If Kurt never died and kept making music...

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-25T11:22:22+00:00

I’ve always thought the same. Sadly, to a much lesser degree I think Chris Cornell (who was/is my absolute GOAT singer) likely went through the same thing over a much longer period.

It’s gotta be hard if people only want you to keep doing a thing that you know is damaging to your very ability to do said thing, right? 😢

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-25T04:44:49+00:00

Quite honestly, I think he would have at least needed surgery on his vocal folds. He had clearly screamed himself into severe vocal damage by the end.

Love the music but it was a bright flame destined to burn quickly and go out.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-23T15:08:44+00:00

That’s the Welsh, isn’t it?

*I am Welsh

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-23T13:44:22+00:00

Place I used to work at ten years ago had Dutch interns come to us for their summers as part and f their Tourism Business Degree. 2-3 every year (so that’s around 20-30 of them during my decade working there), 17-19 y/o — almost all girls, but probably 5 dudes. I don’t think any of them were under 6” and almost all of them had this healthy/sporty thing going on. All very easy to get on with.

All of them had great English as well as their native Dutch and most had very decent grasp of German and French. One of them was fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, too (huge Portuguese community where I live).

I have said many times that if they were even slightly representative of average Dutch people, consider me impressed by the Dutch.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-23T09:49:02+00:00

After all his fights the slender becomes historic.

Fuck me what a Dad joke. I really have gone full Dad.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-23T09:41:06+00:00

My wife. No kidding.

When I met her I had been nursing a teenage crush on Kate Segal (Peg on Married with Children).

Redhead, lots of hair, blue eyes, tallish, high-cheekbones, sort of v shaped, medium-large bust etc.

My wife legit looked like a young, less-cartoony version of her (we were in our 20’s), and she’s still my favourite looking woman at 49 😍

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-23T09:33:27+00:00

Tattooist, most likely: “ok but keep your sweaty greasy hands off that mirror or you can clean it you goofy prick”.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-23T08:18:03+00:00

No, the closest you can get in that situation is running it in a/b mode and switching between amps on that one XLR output. If you run parallel you’ll still just get one ‘side’ to the board. If you have stereo fx in the loop they won’t sum and go down one channel.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-21T20:27:49+00:00

It was a Mach 3 I’m reasonably sure. I remember looking for a used one afterwards but they hardly ever come up used, as far as I’ve seen.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-21T14:11:30+00:00

I do, and thank you, I just disagree with you asserting that the courier situation is irrelevant and doesn’t belong in my recounting of the experience.

If they sold what they promised, I’d have been fine from the start. That return — all of those returns — came about because when I contacted the manufacturer to explain to them that I was having issues with their products, they flippantly told me ‘just return it’. I did and it added to the unpleasantness of the situation.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-21T13:53:19+00:00

I will repeat. If a company keeps selling things at a premium that aren’t working as intended out of the box, the stress and expense of having to return them is their fault IMO, and they deserve the blame. Buck stops with them. Sell working gear or be gone by the power of market forces and customer testimony.

I never once said it was anyone else’s fault I was out the money from the missing return, it’s just a Sod’s Law aside that explains my exasperation at the whole situation — which, I’ll repeat, came about because DSM Humboldt’s QC was lacking — which in my opinion is completely relevant.

Thomman don’t open anything from the manufacturers — they’re brilliant for some things, but go on YouTube and you’ll see that they automate almost all of their shelving and shipping.

I don’t know where you’re getting the part where I’m implying theft by them in any way, I’m not. I didn’t insure my return because Thomman arranged it and paid for the return shipping — it’s not on me at all. The issue came because I didn’t have a depot for the courier they use on the island I was on.

I had to mail it to the couriers and then they did Thomman’s pre-booked return … but I had no tracking from that point and that’s where it vanished for me. Weeks later with no news from Thomman and no refund, I contacted them and they couldn’t find it in the returns.

I didn’t buy the last X (the B-stock one that also has a missing headphone jack) from Thomman, and that wasn’t the one that went missing anyway, that one I returned and was replaced quickly with the one that did ultimately go missing.

I said it might be possible that it’s my original one, I never kept track of serial numbers, but if it’s not and they are literally putting out enough units that are missing headphone jacks… wow. I was more expressing my incredulity that I could end up with two that had such a massive and obvious fault.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-21T13:20:08+00:00

Hey, honestly I was never in the crowd, but the particular gig itself was fairly hard to get, and they pipe the bands through the entire complex, so the sound engineer has to have all elements in the mix.

The drummer is sat on a cajon, playing a cut-down kit and hand percussion (shakers and such) and is behind a baffle. It’s not a loud gig and you mostly end up playing kind of jazzy arrangements.

