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.

Fat Strings Make for Fast Picking

Well this is weird.

I’ve been working on the intro to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “I Know a Little” for weeks, and I was having a miserable time with some of the flatpicking. There’s a place where you play the first string at the twelfth fret, then the second string at the tenth fret, then the third string at the eighth fret, and then you move everything down a fret and play it again. You do this at 150% of the song’s normal 220 beat per second speed. It is not easy. I’ve been screwing it up over and over.

The other day I took my Strat out of the case. I hadn’t played it in a while. It has elevens on it. My other guitars generally have tens on them (or tens with heavy bottom strings). When I played the Strat, the flatpicking was easier. This was what I had hoped for when I took it out. It’s not surprising, since it’s generally easier to flatpick heavy strings. I decided to consider putting elevens on my other guitars.

The Strat is great, but I can’t cope with the volume knob that sits where my picking hand should be. It forces me to play near the neck, where the strings are wobbly and hard to find. I figured I should try elevens on another guitar and get used to picking fast near the bridge, where it’s easiest. Eventually, I would be able to go back to the Strat and play fast, regardless of the position. I’d get used to picking fast, so the knob would no longer matter. This was the plan.

Today I got a set of D’Addario jazz/blues strings (couldn’t find the normal ones at Best Buy) and put them on my amazing Chinese Epiphone. Suddenly I was able to play that difficult lick! The clouds had parted! You can’t imagine how hard I’ve worked on this, and how little progress I made until I tried the new strings. Suddenly I was able to feel the strings properly with my left hand, and they didn’t run away from my right hand any more. The thinner strings didn’t give my left hand much feedback, and they were hard to find with the pick.

Since then I’ve played “I Know a Little” until I’m wiped out. It’s so satisfying, hearing it work. Now I just have to fix one piece of fretting, and I’m in business. I’ll be able to play the song well at 90% speed and adequately at 100%. That’s a big deal. I’ve never seen anyone else do it. If I can do this, I know I’ll be able to play blues guitar well.

Most people like to use little strings to play fast. It doesn’t work well for me. They bend much easier, and that’s nice, but when you’re really flying, they seem to let you slide around the guitar neck too much, making your fretting inaccurate. When you fret guitar strings, sometimes you actually use one string for support while you reach for another, and that doesn’t work well with nines or tens. And because they’re hard to feel, you don’t always know what’s going on.

Maybe it’s because I learned on thirteens, playing bluegrass. Those things are fantastic for fast picking. You can forget about bending them to any useful degree, and stretches and playing up the neck are really rough, but your right hand will cook, and your left hand will always know exactly what’s happening.

I wonder if this is why Stevie Ray Vaughan liked thick strings. Perhaps when your hands get strong, playing on thin strings gets harder. He played very, very fast, so I can see how thin strings would confuse his picking hand. I’m sure someone will point out that he tuned down half a step, making the strings easier to bend. I think that would make the need for stiffer strings even greater.

This is fantastic. I’m so relieved. When you’re a musician, every time you hit a technical problem you can’t solve, you wonder if you’ve hit the limit of your talent. Now I know I can flatpick the electric guitar as fast as anyone needs to. I may not be the fastest, but almost no material will be off limits to me because of speed issues. That’s good enough for me. It’s the best result I could have hoped for.

It’s also comforting to know my age is not limiting me. I remember watching Roy Clark complain about losing speed, and he was probably five or more years younger than I am. I think he had arthritis. Anyway, when you’re old and you try to develop a skill, you always have to worry that it’s something your body or mind can’t do.

Finally, I’m going to have music in my life, and I’m going to do it well. The problems I had with the piano were extremely disappointing, so I feel like I have a new lease on life. I also have friends who are interested in amps, guitars, music, and serving God, so I won’t be alone in this.

I can’t wait until next week. With this new development, I should be playing this song correctly by then.

On top of that, I found a new tube amp design that I like, so I’m getting ready to order the parts and get to work. I now have two guys at church who want me to build amps for them.

Psalm 37:4!

Actual Noise, as Contrasted With Aspirations and Theory

I got the Firefly amp and speaker cabinet working. I thought the amp was too dark, so I dug up a 200pF capacitor and stuck it in the magic “bright” holes in the PCB. I think it made a big difference. Now the amp sounds a lot better.

