Ulu

Building the speaker cabinet. Once that varnish dries I can finish this. In the meantime I have purchased two old vacuum tube radios to work on. Niether one is completely dead, but each has a problem. One is original and unmolested. 1950 Sears Silvertone. Early AM/FM did not say AM. They said “standard broadcast” for AM. $26 The big one was $66 but it was highly molested. 1961 Zenith AM/FM hi-fi. 7” speaker + tweeter All the tubes light up but there is a broken tuner string and there is no sound from the original amplifier. The speaker wires are cut. Someone had tapped a modern Bluetooth device into the radio and it was playing out thru the original speakers. I bought both of these with the intention of using them as vacuum tube guitar amplifiers.

There’s gonna be a mile thick glacier coming down off mount Whitney into the San Joaquin Valley before I ever pick up a snow shovel again! 😛

Building another amp from a discarded boom box and four 8” Mexican alnico speakers from an early 70’s Sanyo quad. Test rig on the bench: 1965 Silvertone guitar, played thru a Fulltone 2b booster amp, which I juiced up from 9v to 15v with the 2 amp power supply from an old aquarium pump, then the bare Sanyo mainboard. It’s loud enough to be lots of fun. Now I need a cabinet.

It looks like the weather will be nice enough to work on the car again soon. Meanwhile, stuck indoors, I built this old radio into a portable guitar amp. it was my Dad’s, so it had sentimental value. It was also my garage radio for years after he died. Needed a good cleanup, a new power switch and plate, plus a 1/4” phono jack for the guitar. Just two wires: the blue wire goes to ground, and the tan wire goes to the base of the audio pre-amp transistor. I’ve attached it to that transistor’s shunt resistor lead just for convenience. It sounds OK for 5 amps, and even better with the amplified pickups, or an external booster. I’m using the FullTone 2B booster seen here. Both it and the radio will run from 9 volts, which is very convenient.

Wait, this had five crankshafts? Whoa! Was there another 5hp engine just to pump the oil?

We are in a state of denial, that is certain. From the Yahoo news: ”…a critical National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office on the Monterey Peninsula that is on the front lines of tracking and helping to mitigate the effects of climate change…” We’re getting better at tracking things, but as far as mitigation is concerned, I don’t see a possibility that humans can control or even mitigate the changing climate. When you understand how many ancient cities are under the sea, you realize that this has happened before and it’s going to happen again, and we don’t have any control over it. Now in the concept of chaos theory, we might certainly have an effect on climatic change that could end up being broad, yet we would have no knowledge of what that action might be and what effect it might have. That’s where the chaos in chaos theory comes in. You don’t know that if you start your car in the morning that that extra puff of energy into the atmosphere was the very beginning of a cyclone. As far as this earth is concerned, human beings are just along for the ride, and where it starts and where it ends is totally out of our control. Now I’m starting to get religious so I will stop there.

Well 50 years ago I moved to the desert because I don’t like snow. It appears that you folks that like snow are going to have to move further north. If the earth wants to get warmer, we’re not gonna be able to stop it. Same thing if it wants to get colder. It’s generally still very dry here in the San Joaquin Valley but this year we seem to be having a little more rain than normal. We did have some hotter temperatures this year but the heat waves didn’t seem to last as long. But the boat yard is all still wet from the last rain and my boat and project cars are covered up with tarps. I’ll be indoors messing around with my guitars until this clears up.

I once had the overdrive ignition circuit wire on my Edsel short to ground while driving. It blew the condenser wire right off the condenser. The engine stopped. I taped up the shorted ignition wire, but that engine would not restart until I replaced the condenser. I had a used one from our old Scout, at least 10 years old, which worked instantly. I never bought a bad condenser for a car, but I bought computers loaded with faulty ones right from the factory. 20 years ago, Taiwan had a big run of bad motherboards. Not just one maker either. We had 8 at work which failed one by one, within a couple years. Different boards with the same brand of weak capacitors, splitting open, & leaking burnt oil.

I found out that Kay also sold guitars as TrueTone brand, through the TrueValue hardware store chain. I have been doing a lot of work on the old Silvertones. The 1448 got a custom bridge, saddle, and pickguard. It is in good shape now, but the Bobcat had delaminated veneer, and is getting glued. I also made a bone nut to replace the molded plastic on the Speed Demon. I will have to post some photos, after I make more space.

