Anniversary Memories

October 3O marked the 14th anniversary of my marriage to my lovely bride, and today (the 31st) marks the 30th anniversary of my acceptance of Christ's call and my following him through baptism.

To this day, both are dear to me.

Both mark acceptance that I didn't really believe I merited, and both relationships go out of their way to encourage me in my worth.

I get reflective around these times, and it occurred to me to ask myself - have I really done justice for either relationship? For Christ; do I take enough opportunity to reflect and realize that He authored me, binds me together and causes me to draw this very breath that allows me life here and now?
For my wife; do I show the woman that chose to hitch her wagon to my train the consideration and thoughtfulness that she merits?

Both show me grace - overtly and abundantly - and I am indebted to both more than I can explain, or perhaps even fathom.

Here I stand.
Not particularly proud of the decisions that get to here in my life, but not particularly embarrassed either.
Not embarrassed as life has given me ample opportunity to look around, look outside of myself and see that I am not exceptional. We all require grace on many levels.

My prayer to my Maker:
Keep me reflective, please, of what is forgiven me through You and that You desired this fellowship enough that you called me accountable in the first place.

My thoughts to my wife:
I am sure that I have neglected our relationship many times, and yet we are together.
I express my thanks to you for your perseverance and the hope that awakens in me.

May I always be more like Christ tomorrow than I am today, for the sake of my Maker and all who know me.

Guinea Pigs and Wheel Alignments

No, the guinea pig wasn't tracking wrong, but the beat-up old Mercury wagon was.

5 years after I installed an inner tie-rod end on it, I decided it was time to get it aligned (wanted to make sure we were going to keep it, as I hate wasting money).

Small, nondescript chores like this are usually what fill days off around truck-boys household.
That and irritating the boy with his own guinea-pig.
(the guinea pig did pull to the left a little, after I installed her in the bathroom with my boy).

Use-it or lose-it vacation. This phenomena probably spawns more ill-conceived household projects than Tim (the tool man) Taylor on amphetamines.

It's a rough balance to achieve:
You've got no money for a real vacation (maybe breakfast at McDonalds) so you figure you'll tangle with projects you've left lay around for a while.
You have no money to do these right either, so it becomes a love of labor.
So I spend my $59.95 to have the wheels put in some semblance of alignment (Vs. the 5-year old tape-measure job it had) which may squeeze a few more miles out of (the next set) the tires.

Sure enough, this thing had more toe-in than a kid checking the temperature in a swimming pool.

Drives better now and the beauty is I didn't destroy anything else in the process.
So ends another successful vacation day.

Piddley Cruiser plight

Saturday found us a break in the rain, so rather than go secure gopher-wood for the arc I figured I would do some preventative maintenance on the residential fleet.

We drive an '03 Chrysler Piddley Cruiser with a stick-shift. It's been a good car to date but a few months back picked up a chirping fan-belt tensioner pulley, so repairing this was on the docket.

It proved rather difficult to get the pulley off (no room to get the bolt out) and after trying 3 parts-stores I found out why.
The pulley isn't available by itself.
So in effect, I was supposed to spend $80 dollars on an entire tensioner assembly to alleviate a noise in a $2.00 bearing molded into a 39 cent plastic wheel.

I'm no fiscal guru, but this seemed a little overkill.

End result:
I found out with the proper dental tool you can pick the seal out on an idler-pulley bearing and repack it. I lucked out on this because the bearing was just dry, not yet damaged. So the net repair was only a dollop of moly-lithium grease.

Good thing guitars don't have idler pulleys.
The moly grease would sure get your pants messy.

Hot-rod reminiscing

Not about amplifiers for a change... What a deal huh?

I stopped of at the hospital to chat with my uncle a little bit tonight. He is (I believe) 78 and is getting ready to have a pacemaker pulled out of him that his system doesn't agree with. He looks like he was bit with an infection, but not bacterial.
Anyway.
This guy is the one that helped me develop my mechanical chops long-long ago.
More years ago that either he or I would care to admit, I spent my summers in a little VW shop he used to own.
I am sorta dicey on how he started this shop, but I do know he was pushed that way by a layoff.

Anyhow, back then he used to be sort of a local Guru with type 1 and type 2 VW's (Bugs and Buses, for the uninitiated), and about the time I was getting underfoot, he had become the builder doing aircraft conversions on these engines for the local experimental aircraft guys.
So I watched many engines come apart and go together on his bench, and soon after, had a few engine components dancing in my own shop.

Tonight we were talking about some of his old (read pre-truckboy) racing exploits. He had gotten into dirt-circle track racing in the late fifties, and by 1962 he was part owner in a B-mod which was stoked by a rather stout 261 Chevy six. This was a wild time in the sportsman classes, the Chevy V-8s were just then finding their voice in competition, and the Ford flathead V-8's were about developed-out. Folks were often taking highly developed stovebolts and proving competitive with them.
Built-up Chevy 261's, GMC 248's and 270's would run elbow to elbow with Flatheads and Chevy small-blocks, and often win. Within a few years, the Chevy had speed parts out the wazoo and the Windsor Ford (260-289) had debuted, and the oddball sixes had sang the swan-song, except maybe the odd 1/8th mile dirt-track in the Midwest.

