The Hello-Thread: Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself 👋

I dont drink but im forgetful like i can never remember where i sat my beer down

Hello, Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself: I'm Don from old Tucson. I'm a mechanical engineer and somewhat of a gear head. I've got a lovely daughter who has musical talent that is somewhat undeveloped, and an awesome wife, who puts up with all my 6+ stringed 'girlfriends', ...her words. So I started giving them appropriate names, like Ann Margaret for my PRS S2 SCSH that I customized right out of the box with 4 push-pulls and hotter pickups from Bare Knuckle, and then Jessica Rabbit, the 'beater' PRS SE Semi-Hollow that I also customized with my favorite combinations from the S2. Still need names for the 12 string Schecter C/12, but I did name the Ibanez EP10 the Black Pearl. Playing is so fun, I regret taking a 10 year hiatus starting with a neck injury in the '90's and ending once the house was mostly finished.

I have designed and built my own passive/active-solar rammed earth house out here from the very land we bought. In the daytime I design medical devices, and after-hours, when I'm not playing with my cover-band: "Cluster Jam", I enjoy construction projects (the house isn't quite ever finished), playing hide and seek or tag with my girls, welding, and design tools & systems for hire. Oh and for some reason unbeknownst to me, my friends have taken to calling me Major Overkill.

My musical tastes range from reggae to world music to classic and alternative or post-grunge rock and the Flight of the Conchords.

I ran a search on: what gear does I-can't-remember-who, play ('who' turns out to have a collection of 159 guitars and 17 amps) and when I saw the opportunity to show off my gear too I had to join in. I also invited my band mates, who are also gear heads, although, true confessions: I've purchased more guitars than all of them since I started playing in earnest again 3 years ago. I have been lucky in that regard, finding great sounding stuff that hooked me hard. An Ibanez AR720 that the keyboard/guitar/bass player now owns (as well as my Washburn WCG66SCE that I owned for <25 hours before he got it) started if off with their: parallel, series, coil-split switches. That led to the PRS S2, and the cost of that led to the SE, and then the need for an acoustic led me to a Guild cutaway with an issue that required it to go back, and the Ibanez EP10 replaced it. Then the comment to the guy at sweetwater to send me a 66SCE when I have $700 burning a hole in my pocket, followed by the realization that I didn't have a 12-string any more, which led to the finding of Reverb.com and my Schecter C/12. I guess the finding of this site was a natural progression. Inevitable even.

Now I just need to figure out how to get an image of my dream guitar put together so I can have it show up on my want list. The axe of my dreams: a Customized Rick Turner M1. The way I've taken to the electronics as a means of expanding the tonal range of my gear makes that model somewhat of an ultimate lifetime achievement goal for me before arthritis renders me unable to play.

I guess I wouldn't go quite that far Jim. But I did specify the 2 Celestion speakers my V3M is driving in my speaker cabinet. I changed the pups in my 2 PRS's, adding 2 push-pulls to the S2, and swapping the 3-way for a 5-way and adding the extra tone knob (both were also changed to bourns push-pulls too) also with a pup change to the SE. That was mostly a wiring job from Guitar Electronics.com and required me to actually complete their deficient diagram. A luthier routed out the body for the larger switch and added the new tone pot hole. G E neglected to continue the neck pup signals, as I provided in my requirements, to the new 5-way switch's positions 3 & 4 (The 2 most important) positions, these were the Peter Green and neck-bridge-pup-coils-all-in-parallel positions. Man I love the parallel sparkle, and by increasing the bass strings to the .050+ range, the clarity of the bass is still there, and if you attack hard -especially with a semi-hollow body, the bass really booms! That G E experience was really disappointing, as it took them over 6 weeks to provide the deficient diagram, and I ended up having to do that signal tracing work anyway. Uuugh! I'm getting better at it, and I did the electrical design and calcs on my house and utility grid systems, but power is easy and totally different than harmonics which are typically only considered a problem in that field. I'm more of an thermodynamics, fluidics and structures kind of guy and dabbling in the electronics world I know I can do, but I don't find as much satisfaction and enjoyment. Maybe it was that Kustom HV30 that I dearly loved and tried to replace the Lead channel's volume pot on myself that sealed the deal for me on doing electronics work beyond wire soldering. When I turned it on after my repair, I did not expect the 30-06 report it gave in my small room. I'm sticking with simple wiring and soldering and staying away from active components. ...and brain surgery. Got to respect a man who knows his limitations, eh?!)

Beyond that only medical process equipment design, refrigeration system design, mine sensors, commercial kitchen tools, emissions measurement systems, aircraft cabin-pressure & smoke detector test equipment, a rammed earth house, a solar thermal energy storage system, a low-cost solar tracker, micro-fluidic mixing controls n stuff like that. I am currently in communications with Mr. Rick Turner and staff on them building my dream M1 guitar, but that's just specifying stuff that he's already designed.
What about you folks? Am I in water over my head here?
I'm the rhythm guitar guy in our cover band. And play for fun and charity benefits professionally. (You know where folks are there for a higher purpose, which mostly precludes heckling. I look at it as them paying me to stop playing. Although I've been told I don't suck, ...so there's that.)

Hi! im Cal'

im 20 years old, a technical engineering apprentice with an affinity for playing bass and guitar, and singing; im from Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

ive been playing since I was 14/15 and im currently in a prog metal band called Life Amongst Wolves.

im a mega tech head with a love for effects pedals, electronics and all things to do with guitars and basses.

ask me stuff!