euphoric

meet me in fast trac... bed 7. i'll be the guy on the gurney, with an i.v. drip hanging from my arm.

my kidney stones sent me to emergency again.

portrait.

felt like drawing, drew a humorous picture of my ol' friend johnny wakeham. enjoy!

rotating speaker cabinet

i really like the sound of tremolo, and i like building analog devices... when searching around the internet a quite a while back i came across what was called a " fender vibratone cabinet" which is a rotating speaker cabinet designed for guitarists to use for tremolo as you would with an old hammond leslie cabinet with an organ.  the difference here was that this version had a cross over in it to separate the high/low and mid frequencies from each other. when actively set up it send the high and lows to the cabinet while the mid frequencies keep coming from your amp. i decided i needed to have one. or at least try one out. there was a slight problem in the fact that i could not find one... turns out they are rare. so after months of research looking at schematics i figured out how to build one with some old parts and crafty skills. and this things just flat out sounds amazing. heres mine finished.

i decided that i would actually build these for people who really want them. so if you are interested in one let me know and you can come and play mine and see what you think. they take awhile to build 3-4 weeks. but the wait is totally worth it. it really is a very musical cabinet and has such a wild 3 dimensional sound. cab is solid pine. and the baffle is 5/8ths ply. the motor has two selectable speeds. slow and fast.  just like an organ tremolo. it can handle any 100 watt amp, but works best with old tweeds  or really anything in the 40 watt range.

two things

1. if you see someone on the bus quietly enjoying their headphones... dont't try to talk to them unless you know them.

2. riding your bicyle for 14 kilometers in the snow and freezing temperatures  really sucks sometimes.

yes that is ice in my beard. if you can call it a beard. maybe neck beard.

flashbulb.

i kind let myself forget for the last little while that i had tickets to the murder city devils reunion show in vancouver. i'm pretty stoked about this. really stoked about this.

i saw them in seattle in 2006 when they played a reunion show at the capitol hill block party. it was pretty crazy. there were girls passing out in the crowd, and guys puking on each other. for the first song of their set i was from row, but i had to move to the back as i felt like i was gonna pass out from the pressure of the whole crowd of thousands pushing towards the stage.

this time round they are playing at the commodore ballroom. so it'll be a little smaller crowd. but it will probably be just as rad. and what a day to have it on.... friday, february the 13th..

proofs.

well scott sent me some proofs of the plates, he says in life they are more like true red not the orange kind of colour that they appear to be. thats good.. anyways they gotta cure for a week before they can be cut and all the fun stuff. what do you all think? 

friday.

the office day is slowly coming to and end, in the moments following i will push "publish post", put on my coat, get one my bike and head home. thats one more week finished. one more closer to my death. do i feel accomplished? ...no. why? ...because its not what i want to be doing. what would i rather be doing? ...getting drunk, waking up late, building amps, playing music, riding my bike or even nothing. 

it seems like a waste to get up everyday and come to work. it's a job.... hell it's a career. i suppose i'm being lazy and just looking for a handout... maybe. or maybe i'm over it because the economy is crashing and its really effecting my industry? hit panic button now! how long will i have this job? do i have a back up plan? what am i doing? where am i going when all else fails..... reagen can i live in your van?

on another note....

i used to have alot of friends in vancouver. most i never see nor keep in touch with anymore. well they were my friends, who knows if i was theirs... sometimes i felt as though i was just thrown in the mix.... kind of tagging along.

kinda miss those days....

i wasn't working then.

i need a cold one.

lunch

i'm sitting at my desk.

its lunch i guess. I had a caramilk bar, the big one. its boring at work. i wonder how many times i can check my email in an hour.

i'll still be sitting here at four. checking my emails.

i just realized that kevin and i agreed we were going to move our stuff out of the jam space at the end of the month because its too far away from us to make much use of it.  if there were buses that went even remotely near the location we would probably stay, but there aren't any for miles and miles.

so we need a new jam space, one that allows us un-restricted access 24hrs daily would be nice. oh and heat would be good for these cold months.

i guess thats all for now.

hump day

well, wednesday is here. its gonna be long.

sometime this week i have to pick up the logos from the print shop and drop of the ai files for those back patches. the weekend is coming quickly now.... i gotta get reagen's van done. before long it'll be monday again.

