So... this past weekend was a tad bit noisy up here. You see, for the third year now a group of motorcycle enthusiasts have held an event in Cottonwood (just down in the bottom land of the Verde Valley below) called "Thunder Valley Rally". It's cool and all of that... they have local and regional music acts as well as a beauty pageant... all understandably geared towards the motorcycle crowd. But then all of those bikers see this inviting mountain with it two-lane winding road and... well... it tends to get a tad bit noisy!
An interesting thing happened recently... so I will tell you about it. I've been buying & replacing guitar strings for more than 50 years. Acoustic, electric, 6-string, 12-string, bass, ukulele, banjo ... you name it. I have never had a problem... until recently.
I changed the strings on my 1976 Washburn acoustic. Replaced the old set with a new set of the same strings I've been using for more than a year now. Brought everything up to pitch and discovered that my high E had a buzz! I checked the action... did not look like the string was hitting any frets. But the buzz was definitely there. I messed around with it for several days and finally decided to get hold of my luthier to have him take a look at it. He thought it might have something to do with the increased moisture in the air. So... the axe sat for a couple of days until I could get it to my guy.
In that time I bumped into a guitar playing buddy. We hadn't seen each other in some time so we pulled over to catch up with each other. I eventually got around to describing the problem with my Washburn. He looked at me and said, "Did you try replacing the string?"
I told him the thought never occurred to me and I asked him if that was a real thing. He looked at me as if to say "What? Are you new at this?".
I went home, replaced the string and, to my great joy, the buzz is gone!
After all these years... I guess it was my turn to have a bad new string!
No comments:
Post a Comment