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Pics of the outside and inside would help establish whether it's easy or requires experience. To be clear, "tube socket" is the multi-hole piece the multipin tube plugs into. The "tube shield" is a simple metal cylinder with a spring inside. It acts as a tube retainer and heatsink more than as a shield. It is optional, and if that's what's damaged, after straightening the tube pins, you might not need to touch anything, or maybe just a new 12ax7. But, pics, please!

Doesn't sound like you are a dumbass but read up or watch videos about how to discharge the electrolytic caps. Those will kill you like you have it plugged in the wall and throw it in the bathtub while giving yourself a man-scape. ETA: include me in your will just in case. ETAA: @Dutchman is the man to ask. Great guy and quite the amp guru. ETAAA: Read up on Prop 65 just in case.

I say drain the voltage and give it a go! After you drain the voltage, make sure you've drained the voltage! After that, test to make sure there's no voltage left in the chassis.

Imagine then, if you will: Someone who plays death metal by night But does Crossfit by day!

Not argumentative at all. The business of one special character, one capital letter, etc. was proposed by a dude named Bill Burr back in the '80's working for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. I happened on an interview of him from some time in the past twenty years wherein he said he regretted what his simple white paper had become, especially the part about changing passwords every 90 days. The whole theory behind the practice was to prevent machines guessing the passwords. He said 1. the standard was only a discussion and not based on any hacker data, and 2. implementation had resulted in lower overall security because the difficulty in remembering passwords thus configured along with the 90-day expiration all but forced users to write them down and keep them where they were easily found by others. Additionally, the practice put users in the habit of using easily guessed passwords with simple modifications such as capitalizing the first letter and adding an exclamation point on the end. Pass phrases are now recommended (at least by the NIST) because they are more or less random (see the Battery Horse Staple example), more easily remembered and can be significantly longer (as your probabilities post points out). If anyone is interested in completely nerding out on this, the most recent NIST publication (26 August 2025) can be found here: NIST Special Publication 800-63B. I will say I administer a network of around thirty users and those who have implemented pass phrases seem to be far more satisfied with the experience. Mostly because, given the complexity available, they aren't required to change them every 90 days. ETA: the implementation of Passkeys (where a linked device provides biometric confirmation of identity) seems to be the way of the at least short-run future. I have around a dozen sites (my iPhone says I have 15) sites administered this way and it is extremely convenient - so long as I have my iPhone with me. ETAA: quantum computing, of course, will render all of this moot. 🙃

Ugh 😵‍💫

I bought a used Super Sonic 22 off Reverb/Musicians Friend and it arrived DOA. Poking around it looks as though V1 is cattywampus. I'm thinking poor packing and FedEx gorillas allowed the footswitch to move around and it hit the V1 tube case knocking it off a bit, not completely loose. I do get a bit of a glow when powered on. My question is, can a fumble thumbed simi idiot resolder or replace the socket himself? Fair soldering skills. Changed a few switches in pedals. Installed quite a few pickups, switches and caps in guitars over the years. Asking because I don't think there is a reliable tech in my area anymore and shipping costs are killer. As are shippers in general. AMHIK

Off the top of my head and with much self-editing on the fly: In the 80's those in power considered it beneficial to the general populace to propose warnings to consumers about possible environmental risks (the official name was The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986). In an abundance of caution, their consideration was deeper and included risks more acute than those typical of other consumer-facing regulatory and advocacy groups. The administration proposed the idea to the general public and the general public voted overwhelmingly (63% for vs. 37% against) to enact the Proposal and so it was put in place. That is my attempt to provide the factual information free of any political commentary whatsoever.

