Another update:
I had been having issues with the neck pickup in this guitar. The 53/10 that I had
thought I wanted was just so...
wrong for this guitar. So big and so dark, not at all what I had expected. I had tried to wire it permanently split to a single and it still remained pretty unusable for me.
I had been at Rider's house a few weeks prior, and finally wasn't too scared to play his ME for more than a second, and fell in love with the neck pickup tone (both full and split). So I left there lookin' for the closest I could get to that sound which led me to lookin' for a 57/08. Well... that search wound up with me accidentally buying a Mira, and though I thought I was gonna yank the pickups.. Sh!t... I'm learning to know better than to mess with a magic-soundin' guitar, so that meant I was back to lookin' for another 57/08.
I found an old one, brushed, un-etched, and with the old sticker that spells out 1957/2008 on TGP for a nice price and waited for it to arrive. I slap it in there and wire it up... Better. Much better. The darkness and unevenness was gone but... still not quite the same magic as the ones in the Mira. I don't know.. I know it's a different guitar but, there's something missing from this particular pickup.
I've heard stories, and have experienced first-hand how there are discrepancies in some of the 57/08's. Some are spectacular and some are just.. still good pickups but, they're missing the "airiness" and "glassy" "halo" around the notes... Hard to describe but, if you know, you know what I'm saying. I've messed with the height and the pole pieces for a week or so, and think I have it the best it's gonna get so... I don't know. I think I'm gonna have to keep an eye out for another one at some point.
But still... I'm in love with the guitar and it's way more Bangin'! now. I'm just on that last 10% tip of the search if you catch my drift.
But! The real cool sh!t was this:
My lil' dude Paco started to kinda crawl/scoot this past Sunday. He's now all over the place and I can't take my eyes off him for a sec. His mommy comes home yesterday and is keeping an eye on him and yells to me to come here and check him out... I swear, there was zero. None. No prompting or fake-@ss trickery involved. Paco Just crawled over from his play mat, about two feet away, and grabbed this. The first one he was interested in:
Dude knows. I had this moment: