The X-1 Needs to Cool Down

I’m making great progress on the Fender Champ/Garnet Herzog cloney thing.

Today I made the screw holes for the power transformer (I already had a hole made for it to sit in), and I installed the rectifier socket and output transformer. I also made a circuit board from scratch.

Sadly, I made a little boo boo while making the socket hole. I have a new unibit that goes up to 1 3/8″, and I was all excited about using it. I fired it up and drilled a pretty nice hole, and then I remembered…the correct size is 1 3/16″.

The hole was bigger than the socket.

I had to spend an hour an a half remembering how to use the lathe. Then I made the little tube platform you see in this photo.

Most people don’t know anything about tube amps. They’ll think there’s a scientifical reason for that platform. AND I INTEND TO LET THEM BELIEVE IT.

It looks very cool, so I’m not complaining.

This thing should be running by tomorrow night, if I can figure out what kind of relay to use for the footswitch. I may have to bypass the footswitch stuff until someone clues me in.

Anyway, it’s beautiful.

More

I figured out what the platform does. It repels microfleems that aren’t subradiante.

Monster Wattage is the Answer

Life just gets better and better.

I received the parts for my new 5-watt Herzog/Fender Champ clone, and today I started working on it. I had such great results with the heavy aluminum channel on the 5f6a clone, I decided to use 4″ aluminum square tubing for the new project. And I’m using a tube rectifier, just in case it makes a sonic difference when I use the rig as an amp. I’m told it won’t, but it will still look cool, and that’s important.

The next photo shows the chassis after I trimmed it with a table saw. I just made a rectangular hole for the power transformer, using the milling machine, but I’m too lazy to take a photo. Now I’m waiting for my giant unibit to arrive so I can drill the tube holes instead of using a hole saw.

My buddy from church settled on an amp: the Trainwreck Express. This is one of those legendary small-shop amps, like the Dumble Overdrive Special. A little outfit in the Northeast made them, and then the maker died. Now people go over them with microscopes and try to copy them.

It’s supposed to be a high-gain amp with a temperamental circuit. They say the overdrive goes nuts with a small twist of a guitar pot. It’s said to be better for rock than blues, but my friend says it’s what he wants.

Next week we’ll order parts.

I’ve learned a ton since I made the 5f6a, so this new amp will have new intelligent features in it, like heater wires that are arranged correctly to minimize hum. I’m referring to the Champzog. The Express is another story. People are telling me to do exactly what everyone else has done, if I don’t want trouble.

Here’s something amusing and possibly useful. The Express is a head (like all Trainwrecks), and it’s traditionally made of lacquered hardwood. Someone found that you can go to Woodcraft.com and order a nice dovetailed cherry drawer for $56, in the exact dimensions of an Express cabinet. Good info to have.

I love it when new amp parts arrive. I want to pour them out on my bed and roll in them. But I’m not that mental yet.

I’ll bet anything I end up making more amps for the guys at church.

Time to unwind with a Coke. This has been a phenomenal day.

5 Pounds of Sustain

I’ve decided on my next tube amp project. I wanted to make a low-powered Bassman 5f6a clone, but my 40-watt amp sounds so beautiful at low volume, I think a smaller one would be a waste of time. I decided to do something a little more unusual: a Herzog.

This is the effect Randy Bachman used to solo on the Guess Who hit “American Woman.” You get a creamy, compressed, overdriven sound with infinite sustain.

How did he do it? Amp maker Garnet Gillies took a single-ended 5-watt design similar to the Fender Champ, slapped a resistor across the output, and ran it into the input of an ordinary amp.

There are two well-known Herzog schematics out there, and neither one really makes sense, but they are authentic. I pored over them and asked other people for help, and today I ordered parts based on my conclusions. I plan to make a 5-watt amp head which can be turned into a Herzog effect with the flick of a switch.

I know there are other ways to get this effect, but my guess is that they don’t sound the same. The Herzog has two tubes in it. I would be surprised if you can duplicate their sound with solid state electronics. I’ll bet the analagous pedals are not quite as good. And they definitely won’t drive speakers.

The Bassman is beyond amazing. I can play it with the volume at 2 and get beautiful, warm sound. It loves pedals. It sounds great on its own. It’s perfect. Better than I hoped.

I’ve noticed that the dynamics go way past any other amp I own. It’s actually a problem. If you pick lightly, you get a very quiet sound. If you pick hard, you get popping notes that fracture your skull. The trouble with this is that it exposes every mistake. Things I used to get away with are suddenly right out there where everyone can hear them. My other amps evened out the volume, and I didn’t know it.

This is a great quality for an amp to have, because dynamics are a big part of playing well. Nat “King” Cole was an astounding jazz pianist, but he played everything within a very narrow volume range, so he never got the kind of acclaim Oscar Peterson got. Vladimir Horowitz doped the hammers on his Steinway so he could cheat and get a wider dynamic range. Art Tatum could go from a whisper to a roar instantly. Variations in volume keep the listener engaged. They make music less boring.

The amp makes a little noise, but still, you can hear tiny details. If I run my finger up and down a wound string, you can hear every winding.

I can see why so many amps were based on this circuit. My guess is that if you don’t care for metal death distortion, this is as good an amp as you can get.

It’s a little hard to think of new projects after hitting a home run on the first try. But I’ll keep going. After all, there wasn’t a whole lot of original thinking in this amp. The physical design is completely unique; I did all that, apart from using old circuit board layouts. And I chose the components. But the actual circuit is 95% Fender. And Ma Bell’s engineers designed it before Fender got ahold of it.

My blues guitarist friend now says he wants a Trainwreck Express clone. Whatever. Once he figures out what he wants, we’ll build it.

Homebrew Amp Sends Sino-British Combos Packing

I took my new amp to church yesterday? The verdict? Amazing.

One of the guitarists asked if he could use it during services. Mind you, he was going to be putting it up against the lead guitarist’s $1200 Vox AC30. At the end of the day, the guitarists were telling me how great my amp was.

The sound is warmer than the Vox. It breaks up nicely. It sounds way better at low volumes. It has plenty of juice. They didn’t have to turn it past 12 o’clock, even with a single 10″ speaker battling against the Vox’s 2×12.

I put a new part in it: a humdinger circuit suggested in Merlin Blencowe’s book on power supply design. This is a trimmer pot between the heater feeds with the wiper connected to ground. It allows you to balance the voltages in the feeds so they’re identical. This gives excellent hum cancellation. Now the amp is really quiet.

I’m planning to build an amp for one of the guys, and he was leaning toward a Super Reverb, but now he’s thinking two amps, because he likes this one so much. It looks like I can do it for around $400, unless he goes for a Gucci tone-snob transformer set. That will add $300 to the job.

It amazes me that I can use this amp to practice in a small room. And look how God has given new value to the physics education I thought had been wasted.

Two of these would completely solve my church’s guitar amp problems, but I guess they’re stuck with the Voxes. They’ll never sell them and use homemade amps. People don’t like to rub their mistakes in their own faces. When you blow that kind of money on amps, the natural thing is to struggle to make use of them.