Here I am, continuing to work on “I Know a Little,” with the mighty Chinese Epiphone Riviera P93 with Lollar pickups. I’m using a Way Huge Pork Loin pedal. I’m at 80% of the album speed. I can play it faster, and the mistakes don’t get much worse, but I like it better at this speed.

05 01 11 i know a little intro epiphone riviera firefly amp pork loin

It craps out when the boost is too high. Probably something loose in there.

I recorded this on a Tascam GT-R1, which is a very small recorder with a cheap built-in mike. Take it for what it is.

Eat Your Heart Out, Bang & Olufsen

Here’s what I have so far on the Firefly amp.

I still have to put handles and feet on everything, smooth out the speaker cabinet, and paint everything. But it works right now.

I’m amazed at how loud it is. I can’t turn it all the way up because of feedback. It won’t make you deaf, like a 5-watt amp. But it’s loud enough to make the neighbors mad, if they’re outdoors.

The next project will have to be a Murder One amp. This is a less powerful design, and it’s the size of a pedal.

I like the Firefly, but it’s a little dark. It’s supposed to sound like a Marshall, and if the Marshall/Fender comparisons I’ve seen are any guide, that means somewhat tinny. I think I prefer the Fender sound. Of course, I don’t know how to get it.

This project took considerable work. One of my friends from church wants me to make him a Fender Super Reverb clone. That’s a huge amp, but it would be way easier, because there would be no fabrication. In fact, it’s barely fit to be called “building.” You just put the parts together.

Let’s see. Soon I’ll be playing an amp I made, through a cabinet I made, using a guitar I made. Weird.

Guitar Improvement

Five days ago I posted a cheesy recording of me, playing the intro to “I Know a Little” on a Telecaster. I had just gotten it sort of together, and it was really shaky. But I was thrilled I knew it well enough to play it. Here it is.

I Know a Little, With Marv as Background Vocalist

Today I decided to post a new recording I just made. It shows what you can learn in five days. I played it on a Strat, which is very annoying to work with, because the volume knob is in the way of the picking hand. Still, it’s way smoother and more competent than the first recording. I think I should be on top of this by the end of May.

I Know a Little, played on Strat.

That’s actually not so bad. Working on one piece for weeks sounds awful, but this is a very hard bit to play. As fast as it is, it’s only up to 80% of the album speed, and there are slides and stretches and other difficult things in there. The triplets come in at about 260 beats per minute, and they’re flatpicked, one at a time.

One of the hard passages has been smoothed out completely. The others are improving fast. I’m even getting a little more swing, as the piece gets easier to play. It’s hard to think about music when you’re terrified of missing a note or getting lost.

Today I decided to check out my Greg Koch instructional DVD to see what he could do to help me. In my memory, his playing was right on target, so I figured he might have some tips. I was shocked when I watched his demo. He’s not even close. He can really play, but he’s way off on “I Know a Little.” Maybe the work I’ve done since I bought the DVD has changed my ability to hear the music correctly. I’m going to be able to play this better than he does. Apart from that, however, I will still basically be a wart on a germ on a flea on Greg Koch’s rear end.

This is pretty exciting. Someone else might listen to these recordings and hear only hopeless crap, but I know how fast I’m making progress, and I can tell where I’m headed. I’m going to be able to play blues guitar well. What a relief.

SOUND!

I got my new Firefly amp working. I am too lazy to post another photo.

The sound is very good, although a little dark. I think a pedal will fix that. You can brighten the sound by adding a capacitor; I don’t know if that will make it warmer or just tinny.

The amp has a boost channel. I don’t really understand the circuit, but I assume this just recycles the amplified sound, using the main circuit as a preamp. Anyway, it’s pretty danged loud. But with the boost off, you can turn the main circuit gain up all the way without getting loud. The sound is nice and coarse, so it sounds like the tubes are actually working, but the plaster doesn’t fall off the walls of the house, as it would if I turned up any of my other amps.

I have advice for anyone who builds one of these using a PCB. First of all, why use a PCB? It’s easy and small, but the amp will still be small if you use an ordinary circuit board, and you’ll save forty bucks or something.

Second, don’t use the onboard stuff, like the pots and jack and switches. There are places to mount these items directly to the PCB. This forces you to drill very precise mounting holes in the cabinet. It all has to line up. That’s stupid. Just run wires to the PCB and mount this junk wherever you want.

