P Bill wrote:We don't see enough of your work Kim.
No one has for a while Bill...I've been hijacked!!!
'Honey do' can be an awful demanding thing in an old weatherboard home and with two teenage girls both of whom sing and play better than I these days, I've been relegated 'guitar tech to the stars' and that can keep a bloke pretty time free..... but the pay is really good for the sole
I also get side tracked
e.g. Worked on an 89 Epiphone X1000 superstat recently fitted with the infamous terminally ill KB bridge..found a few interesting things on that one but the most recent distraction was when the girls needed an amp to tote about for jam sessions. A valve amp was out of the equation because they needed something light weight enough for them to lug around (they don't like the idea of a fat bald 50+yo roadie following them to the friends places for some reason), but the amp also had to have enough output to cut through an acoustic drum kit. Well I had what I though was the perfect thing..a 1970's solid state, 45watt Peavey Pacer 1 x 12 combo. But the girls flatly refused to use it... because "its got issues daddy" "its sounds all scratchy daddy" and "Its so bloody
Ugly daddy"
I did not take any before shots but here's a few of the same amp in similar condition I scrounged from the net..
- all2.JPG (39.14 KiB) Viewed 29270 times
- back1.JPG (67.83 KiB) Viewed 29270 times
Mine was probably in a bit worse nic than the one above with the speaker cloth more torn and the cabinet hardware properly rusted...so the girls had a point I suppose. So I ventured off to learn more about electronics and fixed all the "issues daddy", and then worked out a way to 'properly'
dye tolex so the colour would go 'into' the material and not scratch off like paint does or some of the 'so called' dyes will when bumped into door ways and things as one is incline to do when lugging around an amp. Getting that sorted allowed me to fix both the "its so bloody ugly daddy" and the "can't you make it a blue one daddy??" complaints at the same time.
I probably should do a thread on the whole process rather than hijack this one but this is what I came up with...the image of the back best shows the colour change...painting the fascia was a complete bastard too, ended up doing it by hand
Sounds great now too because I replaced all the electrolytic caps, stripped, cleaned and refurbished the pots, fitted a new reverb tank, full 17" down the bottom of the cab instead of the pissy 8" under the chassis as per original. Biggest single improvement in sound though came when I replaced the original Peavey/Eminence PA voiced speaker with a 50watt aussie made Lorantz greenback clone....sounds very valveish now and with the volume up, and master down, it distorts nicely without bursting ear drums...Speaking of drums, it also has the output to cut through pretty much anything..not surprising because from what I understand these old USA made Peavey SS's shared the same preamp circuitry from 45 to 400watts..I was fortunate enough to have John Madison drop in during a trip up from Albany last week, he can probably vouch for the output.
Best of all, whenever the girls plug in these days I get.."oooowww its soooo cooool daddy" and "thank you daddy xxx"...like I said, the pays pretty great...the neighbours are not so impressed though..
Thank you Daddy!!
Cheers
Kim
) and then repeat until you achieve the gloss level your after.
