A Merry Christmas to anybody who might be looking in and enjoy this FREE festive EP download from my favorite Ukulele(and mouth trumpet)player Victoria Vox!
http://victoriavox.bandcamp.com/
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Open Mic at Gary's Club including video
Open mic night at Gary's club.
I had a great open mic at Gary's club last night. I felt far more confident and go to grips (at last) with singing through a microphone!
Unlike a normal open mic where you only get to do one or two songs Gary pre-books you in for a 20 minute slot so you can really
start to develop a proper set. It was a great evening with 6 of these slots and a really varied selection of styles and I was asked back
to do another in about 4 or 5 months or so,in the mean time I'll definitely be back to watch!
I had a great open mic at Gary's club last night. I felt far more confident and go to grips (at last) with singing through a microphone!
Unlike a normal open mic where you only get to do one or two songs Gary pre-books you in for a 20 minute slot so you can really
start to develop a proper set. It was a great evening with 6 of these slots and a really varied selection of styles and I was asked back
to do another in about 4 or 5 months or so,in the mean time I'll definitely be back to watch!
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
100 watt homemade guitar amplifier MK 3
My main homemade guitar amplifier is undergoing its third reincarnation!
It is based around Maplin 100watt Mosfet power amplifier kit which was popular for use as a disco amplifier in the 1980’s and is no longer made.
I remember I originally built it as a general purpose amp in the early 90’s then in 1997 (see photo) I built it into an old tape recorder cabinet cobbled together with a hodge podge of different projects which included several relays, one valve (tube), five power supplies and a loud speaker from the late1950’s to make a very useful amp indeed! I used it for many a Prison Fellowship visit into jail in the trio El Camino and despite its heath Robertson nature and being shaken up on a bone rattling trolley it never let me down even surviving being dropped and landing upside down! Its only problem was it had so many controls I would get to the end of a gig and wonder why my sound wasn’t quite right to find a knob on the wrong setting!
After we’d stopped doing the prison visits it languished in my shed for a few years and when I fired it up last year I discovered that part of it had ceased to function and rather than trace the fault in it rats nest wiring pulled it to pieces and put the components aside for later.
My modern digital VOX ACD30 is great but somehow I feel I should be playing through something homemade and also I’m missing the thunderous roar of my old 100 watt monster so I’m rebuilding it (neatly this time!) into an old (digital!) 30watt amplifier cabinet, I’m not sure if I can shoehorn the old speaker in there yet!
Co-worker Graham is kindly building it a new neater Craig Anderton “Super Tone Control” circuit, I have already got the powers supplies into the new chassis.
Photos etc to follow!
For the geeky here is a list of its circuits: (so far!)
Germanium transistor “range master” booster (New to this build)
Preamp from a tiny Fender mini twin battery amp
“Super Tone Control” from the Craig Anderton book Projects for Musicians
Maplin Spring line reverb driver
It is based around Maplin 100watt Mosfet power amplifier kit which was popular for use as a disco amplifier in the 1980’s and is no longer made.
I remember I originally built it as a general purpose amp in the early 90’s then in 1997 (see photo) I built it into an old tape recorder cabinet cobbled together with a hodge podge of different projects which included several relays, one valve (tube), five power supplies and a loud speaker from the late1950’s to make a very useful amp indeed! I used it for many a Prison Fellowship visit into jail in the trio El Camino and despite its heath Robertson nature and being shaken up on a bone rattling trolley it never let me down even surviving being dropped and landing upside down! Its only problem was it had so many controls I would get to the end of a gig and wonder why my sound wasn’t quite right to find a knob on the wrong setting!
After we’d stopped doing the prison visits it languished in my shed for a few years and when I fired it up last year I discovered that part of it had ceased to function and rather than trace the fault in it rats nest wiring pulled it to pieces and put the components aside for later.
My modern digital VOX ACD30 is great but somehow I feel I should be playing through something homemade and also I’m missing the thunderous roar of my old 100 watt monster so I’m rebuilding it (neatly this time!) into an old (digital!) 30watt amplifier cabinet, I’m not sure if I can shoehorn the old speaker in there yet!
Co-worker Graham is kindly building it a new neater Craig Anderton “Super Tone Control” circuit, I have already got the powers supplies into the new chassis.
Photos etc to follow!
For the geeky here is a list of its circuits: (so far!)
Germanium transistor “range master” booster (New to this build)
Preamp from a tiny Fender mini twin battery amp
“Super Tone Control” from the Craig Anderton book Projects for Musicians
Maplin Spring line reverb driver
“ line driver & 100 watt mosfet amplifier
I’ve just remembered that I want to put in a microphone input too so I can use it as a joint guitar amp and PA system like Carvin make. This is going to be an epic project!
I’ve just remembered that I want to put in a microphone input too so I can use it as a joint guitar amp and PA system like Carvin make. This is going to be an epic project!
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