When I finished getting this thing into working condition, I had no cabinet to plug it into. I found a solution. I borrowed the jack from the Telecaster I’m building, and I wired it to the Weber speaker I’m going to use in the cabinet. I stuck the speaker on the couch and plugged it in. Works great. Not elegant, but I was in a hurry.

It turns out the tubes have to be mashed pretty hard to get them into the sockets. One of mine fell out. Also, the little screw-tightened wire connectors on the PCB are hard to get right. The wires tend to fall out, which is bad.

I attached the top using only glue, and so far, it has worked. They tell me a good glue joint is stronger than the wood around it, so why not put it to the test? If it breaks, I’ll put it back together with screws and supports.

I have to figure out how to paint it. I think I’ll just blast it with leftover truck bed paint. It will be very tough, and I won’t have to blow twenty bucks on a vinyl covering.

It needs knobs. If I can’t find anything around here, I may machine a couple out of aluminum. That would be fast, and it would look good, and I could rub it in the noses of all the non-mechanical people who already think I’m superhuman because I can solder resistors onto a board.

Now all I need is a tiny cabinet for super portability. The speaker I bought is a 12″ job, and it sounds good, but for convenience, it would be good to have something really small, like a car speaker. And dang it, I KNEW I’d need the old Dodge and Ford speakers I threw out when I upgraded vehicle stereos. DANG it. I just realized that. Maybe I still have the Dodges. I wonder how sensitive that speaker is. And how do you check the impedance? Can you just stick an ohmmeter on it? I might have to stick a resistor in there somewhere.

This is beyond cool. Now I have to make the big cabinet, the little cabinet, and a Murder One clone, which is a sub-one-watt amp using submini tubes, whatever they are. It’s the size of a pedal. I may even try to make a PCB for it. You can do that, if you’re a big enough nerd. I already have the PCB and photo paper, plus free circuit design software.

Man, what is happening to me? I’m turning into My Favorite Martian.

I’ll try to record this thing eventually.

Take me Where I Cannot Clamp…

I got my Firefly tube amp running today. When I first turned it on, it blew a fuse. I let it sit while I waited for new fuses to arrive. Today I opened it up, and I saw the problem. I felt so stupid. I put one of the rectifier diodes in backward. I knew about this hazard before I started, and I still did it!

Luckily the fuse saved the diode. I put it back in, and I turned the amp on, and I got a power light and no smoke. Does it work? Can’t say until I build the cabinet.

Right now the top is glued to the sides, and it’s setting up. I don’t know if it’s necessary to brace it from inside. It’s only about 6″ tall. It can be very difficult to line things up when you try to screw or glue a support in a corner, so I decided to go ahead with glue, which is much easier. If I decide to put a support in, hopefully, the glue joint will keep everything aligned.

I’m not a good woodworker. This is the best I could do. I don’t know how I’ll apply a finish after all this, but I don’t care any more. I have to get it working. I can always build a nicer box later.

Have the Groupies Clean his Perch

What a day. I got my Telecaster working yesterday, and I fired up the Super Champ XD and the Fat Sandwich pedal and started working on “I Know a Little.” It turned out that the Telecaster, with its long scale and super-tall frets, was actually easier to play than my amazing Epiphone Riviera P93. Slides are somewhat unpleasant, because my fingers smash into the frets from the side, but still, it worked great. It felt like it was harder to play, but I was undeniably playing better.

Today I decided to make a recording to see just how bad I sounded. I figured it would be horrible, because the timing on my last recordings was really jerky and awful. Also, recording makes my timing even worse, because it seems like my joints quit working. I worry about what the mike is picking up, and there goes any hope of playing loose.

Incredibly, it sounds like music. WAY better than I hoped. There are three passages which are still technically not under control, but basically, it’s sound. In a week, I should be able to play it for real. I don’t know that I’ll be able to play full speed, though. Today I cranked it up to 78%.

I don’t know that I like it at 100%. You lose many of the guitar subtleties, and there isn’t as much opportunity to play with the vocals.

I recorded this on a Sansa clip, which is a tiny, cheap MP3 player. And Marv was “helping” in the background. I’m posting it anyway. Whatever the problems are, it proves this is going to work!

