Gasalcoholics anonymous? whoever said this was a help group?

[TheTransient]

i got curious and looked at old Yamahas on Reverb and came across this little guy. sometimes a guitar just reaches out to you, and this is so adorable i want to take it home and love it and hug it and call it George. it reminds me of a old Guild Bluesbird. that poor baby needs moisturizer all over. i don't love it $900 worth, but i love it.

Looks a bit like a Hagstrom Swede with the lower horn cut off.

[Pepe]

Recently I bought a vintage block logo MXR distortion +, declared as defective. The potentiometers are from Dec '79 and Jan '80, so I think it's been made in 1980. The original foam was a horrible mess and maybe the reason why it was declared as defective. I cleaned everything and put it back together. I replaced the original blue tantals with new ones and then I activated it for the first time. Works like a charm! I used thin foam rubber to isolate the electronic parts and a thick layer of soft foam for the place where the battery goes. Is there any replacement for the bottom rubber? It is by no means skidproof anymore.

The seller put up an ad and he wanted 20 EUR for local pickup in North Germany. I immediately offered him 40 EUR including shipping and he was okay with it. He repeatedly wrote me that it was broken and asked me if I really wanted to buy it. Well, certainly! He wished me good luck with the repair - and you see how it went. Easy fix!

I'm amazed how many good sounds are inside this little beast! It's definitely a keeper.

[Pepe]

Another bargain made it to me in the last weeks. An Ibanez Soundtank TS5 Tubescreamer for 14 EUR including shipping. I had to order a new switch (under 2 EUR), because it was faulty. Back to full life again!

When I tested it against my brother's TS-808 (reissue) I was surprised to hear only very small differences between these two pedals. To be honest I couldn't tell them apart without looking, but my brother (21 years younger than me!) always heard which one was activated. The TS-808 has a bit more low-end and he thinks it has a bit more punch. Well, I can live with the small difference.

Normally I'm not a huge fan of the Tube Screamer, no matter which version I've tried, but for a total sum of under 16 EUR this one is another keeper! It doesn't hurt having some legendary tones available. This unit is quite clean and without severe scratches. Too bad that the TS5 doesn't belong to the models that had a metal chassis in the first edition.

[dubkitty]

i have a 1978 D+, dated by the fact that the printed logo is the box with the block letters but the embossed logo on the back plate is the script logo, dating it to a specific few months when they switched over. i've proclaimed my love for it many times on here...it was the first pedal i ever bought and it'd be the last one i let go. it's been on every board i've ever had...whenever i try to take it off i miss it too much. the foam in mine died sometime in the 00s so i cleaned it out and made a little slip case from a piece of card stock--the warranty card to one of my Tokais, actually--tucked it inside, and taped it shut. i bought a replacement base plate that i could file a notch into for the battery adapter jack. i ran across the original yesterday when going through boxes looking for guitar parts. i've never even seen one with a rubber bottom. i'm pretty sure some components have deteriorated because i don't remember it being quite as ragged in the 80s-00s as it is now, but i'd rather get a newer one than fuck with it and risk messing it up.

[le lambin]

I’ve been searching for a midi controller to control my second EDP- the original footswitch set up is pretty janky even when the switches are all working right. I was casually scrolling reverb to see what’s out there and came across the Morningstar MC8- turns out it has two pages of functions per bank (8 switches per page), allowing me to easily access 16 functions on the EDP on the fly. I can even hook up both EDPs to it, have a bank set up for each EDP and control both from one very compact controller. Might be a lot of tap dancing but I ordered one to see if I can make it work.

My other project this year is putting the EDPs in a rack and building a custom patch bay for it, with the hopes of assembling an all in one looping rack megazord. Can’t wait!

[dubkitty]

and you were just asking about a solution for that. hope it works.

[Dowi]

A long time ago I had a lot of Yamaha SB/SBV basses but never the guitar version, in part because the bridges looked huge and clunky which spoiled the look of them for me.

Having bought way too many Telecasters I thought I was done with guitars buying, but persistence threw up this:



Which should be in my hands sometime this week

Woah did they ever make these stock with the tune-o-matic or is it a mod? I've played one a bunch (Eivind August's) and never had an issue with the bridge but this one looks cool anyway

Yes, it's all stock - an SGV-500 (the 300 and 800s are much more plentiful and have the vibrato bridges)

This guitar looks sooooo sick. Never played one of those but aesthetically they caught my attention since i saw a pic of Eivind's model, talking about literally aaaaages ago.

[Paul_C]

It's just arrived - it still has the plastic on the pickguard/scratchplate so I'll post a picture when I have given it a clean and polish.

I used to have one or two of the basses but this is the first guitar - it's got a narrow/chunky neck compared to my Telecasters but none the worse for that.

[dubkitty]

well, my acquisitions are about to come to a screeching halt. i just found out that i need four dental crowns (making me one up on Hermes Trismegistus but still short of Queen Victoria or Idi Amin) for a total cost of USD $6000. i'm going to have to get a loan to afford it, and my spending will be clobbered for the next year to the tune of $400/mo. fortunately i've sorted most of the stuff on my acquisitions list...i'm currently waiting on the correct pickguard for the Duo Sonic, new knobs and Varitone for the Kondor, and am getting an order sorted from a small shop in Germany that deals in vintage parts for essentially everything else (neck with tuners and Jupiter 62 pickguard) i need to restore the Höpf Twisty. i'll cannibalize the pickups, electronics, and knobs from the guard because they're all better than mine, particularly the hotter Schaller-oid single-coils. i'm also getting a set of the much-despised threaded Jazzmaster saddles...the string spacing on the Mustang-style bridge the CVJM came with is too wide and i'm constantly falling off the edge of the fingerboard when above the 12th fret on the high E string. i've played guitars with threaded saddles in the past and never had problems with them, so it should be OK. and when i was looking for knobs for the Kondor on Amplified Parts i found a plug-in solid state rectifier to replace the 5Y3 in the Hammond reverb amp...i've never liked tube rectifiers which is why i don't get along with modern (post-tweed) Deluxe Reverbs. i'm hoping that'll calm the amp down somewhat because it's pretty damn dirty set as cleanly as possible.

