Behind The Scenes #11
Wichita Lineman
  (link to video)

I promised myself that for 2022 I would find a way to post music videos more often. I'm slogging through a backlog of more than 13 videos now, and the most technically challenging vids are the highest priority (of course they are). It's causing quite a backup. One of my ideas was to make a video from my personal practice time. I try to run through a few songs every day just to keep myself from getting too rusty. Why not just record those and see what happens? So I gave it a go. The camera setup was pretty simple: one in front, one to the side, and one clamped to the headstock on my acoustic guitar. The recording setup was also very simple, one guitar mic and one vocal mic. Then I pressed all the record buttons and blasted through my little rehearsal session. I listened to a few seconds of each one, picked Wichita Lineman, and cobbled together this video in a couple of hours. Pretty painless compared to my other videos. :-)

My First Truss Rod Adjustment

When I was running through some numbers that I wanted to try for this video I noticed that the high E-string on my Gibson SJ-200 was buzzing. This sort of thing happens on guitars sometimes, even on the finest instruments. Their necks can warp ever-so-slightly and cause problems like this. Most guitar makers these days embed a metal truss rod into the neck that can be adjusted fix these kinds of problems. Normally, I don't mess with truss rods. I get my guitars serviced by a tech periodically because many things get out of whack on stringed instruments over time and the correct fix is not always obvious. My guitar tech is Steve Crisp at The Guitar Shop in Santa Cruz, California. Steve is truly amazing with guitars. He has found and fixed issues on some of my stringed instruments that have baffled others. This is not a paid advertisement or anything - I'm not being compensated in any way. Many of the people on this distribution list are guitar players. Good guitar techs are hard to find. Steve was referred to me by a friend. If you are in need of someone to work on your guitar, you will not find a better tech than Steve Crisp. Anyway, I was in a super-hurry because I wanted to record the next day. I emailed Steve, described the problem, asked if head could suggest a quick fix until I could bring the guitar in for service. He replied with instructions for how to do a slight truss rod adjustment, I made the adjustment as he described, and the problem was fixed! Disaster averted!