Jimbilly

Third Stage (crappy) photos, I asked about which wireless he was using, it's the low-cost Nu-X and reportedly works great. Also joked with him about the strip of black tape 'delete' covering the holes in the pickgaurd where the tone controls once were, "tone controls?, who uses those?"

both NW based: "Borrowed Time" and "Third Stage", saw them on Saturday night. Same drummer and keys for both, I think the 'Styx' singer/bassist plays bass for 'Boston' with some costume change. I've never been into Styx very much, and went for the Boston portion, of course at my age I've heard a ton of Styx on the radio over the decades. The main singer for Borrowed Time (Styx) nails the vocals, really good, the two guitars players sang a few songs too, They did a fine tribute, I spotted the Hamer Standard right away on it's stand, but it's an import, the guitar sounds were passable. Also really impressed with Third Stage, the singer sounded a lot like Brad to me, prior to More Than A Feeling he explained that he hits the high note about 50% of the time, and gave props to Brad a few times for having super human vocals, - and in the song he hit the high note. While introducing Amanda, he made the Simpsons Bart crank calling Moe joke reference, asking if anyone in the crowd was named Amanda? Amanda Hugginkiss? - I think very few of us got it, but I was appreciative. The guitarist on my side of the stage had a pair of strats with Kahlers, I asked him about them after the show, he said he had them put on fairly recently, and was bummed that some part had already fallen off of one of them. I'd see them again for sure. I took a couple of short videos, but the audio quality is awful and I won't subject you to it.

I like the idea of a dremmel tool, but WAY too easy to remove too much material. Harbor Freight sells 'needle file' sets that include some with a flat edge for $4.99. Those are handy to have around anyway. Maybe mark the top with painters tape?, and file back to the tape with the flat file edge? https://www.harborfreight.com/12-piece-precision-needle-file-set-4614.html

I would half jokingly call that an SS-4: proto = "ss zero" ( ss 1, ss 2 ) regular Centaura = "SS-3") I always wanted a reverse slanted dual hum Centaura, but I'm 'too good a bargain shopper' to buy one for market value online, I love the reverse slanted pups. I can console myself by having an SSii custom and a regular Centaura.

I have made peace with the Kahler, I like the one on my Proto ii

same one that's been on the Pawn1 site for a while (mentioned here a month or two ago?), make a lowball offer through their website, they're probably tired of it hanging around and are ready to make it go away https://shop.pawn1.com/Item/Details/HAMER-GUITARS-PROTOTYPE/13649f36be2a498ea8db4bec021e9af3?sParam=eyJxIjoiaGFtZXIiLCJjaSI6MzM1ODgwOTgsImNtIjowfQ%3d%3d

I have an older cousin who is now 70, and still works as a carpenter with no significant aches/pains. He swears by collagen, and eats some knox gelatin daily (which is a cheap alternative to health food store packaging). I've been trying to get in that habit, along with Turmeric. It's hard to argue with the older guy who is super active and strong with no complaints. I've got a handful of aches/etc from some injuries, recently I overdid some tennis with running for the stray balls after an hour and half on the mountain bike, and afterwards got a big lower hamstring surprise cramp while sitting at the kitchen table (never ever had any cramping issues, even when bicycle racing at a fairy high level), it's taken a month to work out, I tried some different things (avoiding too much ibuprofen) and it seems that Creatine gives some relief. I have an 80% collapsed vertebrae (T9 or 10, can't remember now) from an injury 3 years ago, very slowly improving, using a stool for rehearsal is helpful, and heavier instruments/amps are more of an issue than they used to be. I need to be better about my PT, which is pretty much the "McGill Big 3"

at that price, give it a go, sounds like a fun project/experiment

dirty pot? spray with Caig DeOxit? Try it with a different amp to make sure it's not the amp?

The name is not memorable: it's an AZ47P1QM, it had been sitting derelict / unplayable at an area pawn shop for some time (how that happens to recent builds, I don't want to know). It's from their Premium line made in Indonesia. I have another Premium that I really like so I noticed this one a while ago, the price recently got dropped, and further discounted when I went to get it, to pretty much HFC approved plus tax, so it had to be brought home. It has real DiMarzios: Tone Zone (bridge), True Velvet single coil, and an Air Norton at the neck. Gotoh locking tuners and Gotoh bridge, it stays in tune quite well, even with some trem use. I found a slightly high fret up around 21 mostly on the GBE strings, realized that they most likely set all the SS frets to level with a press, so it would likely just need to be pushed back in rather than filed down, I found a clamp of about the right size and yes, some clamping force and no more high fret. These are super nice imo, really easy to play and a great sounding guitar.

