jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

just off the top of my head, my favorite choruses are always analog... all time top 2 are the rack mount tri-choruses of the 80s and the juno/chorus echo roland chorus design... nect the CE2 and small clone, but nly the old small clone... lastly the big box, yellow mxr, new oens are better! that said, the new warpe vinyl chorus by one of thsoe boutique companies is a real killer! Now, any good flanger with a d-time control can be used as a chorus with the d-time set way long and the regen/resonance set way down ebcause a chrus is just a long flange with no regen. The Ibane FL9 is a real champ at this, basically a CS9 with the ability to flange too. The neuenbauer seems like a cool tri-chorus, but its probably digital, just a simulation. I would say that your first chorus should be a classic BBD version. Anyway,good luck

If I recall Iobtained my flashback X4 from an online retailer on blowout (supposedly a blemmished one, but it wasn't scratch n dent at all) and tit was under $200 shipped. Its a very inexpensive pedal and I see no reason to get the smaller version when you need tap. Why plug in an extra device or deal with TC's strumming tempo thing? The savings isn't that considerable if you buy a used X4 or find a scratch n dent or catch a sale. The only reason to have a small one is that its small LOL. I have the alter ego in the mini size. I got it VERY cheap just for its one trick, the broken echorec. its brilliant at that but the strumming in the tempo thing is very hit or miss. As a result I NEVER use the AE for anything but slapback type stuff or I'll just play around a stock echorec time that I punch in with the toneprint software.... its pretty much just for Floyd impressions with those d-timed locked in. I've owned many small pedals that accept a tap switch and these guys are only as good as your momentary switch's response. I would advise everyone to avoid delays without built in tap if they want precise, on the fly delay timing. In the case of the X4? The tap button is excellent. My only gripe with the timing is the lack of subdivision options as well as the lack of additional options in true stereo other than ping pong. But what do you want for about $200?

thanks, that old ac30 is the only piece of music equipment I think I love more then my kid! I have her 100% tuned up now, found some bogus aprts in there that were either WAY off spec from the previous owner or just failing due to being almost 60 years old... only took my 15 years to spot that the brilliant channe;'s 1st coupling cap that the previous owner replaced was over 10 times larger then the part specified by JMI totally playing havoc with the channel's voicing and probably causing an intermitent noise issue the amp's had all this time. People do some strange things to amps. it was a solid enough sieman's mica cap, but in roder to put ina part that LOOKED right the guy went with a big value that apsses more bass then on the normal channel! The only thing preventing moroboat noises leaking in from the pweor supply was the bright cap! The thing looked like it could be original and I couldn't read the labeling the way it was put in. Couldn't even see the siemen's logo until i really dug around and decided to risk cracking the sodler joints or damaging the legs. When i etmered it I wasn't even getting a reading ebcause I was set to picoferrads expecting 500 to 1000 of them but this thing was like a .68ufd and for those unaware 1000 picos is .001ufd! The value for the normal channel is .01ufd and that's just small enough to block parasitic low frequency oscillations. What's funny is the vox circuit is so sweet that it sounded okay like this as long as I didn't turn that channel all the way up where it would freak out but now its got this great mid focus it never had, cuts like a knife with a Gibson and does a perfect early paisley with a tele...

I'ms till trying to source the right vents for her though :-( the cabs were made at a few different subcontractors and the vent work on mine is sloppy, so a lot of repros are too small to stay put even if they cover the slots alright.

