GEAR LUST #3: SPARE PARTS!

i play Premier drums. they are from England, and span both pre- and post-metric time periods. they are great drums, but they are English...which means they require maintenance. everytime i take my kit out to a show, the last ritual before heading home is to prowl the stage looking for nearly-impossible-to-find, itty-bitty parts that might have fallen off the kit during the performance.

a few years ago, there was a posting on eBay that was a dream find - a UK drum shop was closing, and the retiring owner was selling off the contents of the catch-all parts drawer...by the kilo! over the decades, whatever little bits were left after a repair, etc. was tossed into this drawer. i won all this stuff, and never regretted paying a small fortune for what amounted to 22.2 lbs. of shrapnel.

i also play '60's era Vox guitar amps. like most manufacturers, Vox took every cost-cutting corner they could find, which often meant building their stuff with odd lot fasteners, British army surplus screws & nuts and other components they could find on the cheap. nevermind that the UK at the time had a bewildering array of thread standards - Whitworth, Imperial, British Standard, British Standard Fine, etc. - that were all incompatable with each other, but got the gear out of the factory and into a music store for sale. well, this stuff ain't maintenance-free either, so the avid collector needs to acquire tap-&-die sets for self-manufacturing speaker baffle nuts, spare grill cloth & handles...in short, as many spare parts as can be found. North Coast Music makes quality repros of some of these parts, but not always to the original spec or thread size = thus one is on a perpetual search to find The Guy as in "i know the guy who has what you need". in fact, knowing The Guy is a kind of trading currency in the world of collectors - he or she with the most The Guys, wins.

and then there are the antique recording machines i also collect. oh...wait...you want them to work? well, then you better follow the Noah's Arc Rule - for every machine you want to actually use, you better have at least one extra of the same make & model to cannabalize for parts.

this is also how you become The Guy...top of the food chain...which is a very good thing to be.

NP: The Daily Show - live from Ohio State University in Columbus. they did a special Battlefield Ohio themed show, which was both hilarious and painful.

PEEVE DE JOUR: gimmegimmegimme. nothinginreturnnothinginreturnnothinginreturn.

JOIE DE JOUR: autumn at Dun Giggen (pix coming)

N.B.A.T.W.P.:

Amy Rigby at The Beachland Ballroom in Clevo Nov. 2nd/8pm sharp

http://www.beachlandballroom.com/

cb...where are you?



OHIO