FriendBurst Blog

Over the weekend, I got the bad news.  The pre-amp on my tenor ukulele was not fixable.  I think I was somewhat at fault, as it hasn’t worked since I replaced the connector for the 9V battery. I explained this to the nice guys as GuitarVille shop when I brought it in, and I was actually a bit surprised as the repair guy told me nothing could be done to fix it.

Mind you, the uke is still playable, it’s just no longer something I can plug into an amp.  I was kind of disappointed in its condition when I got it back.  There’s a decal that one has to peel back to get at the screws to access the pre-amp; that decal was still half off.  The screws to hold the pre-amp in were still loose too.  In fact, it was a bit of a design flaw in that once you loosen the little wood screws to get at the innards, they’ll never hold like they did originally.  The battery itself (it’s just a 9V, but it was new) was gone.  I asked for a screwdriver to tighten up the screws.  They gave me another battery.

The store manager was there behind the counter and sensed my mild annoyance.  We got to talking and he said that since his store does a lot of business with Oscar-Schmidt ukuleles, he’s talk to the factory to see what could be done.  I was thinking maybe I might get some store credit or a discount on a new one.  This was the same store (at a new location) where I bought it when my first ukulele was retired due to an insurmountable addction to zinc supplements.

See the following video to see how I got the Oscar Schmidt in the first place.  Zinc addiction is a terrible condition.

A couple hours later, I was still out and about and got a message from the store manager.  Bring the uke back, he told me.  They’re going to take care of me.  Well…  Oscar-Schmidt stood behind their product!  I’m getting a brand new ukulele in just a few days!

I handed over my old one without quite realizing the full impact of what I was doing.  It wasn’t until after I left that it hit me, “OMG, I’ll never hold that uke in my hands ever again!”… The thousands of hours I’ve played it.  How many songs?  How many videos made with that uke?  A couple hundred, at least with hundreds of thousands of views.  And now, it’s gone.  Wow.  If I would have actually realized what I was doing, I would have sat down and played a set there in the store before handing it over.

Gosh… I can’t really think of my favorite song that I ever performed on the Oscar, so to conclude the blog, and to say good-bye to my Oscar-Schmidt (I never did give it it’s own name out of respect for Wanguruwe) I’ll just post the longest….