I mettioned that the new ac30s handwireds aren't markedly inferior to the early JMIs like mine but I take that back. now that she's tuned up I think this amp plays a lot easier and just feels better then any of my other ones. its got a sweeter breakup too. Pretty much just a better sounding amp then anything made now in this style. But it took a lot of work to get it here and I admit the thing is a maintenance nightmare that would give someone who doesn't know how to work on tube amps a laod of grief.

more modern tube amps that are a steal and sound great for rock:

any laney AOR series head, there's also a 30 watt combo, ugly amps, but real sleepers... cheap but amazing, like hot-rodded marshalls... I prefer the ones with elss knobs. YMMV though

some laney GH series amps, I like the GH50L, its 99% a jcm800, don't pay mroe than $600 for a head...

trace elliott tube amps, the 30 watt one is a real sleeper, ac30 style amp, should cost $500 or less... I would try for less... haggle

this dude on here recommends the Crate club series amps, there's a thread we were talking about them on. Apparently you want the first one, not the later one that rbeaks down, but this odler version that's more marshalls than voxy. I'm just apssing this along, I've enver had any luck with Crate amps. They sound okay but they all break! Except for this one apparently... not sure how easy the good club amp is to find though

Gibson goldtone amps from the 90s, trace elliott amps in gibson clothing... I like the trace amps ebtter, but the gibsons are okay too... the 50 watt head is rpetty sweet actually but its not worth anything on the used amrket. Try tog et it for $300

jet city amps, shockingly good sounds and build quality for a chinese PCB amp. Reasonable prices new, trade used for peanuts. No brainer. They amde a 50 watt combo for a while that's really unknown. its amazing, based on soldano's awesome lucky 13 amp. $400 limit on the heads, a combo is worth considerably more, they have nicely made cabs and high quality speakers stock

I hate to say it but the peavey classic 30 and classic 50 are a steal, real workhorse tube amps. THey lack character but can do a little of everything. They're often very cheap. I would enver pay more than $400 for anything amde by peavey.

you run into this shit all the time if you keep your eyes open. There are cheap, quality tube amps all around you if you open your eyes. If this dude is thinking of spending $400+ on a hybrid amp? he should raise the money bar a few hundred and get a full tube amp.

welcome! I'm jim.... I play the guitar and the piano, soemtimes I play the fool.... post often, its been too quiet here lately.

a bandit is a tube amp? nah,s eriously... within the last 5 year or so I aquired the following tube amps fully WORKING for $600 or less:

50s Gibson Ga14 Titan (tweed deluxe 1x10 type of amp, KILLER, flea market, 15w) $400

50s Gibson GA9 Lancer (Titan in a 1x12. instant neil young machine, craigslist, 15w) $500

50s GA20T Ranger (close to a les paul model amp, 18w) $600

60s Airline Model 24 (rebranded supro 1624T, zep1 amp, ebay 12w) 450

60s Fender Bandmaser head w/o tubes and empty 2x12 (from a friend, but still 40w) $500

80s Marshall Studio 15 (at sam ash, traded for an FZ1a, marked at 600ish 20w) $600

Traynor YVM1 (tube PA head, orange-style circuit 50w+) $350

Selmer Treble N Bass 50 Mk2 (most affordable 50 watt brit tube head left 50w+) $600

why pay 400+ for a peice of junk?

look around, deals are out there for the wise... even the tweed deluxe style amps are loud bastards. loudest 15 watts ever! solid state wattage is just quieter. It dissipates in an unloud way. Think of solid state as being half as loud as tubes.

whoa! that amp is not $440 good! you can get a beater old tube amp for that

that response is really long and incoherent... just tell him to try a real ac30 first, at elast an ac30hw2... and then tell him $250 limit on the VR

I've actually scoped this amp out before! call it morbid curiosity... the ac30vr doesn't sound BAD, nor does it sound good. The cab is made like shit from particle board! The regular channel soudsn vaguelly like an ac30 top boost if you're drunk when you lsiten to it. The dirty channel is a total WTF sound. There is no dirty channel on an ac30. You don't need it. On an old one you're lucky to have stageworthy clean headroom! A real ac30 has a great clean, but at band levels its the epitome of 'rock and roll' cleans! The VR dirt channel is not bad per se, but not good either. Bland and unvoxy. Gets the dirt from teh wrong place. The clean channel is closer to the mark turned way up. I would not pay mroe than $200 for a hybrid amp like that. Its a good idea, basically a 2 channel 1 watt tube amp based on the well known moonlight DIY amp circuit (which sues a preamp tube as a 1 watt push pull power section, zvex's little amp uses the same approach) tweaked to be ac30ish that is then amplified by an SS power amp up to 30+ watts so it'll have tube and transformer feel but with all small cheap parts with that little amp acting like a complex preamp for the neutral pweor amp. It coudla been really fantastic if they ahd thought it through a little better and given it elgit speakers in a legit cab. As the circuit turned out I castly prefer the fully solid state Roland/Boss tube-emualting amps and the Quilter stuff (as I have mentioned many times on this and other forums).

