Cycopl

rockin out

I fixed my guitar yesterday. It hasn't really been critically broken, but right now it's in better shape than it's been in literally years.

I think it started when the pickup screws started falling out, so the pickups were just sitting loose inside of the guitar without any screws holding them in. They would fall against the strings while I was playing, so I put duct tape over them to keep them inside. Duct tape was probably on that guitar for about two and a half years.

I ended up taking off the nut locks because I changed tuning on the guitar so much. Nut locks are little clamps that go up at the top of the guitar between the headstock and the neck. They keep the tuning in place which is really convenient, but also at the same time really inconvenient if you change tuning a lot. Well, I ended up losing the nut lock clamps and the screws.

Then I think the tremolo tension springs in the back of the guitar started to give way a little bit and lose some resistance, so I couldn't tune my guitar to standard tuning without the bridge sticking up two inches off the guitar. This would make the strings stick up about an inch off of the neck, pretty much eliminating the ability to even play effectively.

So, I ordered some pickup height adjustment screws, which were all I needed to fix the pickups (I should have gotten them a long time ago), some new nut lock clamps and screws (the clamps cost 3 bucks a piece, jeez), and a couple new tension springs so I can tune the guitar into standard tuning. Then I got a couple new sets of strings and some Fast Fret™, which you just slice around on the fretboard and it makes the fretboard all slippery and is supposed to help keep it clean and "enhance the life" of your fretboard. I was giving my guitar a makeover so I figured what the hell.

So yeah, the guitar sounds better, looks better, and feels better than it has in years, and it makes me really happy. I'm seriously considering dropping some money on an effects processor or something like that.

Anyway, I got the mud running again. I'm being really careful not to crash it because I still dont' know what the problem is. All I know is that when I shut it down, I don't have the problem. When it crashes, all hell breaks loose. Luckily, this is a fucking great codebase I'm working with (1stmud, a ROM derivative), and it has a little feature called "Copyover", which basically does periodic backups of the whole MUD, and then when the mud crashes, it starts up the backup almost immediately when it crashes. Sure, you lose all of your saved changes since the last backup, but you would have lost them either way, but you can start right back up on what you lost rather than waiting for the mud to reboot or figuring out how to get it running again.

Posted by at March 4, 2004 06:17 PM