badbluesplayer
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Posts posted by badbluesplayer
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1 hour ago, Sgt. Pepper said:
I know your an amp guy and I am not sure if you built, fix ect ect amps on the side, or if its your regular job. If it is your job, and you are working on someone's amp, do you do a bunch of work they didn't ask for just cause your a nice guy and not charge them? Probably not. Just like S W. Its called a 55 Point Inspection not a 55 Point Inspection + a set up. Just like Martins days are gone of resetting necks with the warranty.
I did it for a living for about 10 yrs. And I was a consulting engineer for about thirty before that. So I never let anything ever fall through the cracks. That's because I'm a regular individual with a desire to give the best service I can. No chiseling away at my own service standards over time. No such thing as "dumb guy" levels of service.
When I worked on amps, I always figured out what's wrong with the amp, period. Then I fixed it 100% correctly if the guy wanted to pay. Always keeping the guy up to date on where the bill was.
I'm just saying that it used to be a seamless, no cost sales experience, and they've changed the way it works a little. No more setup questions. No more running around inspecting the guitar for you if you have questions.
In fact, the intonation was still wrong on the guitar when I got it. They didn't change it a bit during the inspection, and I had to set the intonation on every string. So they didn't inspect that at all. No big deal, but you still have to know more than them to be sure you're getting a good guitar.
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I just bought a Les Paul Standard from them. The 55 point inspection is good, but it's not the same as it used to be. Don't get me wrong - they're still the only big online place I'll buy a guitar from. They used to send a guy down to the warehouse and personally inspect anything about any guitar you had questions about. They've done that before for me when I had a particular question abour a particular guitar. But those days are over.
This last time, I was looking at the photos of lots of Les Pauls and it was obvious that they were not being properly intonated at the factory. The saddle pattern was all over the place, and the D string saddle was hard up against the front stop of the bridge on the one I wanted. I asked the sales guy to have somebody check out the intonation to make sure I'd be able to set it up properly. And here's the thing - he said "I'm sure the 55 point inspection will make sure that's o.k., but if you want a complete setup, it'll be an extra $100." So they were not willing to have somebody check it out. Of course, I WAS able to set it up properly, because I recognized the problem with the saddle pattern and I knew it was going to be o.k. once I tweaked the setup. But you have to know more than they do to be sure everything's going to be o.k. Repeat - You have to know more than they do to be sure everything's going to be o.k.
So it's not what it used to be. The 55 point inspection is not a setup. It used to be. But now it's not.
Having said that, the guitar I bought is awesome, and I'll still buy from them. But if I didn't know how to do a setup, I'd be playing a poorly intonated guitar, which is not good for somebody who's learning or used to having a shop set up their guitars.
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Mittens and Vader watching the rain from the window -
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I was an English Lit minor, so I never read literature type books.
I read a book about designing amp power supplies a few months ago. It was o.k. No drama or weird people. No nincompoops telling me how to think.
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Antique Electronics/Amplified Parts has individual ones for $0.95. I have some and they're as iconic as anything -
https://www.tubesandmore.com/products/knob-position-indicator-gibson-style-speed-and-bell-knobs
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I watched it when it came out on Disney and I thought it was awesome. It was only $8 for a month. I didn't care so much about the personal stuff - it was kept to a minimum. Watching them play music work in the studio was pretty amazing. I thought they did a great job editing the studio work. And it seems like it was about the right length to me. I waited a few days between episodes.
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Pumpkin is one year old today!!
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45 minutes ago, ksdaddy said:
I’m not one for car shows. I did take it to one in 2018. I’m in the process of handing it over to my son in law. He’s already handed me the money with the understanding that I hand over the keys when I’m ready. He’s taken it to one parade and two car shows, plus they can “borrow” it anytime. My only hesitation is that I haven’t found a “summer car” to replace it with. You’ll see it in the video, hard to miss that turquoise.
Awesome! Cool show.
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6 minutes ago, Sgt. Pepper said:
If you don’t know, no one does. But I think I mentioned why it got locked. Some member posted about the shooting and DT, and that was a rap. I wish someone would do that to any “what are the best strings to go on my J-45” thread.
That was me with the DT crack, Hoss! 😁
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1 hour ago, Larsongs said:
Him & Warren Buffet own property & are pumping Lithium from 8000 ft under The Salton Sea in Palm Springs, Ca. It’s said, they produce about 80% of the USA’s mining of Lithium.. Although, the cost to the Deserts environment is making it Toxic & in the not to distant future unlivable unless something is done to protect the Environment.
Gates massive ownership of farmland could be used to build the massive Servers needed for the Cloud.. People do know that the Cloud isn’t really in the Sky.. Don’t they?
I like to measure those guys by how rich they had to be before they stopped being a dooosh. Like Bill Gates had to be worth like how many billion before he stopped yelling at his employees or having an affair. The Amazon guy is worth half the world and he's got a rocket in his backyard and is still baiting-and-switching and taking four days to pick your order before they ship it by hitchhiker.