Life is sweet. The next project will begin as soon as I can get parts.

Amp Virtually Finished

This is too cool not to blog

Last night I got my Fender Bassman clone running! Here’s a photo. It’s gorgeous. I call it “Thick Al.” I asked for advice on a forum, and I referred to it as a “thick Al chassis,” referring to the aluminum, and someone thought I was giving the amp a nickname. Sounds good to me.

This is a 40-watt amp powered by 6L6 Sovtek Svetlana tubes. It has a 12ay7 preamp tube (V1), and then the signal goes through two 12ax7s (second stage and phase inverter). The rectifier tube is a Chinese GZ34, and it’s backed up by 4 4n1007 diodes.

It’s the exact circuit Leo Fender used, except that I didn’t follow his practice of always using the cheapest components, and I omitted the ground switch, added variable outputs, and used a 125V pilot light. If I had it to do over again, I would omit the standby switch, as a noted authority has convinced me that they are worthless.

The chassis is a 20″ length of 6″ Aluminum Association channel. I machined hollows in the back to make it easier to mount things. I made the circuit boards using a table saw and drill press. I polished the chassis with an orbital sander and 220-grit sandpaper.

It still needs something to cover the bottom.

A day or two, I did the “smoke test,” firing it up to see if it worked. I kept blowing fuses, and that’s when I learned that the cases of electrolytic capacitors are electrically connected to the innards. I had the filter caps mounted so the leads touched the cases, and that caused shorting. Hey, I don’t make capacitors. How would I know?

I got that fixed, and I built a current limiter to conserve my remaining fuses, and I found that the amp was very quiet and distorted. It took two days to find out that I had put 470K resistors where I needed 470 ohms. Two were on the screen grids, and one was on the phase inverter. I also had a 250pF capacitor where I should have had a 250uF, and I had the volume pots wired so they turned backwards.

Last night I got it running, but it was too late to try it out. Today I turned it on, and I had lots of noise.

I learned a lot about grounds. I had to move a whole bunch of them. In the process, I rewired the volume pots and also the presence and EQ pots (which, I now know, were wired correctly at the time). I replaced various bits of cheap stuff with good stuff, I put a tube shield on V1, and I turned the amp on again.

Still noise.

Then I turned on my Fender Blues Jr. Guess what? It was considerably noisier. That told me I had made it. I got some great suggestions for reducing the noise further, but it’s great right now.

I played the amp using my Epiphone Riviera P93 with Lollar pickups, using a Holy Grail reverb and the following distortion pedals: Plimsoul, Blues Driver, and Fat Sandwich.

The amp is amazing. The sound is very sweet, hot, and detailed. It has lots of punch, so you get a big reward for picking louder or softer. It’s less muddy than the Blues Jrs. Apart from the residual noise, it’s the perfect amp. And the volume actually works! A lot of amps go from 0 to 10 in ten degrees of rotation. On this amp, 3 means 3! It sounds good at practice levels! I don’t need my Firefly now!

I play it through a homemade cabinet with a 12″ Weber Signature speaker (super cheap). I can’t turn it up because the speaker is rated at 25 watts, but so far, it sounds beautiful. I just received a 10″ Eminence Ragin’ Cajun, and I plan to make a cabinet for it tomorrow. That will give me 75-watt capability, so I’ll be able to fire the amp up for real (probably with ear plugs).

I never expected to be able to use this amp. I built it in order to learn. But it’s extremely useful. A keeper. The ideal blues amp.

I just wish the selector switch on the Epiphone wasn’t going out. I have to get that fixed.

I love the way the amp looks. I was going to put some kind of roll cage on it, but I don’t really need one at home, unless I plan to get drunk and sit on the amp.

Now I need a new project. The guys at my church complain that their Vox AC30 amps are too loud; they can’t crank them and get good tube sound without blowing up the church. Maybe I should make an 18-watt EL844 based amp and see if they like it.

It’s amazing how God is taking the old threads I dropped and weaving them into something meaningful. This is a blast.

Amp Nears Completion

I keep plugging away at my new guitar amp. Because I chose to do an original chassis design, I ended up running into a lot of surprises, and they slowed me down. The next time I make one, it will be a breeze.

Here’s what it looks like without the tubes, power light, and switches.

I couldn’t figure out how to give it a nice finish. A thing like this is not easy to fly-cut. Today I decided to try a woodworking scraper and an orbital sander. WOW, did that work. The scraper leveled all the places that lifted up when I drilled it, and it reduced the scratching. The sander gave the aluminum a crazy finish that looks like Damascus steel. It has all sorts of wiggly parallel lines on it. And it only takes a few minutes to clean up the whole amp.

I have one ding that won’t come out, and there are a couple of fairly deep scratches I am too lazy to remove, but it looks great. Someone suggested an engine-turned finish, but that takes a long time to do, and it will show scratches badly. This is quick and unique, and if it gets scratched I can fix it in ten minutes.

The input jacks I ended up using are about a millimeter too big for the cavity I made for them. I did the measurement with smaller jacks. I guess I’ll have to fix that. The other jacks will work fine as outputs.

These knobs were labeled “bronze” when I bought them, but they look like copper to me. Whatever. They still look neat.

I might conceivably be able to play through this amp tomorrow. I have to get the circuit board installed and solder the connections to the pots, transformers, tube sockets, and whatever else.

The only cabinet I have is a 25-watt 12×1. I hope I don’t blow it to smithereens.

It’s going to work. Can’t wait to hear it.

I’ve been getting advice on Internet amp forums, and I can tell I’m irritating some of the people. Some think it’s cool to do a design this weird. Others seem almost offended.

I have never understood people who hate creativity, but they’re everywhere. If you’re a truly creative person, you will be persecuted your entire life, no matter how hard you try to get along with people. I’m surprised I haven’t been burned for a witch.

Neandernerd and his Cave of Even-Order Harmonics

I had to put the AC plug in my amp chassis today. I knew this might be a problem, since the chassis is 3/8″ thick and a bit floppy for milling. I had selected a three-prong receptacle that required a hole 1.1″ by 1/25″ in size.

I was able to use the mill to waste excess metal, but it was no good for making the contours of the hole. I tried everything I knew. Fein Multi-master. Rotary flex shaft tool. Files. Everything was slow and hard to use.

I decided to get crazy and try the drill press.

You won’t believe this. You can mill aluminum with a step bit on a drill press.

First I used the mill to reduce the thickness to 1/8″ in the applicable area. I was able to orient the chassis so I could do this easily, but orienting it so I could cut the hole was not possible.

Then I stuck a cobalt unibit in the drill press and went to town. I learned two things.

1. If you hang onto an aluminum workpiece and drag it by a unibit, it mills pretty well.

2. You can use a unibit as a very precise and quick nibbler. Seriously. You raise it a step, move the work over to it, and lower the step through the metal. I’m sure this is like #3 on just about any video of workshop no-no’s that will get you fired (right after using a lathe while wearing a grass skirt and dreadlocks), but it really works.

