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.

One Spirit’s Incense is Another Spirit’s Brimstone

I can understand why the Bible says that all the stuff Jesus did would fill all the books in the world. I’m considerably less significant than he is, and even I have a testimony I don’t have time or space to relate. Stuff is happening so fast, I can only write about the highlights.

Here’s one from this morning.

One of my Armorbearer buddies had to move. He has three young daughters, and his wife is about to give birth to his son. He needed space. I have a truck, so naturally, I got recruited.

While I was helping, I realized he had a problem with which I am familiar. I am not an orderly housekeeper. I don’t live in filth, but I can’t seem to organize things, and I would like to reduce the clutter and dust and so on. I think things like this have supernatural causes. Some people just don’t care how they live, but others have enemies who frustrate their efforts to improve.

I have been taking Perry Stone’s advice and using worship music to clean up my home. He says that when he travels, he ends up in all sorts of ungodly places, such as hotel rooms, which are basically rental stalls where people go to fornicate. To improve the atmosphere and bring peace and order, he plays holy music, even when he’s not present. He’ll leave the CD player on and take off.

I got myself some stuff from Julie True, Grace Williams, and Laura Rhinehart, and I’ve been playing it during prayer and while I drive, and sometimes I leave it going on the living room stereo. I wanted to get more of this material, so I found a website and ordered some CDs. One was by Grace Williams, and the others were by Julie True.

My buddy’s kids mashed some of his furniture during the move, so I took some drawers home to glue up. This is amusing, because I’ve found that it can be embarrassing when you have to tell your friend his drawers are in your garage. Anyway, the other day I grabbed the Julie True CDs and started to open them so I could play them, and I could not finish the job. I got the plastic torn off one corner of each CD, and I had to quit. I felt like I had to give them to my friend as a housewarming gift, to help him get his new home set up spiritually.

This was annoying, because I wanted those CDs!

I dropped the CDs in one of the drawers, and I stuck everything in my truck, and yesterday he picked it all up, and I told him about the CDs. I explained about the torn plastic.

Today he left a phone message telling me how great the CDs were. They were just what he and his wife needed. They put them on and started going crazy with prayer, and he broke into tongues, and they had their own little revival. So now he has a new tool in his supernatural arsenal.

Incidentally, prayer goes much better when you have this kind of music going. Don’t ask me why. Try it and see.

I texted him back and reminded him that God had forced me to hand over the CDs, so he was the one to thank. Then I sent him another funny piece of information: the address of the website where I got the CDs. It’s at DadResources.com. How funny is that? I’m not a dad. Here my friend is with three on the ground and one in the oven, and I’m ordering his CDs from his website, and I don’t even know it.

I still want those danged CDs. I better place an order.

And Pull Your Pants Up

One of my beefs with modern Christianity is over music. I get tired of music that makes my ears hurt and sounds like something you would hear in a disco. And Christian rap…how is that even possible? Are you praising the Lord or jacking my car? Honestly, I can’t tell. When I was a kid, they had another name for rap. They called it “yelling.”

I’ve sensed the presence of God many, many times, and nothing about him has ever reminded me of rap, disco, or hard rock. In fact, the Bible says “clamor” grieves the Holy Spirit. When God’s presence is around you, things tend to be quiet and tranquil.

We work too hard to make God cool. It’s as if we’re positive every teenager in the United States will go straight to hell unless we let them inflict their awful music on us. If you ask me, God is already cool. He can say a few words and create a galaxy. Isn’t that cooler than wearing your pants around your knees and calling everyone “bra”? I guess my standards are warped.

I can understand the desire to have a certain amount of lively music in church, but after a while, it’s irritating and counterproductive.

There is a new genre of Christian music that was created to fill this huge gaping hole in our worship. They call it “soaking” music. You crank it up and lie back and pray. Typically, the lyrics aren’t all that catchy. Just stuff about how wonderful God is. It’s not supposed to bowl you over with its cleverness. It’s supposed to help you sense the Holy Spirit. That loud junk they play for the kids seems designed to get between you and God, like a big pimply wall.

When you listen to this stuff, it reminds you that God is all around you, and that he’s in charge, assuring you of a purpose and a good future. It brings intimacy.

The first soaking CD I owned was by a woman named Grace Williams. I don’t know how it got here. I didn’t buy it. I suspect my sister left it here. I found it here after watching an episode of Sid Roth’s show which featured a Grace Williams CD. She told him she used to sing in the Spirit when she was a baby. Her material is very nice.

I also learned about Julie True through Sid Roth. I picked up a couple of her albums.

Last night, I found Laura Rhinehart. I DLed her off Itunes. Very peaceful stuff, and the songs are long, so it’s not like they poop out just when you start to feel it.

I highly recommend this stuff. It provides the experience that New Age music tries to counterfeit. The lyrics are based on scripture, so you have good things to think about. You don’t sit there emptying your mind and waiting for nutty Hindu spirits to show up. It puts you in a good frame of mind to talk to God and listen for his responses.

