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Thoughts/prayers for any of you out on the east coast (or elsewhere) who may be affected by the hurricane. Stay safe!!

G&L ASAT Tribute in ash for $299. Wish I could get one.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/stupid?icid=210150&sdotdapp=yes

Some of you followed my acquisition and modding of a 1956 Hammond M3 organ in this thread a couple years ago. Well, as cool as that "Baby B3" was, my buddy offered me the opportunity to trade it (Leslie not included) back to him in exchange for a project Hammond C2, so I went for it.

The C2 is functionally identical to the B3, except that it doesn't have percussion. If you don't already know, with Hammond tonewheel organs, "percussion" is referring to a chirpy harmonic on the note attack. It's not the cheesy drum and rhythm stuff on your grandma's Lowery organ.

So the cool part is that, although this one doesn't currently have an amp in it, my friend gave me an AO-29 amp out of an M3. The AO-29 has the percussion amp section built in. And he gave me a set of M3 percussion switches. He also knows how to get it all hooked up and working, so he'll be able to guide me through that daunting process.

When all is said and done, I will have what will functionally be a C3. The C3 is a B3 in a church style cabinet. I'm excited!! I'll start a thread in DIY when I get started on it. This is going to be fun. 

My wife and I brought our oldest son down to LA to tour some movie studios as a high school graduation gift. He's way into film. Today was Sony Pictures, and the highlight for both my son and me was getting to go into the scoring stage there. It's a very ugly tracking space, being nothing but a giant cube that is essentially unchanged back to the '30s. They don't change anything because they are afraid to mess with the acoustics. It was pretty cool to be a few feet from where John Williams was so recently conducting the score for TFA. As hinted to in the thread title, the mixing desk was equally impressive. I was bold enough to lean on the edge of it. Hopefully some of the mojo rubbed off.

New tremmy, phasey, vibey thingy day. AKA - my friend gave me a Leslie module.

It's really fun running my 5E3 into it. It's got a 2 speed motor stack, which is cool. I love the way it sounds on slow. I don't know if I'm going to hang onto it or not, but it's fun to mess with. I doubt I'll get around to building a cab for it, but I may build a switching box for it.

Anyway, I know these things sell on craigslist all the time. I could never bring myself to pay for one, but free is a great price. At least it's an extra motor stack, belt, pulley I can use in the real leslie if I ever need to.

I already posted this in the TFA thread, but it's too good not to bump.

Today is my 20th wedding anniversary. Still going strong with my wife Jennifer, the woman who has brought me 20 amazing years, 4 incredible kids (2 of which are twins!), countless laughs, and 2 guitars. I'm a happy man.

I haven't been doing any building for a few weeks now. I'm waiting on some sheet metal fabrication that a friend is doing for me, my bench is a wreck, and I need parts. The main thing, though, has been that I've been doing a ton of work outside! I'm on almost 3 acres, and I can't justify not taking advantage of the good weather we've been having.

My personality is one that has me in either indoor or outdoor mode. I find it really hard to be in both headspaces.

I'm so thankful for the hope I have because of what we celebrate today.

Did anyone else see this? I'm still more interested in something like the FV-1, but this could be cool for the DIY world.

http://www.accutronicsreverb.com/main/?skin=sub01_07.html

$30 at Smallbear
http://smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/belton-digital-sound-effect-modules/

Apologies in advance for the TLDR nature of this post

Like every kid in the '80's, I had a Rubik's cube. I used to be able to solve the first two layers by myself, and I could finish the solve using a book we had. A few years ago, my sister, remembering how I liked playing with the cube as a kid, bought me one for Christmas. That rekindled my interest and motivated me to learn how to solve it by myself.

Since then, I've been solving it using the "beginners method" but I recently picked up a speed cube, and now I'm wanting to learn how to speed solve. I think it would be fun to get down in the 30 second range. Right now, my fastest times are about a minute.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I started looking into it and learned that I need to: 1) get more efficient with solving the first layer cross, and 2) learn F2L. I found a video explaining F2L. I understood it while I was watching it, but it was a bit overwhelming. I decided to focus on getting quicker with the cross, and then I got completely sidetracked wanting to learn to solve the 4x4 cube.

I got my 4x4 cube last week and it only took me a couple hours to get where I could solve it unassisted, since I really only had to learn a few intuitive moves and 3 new algorithms. Now, I'm kind of hooked on solving the 4x4, and I really want to get a 5x5! Haha!

So, here's the funny thing. After a week of playing with the 4x4, I went back last night and watched an F2L video, and it's suddenly making sense because of how the 4x4 was helping me understand edge moves.

I've been playing around with F2L the last couple hours, and as expected, it's REALLY slowing me down. I know it's normal. My question, for anyone who has already been through this, is how long is it going to take before F2L will get my times quicker? I'm also interested in opinions on speed cubes to try out. My fastest cube is the Rubik's brand speed cube. It's actually pretty quick the way I have it tensioned and lubed, but I know it's not exactly a favorite. I'm kind of interested in the stickerless Dayan Zhanchi. Any opinions are most welcome!

