Saturday/Sunday 1st/2nd September

The bonus of having important customers visiting is that invariably the entire setup gets a good going over and ends up looking almost presentable, and thus is easier to work in over the next few days.. Friday was spent tidying, organising etc the workshop and the new display room/office.. between a manic round of phone calls and emails of course.. half way through the day I put my wiring hat on, and..

started on one of Roberts Hollow bodies.. the cavity is clean, with only the pickups cables etc in place

I try a different tack this time, I install the basic guitar system before any of the complex trickery.. it seems to work better.

six wires instead of the usual three go to the toggle switch

and by the end we have two PCB boards and about 80 seperate wires etc..

at this point I realise that something is not working and track it down to a poorly soldered wire on the bottom of the sustainer pickup.. not a happy occurance!

everything is installed and knobs put in place.. we have.. master volume/tone stacked pot, MIDI volume, MIDI up/down buttons, MIDI/MIDI - Guitar mix, Guitar mini 3-way switch, MIDI led, Sustainer intensity, Sus on/off, harmonic/mix/note switch for the sustainer, battery on/off push/pull pot and a seperate volume control for the neck single coil humbucker which acts as a boost for the sustainer..  it all gets simpler once you've played her for a bit..

the back plates are marked out

and cut

and the battery compartment bolted in place

and here she is..

the new demo room/office complete with guitars.. which will end up on the walls over time

and my stunningly amazing Ox amp.. the best thing since the invention of the humbucker!!!

 Tony Geballe and Tom Redmond of the Hellboys and Guitar Craft fame are here to record Robert Fripp and mix the new album at DGM HQ, they also quite fancy a custom Crimson Guitar or three..

just loves the Strawberry

and Tom got down with the jazzer.. Jasper enjoyed the session too..

Tony couldn't praise the Ox enough and ended up deciding on an X-symbol as his signature model.. tricked out with MIDI and sustainer etc of course.. the pinstripe x-symbol is currently finding its way onto some of the Hellboys tracks being recorded this week..

and it's fitting that an X-symbol is featured here...

Full production mode will begin on the morrow..

VB,

Ben