Does it sound like an ac30? kinda sorta... it doesn't sound like a fender, that's for sure! none of my ac30s sound the same LOL, there's overlap but they're all different. What does an AC30 sound like? its more about what it DOESN'T really sound like, which is anything else that's not copying an ac30 pretty carefully!

Also, I venerate the ac30. I love my voxes, each and every one. Its MY sound. Its not for everyone. Not everyone's guitars and playing are suited by them unless they adapt to the amp. Even the pale imitation that is the VR may present that issue. I think everyone should try an ac30, but I don't pretend its for everyone. Its a good all arounder for a lot of musical styles and it suits a certain kind of player. When I got my '62 I plugged in and went "OH SHNAPP! when I imagine my guitar sound, that's it! that's me, right there. DONE!" Not everyone will have that experience. But for me it was the sound Iw as always trying to goose out of my various marshalls and fenders. FOr me I could lose my other, different voiced amps and just have ac30s and rarely miss the selmer, tryanor, fender etc.

all that said, for $200 (maybe 250) or less he should do it.... more than that? think twice? When you can get 45 very tasty watts of quilter that fits on a pedalboard for about $150 and find a used no-name plywood cab at an average local store or pawn shop for 200 or less? Any sold state type combo needs to contend with that pricetag and clock in under 300 as far as I'm concerned. I say 200 because he's going to have the speakers and the cab might fall apart if its bumped on tour! I admit though, a vox 2x12 in your backline DOES have serious visual impact... like a marshalls tack it justs creams rock n roll.... but anyone who knows will spot that its a cheapie in a heartbeat so its not going to gain you much cred with other bands, just the audience.

If I were getting backline on a budget these days I would hook one guitarist up with a Boss Kitana and one guy up with a Quilter microblock and give them each a 2x12 or 2x10, one with celestions and the other with jensens or maybe JBLs... or equivalents. Boom, marshally sound one side, fender hiwatty on the other, close enough for the audience, both will take pedals real well. Good enough until you can afford some serious kit.

if you're going to do any screaming rock vocals you may prefer a high quality dynamic. Nothing too cheap.

get an audio technica 20 series, best budget microphone ever... low onf eatures, great neutral sound, very low self noise. Also, cosnider that a lot of male rock vocals aren't done with condensers. Some are, but its very common to record rock vocals, especially dudes, with a broadcast dynamic like the EV RE20 or Shure SM7b... a lot of guys from Tom Petty to Smashing pumpkins have just used the good old SM58 stage micto record their hits. A lot of times they even held it in their hand! Look it up, you cna't make this stuff up.

If you're recording yourself, think about how and what you're going to sing. If it might have some screaming and its going to eb forceful you may justw ant to stick with a dynamics. If its crooning then think codnenser. In budget mics I like the Audio Technica. The Rode NT1a is also a very good affordable condenser with some more features liek a pad and built in high pass. But you don't really need that stuff for vocals. If you cna find one, the Oktava MK319 is a very good budget microphone too. Not sure if they still make them.

