Today was another good day. I woke up around 8 and took Lucy over to my parents' house. I needed to get a check for the guy coming to repair the piano that they gave me, and since Lucy hates strangers I figured it would be nice to get her out of the house. I don't think workers enjoy being growled at the entire time they are at our house.
So my parents gave me this piano, it's from the 1920's, and it's a player piano...you know, the kind with the paper rolls and the bellows that you pump. It was actually my great grandfather's piano. Mom says that a man came to my great grandfather's farm trying to sell a piano because he needed money to feed his family. My great grandfather apparently was a very kind person, and so he scrounged up what he could, which was $100, and bought the piano. Alot of family members have learned to play on the piano, including my sister and I, so there is alot of special history to it. Since it is so old, there were a few dead keys, and the ivory was missing on a few. Mom finally found a guy that was willing to work on the piano. It is kind of an art form to repair player pianos, and most people she talked to weren't willing to do it. Some of them were willing to fix the dead keys, but said that would not guarantee they would be able to get the player mechanism back in correctly. The guy that mom found has been fixing pianos and organs since the 1950's, and really knows his stuff. He was disappointed that we weren't getting the player mechanism fixed right now, but it is quite a bit of money. Apparently there were 3 brands of player pianos that are worth something now, and Milton is one of them, which is what ours is. I took some pictures of the sounding board and keys when he had everything disassembled today:
He put all new hammers on, fixed the action, and reinstalled everything. I am pretty excited, except it is extremely out of tune, so I need to call someone and get them out here to tune it.
After he was done I went and ate lunch with my mom, picked up Lucy, and after dropping her off headed to work. I didn't have a ton to do at work, but I had a few things to set up. The sax player couldn't come tonight, so we had an electric guitar soloist instead. He was very good, and the amp he played through really interested me. I was not aware of this line before, but it sounded really good, and I really like the features. It's a special line done by Crate, who I am not a fan of as a company, but it sounded really good. I am definitely going to look into them before I buy my Fender Tweed Blues Jr. He had the 3/5 watt version, but I might be more interested to play/hear the 7/15 watt version. You can see it's features here. I highly doubt that I will end up liking it over the Fender Blues Jr., as I am normally a fan of proven, highly used brands...but it is the first other small affordable amp that has interested me.
Originally I was going to just throw an SM57 on the amp like usual, but then I had a better idea. I like to read geeky sound forums, one of which is homerecording.com. One of the guys on the site has a small studio, and started making his own condensers. You can check out his work and mic options at his studio website.They are so cheap that I had Kristi buy two of them for me for Christmas the other year, but I haven't used them all that much. I decided to use one on the guitar, and it really sounded great. It's a pretty cool little mic. Here's a picture I took of the amp all miced up and ready to go:
I also took a picture of the Shure LDC that I placed in front of the kick drum. Apparently my auto focus wasn't focused correctly for this picture...sorry:
And just for fun I took a picture of the trusty SM57 on the snare. I put a Beta 57A on for Jingle Jazz originally, but didn't like it in rehearsal.
Tonight's show turned out to be a frustrating one. The piano and guitar mic kept wanting to feed back, which I knew would be an issue. I obviously didn't get to test every situation in all the songs with the guitar like I did with the saxophone. There were also a few other mistakes that I really had no control over that were very frustrating to me. Reflecting over the whole night, I think it was good overall, but it's hard for me not to be frustrated in the moment.
After the show Matt took band and tech people to TGIF, and it was really good. I enjoyed talking to the band members, and also really enjoyed the food. I got home around 1 and after taking Lucy out got into bed.
Tomorrow should be another good day. I am taking Kristi's car in to somewhere to get the tire put back on. She decided to hit a huge pothole the other day and destroy her wheel, but thankfully it's just a cheap steel rim (the kind you put a hubcap on), and I got another on ebay for $35 shipped. Not too shabby I say. After that I'll probably just hang out and then go into work around 3 or 4. Too bad there's not any college football on!
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