If someone wouldn’t mind testing the commenting system of my blog, I would really appreciate it.

I understand that I’m not getting a lot of traffic right now, so this may take a while.

Thanks!

Mike

About four or five years ago, I stumbled upon the AX84 project. The folks over there have spent considerable time and effort in devising plans and schematics for average people to build their own guitar amplifier. They’ve got 8 designs ready to build/prototype, ranging from a simple 2-tube design, all the way up to a six tube monster that is designed around the plexi circuit.

I’ve been telling myself for a long time now that I would try to build my own amp, but I have either come up short on money or time and haven’t been able to do it. Now, though, I think I may be able to do this.

I repair computers for a living (well, try to, anyway), and I have a customer who is in his 80s. He knows that I’m interested in vintage electronics, and in particular anything with tubes in it. A couple of months back, he gave me an Eico amplifier, complete with tuner, phonograph, and speaker. He built the amplifier and speaker himself back in the 50s. It works, but needs some fresh tubes to put out at the level required for casual listening.

He also gave me a Hammond A0-15 speaker cabinet, which includes a massive tube amplifier. This thing has 10 tubes in it, and is quite the piece of work.

My plan is to gut the Hammond amp for parts, and use them to build my very own tube amplifier. It will take some time, and a lot of assistance from other people, but hopefully it will work in the end. I figure that using the parts from the old Hammond will get me more of a “vintage” tone when I’m done, but really, I have no clue.

I am really looking forward to having a true tube tone. I played my Ampeg VH-140C for about 10 years. It’s a solid state amp, and has way too much power. Who needs 140 watts? Certainly not me.

I replaced that amp with a Roland full frequency amp that I garbage picked about 8 months ago. It was broken, but a phone session with an electrical engineer friend and a bit of soldering fixed it up nicely. It’s a 4 channel amp, made for PA use or keyboard use. It’s pretty nice.

Right now I run my crappy Ibanez AX series into an Akai Shred-o-matic that uses a 12ax7 preamp tube for distortion. I picked it up for around $35 new on closeout, and it’s a pretty nice pedal. It can manage some good tone, but it’s not necessarily the tone I seek.

I play mostly blues, in the style of Buddy Guy or BB King. The guitarists out there are probably cringing at the thought of playing Buddy Guy style blues on an Ibanez, but for now it’s the best I’ve got. The other option is a Yamaha classical– nice guitar, but not bluesworthy.

In the next three months or so, I plan on getting my real guitar put back together. It’s a 1993 American Standard Strat that is currently disassembled in my closet. I had a coil on my bridge pickup break about three years ago (how I don’t know), and it has been disassembled ever since.

I have plans to pickup a set of Fender Texas Special pickups. These are the same pickups that come standard on the SRV Strat, and they offer a lot of midrange punch and a hefty dose of that beautiful Fender quack. I’ll be wiring that up to a Torres Engineering BluesKaster Wiring Harness. This harness includes a volume pot mod, a midrange boost/cut, and a tone pot called the “woman tone” cap. Out the door, I should be in under $200.

We’ll see how well this works out!

Mike

We are all familiar with the food pyramid, technically called the “United States Department of Agriculture Food Guide Pyramid.” Apparently, this guide was initially released in 1992, although I thought it was much older.

In its current form, the Dept. of Ag. recommends:

Fats, Oils, & Sweets: Use Sparingly
Milk, Yogurt, & Cheese Group: 2-3 servings
Meat, Poultry, Fish, Dry Beans, Eggs, & Nuts Group: 2-3 servings
Vegetable Group: 3-5 servings
Fruit Group: 2-4 servings
Bread, Cereal, Rice, & Pasta Group: 5-11 servings

The government released the new food pyramid today. Well, that isn’t technically correct. Even though Google News lists 157 articles summarized as “US Unveils New Food Pyramid,” it is clear after reading a few of the articles that the new pyramid will not be officially released for several more months.

Apparently, we (the taxpayers) picked up the tab for 13 doctors and scientists to get together and decide how much everyone should eat. The panel basically said that we should restrict transfats, eat more fiber, eat less salt, and– get this– up the fruit and vegetable count to 13 servings! Additionally, they have decided that Americans are too stupid to determine the quantity that constitutes a serving of certain items, and they are now recommending that the food pyramid should be setup for these items to use ‘cups’ instead.

The part that really gets me is the 13 servings of fruits and vegetables. 13! Now, I understand that is the recommendation for people who are extremely active– not for people like me who spend most of the day in front of a computer. But that still seems to be excessive. That’s 13 cups of salad, or 6.5 cups of carrots. You could opt for 13 baked potatoes, or over 1/2 gallon of tomato juice. Either way, you’re going to be eating a heck of a lot of food.

Add to that the fact that you’ll be eating up to 11 servings of the Bread, Cereal, Rice, & Pasta Group, and you are consuming an amazing amount of food.

So what does the future of the food pyramid hold? Eventually, the Fats, Oils, and Sweets Group will be a mere speck in the pyramid. I imagine it will be something like this: