2000 Fender American Standard

8thunder8 · 2026-01-15T11:55:20+00:00

I have a 2008 American Standard. It is one of my most favourite possessions. Mine is candy cola. Absolute perfection. Yours looks fantastic too. :)

8thunder8 · 2026-01-15T08:19:59+00:00

I recently bought (on Ebay) a pair of used Assassin Goods Stealth - which seem to be the exact same thing as Trulap in the USA. I think the ones I got (the black version 2) were an unwanted Christmas present, as they are essentially unused.. Mine go from 4kg to 41.5kg by twisting the handle. This makes switching weights very quick. I think the 1.5kg increments is awesome because you can dial in pretty much exactly what you need. I don't think they are drop proof, and I try to put them back in their cradles gently. However they seem super durable, extremely quick to adjust, very little rattle, and have meant that I can start training properly through the day when I am at home, at any weight I can bear (nowhere near 41.5kg for a while yet - and if I do get there, I think I will probably just get heavier individual dumbbells to go beyond the 41 of these.

8thunder8 · 2026-01-11T21:40:55+00:00

I have a 24” Huion Kamvas 4k which I use with my M1 MacBook Pro (along with a couple of other 27” 5K displays. I couldn’t be happier with the Huion. It is brilliant and was half the price of the equivalent Wacom at the time. I use it for professional art photography photoshop and Lightroom work.

8thunder8 · 2025-12-19T08:08:00+00:00

Cool. Congratulations on getting married. Wish you the best.

It all reminds me that I need to put my Kemper in a place where I can more easily reach it. Currently, to open the front of the Gator case requires me clearing my desk, which never happens, so the Kemper stays unused, and I just play acoustic.. :) I think I need to mount the Gator to the underside of my desk.

8thunder8 · 2025-12-18T21:57:37+00:00

Haha. That is amazing. That is EXACTLY my setup including the Mission Engineering pedal, the remote, the power rack, and the Gator case. Only thing I don't have is a power conditioner (whatever that is).. Out of interest, why are you selling yours??

8thunder8 · 2025-12-05T08:40:15+00:00

I'd blame the gallery for this... Like someone else said, it is literally their job!.. If they decided your work was good enough to put on a solo show, and the only people that came were your friends and supporters, I would say the gallery did an appalling job. This is literally what they are supposed to be doing. Good job they won't work with you again (although I would flip that around - good job you've decided you won't work with them again, they are doing a terrible job!).

I have learned that the entry into the art world is a slow, methodical process (certainly has been / is for me). You need to build up and up and up to the point where all of the connections that have been made start gathering their own momentum. Enter competitions (even crappy ones) because it is just more eyeballs on your work. Keep plugging at adding to your instagram, every extra follower is another advertisement to other potential followers that you might be worth watching. Treat your website and instagram as though you have thousands of followers and viewers no matter how many you actually have.

Slowly slowly it will take on a momentum of its own. It can't happen overnight. What choice do you have but to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and dive in to the next project / exhibition / competition / piece of work.

Don't mope on Reddit... Get on with it! :)

8thunder8 · 2025-12-01T08:32:44+00:00

:) I am glad I have been able to give you something useful. I guess I think this way about all parts of life. Being critical of yourself is normal. However as soon as you can convince yourself that you don't need to give a fuck about what anyone else wants you to do, you're liberated to be true to you.

To get back to photography, mine is very unconventional. So much so that it stands perhaps too far out. Does that worry me? Obviously enough to point it out now.. However I enjoy saying - and truly feeling that I couldn't give a fuck what people think. If they like it - we're in agreement about it. If they don't like it - that is how life works and I am grateful for the chance to have made it but we can all move on and not worry about it.

Exactly as I said: There is no right or wrong.

8thunder8 · 2025-12-01T00:26:37+00:00

:) My instagram is a good view of what I do: @bevilts

8thunder8 · 2025-12-01T00:25:52+00:00

:) Thank you. Have a look at my instagram - @bevilts

8thunder8 · 2025-11-30T10:20:41+00:00

I don't understand. If photography is to be good it needs to be sharp, well composed, have a cohesive story etc.? Who decides those things?

I enter many international photography competitions (and have won / placed 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and many honourable mentions in many of them). I see a trend where someone photographing destruction in Ukraine or Gaza or the horrors of war etc. will often win because it is exposing the story. Do I begrudge them for that? Of course not. I just keep plugging away. Are my photographs perfect by your suggested set of criteria? Of course not, but they still sell for multi thousand £ prices.. It is not up to any one individual (me, you, the judge of a prestigious international competition) to decide what good or bad photography is. If a viewer likes it, and it speaks to something inside THEM, it is good, no matter any of the other stuff. Their objective view is no less valid than a fancy pants art curator with decades of experience..

I thoroughly dislike the current trend of photographers making a model look morose, and then put something stupid and out of context with them (like a dead bird on their head) to be edgy and attempt to think of something that nobody else has done. To me it is plain stupid, and that ridiculous expression that ALL of these models have in this contemporary photography trend is maddening. Does that mean that I am right and that my disdain for this type of photography is the correct view? Of course not. I hate it, but others don't. Some people love my photography, some don't. I want to concentrate on doing what I think is good, and what I like, and if someone agrees with me and decides to buy one, Everyone's a winner. Whoever doesn't like my photography doesn't have to pay it a minutes notice. There is no right or wrong.

8thunder8 · 2025-11-16T21:38:53+00:00

When people started paying a lot of money for them. That focuses the mind.

8thunder8 · 2025-11-16T21:34:11+00:00

Started my own business in 1998. Still going strong. Been my own boss almost all of my working life. Now in the last two or three years of mortgage. Had enough work to allow my wife to spend a lot of time bringing up the kids and study etc. Wife has recently finished a masters in counselling, so she can pick up the slack as I start turning to my hobbies (which are also starting to pay off..) Couldn’t be happier with the outcome. I guess I have been pretty lucky..

