StratDudeDan

i've looked everywhere for a pair of BC167B NPN transistors, 'cause i'm building a fuzz pedal based on the fuzz/wah by colorsound. the schematic calls for two BC167B NPN transistors, but i definitely cannot find them anywhere. does someone either have a link to where i could pick two of these up, or does someone know what would work in their place? thanks in advance!

way to go "Mr. I Have Different Basses for All My Different Settings." as a broke college kid, you learn very quickly how to get what sounds you want from ANY setup on ANY bass with an on-board EQ. most violent has been 80's "post-disco" during the day to a jazz concert that night. one bass, one amp. never touched the amp. hooah!

fretless + EQ = pointless. hell, you could set the amp's EQ flatline (on any amp, mind you) and that bass will have a wonderful sound. creepy thing about fretlesses, i'm telling you. i still don't get it. as long as there's a solid enough pickup in there and it's getting something to the amp, it will sound original and good. the bass i've been working on will definitely be a fretless, and i've been saving for a Carvin AC40 (acoustic) fretless for some time now.

i'm stuck in an odd position, where everyone assumes i have all this natural talent and whatnot... actually, i just live in a family of musicians. my dad is a band director, my mom is a choir director. my grandparents were musicians. my sister is a professional euphonium player, my brother a professional trumpet player. so everyone's like, oh, music's in your blood. i don't think so. to start playing bass professionally, i practiced four hours a day for a year and a half, then made sure i at least played everyday and as many styles as i could think of. i still don't consider myself a good guitar player, i play about an hour to two a day, i read as much as i can, and all that whatnot, but i don't think that i'm an inherently good musician or anything. so i'm gonna go with hard work and practice, 'cause that makes way more sense than "he's just good at it because he is."

Dean's 3-band onboard for me. i love it. granted, i still mess around with the amps i use (i use three different amps depending on where and what i'm playing) just to get a "general" sound, but then i use the on-board to make major changes and tweaks. def. on-board. though i've been considering a floor eq for my passive peavey foundation. just to see if i like it. too expensive right now, but i might decide to make something.

same here, looks very similar to a bass design i've been working with lately. i love the full sweep from one horn to the next instead of a "rounded up to the neck" look like strats.

my own amp is a Fender UltraChorus, which is now called the Ultimate Chorus. 2x12", 65w bi-amped (each speaker has it's own amp), and a very flexible and wide range of sound possible. i have a standard strat, a Tom Delonge signature strat, an LP-100, and an SG w/ p-90's, and all sound wonderful through this thing. the only problem is it doesn't have a speaker output, so there's no way to put an extra half cab on there or anything, which i'd like to do for a 3/4 stack. just get some more drive over the band, as i usually play lead.

i am a huge epi fan, though i'll admit i just put a down payment on a gibson the other day. one of their new melody maker reissue. i love it. total crunch and just singing sustain from the single p-90 at the bridge. gorgeous. usually when i get a new student or something, i'll have them start on a squier strat, then let them choose which way they want to go. the two biggest choices are fender tele's and epi LP-100's. 3 years later (5 in the case of my first ever student), i see them with the same guitar playing at gigs and could never be happier with it. i love the sound of well-built epi's, and it seems like they're priced at what they're worth. $300-700, what you pay is what you get. not like gibson, where you usually end up paying $500 just for the name "Gibson" to grace the headstock. typically, they don't sound noticably different from epi's, either. i was surprised to find this melody maker for less than $500, acually, and all it is is a thin piece of mahogany with a set neck, some hardware, and a p-90, pretty much. parts only, maybe $180-200. it just seems like for what they're worth in hardware and electronics, as well as their tone and feel, the price is so much better of a deal for an epiphone instead of gibson.

1 yes 2 not sure how i would do this, but i've never had any problem with them in the past 3 yes, in more ways than most people could have imagined 4 yes. there's a shield over the entire pickgaurd as well as the back of the rout in the body. not on the sides, but as i said w/ 2, i've never had an issue with this body or pickgaurd before. 5 if i'm about 2-3 feet away from the amp, the hum goes away. i tried it in another room (my practice room tends to be noisy, flourescents as well as iffy power), and it still hummed, though a wee bit less (nothing major, just noticable). thank you for the suggestions, though.

yes, the lead and ground wires were connected to the jack correctly. as for the proper phase relation, i'll be honest in saying i don't know... right now they're wired with both leads as their "hot" side and the grounds to ground. if i need to change this, no problem. as for the cap, easy to pull out (as i'm re-wiring the whole thing again soon...), and if i were to need it back, i was going to run it from the input side of the pot to the wiper, like is done in the Tom Delonge strat. so it's no problem to pull it out and screw around with that.