the only other things i can actually argue i need with a straight face are the remaining parts for the Gretsch Electromatic Double Jet consisting of shallow-depth toggle switches and a TV Jones adapter kit to reinstall the Filtertrons because the original owner did a totally crap job and the PUs were crooked in their routs (total cost: $87), the Tiny Two-Way Crossover for bi-amping the looper setup, and a Duncan Acoustic Tube pickup for the 12-string jumbo acoustic so i can have electric-ish 12-string without buying a whole 'nother guitar i'd seldom play. when the tax refunds show up i'll order that stuff and then hunker down while the storm goes through, perfecting the setup and guitars with stuff that i can do for little or no money. down the road i do need a second 8-ohm bass cabinet, and it would be good to get amps repaired and the Jazz Bass neck straightened. but none of that is really necessary for what i'm intending to do. i'm sure glad that i organized everything in lists in Google Docs so i can keep track of what i'm doing and what i need. but there will be no solid-body electric bouzouki in my life this year, nor any new guitars or projects. it'll be around a year to pay it off, but i kind of need my front teeth.

[dubkitty]

my Reverb ads they serve to my email page are much more entertaining since i searched old Yamaha electrics the other day. i think this one is hilarious. it's a late-70s Greco copy...of a contemporaneous Ibanez design! specifically the Ibanez Musician model they based on a guitar they made for Jerry Garcia, who played one Dead show and one or more nights of a Garcia Band stand at Keystone Berkeley in June of 1978 with it and never used it again. i assume Weir put them on to him; he played a Ibanez similar to half of John McLaughlin's Ibanez doubleneck for several years. Greco copying Ibanez cracks me up. how the turns have tabled!

greco1.jpg (145.5 KiB) Viewed 1311 times

apparently the only extant photo, June 10 or 11, 1978.

jer-banez.jpg (11.86 KiB) Viewed 1311 times

linky.

[dubkitty]

i thought about it and decided that the best strategy for dealing with my projects was to order all the other stuff outstanding for the important projects--the Gretsch parts, Acoustic Tube pickup for the 12-string, and Rolls Tiny Two-Way Crossover for the looping board--on my credit card which i'll be able to pay in full when i get my tax refunds in which should be next week...when i was sick and not spending on anything i paid off my cards and car loan and am trying not to carry any balances. i snagged a used crossover off eBay for $80 which is better than $109 new and the Acoustic Tube for only $35. so now the only spending i can argue i need to do in the next little while would be a second 15" 8-ohm bass cabinet, but i don't need that until and unless i have to play the bass at stage volume levels. i'm going to be up to my tits in projects for a little while, but when i look at my lists there's nothing horribly demanding to be done though getting the Gretsch pickups and wiring sorted will be a pain as Gretsch wiring always is. but at the end of it which will be in the next couple of weeks i'll have the Kondor improved yet again and the Gretsch with Filters and the Höpf with its hot German single-coils available, essentially giving me two and a half new guitars. i still need the missing bits for the front-end board which are pre-ordered and being repaired respectively, but after that i can't come up with anything else i need to get for now other than a fuckton of Regular Slinkies...having changed strings on 6 electric guitars in the last few weeks i still need 8 sets for everybody including the projects. the next few weeks will likely be the most active my Wacky Project Guitars thread will ever be.

[Pepe]

Höpf

No "umlaut" in this case. It's just "Hopf" and it is spelled like "hop" with an "f" at the end.

[dubkitty]

i stand corrected.

[Gone Fission]

Another bargain made it to me in the last weeks. An Ibanez Soundtank TS5 Tubescreamer for 14 EUR including shipping. I had to order a new switch (under 2 EUR), because it was faulty. Back to full life again!

When I tested it against my brother's TS-808 (reissue) I was surprised to hear only very small differences between these two pedals. To be honest I couldn't tell them apart without looking, but my brother (21 years younger than me!) always heard which one was activated. The TS-808 has a bit more low-end and he thinks it has a bit more punch. Well, I can live with the small difference.

Normally I'm not a huge fan of the Tube Screamer, no matter which version I've tried, but for a total sum of under 16 EUR this one is another keeper! It doesn't hurt having some legendary tones available. This unit is quite clean and without severe scratches. Too bad that the TS5 doesn't belong to the models that had a metal chassis in the first edition.

FWIW, usually the "bad switches" on the Soundtank pedals aren't really faulty. The debouncing cap in the switching circuit is undersized for the job. If you want to avoid things going the same way in the future with the new switch, it would be worth going from the stock 10n at C3 to at least 22n.

You can also find info on mod'ing two resistors in the TS-5 output buffer to 808 specs here: http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/T ... sxtech.htm (I believe this is R34 from 470 to 100 and R35 from 100k to 10K.) The TS-5 builds the bias circuit a bit differently, but apart from that it's a TS-9 and the 808 is only these two resistors away from each other, magic opamp lore aside.

Fun thing to notice--R,G, Keen's write-up was written back in the day when TS-10s were cast-off stuff to mod to TS-9 or 808 specs.

[Pepe]

Very interesting, thanks a lot! I leave the pedal as it is, but it's good to hear that it's two resistors away from the TS-808.