn't seem bad. caveats and smart behaviour obviously apply, as they would in any downtown anywhere, but i'm not really worried.

google claims it's a 25 minute walk. my experience is that that usually means it's more like 15, because i'm fit and i walk fast. walking there while the sun is up isn't going to be a concern, but i am going to have to walk back around 11:00. well, i'm going to have to figure things out by experimenting, anyways. if i walk by a mugging, i may think twice about it next time.

i think by foot is actually the safest approach, given that detroit has a high incidence of car vandalism and buses really just get you stuck in a corner you can't get out of it. a brisk walker is less of a target than a bus passenger.

i'm going to go down early to pick up some tickets for boris on the 9th. i've avoided listening to the new record...