A good friend of mine just dropped 4k on a Kemper profiling amp and peripherals. HOLY SMOKES! I don't like to admit it, but this thing is legit. Playing his SG into a Marshall plexi model was intoxicating. I've really never seen or heard anything like it. It has the ability to let you profile your own gear too. It's something like the way a convolution reverb works. You mic up your cab and run this thing into your amp. It plays a bunch of crazy tones and next thing you know, you have a virtual version of your rig, the quality of which depends upon how well you mic'd up etc.

It's such a joy to have decent tools. These are some early birthday gifts from my mom. Not super expensive, but really excellent stuff.

iGaging IP54 digital caliper. The video shootout in the user reviews for this made me want one.




Free Eagles screwdriver set. When I first found these, I wasn't sure about the old school wooden handles, but the quality looked good. These things are so nice! The grind on all of the tips is really precise. The philips heads lock in perfectly, and the flat heads are hollow ground, so they make really positive contact in screw slots. These are USA made by Grace. I highly recommend them.

I recently got a strat as a late Christmas present from my amazing wife. I had posted a NGD pre-crash. (MIM, LPB, SSS, maple fretboard) Anyway, I'm contemplating which mods I'm going to do, and one thing that's intriguing me is the idea of putting in a hum cancelling dummy coil, mainly for the bridge pup.

From what I understand, these can be pretty effective in reducing or eliminating hum, and have much less impact on tone than stacked humbuckers. In fact, a little treble suckage on the bridge wouldn't hurt.

Looking for opinions from anyone who has tried this approach. I know I could just put a humbucker in there. Don't want to.

Browsing through the Sweetwater winter namm report. This looks pretty cool.

http://www.bossus.com/products/es-5/

Felix had the right idea posting his 2015 mashup thread, so here's mine. I hope we see lots of these threads.



Pot Matrix Box - Dial up any pot value with a couple clicks of the rotary switches and send it out to the test clips to splice into any circuit.











Phab 45 - A phase 45 with glowing halo around the rate knob that pulses in time with the phase. Built on Stomptown's Galacticon DX board. ET issues with this one. Lots o' bubbles.















Fastback Delay - GPCB D'Lay with taptation. Momentary stomp can either function as a tap tempo switch or runaway oscillation depending on position of toggle switch. Echobret owns this one now.













F-85 overdrive/boost - My "Big Block" overdrive circuit + LPB-1 boost with flipper switch. This was my entry into 2015 BOTY. Built for my friend's nephew in the style of his prized 1966 Oldsmobile. The artwork mimics the actual dashboard of his car. I did a huge WIP thread on this which I will not attempt to replicate. In a nutshell, it was loads of planning and work, but super fun to build. I'm sad it's done. I'll include some of the in-progress shots. My son took all the "beauty" shots.




































Thanks for checking out my builds, and thanks for all of the encouraging words I got from you all in 2015. It has meant so much to me. And thanks for all of the votes in BOTY!! I feel really honored, guys.

I want a simple looper. I've owned a Jamman Solo and got rid of it because it had way too many features for a one stomp pedal. Even with an external switch, I couldn't keep track of how to run it. Also, I felt like the fidelity wasn't 100%.

I want a simple looper that retains 100% of my signal. I think I lean toward the TC Ditto because of the simplicity and reports of accurate tone reproduction. I don't care about the f/x in the X2, but the dedicated stop switch would be nice. The thing I like about the Jamman Express XT is the dedicated LEDs. I'm a bit color blind and that would make it easier for me to see more clearly what's going on.

I don't really care about 10 minutes vs 5 minutes of loop time. syncing, down/uploading loops. Stereo I/O isn't important to me but could be fun.

My main uses for a looper would be:

- practicing/messing around
- using it at the bench for hands-free testing of circuits instead of using a function generator
- using it to play for me so I can hear my tone through the PA
- possibly some live use both with acoustic and electric

The biggest values I would want in a looper are fidelity and ease of use, in that order.

I've read that stopping/clearing the Ditto can be a pain live. I'm thinking if that's an issue, I could put it in a TB loop to make it easier to reset and not have to worry about that split second where it restarts the loop before clearing. I could probably also replace the red/green LED with a red/blue, which would be far easier for me to distinguish. That's probably a lot of bother.

I realize that the Ditto and Jamman show the same sample rate and bit depth, but I believe that those numbers don't tell the whole story, and I wonder if there is a difference in the converters. I really truly believe that my first Jamman was robbing tone.

OK, let the opinions fly. If you own one of these, how well have you bonded with it?

Well, not his whole band, but I got to hear Jon Patton play live tonight in Portland. If you ever get the chance to go see him, you should! I was impressed! He's a great singer/songwriter and an OUTSTANDING fingerstyle guitarist. I got to meet his wife and he hooked me up with a bunch of CDs. Thanks again Jon and enjoy Hawaii!