I Know a Little, With Marv as Background Vocalist

I have a new wonder pick. My teacher recommended a Dunlop jazz pick, which is a very hard, small nylon job. They’re very fast, but they make a somewhat dull sound, and the tiny size is hard on your hands. Last week I took a Dunlop triangle pick, which is huge, and modified it so it would still be easy to hold, but it would not interfere with my movements or rotate out of position. The result is the greatest pick of all time. I can’t put it down. I’m wondering if I should make my own version and sell it.

Anyway, this is fantastic. When I get it cleaned up, I’ll post a better version. Probably without Marv.

If I can do this, it proves I’ll be able to play decent Christian music.

Cabinet!

The amp is taking shape. It’s about 10 1/2″ long, in case you can’t judge.

I’m sorry I chose to form a chassis from sheet aluminum, because the aluminum is so flimsy. It will work fine in the plywood cabinet I’m building, but I think it would have been better to make the whole thing from wood. I am told the fire risk is pretty low with tubes this small, and I think it would be easier to fireproof the wood than it is to drill and bend a chassis with precision.

It’s funny; sometimes precision woodworking is easier than precision metalworking, but usually, it’s the other way around.

I’ve learned a few things about holes in thin materials. I stupidly figured I could cut nice holes in thin aluminum, using metal bits and Forstner bits. The Forstner holes aren’t too bad, but some of the metal-bit holes are triangular. No one will ever see them, but still. Another thing: I should have pre-punched the metal to keep the bits from wandering. Even on a drill press, bits roam.

Apparently, I should have used knockout punches. These are chisely sort of things that cut round holes in metal. They’re usually used on electrical boxes. I found an incredible tool while researching this. Harbor Freight sells them for $90. It’s a hydraulic pump that attaches to a device that pops holes out of metal. You drill a guide hole, attach a die to the metal and pump, pump the handle, and pop out holes up to 3″ in diameter, in steel up to 1/8″ thick. That’s astounding. And the reviews say the tool WORKS. Think of the hilarious pranks you could do with a tool like that.

I’ve also discovered step bits, and I bought a set of 4.

I’ve been using scrap wood to make the cabinet. I can see why Doug Stowe (the box guy) uses the table saw so much. If you can rout, resaw, and thickness on the table saw, you can save a ton of time and get extremely precise results. The only problem is that there are limits to the types of cuts you can do. And anyone who knows his stuff will realize instantly that you used the table saw.

I cut dadoes inside the plywood to hold the screen and wood panel, as well as the divider between the screen and panel. I also put dadoes in the top and bottom of the divider, which, itself, was created on the table saw. I plan to run a 1/4″ radius router around the whole box when it’s done.

Someone just suggested Tolex to cover it. Maybe I’ll do that. But the wood panel will be lacquer or solid paint. I’ll hose the screen with grill paint. I have to get the rust off somehow. Maybe naval jelly.

I don’t know how to install Tolex, or if it will work with this front panel. I guess I can look at my Fenders and see how it works.

I should be able to get this thing finished and running tomorrow. The speaker hasn’t arrived, but I can use my Super Champ as a cabinet.

This is so much easier than making guitars. I can’t even tell you.

Next amp: a submini I can put in the pocket of my cargo shorts.

Ps. 37:4!

More

Something I forgot to post: if you’re trying to fab an aluminum electronics chassis, don’t bother with the souped-up foil they sell at Home Depot. Buy a pizza pan for four bucks. It’s much more rigid, and it will make a fairly big chassis. You can find them at Gordon Food Service or other restaurant supply stores.

& Someone Slap Biff

Okay, here is my tube amp.

That’s a Firefly PCB I bought on Ebay. In retrospect, I wish I had used a generic PCB, so I could arrange stuff however I wanted. But this is much faster and less intimidating.

Here’s how it looked when I started.

Here it is a day or two later.

The white thing is a sheet of aluminum with a template glued to it with 3M spray adhesive. The Internet is amazing. I printed out a Firefly build guide and glued this page to the metal. After that, it was just a matter of drilling and cutting. As of this moment, the paper is off, the holes are drilled, the power cord hole has been cut, and the adhesive has been removed. It turns out the adhesive doesn’t REALLY come off all that well with denatured alcohol or acetone. Brake part cleaner is the way to go.

