31 Days- Creativity in the Guitar Shop

Creativity- having or showing an ability to make new things or think of new ideas

Not to be confused with a thinker of deep thoughts, someone who is creative can often feel burdened to move the thoughts from their head out into the world. It can end up a very public, very functional and very elegant result... or the exact opposite in one (or even all) of those areas. Success or failure is not the end result. Getting it "out there" is, at least for me.

In my experience there are a large number of people here on the planet that are creative but haven't the slightest idea they are. Maybe they've never been told they were creative or, more likely, they don't see what they do as being creative. They're just getting a job done. They believe the label creative only applies to a select few: painters, composers, authors. 

I see creative people everywhere I look. They abound in rooms full of engineers, in your local garage as well as in the trades i.e. machinists, carpenters, and plumbers. Wait, plumbers? Yes, the creative plumber exists. You see, creativity isn't about the medium you use to exercise your creativity; it's about exercising your creativity.

For example: opening a lock. The vast majority of us open a lock with a key, a security card, or a code. Some may turn to a hacksaw blade or a cutting torch. Then there are those among us who turn to using a pair of wrenches.

Now I don't know if Mr. Gear is the originator of this technique or not. It may be something passed down from generation to generation but at some point the world did not know how to do this. And this skill has now been seen by MILLIONS of people around the world. Some say this doesn't fit into the box of how they define creativity. I choose to see it differently.

Try this: have you ever looked at a situation and thought "this can be done better/easier/more efficient"? Stand back disbelievers- creative thoughts are being thunk! There is an amazing amount of creativity that goes into what we call problem solving and it can happen in front of your eyes when you least expect it.

And that gets us back to why I'm here. For the next 31 days I'm going to talk about the myriad of ways I use my creativity in conjunction with my hobby known as Rattlecan Guitar Restorations where I explore the world of stringed instrument construction, repair, and restoration. And a sneak peek into how those various creative actions come together can be seen in the home page for the Patreon partnership I launched today. So check it out and see if you can pick out where creativity was used to present a message.

Starting tomorrow the posts will generally happen in the evening as I want to present a "here's how I was creative today" journal. It won't be limited to just the guitar shop but that IS where I spend the majority of my time. So....here's to being creative!


Cheers,

James 

31 Days of Guitar Shop

A friend of mine goaded/poked/prodded (ok, she nicely asked me) to consider participating in the 31 Days challenge where you write for 31 consecutive days on a subject of your choosing.

Lately, I've had some interesting conversations with people and realized they have no idea how a typical day goes for a creative person such as myself. It seemed like a great opportunity for me to document just what goes into constructing, repairing and restoring stringed instruments and the behind the scenes activities of producing and promoting those activities for a YouTube channel.

So hang on, my guess is it won't be what you think it is.

James
host of Rattlecan Guitar Restorations on YouTube

Rattlecan now on the YouTubes!

Hey folks, exciting news. Rattlecan Guitar Restorations now has a YouTube channel! Enjoy the pithy comments that normally rattle around in my head, unheard, while I talk about ongoing guitar projects. So if you wanted to see things live-action as they happen, this will be the place. Be sure to subscribe, like and comment on the videos. Oh, then fun we're going to have.

Helloooooooooo California!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hail, hail.... the gang's all here! We finally made it to California just west of lovely Travis Air Force Base which is in between San Francisco and Sacramento. In just a few short days we found a house and a week later the movers arrived with THE STUFF...... all 13 crates of it. And inside one of those crates were the reasons behind this blog:

My hat's off to our Japanese packers as there was NO damage to any of the guitars (nor any of our other stuff as a matter of fact). You know they did a good job when the people unloading your goods tell you the packers did a very good job. Less than 2 weeks later I'd say 99% of our house has been put in order (we're good at this moving thing) and even the garage is mostly sorted. One bay of the garage houses my workshop and she's ready for work to begin. Even my bass amp is ready to go.