I only wish I had figured this out right off the bat. I could have wasted the metal with the unibit and then nibbled it to fit. I had to file the corners a little, but that was a cinch.

Here’s the obvious question: why didn’t I use a cord that only required a round hole?

Look, shut up.

Okay, I’m stupid. That’s the reason. Everyone uses computer-style receptacles these days, so I although I thought about an old-style cord, I forgot about it when I ordered the parts.

Never again. Trust me on that. An old-fashioned cord with strain relief is just as good. I think it’s better. No one is going to kick it out of your amp when they walk by.

The chassis is basically done. I have to drill a couple of round holes and get wood screws to hold everything down, but that’s it. Now it’s just a matter of soldering, adding knobs, adding a structure to protect the tubes, and turning it on.

I’m dead-set on wood screws. They won’t vibrate off like machine screws with nuts. They hold really well. And if I use short ones, they won’t protrude into the chassis and aggravate me like machine screws. And no nuts to fool with! I hate turning a screw with one hand and holding a slippery nut with the other.

I should have finished the amp today, but Mr. Amp Genius had to have his three-prong receptacle.

My mill is driving me nuts. The power feed failed, so I have to turn the dials by hand, and they’re getting so you really have to apply pressure to make them engage. Tips would be appreciated. There are nuts at the ends of the screws that–I think–may adjust this. I plan to crawl around under the table and see.

That’s the weekend! Yeah, dawg!

I can’t help it.

Yeah, Dawg

The hard work on my amp is all done. From here on out, it’s small strokes. Here’s what I got:

There are two hollowed-out places behind the front panel now. The first one is where I put all the stuff you see now. The other one will make it easier to mount switches and a light, although it really isn’t needed, since switches have long threads and the light has a long housing.

I may forgo a cabinet. I’m very tempted to turn this into an industrial-looking all-metal amp. Not steampunk, but closer to that than Fender. I would need to come up with a nice-looking cage to go over the top and protect the tubes. Hey…I wonder if I could fill copper tubing with epoxy, bend it to a suitable shape, and let it harden. By itself, copper is too flimsy. Although I suppose pipe might work. I have things for bending tubing.

I can’t wait to fire it up and see if it explodes. Maybe tomorrow. I won’t have knobs by then, however. Unless I go with Radio Shack.

I need a reasonably priced tool to check capacitances. I don’t know why, but capacitors are marked in ways nobody can read. My Fluke meter only goes down to nanofarads. I have a whole drawer full of capacitors, and I can’t read them. Even the Internet is useless.

I don’t know what I’ll do with a 30-watt amp. Put my speaker cabinet in an isolation box, maybe. My speaker is only rated at 25 watts, though.

I am loving this project.

And now I think I’ll embed a stupid commercial because it cracks me up.

Someone please tell me what a bro-stache is.

No, don’t.

Get Knock on Door From Joyful Cops

Here’s what I got so far:

I had a lot of fun making tube socket holes in 3/16″ aluminum. I had to use a 1 3/16″ hole saw for the big tubes and a 3/4″ Forstner bit for the small ones. I should buy stock in WD40; I used so much to keep the bits from binding.

The stuff on top will be held down with wood screws. There is no need for nuts when the metal is this thick.

This is extremely cool. Can’t wait to turn it on.

God’s Voltage Will Find a Path Around Man’s Resistance

All sorts of stuff is going on.

For like two years, I’ve been trying to get friends and my sister to pray in tongues. Back in the Eighties, I started to feel sure that this was the key to spiritual growth, and my experience since then has confirmed it. I believe the Holy Spirit is the nervous system (the “Force”) of the Body of Christ, and without it, we will always be ineffectual and self-defeating, so I try to get people to build the Holy Spirit’s influence inside them by praying in tongues.

People I know are starting to listen. They get timers, and they make sure they pray in tongues every day. They come back to me changed. I feel like I have help now. I don’t have to be the lonely voice of tongues. If I drop dead, they’ll keep going and multiplying and growing.

It’s like The Matrix, in reverse. We’re the agents, and we’re the good guys. That little surveillance kit an agent wears, with the plug in the ear? That represents the Holy Spirit, connecting us to our guiding power. We submit. We listen. We are in agreement. We act as one. Neo? That’s the guy who thinks he’s special. He thinks he can do it without God. He believes he knows better. Basically, he’s the Antichrist.

Remember how Agent Smith touched people and turned them into clones of himself? That’s what Jesus bought us on the cross. On Pentecost, he came down and sent the Holy Spirit through the Upper Room, turning 120 people into his younger brothers and sisters and enabling them to grow to be like him. Now we can lay hands on people, quite literally the same way Agent Smith did, and we can give them this gift. This is what being “born again” really means.

People love their pride. They love to feel like they have special abilities no one else has. They love their narcissism. That’s why the image of Neo is so appealing. You put on a cool black coat and nifty black shades, and you load up with all sorts of sexy weapons, and you wade through the sheep who oppose you in ignorance. You slaughter them without remorse, because they’re part of the problem. If they were as hip as you, you wouldn’t have to shoot them, but they’re just not cool, so down they go.

That’s pretty much how Satan works. He didn’t like God’s plan. He figured he could do better. He was beautiful and smart and strong. He was persuasive. He was aggressive and self-confident. Today we would call him “empowered” and “centered.” He didn’t care about the little foolish people who weren’t very bright or very strong and who therefore had to depend on God. He was all about the special ones. The elite. He was Morpheus.

God is not like that. He isn’t a modern model of self-aggrandizing cockiness. He is humble. The Bible says, “Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off.” God doesn’t look for cool people who have it together, so he can let them do him the favor of applying their amazing gifts in his service. He looks for the weak and the grateful, so he can build them up to fight with HIS gifts. He uses foolish things to confound the wise. His strength is made perfect–“perfect” means “complete”–in our weakness.

So now my prayer group is spreading the infection. And I know there are other carriers all over the place, doing the same thing, even if they don’t talk much about it in church.

Pastors and teachers tend to underestimate the importance of tongues. Most flat-out deny the power of tongues. Many slander the Holy Spirit, saying tongues are demonic. That’s fine. The Holy Spirit doesn’t have to speak from the pulpit. He can speak in the parking lot or the men’s room. That’s what he does in my church. He’s like electricity. He finds a path of low resistance, and he takes it.

Why didn’t God make this happen 2000 years ago? The simple answer: he did. But the church listened to Satan, as it always does. Satan told our leaders hard work was what mattered. It was WRONG to expect God to change people simply because they prayed words they did not understand. It was SELFISH. You should EARN your favor with God!

Never mind the obvious hypocrisy. You can obtain salvation, which includes eternal life in health, joy, and wealth, by uttering a few words. But if you expect God to change you just because you pray in tongues every day for years, well…that’s just too easy! Does that make sense to you? I hope not. You would have to be stupid.

