Covid19 is really mucking up my business

[orpheo]

I am not angry. I am sad. I can't do anything to right this ship, find the course again and all work I put in my company over the last decade is now about to turn to dust. Not sawdust unfortunately. My workshop is in a group building of several workshops and we all had to close our doors since October to curb the spread of Covid19. I can't do anything right now. I have my work at Aristides, that's going just fine, but my own work? standstill. All I can do now, is bide my time, wait for groups to be allowed in 1 building again and start up the business. I spend my time doing, nothing, refinishing older guitars, doing some basic fretwork to get them to play better but new projects are not even on the backburner anymore, it's all closed.

By June, it all should open again, or so it is claimed. nine months of inactivity is killing me mentally and it's also killing any momentum my company had.

I just had to vent...

In the meantime, enjoy some refinishes I did since then.

 

[Obsessive Compulsive]

Meanwhile people in Texas have to harvest snow just to flush the toilet. Beautiful purple quilt by the way.

 

[PFDarkside]

Beautiful.

I figured you were going to say you can’t get raw material and hardware. I’m having a hard time to get things for one casual build.

Beat of luck, hope it all works out.

 

[orpheo]

Beautiful.

I figured you were going to say you can’t get raw material and hardware. I’m having a hard time to get things for one casual build.

Beat of luck, hope it all works out.

Oh man, that's a whole different game of problems. But I can't even get into the workshop to get to work. 'Not Allowed' because too many people in the same space,even if we all have our own separate workshop working space.

 

[orpheo]

Meanwhile people in Texas have to harvest snow just to flush the toilet. Beautiful purple quilt by the way.

Yeah but that's a whole different problem. We had severe frost here too a week ago. almost 50cm of snow. I haven't heard of anyone not having electricity or running water. We insulate our pipes, Texans don't, as far as I know.

 

[TVFV]

I'm interested in how that HSS LP is wired up. What pickups are you using?

 

[ErikH]

Sorry to hear about your business. That really sucks.

No, pipes aren't insulated here in TX for the most part. Much of the Southwest is the same way. Why should they? What happened last week here is not normal. Snow and ice in Galveston? On the beach? That's unheard of here. It's a once in a century storm. Sure, we get cold temps and may dip below freezing in the winter at times for a couple days but a hard hard freeze like last week is not typical. Now it is sunny and was 70 yesterday and projected to be 77 today. All the snow was gone by Sunday. We were fortunate in our neighborhood to not lose power or water. One of our neighbors had a pipe burst and got it fixed pretty quickly. I have friends and co-workers not so lucky.

Haven't heard much about Covid since. Maybe it froze to the death and is gone. Wishful thinking.

One of the things I'm diving in to since I have more time at home is fret work. I just got some tools in and have a couple high frets on a few that need to be leveled and crowned. I need a spot level file yet and probably a longer level file. Totally forgot about that when I got the crown file and fret erasers.

 

[orpheo]

Sorry to hear about your business. That really sucks.

No, pipes aren't insulated here in TX for the most part. Much of the Southwest is the same way. Why should they? What happened last week here is not normal. Snow and ice in Galveston? On the beach? That's unheard of here. It's a once in a century storm. Sure, we get cold temps and may dip below freezing in the winter at times for a couple days but a hard hard freeze like last week is not typical. Now it is sunny and was 70 yesterday and projected to be 77 today. All the snow was gone by Sunday. We were fortunate in our neighborhood to not lose power or water. One of our neighbors had a pipe burst and got it fixed pretty quickly. I have friends and co-workers not so lucky.

Haven't heard much about Covid since. Maybe it froze to the death and is gone. Wishful thinking.

One of the things I'm diving in to since I have more time at home is fret work. I just got some tools in and have a couple high frets on a few that need to be leveled and crowned. I need a spot level file yet and probably a longer level file. Totally forgot about that when I got the crown file and fret erasers.

I understand, but insulation is very cheap and IF it goes really cold, like it did recently, it'll pay for itself instantly. Just my 2 cents.

 

[orpheo]

I'm interested in how that HSS LP is wired up. What pickups are you using?

These are pickups by AxesRus in the UK. I really, really like these pickups. They scream, howl, and sing like nothing I've heard before. Just works very well. How it's wired, that's a bit tricky.

1: bridge (lower vol/tone controls)
2: bridge (lower controls) + middle (upper controls)
3: bridge (lower controls ) + neck (upper controls)
4: middle (lower controls) + neck (upper controls)
5: neck (upper controls)

In essence, it's a normal superstrat switch but the pots assign themselves to the pickups that are on. The pickup closest to bridge gets the lower controls. I wire all my 3 pickup 4 pot+5way guitars like this. works really well for me. Since position 2 and 4 are the odd ones out and I rarely use those, I am not finding this more difficult than usual. I don't like push pull pots, to be honest, so I try to work around that as much as possible. I don't have push pull pots on this one, at all. If it were an HSH, I'd have 1 push pull pot to split the humbuckers, like you see on the HSH trem LP.

