Derelict

The more time I spend on this weblog, the more I begin to realize how much like my psyche this site begins to resemble. By this, I mean, that this place -- much like my mind -- is a total mess, unkempt, broken, and in need of a major overhaul. I have been trying to motivate myself (when there's time) to add tags to all the blog posts, but that has since been tossed at the bottom of the priority heap. I've been trying to give this site a facelift, but unfortunately it continues to recede... not unlike my hairline.

I continue to convince myself that things are going to change, and they will in two weeks. I hope I can find the motivation and desire to make this site, and the others I maintain to appear in the way that I have been envisioning. But that has much more to do with how much energy I have (and how many daytime game-shows I insist on watching), than how motivated I am.

Most of the weblinks situated on the sidebar are broken. Tags are missing from more than 300 posts. I finally fixed a broken picture of me, and it took me how long? It was only today I realized that the image hosting site I was dependent on a scent few years go went tits up God-only-knows-how-long-ago. It was a damn good thing that I have kept backups of this site, as I have managed to retain 95% of the images that disappeared into the black hole known as the internet. Still, I have to re-upload every image manually -- and after some 20 minutes of frustration, I managed only to resurrect about a half-dozen images.

Once April 1st hits, things are going to be totally different. Say goodbye to MC Fro, the tree-hugging hippie, and say hello to MC Fro the Trailer-Trash Hermit. It's probably just as good; I likely destroyed more trees in my tenure as an Environmental Consultant than I managed to save. But that's another story for another day.

It's time to start cleaning up everything. This includes my house, my yard, my car, my website, my mind, and my life.

Response to J.T. Massacre

[Ed. Note: J.T. Massacre left a comment on my post: "Status of the Makeover". I felt a response to him was worthy of its' own post, so here it is:]

J.T.:

I am glad to hear that you recently purchased a set of Canwoods. I hope they sound as great as mine do. Sorry to hear that like mine, your Canwoods were also "well enjoyed" by a previous owner.

I hope you managed to look at my initial post: "How many drumsets does a drummer need?", as this post in particular has pictures that show in detail the condition of the shells, especially with respect to the finish.

You mentioned you wanted to re-lacquer your drum shells. I have a simple question for you -- were you planning on re-staining your drum shells, or were your planning on keeping the original color?

If your shells are in a similar condition to mine, and you plan on keeping the original stain, I have some bad news for you.

I have been involved in several discussions with "wood experts" (i.e. carpenters, luthiers, and a number of on-line drum discussion forums), and the consensus is that the deep gouging that is apparent in my drum set will not be remedied by re-lacquering the drum. The drum will have to be sanded smooth, re-stained, and then re-lacquered.

When I said in my previous post that a drum can be re-lacquered without adversely affecting the stain is true. It is a very delicate process of using chemical strippers to remove the lacquer, then re-applying a lacquer spray, and buffing to a high-gloss shine. But this will only remove superficial scratches -- I sadly only learned this very recently.

So now I am in the situation where I have to decide if I want to venture into the world of full-blown drum-shell restoration. If these drums have to come apart one more time, I had better "do it right" this time around.

I will continue to document my work on this drumkit. You may however get some benefit from the links below:

• Join the Yahoo! group: Drumzilla's Lair. There are many posts dealing with drum restoration (many of the discussions instigated by me), who was seeking the very advice you are:
  
  
• Visit Vintagedrum.com. There are a number of links within that deal with drum restoration.
  
  
• A fellow named Big Fred built a snare from scratch. Though this project is beyond the scope of yours, he did discuss in detail, the process of staining and finishing the drum shell. He also has a large number of pretty pictures to drool at.
  

I had other web links related to drum restoration, but I just can't seem to find them right now. The links above are a good place to start though.

I of course, will be discussing the trials and tribulations of refinishing my Canwood drumkit on here.

1095 Days And Counting

Three years ago to the day, I created the first post in this weblog.

In those three years, this website has gone through many growing pains, and many redesigns.

Each year a posted an image similar to this and would discuss how a bright(er) future for my little corner of cyberspace existed just around the corner.

Ok. So I'm no market analyst. But I have seen trends develop over the three years. And one of the apparent trends is the slump in visitors during the summer. July always seems to be the low point of the year with the fewest number of visits. Everything seems to turn around, with March and April being very strong months.

I would like to think my readership is getting stronger. My argument for this, is that even though this year's traffic is comparable to last year's, I have written far fewer posts. I would consider myself lucky if I write three posts a month.