God does not force the world to work properly. He gives us the tools, and then he steps back. And we fail him, over and over. Adam failed him. The entire world failed him before the flood. The Jews failed him in Egypt and in the wilderness. Christians failed him, even after he gave them easy salvation and the gift of tongues. God let these things happen. He did that because making the world work is our responsibility, not his. His kingdom is not of this world. This world is supposed to be our kingdom.

Every once in a while, God returns and gives us what amounts to a bath. He cleans us up and puts us back on the path. He gives us knowledge our ancestors should have held onto and passed on to us (“A good [man] leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children). Then he steps back again. Over the last century or so, he has been pouring the Holy Spirit into us like a French farmer force-feeding a pate goose. The Holy Spirit is back. We have another chance. And we’ll eventually blow it. Meanwhile, we can do a lot of damage to Satan’s kingdom.

This weekend, our pastor taught about the prayer of victory. I was afraid he was going to pass on something Steve Munsey came up with. I was afraid we would hear that we were supposed to give a huge monetary offering in exchange for a super Pentecost dose of the Holy Spirit. That didn’t happen. Instead, at the altar call, he said he wanted people to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit…en masse! It was wonderful. It was beautiful. This is exactly what my little group prays for! This is what changes lives. God armed a bunch of new recruits. We don’t have to feel so outnumbered now. I hope we see more and more of this. I don’t want to see my pastor do things that aren’t going to bring him a fit reward for a lifetime of service.

We have a conference coming up, on South Beach. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it. Sometimes we do things that make me very uncomfortable, in order to attract kids. But we got this big Holy Ghost blast this weekend, and the conference is taking place on Pentecost. Now I’m a little excited. Maybe God is in this after all.

I feel like there is more hope for my church than I realized.

I’ve learned some discouraging things since I’ve been there. We have a pattern of taking qualified people out of positions of power and putting them to work as beasts of burden. I’m a cook, a writer, a lawyer, and a physicist, but I can’t cook, write, or practice law for the church. I wander around doing security jobs. We have one of the best guitar players I’ve ever seen, but his service consists mostly of cooking in the cafe and playing for kids. We have a guy who went to college on a vocal scholarship, and he was removed from the worship team and required to teach small children. I could go on and on. We put less-qualified people in charge, and we waste the talented people God sent us. It’s like the Body of Christ is walking on its hands, eating through its ears, writing with its feet, and so on. It’s so bad, I quit giving things to the church, because I know they’ll be wasted. I give to other organizations that do a better job. But now I have hope that the Holy Spirit will be allowed to put things back in order. This is the power that puts flesh on the “dry bones” and puts them back together in an organized body.

We listen to Australian music in my church. This stuff is really…it’s not good. The musicians are not overjoyed about it. If you gave me all of it in CD form, it would be in the trash in ten minutes, because there is no way I’d ever listen to it. Think of every bad thing the word “white” means when you apply it to music, and that’s Australian worship music. And the lyrics are, well, I’m not going to use the word that came to mind, but they’re…if I wrote lyrics like this, I would seriously wonder if I had any business writing lyrics at all.

Meanwhile, the church is about 80% black. It’s an American church. America has the best popular music in the entire world. We created gospel. We created the blues. We created jazz. We invented soul. Isn’t this obvious? Do I even have to mention Mahalia Jackson, Rosetta Tharpe, Ray Charles, the Stanley Brothers, Kari Jobe…even Hank Williams wrote church music. Importing music from Australia is like importing chefs from England or comedians from Germany. It’s almost an insult to American culture. Would you export watches to Switzerland?

We had a guy come in and sing a couple of bluesy numbers a while back, and people went nuts. It was like they were starving.

We have unbelievable musicians. They’re dying to write and perform real music. But they don’t get the chance. I’m encouraging them to come to my house to work on their own stuff. My church won’t accept the blessing, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do what they were born to do. I told one of them they should get together and start playing at other churches. Do what God does. If one person rejects a blessing, give it to someone else. You can’t ruin your life by wasting time doing things God did not create you to do. Consider Psalm 37, verse 4. Your natural gifts and desires are not what make you a good Christian, but God does provide them for a reason, and they are not to be ignored.

I quit giving extra money to my church. I found other organizations that made better use of what I had to offer. I quit working in the church kitchen. Now I’m building amplifiers, and I hope to be able to help Christian musicians get good equipment. I was rejected as a writer, which is really beyond belief, considering what I can do and how limited the church’s other writing resources are. We have no other writers of any consequence. Now I either write here, or I do something more productive with my time. If you are bearing God’s fruit in your life, YOU HAVE TO DROP IT SOMEWHERE. You can’t wait around while the people you want to bless give you the straightarm and treat you like a burglar. I just can’t do anything for this church except pray and help with security. So be it. Until they come around, I’ll do for someone else.

Honest to God, I feel like renting a warehouse for these kids. I want to say, “Just go in there and PLAY, and don’t come out until you have ten good songs, and if anyone who even looks Australian shows up, bar the door.”

This has to be how God feels. He has so much good stuff waiting for us, but we choose our own hog wallows. We die in the desert instead of crossing over into the Promised Land. I remember how sad Jesus was when he talked about the things he wanted to do for Jerusalem.

If the revival continues, we should be able to get things in order. If not, I will continue to bless and be blessed, and the good things that come through me will go somewhere else. A current has to find ground. It will not be stopped. I am not going to let human beings thwart God himself. Jesus had to go to the Gentiles in order to bless people; I’m no better than he is.

The amp-building goes well. My only problem is that I’m learning so fast, I can’t finish my latest amp. Every time I think I’m ready to put it together, I learn something that makes me want to change it. But I may be able to get started soldering this afternoon.

I am going to have to go back over some mathematical foundations. Monkey-see, monkey-do is not going to make me an amp expert. I need to know how to calculate impedances and so on. I don’t think any of the math will be challenging at all, but the material will be fairly dry, so it will take effort to swallow it.

Life is beautiful. I hope I can help other people get on the same train. It looks like God is giving me success. In the meantime, I do not intend to let God’s work in my own life go to waste, regardless of who gets in the way. I am too old to put up with nonsense.

My Loss is Heaven’s “Gain”

I guess I should post an update on my amplifier.

I decided to make a Fender Bassman clone. I got all the parts except for the chassis. A new Chinese chassis which doesn’t look too good runs something like $50 plus shipping, and I thought that was stupid. If I’m going to shell out that kind of cash for a piece of bent metal, the quality should be good.

Naturally, I decided to do things the hard way.

Here are the pieces of surplus structural aluminum I bought. Two are 4″ square tubing with 1/8″ walls. The third–this is really cool–is 6″ Aluminum Association channel. “Aluminum Association” means the walls are not tapered. The inner surfaces are parallel to the outer surfaces. This makes it easier to mount stuff in the channel.

The tubing is thin and easy to work with. The channel is very thick, and it poses a lot of problems.

Naturally, I decided to do things the hard way.

I’ll put that on my tombstone.

I am using the channel, with the long side up. The transformers and choke will be mounted above it. Actually, the power transformer is sunk into it, because that’s how you mount them. But most of it is up top.