That hollowbody got a third humbucker recently. Because, why not...

 

[ErikH]

I understand, but insulation is very cheap and IF it goes really cold, like it did recently, it'll pay for itself instantly. Just my 2 cents.

Yup. I get that. I grew up in the Northeast near Buffalo, NY on Lake Erie. I've been through that type of weather before. Granted, it was more than 30 years ago and a nice reminder as to why I moved away from there in the first place....LOL. We still had pipes freeze up there too, even some insulated.

I wish builders would insulate the exterior wall pipes. Heck, insulate the garage at least where the hot water heater is. We have a new house being built and all the plumbing is interior. Nothing is on an exterior wall that we can tell from the plans. That is a benefit. Our current house has our master bath sinks on an outside wall and that is it. Cabinets were open, faucets dripping. No problems.

Sucks for your business to have to be closed like that. Kinda silly since you have your own shop area and really socially distanced from everyone else. Doesn't seem to make much sense. At least you have your gig at Aristides to keep yourself afloat. Now those guitars are cool as hell!

 

[GuitarStv]

No, pipes aren't insulated here in TX for the most part. Much of the Southwest is the same way. Why should they? What happened last week here is not normal. Snow and ice in Galveston? On the beach? That's unheard of here. It's a once in a century storm. Sure, we get cold temps and may dip below freezing in the winter at times for a couple days but a hard hard freeze like last week is not typical. Now it is sunny and was 70 yesterday and projected to be 77 today. All the snow was gone by Sunday. We were fortunate in our neighborhood to not lose power or water. One of our neighbors had a pipe burst and got it fixed pretty quickly. I have friends and co-workers not so lucky.

When things are privately run, they maximize for profit - and preparing for predictable but rare events is costly. If there's nobody telling the company to do something for the public good, why would they? How many of the (partially or fully) state run electrical grids had the same problem with all the winter storms? None. Because when you don't run for profit, you can do things for public good instead. If Texas keeps their private system, I'd expect this same thing to happen again. And again.

As far as 'once in a century' storm . . . heh. I certainly wouldn't bet on that going forward over the next century. Climate change is real, and (while already requiring a level of cognitive dissonance) it's going to get harder and harder to stick your head in the sand and ignore it.

EDIT - I just looked it up. That wasn't a once in a century event. Texas got just as cold for a couple 5 day periods in December '83 and December '89. This was completely foreseeable and not out of the ordinary.

 

[ErikH]

When things are privately run, they maximize for profit - and preparing for predictable but rare events is costly. If there's nobody telling the company to do something for the public good, why would they? How many of the (partially or fully) state run electrical grids had the same problem with all the winter storms? None. Because when you don't run for profit, you can do things for public good instead. If Texas keeps their private system, I'd expect this same thing to happen again. And again.

As far as 'once in a century' storm . . . heh. I certainly wouldn't bet on that going forward over the next century. Climate change is real, and (while already requiring a level of cognitive dissonance) it's going to get harder and harder to stick your head in the sand and ignore it.

Yes, the grid here needs serious upgrades and weather preparedness. ERCOT is a joke. Nobody is happy with how they've been handling things. But that is a whole different conversation.

 

[orpheo]

When things are privately run, they maximize for profit - and preparing for predictable but rare events is costly. If there's nobody telling the company to do something for the public good, why would they? How many of the (partially or fully) state run electrical grids had the same problem with all the winter storms? None. Because when you don't run for profit, you can do things for public good instead. If Texas keeps their private system, I'd expect this same thing to happen again. And again.

As far as 'once in a century' storm . . . heh. I certainly wouldn't bet on that going forward over the next century. Climate change is real, and (while already requiring a level of cognitive dissonance) it's going to get harder and harder to stick your head in the sand and ignore it.

Yeah, exactly this

Water here, in NL, is a utility and not a for-profit firm. My grandmother is 87 years old and she said that when she was young, pipes were already insulated.

 

[jeremy]

this is certainly an awful time for many people effected by the weather, the company i work for is based out of texas so i have lots of co-workers who lots power, had no water, burst pipes and other hardships. covid-19 has been taxing and hard for everyone i know, some much harder than others. lets keep politics out of this discussion

 

[Chris Pile]

BACK TO THE OP..... Your guitars are beautiful. Very well done.

 

[Clint 55]

Suck that your business has been taken out. Stunning pictures as always. Maybe round some fret ends in your down time.

 

[Mincer]

I loves the purples, especially the stratty thing!

 

[GuitarStv]

This one is pretty hot.

 

[NegativeEase]

Hang in there dude, guitars look nice! I've lost of a ton of $$ during the Pandemic too. I'm trying to do anything I can during this free'r time because it will all be gangbusters when it get's cooking again -people will be so stir crazy it will be nuts!

 

[PFDarkside]

I didn’t notice the inlays.