The fly rig is mostly for tuner, 'amp simulator', and di. The Joyo battery power supply lasts surprisingly long, and can be good if there's noise issues with the house power

The 'crowned and bound' for 'ground round' is: mix Worcestershire sauce in with the beef when you're hand forming up the burgers, a little garlic powder, minced onions, salt/pepper is nice too, but Worcestershire is the stuff. My current fave sauce for the build is the Chipotle Mayo from McCormick, sprinkle some Chipotle powder on it for more snarl. And this time of year, a thick slice of fresh tomato from the garden. This makes me want to play the ssii

I ended up turning the bass knob down to around 11 0'clock, it was a little big/boomy in the lower notes, which is probably also a good sign that it can do that

I look for MIJ Epi everytime I'm out shopping, never seen one, - rarer than Hamer around here

I've had a couple of the older Epis, not very impressive imo. I've also had a couple of recent builds, probably 4 years old or less: LP Custom, Lucille, and 'goldtop' w p90s (black, which was an option), those recent builds were very nice, much better than the older ones as I recall.

there's plenty more of that around here! "position 2" on my '90 Centaura really seems to be both halfs of the humbucker and the middle pup, so I can't say about yours. My ibanez slm10 (hss) seems to split the hum on pos-2, and makes some significant hum there compared to just the humbucker, - so that info is probably no help (really really nice guitar btw).

Picked this GK stuff up off FB marketplace, super clean and very very affordable, got the head/cab and speaker cable for four fitty. GK MB Fusion 500 head, quite small/lightweight and three 12ax7s. Neo 212ii cabinet. It's so clean, I gave my moderately used 212 Neo (gen1) cab to a friend. I think the Neo212 ii is even lighter than the gen 1 neo212, I can't really carry it with one hand, but I can hold it with one hand while I open up the car hatch. Imo, these 212s sound every bit as good as my old Eden 410xlt at about half the weight (410xlt was 98 pounds iirc), and the tweeters don't blow when you turn the amp on like with the Edens. I ended up with most of the tone controls mostly straight up, sounds really good. I was going to run the FlyRig xlr to the house, but running it into the GK resulted in some extra noise, so I ran the GK xlr to the house and then the tuner out from the GK to the FlyRig, - only using the FlyRig as a tuner. The IYV bass is a winner, but I will need to replace the volume knob/switch, because there's still a 'whoosh/whump' when turning the volume knob up when 'active', but until then I'm quite happy with it passive for now, no volume knob noise on passive. I loaned it to a friend who plays in a couple of the casino cover bands, he was quite impressed, he might be ordering one for a travel bass. It looks like the stacked volume knob/switch is a common part, very cheap off ebay.

'58 strat fs on Craigs, hire a proofreader if you need one!

It sounds good in either position, but good idea! Those are such great guitars, strat cleans and rock from the humbucker, the perfect super-strat. Mine is black sparkle, last time I played it 'out' I got the most compliments/attention for the look of that one. - if you can't get compliments on your playing, at least go for compliments on the look of your gear

it's a 'class reunion' theme, -just an excuse to post some photos of possibly similar production runs, and what might have been fs at that point each decade.

I have one, it's so subtle that I'm not sure if its working.

follow up: cool little amp if you don't need a lot of stage volume, and just a monitor and something to mic. I was messing with different power supplies, trying to eliminate a little noise (which seems to have been coming in through the xlr di on the fly rig). The git is an '07 deluxe strato caster, the S1 switching doesn't do a thing for me, but otherwise I like that guitar and the quiet SCN pickups. I think the Fly Rig gets unfairly judged, based on it's distortion: I have at least a dozen dirt pedals, it's not really reasonable to buy a Fly Rig and expect to like its distortion function better than all my standalone pedals. - it plays well with other dirt pedals in front of it, this Wampler is my current fave.