Loud music is like caffeine. It seems to give you energy, but in reality, it’s just sucking energy out of your reserves and making you spend it. Soaking music refills the reservoir.

Comes With a Free Bean Pie

The Telecaster clone STILL isn’t finished.

I bought some bowtie router templates (for making bowtie-shaped inlays with matching cavities), and I was going to use bowtie inlays to “tie” the new wood around the neck pocket to the rest of the guitar.

Here’s a sloppy Photoshop illustrating the idea. Ignore the piece of mahogany lying on the guitar.

I went to a guitar forum and asked people for advice. They generally thought it was a bad idea. Their answer was to create a “burst” finish which starts dark and opaque at the borders and fades to clear in the center of the guitar. The dark stuff would cover the mismatched wood by the pocket.

I checked out some videos on creating burst finishes, and I played around with some pigment and scrap, and I found that I did really bad work. For me, finishing is much harder than woodworking. So I gave the burst idea up.

Problem: the smallest bowtie inlay I can make is way too big to do what I did in the Photoshop. If you look at the little inlays above the neck, they’re maybe half an inch long. I can’t make one smaller than an inch. Too big.

I tried to make a smaller template, but it turns out there is a limit to how small you can go with a 1/8″ bit, and I’m just about there.

I decided to try a new strategy: use my inlay kit to remove the top layer of mismatched wood, and replace it with something that should be nearly indistinguishable from the guitar top.

This meant creating a new template, and that meant using acrylic on the milling machine. What a nightmare. It’s like I always say: calculus is easy; addition and subtraction are hard. To create anything on a mill, you have to do a ton of addition and subtraction in order to determine where to move the cutter. And it’s not intuitive. It’s very easy to confuse positive with negative, which results in horrible mistakes. For example, you might need to move the cutter to -0.530″ on the DRO, but you screw up and move to +0.530″, and your workpiece is ruined.

It took me half an hour to come up with a list of milling directions to produce a simple template.

When I tried to make the template, of course, the cutter grabbed the acrylic and pulled it out of the vise and broke the template. So I had to start over, sawing out more acrylic on the table saw.

The second time I milled it, I applied WD40 to prevent the cutter from grabbing, and it worked. Thank God. Finally, I have something I can use.

I still want to put some bowties on the guitar. I want two on the front and three on the back, and I want a small one in the maple inlay at the head end, with the strap pin attached to it.

It turns out the Photoshop version is not workable, because I forgot to lay the hardware out on the guitar top. The inlay to the left would be under the bridge. I plan to move it farther left, so it shows through the little window in the Bigsby. And I think I’ll get rid of the little inlays under the knobs. On the back, I want one big bowtie in the middle and two smaller ones around it. They would be on the centerline, just like the ones on the front.

I like the way bowties pull stuff together visually. A long time ago, I saw a TV show about a guy who made tables from figured stump wood, and he stuck bowties in areas where there were big cracks, so it would look like they held the tables together. I like that.

I’ve noticed something else. Plain wooden guitars look bad. I’ve seen a bunch of photos of Telecasters made from clear-finished wood with no pigment, and they look unfinished. Even acoustic guitars have rosettes and binding. A guitar needs something beyond lacquer to make it work. Some people mix the woods, using inlays and so on. Others use burst finishes or dyed finishes. You can also jazz a guitar up with a pickguard. To make a guitar look nice, you need to do one of these things. But you usually shouldn’t do more than one of them, because it will look like the guitar was made by a committee.

People have complained that I’ll cover up some figuring, but that’s not really a concern. The left inlay will be in a plain spot, and the bridge pickup hole has already done more damage than ten inlays.

Maybe I’ll change my mind. I don’t know. I do know that I’m almost certain to ruin a burst finish, and it will add days or weeks to an already interminable job. I need to get this thing done and move on.

I think the next guitar will be a hollowbody with two F-holes, a Bigsby, a quilted maple back, curly maple sides, and a spruce top. A maple top would look better, but it’s my understanding that spruce and other softwoods are best for hollowbody tops. Another possibility: figured redwood. This stuff is incredible. But I’d have to come up with a suitable wood for the back and sides, since maple would not look right.

Basically, I want to make a Gibson Blueshawk with a Telecaster body. My Blueshawk is great, but the neck is garbage because of poor Gibson quality control. A Warmoth neck (or a homemade neck) would be a thousand times better.

Anyway, it’s taking shape.

90%

I am finished with the major woodworking on my walnut guitar. Check this out.

It looks like the switch is not in line with the knobs, but that’s a trick of perspective. However one knob is a fraction of a millimeter out of line. That can probably be adjusted out later.

I put the knobs close together because I thought it would give me a nice custom look, and I put the switch far away in order to correct Leo Fender’s blunder. He put the switch so close to the volume knob, it’s hard to use it without changing the volume. Someone told me the knobs looked too close together, but the centers are an inch and a half apart. That’s plenty.

I’m about to do the final sanding and cleaning up. This should be pretty sweet.