Quickie - Hondo II Parts

Ordered new machine heads, switch and nut for the Hondo II 'Faker. Was pleasantly surprised to discover that W. D. Music do enclosed bass machines of the right type and measurements so shouldn't have to do any unnecessary drilling. Win.

Still need to get a new scratchplate and a load of new screws to replace the rusted/stripped ones, of which there are many. This is pretty much going to be a trawling hardware shops job as the screws used on these Asian copies are narrower and slightly longer than the ones used on modern guitars so you can't just go to a guitar parts website and buy them.

Still for Sale - Jackson KVX10 with Hardcase.

Still trying to sell this, it's a pretty good instrument just not really 'me' any more. Email me if interested.




I'm after £250 or thereabouts for it. I will consider dropping the price if the request is reasonable and you're willing to haggle. Demanding I knock £100 off and then refusing to budge will just make me judge you.

I should point out, due to recent events, that I may take a little while to respond to emails regarding this. There are good reasons for this, I AM NOT A TIME WASTER just busy and occasionally too tired to think about stuff like this, and if a lack of instantaneous response causes you to lose interest at least have the manners to tell me so.

Peavey Roadmaster - Testing

Welp...

That was mostly successful.

The amp works, and sounds come out of it. The clean channel is nice and warm and clear, the reverb works but is a little noisy (not imagining this being an issue with high-gain doom though).

But the lead channel is still fizzy and glitchy and cutty-outy. Which sucks.

Well, from a certain perspective it's quite cool, as it'd be useful for noise stuff, but I imagine it won't do Eric's overall health much good if I keep using it. It's a bit of a mystery as all the relevant valves tested okay and all the big caps are brand new...

I've sent Oli a message to see if he has any ideas.

Eric's Got Some Brand New Caps

Having sent my Peavey Road Master head off to Oli for general diagnosis, I now have him back along with some new capacitors. After establishing that the big filter caps weren't going to ELECTROCUTE ME TO DEATH I began unplugging and de-soldering so I could whip the boards out and replace the caps.



The de-soldering was something of a pain in the arse, not only because a lot of the stuff I de-soldered had no reason not to be some kind of plug connection, but because two of the wires I de-soldered had actually been a plug connection until the mysterious Mr. Previous Owners made something inside the amp explode and then made a bit of a pig's ear of fixing it. There are lovely scorch marks on various bits of the power board.

Anyway, with that done there was some rather more expected de-soldering to get the original caps off and then the new ones were soldered into place.





Eric himself remains in bits as it's quarter to eleven at night so I won't be able to test him anyway. Hopefully I'll be able to to that before Christmas.

Prepare for Battle!

As you will have noticed I don't update this very often. The thing is that fixing up guitars is expensive and as I've not yet taken on any serious paid work for other people I don't have the money to just go out and buy stuff to put in my current projects.

Something that's not expensive though is making battle jackets, and I thought I might as well start posting about mine. I've resisted for many years, but I figure that at 33 years of age I can be as much of a cliché as I like because damn it I'm doing it knowing it's a cliché.