i'm looking for a really shit jazz bass. with a broken or warped neck. i just need the body and the tuners.... know any?

on another note its whopper wednesday.

this evening

started to clean my room today. i think it was long overdue. and after-all the space i have is very minimal and its filled with amps and clothes and recording equipment. not to mention all the random shit that i find and drag home like a scavenger bird. but at last i can see the floor!

i will post some photos of my cleaned room and work space as soon as i can. and two weeks from now i will post them again for the sake of comparison. just a filthy mess, you wouldn't believe some of the things i found on my floor.

now for another five days of work.

this morning

woke up with a headache. my brain is cloudy. ugh

the brushed stainless steel plates have been dropped off at monster press, and the bill is paid in advance. i should have name plates printed mid next week, then they have to be hauled out to north vancouver so reagen can punch them and i can file the edges. 

scott at monsterpress clean up the art work and centered it all mathematically so we are good.

now i just have to order more parts

on the list of amps about to come around:

jcm800. model 2203 100 watt

hiwatt  model dr504 50 watt

orange or100 100 watt (built to 1970's spec's)

well this should be fun

i also decided that all of my tweed clones would be available it classic tweed with oxblood grill cloth. or black tolex with silver grill cloth. chrome chassis. and i will only offer the 5f1 circuit (champ) or the 5e3 circuit (tweed deluxe) on the deluxe it will be your choice of 20 watt or 40 watts.

on the british amps. i will only be offering heads. only available in black tolex with black faceplates. black on black. like Henry Ford said "you can get in any colour you want... as long as its black"

thats all for now

random acts of kindness.

today has been a day full of it for me.

i started my one and a half hour to work this morning with a coffee in my hand, headphones on with ted leo cranked. i don't think i was more than ten minutes in when a kind older women pulled over and offered me a ride. 

and to top it off when i got home tonight my neighbor saw me in the hall and said he had something for me. so he ran back into his place and cam out with boss wah pedal. never had one. never thought about getting one... but its surprisingly cool and useful.

i owe him one or two favors by now.

good day.

well the crest is complete.

stoked.

new banner

well. i'm happy with that

sleeping in

for some reason i keep sleeping in, and i don't know why.

so for the last two days i've had to take a cab to work.

well thats $80.00 down the drain.

shit

take off eh ya hoser!

i am having monsterpress print my logo's for my amps on stainless steel. the design is a fifties industrial style logo, which they are also helping design.

pretty cool. Reagen is going to cut the steel afterwards and shape the emblems. stoked.

and in other news, there were a few of us that were having back patches made for our jackets. i had an old friend of mine design the artwork for us coz i didn't want to do it and i really like his artwork and designs. and i guess the rough proofs will be coming through to me any day now.

things are looking up.

pretty cool.

ninetwofive

well i'm back into the swing of working, kinda relieved. i was having trouble occupying all of my time while on holidays.

the picture.

so here it is in all its glory.

the amp is a clone of a fender 5e3 (tweed deluxe) circuit. there are only a few modifications made. the original 5e3 only produces 15-20 watts of power from two 6v6 power tubes. this amp instead has four 6v6 thats basically doubles the power. the original only had a single 12" speaker. this again is doubled at two 12" weber signature 12 alnico's i prefer an alnico speaker to a ceramic for three reasons, the first being the bell like chime the produce in the highs. the second is for the fatty grinding natural overdrive the produce when they are really pushed. and lastly cosmetically the look nicer.

the controls on this amp are simple. four inputs that can be jumpered. two interactive volumes and a tone control

in the coming days I'm going to add a 1/2 power switch so i can shift it down to 15watts for recording purposes.

testing, testing, 1... 2... 3...

so i finished up the wiring and fitted the chassis into the tweed cab, normally i would have used a variac to start a new amp up to see if it was working and slowly increase the current to the regular 120 ac its built to run on...... but... my boyish nature got the best of me and i plugged it in without it and fired it up.

It works!

fired up on first start! sounds great! no smoke! loud as fuck!

i'm happy.

so now its on to sourcing parts for my next project which is going to be a 100watt clone of an orange amp. well not really just the same tubes and tone shaping controls!