Too bad they didn’t have some of those concrete filled tire bollards to fend off the careless drivers. I remember having to fill those things, and it was the first time in my life I ever mixed concrete. We were making flood light stands.

Well I am still working on the guitars but today is my wife’s birthday and I took some time to help her out with her crafty projects. I never did record Mama Didn’t Buy No Cookies, which I wrote for my mom‘s 85th birthday, but I wrote something for my wife’s 69th birthday. I recorded the instrumental part, but It doesn’t have a bridge yet. Maybe I’ll pull out the harmonica. I won’t post up video until it gets more polished. It’s all too big to post up here of course. I would have to put it on my YouTube channel. It would be my first music video. Imagine a basic 12 bar blues like Pride & Joy, key of G, with some slides and syncopation whenever I can manage it… Titled:[b] Lordy Dontcha I told my baby Oh yes I do I’m gonna love you ‘til the sun turns blue In the sky But I don’t know why Some days she drives me crazy But Lordy dontcha take her away I drive my baby All over town She spends money like it’s raining down From the sky And I don’t know why These days she drives me crazy But Lordy dontcha take her away (Instrumental bridge) I took my baby For some fine cuisine I wanna feed her like the English Queen Me Oh My But I don’t know why Today she drives me crazy But Lordy dontcha take her away[/b]

Danelectro also sold those Silvertone style guitars through JC Penny as the Penncrest. I think you could buy the Kay-made versions at Western Auto.

@cheesy ”multi speed fixed gear” I never heard of such a thing!

Chicken pickin’, flat pickin’, finger pickin’ . . . A lot more guitar picking has been going on here since Christmas. Particularly since we have had several very rainy days, and lots of damp cold days, which have kept me indoors and away from my welding. See, in the short time from Christmas to Valentine’s day, I bought 8 electric guitars and 2 amps, plus lots of cases and accessories. Having learn to play the guitar in 1969, I have, all these years, only owned acoustic guitars. When I decided that I wanted an electric guitar, it set off a chain reaction of spending, prodded by recent high inflation rates, plus the growing interest in old guitars. Since I played the bass violin in high school, I bought myself a bass guitar and an amplifier for it. I also bought a Hawaiian steel guitar, just because I always wanted to learn the slide. I bought a rather expensive 1999 Eric Clapton model Fender Stratocaster guitar, which I won’t be playing. It’s more for investment. I got a cheap 2024 foreign made Telecaster, for daily playing, and a more expensive local custom builder Strat for the the same. I bought a Schecter Platinum, which is a tone monster. A heavy Gibson type solid mahogany pro concert-worthy instrument. I got it cheap due to a chip in the heavy resin finish. I bought a 1958 Silvertone Speed Demon, also as investment. They are currently not as popular as old Fenders and Gibsons, but they are decidedly more rare. This model was built for Sears by Kay, It was also sold through the Spiegel catalog as The Old Craftsman. I also bought a ‘65 Silvertone and a ‘67 Silvertone, as investments, but both of those guitars need restoration work. More about that later. The 1965 Silvertone was built by Danelectro and sold exclusively by Sears. This 67 model is really a Harmony Holiday in disguise. It was built exclusively for Sears. I have currently got both taken apart, and that work is proceeding as I receive the parts.

Yeah don’t do that! Since my days swapping wheels as a kid I have only built two wheels that required me to buy new sets of spokes. I got both from a place called TNT. But I don’t know what they might have in non-standard gauges. You can probably even get 12s but then you probably have to drill everything out. I don’t do the kind of riding where I have to worry about breaking my spokes. Strictly geezer peddling here.

I know I can stop anytime I want, but well, I wanted this 1958 Silvertone. I also bought this custom blue non-Fender “Partscaster.”

Perhaps, we’ll start a small bail fund for your eventual incarceration. BTW, I never got locked up for my driving, but let’s just say that I am lucky to have just survived the hot rod antics of my youth.

It’s kind of funny, but now that I’m old and I can actually afford fast cars and motorcycles, I just don’t want to race around anymore. I don’t want to be in a hurry. I want to be leisurely and take my own sweet time about everything, including driving. Where in my youth it was a luxury to have a hopped up V-8 and go fast, now it’s a luxury to take it easy.

The Ampeg Micro VR, advertising “200 Watts” it’s really amazing how Ampeg can claim this thing puts out 200 W but it only takes in 150 W from the AC line!

