I'm about to go to bed. Christ. How did it get to be 5:28am?

I visited Dawg yesterday. I wanted to drop by and say hello. I haven't seen him or Lea in a long, long time. It's literally been years since I've seen Lea. I'm not much of a friend, I guess. I keep meaning to drop by, but there's always so much to do when we come home. And, of course, I'm really good at being lazy and making up lots of excuses.

I got Dawg to give me his Cat bass. I gave him an Aria Pro II Cat Bass a good while ago. Dawg thought about it and decided that it must have been about 2 years ago. But upon reflecting on this a bit, we reached the conclusion that I gave it to him about 10 years ago. I don't know which of us hit closest to the truth. I can't recall. It seems like I gave him that bass before I moved to Florida (that was in 1991).

Anyway, I plan to finally finish the bass. When I gave it to him, I had just put an Alembic Activator P-Bass style pickup on it, and intended to mate a Jazz style pickup to it later. This never happened. It's bothered me all these years. I feel like I gave him a piece of junk or something, and I want to do right by Dawg. I want to do right by the bass, too. Sometime during the next 6 weeks or so I'm going to put some Seymour-Duncan pickups on it and get Andy (the guitar tech from Sam Ash in Charlotte) to wire it and set it up. Hopefully he can turn it into a playable bass. I'll probably give Dawg a little practice amp when I take the bass back to him.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I was disappointed at the shape the bass was in, but I would have to concede that wasn't a very useable bass as I gave it to him. I have no right to complain that it had a thick layer of dust and ancient strings on it. Hopefully if he gets it back with a practice amp and a case he'll take better care of it next time. Of course, I'll take a picture of it for the collection before I give it back (Dawg still maintains that the bass is not his, but is on extended loan).

I thought for a long time about what to do with the Alembic pickup that was on the bass. My original plan was to have Alembic Activator pickups in a P/J configuration. But Alembic stopped packaging their Activators as singles. Now you have to buy a set of 2 (or at least their web site only shows sets). A set of P/J type Activators run about $700 now. I'm sorry, Dawg, but that's just too much for a bass that is mostly going to sit around. The Seymour-Duncans will be much cheaper, and they'll be really good pickups. Anyway, I've decided to give the Alembic pickup to my cousin, Mark. He has a B.C. Rich bass with only a single P-bass pickup on it. So, hell. I'm giving Mark an early birthday present. He still plays, and will get a lot more out of the pickup than Dawg ever will. I'm never going to use the pickup. I'd hate to see the thing go to waste.

Ok. So I'm babbling. I should go to bed.