Extra, extra read all about it!!!

 

"pbp" is rocking. In other words alive and kick´n but at this very moment we are in desperate need of a bassplayer, 

 

Maybe this talented "bassplayer" also is a guitarplayer, someone who plays keyboard or violin...if you´re insteressted in Our project, give me a call.

 

We would prefere if you do live on the Swedish Westcoast or Stockholm area, but will consider musicians from the UK.

M-J

"second rehersal"

Once again I packed me gear in the car and headed of to the old yellow house in Haninge for yet another rehersal session. This time I picked another road, that made the trip much faster and shorter. So me and "Builder Bob" sat down playing drums and guitar, lucky for me I didnt forget to buy earprotection, a gadget much needed sitting a meter from this hard banging man and his drums.

crowded rehearsal basement in Haninge

Later that afternoon "miss october" arrived to the house. Possibly a bit nervous. One of her main hobbies is to sing at Kareoke-bars and the thing with singing in a band was totaly new to her. My attemt to make her sing "Itsy bitsy spider" failed totaly but soon she became used to the idea of singing for only two guys in a rehearsalroom.

 "miss october"

Time passes by in a hurry when you have fun and on my behalf the session was a huge sucess for the three of us. As far as I can see it the band now does have three talented female vocalist´s. Its now a question if We, the guys playing does have the same amount of talent.

A question popped up at me Facebook regarding the importance of the make of a musicinstrument. Among guitarplayers theres always been some kind of stardom connected to different Guitar makers. Something that have lead to some old guitars have the value of a nice car or a house today, if its the right brand on the headstock. Can a lowpriced guitar become a great guitar?

for many young guitarplayers in Scandinavia their first cheap elctric guitar.

priced in 1964 at 50,oo euro

Italian made EKO sold at app 60,oo euro

A great guitar? todays value app 300,oo euro

this old Fender Stratocaster could be yours for 1500,oo skr in 1965

 and has today a value of app 100000,oo skr! Agreat guitar?

I would say Yes, to that. Years ago a freind of mine bought a cheap Fender Stratocaster copy. It looked like the real thing but wasnt near the original in quality. So we exhanged the tuners, a new set of microphone and revired the electrics of the guitar. After a couple of hours adjusting the guitar it proofed to be almost as good as the real thing. All to a price of far less then half the price of an original Fender.

Fender Stratocaster Jaguar edition 2005, 

priced new at more then 4000,oo euro

Top of the line at Gibson in 1968 was this Barney Kessel guitar.

costing 900,oo euro new. (app 3  to 4 month sallery at the time)

Some weeks ago I found me self owner of a guitarshaped piece of wood. I was in the small town of Köping where "Gitarrdoktorn" does have his store and workshop. The guitar as such was brand new, but had been scrapped caused by a small crack in the top surface near the neck (see pic). There for it was useless and couldnt be sold. Together with a set of secondhand tuners and a new set of string it was soon put back to a nice guitar. Could be useful in during sailing in our boat, at no cost at all it could even be used as a paddle!

small crack near the soundhole

Some minor adjustments was made before I fitted a Schaller micrphone in its soundhole. Still there was a big hole left at the guitars sidesurface where originaly a preamp was fitted. The guitar showed of to be a really nice guitar much better then I thought to beguin with. So a piezo unit was found second hand and fitted. 

My question was at this stage should I use only the new microphone or should I keep them both. I went for the last sollution and instead of connecting the two different units yet another hole was drilled to cater for a second guitar cable. Some kind of weird Stereosound, or what?

The Schaller microphone 

and the instrumentpanel to the piezo microphone installation.

The result is a really nice guitar with a wide range of sound buildt in coming from two separeted microphones. Giving both the sounds of an acustic guitar and an electric. All to the price less then a new set of tuners!!!

Stereo-cable connections.

"on the road again"

Time to sit down and reflect over yesterdays session/rehersal. As what will become usual in a while I carried the VOX amp and 2 guitars with me in the car. Are you going to move out, our nabour asked politly. But no, not at all, it just takes a lot of gadgets to make music. 