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4 hours ago, Sgt. Pepper said:
Cause someone mentioned the recent 4th of July shooting, and the Orange Messiah in the same sentence. That's why, and if you read it you damn well know that's why. After I read that post, I knew it would be a matter of just as soon as Duane or KSD saw that it would be nuked.
The hot dog one is still up, but I'm confident as a forum member were gonna find a way to bring politics ect into it, and it will die.
Why? What happened?
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On 7/10/2022 at 2:05 PM, brad1 said:
For someone who doesn't like Gene Simmons very much, you sure like to talk about him a lot. 🙂
I think it' some kind of cis/trans bromance thing. Is that Gene a guy in real life?
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Vader - about 12 years ago -
A few years ago -
The other day -
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On 7/10/2022 at 1:04 PM, gdecant1 said:
Being a civil draftsman for several years, I had to decipher your and the surveyors illegible notes to produce topographical drawings.😀
Having had a bunch of jobs over the years drafting was my favorite until cad came out then it was just typing data into a computer. I got pretty good with a rubber band on the topo’s though😁
I'm a surveyor too. I started holding the rod at 9. I'd been fired for the first time by the age of 10.
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For the input - if you have a low-z mic you could try using it and play the radio or TV thru it. Or wire a radio/stereo speaker output to an input jack?
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50 minutes ago, ksdaddy said:
I’ve made the statement that I’m losing whatever knowledge they crammed into my brain. 20+ years I sized watersheds with a pencil, got the Runoff Curve Number using that and the soil classification, land use, slope of the watershed, all that, plus the slope of the planned waterways to get the Q (peak flow) and size waterways from that info, and using the maximum velocity rate for the soils, determine if it could be grassed, erosion control blanket, or rocked, and if so, the d50 size. Gods honest truth, I’m so close to the gate, I’m not sure I could design one anymore.
Well, dang, you were doing drainage engineering the whole time and I didn't even know! I did lots of drainage and erosion control engineering for almost forty years, mostly for developers. We'd have to engineer the drainage systems and prepare plans and stuff to get the approvals. Very cool.
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Sounds like most likely a bad tube or socket or a bad connection somewhere. Wiggle the power tubes to see if it's a power tube or socket. Replace the power tubes if you have some and see if anything changes. If you don't have any other power tubes, you could pull one power tube and see if it's the same. Then pull the other power tube, replace the first, and see if it's the same. That might tell you whether one of the power tubes is bad.
Then try removing the preamp tubes one at a time, starting back at the last one before the power tubes and proceeding to the input tube, and see if the same thing happens. If it stops happening with one of the tubes pulled then the prob is before the tube that was just removed. Then remove the next tube toward the input and see if it's still happening. That'll tell you where the problem is.
You can "stick" the thing. Power the amp on and get a plain stick, like a pencil, but with no lead - lead is conductive. And take the stick and poke and prod the wires and components with the amp on to see if you can make it cut out to find a bad connection or component.
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Congrats on your retirement. You worked for USDA, right? I used to use the county soil surveys and TR-20 and TR-55 for runoff calculations. My sister was a soil scientist and she interned with SCS to get her certification. She mapped wetlands in CT for a long time. Have a good one.
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4 hours ago, fortyearspickn said:
At the risk of this getting deleted ...
Consciousness of guilt? 😄
🧨🎉🧨🎉
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We had a couple of kids in my class named Naomi and Jose Ibanez. No, it was Ortiz. Naomi and Jose Ortiz. Threw 'em right into second grade with no comprende English... Anyway...
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They set them up with what they think people want. Lots of people like 10's but 9's will be fine too. It's more about feel than anything. What feels right works right.
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Nice!!! 😍
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14 hours ago, kidblast said:
Does he do standard tuning, or maybe lower? Like Eflat?
A lot of guys that use the heavier gauge strings seem to do that. SRV was for sure doing that, and I think guys Tommy Castro and Walter Trout do too
I will say this.. It's easier to sing all night in Eflat vs standard!
Nah. He's just a monster. It looks like Norm of Norm's guitars behind Joe.
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Josh Smith, the blues tele guy, uses .013, .017, .026P, .036, .044, .056.
Phillip Mc Knight & Sweetwater 55 Point Inspection Video
in The Gibson Lounge
Posted
I think that what I learned from the video is that Sweetwater is probably doing as good a job as any big place dealing with the fact that all guitars need a setup to play their best.
But they're still sending most guitars out the door not properly setup.
This is an issue that's unique to stringed instruments. Your new trumpet doesn't need a setup. Your new guitar does. It used to be part of the dealer's work. Musician's Friend changed that.
On the upside, I'm sure I could easily get a job as a Tech 3, the guys above the inspectors that actualy know how to work on them. So send me a poorly setup guitar. No prob.