In another respect, because of the diversification of the site, news related to the Savoys or Tung N' Groove is now posted on their respective webpages instead of here. I think this negatively affects traffic to this particular site, however increasing overall traffic. I however, do not compare and contrast the web traffic between the other sites.

The upgrade to Blogger Beta (which is the new Blogger now) is apparently beneficial. Those who query search engines such as Yahoo! or Google with specific keywords are flocking to my site. The meta-tags built into the new blogger is assisting in this. Popular keywords in the past few weeks have been Tongue N Groove and Canwood. This is adding to increased traffic I otherwise would not have received. I could only expect that once I go through the archives and add the proper tags, I may just as well increase my traffic in that respect. In those three years I have written about nearly everything under the sun.

If you examine the market, the number of weblogs available to the public has grown exponentially. I do not have the exact numbers, nor to I care to look for them at this moment, but I would not be surprised if the number of weblogs have increased tenfold since I began writing in 2004. It also occurs to me that the traffic to blogs have diminished, given the rise in popularity of social networking sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and FaceBook.

No I do not have a MySpace account, and I don't plan on making one in the foreseeable future. It's just another website to maintain, and it seems to me, it's merely a popularity contest, with little substance. I can't afford to waste my time sending instant messages to people I do not know, just because I linked to them, or they linked to me and call me "friend". I have a full-time job, I have a fledging musical career that I consider a full-time job. I have far too many hobbies and interests than available free time.

In three years, one would think that I have finally "found" my voice. I really can't agree with this. I think one's voice and opinion -- especially with respect to personal journals -- is a constantly growing and changing thing. I really believe that this is a personal journey, and given such, in a years' time, this blog may be completely different than what it is today. It certainly is much different than what it was in years past.

Overall, I still think that it is worth my time to continue to write. Like music, any level of creativity is good for the mind, and the soul. That being said, I believe I will continue to blog throughout the year, even if it may only be 2-3 times per month.

Status of the Makeover

The reclamation, uh restoration continues on my new Canwoods.

For 2-3 weeks now, whenever time can spare, I am pulling apart my drums, cleaning, tweaking, tuning, polishing, and replacing damaged parts on them. With each part I replace, with each piece of chrome I polish, and with each drum I clean, the drumkit looks better, and sounds better that it ever did -- that is since I have become its' rightful owner.

As of today, each drum has been completely disassembled, the bearing edges cleaned of gunk, the drum shells cleaned with Windex and/or wood cleaner (also remember that Windex cures all that ails you).

All drumheads have been replaced including the resonant heads, which are often neglected. An Evans EQ pad now provides the desireable amount of muffling I wished in the bass drum. All tuning lugs have been greased with petroleum jelly. New stands and hardware has been purchased, all chrome components have been cleaned and buffed to a gloss shine with chrome polish. A new snare strainer has been replaced, as the old strainer was damaged beyond repair, as well as a 50-strand snare installed on the underside of the drum. The tom mount on the bass drum has been upgraded with new parts. Lastly, new bass pedals, hi-hat stands, and snare stands have been purchased to accommodate my new kit.

Given the fact that I have spent between 3-4 hours cleaning each drum, you might say I have already invested a lot of care and attention to my new babies. In fact, I have spent much more time restoring them, than I have had playing them.

Though the drums look a lot better, and sound a lot better than what they did when I first received them, all is not finished. There is still a lot of work to be done on them before I can consider the restoration complete. The following details what still needs to be done:

The bass drum hoops need replacement. I would like to determine a way I can stain replacement hoops to match the color scheme currently on the drums. This will prove to be difficult, as I would think only a master craftsman would be able to create an exact match.

The bearing edges need to be evaluated. I am fresh out of large, smooth, perfectly flat surfaces such as a granite slab.

Some hardware still needs to be replaced. The triple-flanged hoops on the snare drum will likely need replacement, as they are rusted. I may consider replacing them with die-cast hoops, but those are very expensive. There are a few tuning lug casings which require replacement on the snare. I may as well just redo them all.

I am missing only 1 piece of hardware. This is the ever-important throne. I have already identified what I will buy, but it does not come cheap.

The biggest job of all will be redoing the lacquer finish, which (I hope) will mask all the scratches, gouges, dings, dents, and other imperfections of the finish. My research has concluded that the restoration of the lacquer finish, without affecting the stain of the drums, is possible. This is also very risky, as I could really mess up the appearance of the drums, if I do not express due diligence where required. The end result will be -- if I may say so -- breathtaking.

If I have very little to do this summer, it is likely that I may be able to accomplish the entire restoration project by the time the Savoys return from their summer hiatus.

Not only am I looking forward to playing my Canwoods on the gig; I can't wait to record with them.