Kia ora! Matty Flatt here again, for the last time this week with Fitzie back on board from tomorrow. Lucky you!
Life has been full of drama lately. Some of you may have read my series on my visit to the Sydney Super Cup; that was absolutely full of drama. But there was another, slightly smaller, but still annoying series of events that coincided with that trip.
Some of you know that one of my hobbies / side hustles is music; specifically, the fact that I’m a guitarist. And recently I decided to change the pickups (objects that sit in the body of an electric guitar that convert the string vibrations into electric signal which is eventually turned into sound by an amplifier). Pickups are a big part of how an electric guitar sounds, and by changing pickups you can dramatically change the sound of a guitar.
Depending on the type of guitar, this can be a reasonably simple job or a rather annoying one. The guitar I was upgrading was a Stratocaster, which thankfully was on the simple end of the spectrum: loosen the strings, unscrew the pickguard and output jack, then desolder the existing pickups from the jack as well as the ground wire. In this case, the pickups I bought (second-hand) came preinstalled in a new pickguard, so all I had to do was put the new pickguard in place, feed the wires through, and solder to the output jack.
And that’s where the drama started.
The guy who sold me the pickups wasn’t super knowledgeable (and in fairness, I had some knowledge gaps too) and had his tech desolder it for him; but instead of desoldering, he just clipped the wires, leaving very little length with which to work (cue Michael Scott). That’s fine, I’m handy with a soldering iron, and can work in tight spaces (again?). Annoying, but not a deal breaker.
Here’s where my knowledge gap came in. I was installing what are called “active” pickups (which basically means they utilize a battery and have a hotter output / more aggressive tone). It turns out active pickups require a special type of output jack to ensure the battery doesn’t constantly drain, which should have been included with the pickups, but the guy selling it didn’t know this and neither did I… until I checked the wiring diagram.
Great.
I figured this would be easy to track down, so went to a local electronics store… no dice. And I flew out to Sydney the next day. New Zealand tends to be limited for this kind of thing, so I thought I’d just go to one of the big music stores while in Australia and grab one there, which I did.
So back I come to New Zealand, get everything soldered to the new jack, and go to screw it in… and the jack lugs are too big for the cavity. What started as a 20-minute job now has me on to my THIRD jack and we’re two weeks in. Great.
I ended up ordering said third jack online as there are no local options. It gets to me in a couple of days, I open the package… and they’ve sent me the wrong one. Yep. Instead of the special stereo jack I need, they’ve sent me the mono version. I reach out to the store, they are super responsive, and very quickly dispatch the right one. Finally, I get it soldered in, pickguard reattached, am halfway through screwing it back in (there are 12 screws by the way)…
I’ve forgotten to put the battery in.
Screws out, pickguard up, battery in, screws back in, strings tuned up. And now because of how long the strings have been sitting loose on the guitar, the setup has gone all out of whack (basically how high the strings are sitting above the neck / the positioning of the bridge) and the guitar is near unplayable.
I did get there in the end; here’s the end result (which I’m very happy with):
Sometimes, you just want a quick win, but something super simple you set out to do becomes bigger than Ben Hur. What snowball effects have you had to deal with lately?
Matty Flatt’s track of the day: Coming Back to Life (Live), by Pink Floyd
And now for your links:
Alasdair Gold breaks down Tottenham Hotspur’s eventful transfer window
Speaking of which, check out this cool site, Valuball: full of fantastic data and dashboards on transfers and more
BBC does a deep dive into Harry Kane’s 73-goal season for those who want to bathe in nostalgia
And check out the highlights of Leyton Orient’s win over Bromley; Spurs loanee Yusuf Akhamrich had himself a game!