It’s actually been ages since I was there, and it’s only the second time I’ve been but it is definitely one of my favourite places in the world so I thought it was worth a mention.

I went out there with some friends to go to the Primavera Sound music festival, which is now one of my favourite things in the world.

This is due in no small part to the incredible line-up some of whom, like The Dan Deacon Ensemble and Jesus Lizard, were unforgettable.

On a more boring note it was also incredibly well organized. Hardly any queues for the toilet, and even less queueing at the bar.
The only thing that made it a bit less ‘festivaly’ is that there is no camping – it’s up to you to find somewhere to stay in the city – and it was a much better experience for it. We managed to rent short let apartments for a week, so during the three days of the festival you got to do a bit of exploring, site-seeing or just plane old wandering around during the day before making your way to the festival when it began at 6pm. It felt like more than a festival.

I think if there was camping we would have spent the whole time on the fetsival site and not seen anything else, which is fine if you’re at Reading but a shame if you’re in Barcelona. It’s a beautiful city, even the new bits. Mind you the sun, and the being on holiday probably helps.

Anyway, no point really. Just that I highly recommend the Primavera Sound festival and Barcelona which is now pretty high up on my ‘places I want to live’ list.
More photos and videos here and here respectively.

Its finished! More photos in this flickr set.

Rather pleased with it. Sounds fantastic too, much better than expected.

CTS wiring kit, with short shaft 500k pots, and orange drop tone caps.

Irongear Alchemist 90 pickups. They’re humbucker sized p90′s, but they only come in chrome so I had to spray them gold, not sure how long that will last though!
They just sound amazing, especially with some decent wiring.

Explorer

Took the opportunity to change the machine heads and bridge/stop-tail on my Epiphone (Korina I think, not sure as it was second hand) Explorer too. The old stock gold ones were replaced by chrome Wilkinson locking tuners. No idea why they used the gold ones in the first place, the chrome is much better on an explorer.

Replaced the bridge with a chrome one, but couldn’t remove the original sockets from the guitar, they weren’t gonna budge.

The first step is to replace the machine heads. The old ones were a bit rubbish, probably because they were old. I ordered Wilkinson Deluxe tuners from the good people at Axesrus. I’m sure there are better ones on the market but despite the guitars sentimental value, it’s not really worth spending too much money on it.
Because they are ‘vintage style’ they had to have reducers so that thay would fit the holes in the headstock.

I decided to stick with the black and gold because thats what the guitar was like originally. Hopefully the gold colour will calm down a bit soon.
Again because they’re ‘vintage style’ the new tuning keys also have different fixing holes than the old ones, so I had to drill new ones. I just did it by eye, but I think they lined up pretty well.

Next up is a complete re-wire, including new pickups.

They’re talented guys, check out their Vimeo channel for more.