The easy way to cut a Florida electric bill for cooling by more than half
For a good chunk of my New England life, I lived with no A/C whatsoever because it simply wasn't required. Only for maybe 1 to 2 weeks out of the year did you really feel the heat and cranked up A/C if you had it.
It's during the winter months that New England living is most expensive primarily due to the heating oil bill. It's absolutely required to keep the pipes at a minimum 55F, else they'll freeze and you have no running water.
As crazy as this sounds, the best course of action to save cash on heating oil during winters in New England is to use an oil-filled electric radiator. You set the house thermostat to 55F so the pipes don't freeze, put the radiator in the bedroom, set to as low of a setting as possible to stay comfortable and the heating oil cost for the rest of the dwelling won't skyrocket.
Florida has the exact opposite issue. The winter months are the most pleasant because on most days you don't need to run A/C. But from April at the time I write this until about mid-September, people are cranking up A/C units everywhere and spending huge dollars just to cool their houses and apartments.
I live in a 2-bedroom apartment, and my electric bill last month was $57. That's about as low as you can get it in Florida. And bear in mind that cost includes running cycles of my own electric clothes washer and electric dryer every month.
How do I keep my electric bill so low? I know fans and know how to use water for cooling effectively.
Knowing the difference between air cooling and air conditioning
In simple terms, cooling the air cools but adds humidity. Conditioning the air cools and does not add humidity.
The most common way to cool the air is by use of an evaporative cooler. And I can tell you right now that this does not work in Florida because there's too much moisture in the air for it to have any effect.
Dirt cheap easy ways to get cool without A/C
Fact: Most of the time you don't need A/C at all, even in Florida.
More often than not, if you want a cooler room, all you need is moving air - if it's the right kind.
"The right kind?"
Yes. I'll explain.
Ceiling fans for most people are worthless if that's the only fan you have. It doesn't matter whether it's pushing air down or up because there's simply not enough air flow going on.
A combination of window fans, pedestal, box and/or ceiling fans with a periodic splash of water however can make all the difference.
Most fans on medium setting will only use around 50 watts per fan at most. So if you ran two fans, one in the window and a pedestal, and ran that 24 hours a day, that's 2.4 kWh a day or around 72 kWh a month.
To put this in comparison, a window-mounted 9,000 BTU/hr air conditioner run only 8 hours per day eats up 321 kWh a month on average. If it's a central air system, the same 8 hours a day for a month spikes to 857 kWh a month.
I state this because if you were wondering why fans are so much cheaper than A/C, now you know. Central A/C uses a ridiculous amount of electricity. Fans don't.
Fans I recommend
Twin window fan - Fits in just about any window, and nearly all of them have 3 settings. The first setting brings air in, the second setting reverses both fans to take air out, and the third setting has one fan bringing air in and the other blowing out. The third one is actually quite useful because it's an easy way to get fresh air circulating in the room instead of having the air direction being one-way-only.
20 inch box fan - Old-school style box fan. Cheap, quiet, works. Use on the floor or in the window if it can fit there. Don't buy one. Buy two.
20 inch high velocity fan - I only recommend one of these to those with large rooms that need something that can really throw some air. Any fan billed as "high velocity" will be loud, and that's just the nature of the way they are. The loudness won't be too much of a bother in a large room because you can place it far away from you and still feel the air flow. And yes, the price of the fan is dirt cheap compared to an A/C bill; it's lower than you think.
9 inch fan - The best use of this one is on the floor when working at your computer desk. Set it down, point up towards you and feel the breeze. Just make sure your floor is clean first or you'll be blowing dirt up at you.
How does a splash of water help keep cool?
Okay, so you've bought your fans and you can now feel the air. Good. But there are times when you still feel too hot.
No problem.
Wet your head. Grab a hand towel, soak that, put on your head and make it damp. Then sit in front of one of your fans and watch how fast you cool down.
Want to feel even cooler? Wet your neck as well.
Want to feel cold? Get a t-shirt, put it on, soak just the shoulder area of the shirt and sit in front of a fan. You'll be shivering in less than 2 minutes.
"What about when I sleep at night?"