Here is the tube layout I’m considering. The rectifier is hidden away from the other tubes, and the 12AY7 (the most sensitive preamp tube) is way down there by itself, far from the noise. I hope. Someone pointed out that using a triangular layout may make it difficult to wire the circuit board, but it’s so cute, I think I’m willing to put up with that.

The eyelet board, which I have not made, will be under it. The knobs and stuff will go through the front wall. The whole thing will sit in a wooden cabinet which I have not built yet.

This thing is monstrously rigid. If I mount it in 3/4″ plywood, it will be like a Sherman tank with input jacks. It weighs around 6.5 pounds, contrasted with roughly 3.5 for the tubing.

I don’t care about the weight. This is a head, not a combo. It won’t have a ton of speaker attached to it. If it weighs 15 pounds instead of 12, who cares?

I was able to trim it to an accurate size using the table saw. You have to love that.

I have to figure out how to polish the aluminum on the front and top. I considered using a fly cutter on the top, but my vise is like 6″ wide, and this thing is 20″ long. I don’t know if the vise will hold it firmly enough for fly-cutting. I may end up using an orbital sander.

You may be asking yourself (if you’re still here) why I’m making a head. Simple. I want to make one amp every month. If I put speakers in all of them, it will cost $900,000 a year, and they won’t be all that portable. If I use a couple of interchangeable cabinets, I’ll save a lot of cash and work, and I’ll be able to take my heads around and play them through my 1 x 12 cabinet.

By the way, here it is, all finished. Or at least it WILL be here, as soon as my camera’s battery charges. I might add a few more touches, but this is basically it. I chose not to cover the cheesy sign paint. I thought that added an extra layer of testosterone or something. The edges are all radiused, and it has big rubber feet. It’s very stiff. You can sit on it all day. By using variable-output power transformers, I’ll be making heads that can be played through this high impedance with no problems. This sure beats carrying a 4 x 10 combo every time I want to use the amp.

The channel is causing new problems every day. Last night I realized I may have problems with the potentiometers, because the metal is so thick. The shafts have to go through it. I may have to order new pots. The other answer is to mill down the front face. I would have to do this from inside the channel in order to avoid it looking like an abortion. Another option: Forstner bits and an angled drill, to make small cavities for the pots to sit in. And of course, I have no angled drill. Yet.

I think I can mill the front down using a straight end mill and holding the channel on its back in my vise. I only need about 1.5″ of thin area. It might work. Depends on how much the aluminum likes being milled that way. It may flex around and drive me crazy.

I’m going to need legend plates. I don’t want to make a nice amp and then use a P-Touch for the labels. I need to find a local place that makes the plates cheap. Prices on the web are completely mental.

I got some neat videos to help me along. A guy named Gerald Weber has a video on understanding tube amps, and he also has one on servicing and maintaining them. I’m still burrowing through the first one. It’s helping me understand what I’m working on. Some of the things he says about electronics are a little dubious, but maybe that means he learned by doing instead of learning by watching someone scrawl on a chalkboard.

In case you doubt his wisdom, here is a video that proves he’s a real pro:

My buddy from church initially wanted me to help him with a Super Reverb clone, but now he’s talking about a Dumble Steel String Singer. Unfortunately, Mr. Dumble pours epoxy into his amps to hide the circuitry and prevent people from determining exactly how much unicorn poop he puts in there, so there aren’t a whole lot of schematics out there.

He has also been talking about building a Bassman AND a Super Reverb and using them together, like this Youtube guy. I can’t argue. They sound great.

I’m also fantasizing about building a Herzog. This is the effect used in the original “American Woman.” Turns a guitar into an organ. Pedals make this sound now, but I don’t know whether they do it well. In case you care, it turns out a Herzog is just a Fender Champ rigged up so it won’t blow up your main amp when you use it as an effect.

I can’t believe I’m getting to do all this stuff. Finally the torture I inflicted on myself by getting a physics degree is paying off. Sort of. Anyway, Psalms 37:4.

The guitar playing is going well, but the amps are taking time away from it. That’s why I want to get this thing DONE. I love my cheap Epiphone Riviera P93 more every day; I still can’t believe it turned out to be so great. On the day when I bought it, I seriously felt as though the Holy Spirit told me to go to Guitar Center and pick it up, so I made a left turn and did it. When I bought it, it had shortcomings. The pickups were pretty lame, and the tone capacitor was not right. Now it’s a monster. Great tone and super-low buzz-free action. And the size and weight make it stable for fast picking.

I play mostly through my homemade Firefly amp now. The sound level is perfect. I adjusted the tone using a new capacitor, and it worked out very well. I still have oscillation when I use the gain circuit. I have to fix that.

I picked up a Blues Driver. Very nice pedal. I gravitate toward the Blues Driver, Plimsoul, and Fat Sandwich more than my other two pedals.

That’s how things stand at the moment. Updates will be posted when I feel like it.

Zechariah 4:6

First off, Heather’s mom still needs prayer. Her kidney function is improving, but she will need dialysis anyway. Apparently she has edema, and they believe dialysis will get rid of it:

Mom’s doctor and I have discussed dialysis since her kidney function numbers aren’t getting any better(they are a lot better but still not where they need to be). This is mom’s primary physician so he knows the score as to all of her health issues. He really feels like giving her dialysis will be the best chance to help her body get rid of this edema and recover. So at three pm today they will be surgically implanting a dialysis catheter.
Please pray that this is successful and she’s able to recover.
God Bless,
Heather Page

That being said, here is some Holy Ghost weirdness.

Years ago, although I had failed algebra in high school, I decided to get a physics degree. I was over 30, and I had gone back to college so I could find something productive to do with my life. Through a series of strange twists, I found myself studying physics. I learned algebra and calculus at the same time, I got my degree, and I went to grad school at one of the nation’s finest departments. Then I got burned out, quit, and went to law school. I was glad I had learned about math and physics, but I felt that I had failed.

A couple of years back, I started going to church. A guitarist introduced himself to me, and we started talking. I took up the guitar again. I made cheesecakes for the church’s cafe. Another guitarist ate the cheesecake and became one of my fans. We got to know each other, and he started helping me with the guitar. He started asking me if I could build tube guitar amps.

It sounded pretty crazy. But I took two semesters of electronics courses while I was studying physics. And in my garage, I had–this sounds like something I’m making up–a powered breadboard, a Weller soldering station, woodworking tools for cabinets, tons of components, a lab power supply, and a beautiful old Hitachi oscilloscope I bought on Ebay. Plus machine tools, a drill press, a welder, and a plasma cutter. Whatever has to be done, I can do. I felt like I was going nuts when I bought this stuff, and suddenly it was turning out to be just what I needed.

Of course, I started building amps. I built an amp with less than two watts of output. I thought it was too loud. I built an amp with a much lower output. Both amps worked well. All this time, the guy who liked the cheesecake was bugging me about building a Fender Super Reverb clone for him to gig with. I decided to look at bigger circuits, as preparation.