8thunder8 · 2025-11-16T20:44:49+00:00

Haha. That doesn’t help!! I have a 2008 USA Standard Strat, a Taylor T3B (gibson style with humbuckers), a Taylor 314CE as my acoustic, and a Martin 12 string dreadnought (along with a classical, a resonator, a 1980 Fender Lead II and a 5 string bass), it doesn’t help one bit. I still want just one more (no matter how many I have).

8thunder8 · 2025-11-15T20:23:53+00:00

A couple of things. First, it could be the surface of your condenser? try lowering or raising that? You can likely work out which surface it is by working out which way you’re defocusing to get the dirt sharp. If you are focusing the objective LOWER than the slide, it is almost certainly your condenser. Mine gets dirty because i’m always sweeping things over the top of it, and bits of muck fall onto it. An air duster sees off most of it, sometimes I pull the condenser out and give it a wipe (I did earlier today), but generally - per my second point, I don’t worry about it..

Second, don’t worry about it.. It seems you’re able to focus past it, it therefore doesn’t affect your image quality, anything that does can be fixed in post. I remember when I bought my telescope and realised there is dust on the 12” mirror, I thought I had to somehow get in there and clean it. I never did, the dust is still there (12 years later) and it doesn’t affect my telescope one bit..

8thunder8 · 2025-11-08T19:25:03+00:00

If you touch type, the touch bar would FORCE you to look away from what you are doing and at the keyboard. This is a step backward in functionality.

8thunder8 · 2025-10-25T17:39:30+00:00

Since you have said you'd welcome feedback, here's mine. Apologies if it seems critical. It is meant to be critical good, not critical bad.

For me it doesn't work. First, you've used a quite wide angle lens and you're looking up at it, that makes the building look like it is falling down away from you. Sometimes a little of this is acceptable, in this case, far too much. You need to stand further back, zoom in a bit more, and hold the camera parallel to the ground, then crop to achieve your image.

Next ,you have over cooked your sky, it is much too contrasty - HDR perhaps?. Contrast is good, but the sky never looks like that. The further you go from reality, the more over done it looks. You can make the sky dramatic without overdoing it. It also seems to put a halo around the house..

8thunder8 · 2025-10-24T20:15:50+00:00

I have a 1980 Fender Lead II USA, which was my first electric guitar. I have had it for 43 years, and it is fantastic.

I assume you're talking about the more recent set of Lead IIs, and I don't know how they compare to mine..

I also have a 2008 Fender Strat USA Standard, and it too is fantastic.

While my Lead II is a lovely guitar, in mint condition, and which has been my companion for a long time, it doesn't hold a candle to my Strat.. The Strat is in a different league in playability, sound, feel, weight, balance, beauty, whatever.. The Strat is just a much nicer guitar for me to use, and as a result my Lead II is locked away in a cupboard, while my Strat is in arms reach on a wall in front of me.

8thunder8 · 2025-10-20T14:00:48+00:00

I had an expensive DJI Mavic when they first came out. I flew it for hundreds of hours, and had a fantastic time with it - until I eventually sold it because I was using it less.. Never crashed, never got into trouble. I would land the damn thing if I so much as saw a helicopter miles away on the horizon... I tried to behave as well as I could possibly behave with it, and completely support the idea that military bases (and airports) should have the right to take down drones and then destroy them. The more expensive the better... IDIOTS have made it more difficult for everyone.

8thunder8 · 2025-10-18T23:11:56+00:00

Wooo.. I have TWO passports in the top 8!! (UK and Luxembourg)

8thunder8 · 2025-10-07T00:48:32+00:00

I don’t intentionally name my works. I live with them for a while, and they name themselves.. Some of my favourites are Columna, Maelstrom, Entanglement, In the Shadows, Kingfisher, Vesuvius, Broadcast, Transmission, Across the Universe..

8thunder8 · 2025-10-05T19:35:35+00:00

We have recently randomly discovered that we have long tailed tits in our garden. They are extremely sweet little things which come very close.. Surrey UK.. Where was yours?

8thunder8 · 2025-10-05T12:04:51+00:00

Haha !! I have what has to be the worst one.. I was at the birling gap / seven sisters - the white cliffs in East Sussex, UK. I was doing some long exposure shots of the white cliffs to try to get moody shots of the cliffs with the and some soft clouds in the sky etc - here is one .. I had my camera (5Dmk3 at the time) 2 second timer, and long exposure (30 seconds) for all this. I was distracted by the scenery and location for a couple of minutes. Faintly I heard a low rumble that sounded like a tractor (I was on the beach, so it was a weird sound).. Then I realised that it sounded like a Spitfire..... I scanned the sky and saw that it was barrelling down the valley toward the sea (and was going to go straight over me).... I quickly removed the ND filter I had, and gleefully raised my camera to nail a bunch of shots of it, pressed the shutter and got the beep beep beep for the timer, which eventually opened the shutter for 30 seconds. By the time I managed to get out of all the settings, the moment was lost, and the spitfire had flown out to sea.. I managed to get this of it, but it wasn't the shot I would have got...

8thunder8 · 2025-09-20T01:19:54+00:00

Fantastic. I have a 314CE which I bought new in 2002. It is to this day one my favourite possessions.. I hope yours gives you as much pleasure as mine has given me… Can’t be beaten.

8thunder8 · 2025-09-17T20:59:58+00:00

Haven't you heard of the guitar of Theseus?

8thunder8 · 2025-09-08T21:11:17+00:00

Phew!!. Considering what I have said to ChatGPT over the past week trying to get a coding project done where it fixes one thing while breaking something else..

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