Moving, even if it is just next door is still a lot of work. Even when there is a missing wall and what not, it is still tonnes of work! Tomorrow all the junk is going and I will be painting up a storm, but otherwise, we are basically good to go! :) Our side of the house despite my best efforts to move stuff over in a clean and orderly fashion is a complete disaster! Anywho time for a cold shower for we are off to see Les Mis at the Stanley Theatre tonight.

It was hot out.

Mike came and built me the better part of a wall.

Shot a lot of people.

I saw an epic sunset!!

A tiger and I are Jamming tonight!

Thinking about breakfast!

That is all.

This week has been all about the moving for this jerk.  For those not in the know (which I know is most of you because it is summer and I am to busy to blog anymore) we are shrinking our space in a effort to not spend preposterous amounts of money.  We are hoping that by January sometime we can be on the hunt to buy a home somewhere. If all goes according to plan we should be able to keep our water street office and have a separate home somewhere else that is completely devoid of all work related things and contains nothing but life type stuff! That is the plan and step one is to give up the second suite that we have here and suck it up and live in the single space again for a while!

So I have been moving us slowly back into the left side, and when I say ‘I’ I really mean Reka the Intern and Darren the Tiger because I managed to pull a reasonably important muscle in my back lifting the very first thing. So props to Reka for making 70,000 hand cart trips to the recycling room and Darren for hauling all my wife’s lead. (when I say lead I really mean lead! She has like 700 lbs of lead type for a printing press) you both rock!!

I have large boxes of Computer parts (most of it/them work even) for free/sale so if you wanna come rummage you are more then welcome to! Come quick though because goodwill is about to receive a multitude of computer craziness!

In other news saw the Weakerthans and Iron & Wine last Friday! Wicked show for them both! I bootlegged it with the Zoom but I haven’t gotten around to listening to it.

Tonight is jam #2 for My Friend Lisa at the new jam space. The Tiger & I have been making noise on a fairly regular basis but this is the second time that the band we be together here. I am going to attempt an off the floor recording of a line in mix of the evenings adventures so we will see how that all goes. The Lrbaggs will rock out for the first time in a loud capacity as well!

We spent the Sunday/Monday on Galiano Island for a wedding last weekend as well. What a genius place to hang in the wilderness. If I ever get rich/eccentric and feel the need to record a solo album with nothing but my mac book in a cabin in some secluded location I am going to do it on Galiano island! Man I Love that place!

I need to collect a case of free Rock Star now so ya!

I am off to a wedding later today so I will be brief!

Last week my friend lisa had the first loud jam in the new space!  Despite our apprehension about getting into a loud space it went swimmingly! However I basically had to play almost everything on Chester the Gretsch. I am not complaining cause I heart Chester, but some things just need to the acoustic tone. Now Jonathon Livingston does come equipped with a pizo bridge pickup but I have to say that it is about the worst sounding thing that I have ever played (not that i have played a lot) I am working on different ways to make that better (things like tossing it though a new preamp or possibly installing a LB6 but these are all topics for another day.) but in the mean time we basically didn’t have a real great acoustic solution other then getting quieter and that was sort of against the point :)  So after about a year and a half  of research I decided that getting an Lr-baggs M1 would be a decent idea, and while at L&M the other day the opportunity presented itself with a cheaper open box M1 Passive! Super great pickup, you can swap it in and out of any guitar you want, there is a tonne of info and reviews out there about this pickup so I am not going to get into a huge review about it or or anything. I like it and think it sounds great. Full stop.

After playing with the cable hanging out of the sound hole for a day or so I decided that I should probably install the end jack in something.  Jonathan Livingston’s sister Seagull had no pickup of any kind so she seemed to be the likely candidate! The problem was that being that she had no pickup installed of any kind she was missing the holes to install jacks and what not so surgery was going to have to be performed.

Basically I needed to drill a 1/2” hole in the bottom of the guitar and screw in an end pin jack. Doesn’t sound all that complicated but to be honest the fear of ruining a nice guitar was running a bit high! After double and triple checking every thing I fired up the drill with the biggest drill bit I have.

Next was weaseling my hand in through the sound hole to install the end pin. Not an easy task when you have big hands!

Next add the actually pick up itself.  You can get this in & out with the strings on with ease.

Then a fresh new set of strings!

Because I took all the strings off at the same time I will have to adjust the neck a little but all in all it was easy and I ruined nothing! Sound sample to come! :)