pH3ra

I learned about the existence of this book almost one year ago and the story is pretty fun:
Do you remember this guy?

If you do you grunt when you get up from the chair. If you don't, this was a meme from 2009, when the internet was a way different place.
This meme came back to my mind last year, when I was talking with a friend and they didn't remember it, so I googled it and found out that his name was Gerry Alanguilan and he was a comic writer from the Philippines. And I found out that the guy, other than being a renowned inker both for Marvel and DC, also drew and wrote Elmer, a satyrical and dystopian story staged in a world where chickens become sentient.
The plot was so appealing that I started deep diving to find about this book I never heard about: the worldwide promotional tour for this comic had to be cancelled due to a sudden illness of the author, so it never took off and remained pretty obscure and hard to find, expecially in Europe, where it had a limited printing but only in France and UK.

I managed to find a copy on eBay last month that could be shipped here and now I'm glad I can finally read it.

Always braid your cables kids, it helps with shielding

As I said in the last post I made, I had the intention to upgrade the guts of my newly bought guitar. I switched out potentiometers and pickup selector for something that wouldn't feel as cheap, added a coil split mode through push/push pot and added a treble bleed to brighten up the tone. Everything I needed I found on Thomann.

Here's the schematics I made with DIY Layout Creator, which is a really cool piece of free software that I can only recommend if you're into this sort of stuff. You can find it on FlatHub as well.

Did a walk-in tonight and I picked the most beautiful of them all

... but I had such a good deal with this guitar that I couldn't miss the opportunity.

I started being interested in this kind of design since Squier reissued the Toronado in its Paranormal series, based on an old Fender model discontinued in '06.
And I found out that Ibanez gave such a design a chance in 2012 with the Roadcore Series and in particular with this mid-tier model: the RC320.

While searching some information about it, I found a listing of a guy selling one not far from where I live. It was a really, really good bargain so I ended up buying it.

The guitar is a distillate of features from all the most iconic guitars manufactured in the last century: it has a mahogany body and humbuckers like a Les Paul or a PRS, an offset shape like a Jazzmaster/Jaguar, a 648mm scale and a bolt on maple neck with rosewood board like a Stratocaster, but with a flat radius and the crazy low action only Ibanez can make.
And as an upgrade, the previous owner installed a couple of Blues Engines pickups, that have a very apt name given the warm tones they produce.

I have in mind over the next months to upgrade the electronics and since the humbuckers are splittable, add a push/push potentiometer to experiment with an alternative configuration. I'll try to post some pictures of the job.

When we get too involved in online matters, disconnecting from the internet and getting a hold of the real world is an analogy to the Greek Philosoper's work

Following the post of this week, I'm really happy of how it turned out.
Now I can retire my old Beringer TO800

For my birthday I gifted myself a DIY Pedal Kit: it's a clone of a quite famous effect, can you guess what it is?

So, I had this amp lying around in my father's basement for a while now. 13 years to be precise: It was my first practice amp back when I bought my first electric guitar. The circuit wasn't half bad, had a cool gritty marshally sound with an analogical spring reverb, but unfortunately the speaker was trash.
30 watts RMS are hard to handle for an 8 inches cheap speaker, so one morning, after an intense early '00s punk rock rehersal it simply went BZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz..... and it was gone.
And finding a new speaker that wouldn't blow up again, expecially one with such required specifications, was something I couldn't achieve 13 years ago. So eventually I gave up searching for spares and I bought a new amp.

Fast forward to a couple months ago, I need a small practice amp to carry around, now that I have a new band after a log time.
I remembered the existence of this relic from the past, went to my dad's house and I was surprised he didn't throw it away after all of this time.
I started to look for spares immediately and thanks to the power of today's internet, I was able to find that the Celestion TF0818, even tho it's not a speaker intended for guitar amps in the first place, had all the specifications I needed: 8 inches, 8 ohms, able to withstand up to 100 watts of power.
The delivery took a while to get to my house (I ordered it via a local website) but once it arrived I put it straight in.

With new guts, my old friend is back in action: the 0818 has a good response to mid-low frequencies which gives a lovely round and dark tone to the gain channel, while still being able to work with high frequencies due the small sizes.
I'm always happy to bring new life to old music equipment, it reminds us that we don't need the latest gizmos (and create unnecessary waste) if we take care of our stuff. Also, the swap was super easy, no joke I just needed a scewdriver and 10 minutes, so if you have and old amp lying around you could totally give it a shot, the results might surprise you.

This friend was gifted to me by my next door neighbour in 2009, when I was 17 and it has been love ever since.

Today it was it's cleaning day: I cleaned it all up, scraped the gunk from the fretboard and polished the frets with car scratch remover and at the end it came out so fine that made me want to share a picture with the community.

Take care of your instruments and they will last for a long time.