I decided a Deluxe Reverb was the way to go. Then I listened to a Hot Rod Deluxe, and I decided it was even better. I asked questions on an Internet forum, and someone told me that what I really wanted was a Fender Bassman 5f6a. I looked it up. Sure enough, they sound fantastic. Exactly the sound I like. I decided to build one.

Over the last few days I’ve been choosing parts. Yesterday I ordered them. The amp should be complete in about ten days.

This morning I went to breakfast with my dad. At the cash register, I felt something in my pocket. I took it out. It was an audio tube. I had forgotten it was in there. For some reason, it made me think of a friend of mine; an audiophile I’ve been trying to get to go to church. I realized I now had the ability to build tube amps for stereos. I thought it would be funny to send him a photo of the tube and let him know what I was up to. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my phone with me. But I texted him when I got home. Now he’s all excited. He wants to see the Bassman clone when I finish it.

When I got done texting him, a friend of mine called me. His name is Leo. This is one of my armorbearer friends from church. He works with the VA. You won’t believe what he told me, but here goes.

They help people learn new skills, both as hobbies and for vocational purposes. He knows a guy who just received…a tube amp kit. This guy is not highly skilled, and he’s freaking out at the complexity. I told Leo I’d be happy to help. I’d need a schematic, et cetera et cetera. Leo said the amp was a clone of a Marshall JTM 45, and he sent me a link to the assembly manual.

How many amp models has Fender produced? Two hundred, maybe? What about Marshall? Same story. Why does that matter? Here’s why: the JTM 45 is a Fender Bassman 5f6a with a Marshall label. It’s a direct copy. So I’m building a Bassman for myself, and then a week or two later, I’ll be building the same circuit for someone else. And the online manual Leo provided will be a big help to me, not just with the JTM 45, but also with the Bassman.

So this is a testimony.

Where does this all come from? What is the source of all these “coincidences”? They come from praying in tongues. I recently learned that one of the benefits of praying in tongues for long periods is that you prophesy over your own life. You speak blessings into existence. You declare how God will tie up the loose ends and put you on rails headed for success. A guy named Glenn Arekion teaches about this; you can find audio at Sid Roth’s site.

The vast majority of Christians have lives that only work a little better than ungodly lives. They pray for things they don’t get. They divorce. They can’t quit smoking. They can’t lose weight. Their enemies beat them. They don’t have peace or joy, to any great extent. Why is this? It’s because they’re not plugged in. They’re like appliances with the cords cut off. Prayer in tongues makes the difference. It’s the power supply.

You need to quit saying it can’t be that easy. If you’re a Christian, you already accept easy success. At some point in the past, someone told you that you could get eternal life in a mansion in heaven, just by saying and believing one sentence. If you can believe that, why can’t you believe praying in tongues will give you the power and the character you need to live a victorious life here on earth? Do you understand how ridiculous that is? Effort required to receive eternity in paradise: speaking one sentence. Effort required to be blessed for the few years you have here on earth: copious daily prayer in tongues. Which is easier? Isn’t it obvious? If you can believe you received eternal salvation in ten seconds, surely you can believe God will give you a few decades of help in exchange for hours of prayer.

This works. I have zero interest in your scholarly arguments and your time-honored doctrine. I have seen this working, over and over. It works, it works, it works. You can argue with someone who reads about God, or who studied God in a university. You can’t argue with a witness.

God is sending people to me, to receive this message. It’s happening in my weekly prayer group. People notice that there is something different about me, and about the things I say, and they are trying to get ahold of it. Some of them took my advice and didn’t even tell me. I have five people now, using timers to make sure they spend time praying in tongues every day. They are changing. I see it. They don’t need me any more. They’re going to go on whether or not I continue.

This is why the gospel was called “good news.” It’s not just about salvation. The Jews had salvation before Christianity existed. What they didn’t have was the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God’s spirit rested ON some of them, but he did not become part of them, the way he does now. This is why Jesus said he who was least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than John the Baptist, who was greatest among men “born of women.” Today, you can be born of the Spirit. It’s not the same thing. It’s what “born again” really means.

Watch this space. Things are breaking loose.

1 = Loony; 3 = Cult

The weekly prayer meetings at my church are impressing me a lot more than the sermons these days. The sermons are generally good, but they are aimed at a fairly weak group of Christians, many of whom will pack up and go home if they don’t hear what they want to hear. The prayer meetings tend to attract people who really want to advance in their relationships with God.

Even the prayer meetings suffer from a Gideon effect. If someone who is highly placed in the church shows up, attendance is higher than it is the rest of the time. On the weekends when a less-prominent person leads the meeting, attendance falls steeply. Someone let me know that this happens because people show up to score political points. I didn’t realize it because I don’t think in terms of butt-kissing. By the time I realize there is a butt-kissing opportunity, the butt has usually left the building with its entourage.

I call it the Gideon effect because it pares the group down to a small but effective group of people, the way God pared Gideon’s army down. I don’t know if the purpose is the same; God sent most of Gideon’s soldiers home because he wanted everyone to know that Gideon and his men were not numerous enough to win without divine help. I don’t think that’s what God is doing with my group. Still, it works out the same. Nine people one week, three the next.

This week we ended up with the only three people in the whole church (that I know of) who pay any attention to me when I say prayer in tongues is extremely powerful and that it is the most important activity in a Christian’s life. I’m one of those people, so you can see how my ministry is growing. Next year there might be five of us! Pardon my foolish pride. I dream big.

One of these guys is an unemployed construction worker who boxes professionally. He’s a wonderful guy, but he does not get a lot of respect at church. He’s eccentric, and he gets excited easily, even by charismatic standards. Quite frankly, some people think he’s nuts. They are not completely without justification, but I think his extraordinary zeal, which is an asset, makes weaker Christians think he’s a little off. It’s funny, we tell each other to BELIEVE, BELIEVE, BELIEVE, but when we run into a guy who takes us seriously, we tell each other, “Keep an eye on that nut.”

I’ve talked to him a lot, and my take is that he is one hundred percent sold out to God. I think he’s the real thing. And it’s wrong to sell him short. He’s not a highly educated person, but sometimes he’ll show up at just the right time and tell you exactly what you need to hear. That quality comes from God. People do not appreciate him. I get a lot more good out of him than I do from a lot of people I know who are successful and stable.

In our prayer meetings, he has caused a certain amount of disruption. Sometimes he would come in and talk more than he should. He has a lot of problems, and earlier this year, he was very discouraged. He would come in and tell us how hard Christianity is, and how you have to struggle and fight. I kept trying to get him to try tongues, to build himself up and change his outlook and his character, and to get God’s power moving in his life.

A few weeks back, he came to the meeting in a bad state, and we tried to help him, and at the end, I told him not to bother me any more unless he had been praying in tongues. At the next meeting, I gave him a kitchen timer I didn’t like. I bought it a long time ago, for things like prayer, music practice, and cooking, and it was aggravating to use. One day it occurred to me that it would work very well for my friend, and I would be rid of it, so I turned it over to him and told him to do what I did: set it to three minutes and pray in tongues. Every day. I told him his life would change.

