Humility is...

...playing an entire Easter Sunday Mass on electric, and then being told by the sound-tech that the mic wasn't on.

As a sound-tech myself, I have an innate hatred for microphones that have on/off switches (either on the mic, or on the mic cable) because there's nothing you can do from your perch 300 feet away from the band to fix it without getting up, walking across the church, and turning the mic on yourself. Now, as a guitarist, I have a whole other reason to hate them, though I can't blame this one on some idiot vocalist who wasn't paying any attention; I'm the idiot here!

At least for the Vigil Mass the night before, the same sound tech told me that he liked my playing, and was shocked when I told him that this was one of my first attempts at playing electric. I guess God figured I needed something to knock my pride down a notch...


Also, for those of you who actually care, I've ordered a new pedal board and switching system; I decided to go with a Loopmaster 7-loop bypass strip, mostly because it's 1/3 the width (top to bottom) of the Octaswitch that I was talking about a few days ago, meaning that, on a Pedaltrain board, I get a whole other slat to work with, which is like two or three pedals worth of real-estate. I'm hoping to get it here and setup before this weekend, but I'm sure the bypass strip is going to take some time since it has to be hand-built my magical tone faeries.

Also also, the Cardinals won their opening-day game, and Pujols went 3-4 with two home runs. He is so choice.

Is it plugged in?

As an IT specialist, I find myself asking that question. You really would be surprised how easy of a solution that is, and how often it is the correct solution. And how stupid it makes the people who have come to us with the question feel. Cue foreshadowing....

I had a minor freak-out moment last night. On the advice of a friend, I gave my Blues Jr. a once-over with the screwdriver to assure that all of the screws were nice and tight, and also to learn a bit about how it's put together. When I put it back together, nothing. Glowing tubes, no sound whatsoever. No noise, no guitar, nothing.

I thought I'd jostled a tube to death or inadvertently exposed the circuit board to air and thus killed it, and took 15 minutes seating and re-seating the tubes, checking the connections, before I noticed this:


Note: there are two 1/4-inch jacks on the back of a Blues Jr. One for the speaker, one for the boost switch that I don't have. They are not marked, and both are difficult to see or access. The boost switch input will not drive a speaker. That is all.

For anyone with a Blues Jr., the jack closest to the tubes is the speaker jack, and the other one is for the Fat Boost switch.