..and we're in business!

ladies and gentlemen....the deluxe is functional!

the last little problem, the volume on the normal channel not going to zero, has been resolved! Just a little grounding problem. I'd like to give a shoutout to the guys on the weber kitbuilding forums for helping me find the problem!

what to do next....what to do, what to do....I may build another 5e3 for sale...as this amp sounds awesome, although i'm also thinking bassman or plexi...

anyway parties interested in the sound of the new amp can come see The Silence Kit play April 3rd at the Auction House in Audubon NJ!

argh...life so busy..

...so i recovered from being sick....had my computer explode...got super busy with work & finished that project...THEN poured beer all in my main amp at a show & thought I killed it (didn't though - whew!)...and now i'm super busy with recording, trying to get the guitar parts for the new Silence Kit album finished before the end of march.

Also, I got asked to help a some guys at work to a Beatles cover thing, so i've been practicing for that.

so the end result is I haven't made a whole lot of progress on the deluxe lately, or this blog, obviously. The amp technically works, but it sounds not so fresh. my suspicion is we have something crossed on the circuit board, but behind it, where you kind of just have to go on faith that things were wired right before you put it in. there is a coupling cap that got too friendly with the soldering iron, and although I don't think that's the problem, i'm replacing it anyway. i also have all new carbon-comp resistors - i figure if i'm going to pull the board, i'm going to replace all the resistors to be of the type that the original amp design used. don't ask why i didn't do this in the first place...it was just dumb.

the third lessons learned thing is that i'm now using much thinner-insulation hookup wire, as it's much easier to work with in tight spaces. the gauge of the metal in the wire is actually the same, and it's rated the same, but instead of being poly-wrapped cotton, it's just waxed cotton, so the diameter of the overall wire is about half.

so the next pic of the guts of the amp will probably look totally different. hopefully i'll have something up after the weekend. wish me luck!

The Silence Kit - A New Disappointment - @ The Clash Bar

From our show at the clash bar. enjoy.

yet another new blog title...

this one being, perhaps, the most appropriate, and rather humorous to the 3 other people in my band. speaking of which, hey Pat, how can we go about changing the player from just playing Sea of My Discretion to some other random song?

Home from Clash Bar, good guitar cables, etc...

The show up at the clash bar in clifton new jersey was great! show was a lot of fun, i hope The Silence Kit gets to play there again soon. Also, look forward to some possible new videos popping up real soon!

anyway, one of the conversations i actually had up there was about guitar cables and how they can fall apart over a while because of abuse, and really don't last very long, mostly. or they just suck anyway and ruin your tone. Like Samson branded cables. screw samson! Sure you can get two twenty-foot cables for $10, but if they short out in a week, what's the point?

BUY THESE: CBI Braided Guitar Instrument Cable

the braided outer shell does more than look nice, it protects the entire cable and the ends of the cable are rubberized and sealed which goes a long way towards keeping the weakest part of the cable (the solder connections in the jacks) together longer. All my cables have been these basically the whole time i've been in The Silence Kit and i've never had to replace them, while a lot of the cables the other guys in the band have used have crapped out.

If you need short patch cables, or midi cables, or any kind of a weird cable type at all - Hosa is the place to go. Hosa sells everywhere, generally in the pro-audio sections - but i'm telling you, their cables are also rock solid, and often times only cost 25% what anyone else wants. For short patch cables between effects pedals, or if you need something weird like a stereo guitar cable (like I do for the strat - long story I'll explain later) - this is what to get.

everyone i went to highschool with is not, in fact, dead.

let me introduce myself. I'm this guy. I'm currently the guitarist in the silence kit, but i've also played in a number of other bands, the first and closest to my heart being dubbed in english, a band I started with some guys i met on a bbs(remember those?) way back in 1996.

anyway, being a tone-snob guitarist, and finally getting sick of the fact that nobody in south jersey can competently work on tube guitar amps i finally decided to start tinkering with them myself, and that quickly led to building my own. my first amp build was a Dave Hunter Two-Stroke, which was a great success and is now being happily played by some guy in New York. I'll talk more about that build and my experiences in a later post. i'm now working on a straight up 5e3 clone (a 1957 tweed Fender Deluxe) that i am working on with a friend, and will be posting some details on that as well.

which brings me to the point of this blog - amps in particular, and guitar tone in general. i plan on turning this amp building hobby into some sort of a semi-business, building high-quality handmade custom and cloned amps - and any thoughts i have along the way i'll be sharing here. comments are welcome.

i'll probably also be talking about bands i like (the cure, new order, joy division, faith no more, death cab for cutie, etc), and might occasionally write a crazy drunk post about how the end of mgs4 made me cry cool about video games i've played.

please to enjoy.