Out of the 2 microphoens you listed I would go Samson just because I at least know that company and know they're reasonably reputable.Their dynamic mics are own right good. GO that route If you absolutely can't spring for an audiotechnica or rode. I still feel like all the really cheap mics are built in the same Chinese factory and will be basically the same.

there's soemthing about the matamp and 70s orange circuit, probably the cathodyne (aka concertina) phase inverter which is rare in alrge amps and unique to this circuit versus the LTP in every other notable british amp, that lends itself to 'doom' rock. Indeidentally there are number of late 60s and early 70s ampeg circuits that utilize a variaition of this phase inverter. By the 60s fender had abandoned it in every amp but the Princeton series. Even in the 50s fender never put it in the bassman or twin. 30 watt rating was the cutoff for the concertina at fender. Its a great PI in small amps but its not very efficient or hifi when it needs to drive a larger power section. If you use a more powerful pentode driver stage like ampeg did the splitter triode will usually breakup long before you can drive a pair of 6L6es or EL34s at max plate dissipation. For whatever reason Matt Mathias was unphased by this fact (pun intended). The upshot for playing your amp well into power tube saturation is that in something like a GT100 or OR120 the phase inverter will be hugely saturated by the time you manage to overload the power tubes.

if you take mick out of it you'll miss him though... Keith Richards solo is missing the jaggerisms. Only the stuff that's not stonesy really kills it.

what about Roger Daltry? or hell! no one mentioned Mick Jagger? the guy practically invented the non-playing rock front-man routine. You have Elvis and Gene Vincent, but they're still on the rockabilly side and Elvis went all vegas in the end, as much Tony Bennett as Howlin' Wolf. Mick really set the standard for a lot of what's come since.

I wait for an idea that's really good (or one that i really like, at any rate)... it'll generally be melodic and I'll just be humming it in the shower or while I'm o the toilet or maybe while I'm waiting for a train or something. I used to record those into a dictaphone and later on into my phone once phones could do that but I find if Ic an't remember it unassisted then it isn't worth remembering. Frankly, I have no demand on me as a songwriter to crank out 20 or 30 songs a year anymore so I only bother to work on stuff that's stuck in my head. Anyway, the idea might be a vocal part or guitar riff, I don't know that til I develop it, usually at the piano weeks or months later... then stuff starts to happen. I do a little acoustic writing when the song seems to need to develop that way or I work on stuff on a classical when I need to dos tuff that doesn't work on a keybaord, but its always in conjunction with piano. Alternately I start sequencing stuff when it might be partially or totally electronic so I don't have to keep playing the parts that I'm set on and I can start thinking about other things. I haven't written anything on an electric guitar in like a decade. I get distracted and have too much fun on electric. Ic an't focus any of my ideas, I just keep riffing and riffing these days. but usually I don't touch a guitar until i'm working on parts and deciding on a structure. That falls int ehre with lyrics as last minute stuff you cna do right before you make a quick demo.

Boring, eh?

I thought it was pretty fucking funny when I saw it! but really, I built up all my drool worthy gear despite being a poor person by being really shrewd about what i spend on. There's a lot of stuff I own or have owned that I wouldn't have bought if any of it cost mroe than 50 or 60 bucks back when i bought it. For that price? sure. FOr what that stuff goes for now? I dunno. I wouldn't have a 1962 ac30 if they cost $4k+ back when I bought it, but they didn't. They were 2kish and I got mine for even less being shrewd, patient and lucky. That's the secret of getting the really magic stuff. I wish i had been mroe shrewd with old recording gear but i didn't know enough about it until it was too late to find the good deals. Although I had some cool altec peices for awhile but I didn't care for them for my personal style of recording. Wish I had sat on them ebcause now they're worth way mroe than i sold them for. See? can't win 'em all, but you need to think about the point at which you want or need to sell an item. Assume that NOTHING is a keeper. Because very few pieces will be. Whats the resale going to be on a crazy tube circuits pedal versus what you pay out retail? The value will likely go down unless it gets discontinued and a SUPER famous guy waves the flag for it online. The Klon centaur phenomenon is a fluke... msot other hyper valuable pedals took decades to acquire any real value. just think that over.