Many thanks for your patience as well as the enquiries as to when posts would begin again. Today I've started the second part of the ARIA PRO II saga and will soon be updating the LES PAUL STUDIO page as well. I'm waiting for a tool box to arrive and as soon as that's organized I'll post photos of the shop area.

Cheers from breezy northern California!

James

Did you hear that screeching sound?!?!?!?!?

That was me screaming when I found out today, Wednesday, that the movers would be coming NEXT Wednesday to pack up our things to ship to California. And just because we like to do things a little bit different, I am running a large Asian Bazaar this weekend so I have 4-1/2 days that I will be away from the house. So, Monday and Tuesday I'm getting projects wrapped up and secured to be loaded into a CONEX on Wednesday and Thursday. Holy crap.

And thus, the explanation for the pause in the action.

I'll get things up and running ASAP on the other side of this adventure.

Why is your guitar missing?

You know when you blow a dog whistle and the pooch tilts his head to the side and gives you that quizzical "what the hell?" look? That must have been what I looked like when someone asked me if I had found my guitar. I replied that I wasn't missing a guitar, or at least I thought I wasn't, and why did they think that?

"Because it said so on your blog. Peavey something-or-another MIA!"

Oooooohhhhhhhh......... NOW I see what you're saying. Let me 'splain. A brand of guitar can have many, many different instruments made by more than one factory. Some are in the US and others aren't. Their location of manufacture can be a big clue as to how skillfully the instrument *may* have been made and appropriately affect the value. Next to each project I put the make, model, year of manufacture (if known) as well as the manufacture location (if known). Sometimes it takes a bit of digging to find out where a guitar was made. Often those labels are removed if the country or origin isn't known for producing high-quality instruments or the instrument can just be old and the sticker gone (if there ever was one). Of the (currently) 9 instruments in my house only 3 of them have stickers declaring the country of manufacture. The rest have been identified by research.

The code is thus:

MIA- made in America, specifically the USA. I know some people will balk because Canada and Mexico are also part of (North) America but I'm an old grumpy man set in my ways.



MIC- made in Canada, eh? I don't have any MIC guitars, I just wanted to make the "eh" joke.

OR

MIC- made in China

MII- made in Indonesia

MIJ- made in Japan

MIK- made in Korea

MIM- made in Mexico

MIT- made in Taiwan


So if you see another MIA pop up, I haven't lost a guitar. If I do, it will be painfully obvious.

What the heck is a rattlecan restoration?!?!?!?!

You don't know what a rattlecan is? You know, spray cans. Aerosol cans. A term used to describe low-budget operations i.e. dude can't afford an OSHA spray booth so he uses rattlecans.

After many years of playing guitars and basses and handing over lots of money to the mysterious guitar technician behind the curtain I decided to learn exactly what they did back there. Through this ongoing process I decided to consolidate and post my efforts here at the Rattlecan Guitar Restorations blog (which, by the way, is NOT a business). If I want to learn about Floyd Rose whammy bars, I prowl the second-hand shops around my area until I find a guitar with one at a decent price that allows me to delve into the mysterious workings of the dual-locking tremolo system and if I totally gooch it up, I'm not out a tremendous amount of money. I do find some neat projects as I currently live on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan and come across some rather eclectic brands and styles.

Now there's a downside to living in Japan, too. Parts take time to get here or are expensive when sourced locally. Getting to a well-stocked music store can be an adventure in and of itself. I don't read Japanese so trying to find certain supplies can be a goat rope.

What I did was to make a page for each project (look to the right) and I will add images and developments to each one as they happen since I usually have 1-3 things going on at a time. Subscribe to the blog to get notified of when I post an update.

A word of warning: this is an educational process for me for the most part. I'm totally open to hearing opinions on how to do things. I have a passion for the minutiae of a process. I'll mess things up and make statements that sound crazy, mostly because I simply haven't experienced a situation before. For example, I don't know why there's a special tool for a Telecaster jack because I've never owned one. Yet. Be patient with me. And gentle. I cry easily.

James