Anyway there was a first stop at me Jaguar freind Allans house at Ekerö (he does have a magnificient veiw. 

Then further on to the ferry taking me back to the mainland in the south of Stockholm. 

Havnt yet figured out the best, shortest road yet. But arrived at Haninge en the "Yellow Villa" to meet with "Builder Bob" the bands drummer who was waiting. 

Have to admit i was a bit nervous in regards of this our first meeting with instruments and music. Anyway after carrying all me gadgets down to the basement we did our first attemt to make something  called music together. 

Just a huge set of drums and a guitar. Alright there was ahuge stack of loudspeakers and amplifiers that could help me lonley guitar to create db enough to if not "out-loud" so at least make the guitar heard a little.

A couple of different songs was tested and the noise was enormous. My head started to ring like a firealarm, but we did keep on playing. 

"Builder Bob" asked every now and then if this or that was what I wanted and somehow we did find a way to produce something that was at least one step ovr the noice that was heard during the first hour of rehersal.

App 2 n half hour later me gadgets was restored back to the car, our first session was Done and i have to admit, I loved every minute of it, exept for that bloody noice in my head that kept on ringing the rest of the day. Next time for sure Im gonna get some earplugs to help me out.

PBP

Is it even possible to form a band with members that still have´nt met? Today it seams like a possibility. Still there´s a few missing link´s but as far as I can see it the band is almost ready for some kind of serious acting.

This is <<pbp>> of 2012.

"miss Paddington"

oldest member in the band and do have a magnificient voice. Lives on a suburban island somewhere (and might be in love)

"miss amimna"

latest vocal instrument who alrady proofed her qualities.

Live near a wellknown waterhole in our country.

"miss xxx"

still a missing link in the band, but hopefully She´s out there somewhere.

"Builder Bob"

the man with pots and pans, who keep the rhytm.

Is to be found in a rehersal studio not far from our capitol city.

"Mr Patriiik"

Bass-man who just love to hug his Bass.

Cituated mainly on the westcoast of Sweden, former pro-bass man.

"Mr Gura"

the one who can play for your soul, still missing in the band.

"Master-J"

hmm, the man behind this weird idea and dreams of a band.



aint it funny

During the last month´s or so I´ve started to wonder, who the hell is it who read my blog-site. A blog-site about an overaged man who still is a Wannabe" among all agegroups, hoping that someone like´s what I do. So who have any interesst in my site, especially when its easy to see that more then 7000 times the pages have been read!!??

It would be ever so nice to hear-read a comment from you all every now and then. Telling Me what makes you interessted.
The last 5-6 weeks I´ve been fully occupied in restoring Jaguar V8 motor, but as its extremly cold outside and my heart doesnt work properly I spend app 3-4 hours a day in the garage. The rest of my time is used for playing music-recording, and composing new songs for you to listen to one day.

Here´s the latest tune in its first instrumental version.
link below:
use-me

 shopdisplay for Burns guitarpics in 1965,at your right side is the orginal Burns pics from 1965 and the Hank B Marvin design´d original. On display is also Gitz-Levin pics from the same year and a pic from the legendary SUN studios.

One thing in my life is the creation of a new tune, cant say it follows a certain pattern but suddenly its just there inside my mind. Pen and paper may come handy and after a bit of struggle there it is.

Next step is to record it with the same sound as I clearly can hear inside me head. That´s when the big problemes occure.

The song in my mind this time is called “like a butterfly”. The title in it self may sound harmless but as far as i know the english language is exellent in that way, you can use its words. What I try to tell with the lyris can mean so many different things for the listener.

 

Epiphone ES175-3 Bigsby

One of my greatest problems with music to keep in rhytm, thats why i love a good drummer, or even the rhytm pattern in my keyboard. It keeps me in rhytm.  Already at first class in school i was taught to count. One, two, three and four. Its easy but when it comes to music it may cause a huge problem.

 EKO 290-2V 1964

So i wrote this song, recorded it and was at least a bit satisfied with it, and the sound of it even if my voice doesnt do it any good. So the music was sent to one of the great female voice´s in my “wanna be” band.