I did go and buy a new hydraulic line but I never installed it. As a matter of fact I haven’t touched the car in a couple weeks now because I’ve been messing around with new guitars and old amplifiers. I only spent $800 on those 4 guitars, which really is a pittance if you have priced musical instruments. emboldened by that show of frugality, I splurged $1500 on this classic Eric Clapton model fender Stratocaster. 25 years old. The case I got with it didn’t match at all so I got this matching $140 case. Shamed by that act of extravagance, I decided that, even though I desperately wanted to own a ‘50s Broadcaster style Fender Telecaster, I would have to settle for Squier, an Indonesian made under license to Fender. $189 not including the case. I like to play the Telecaster so much more, that I will probably end up selling the Clapton signature Strat. I also bought two more amplifiers and a speaker. This is a classic 1965 Sears Silvertone 55 W tube amplifier. This had new tubes and capacitors and it sounded very nice, but it needed a lot of cleanup. Also the grill cloth was totally rotten and stained. so I replaced it with this lovely Hawaiian cloth and the steel grid to protect the speaker. if you think I’ve ruined the value of a valuable antique then you must understand that the speaker had been replaced in 2002, and it did not have any of the original capacitors. I also replaced the Masonite baffleboard with a piece of modern high density furniture plywood. This is what Fender guitars used to use in their amplifiers before they got cheap and went to particleboard. Finally I bought this used Fender bass speaker and this Ampeg Micro VR mini bass amplifier. Both of them needed a bit of cleanup.

Well, I had the whole top of my frame wire brushed & nearly ready to paint, when I nicked the long hydraulic brake line with a grinder. Aaaaaaugh!!! I got a New one for only $25 yesterday, but I have to cut the zip ties, get the old one out of the tunnel, bend the new one up, put it in there, and strap it down. Today I had to work on my sister’s car. But we are having beautiful sunny warm days. I may actually paint tomorrow.

Ok….. Four guitars, but the Bass won’t arrive until Tuesday.. I think this is a Chinese copy of a Schecter. These are supposed to be well made but the pickups are second rate. The body will not be walnut, maple or mahogany. Poplar or maybe basswood. I only paid $100 for this one. Cheap! I only gave $325 cash for the Schecter with case, because it sat in a shop 5 years and had a chip in the finish on the back. New, that would have listed over $900 + $160 for the case, plus tax and shipping! So nearly $1300 list, but we are in the midst of a worldwide glut of guitars. Otherwise I would have paid much more for the antiques. I got the Bobcat for $325 and I gave $200 for the 1448. I sacrificed this $3 aluminum (metric) tri-square to make the new 1448 bridge. The baseplate was carved from a $5 stainless burger press.

Cold and damp weather has kept me indoors. To keep myself amused I bought an electric guitar. TWO electric guitars……well three actually. This 2014 Schecter is the cat’s meow. Still had the stickers on it. Pretty much unplayed. Korean made and well respected. Schecter made parts for Fender, Gibson & others, before competing with them. I bought this 1967 Harmony-made Bobcat, sold by Sears as a Silvertone. It needs knobs, a whammy bar & new strings. Still plays better than lots of new guitars. Gold pickups have tone for miles. Finally this 1965 Silvertone 1448 beater. This has a million hours on it and still works, but the tailpiece was missing. I made this more organic shape from stainless & aluminum. Look at the armpit wear on this machine and that pick guard wear. I made this tail piece for it and put some new strings on it and she plays pretty well. Not that it can match the fine action of a Schecter, but this was a budget guitar back in the day. I did this from scratch. It works great but I am sharp nearly a quarter tone at the 12th fret. The bridge needs to move 1/4” farther from the nut. Rockabilly magic with a small amp. I modified the bridge a little bit more and you can see that in the photograph above. Why did I buy this old beater? Well as it turns out this is the same model of guitar that Jimi Hendrix started out on. I can guarantee you this [i]exact[/i] one was not his though, because of the pick guard wear. It would be on the other side of the guitar, as he was left-handed

I just got out the Bombay taxi horn, and honked it in.

Happy new year Tim! I bought me a really loud electric guitar this year, and if I get drunk tonight I might open the windows and wake up my neighbors. (Think about me pretending to be Jimi Hendrix, playing the Star-Spangled Banner.)