The old trick to keeping cool while you sleep is by use of a box fan. Take the box fan and set it against the edge of the bed on the floor so that air runs under the bed. That air will escape out the sides, up and around you. Combine that with a pedestal fan pointing at you and you'll stay cool enough to sleep without A/C and be comfortable.
If you want to make it even more effective, make sure the headboard side (as in where your pillows go) isn't against the wall. Air will go under the bed, hit the wall and escape up near your head for a nice soft breeze.
People in Florida are already cranking up the A/C...
I only turned on my central air once since 2014 started; it was for 5 minutes and that was only to check if the central air system is working properly. Other than that, it's remained off.
That can't be said about other locals however. Even in my own neighborhood, I've been hearing those central air units fire up as early as last month. What a waste.
Bear in mind I'm not talking about people with children or infants using their A/C here. I'm talking about regular non-senior adults, many of whom don't have any children living in the house. And they're all turning their homes into freezers.
It's not that I'm not totally anti-A/C as there are Florida summer days that require it. But it's not even summer yet and people here are blasting the A/C and paying huge electric bills already.
Do none of these people know how to use fans? I guess not.
No more Ovation guitars from Connecticut
Fender owns the Ovation guitar brand, originally brought into being by Charles Kaman, hence Kaman corporation (sold to Fender in 2007).
Anyway, the New Hartford Ovation guitar factory is closing down, so that literally means there will never be another USA-made Ovation guitar made ever again. Yes, the brand will live on, but all the guitars will be made in China, South Korea and Indonesia.
Did Fender totally botch up Ovation?
Not really.
The Ovation brand is not what comes to mind when you think of acoustic guitars, which is what the brand is (or should I say was) known for. When you think of "acoustic guitar", you think of Martin, Takamine, Yamaha and maybe Washburn. But not Ovation.
A typical reaction when you mention Ovation to a guitar player is, "Oh? I didn't think they were still made." Yeah, it's that bad. The Ovation brand was barely noticeable in Fender's lineup.
Yes, it does totally suck that yet another factory had to close down - especially one from Connecticut. And eliminating 50 jobs in this economy doesn't exactly make Fender look rosy, so to speak.
If there's anything to be said where Fender messed up, it's they probably simply didn't know what to do with Ovation after they got it.
Fender will most likely continue to clean up shop
I see Fender as the General Motors of guitars that's basically doing the same thing GM did when they dumped Saab, Saturn, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Hummer, Saab and whatever other brands they nixed - except that Fender is doing it real slow with their brands.
In 2002, Fender dumped Sunn and discontinued production. In 2013, they did the same with Hamer guitars. At some point in the 2000s, Fender dumped Tacoma acoustic guitars. All of these were smart decisions...
...but more needs to be done.
A Fender brand that I don't even know why it still exists is Charvel. There are barely any regular-run models available and that brand almost exclusively operates as a custom shop. They might as well totally operate as a custom shop and dump all the regular-run guitars altogether.
Jackson is another Fender brand that needs to go away or be scaled down to being only a custom shop.
Fender as far as I'm concerned just needs to dump any non-performing brand they have from regular production. Just get rid of the regular-run models and scale back a few brands to being just custom shops.
If that's what it takes to keep Fender around, I'm all for it.
The under-$150 Fender guitar
Just for fun, I wanted to find out what the absolute lowest-priced Fender branded guitar was. It's a ukulele. Specifically, the Fender Ukulele U'Uku Soprano. It's well under the $150 price point and anyone can afford it.
A kid's uke sells for $15 new. One that isn't a total piece of crap is the Mahalo U-30. One that's better than the U-30 is the Kala KA-15S.
Is the Fender the most expensive uke? Not even close. You could spend over $600 on a uke if you wanted to. And, of course, the Martin S1 is expensive. Why? Martin, that's why.
Anyway, yes, the under-$150 new Fender guitar exists. It's a uke. Now you can finally buy a Fender and still be able to pay the rent. :)
Oh, one more thing. If you want a uke that "looks more Fendery", see the Fender Mino'Aka. It has a Telecaster-style pegboard on it. It's also under $150.
Experimentation with a floating bridge on a cheap Squier Strat
Long time followers of mine know a guitar of mine I call Banana, the 2010 Squier Bullet Strat in Arctic White. Why is she called Banana? Because the Arctic White that Squier puts on that particular guitar is nowhere near white. It's decidedly more yellow, as in banana-colored, hence why the guitar is called Banana.