Cutting out the sheet on the table saw was pretty terrifying. Perhaps I need to rethink that method. You need fingers to play the guitar.

I’m already unhappy with this amp! It turns out you can make one that’s even less powerful. It’s called a “Murder One,” and the designer put the schematic on the web, so any idiot (not naming names here) can download it and make the amp.

The Murder One is about the size of a miniature cereal box, with a tube or two sticking out of the side. THAT is small.

I’m only starting to realize how badly most guitarists get ripped off. They go to Guitar Center and see 40-watt tube amps, and they think, “Man, is that the biggest I can afford?” Then they take them home and find out they’re so loud they can literally cause partial deafness. Not only that; they can’t make good sounds at comfortable sound levels. So people end up with big, expensive amps that are nearly useless in a home setting.

The market for small amps should be huge. Every guitarist needs one, except for those who are already deaf. I guess people are just too ignorant to want them. I certainly was.

I’ve read that you can drive two 4×12 speaker cabinets with one of these tiny amps. Can that possibly be right? The term “4×12” means four twelve-inch speakers.

I love working on this thing. It’s so much easier than building a guitar. Making electronic devices is not hard, if you have a schematic. Making the wooden parts is what sucks.

It should be up and running by Tuesday. I receive the remaining electronic parts tomorrow, and I should have the wooden stuff done sometime Monday. I’ll let you know how it works.

I am well on my way to becoming a mad scientist. I feel like I should build a guy with scissors for hands. Or a Delorean that will take me back to 1985, so I can somehow prevent Lady Gaga and American Idol from happening. Or maybe I could go back to 1975 and abort rap. And disco.

I’ll tell you how bad it is. I accidentally ordered two pineapple-sized 0.22mF Orange Drop capacitors for this thing, instead of 0.022mF. Looking through my capacitor collection, I found I had THREE spares. Same brand. Same everything. I thought I had failed to order 1N4007 diodes, so I looked through my diode drawer. Yes, I have a diode drawer. I managed to find a 1N4007 in there before realizing the new ones were in the stuff that’s coming Monday.

If civilization collapses, my garage will be a pretty good place to hole up. Unfortunately, it’s taken. And I have enough ammunition to create a very discouraging crescent of bodies around the doors. Not that I would do that. On account of I am all holy and whatnot.

Ps. 37:4!

I Know Very Little

Thought I’d update people on my musical progress.

I now have…I am too lazy to count…maybe six electric guitars? I got three Japanese jobs, which are very slick, quality items. I got my Chinese Epiphone Riviera P93. I got a Telecaster American Special. Plus my older instruments.

I got them all for different reasons. None were expensive. I planned to get myself a really sweet high-end guitar on January 8 (Elvis’s birthday), as a reward for studying for 6 months, and I got various affordable instruments to simulate the expensive guitars I was considering. The Japanese Les Pauls are sort of like Gibson Les Pauls. The Riviera and the Japanese ES335 clone are sort of like ES335s. You can see what I was trying to do.

I stuck a Stetsbar vibrato on the Telecaster. You’re not really supposed to do that, but you can imagine how much I care about tradition. The Stetsbar is made by an entrepreneur named Eric Stets. It’s very nice, but it doesn’t really fit a Telecaster without substantial grief. The bridge pickup hole presses against the pickup wires and shorts them out, and it prevents you from raising the pickup to the correct height. And you have to shim the neck to make it work, and the shim he provides is real garbage, so you have to make one, using your garage full of expensive woodworking machines. Which you probably don’t have, but I do.

I had to put the Stetsbar on my milling machine and hollow out an area on the underside to provide clearance for the pickup wires. How many people, realistically, are going to be able to get something like that done? Finding a machine shop is a real pain for most people. For me, it amounted to walking five feet across the garage.

Now it fits, but I would not recommend it to anyone else. Unless you know me or someone like me, you may have serious problems putting one of these on a Telecaster. Hopefully the manufacturer will find the time to make the needed changes. Everyone gives the vibrato rave reviews, so it appears to be worth the effort.

I have not completed my walnut Telecaster clone. I got to the point where it was nearly ready to finish, and and there was a problem with the grain matching where I redid the neck pocket, so I procrastinated for months instead of deciding what to do. I promise I’ll get it done.

