XBUENOXPOWERX: June 2023

Daily Collect

Friday, June 30, 2023

I'm starting to finish off all the pictures that I took for the Chicago trip. Been gathering a lot of work in the last few weeks and had also been busy playing guitar and figuring out stuff for the next record I'm going to release. Hopefully I can come back here and chill with a friend I haven't seen in years.

- Arthur

La Hwa Sa

Thursday, June 29, 2023

So, a couple of years ago I salvaged a guitar that my former boss from Guitar Center was gonna trash. The guitar was in bad shape with all this filth, a missing tuning key, and I think an input jack that was crapping out. Restoring would probably cost an arm and leg for the company so I think my former boss was looking at a loss rather than a gain on this. I took it home and closeted it for years.

Welp... just the other day I found the guitar snoopin' around the closet hallway. And yes the condition of the guitar was at the same state when I found it sitting in the can at the Guitar Center warehouse. For awhile I wanted to have a guitar I could bring to play before work and during lunch to dish out some ideas. I needed something to occupy my time rather than dick around and buy shit during my break times. And when I found this piece of junk I immediately got excited to turn a junker into a worker.

My first objective was to see if the guitar actually outputed sound. I connected it to my amp and started touching the pickups. Luckily the pickups were responsive so it gave me insentive to continue on. I turned the volume and tone knobs up and down to smoothen out the scratchy breakup. There's still a bit of it, but just enough to not be a nuisance. I actually took out the input jack to see if there were any adjustments that needed to be made, but luckily not too much. I think I just bent the part the 1/4 inch plug met to get stronger contact.

Next was to clean the guitar. Already the body suffered quite a bit of dents so banging it on a wall or floor would not make me feel some type of way. I actually did the worst thing and sprayed some clorox bleach on it (and honestly I didn't want any germs staying alive so I hit it with that nice nice house cleaning lol) and began to wipe it down. I also disassembled the tuning keys. The nut on the guitar was almost out of place, but I hit it with a rubber hammer and aligned it with the bridge saddles as best I could. I brushed the bridge saddles with some clorox and a toothbrush and got most of the dirt and grime out. I also cleaned the nickle plated pickups (needs some work, but I'll do more later).

I ordered some cheap tuning machines from Amazon ($20), bought some new strings from my former job, adjusted the action a bit and presto!!!!!!! The guitar came back from the dead. Honestly.... this guitar is pretty sick. The 5-way selector switch needs to be replaced, but for now it's playable. I started playing the guitar right after I had done the adjustments.

Now it doesn't sound anything like "Big Red" (my red stratocaster), but I've never owned a guitar that had two humbuckers on a strat body, let alone, a two humbucker strat with a 5-way selector switch. The tones sound pretty good and with this setup it has a bolder sound for sure on the neck and bridge pickups. Everything in-between doesn't sound too bad as well. I did some research using the Fender Serial Generator and found out its a Fender Blacktop Stratocaster.

This guitar was produced from 2010 - 2014 and it seemed like it was overlooked. The prices on these are still affordable and it seems as though no one really gave a shit about them. And for the the last few weeks I realized this is probably one of my favorite guitars I've played. It's a Mexican Stratocaster, but jeez there's a lot of personality to it. It plays well, sounds good and just has a good weight to it. I'm happy that this thing exists.

Not all great guitars need to be expensive. Sure, buying a guitar with a cool body, paint job and neck type with a high price is something to be desired, but are you playing the guitar for aesthetics or you playing to make sounds? You can do so much with a piece of wood, strings and pickups. And it won't make you sound better if you spend thousands of dollars on a guitar. You gotta put the work in and just get good.

I named her "La Hwa Sa" lol. I love Hwa Sa from Mamamoo and I dedicated this guitar to her. I don't know why, but there's something sexy about it. The sound and look (here I go talking about the aesthetics ha) just told me "La Hwa Sa". I don't know.. whatever. She's a fav of mine.

The guitar plays well enough. And maybe might be my main for certain things I write. It doesn't need to be fancy. It just needs to play well. That's all.

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A post shared by Art Bueno (@buenopower)

Daily Collect

Thursday, June 15, 2023

I always thought that airports were a fascinating place to take pictures. The lighting always seems so captivating to me. I was on my way to meet my girlfriend in Chicago. Yo... that plane ride was so short it was awesome. And the time I was in Chicago was also short lol. Chicago is pretty damn cool and I'll be posting more of those here in the next couple of weeks. Until then enjoy!

- Arthur

Daily Collect

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Sometimes you just find weird shit when you go to the store. I didn't have anything to pair with this image since it just stood alone by being its stupid self. And these are the images that I look for that people pass and don't give a shit about.

I'm hoping to catch up more on these posts during this week. So far this process has been very fun for me and I'm enjoying just finding the dumb in the mundane.

- Arthur

Yeah Man

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

It's been an eventful few weeks heading out and watching shows consistently. Honestly, this has been a great year for influences and creating. Though that I gave myself a bit of a sabbatical to just refresh on things I realize how much of my mind opened up to all these new things. It's been just cool.

Photography is cool. Making pictures is cool. Playing music is cool. Writing songs is cool. Recording songs is cool. All these things I've been doing has been just cool. And I feel like I'm at this point where I don't really need anyone to tell me that these things are not cool. I feel like its cool to share these things with the people I love and letting them just have fun with them. I'm not at all a famous person and just a little nerd in the corner of the internet, but goddamn it this shit is just cool ya know?

Have fun. This is the only time you'll be able to.

- Arthur

Daily Collect

Monday, June 5, 2023

Been away for a bit and not really updating things, but holy cow is it already June. I'm currently sorting through some images and will be doing a lot of editing in the next couple of weeks. There's just been so much happening and I'm glad that I'm busy. Just recently I got to see Yvette Young in an instrumental orchestra setting and got so inspired to write. I think I need to start listening to different things and saying yes to things more. It just seems so much fun.

Anyway. Enjoy the images today. Just some color play.

- Arthur