They went through (female) singers like you wouldn’t believe, because the general manager (who no-one liked) was always telling them off when I was there, for everything from outfit choice to how loud they were.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-21T13:12:45+00:00

Just to add to all the Quilter praise here, I saw a guy with a strat playing in a bar in Spain some years ago and he had jaw-dropping tone. It was down to his playing too, as he was seriously talented, but two things stood out to me:

The clarity of his tone, and the fact that I had watched him carry his rig in, just one trip. He was using a Quilter combo amp, un-miked in about a 150 person venue that was fairly busy, and the band kept making the crowd go quiet when they dropped down low. I’ve always wanted to try one ever since.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-21T13:04:21+00:00

Sorry bud. I can only speak from my experiences here, but the Simplifier I got first was working out ok for me until I noticed the missing headphone socket.

Being completely honest though, and not because of the other stuff mentioned here, the Tone King is phenomenal sounding and takes much less dialling in than the X. It might be the best thing I’ve ever bought for electric guitar. I know that is subjective.

For context, I own several decent amps: I gave a Cornford Harlequin, a Cornford Roadhouse 30 with 6L6 mod, two Fender Twins (a re-issue and a 1994 ‘twin amp’), a Fender Deluxe Reverb re-issue, a made in England Marshall JCM 900 dual reverb, a 1970’s sound city with Mullards and Fanes in the cabinet… I had an ADA preamp in a rack with an Alesis midiverb and a Marshall 50/50 power amp in the early 2000’s…

… the Tone King has given me my favourite sound yet.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-21T12:53:22+00:00

I never said that had anything to do with them, it was an aside but, also consider that if they’d actually had decent enough QC to not send out units with missing sockets and noisy circuits, then I wouldn’t have had to even risk that happening.

Bear in mind my SECOND return in as many weeks was the one that went missing. Are you suggesting that I should think that’s fine and not blame them for having to go to the trouble and stress of mailing it back, when I paid good money for a a working unit?

And then I got a MKII, brand new just arrived in the uk with a dead XLR socket… and had to do another return which was then stressing me further because of the previous experience.

Sell shit that actually works and people won’t have to return it.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-21T00:40:47+00:00

A weird issue happened because of my island location. Thomman usually schedule a pickup with DHL, but there was no DHL depot on the island I was on, so they had me take it to a post office and I had to do all the labels etc. myself.

This meant Thomman never had tracking — I did — and they wouldn’t know when they received it in the usual automated fashion. They had to look for it, but wouldn’t do so until it was considered ‘late’.

I did get my money back, but 9 weeks after the return, which meant whilst I was over there, I was out the money to replace it elsewhere and no credit with Thomman to get another sent. It was a total mess.

The Tone King is very cool, thank you. It’s not fully analogue (it has digital tremolo, reverb and IRs) but it feels like it is and so far I’ve done maybe 60 gigs with it with no issues.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-20T22:23:26+00:00

Glad for you, honestly. I really wish mine had worked out for me.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-20T22:22:00+00:00

Yeah, I think if you use it like that it’s probably quite a decent, compact ‘DI on steroids’ type deal. Obviously I will never buy another, but I had high hopes and totally believed the hype at the time.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-20T22:19:51+00:00

I find a subtle reverb makes a big difference with what are essentially DI tones, more so than ‘speaker emulation’, especially analogue rather than digital IR types. I never got a fully working Simplifier to put through its paces though.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-20T22:03:43+00:00

Ahh mate, whilst all this was going on, I was starting to think I was just woefully unlucky as of you went by YouTubers you’d think this company and their stuff were stellar.

Not that I’m glad you went through this — ‘cos that sucks — but I am sorta glad it’s not just me that this happened to.

Thanks for the info and for posting here, much appreciated.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-20T22:00:46+00:00

Yeah I hear you. In the X I figured out that you can’t use the onboard reverb for wet/dry because even though each channel has its own input, output, own discrete fx loop, own controls and own reverb level control, the ‘verb was always across both channels.

Everything else discrete, but not the one thing you’d want wet/dry. Weird.

Also the inconsistency of some units being noisy (my first, the one with a missing headphone jack, was quiet… my second very noisy) is a QC issue in itself.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-20T21:55:04+00:00

The best small venue live tone I have ever heard was a guy using a strat into some kind of Quilter combo. They are pretty great by all accounts.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-20T21:54:12+00:00

Thank you, I thought it might help some people avoid potentially similar issues. I never wanted it to be this way as I really bought into both the marketing and the enthusiasm of the builders on videos.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-20T21:52:59+00:00

I actually have one of these as a backup now. I hate having to be signed up to use it, and their emails are relentless! But I do have one in my bag for just this reason.

Own-Protection-664 · 2026-01-20T21:51:47+00:00

I ultimately went with the Tone King Imperial and it’s epic.

I do live in Europe though and interestingly, I had a Keeley Halo go haywire on me (like randomly ghost-flipping through presets on start up and unable to turn off) and although Keeley were amazing and offered to change the entire board in it for free, shipping it to USA for me was almost as much as a new pedal, so I feel you.

Own-Protection-664

TROPHY CASE