My History Les Paul clone sat idle for a long time, because I could not get the Harmonic Designs Z90 pickups to work. For some reason, the bridge pickup gave me a resistance figure of 0Ω, which was something like 10,000Ω short. In other words, a short. I got them to agree to look at it, but before I packed it up to send it in, I checked the resistance, and it was back to normal. So I must have caused the problem. Now it’s installed, along with big American potentiometers and Orange Drop capacitors. The neck pickup is really nice. The bridge pickup is not quite as wonderful, but that may just reflect my love of neck pickup sounds. The guitar looks magnificent. I bought tortoise-shell pickup covers, which have a pretty severe pimp quotient.

I stuck Pearly Gates humbuckers on my ES335 clone. Very nice. I think I have the action a little too low, however. That can adversely affect the sound. Seems a little thin at the bridge.

The surprising winner, out of all the instruments, is the Epiphone Riviera. If you like the blues, BUY one of these things. Don’t fool around. Just buy it. Make sure you get one that has a good neck and no major QC problems. Then put Lollar P90s on it, and change the tone capacitor. You won’t believe the sounds that will come out of it. Just beautiful.

You’ll have to learn how to work the knobs and switch. This thing has three pickups, which seems like a dumb idea, but it works. To isolate the end pickups, you have to turn the middle volume down to zero. To isolate the middle pickup, turn the end pickups down. The selector switch will not mute the middle pickup, so you have to do it with the knobs. Once you get this straight, the guitar starts to make sense.

I’m taking lessons now, from a guy at church. He’s one of the Armorbearers. He’s a fantastic blues guitarist and vocalist. Just a blast to listen to. I took the ES335 clone to him, and he liked it a lot. Keep in mind: this is a top-quality instrument, put together better than a Gibson. A week later, I let him try the $500 Chinese Epiphone, and he said it was better. I have to agree. It plays a little easier, and the tones are sweeter. All told, I have about $1000 in it, which isn’t bad for a semihollow with a Bigsby, three boutique pickups, and a great SKB case.

I have a pile of amps. I got a Vox AC4TV with a 1/4-watt setting, figuring it would be good for low level play. It’s not bad, but it’s not phenomenal. I also tried a Bugera V5, which attenuates to 1/10 watt. Again, nice, but not amazing. At the moment, I really like my Blues Jr. and my Super Champ XD. Between the two, I’d probably keep the Super Champ. It’s easier to work with at low levels, and it has built-in effects which are useful when you have to go somewhere and you don’t want to carry pedals. But the Blues Jr. is also very good.

My lesson guy wants to build amps. I told him about my insane tool collection, and we made a decision. Free lessons for me; free tool access for him. We’re going to try to build a Super Reverb clone, if he ever gets around to buying the parts. It won’t be very hard. It’s just soldering and turning screws. You don’t have to build anything from scratch.

As preparation, I’ve decided to build a Firefly amp. This is a well-known DIY design. It puts out less than a watt, without attenuation. I’m hoping it will give me improved sound at low levels. I’m going to put a crappy, insensitive 12″ Weber speaker on it. The description on the Weber site gives me hope that this speaker will strain the amp and improve the sound, and that it will have the kind of coarse sound a blues amp should have. If not, it will still be fun to put together. The only hard part (far as I know) is building the external cabinet, and I’ve already designed it and roughed out the wood. I want to use a separate cabinet so I can take the Firefly head with me and use it on different cabinets.

The junk to make the amp is on order. I hope to have the cabinet basically finished before anything arrives.

Zach (lesson guy) has me working on F scales, which will make my left hand work better. The scales have all sorts of hideous stretches in them. My finger joints are actually sore these days. I hope this stuff works out.

On the music side, I’m practicing “I Know a Little” every day. Steve Gaines was an incredible guitarist, and the intro to this song is murder. I thought I would never get it. He plays at 220 beats per second, and the moves would take some effort at a third of that speed. I’ve been pounding on it for weeks. I think most people would have given up by now, but I remember two things. First, I went back to school at age 30 and got a physics degree, after failing math in high school. That makes almost anything look easy. Second, when I learned to flatpick, I was convinced it would never work, because after several months, I still could not do it. Then it came together, showing me that the body and brain can develop brand new abilities over time. Flatpicking is a totally unnatural activity. It took me about 6 months to grow the right neurons or whatever. Fretting works the same way, so I know I’ll eventually overcome the left-hand challenges in this song.

