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Damnit.
I will try to be bit a bit more mindful of the good in life and mourn the loss of a kind soul at the same time.
Daniel
I’ve got a friction fit ebony pin in my dreadnought. Never had a problem with it coming loose in 23 years.
I’ve got a screw-in strap button on the treble side of the heel as well. I’ve never been comfortable with a strap tied to the headstock. The guitar slides too far to my right, and my right hand runs too far up the fret board.
Strap buttons can be added cheaply and easily.
Daniel
The tube that failed is a 12DW7. I wish it still worked. It reduced the amount of power in the preamp by about 6 or 7 dB, which made the single volume knob abit less touchy below 2 and a lot more useful beetween 3 and 5. the tone was also a bit smoother. I’ll send it back and try again.
Another gig last night, and another scare. This time the replacement amp, my Marshall MG30CFX, from the week before failed to make noise. Here’s me swapping cables, taking the pedal board out of the loop, thinking about plugging my electro-magnetic pickups into the PA (again)… When my 12 yo daughter says, “should you try turning up this knob?” It was the Master volume. <heavy sigh with eyeroll>
The pedal board was perfect. So I think what happened last week was that two unused power leads touched or grounded. All leads are now taped securely with electrical tape to avoid this in the future.
[Now those of you who play electrics are probably wondering why I bother with the MG series by Marshall. And while I agree that these amps are rubbish ; they’re made for players whose guitars will never leave their bedrooms/man caves. Players who play at guitar rather than play guitar. This may be a valuable market, but oh these amps!
I like my MG30CFX several reasons.
- The memory function. I can set the everything except reverb and master volume in memory and take the amp to a gig. I won’t have to reset everything when I get to the venue.
- The clean channel is actually a good match for a 5 string mandolin. The 30w with a 10″ speaker in a closed cabinet gives a lot of bass.
- The MP3 player input turns this amp into a powered speaker. I can run my old Line6 POD 2.0 as an amp and get pretty good tone that way. (Though it’s too much trouble ususally.)
- The “carbon fibre” covering with silver/grey control panel looks pretty cool. I don’t know why Marshall hasn’t used it on other models and series.
- They’re less than $200. This makes them cheap and easily replaceable.
Another gig next week. Same set up. We’ll see if I can manage to avoid near panic as well as avoiding technical issues. 😉
Daniel
OK. Slept well last night. Woke up, went for a walk with Claudine, took the kids to Aikido in the next village where I worked on exams for tomorrow, and came back. Been thinking about the Ampeg the whole time.
I decided that the nature of the issue -being sudden and total- indicated a physical failure of some sort… a complete disconnection of the signal somewhere. Since the amp was not bounced around at all between 3pm and 5pm, it had to be something more fragile.
So I this afternoon I opened the amp and had a look around. Nothing visual, nothing that moves to much. Jacks are still solid, tubes are tightly connected, no burn marks anywhere.
Back in March I replaced a preamp tube (a 12AT7 or 12AX7) for another type of tube that would reduce the volume of the amp by a little without killing the trem circuit.
It looked fine. But I pulled it and replaced it with the original tube.
Et voilà! Fully functioning amp! Yay me! Boo whoever made this tube!
OK, now I just need to feel confident about my pedal board’s power supply! 😉
Daniel
Bought myself an Ambient pedal made by Walrus Audio. Basically it’s an ambient reverb pedal. It part of their Fundamental series, and was only 109 euros.
Three modes, three controls, and ‘tails’. Love the tails.
Very very cool. Highly recommended if you want to dip a toe into the ambient thing.
Daniel
Richard,
How did the gig go?
I took the family to Chateau Chantilly last weekend. Amazing place. If you like art, painting and scultpure especially, you should visit. I was literally inches away from Renoir’s The 3 Muses, nothing but the frame’s glass between me and it. Amazing.
Been practicing playing my own harmony parts with the looper. Not easy. Clearly I need to run scales more often.
🙂
Daniel
And for the record… I would ust like to say that I did my best to keep the electric section alive. 😉
Daniel
🙂 Thanks Richard.
I have been jonesing a NAMM fix for a few years. Every January I get itchy to see new musical instrument products. It doesn’t help that FB sends up photos of the last time I was there every year. 😉Daniel
I’m sure it’s amazing. But I’ll probably never be in the same building with it.
I wonder if Eddie’s Guitars ordered it as a presitige item…
Daniel
Train times kinda depend on your flight to Paris CDG. After you land get a train into Paris (La Gare du Nord), then catch a train to Laon.
😉
Trains from Gare du Nord to Laon:
__
Had sun today and it’s getting below freezing at night. Which is way better than grey and damp.On the ‘band’ front, Barbara is mending some damaged ligaments in her left wrist which will take a while. But Fred and I are meeting on Thursday afternoons.
I’m playing my SCGC on Nights in White Satin (Heyward), Windrush (orig.), Under a Stormy Sky (Lanois), Shenandoah (trad), and Ashokan Farewell (Unger). I’m thinking of matching Shenandoah with Edgar Meyer’s “Short Trip Home.” They have similar cadence and are both in D major.
This will be fun stuff to gig, and even more fun to record –if we can get there. 🙂
So… who’s coming for solstice? 🙂
Daniel
We got some snow yesterday and a few flurries today. None of it stuck.
The pleasure of snowfall lasts only as long as the snow falls. Unless it’s cold enough to collect and stay on the ground. then the snow brightens up everything. That has not happened yet. We might get lucky this year. Who knows?
Practiced yeterday with Fred, my bass player. We discussed our new project which will get off the ground as soon as Barbara’s wrist heals from a fall. Barbara plays violin. We’re getting her to stretch from classical to folk, country, and Jazz.
For Solstice, we’re having a celebration. We’ll be having a little bonfire to burn off the bad and welcome in the new year. We’ll be eating, drinking, and having a good time.
If you’re in the neighborhood on Dec 21, give me a shout. We’ll pick you up at the train station. 🙂
Daniel