don't be thinking "its only 300 bucks and it'll be SOO SOOOO cool at my enxt gig!" because that gig's going to pass and at the next one it'll seem a little less cool and when you're 300 bucks shy on that sweet guitar you found at the local shop you'll be like "I hope I can sell that chorus pedal for retail value on ebay because they won't give me jack for it as a trade in" but you won't. And there goes that sweet guitar to another dude.

my unsolicited advice is that unless you are flush with cash, don't just buy something just to buy it.... especially not at retail price. If you have a legitimate purpose for it then buy it, but try to get it on the cheap if you can. Buy used or wait for a sale. If you really have no idea why you need it and you can't get it cheap? Maybe wait until you know you REALLY REALLY need it because you're making a record or something where you just can't do without that sound creatively.

I lvoe gear too, but I wind up recording and mixing all the time and I have for many many years. I did lose a lot of junk during a period where Iw asn't doing any studio work.... Ic an tell you I am sitting on a mountain of money in pedals I plug in once a year at most. I am seriously thinking of losing more of them. I'll also tell you that I didn't really aquire them at retail pricing otherwise I wouldn't have bought them. They aren't improving my music 99% of the time. I forgot I woned a lot of them, that's how useful they are once the initial thrill of a new toy fades.

what are you actually planning to use them for? these are coole ffects but unless you're regularly producing records or you're a member of my bloody valentine they're really overkill.

If you want a TZF flanger you can rgab a deco or the mighty foxxroxx TZF... if you want stompbox flanging look no further than an electric mistress clone for extreme stuff or a bossbf2 or Ibanez fl9, both cheap used and excellent, also capable of chorus sounds...

if you want chorus then you can't beat the DOD choruses and the CS9... for a little more money, both MXR choruses are pretty nice and highly tweakable.

all cheap options for great warble that's not like your univibe... don't overspend on an analog chorus/flange, I know your budget is limited.

yes, its an excellent, feature laden BBD chorus/flange that can cover just about every 80s sound you can imagine and then some... its a pweor hog, can cause ground loops on pedalboards and takes a while to learn. I'm a big fan of Moog in my home studio. But I'm a synth guy. I actually don't use their guitar effects, they do too much. Check out the Minifoogers though. I hear the chorus is amazing.

if it doesn't have preset storage it needs to be set and forget for live use... the audience can't stand it when you pause between songs to tune. They lose itnerest that fast. Only your mom will still be paying attention after you change the settings on your overly complex chorus pedal. I've seen a lot of bands thatw ere really great who manipulated their effects to do amazing things... but the audience just lost itnerest unless they could do it seemlesly without skipping a ebat or pausing for more than a minute between songs. You get like 1 tuning break at a small club gig where the signer will cover you by shmoozing before your audience is starting conversations or walking outisde to smoke til the enxt band is up... these thigns are studio toys or for established acts who have the audience's attention ebfore they even take the stage. Streamline, streamline, streamline until you have a following.

Thanks for stepping in Jim.

I fixed all the item categories on his gear when he added it all back but when I view his Equipboard some of them (many of the accessories/keyboard/expansionboards&sound libraries) are still showing up in the wrong categories there even though when i view the item its in teh right place.... this is your end , man... help the dude out ;-)

you know, the more corrections I make the more I realize the taxonomy on our gear database is pretty scattered. I can really see how it grew up from humbler beginnings. I wonder if you shouldn't take the site down for a few days and retool the whole system in the enar future. Just gog round up and really approach it logically.

tell me which ones are showing up as 'other gear' and I'll fix them all today

EDIT: I think I found all your problem gear and applied a temporary fix ;-) We'll see about improving the categories. I think we need a 'tabletop and rackmount' category and maybe one for "Preset synths and ROMplers" for so-called expander modules without keyboards (no one uses that midi expander term anymore, but I remember when that was the talk of the keyboard and electronic music rags when general midi took over stages and studios so I get where you're coming from... took me a sec though because at first when you said expanders I thought you just meant roland expansion cards for their romplers... but as far as I'm concerned I don't see why a rompler rakc unit can't be in synths, its kind've a presets sampler/synth, I dunno... maybe its just my opinion based on how I use MY personal gear)...