I feel sort of envious that this era of automotive history blew by without my involvement. It sounds like good times for innovations and backyard blacksmithing.

My uncle was happy with the visit and to have the conversation.
Ever since I've known him, I've known that talking about engines and making them better made his eyes light up.

Verb and Reverb

So I take the prince-town to church Tuesday PM to practice a tune with the youth minister which he wants to do Wednesday night at youth-group.
Immediately out of the gate, the reverb that was working fine at home is non-functioning. I trip through the rehearsal and when I get the tramplifier home, I start plugging and unplugging various RCA connectors. Lo & behold, the 'verb comes up, long and spankey just like a Fender should.

I figure I'm hip so I pack it in the Piddley Cruiser next PM, get it warmed up at church, and sure enough, the 'verb is DOA again. I mumble and stumble through his gig, unhappy.
I won't say that I can't play without reverb, but it's like an old-comforting friend.
It builds space.

Back home again, in Indiana, new RCA cables do nothing. Don't know what it is (yet) but I did hear a scratchy sound associated with hooking up the output lead, so it looks like I'll be pulling the tank to see what-up sometime this weekend. Probably a bad connection at the pickup coil.

Thoughts?
Vintage amps sound cool when they are working properly, but keeping them working is sort of a trauma.
I used to really love hot rods too, but adjusting the points each weekend so they wouldn't miss at 6000 RPM was a pain in the wazoo.
And then GM made HEI (High Energy Ignition) and no more worries.
Maybe new has something to commend it, no?

Going tubing, without the boat.

So a trip to Guitar Center netted a matched pair of Groove Tubes 6V6 power tubes.
I had never grooved before, so I was unfamiliar the the rating system.
Apparently, after matching up values, GT gives them a rating which indicates how soon they will "Grind". These tubes rated a 7, which is the high-end of normal breakup characteristics.
I would have preferred a sooner breakup, but this is the set they had, so this is the set I got (6L6's were way more popular). I was figuring 14 watts couldn't damage me too much.

The Groovey tubes went in, and the power went on - for one hour while I burned them in w/ no signal.
Later that night I blew through it a little.
Very nice... The speaker had good presence and the power section had good snap and attack. In fact, as this little puppy has a tube rectifier, any front panel volume above 3½ caused a nice hard clicky transient, and an immediate pull-back into compression. I would speculate that this volume level sucks down the filter-caps right after the transient and then you are riding the DC fresh out of the GZ34.
Whatever the reason, nice and barky. Much like a Rottweiler charging the fence and then being held back... Sweet.

Ivy League – or, am I cut out for Princeton?
The trials of making a Silverface (‘68) Princeton reverb walk the walk.

I acquired this puppy in a local pawn shop early summer of ’06 for a relative pittance. The amp functioned but the reverb was inoperative, so after the requisite hobby-haggle, I believe a walked out the proud daddy of the Princeton for about $65.

Back in the eighties I had owned bigger guns (a Twin w/ JBL’s comes to mind) and I recall at that time we spurned the little Fenders (Princetons, Deluxes, Vibroluxes, etc.) as being “too tiny” for serious work.
Like everything opinion I’ve ever held, time changes it.

I had managed for decades to hold onto my old Blackface Bassman, but it was both too loud (50 watts cooks when you are pushing it to get “the brown”) and too big, requiring a separate cabinet.

A wife, two kids, a mortgage and all the resulting responsibility later, music has become (more realistically) a stress-relieving hobby for me. The band riser seems long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. So much for the reminiscence.

After getting the Ivy-league home, I disassembled it to see “what be wrong”. The driver tube for the reverb (a 12AT7 on these) had the top cracked off, the pilot-light was burnt out, the reverb tank had some broken leads from the connectors to the spring voice-coils and the speaker baffle was bowing. After some parts runs and some creative gluing and bracing on the baffle, she was up and running.

The little amp sounded (technically) fine, with no squeaks/hums/groans, but also sounded listless, lacking the typical fender snap. The speaker it had come with was aftermarket, nominally 4 ohm (measured 2.8) and way too big. This puppy had a 2” voicecoil and about a 6 lb. magnet. Aside from the fact that it could suck-up 5 times the power the Princeton could kick even on a good day, I speculated that the huge voice coil and heavy cone was killing what highs the amp could build.

I started looking online and liked the response curve some of the Celestions were showing. They had a peak right about 2.8K, upper mid for most young ears, but high-end for mine. I bid in an auction for a “Tube 10” and won it. 1 week later it was installed in the amp, and I was blowing through it enjoying the new fire. It really lit up with the old Tube-screamer set up to overdrive the front-end. Half-way through my nightly mid-life crisis, the thing developed a low freq. hum that sounded like feedback. Off the power switch went.
I lit it up the next night and let it idle with all on 10. About a half-hour later, the hum is back, so I grab a rag to shake some tubes. As soon as I grab one of the (original RCA) 6V6’s, the hum stops. When I let go, it starts again and so on. Apparently, the same drop that broke the reverb driver had done a number on the grids in the power tube.