2019 - Move to Cádiz, Split-Kings

The new, small workshop in the Calle Medellin

When you move into the premises of a former nail studio, at first you have a strange feeling. But with a fresh coat of paint and furnished rooms, everything gets its own identity. Shortly after, a band saw and a belt sander were added, as well as about 20 guitars and basses from my old workshop.

Unfortunately, I had gotten some stuff out of my old workshop, and while I was putting together a semi-circular IKEA folding table, I had a sudden feeling as if someone was pushing a ballpoint pen into my fifth lumbar vertebra. I could hardly bend down after that and at first I assumed that it was common lower back pain. First acupuncture, then a chiropractor followed. I could only endure the cab rides lying down in the back seat, because sitting upright increased the pain considerably. And the only thing that helped in the end were lots of painkillers, ibuprofen and paracetamol.

I thought that this would go away and continued to pack things in my old workshop for the move to Cádiz. Then Fred Garcia came along, our former French distributor, who had sold his company shortly before and retired. He helped me a lot. Fred is a real friend!

Unfortunately, the situation got worse and worse. The three classic things happened: hospital, MRI and a herniated disc diagnosis, so they gave me a few days' treatment, some injections and a painkiller called Tramadol, probably an opium derivative.

NAMM

During NAMM I was not well at all, with constant dizzy spells and once I almost passed out, thanks to the fucking Tramadol.

Apart from that we had produced some pink guitars for fundraisers etc. in the matter of "Fighting Breast Cancer". And I, the truffle pig, had sniffed out and discovered a fabulous Japanese restaurant on a trip to Fullerton: SUSHI POINT. This place looked pretty shabby from the outside, but I was hungry and there was nothing else. And surprise: The chef made extremely creative rolls and various sushi cuts of the very best quality. We all went there several times.

Back in Madrid

Back from NAMM, the first move was also due and I had hired a professional company. The organizer of this company had inspected everything and had estimated two huge trucks were necessary for the transport. The first one was to bring one half of the inventory of my Madrid workshop to Cádiz, then a few days later the second one. My physical condition deteriorated more and more and I was often screaming in pain several times. It's really a bad thing when the disc at the 5th vertebra presses on the sciatic nerve. The pain goes down your right leg from your ass to your foot. In addition, there is always a somewhat numb feeling in the toes and also in the left foot.
Early in the morning the first truck arrived. Because of my bad condition I limited myself to conducting: This one comes with me, yes, this one better with the second truck. The boys were really hustling, especially with the pin router.

Madrid – Cádiz and back

We had reserved two tickets for the train to Cádiz. A good four hours for this trip. The trains in Spain are always punctual to the minute. The Deutsche Bundesbahn should follow their example!
Paloma had a bad flu and was unable to get on the train with me. But that was my luck. I had two seats and I could, even if awkwardly, lay down with my knees together. From time to time, I had to moan anyway, although my fellow travelers proved to be very sympathetic. The Spanish are simply nice people.

In Cádiz, I lay down on the back seat of the cab and dragged myself the few meters from Plaza Antonio to the apartment in Calle Ancha. At night it got so bad again with the pain that I was screaming again and had to call the emergency service at 4 am. They came quickly and drove me to the hospital, where they gave me a strong injection and other painkillers, so that I was back in the apartment at seven in the morning.

Two hours later, Cicero and Fernando, the truckers, reported that they were in the harbor and would now rent a van to repack the cargo. The crazy thing about Cádiz is that the alleys are so narrow that a truck cannot enter them. The first load was mostly stuff for my workshop and some stuff for the first floor. Another problem was that the floor was not finished yet, so everything had to be brought to my workshop. In fact, nothing was finished in this house that should have been finished. The only attractive thing was the façade, which was of no use at that moment. A chaos, a nightmare! Luckily, the first thing that was carried in was my deck chair, so that I could conduct the orchestra again in a somewhat comfortable position.
Fortunately, I was able to postpone the next moving date by a month due the construction of the floors. After that I took another cab to the station, got in the train and huddled down in two seats. In Madrid I got off the train, walked 80 meters and had to lie down on the concrete floor for a few minutes. In Germany, they would certainly have regarded me as a bum. But here everything was fine.

Flutsch-Neck

Slowly the disc in my back became more bearable and I started to work on my new project in the new Madrid workshop, which had the working title "Flutsch(Flight)-Neck". Complete nonsense that the neck must lie in a "pocket". With precise milling and three screws you can get the neck securely attached and can now let your fingers slide up to the last fret without any problems. I also finalized the design of the Split-King caps and had the first samples ready. This - including my new Split-King pickups should be an extremely versatile guitar.

Split-King Humbucker - Revolution in Pickup Design

Finally I had the design of the Split-King pickups including caps ready and my first samples. Split-King: This is a two double pickup, which contains an authentic Fender coil with Alnico single magnets and in addition a PAF coil with adjustable polepieces and magnets underneath. Until it all fit perfectly, I fiddled around a lot, winding coils and checking various magnets. But then: Both coils in series offer a rich humbucker sound. However, if you switch off the PAF coil, comes a full official single coil sound. Everyone should know that if you split a standard humbucker, nothing really audible comes out of the remaining coil. Splitting is shiting! Construction and winding values simply do not allow a single "Gibson" coil to produce a usable sound! It just sounds thin and dull. But a Fender coil is just a Fender coil, and it bangs! And sensation: despite the very different construction of the two coils, it doesn't hum at all in humbucker mode. And I had one version for the bridge position and one for the neck.

