coastie99
Enlightened Member
capnjuan said:What all you got in that 'Valve Case' anyway?
Well, first an overview.
Goes like this......
The kid is in his fifties and has a (vague-ish) desire to play acoustic (mostly slide) like his Blues heroes.
Muso-nephew convinces the kid that he should go for it, since the kid has extensive music/blues knowledge to draw upon.
Kid's a bit doubtful, 'cos he's not a very driven kind of guy but, what the hell.
Buys nice Maton, and sets about learning. Sort of !
Wants resonator guitar for that authentic sound. Wife's encouraging, so buys Fender FR48. Since modified with Gotoh tuners, National cone and (soon) carbon fibre biscuit/saddle.
Sets out learning. Sort of !
Kid gets desire for "once in a lifetime flash guitar", and purchases F47RCE. Guitar Dr. fits FWI nut/saddle/pins.
Learning continues. Sort of !
Kid convinces wife he needs a Fender Acoustasonic Jr. Purchases said article.
Kid sees BB on German Ebay. Falls in love, and subsequently purchases one on American Ebay.
So now the kid needs an amplifier, and that of course must be a valve amplifier !
Re-enter muso nephew who enthuses at length about his THD Univalve !
The kids gotta have one of these babies; enter a Univalve, and learning about electric guitar / valve amp. begins. Sort of !
Now, the Univalve allows you to swap around a great variety of pre and power valves, so we must have some of these. And they must be "vintage" valves !
So, the kid ferrets around and puts together a nice little collection of vintage valves.
Now, learning to "drive" the Univalve with different valve combinations begins. Sort of !
Now, the kid could really do with a valve tester to make sure any valves he has, and buys subsequently, are in decent condition.
Enter an Avo valve tester, and another learning experience begins. Sort of !
Now the scenes going nuts !
Enter two F4CE's.
The kid sees a gorgeous black SF4 Custom on Ebay. A bit of negotiating and it's his !
The kid thinks that a re-issue Dano U2 would be just the biz for sliding on.
Naturally, he acquires one.
He decides that customizing would be fun, and modifies just about every damn' thing on the Dano.
Has such a good time, that he buys a second one, and modifies that, too.
Sometime, along the way here, he decides that a Supro Ozark would be fab. to slide on !
Come in Ozark !
Meanwhile, the kid's guitar learning process has kind of hit a neutral !
Could he be spreading himself a bit thinly ?
After all, all he wanted to do was plunk around on an acoustic, somewhat in the fashion of his heroes !
Whoops ! Missed a bit !
Rewind to Amplifier antics.
We need a speaker cabinet, don't we.
What better than a Celestion Greenback in a home-made marine-ply cabinet, with Purple Elephant tolex and Marshall biscuit weave grill ? Perfect !
OK, here we are, back again.
What could be better now, than building your own ?
Enter an Ebay neck, and a great slab of NZ native timber.
And that's where we're at........... Work in progress.
One of these days, perhaps even by the turn of the decade, I'll have a home-made guitar !
And hopefully by then, I'll have learned how to play the bloody guitar !!
So, what's in the box ? At last !
A nice selection of, mainly, Mullard and Telefunken ECC83's/82's/81's.
Ten or so nice RCA 7025's.
A dozen or so Mullard & Telefunken EL84's.
A heap of RCA 6V6G's/GT's.
Various 6L6's - RCA, Kenrad, Transvision, Philips USA.
Several Mullard/Philips and Telefunken EL34's, including a very early, and very sweet Philips metal-based one.
A couple of old Tungsol 6550's.
Two GEC KT88's.
A Mullard EL37.
Several RCA and Tungsol 6F6/6K6's.
I've actually sold a few treasures, over time, to Tubeworld; mostly El34's, EL37's, KT66's and ECC83's.
It wasn't too long ago that I was picking up stuff off our NZ Ebay equivalent, but it seems that now, quite a few others have become hip to that trick !