Cheap Fix
SPB: What’s the most MacGyver-esque workaround you’ve made to connect different bits of equipment?
Chad Nichols (guitar/vocals): You'd think with a name like Cheap Fix, we'd be all over this question. But I'm the least handy of the band members, so I've got next to nothing. All my tricks, for some reason, apply to guitar straps. If the hole for your strap pin is stripped, stick a piece of a toothpick in the hole and screw it back in. Use Grolsch gaskets for strap locks or, in a pinch, twist ties wrapped around the pin outside the strap. In fact, one time our merch guy/driver fixed both the windshield wipers and the triangle window on the van with twist ties. The ultimate cheap fix. I polled the other dudes for more MacGyver-y fixes.
Stuart Sikes (drummer): Using headphones as a speaker to tune a guitar. Wrapping solder wire around your wrist and touching the other side of the wire to your pickup to get rid of buzz.
Doug Niemczura (guitar and bass VI): Tin foil in the fuse holder. Paraffin wax to dip pickups to shield them. Hollow out under a pickguard to smuggle rare produce over the border.
I just thought of one more. If you have an old Fender amp with the RCA footswitch connectors for reverb and/or vibrato and you don't have a footswitch, you can put an RCA pin in the jack and just control them with the intensity or reverb knobs.
James Arthur (guitar & vocals): Actually using a wooden board as a pedal board and using baling wire and screws to hold the pedals down.
That's all we got. Happy fixing.
