Another long layoff from communicating status - lots of divergent happenings driving change...

As mentioned, a lot of divergent items raising their head and invoking change on this end. Simply put - shit is happening, and I'm losing the time I've planned on dedicating to this project for the next short while. I've also hit a few issues with my very powerful DAW PC and the ever fickle world of device drivers that has me rethinking my workstation strategy.

Here's the list, with associative descriptive text and update below:

1. PC Firewire Interface - Windows 7/8 and the legacy Firewire hub driver issue
• so I get my new Focusrite Saffire interface, plug it in on my Win7 OS with the device drivers and I get a periodic stuttering/static thing happening when playing back audio files. This causes a lot of worry for me of course - I sold the M-Audio device because of driver worries, and now have a device which actually *has* issues with drivers... So I spent the better part of a week configuring BIOS, disabling Hyper-threading, shutting off services, configuring pagefiles on drives, re installing on a larger SSD... there was a ton I did and a lot of angst happening. I got it to a state where I didn't get the behavior anymore - yay! This past Saturday morning I fired up the PC, loaded Cubase 7 and after 30 seconds of playback I get the crackle/stutter again... damn! Back to diagnostic mode again...
2. Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion
• replaced my PRS Dragon IIs I put in (a silly whim) with Seymour Duncan JB/GFS Alnico Gold on bridge/neck. Love the tone of the JB there, learning to become fond of the GFS still. I need to take the guitar to my tech for a true setup... SD Triple Shot rings provided a bit of variety in tones although I need to recheck my soldering by maybe starting with impedance checking with a multimeter. Doesn't give me such a big variation as I expected...
3. Svilpacaster
• some weird oscillation issues likely emanating from the Sustaniac - might need to remove this. JB on the neck also is disappointing me big time - dull and very lower midrangey which doesn't turn my crank at all right now. I'll need to turn this into a weekend rewire project and decide if I want the Sustainiac that much or can I live without it. New pickguard would be nice as well - and I think I'm going to eliminate the minitoggles that have been there since I first built the guitar and go with a standard Strat 5 or a 7 position superswitch.
4. Black Strat
• need to install new tuning machines, fix the blaring 60Hz hum issue... and also install my new roller nut from Fender. I got the tuning machines installed without issue - excellent! I also checked out the tasks to install the roller nut - determine I cant do that myself - ok, well yea... Finally I pull the pickguard off and run a wire from the ground tab in the control cavity to one of the pot covers to eliminate the hum. I was 1/2 successful - I got rid of the hum, but no sound comes out either. Back to pull the pickguard off and check wtf I did here and what to do
5. Gibson Les Paul Studio Gold Top (2011 with the clear finish neck/back)
• this is the clear surprise for me - I pulled the stock P90s and dropped in GFS mini humbuckers a la classic LP Deluxe from the 70's. This sounds great! I still have the option of wiring up push/pull pot switches, but I might just leave it alone since I'm pretty happy with it as it is... I have a lot of other things to fix before I take this on though... :)

Home renovations are the primary focus right now, as I'll become a furniture builder soon building our dining room table, pseudo-California closet systems, erstwhile bedframe & headboard solution, etc... I've repainted two bedrooms to what is agreed to be big improvements - Frogtape really works! But to maintain my sanity I will most definitely need to do some music work in the near future.

Last word - I'm continuing to refine my concept for the next project of new music. It will start off with a lullaby being sung to a young child, drifting off into sleep, and then a single long piece of music that is representative of the dreams & nightmares of the child through a single night of sleep. It will be mostly instrumental, with vocals that will cover off key moments of the piece but the music wont be exclusively reliant on vocals to drive momentum forward. I'm also going to be bringing in more musical influences into the material as I have been messing around with a lot of different alternate tunings and different timbres over the past year or so. Nothing is set in stone, since I'm coming in with an open mind and just jotted down thoughts to drive the composition of the long form piece. There will be a companion project that will take some of the separate movements or sections of the long form piece and build short form songs of them - I liked how Mike Oldfield did this on Five Miles Out taking Taurus 2 on side one and pulling a substantial bit of side two out of it. It will be a very interesting journey I think...