I have changed the way I hold the pick twice, which means I’ve done it three different ways. This is irritating, because every time I change it, I have to get new muscles to work, and I have to get the brain connections going. But I think it was necessary. I played for years, not realizing I was making very dumb ergonomic choices.

I’ve also tried different picks. I started out with the rubbery black and grey nylon Dunlop picks I used for bluegrass, and I’ve tried other things. I bought some stubby Dunlop jazz picks, decided they were worthless, and gave them to Zach. He went off to college, returned after a number of months, and came back and thanked me for the great picks. Naturally, I had to try them again, and it turned out they were very well-suited to my new way of holding the pick, and to playing fast passages like the ones in the Skynyrd tune. Live and learn.

I keep trying new picks. This week I received some Greg Koch instructional DVDs, and I noticed he was using a giant triangular pick. This guy can REALLY play, so I dug through my mountain of unused picks and got out a hard green Dunlop triangle. Sure enough, it works. Don’t ask me to explain this, but it’s just as fast as the tiny stubby pick, but it’s much, much easier to hang onto, so my hand feels more relaxed, and I get more “swing” in the music. I have other picks which are physically much more like the little pick, but the huge Dunlop is the only one that gives similar performance. Weird.

For SRV tone, Koch uses a Super Reverb with a Tube Screamer and a Clyde pedal. The tone is perfect. That got me thinking about my Tube Screamer, which I had given up on, and I started rooting around the web. I learned something strange. To get SRV-type grit, you turn up the volume and turn down the drive. Isn’t THAT special? What could be more irritating than finding out the knobs don’t do what their names say they do? I started turning up the volume on my distortion and overdrive pedals, and now I’m in a whole new world of tone. Even my Pork Loin is doing great things.

Tonight I got the Epiphone out and fired up the Super Champ. I used the big green pick and various pedals, and I worked on “I Know a Little.” The picking started to work correctly. The swing kicked in. Finally, I got some expression into it. And I was even able to throw in some filler notes to make me happy. I started to realize this was eventually going to work, and that it wouldn’t be long. I began hearing wonderful variations in my head. I just have to keep working on sight-reading, so I can write this stuff down.

I’m trying to avoid working on my only other tune, “Tube Snake Boogie.” I just don’t like working on a song about cheap sex. I had a breakthrough tonight, so I guess I’ll be able to put that song behind me and replace it.

I keep finding myself thrown together with musicians at church. I’ve gotten to know the two main guitarists pretty well, and I do what I can for them. They give me a lot of great tips. Zach is an Armorbearer, and he’s also a fan of my pizza. One of the other Armorbearers plays twelve instruments and writes arrangements. He’s supposed to be a brutal talent. I talked to him the other day about his future, and about the frustration of putting up with bad Christian music, and I suggested he and some of the people he knows come to my house to work on music. I have a big piano, five guitar amps, and a big living room. And my dad would love to meet some good musicians. So we’re planning to do that. We have a world-class vocalist. Guy from Haiti. Maybe we can drag him into this. I keep telling him he’s going to be famous. He’s so humble, I’m afraid he’ll underestimate his gift and end up doing something else with his life.

So to recap, I’ll be making guitars in the garage. The guys will be jamming and writing music in the living room. And Zach and I are going to build an amp. Crazy.

Psalm 34 says God gives us the desires of my heart. My dream has always been to make music. I know that sounds wrong, to anyone who thinks of me as a writer or a cook, but those are my second and third choices. And building things I design has also been one of my dreams. I wonder where God is going to go with this.

He definitely knocked a bunch of frustrating barriers out of my way. I have the right instrument. I have the time and wherewithal and tools to do the things I want to do. I even learned which pick to use and how to hold it. The little bricks are arranging themselves into a coherent structure. I could not have done that on my own.

I have a feeling things are going to start moving for me in a little over two weeks. I’ll be passing a major milestone in my life, and for reasons I don’t want to go into here, I think it will be a pivotal time. Things are being cleared out of my way. I believe real progress is going to start toward the end of the month. I’m just mentioning it here so that if I talk about it after it happens, no one will be able to accuse me of faking a prediction. Not that it’s a prediction. Just a strong hunch, based on certain facts.