B.Y.O.C Confidence Booster - Finished

Added the battery clip and jack sockets to the Confidence Booster this evening.

It works perfectly.

The rig I tested it with was Ibanez EX140 modded with IronGear Platinum 90 in the neck position and overwound Rolling Mill in the bridge (volume 10, tone 10), into a Peavey Roadmaster 160w valve head (lead channel: Pre 5, Pump 4, Post 1) and Hayden 4x12 cab. With the guitar going straight into the amp the sound was very quiet and clean. With the Confidence Booster plugged in and the trim pot turned all the way up I got a lovely crunch overdrive from the amp. This is actually a very good bit of kit.

Next stage is to buy an enclosure, an A100k pot and DC power adaptor socket, and salvage the switch and LED from the EHX Memory Boy I broke.

I am very pleased with myself.

B.Y.O.C Confidence Booster

Well, I've completed the first part of this build; all the components that go directly on the PCB have been installed. I'm rather proud of my work here, the solder joints aren't perfect, but they're pretty neat... so yeah, the "Confidence" part has certainly lived up to it's name. I feel really good about what I've accomplished with this tonight.

Homebuilt Effects and Bass Cabinets.

So... I have orded myself a Build Your Own Clone Confidence Booster kit (from Vibe-O-Tronic). Basically this is a simple circuit which provides a boost in the signal path between guitar and amp. It doesn't come with an enclosure or anything which gives me an excuse to put it in something entirely random just for kicks. Looking foward to getting it so I can start learning more about electronics and effects building.

I've also arranged to get a bass cab, just a little'un with a single 15" speaker. I have no idea what the impedance is but luckily the Firebass head is variable there... also it has Elvis stickers all over the front which means I can claim it as trve necro or something on account of Elvis being dead.

New Bass! RetroVibe RV4 Blueburst Rickenfaker

I bought a new bass last week. I wasn't intending to, but the guy won't be selling them for much longer and when even your wife says "wow, that's a really nice bass, you should get it" there's no point in resisting.
Technically I can't afford it, but we have savings and I'll be making regular payments back into the savings until it's paid off... yes, I could have saved up for it but if I had it might have gone (and I certainly wasn't prepared to risk paying inflated prices on eBay).



Isn't it lovely? Of course this being a guitar modding blog I can't just say I'll leave it as is, can I? I've already ordered a new nut (because the stock one is as naff as stock nuts usually are) and I think I might replace the plain white scratch plate with a nice cream/black/cream 3-ply job at some point in the future.

Amp Stack - A Blog About Amps

Just plugging a mate's blog: http://ampstack.wordpress.com/

Peavey Roadmaster Gut Shots

Today I added some handles to my Peavey Roadmaster head to make the thing a bit easier to carry (there were three handles originally but a previous owner decided to remove the ones at either end of the top for some reason. I can only assume he was a really strong guy), and while I had it out I decided to take some photographs of the insides.





I love how those PCBs look. Modern parallel track boards just don't have that same flowing aesthetic.

Pickup Prices

Today, having been let out of work early, I went checked out a local guitar shop just to see how much it would cost to get guitar pickups locally... I chatted to the guy and sneakily memorised the prices of a couple of pickups (Duncan Distortion and Duncan P-Rails) for later comparison with online prices.

I was expecting a bit of a mark up.

I wasn't expecting them to cost 35% more than they cost online.

So much for buying local!