I've tried the warped vinyl and it soudns VERY VERY good. Tap works well. As far as modulation apart from Trem with tap goes in a band context? Its useful for recording, although the tempo syncing will be subtle in a dense mix but its pretty well inaudible from the audience live. These are expensive effects and may not be worth investing in unless you're planning to record soon. As awesome as the warped vinyl is, when set for conventional chorus/vibe sounds it sounds like most bucket brigade devices, no better or worse. You're paying for the tap tempo. Also, a univibe is more of a 4 stage phaser using a primitive photo-electric circuit than a BBD based pitch vibrato, you won't find the warped vinyl capable of reproducing that tone. A univibe is tis won thing.

yeah, we don't have a separate category for modules, just modular... I'm a big tabletop and rackmount guy since I had a kid and space became an issue. Keybaords take up space. Anyway, yeah we need a Modules and Expanders section. That's beyond my authority to implement though. Gchiaren would have to.

its cool, we're all Italian to some degree in this thread (I'm a 4th generation Italian American, Toscana and Abruzzi), we gotta stick together.

just post your issues in this thread and I will do my best to resolve them all in a day or two

again, user generated content... there are kids who see the name of a piece of gear on someone's gear lsit and create an item for it just toa dd it to their favorite musicaian but they're not clear on what it reallly is or what it actually does. They're great at spotting who sues what but terrible at knowing ANYTHING ABOUT THE GEAR OR MUSIC IN GENERAL. They're kids.. ignorant, evil, snotty, but we need them. They're willing to post 20 times a day and update all this stuff. I can't keep up with fixing all their goofs though. if when you spot one you tell me I'll try to clean it up as soon as I can', man. Some of thema re really extreme but if its not an item I've had cause to look at on equipbaord I haven't noticed. Someone needs to tell me. you shoulda seen the fender amps on here at one point. It was nuts. I sat down and fixed it all amp by amp based on the circuits. Got everything consolidated, named systematically and categorized right... took me a couple days. Maybe longer. And those are vitnage fender amplifiers. Something ubiquitous, beloved by pretty much all guitar players thate ven kids can absically identify. But they were totally jacked up. Now look at somethign esoteric like roland expansion boards... I'm a huge synthesis guy, but I'm not into those particular instruments so I know almost NOTHING about them, let alone their add-ons... what's some teenager going to know? See, I'm an adult so if I don't know or want to elarn I won't post, but a young person? That's asking a lot. Then you have the total goofs like miscategorizing a popular pair of direct field yamahas... WTF? Can't explain that. Some of our users may have a high gear IQ but their actual IQ is maybe not so high... what can I say? Some people are just fuc ups.

Listen, don't let it boggle your mind and certainly don't be devestated over it... its only music gear. if you notice some goofs by a few numbskulls? let us know so we can fix it. By the way, I just fixed your Yamaha monitors and they're now categorized correctly. Someone got lazy and didn't click through all the pull downs when they added them. Either that or they were added so long ago that there weren't as many sub-categories because the site was TINY. Equipboard is progress, not perfection.

welcome, I'll have to check out your soundcloud later!

for starters, the content here is suer generated, so its just possible that some of the the gear was literally placed in the wrong category by the user who added it to our database in teh first place. I too have an extensive equipboard and there are still a lot of miscategorized items on it and they're msotly due to human error (although some, like guitar speakers, are due to us not ahving created a special category for them yet). In the case of the studio monitors, that's human error. See if you can go in to edit the category of the offending item and correct it yourself. If not, I'll do it for you because I know I have that ability. Whether its a lack of specific categories or a pile of gear miscategorized by uninformed users, I tend to think of this stuff as 'growing pains'. When I joined the site it was much smaller and much different. Its proposed scope was even wider than music but tis practical focus was almost entirely guitar-centric. As Equipboard has grown and changed its been a struggle for our admins to keep up. often tehre are problems thatw e can't be aware of until someone like you points them out. I'll let Gchiaren or Michael take over from ehre.... but you may want to see if you can edit gear categories yourself. I really don't remember if that's a moderators-only feature.

