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Veer on, Columbia, veer on. I'm watching Bound for Glory, about Woody Guthrie, as I type. Time for some new Woody and Cisco and even the just-departed Utah Phillips to remind us that folk are everywhere troubled and oppressed by the rich and powerful, and that folk song is about just that. Damn.
Cowboying: I once had a boss who asked me to carry out a task that would have provided a false impression to some potential investors. Our little company desperately needed the money, as little tech companies do. But I told my friend and boss that I wouldn't do it because it was unethical and I didn't work that way. He said scornfully "Hell, Kidder, I thought you were a cowboy." I said that I was indeed a cowboy, or at least that I had been, and that what cowboys actually did, all myth aside, was take care of cows and grass. We were just husbandmen, I said, not wild and crazy shoot-em-ups and rebels. So now I just joke around about it when someone says "he sure cowboyed that thing" or something similar - I don't actually take any offense, of course.
And Cap'n, you're completely right - the single most important thing I learned from those years in cow camps and big country was self-reliance. The second most important thing I learned was that farmers work harder and longer for less reward than anyone else I've ever met. Three times I've had the great good luck when hiring junior engineers to find young guys who grew up on a farm - you juist know they'll make do with what's at hand, that they won't quit till it's done, and that they'll step in anywhere without prompting when they see that something needs to be done. I use "farmered" as a joke too.
But sheepherding, Default, now that's a different matter altogether. I do mention to people when they talk about those "cowboys" on Brokeback Mountain that that was a sheep camp, not a cow camp, and of course everyone knows about sheep camps. And that stupid joke aside, the few open range sheepherders I've met (very few - 2 in BC and 3 in Montana) have to be about the toughest sob's I've ever run into. That's no job for a wimp.
40% of the surface of the earth has grazing animals on it, and they all have underpaid overworked camel-yak-goat-cow-sheep-buffalo herders to tend them. There's a strong kinship among us pastoralists, all over the world a common language, and an instant understanding known only among them that's been there.
Back to amps now - my Thunderbird has a reverb signal, the footswitch works, all is cool, except that the effect is less than I believe it should be. I have done the steps John outlined for the T1RVT - clean all connections, tubes, etc. - might have been an improvement at the margin, but not at all pronounced. Is there any electrical measurement I can make to give me a sense of the output after the reverb transformer, and is there a benchmark against which to compare it? Or am I (once again) circling around the wrong issue altogether?