badbluesplayer
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Posts posted by badbluesplayer
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It's been fun following this project! Great work.
Check out Q pickups. They're in Eastern Europe somewhere. Not sure how competitive the prices are for y'all o'var in UK.
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It seems like most preamp tubes will last years and years as long as they doesn't go bad right away.
Power tubes tend to get microphonic after a certain time in combo amps. They can rattle pretty much right out of the box or they can get rattled to death after some time. It seems like, as long as they're nice and tight out of the box, they usually last a long time. As short as a year? Maybe if you're playing a couple hours every day.
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Nice!!!
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Got outbid on a '62/63 Gibson Falcon amp. I went to $550. It was nice. Probably worth 7 or 800 on Reverb or ebay.
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Excellent!!👍
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New tubes have gone up about 100% since last year. Russian tubes got super expensive real fast and lots of people have bad feelings about doing business with Russians. That's Tungsol, Sovtek, Mullard and many others.
The Shugang factory in China burned down a couple years ago so they're gone. There's a Chinese company calles Psvane who's making tubes and some Shugang people supposedly went to Psvane to help out. I have a few 12ax7's but never checked them out.
I believe that TAD is getting their tubes from Psvane now. They used to come from Shugang. I still have a few sets of primo TAD 6L6WGC-STR's and a couple of their 6V6's fomr the old factory. I haven't tried the new ones from TAD yet.
JJ is still cranking out tubes and they're not tangles up in any political trouble, so they're still pretty cheap and available. Quality is supposedly maybe a little sketchier than in the past. I remember Bruce Egnater saying once that they had like 3000 JJ tubes fail in the field (in new amps) that had to be dealt with. That was like ten years ago, tho. I never use JJ's in an "elevated cathode" postition. And I don't particularly like their tone. Good for Marshalls and those kinds of amps. Not so good for American sounding amps.
BTW, there's a Ukranian guy selling old mostly Soviet tubes and tone caps on ebay - I just bought some PIO caps from the guy and they're in who-knows-where right now. https://www.ebay.com/str/radioindicatortubesstore
I always hated old tubes when I was fixing amps for a living. You'd have to take the old tubes out, put new tubes in, fix the amp, and then try putting the old tubes back in and see if they're any good. It's better when you can have the tube supplier stand behind the tubes so you don't have to deal with old ones. But now I'm hoarding some old tubes and using a few in my amps.
There's no way to reproduce tube tone with a solid state amp. And learning the feel of how to play into a tube amp is good practice. So hoard those tubes...
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23 hours ago, Sgt. Pepper said:
I was born in this place called Passaic, NJ. I'm an American. My relatives came over 3 or 4 generations ago as well. I have Czech and Dutch in my bloodline, but if your born in the States your an American, I think that is how it works.
Wait I got friends. I guess you just don't get I'm a sarcastic SOB. After 12 joints I certainly would, but I'd rather do bong rips, or a dab.
You might be trying to be sarcastic, but your prob is that you're an a-hole. Maybe that's your inner Passaic talking. I'm sure you've been beaten up behind some backstops for mouthing off.
You don't get to decide how Americas works, just like you don't get to decide "what the point is" or what's funny. A-holes don't get to decide anything for anybody else. You just keep running your mouth and losing friends.
You sure don't get to decide how other people see themselves, Cap'n America. Chief. Son. LL.
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22 hours ago, Sgt. Pepper said:
3rd generation Italian immigrant means she is like me - an American.
Being a 3rd generation Italian immigrant means she's a third generation Italian immigrant too. What are you, the ethnicity sensitivity police, or some citizenship rating committee? The American for Americans of America committee? I grew up in thew New York area. I had mostly Italian friends. If I smoked twelve joints with you you'd probably still have something smart to say. You got like three friends on here. One of them is me. Don't make it two. Dang!
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Geez, if Marco thinks Sgt Pepper is a Gibson employee he's on the wrong track.
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3 hours ago, gearbasher said:
Back when I was working for the USPS, I saw a guitar shipped with no box or bubble wrap. Just the case with the address label and postage taped to it.
I was at the local UPS place sending a guitar to somewhere and a guy came in there wanting to ship a Gibson LP in just the case and they told him no way and he stomped off in a huff. Some people are clueless.