odd double topic post, please delete one of these.

so far, i've had three acoustics in as many days come to me with the owners wanting lower action and better intonation. however, i sit 'em down and look at 'em, then realize that the action is close to 3/8" at some points (and over in one guitar's case...)! holy hell what happened to these guitars?! my guesses are as follows: major neck strain from heavy gauge strings top warping forcing the bridge to pull up (lack of humidification) one on guitar, the neck heel was cracked. i repaired it and saw the situation (about 1/4"), so i was stumped. the relief on the truss rods is set all the way to a place that would practically force a backbow in most situations, so i'm clueless there. first question: what could be causing this to happen? second: how could i go about fixing this issue? thanks in advance!

so far, i've had three acoustics in as many days come to me with the owners wanting lower action and better intonation. however, i sit 'em down and look at 'em, then realize that the action is close to 3/8" at some points (and over in one guitar's case...)! holy hell what happened to these guitars?! my guesses are as follows: major neck strain from heavy gauge strings top warping forcing the bridge to pull up (lack of humidification) one on guitar, the neck heel was cracked. i repaired it and saw the situation (about 1/4"), so i was stumped. the relief on the truss rods is set all the way to a place that would practically force a backbow in most situations, so i'm clueless there. first question: what could be causing this to happen? second: how could i go about fixing this issue? thanks in advance!

first of all, my schematics are here: http://fullservesite.com/stratomagic/stuff/untitled situation: two single coil pickups (one the neck, one mid from a strat) are wired in parallel to a volume pot, which runs to a capacitor. problem: there is a huge amount of hum and noise while i'm playing, and when i'm not touching the bridge or strings, the hum increases by about 10-fold. yes, everything is grounded. yes it's soldered and not twisted. i even went as far as soldering a wire directly to the back of the bridge and then to the jack plate, yet the hum persisted. it's 60-cycle which makes me believe it is ground related, but i don't know how that's possible. question #1: is there something inherently wrong with my wiring diagram. i seems to be frighteningly similar to the schematics for the Tom Delonge strat (he has the cap wired across the input of the jack to the wiper, instead of after the wiper in-line), so i assumed not. question 2: if there is, what can i do to fix it? question 3: if not, what could be creating this? i read something about a ground loop somewhere that could create hum. could this mean that my two pups have a vastly different impedance? i don't have a working multi-meter, so i haven't checked that yet, but is that still a good candidate? question 4: if it is at fault of a ground loop, how would i fix it? could i just stick a resister in series with the lesser impedance line to "balance" it out? is there a way to wire it in series to create only one path to ground that would work? thank you in advance!

i'll meet you there.

as of this morning, more people have voted than have in the past 40 years in any given election. if the same numbers come out for the evening, it will break EVERY voting record in american history. which is good and bad. good: people are actually figuring out how much their vote counts. bad: the country is going to stand hardcore divided on this for quite some time now. they're not voting "for" someone, they voting "against" the other one.

looking already.

already dug up everything they had to offer. no avail still. very confused... thinking i'm just gonna build a box to filter out that frequency.

well, i have yet to allieviate the hum. i wired it in series with one pup's lead to the other pup's ground, ground to ground, and lead to lead. i still cannot eliminate the hum. i DO know that it's ground related, however...'cause when i touch the bridge, it goes away. well, at least gets A LOT quieter. i can still hear it when my gain is cranked (moreso than i usually can, i like a little fuzz every now and then). tell you what, i'll put together a schematic and post it, then perhaps someone can tell me what's wrong with this and why it could be doing this, 'cause yes, everything is grounded properly. i even ran a jumper wire from my bridge directly to the nut on the jack, so i know that that's not where the problem lies. EDIT - the schematic: http://fullservesite.com/stratomagic/stuff/untitled

the sheer number of lawyers already lining up for voter fraud/miscount errors is staggering...and they're still picking up more people the night before...man... as for results, we get the official count at 1 AM in IL, i dunno about the rest of the country, but our votes start getting counted when the polls close (9 or 10...), then we get nothing but "unofficial" counts until 1. and i have only seen one election where the votes from the unofficial were more than 3 votes away from the official.

top three (in no order, i like them the best of their own styles, none of them better than each other) Eric Clapton Jimmi Hendrix Angus Young clapton because i just find more emotion in his solos and songwriting than in most, hendrix for the power and energy he puts behind what he plays, and angus because anyone that can roll around and contort himself like that and still play a screaming solo is just cool. plus, i like his SG...a lot...