I knew this guy was no good:

Not to be argumentative, but why can't it be both? A two-character password that only uses lower-case alphabetic characters (standard English keyboard, sampling with replacement) has 262 or 676 possibilities. If you allow upper-case also (that is, shift+letter), then you have 522 or 2704 possbilities. If you also allow numbers 0-9, then you have 622 or 3844 possibilities. Now allowing the shift+number characters too, you have 722 or 5184 possibilities. If you stretch the password to three characters, and following the same scheme, you have 263 or 17576, 523 or 140608, 623 or 238328, and 723 or 373248 possibilities. Using a passphrase, like "takesonetoknowone", increases the exponent: something to the 17th in this example. In fact, in this example, I used only lower-case letters, so it would be one of 2617 or 1,133,827,315,385,150,725,554,176 possibilities (unless I mis-entered something on my calculator). Obviously this is a much bigger number than you get from a two- or three-character password, but the same principle applies: Allowing more characters increases the number of guesses it takes to cover all possibilities. When I hear "they used to say that but now they are saying this" I wonder what they will be saying next. If it's a matter of just increasing the number of possibilities, adding other characters is a way to do that, if we live in a world where the password protected site allows thousands and millions and kajillions of consecutive guesses until the right one is finally entered. Sites can do everyone a favor and implement a lockout or at least a cooling-off period when a number of incorrect entries are tried. Starting with a passphrase and then applying some creative misspelling (to counter the use of dictionaries in the guessing game) and alternative characters makes the number of possibilities skyrocket. I think it used to be that the worry was that if you wrote the password down, someone would access it and be able to log in. You'd have to judge your exposure to that, but in my case it's just my wife and me here at home, and in fact I'm at the age where I have an estate plan and part of that is to have passwords available to my wife or whoever survives me or us, so they have to be written down. I can make them as wacky as I want, and reference them when I need them. This is especially useful if the site that requires a hard-to-crack password also requires me to change it yearly, quarterly, or whatever. Passphrases might be easier to remember, but is what I remember the current one, or that cool one I used a couple of years ago? Of course I don't leave the passwords right at the keyboard. And if there is a key-logger malware on my computer, it doesn't make any difference how cute I get with the passwords, so I use anti-malware software. Ultimately your security is your responsibility, and good security is inconvenient.

another accurate re creation of a LP, by Epi Saw this one at a pawn shop a short time ago, it's pretty much hanging by the paint at the headstock/neck crack, I suggested they hang it a different way before it lets go

which reminds me of the reality based joke: How do you know if someone plays death metal? - they will tell you

You'd have to play metal on it.

Has anyone ever broken down exactly which songs featured the drum machine in the final mix, and not Beard? There are also multiple versions of "Legs", with the original album version sounding much more raw than the super polished version from the video. The CD I have of Eliminator unfortunately has the Video mix, but I think if you get a new CD now (while you can) Eliminator is back to the original mix.

Well, I read Prop 65. What a load of horse shit. Now explain why people in CA need so many privacy notices and those in the other 56 states don't.

Tell ‘em you’ll ship as soon as they credit you $999 on the guitar you actually *WANTED ! Nyah, AH Ahhh

Yeah, I'm guessing someone had a rather uncomfortable conversation with the manager after my phone call.

Trust me, it was everything I could do not to buy this guitar. I've wanted a prototype since seeing Eddie Martinez on MTV in the early 80's. And this one appeared so clean. In the end I skipped it as 1. I know that I know the neck would be too thin for me to play regularly, and 2. It really wouldn't fill any voids in the pallet I am pulling from these days. But it was so clean!

Thanks for giving us HFC’ers first shot!

Umm I am not buying a guitar from Zorrow.

In all seriousness, if you've listened to the guys who came up with that 'one capital letter, one number, one lower case letter' paradigm, they've totally gone back on all that for more than five years. What they're recommending now are pass phrases (though I suppose the passkey will do away with all of this). There's a great pass phrase generator we use to great effect: Correct Horse Battery Staple | Generate Secure Memorable Passwords Give it a try. They're infinitely (well, almost) easier to remember and equally as difficult to hack.

Oops. 😬 Ah well, at least I've now changed my password here: M0roc@nFr@ud$ter. They'll never guess it.

No love here! Off to Reverb for more money!!

You're supposed to change those?

I know you joke but the early Mk1 models didn't have the EQ sliders, power scaling, etc. I've only owned one MK1 reissue, and it's close enough in tone that it's worth considering for someone. I think people usually want one of Shin's Dumbloid pedals. As an aside, Shin's own videos of this pedals are potato phone quality. I can't help but think if they had someone do demos with proper mics or let influencers do their thing they'd have much more traction.