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1 hour ago, Sgt. Pepper said:
3rd generation Italian immigrant means she is like me - an American.
Her Grandmother was born in Calabria. She was so Catholic that she died on Good Friday. 😁
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My wife's over there in Italy now. Third generation Italian immigrant. By the time Marco gets through dealing with her, he'll lose everything and like it.
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Tight tuners did not cause that headstock break in the pic. That's a clean break caused by a regular-old whack to the front top of the headstock.
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I've bought a few amps off Reverb. Good deals.
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Nice!!!
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On 5/8/2023 at 6:18 PM, 10PoundLester said:
A heat gun helps. I hit the edges with it then the face. The electric stapler is a must, IMO. I do a few inches in the center of each edge then work my way around. Putting the old drip-edge trim back on was brutal. My stapler wouldn't penetrate it so I had to use cut tacks to hold it on. It's pressed into the cab pretty snug but it didn't quite fit right. Can't tell though and I don't plan on taking the baffle back out again. I'm not interested in selling it so I won't have to point it out to anybody else. 🙂
How was the old drip edge held on there? With tacks? Staples? I've never removed or replaced that stuff.
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Sorry to hear that, Larry.
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On 5/6/2023 at 7:25 PM, 10PoundLester said:
Done. Just need to make the back panels.
Nice!!!
That grillcloth is hard to do, isn't it? I have an electric stapler and a good staple puller. I usually have to pull and replace maybe six or eight staples as I tension the grillocloth and get it all stapled down and straight. I'll get it roughly right and there will always be a few along each edge that are too tight or loose. I'll have to go around it twice, adjusting staples as I go.
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On 4/29/2023 at 12:20 AM, Larsongs said:
I enjoy watching Builds & Restorations.. I’m interested to see how it’s done..
I’m curious to know if it’s worth more restored or as it is now? As for me I like Cars that are restored to like new Original condition.. I’d like an Amp like this restored to like new original condition as well…
That amp was in pretty rough shape. For a dripedge Fender DR in rough shape, that amp was probably worth half of what it was worth in excellent condition, maybe a hair more. A nice retolexing job like that with the new faceplate and new grillcloth and hardware won't increase its value much - maybe a few hundred bucks. But that's about the only thing you can do.
Not sure if the blueline grillcloth is period correct. It's hard or impossible to find the actual stuff they were using then.
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My mom would say you guys need to stop watching TV and go outside and play. And if you just complain all the time nobody will like you. 😁
England has the Earl of Sandwich. We have the Doofus of Downstate. Whatever.
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I don't know nothing about nothing, but the guys running the place are definintely doing something right compared to your usual modern managers-turned-manufacturers (or whatever Gibson is.) Somehow, they haven't chiseled the specs of the product, which always sends manufacturers down a hole they can never fully recover from. So they somehow have decided that maintaining the quality of the instruments is some kind of core goal of what they're doing.
The way I see normal modern managers is that when they start to find ways to chisel, the first thing they do is make the product cheaper. Then they ride out the quick profits while the company slowly suffers. The plan is that if the company's value gets whacked, you bail out and buy Belize. Not so here at all, really.
It seems uncanny. How could they possible not be ruining the place? Somebody there has a good heart - for a schmuck, lol.
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It's a good thing I buy lots of guitars from Gibson, cause the only relationship you'd want with them is purely transactional. Ever see that TV show "Monsters Inside Me," where the people have some kind of worm crawling around in their brains and then it pops out their eyeball? That's what's up here.
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Bud Light's pretty cheap right now.
And I noticed when I was watching last year's NASCAR race yesterday that Kid Rock was sponsoring the Mexican driver's car. So yes, things are complicated out there...
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Google "coupling capacitor outer foil orientation" for more info...No charge
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Computer Games How far we have come
in The Gibson Lounge
Posted
When I moved to Tennessee, my buddy Hoss brought me right over to Cubby's Gun and Pawn and I, real quick lahk, straw purchased a 9mm so I could move in. Pumped a few rounds into the bank in the ten foot space between the Pawnshop trailer and Cubby's family's trailer, and gave my 200 bucks to Hoss, he handed it over to Cubby and the rest is history. Now ahm packin', and y'all stay back on over y'own trailer!