After that, when I saw him at church, he would tell me it was working. He felt peace. Things were getting better. He was increasing the prayer time.

Yesterday, he got up and spoke at the meeting, and it was one of the weirdest things I had ever seen. We used to teach him. Yesterday, he taught us. We used to try to get him to shut up. Now I wanted to listen. He had been getting revelation from the Holy Spirit. He spoke so wisely, it was almost creepy. And he looked different! You would have to know him to understand. There is a strange radiance and look of well-being you get from praying in tongues a lot. They say my great grandmother’s face used to shine from it. I’ve seen it in the mirror. It makes you look younger.

I know it sounds crazy, but it was as if God had made my friend smarter. And I suppose that’s possible. I’ve always felt that in the Bible, the word “wisdom” usually does not refer to intelligence. But sometimes it does. And the word of wisdom is one of the gifts you get from prayer in tongues. James said God would give us wisdom if we asked for it. Maybe God makes people brighter, not just better informed.

It gets even stranger. I didn’t realize how much impact I had had on the third member of the party, my friend Alonzo. He said he had been hitting the tongues hard, too. This explains all the wise things he has been coming up with. He has been freaking me out for quite some time now.

The three of us started talking about carnality in our church. There are things holding the church back. It amazed me to see how we agreed. In the past, I would sit at prayer meetings and do my best to get a few words in on behalf of the Holy Spirit, while other people talked about hard work and self-improvement, which are relatively worthless things compared to the power of the Holy Spirit. Yesterday, I didn’t really need to talk at all! Both of my friends were saying things I already knew. And we kept confirming each other. We were in “one accord”! Sound familiar?

The Holy Spirit is the nervous system of the body of Christ. I say that all the time. Jesus is the brain. When we are not in harmony with each other, it’s because we’re not praying in tongues and increasing the Holy Spirit’s power in us. Yesterday I got a taste of what it was like to be part of a body in which the nervous system worked properly.

The Holy Spirit is what makes life work. Haven’t you noticed that human effort doesn’t work? Diets don’t work. Exercise plans don’t work. New Year’s resolutions don’t work. Self-help books don’t work. Therapy doesn’t work. Marriage counseling doesn’t work. Christian teaching that doesn’t involve using the power of the Holy Spirit doesn’t work. MOST Christian teaching doesn’t work (because it’s stuff we made up). God designed us to be plugged into his power outlet. Without it, your efforts have about as much impact as an air ratchet that isn’t hooked up to a compressor.

I know people will retort that the things I criticized DO work. Sure, they work. SOMETIMES. With LIMITATIONS. With COSTS. TEMPORARILY. The general rule is that the things we do to change our lingering problems don’t get us very far in the long run. The Holy Spirit works, works, WORKS. No hidden costs. No strings attached. No unforeseen consequences, except for good ones.

I get so tired of soulish “teachers” telling me and my friends how to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Have you ever thought about that expression? It’s intended to be witty; it’s not supposed to be taken seriously. The whole point of the expression is to show us that we can’t lift ourselves up without help. Try pulling your bootstraps and see what happens. It’s a joke, yet people say “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” in complete seriousness. God never intended us to pull ourselves up. He intended us to allow him to pull us up.

If one more preacher tries to sell me a stupid book, DVD, or seminar full of brilliant self-help tips that don’t involve God’s power, I think I may do something that will give me a great chance to start a prison ministry. From inside.

What if Jesus had stood around handing out pamphlets entitled “How to Think Your Way Out of Paralysis and Blindness”? He would have died rich (from running seminars), nobody anywhere would have been healed, and we’d all be going to hell. Yet we pay good money to preachers who tell us that positive thinking and hard work will get us where we want to be. Blind guides. They never got there themselves, but they make money selling other people maps!

I’m not saying that everyone who prays in tongues will have a perfect life. You can always overcome the Holy Spirit’s guidance if you want to. You can remain unimproved. Perry Stone knew a Klansman who prayed in tongues. But it seems pretty clear that if you DON’T pray in tongues, you are not going to develop the way you should.

We’re talking about forming our own prayer group now, so we can focus more on the Holy Spirit.

I have the feeling that I should buy 5 timers and put out a challenge to the people I know: take a timer and pray in the Spirit every day for three minutes, and get back to me after one week. Give me and the rest of us your testimony. I think I’m going to get some timers this week.

Obviously, you don’t need a timer, but it’s a helpful tool.

I think there are certain people who can be reached, and I should be content with them. If that is correct, I would be in the same boat as people like Jesus and Moses, who never succeeded in getting the whole flock to go through the gate.

Fascinating stuff. It amazes me more and more all the time.

Geez, I wanted to write about the guitar. I guess I can cram it in at the end.

Today I took my homemade amp to church and let my young musician friends check it out. What a blast. We have some extraordinary talents in my church, and I am trying to help them in any way I can. I don’t want to see them end up working in grocery stores. My interests in music and electronics are really helping.

My young friend Zach is an incredible blues guitarist and singer. He fired my amp up on the church stage and tried it out, and it sounded wonderful. We’re going to build a Super Reverb clone. The church’s rhythm guitarist is named Joe; he’s also a very talented singer. I tried to get him to try it out, but it can be hard to get a rhythm guitarist to play after a soloist! He says he wants to build an amp, too. Another guy is rebuilding a Strat, so we may end up collaborating.

Yesterday I finished my second amp, a “Powerman.” It doesn’t work yet. I put it together in a blur of flying tools and wires and components. I really amazed myself. And of course, I did something wrong, and now I have to find it.

The guitar is going extremely well. I’m learning to slow the music down in my head and really get my heart behind my fingers. That brings smoothness and speed.

I’ve been trying to play the intro to “I Know a Little” as well as Steve Gaines played it. Actually, that’s wrong. I’ve been trying to play it better than he did. I didn’t realize it until today. I listened to him playing, and I realized that the sound I have in my head–the sound I’m aiming for–is better than what he achieved in the studio. There are some parts he doesn’t play perfectly. That’s amazing, given that I’m so close to conquering them. He had endless takes in a studio, and presumably, he used the best one, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to beat it.

I’ve got a modified pick design that gives me unbelievable speed, control, and tone. I’m getting my amps to do what I want. The Chinese Epiphone has an action that beats any other guitar I’ve tried, and the new pickups and heavy strings make it sound fantastic. I’m going to win. It’s not that far off.

I don’t know where I’m going, but someone else does, and he speaks it through me every day. All of this stuff is going to turn out to be worthwhile and rewarding. You can’t get that from Anthony Robbins in sheep’s clothing. You can’t get that from Tom Cruise.

That’s all I got for now. I hope it will be useful to someone.

I am an Electronics Expert & Tool Ninja

Today I installed the new Shark Guard on my table saw, fired it up, cut a chunk out of some grade XX phenolic sheet, drilled a few holes in a Hammond aluminum chassis, grabbed some hex standoffs and screws, and made…THIS:

That’s going to be a 6021-powered guitar amp. A 6021 is a subminiature tube about an inch and a quarter long.