I'm probably the only guy on ehre who read this and said "why would you do it another way unless you had to?" I mean, I use pedals, but not as my tone. You guys would laugh at my pedal settings, I swear, you'd be like "what's the point?" But there is a point to it. The amps are doing the real tone work and the dirt pedal(s) are just tightening frequency repsonse when needed, adding a bit of grit and providing an extra boost for me when 10 on my guitar volume isn't enough. I like my guitars and I like my amps. I can happily match the right guitar to the right amp and use nothing else. And that's usually how I do it when I record unless I want fuzz tone. My preset banks on the TC Nova that I use altely are just for gain matching the different guitars, so my hottest guitar has the TS side at like zero gain and by the time I get to the stock strat and 60s tele I'm up to maybe 3 to hit the amp with the same kinda level and I think I shave a hint of treble off the fender settings but ym humbucker patches are wide open or close to it.

To me most gain channels are very much like kicking a drive pedal on. The whole amp is seldom breathing with it if you're at level that retains good power amp headroom for real clean form a clean channel. Same difference.

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/27106-tone-tips-volume-dynamics-guitar

well, I did agree with the guy that things had gotten pretty long in the tooth... he's just an argumentative guy who only came on here to say he could be a better site admin (entirely possible) and then wanted to stay mad when I stuck up for the founders even once he talked me around. At any rate, the first small update's rolled out... more to come. Hopefully we'll see the "used to own" category soon but I guess Azfatboy won't be here. Oh well.

And if dolphins are so great why don't they live in igloos?

For the record I'm not a professional at anything to do with equipboard. I'm not even a professional musician or recording engineer anymore. I never claimed to be anything but a regular dude who loves music and gear... and who likes the guys who founded the site. We're not really 'friends' they're from Texas and I've never even gone down there to see them. I just stick up for guys who put their blood into a non-profit enterprise for the enjoyment of others... I have a lot of respect for people who have a cool idea and then take the trouble to see it through as far as Gchiaren and Michael have. It easier to throw stones then to build a house out of them. But I was willing to admit when Azfat had a point and the dude just kept going at me. Politely, but like I never recanted. Sorry, that's flaming, when you won't let it go. Reminds me of my wife. Then he took his ball and went home. Okay! See ya dude and thanks for the redundant suggestion (gear I 'used to own' has been around as an idea here for years, but the demand is actually pretty low from the wider user base).

anyway here's the easy update that's been mentioned by a lot of people, go crazy with yer pics:

http://equipboard.com/forums/general/topics/we-got-you-guys-3-more-gear-porn-photos-last-week

-unpaid and unprofessional Jim!

In case you didn't notice, gear porn slotts have gone from 3 to 6. I think Gchiaren has even more of the request updates and improvements in the works coming soon.

still working on her a bit... got the right knobs on her... see my gear porn

maybe look for used stuff, troll craigslist

in a comical way

wow... now I don't believe it

I believe it. Quality control in China is non-existent... they don't make shit like they used to. one of the benefits of pushing 40 is that I scored tons of old stuff that was made with care back when it cost very little... it was obsoltete tech when i was a teenager!

Nothing you had to deal with should ever happen.... a jack shouldn't bend easily and a pedal should have its ins and outs wired properly.

look at the last 2 photos... with regular maintenance that old girl is running better than new 56 years later: http://equipboard.com/jimmarchi1/photos

I don't know how anyone can rely on recent budget gear. Its so shoddy, You need to go boutique these days to get something that was built with love and attention. Fuck China.

I advise people to spend more money and do less eating... when you're in your 20s food ad sleep are overrated, tis the time to spend big and get the stuff you need for a lifetime of must making. Get it as cheap as possible and care for it. As you get old it will still be there and your ability to replace any of it will get lower and lower.