Sick String Guitar Repair

03/27/2026

Problem solving\serenity prayer

01/22/2026

Made it another round

12/14/2025

RIP all you 2025 tours. See you next year.

12/09/2025

Jesse accepts his fate

12/08/2025

Just received this Benson x Milkman Sound edition of The Amp for . First time plugging in. Forgive the sh*tty phone sound and noodling. I've been a fan of both these great companies for quite a while, and this is an awesome collaboration. Running through a Benson 2x12 cab, no cab sim, Tele w\ stock WRHBs. The room control gives just enough real amp depth. We're a little spoiled having a Surf's Up dual spring reverb unit with us (not on in this clip) but the built in reverb on The Amp is really nice. Overall super musical, dynamic, and articulate, nicely voiced tone controls, smooth roll on to break up with the interactive volume and master controls. Tbh, A\B'd with our Benson Vincent head, I feel like I could swap in The Amp tonight and barely notice a difference. Sounds rich and feels good to play.

12/06/2025

File under things I don't love to do on the road: this Tele thinline just got converted from a string through hard tail to Bigsby B5 with a jazz\jag style thimble bridge mounted straight into the body. This stuff gives me some anxiety even in the shop where I can lay everything out accurately, use a drill press to make sure my holes are square to the body, and so on. Doing it by hand, in low light, on the side of the stage, before a show was not my favorite.

3 bolt neck, with a little bit of wiggle room in the pocket, so it was hard for me to really trust that I was establishing the right centerline. Although the conversation plate that came with the Bigsby kit fit the existing 3 screw hole pattern for the original hard tail, the intonation point didn't match up when the conversion plate was mounted. After doing my best to lay out center on the guitar, bridge plate, nut, and neck, I used the conversion plate as a template to align the holes for the bridge thimbles with the correct intonation line, convinced myself I'd done my due diligence in measuring, crossed my fingers and zapped some holes in the body. After getting the bridge mounted I could clamp the Bigsby to the guitar, string up the outside Es, and drill for the Bigsby. I've done Bigsby installs with the included string for layout, but sometimes I feel more convinced about my placement when I see a real string on the guitar.

Luckily it came together decently. I tried to place the intonation point right in the middle of the new bridge so there's room to adjust both sharp and flat, and it worked out. I can barely draw a straight line without a guide, so I always second guess myself on these operations. Thankfully the margin for error is a teeny bit forgiving, so I ended up looking like I know what I'm doing.

John played it for about 2 songs at sound check then went straight into the show with it as his main guitar and we haven't gone back in the past 2 shows. Special thanks to for the advice. Exhale.

12/02/2025

11/18/2025

Pretty cool to work with multifaceted artists. JG got the itch and painted this mustang bass right before the set at the Glass House in Pomona. If you come out to a show, take note of the custom art on several of the guitars, that's all him. Love seeing expression take different forms. Hot dogs for aftershow forever

11/13/2025

Tech tiparooney of the day-- everyone is on IEMs these days, and ears are gross. If, like me, you've lost or destroyed your little loop cleaning tool for your ears, you can make one from a 10 or 11 gauge guitar string off-cut. Just make yourself a big kink in the end of the string, use some fine jaw pliers, and wrap it down. You can stretch the loop out a little with the pliers, and a little trial and error. I wrap up the pointy end with a piece of e tape and then gaff the whole thing to the top of my tuner, for those moments when I'm asking "is the guitar cutting out? Or are my ears broken?" If the guitar player isn't freaking out, usually it's just my dumb ear wax deciding to block an entire channel in my mix.

11/12/2025

Portugal the Man side stage house party keeping it interesting

11/12/2025

I have a lot of thoughts about instrument cables, and they're mostly not about tone. Regardless of capacitance or any of that, the most important things to look for in a cable are shielding, quality connectors, strain relief, and proper workmanship\termination.

Buzz and hum can be a chronic pain on stage because electricity is magic and noise issues can come from a lot of unexpected places. For 4 days of rehearsals we had an unpleasant buzz on the bass, that was low enough to live with, but not nice in the PA. If you swipe through you'll see a lot of points in the chain that could cause a problem, and a lot of places we could try a combination of ground lifts to cure what sounded like a ground loop --wireless receiver, SGI transmitter, bass pre-fx DI, bass pedal chain, bass post-fx DI, bass head, bass cab mic. I tried a lot of combinations of lifts and switches where it was safe to do so, including trying hum debuggers and ISO transformers at various points.

Ultimately the thing that solved the problem? Swapping out a "working" Live Wire patch cable, like every band owns a grip of, for a good quality, properly built mogami patch cable. The shielding and termination in those 2 cables is significantly different, even though you wouldn't notice much difference in tone the vast majority of the time

This kind of stuff drives me nuts, especially when I have a lot of other projects to work on, but one way to stop letting something make you crazy is to fix it.

By the way the show looks cool out front even without the video stuff frying your mind.