She listened to it and suddenly there was a load of problems. A matter of mathematics thats for sure. Possibly she did struggle with the lyrics and the tune in her ears, but it didnt match at all. So she told me and once again i  started to listen to it, realising it was totaly wrong. Not all of it, but somewhere I lost the rhytm.

I then started to make a new recording, starting of with track one where i used my Epiphone ES175 to create the sound of a rhytmguitar. The VOX amp and its hundreds of different sound patterns did the rest of the job. Yet another track with the same guitar was recorded, before I with the help of me EKO 290 guitar recorded two different tracks with leadguitar.

With the fact in mind that I´m still very much in the old analog taperecorder style of recording music, i was forced to do this operation over and over again. Mainly cause I did loads of fault in me playing. So after app 10 times recording the same leadtune I was almost satisfied. Next step, and the last one will be to record some strings and horns from me Casio keyboard.

At this very moment I do hope this new recording will satisfye the female voice. Even if it does´nt sound exactly as it did in me head while i was writing the tune.

You can find a link to the tune in its instrumental version below. Hope you like it.

 like-a-butterfly-instr

Whats more om my music-front:

The construction of the loudspeaker cabinett out of an old bookshelf , a midrange speaker and two 12” speakes went in to its final stage when a piece of darkblue cloth was fitted as a front to the cabinet. It looks almost good even if its not a pro-build loudspeaker. Still it sounds app 400,oo£ worth, in other words great.

VOX AD60 and Bookshelf speaker.

I´m still waiting for delivery of me Ebay/Burns amplifier from the UK. Maybe there will also be a Burns speaker cabinet. Hopefully my freind Richard will soon send it to me. For certain it will be amazing to plug it in, and hopefully listen to the sound of it for the first time.

This amp is the smaller one in the Burns range of the 60-ies, with only 30 watt output. As such its extremly uncommon in Sweden where the bigger units was sold back then. the Burns Orbit Double 12 and Three was during that time a step into the future of guitar amplifiers.

Burns Orbit Double Twelve-1964

Owners with the grat VOX AC 30&50 amps exchanged them for this new transistor amp, wich didnt have the inbuildt noice problem. A couple of years later most of those transistor amp´s was thrash´d. The VOX´s, Marshall´s  and Fenders was back on stage.

VOX amplifiers of the 60-ies

 

 

Burns pic included in purchase of Burns LondonMarvin guitar 2005

A new guitarplaying freind of mine at Facebook did like my idea of sending him a couple of original Burns pics to match his collection of Burns Marvin guitars. Hope he will like em, and Im sure he will never ever use them. They will be for show use only as they today is collectors item.

the original Hank B Marvin designed pic 1964

ckua radio Canada

Internet radio station, high quality delivering great music of various kind.

Latest:
A tune that I did write a couple of weeks ago is at this very moment undergoing a total transformation, thanks to the cold weather outside. This time I do my best to make it sound as if it was done in the heavy metal era. Or maybe even sound like a modern tune, this it not an easy task at all with me background in harmonics and sound´s of the 60-ies. But as far as recording has developed it seam´s possible to find the right sound.

home recovering and building.

at the moment fully occupied with the repair of a Jaguar engine but also delayed by some illness I started to construct my own loudspeaker. 

the old bookshelf and 2 x 12" speakers

Already there was a couple of 12" speakers in the closet, so I was in need of a suitible cabinet. This item was found at a secondhand shop in form of an old bookshelf. 

After reinforcement of the bookshelf  the construction developed slowly into the for of my new speaker. 

the new 2x12+midrange speaker and VOX AD60

The two 12" speakers had a 16 ohm resistance was connected in series with each others and then a midrange speaker of 8 ohms connected paralell to the two. Ending up in a 4 ohm almost 100 watt speaker system.

bedside cabinet 12" speaker and TOA amp,DOD effect.

I have to admit that this me latest speaker cabinet is far more refined then the one I made some monthes ago. then it was yet another 12" speaker mounted in a badside table!!! 

Ending up with a couple of rather good speakers to a cost of almost nothing!!!