When ARTE came to town . . . .

A clip of the ARTE documentary in which we featured . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njg768LqvOE

Just aired last week, April 2013, 6 months after the real deal . . . .

Aftermath . . .

We arrived late and bleary for a midday breakfast at Macondo . . .

We returned to clean up the workshop, receive our certificates and have a final jam together . . .

Beer o'clock was late today. In fact for some, it never arrived!

We went for a light lunch at Macondo . . .

. . . .and prepared to say our goodbyes . .

We had a final photoshoot in the late afternoon and those guitars looked GREAT!

Eric popped in to say goodbye to his spiritual leader, Bob Baldon . . . .

We dropped Daniel off at the port to go back to Ibiza to fly back to Dusseldorf, we said goodbyes to Frank and Peter, thanked Eki for his patience and skill and returned a casa one more time before my early flight home to London and then directly to Munich . . .

But it was the seventh day, and we rested . . .

But still had the energy to run through our set to our audience of one . .

The last evening was it's usual stunning self and I said goodbye to the Formentera sunset for the last time . . .

No more hasta . . .  .

Sadly . .

Day 19 - Finale, LIVE

Another surprisingly long day but we had a LOT of fun . .

It all started with another cafe solo . . .

Eric had finished is bass but decided to make a thumb rest (don't ask) . . .

. . . and starting building tool cabinets for sale at 5 Euros each . . .

It is probably the time to share that instructions in the workshop were always VERY precise . . .

I had real work to do in finally assembling the pickups, completing the wiring . . .

. . . attaching the neck, fitting the bridge and tailpiece, finishing the back cover, putting on the strings . . .

. . .  and MAGIC . . . . It actually worked!

Eric decided to get a bit arty and take a knob's eye view of the Jaguar top . .

Then of course is the fiddly stuff of ensuring the neck is still straight under string tension and checking octaves, string heights and relative power from bridge and neck pickups . . .

We jammed and rehearsed for tonight's gig . . .

We signed the guest book . .

We had a quick lunch with rose wine, fundador and hierbas in Can Forn.

We jammed again . . .

We popped home to get showered and changed and returned to the workshop at 9pm. The team were getting nervous so we rehearsed again . . .

Then off for the gig in the placa de l'eglesia in San Ferran, Formentera as a preview for thre big festival next weekend.

We had a beer and a hierbas to calm our nerves then after the local Pagesse band stopped we took to the stage  . . . .

Live at the El Mocambo it wasn't, but it was pretty good. No-one walked off, more people came into the square and we performed to about 100 people and the TV crew from ARTE who filmed us for their documentary . .

When we finished we got requests for more, so we performed the 'Hierbas Blues' . . .

The ARTE crew demanded we sign away all rights to our TV image . . .

Then they were happy . . .

We went to the bar and celebrated in our new found fame . . .

At 1am we went to the 'Irish' to watc h Chimichurri who were excellent as always. Sadly we had a bigger crowd than them but that was not due to talent just the time of night . .

We got home about 4am and the hardest of our team got to bed at 6am . . .

It is now Saturday morning at beer o'clock and we are cleaning the workshop and saying our goodbyes . .

I am waiting for Eric to sober up to get me the photos and VIDEO to make this post more interesting . . YES, SOME HAVE NOW ARRIVED AND THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED !

Hasta!

Day 18 - Bajo Completo

It was another LONG day . .  .

We started off feeling pretty jaded after a short night's sleep but quickly hit our rhythm . . .

When we arrived in the workshop you could touch the oil fumes from the previous night. No naked flames allowed!

We took our oiled bodies and necks and then wax-oil sanded them with the finest sandpaper you can imagine, essentially standard A4 printer paper.

This produced the finest, smoothest, polished finish . . .

We also worked up a frenzy completing the fretboard with tiny shapings of each fret end, fret levelling and polishing. Fret filing is a tricky business . . .

And can be surprisingly dangerous!

But it looked damn good afterwards!

We also worked hard on finishing the headstock with the machine head tuning peggy things . .

We branded our guitars in deference to the professor, Eki . .

Some jamming / quasi-rehearsing kicked off during the late morning . .

We stopped for a light lunch of chuletas di cordero at Can Forn . .

We returned invigorated for a rocking blues jam . . .

We worked late into the night, completing the assembly of the pickups and deep-frying them (don't ask!) . . .

Yesterday's pizza boxes came to use, as always, as the wiring diagrams . .

Then the wiring work started . . .

Eric completed his Precision Bass and it sounds AWESOME (as our American cousins say)!

We continued working till 11.30 and left the rest of the gang still at it. We returned for a late night nibble with some vinha musica . .

Last day tomorrow. A lot to do . . . and a gig . . .

Hasta . .