I took the guitar out of its gig bag today. The neck was back-bowed a bit from not being played in a while. A few turns of the truss rod fixed that right up.
Yes, the guitar is slightly dirty at the bridge, but that's only because of something I did to it today. I adjusted the bridge so now it floats.
My reason for doing this yet again was that I had the thought of how I use a vibrato bar. On the Jazzmaster I use slow movements and barely bend it to make it do what it does. It came to mind that if I float the Strat bridge, I could get a similar effect as long as I'm really light on the bar.
Did it work? In fact, yeah it did. My Jazzmaster playing has "trained" me in such a way where I can now use a Strat's vibrato system, which Fender incorrectly calls tremolo on the Stratocaster guitar, and get that slow-style vibrato while keeping the strings in tune.
As for the dirt seen in the photo, that's gunk that was trapped under the bridge when I had it decked. On the next string change I'll run a rag under there and clean it out proper.
Using the vibrato bar on a Strat is weird
Almost nobody uses the vibrato bar a.k.a. whammy bar on a Strat because it makes the strings go out-of-tune so easily. But it's my feeling most people don't know how to use a vibrato bar properly.
As I said above, the Jazzmaster taught me how to use vibrato the right way. I can't explain that in words other than saying that when you use vibrato on a Jaguar or a Jazzmaster and play on one of those for a while, only then do you truly understand how a floating vibrato system is supposed to work.
A Floyd-Rose system does not teach you how to use vibrato on a Strat, for the reason the Floyd is a locking system and the Strat is open where no part of the string is locked down anywhere.
Actually using the vibrato bar on a Strat is a weird experience because I never played with one on a regular basis before. But I think I might leave it on and try it out for a while.
Yes, it is possible to use the vibrato bar on a Squier and have it keep in tune, or at least possible when the bridge is set to float and you use it lightly.
The "witch hat" knobs arrive for the Jazzmaster
Concerning my Jazzmaster, the new Gibson knobs arrived. While they were tight when installing them, they did fit correctly on the split-shaft potentiometer posts.
For those that haven't read my previous post about this, no, they're not 100% correct...
...or are they?
I found an image of a new '65 AV Jazz, and the knob numbers are facing in, and then I found on others they face out like they're supposed to. And the font is different, too!
Well, that's a collector item right there. If the numbers on the knobs face in, that's a goof and oh yes, that's an instant collectible because the knobs are not supposed to be that way.
It's weird that in 2014 that Fender would have a goof like this, but then again it's really easy to miss, because who pays attention to the orientation of the numbers on a knob? It's most likely the case they got a batch of wrong knobs, decided to use them anyway since they were already paid for, then when that ran out they switched over to the correct ones.
Well anyway, back to the knobs I got.
The color of them is stark white, and I'm debating whether to darken these with coffee or not, because in all honesty, the stark white knobs really look pretty good on the Jazzmaster. I may opt to keep them as-is. Or if I do darken them, I'm not using coffee but rather tea, and a weak tea at that, because it would be too easy to darken the knobs too much.
But anyway, from a distance they totally look like the same knobs on the American Vintage '65 Jazzmaster. Only someone who really, really knows Jazzmasters would be able to spot that they're not accurate to what Jazz controls are supposed to be, appearance-wise.
The thing that makes the knobs a dead giveaway that they're not Fender is the fact they have a zero on them. I've never seen a Fender that had a zero indicator on it as they always start with 1.
Big knobs go well with the Jazz design, but on the Strat, the smaller knobs totally work, and I can say in all honesty that putting the bigger witch hat knobs would not work there.
And yeah, I know, the Blacktop Series Strats all have those bigger skirted amp knobs on them, and this is a look I never agreed with. But then again, all the knobs are black, which is why I think they're called blacktop in the first place. If there was a white or parchment option, that would look a whole lot better.
On the Jazz, the overall look with the white witch hat knobs makes for a much more classy appearance, mainly due to the shiny silver part on top of the knob. The silver part makes the controls look likes ones you'd find on a hi-fi stereo from decades ago, and that's not a bad thing. Not at all.
I'm happy with what I received. The knob set adds a little extra flair without being too overbearing, which is what I was looking for.