k, i lost a pickup on my strat (coil broke, don't feel like fixing it, waiting for the money to get a new set of pups i wanted anyway) so i'm trying to figure out a new way to wire it. now, most humbuckers end up getting wired in series, correct? they have two oppositely wound coils that the signal is run through one after the other. i would basically like to do this using my two single coils remaining on my strat. no switches. nothing but a volume knob in the line. not even tone. so, here's my idea, give me a virtual slap if i'm wrong: take the lead of bridge pup (referred to as B from now on) and connect it to the ground of mid pup (M). take the lead of M and wire to one side of the volume pot. take the ground of B and solder it to the back of the pot, which is jumped to the other side of the volume pot. connect a .022uF cap coming out of the wiper of the pot, then to the tip of the jack. the ground will be jumped to the bridge via the springs in the back, as well as connected to the ground on the jack. i wired it this way, plugged it in, and got the most god-awful hum i've heard out of the strat ever. i also connected the wrong side of the volume pot to the guitar, so it was "on" while the knob was at zero, and off when i turned it up, which i think i'd like to keep. however, this hum issue, i'd like to get rid of. would it be possible to instead wire it lead-to-lead (the mid is already wound oppositely so i didn't think i neede to) in order to alleviate this issue? or ground-to-ground? if so, which ground/lead do i connect to where? thanks much for the help in advance! EDIT - was for a grammatical error and two spelling issues. sorry, that just bugs me and people would wonder why the "edit line" was there if i didn't say something...

the green bay packers/washington redskins game will decide the presidency. since 1932, if the redskins lose the week of the vote, the incumbent loses. if they win, the incumbent wins. so if green bay wins, kerry will get elected. if they lose, four more years of bush. this whole voting thing can just be thrown out.

very original, would have a good chance in GOTM, i believe. wonderful idea and well executed.

as for voting, i've asked around quite a bit and found the most common answer to be "my vote doesn't really count." which may or may not be true. due to our current electoral college system (explained on the first and part of the second pages), a lot of people feel that their votes are just an unheard cry that won't end up mattering anyway... health care: this gets into "American Capitalism," which is very different than capitalism as the world sees it. if you can provide it for cheaper than the government, the government will let you provide it and make money, basically is the rule. our military buys most arms from private manufacturers; our space program is almost 80% funded by private investors; the list goes on. it applies to health care as well. granted, i don't believe in it. i would prefer to live in canada for this situation. the war: depends on who you talk to. some people feel the need to go out and "crush every single possible one-man threat to our american way of life," while others think that there are bigger concerns out there, like the growing nuclear threat in the far east (N. Korea, China), our current world-wide standing and how we're looked at by other countries, and other "non-military" areas of interest. my apologies for the slight bias in how i worded that, i guess it's my personal opinion shining through once again... Michal Moore: he's an idiot and a genius all in one. he produces his videos in an incredibaly biased presentation, and he gets what he thinks off amazingly well. in his other films (Roger and Me, Bowling For Columbine, and others but i can't think of the titles), no one doubts what Moore thinks, but they still question whether he's right or not. he finds the "nuts" on the opposing side and interviews them, while he finds well-spoken, intelligent PR-type personalities to present his own. he uses brilliant editing to create the worst outlook possible on what he doesn't believe, while using the same tricks to make him look like a brilliant politician or investor or whatever he's trying to get off. i haven't seen Farenheit 9/11 yet, though i do plan on it. his portrayal of the president's reaction to the events of the WTC incident is a section of the film i always hear talked about. here's my personal take on it: yes, our prez. might have sat down for a while. this is not what the american people want to see, so he showed it. he played into the idea that our prez is an idiot and can't do anything without being told what to do. now, put yourself in his seat. a major incident has just taken place, and the secret service are getting fragmented pieces of information and feeding it to you the best they can. can you make a decision on how to act based on that? no, it would take some time and a clearer understanding of the facts. in all honesty, i did not believe there was a bombing when i heard it in the hallways of my high school. i was like...yeah...tabloid crap...whatever... next class, they turned on the TV and then i was like...oh...okay... guns: here's my own take, and no, i don't have too many facts to present to back it up, this is only my own liberal/independant take on things. gun laws aren't going to stop crime. if someone wants to shoot someone and needs a weapon, where is he going to go? to a gun shop so he can wait a week, as well as fill out and complete an amazingly secure paper trail that will in turn lead directly to him? no... he'll find a cheaper, faster way to purchase his weapon on the streets or "black market" in order to save money and alleviate the pressure from the paper trail, as well as being able to pick up his weapon right there for cash so he can kill the person faster. will he register his weapon? no...he'll dispose of it. will he make sure he has the proper safeties and child-gaurds? no...he just wants to shoot somebody. he doesn't care about safety... ah well...some info from me.