The Shark Guard is wonderful. It even has a dust port on it, so I can attach a shop vac.

I cut that panel out, taped it to the chassis, and drilled the mounting holes through both items. The holes are perfectly round; I guess the board held the bit nice and steady. So far, it’s beautiful.

I love my tools so much. This was a breeze!

Ps. 37:4; Zech 4:10

Finally Grounded

I had another remarkable day.

I’m trying to build a “Powerman” amp. Some tinkerer on the web came up with this. He took the case from an old PC power supply, and he crammed a bunch of amp parts into it, hence the name. I listened to some sound samples online, and I thought they were tremendous. Clear, hot, and sort of shimmery. Just what I want.

Today while I waited for the parts to arrive, I tried to get going on a PCB, or printed circuit board. If you don’t know what this is, it’s a slab of plastic coated with copper. Instead of using wires to connect things like resistors and tubes, you cut away the copper on the board until you have separate electrical paths separated by plastic, and they become the “wiring.” You solder your components to the board in the appropriate places, and you have a circuit that works.

The “printed” part comes from the fact that you can literally print these things. You create some sort of template and print it onto the board, and then you apply a solution that eats copper. The printed stuff protects the copper you want to keep. What’s left is the pattern that becomes your circuit. I don’t know if they do it much differently in factories, but this is the basic idea. I am too lazy to look up industrial PCB manufacturing.

When you do this at home, you have to create a black and white pattern and print it on photo paper. Then you use an iron to melt the toner (I guess) onto the copper plate. You remove the paper, and you’re ready to add the solution (“etchant”). You can also use a battery and a salt solution and remove the copper through electrolysis.

Feel free to correct the details, because there is no way I’m going to do it.

Here’s the hard part: making the diagram. I guess if you really wanted to, you could draw it on a piece of paper, scan it, and print that. But that’s no fun, plus it would be ugly, and it would be tedious. So what do you do? You use circuit design software, and then you use special software that turns your circuits into PCB images.

I spent like 4 hours today trying to understand a free program called PCB Artist. I never did get anywhere with it. I can understand calculus. I can understand physics. Sometimes I almost think I can understand my car insurance policy. But software written for engineers? It tends to be pretty hideous. Engineers have their own culture, so when they come up with new stuff, they kind of assume you already have all the old stuff memorized, because all you do is sit in your room smoking dope and doing nerd stuff. And sometimes they get angry when they have to accommodate normal people who know what the sun looks like. There are probably still engineers who think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will burn in hell for giving up on command-prompt computing.

PCB Artist has a help file. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, man. Engineers…WRITING. Never a good thing. It has flow charts where it ought to have paragraphs. Even Dilbert would vomit.

So I gave up. But then I made an amazing discovery. I already had free versions of two expensive programs: Multisim and Ultiboard. Don’t ask me how I got free versions. I downloaded them a long time ago. I don’t think they support them now. But they work fine. On top of that, everything is pretty intuitive.

I managed to create my own schematic symbol for the 6021 twin triode vacuum tube. I felt like I had climbed Mt. Everest on roller skates. I haven’t figured out how to get it totally integrated into the software, but I don’t really have to do that. The tubes are going to fit into op amp sockets, so as long as I can come up with a circuit with two sockets in it, I’m fine. The software already knows about sockets.

Very cool.

A bunch of the parts arrived. I have a Hammond aluminum chassis, lots of resistors, numerous capacitors, et cetera. I felt like dumping them in a pile and letting them pour through my fingers. I love this stuff.

Over the weekend, I located an amazing book on vacuum tubes. It was written in 1952, for the military. The great thing about that is that the military EXPECTS you to be stupid. It’s not like university math and science texts, which always have incomprehensible, agony-inducing passages preceded by the word “obviously.” Now I know how vacuum tubes work! Fantastic! I should be done with the book next week. I looked at an awful book on tube guitar amps, and it was as useless as a Honey-Baked Ham store in Pakistan. Totally worthless. But the military book was a breeze. Why aren’t there more books like that?

I’m actually going to be able to do this. Not just this circuit, but circuits in general. Simple ones. And it’s coming together just as the guitar is starting to work. It is now easy for me to do things that were impossible a month ago. My hands are doing things which, I’m pretty sure, aren’t even physically possible. I’ll be brave and say I expect to be able to play “I Know a Little” very well, at 90% speed, without fear of screwing up, in a month.

The nuttiest things are happening. When you pick a guitar, you have to be accurate to within a couple of millimeters on every stroke. The natural impulse is to crab up your hand and move the pick with cramped movements of your fingers. I’m swinging my hand from the elbow, not looking where I’m going, and I’m whacking the strings I need to hit, reliably and smoothly. It’s like sinking a basketball over and over from 50 feet. When you play this way, you can play much faster and more rhythmically than you can by moving the pick with your fingers. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. A person with no fingers at all should be able to flatpick as well as anyone, as long as he can find a way to hang onto the pick.

As I get more accurate, I spend less energy on mechanics, and I have more brain capacity to apply to making the music sound good. I can listen to it and enjoy it. And my left hand feels like it’s swimming in the fretboard. Sometimes I feel like I’m singing with my hands.

I don’t know what’s going on, but a month or two back, I got the definite impression that my life was going to start working much better toward the end of April. I saw it as a pivotal week. I think from now on I’m going to succeed in areas where I used to fail.

This morning, I started feeling that God was blessing me. I felt that he was putting things in motion for me; bringing me wonderful things. It’s hard to explain, but I couldn’t help bending my knees at one point, as if someone were showering me with heavy gifts. I thought I’d blog it. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be just another crazy, and no one will care. If it does, I will have given God his glory, and unlike most people, I will have done it in advance.

God works. And the ideas I’ve had about him are all panning out. Especially tongues. I’ve only managed to get two people at church on board with it. One of them is using a timer to pray in tongues every day, as I suggested.

I’m going to go on ahead. I’m going to be like Joshua and Caleb. I don’t know how to bring people along with me; I wish I did. Jesus himself had limited success at that. But I have learned that when you get ahold of something good, and you decide to embark on a course of action that will dramatically improve your life, nearly everyone you know will find an excuse to stay behind and rot. The slavery they know looks better than the milk and honey they’ve been promised.

Maybe this is why a good marriage is such a treasure. Maybe the best thing that can happen to a man is to find a woman he doesn’t have to outgrow and leave behind.

I know there are disappointments in this way of life, but they are always disappointments in human beings, not God. I don’t care about those things. Human beings were created to be disappointing. We are told most of them go to hell. If they manage to achieve salvation, it’s a big deal. Asking for any improvement beyond that is wildly optimistic. Most Christians remain babies until they die, just like unsaved people.

I pray sincerely for people to change, and I go on with my progress. There is hope for anyone who will submit. I don’t know who will change and who will not. I hope some of the folks who disappoint me will come around.

If I manage to make a PCB amp, I’ll put up photos. This will be so cool, I may not be able to stand it.