Bonus Post - Behind The Scenes Pre-Show Prep

This Is Why We Test Things…

When I play jazz/blues on my harp I like to use an amplified sound setup. There are a lot of cables and connectors and a pre-amp/equalizer and an effects unit and a speaker etc. And everything needs to be checked out the day before.

Today I was testing quarter inch cables and suddenly my pre-amp just up and died.

I tried new batteries but no go. I suspected something had become disconnected but could not find it.

Which let to me rooting through all my mother’s old tech that I keep stashed away because I can’t bear to throw it out but don’t even know if any of it works.

Well today was the day to find out.

About 45 minutes later the verdict was in - almost nothing functional but one unit almost worked until it sort of didn’t.

Sigh.

Time to make a trip to the local Music Center to see if they could either repair my unit or sell me something equivilent.

The repairman is not on site until Monday (of course he isn’t because my show is tomorrow) but they opened the thing up and tried some stuff just to humor me.

No luck but they were able to sell me something similar that would get me through tomorrow’s show at least.

But then - the sun shone on me - and my son, who is pretty much a genius at fixing these sorts of things - came through and saved the day. He disappeared into the basement with his trusty “I fix a lot of gaming tech with this” tool kit, fired up the soldering iron, and got my pre-amp working again.

Which is very important to me because my old Fishman contributes a very specific sound to my setup that was missing from the replacement.

But that new Boss Pre-amp will be in the gig bag tomorrow just in case!

In Addition - Cleaning A Filthy Harp!

My main jazz harp has not been out on a concert gig since before Covid and, while I wasn’t looking, it got VERY dirty and dusty. Years of hand grime and just general ickiness.

It was time for a deep clean.

An Ecloth set took off the major grime on the body and soundboard followed by a rubdown with lemon oil and a deep dive into the carved bits with lemon oil soaked qtips.

All ready to go!

BTW - this harp is a custom design made specially for me by Venus Harps back in the day. They did a couple similar ones but mine was the first to have selective bronzing on the bits of carving that I designated and Wally Krasicki never let another harp leave the shop with exactly the same bronzing pattern. As a bonus he let me design my own decoration on the soundboard. Heck, I actually got to paint it myself :-)

It’s been a lot of years but the harp still looks fantastic when I clean it up!

Hope to see some of you tomorrow at the White Lilac at 1:00 pm!