"JM"- design

Cádiz again

Now the second load of the move. Fortunately, this time Cicero and Fernando had a fully functional loading crane with them, which they installed in the courtyard.
But the chaos continued: The wooden floor on the second floor had not yet been finished, so everything that was supposed to go to the top had to stay on the second floor. But we could already put a little bit of something in its place.

Ronnie & Mike

How nice to see Ronnie with a Pink Pearl on TV, and on YouTube I discovered a video where Mike Campbell, who had been signed by Fleetwood Mac after Tom Petty's death, played a Rezobro.

Eclectica

What enchanting Madrid Chicas. Here Silvia, the girl on the right, with a pink Fullerton!

Tremolo-Stopper

As I mentioned earlier, I had already developed a stopper for our Tremola tremolo years ago. At that time it didn't make much sense, because guitarists didn't tune the low E string down to D for certain songs very often. The other five strings of a guitar with tremolo are physically out of tune when you do that.  Nowadays, however, tuning down is a popular practice.  Of course, these five strings should be able to remain in tune in this event.  So I took my old system out of the garage of discarded inventions and developed it further. The principle of such stoppers is a push away zero point, in this case created by two adjacent surfaces which slip apart when tremoloing up. I had sent our man Jörg Driesner a video showing the function. He added the great idea that it would be even better if you could deactivate this stop. Therefore I mounted it a "twistable" position and enabled the stop mode position with a 2mm pin into which the stopper could be snapped.

 

On the right our Dooros guitarist Javi Pedreira, who was immediately totally enthusiastic about this device.

Earing joy & burglary

Here above left Pablo Carbonell

Pablo is a very well known musician, singer and comedian in Spain and a very likeable person. He once wrote a song that he did not want to publish himself.  He got Raimundo Amador to record it, and in the end it was a great success for both of them. The refrain of this song was: Que gustito para mir orejas! In German: What joy for my ears! You don’t really get it right away, but in the context of the lyrics it turns out that the singer's head, or rather his ears, are pressed between the thighs of a woman during the act of love. Oh how wonderful, these Spaniards!

There is another story about Pablo: He lived in Zahara de las Atunes, the house next door to Gran Wyoming, which Paloma and I were allowed to occupy during the renovation of our new home in Cadiz. One day, upon arrival, we noticed that something was wrong: pasta on the entrance stairs, the door unlocked, the big TV no longer in the living room. No signs of burglary but various things scattered on the floor. Strange. I opened the patio door, went out onto the lawn that lines the swimming pool, looked to the left on Pablo's terrace and discovered that the door glass had been smashed. I entered carefully and suddenly found myself in total chaos. Everything torn out of the drawers, scattered on the floor to the top floor. And leftovers of food on a table in the basement. The burglars certainly had taken their time here.

We immediately called the Gardia Civil in Barbate (Atun y chocolate - representing tuna and hashish), which arrived about an hour later. And of course I called Chechu (Wyoming) and told him that someone had obviously broken into his house. At a minimum the TV had been stolen. "Is the guitar still there?" was his first question. "None to be found in the house," I briefly replied. It was not exactly a cheap classical guitar, very annoying. Chechu gave us Pablo's phone number, with the hint that he once gave him a spare key to his house.
So the burglars, as the Guardias concluded, must have entered Wyoming's house with this key, where they took valuables. Furthermore, during our last stay, I had bought a solid lifting tool to repair a heavy door, which was no longer in the basement. They must have used it to lift the TV out of the wall. Anyway, this hoist was now in Pablo's house, where it seems that they had used it to “liberate” other things. Pablo and Chechu were both very prominent Spaniards, so we had daily police visits for the next few days. But neither the guitar or the TV ever turned up again.  Pablo soon sold his house.

Costa del Sol

This area between Cádiz and Tarifa is simply fantastic!

Especially in summer, Zahara des los Atunes has its special charm, but between the end of September and the end of April it becomes more of a ghost town. Then the "Almadraba" begins here: Fishermen use a traditional method to get tuna out of the water, which come to the Mediterranean Sea at this time of the year to spawn. They do this with a sophisticated technique: the tuna are encircled with nets and several smaller boats and then hoisted on board. 85% of them are said to go immediately to Japanese ships, where the "Atun" is frozen and then auctioned at horrendous prices at the fish market in Tokyo. The act of killing is much more humane than with the Italians. The Spaniards only hit the animals on the head so that their blood remains in the body. The Italians let them bleed to death - red colored sea ...
Raw tuna in finest Almadraba quality can be enjoyed here in the "TRASTEO". The chef is extremely creative and also runs the restaurant "KULTO" in Madrid.

technique ...

New studs for our 74mm wrap-around bridge. The top side of the bridge could be pressed tightly against the bottom side by screws from above. And a 1 key holder.

Sitarizer

Oh, my "old" sitarizer brackets for Telecaster came back into the program.

A design for Paul Landers, the Rammstein-Guitarist.

Hannover

The company Christmas party in Hannover. Here in the middle Christian Neumann, head of a factory of technical springs. He always makes us all kinds of springs and otherwise works for companies like McLaren, Mercedes, Bentley and BMW.

And new at göldo:

And there was no corona virus yet ...