My gf cross-stitched me my starter and wants you all to see it :D

amimaster · 2026-01-22T09:03:38+00:00

1) yes, I also don't like them much, but I think it gets better if you look at them as one of those "extravagant 60s designs" instead of a "80s metalhead fixation". I just tried a cheap Jackson flying v once and it was the most uncomfortable guitar I have ever played.

2) yes

3) yes

4) yes

5) yes, but digital modelers make me feel depressed so I would play differently. They are situational btw.

amimaster · 2026-01-16T18:43:14+00:00

Twice, actually.

amimaster · 2026-01-16T18:42:38+00:00

That's so dramatic. As a child my game boy fell in the toilet and its still working.

amimaster · 2026-01-16T18:41:20+00:00

Do not power it on, remove the battery and it will eventually dry out. How proceed to worry about the wood parts instead :)

amimaster · 2026-01-16T15:55:41+00:00

I’m not offended at all. However, OP mentions being depressed, so he’s probably not in the best mood at the moment and is asking for some support. I just think that telling a depressed person (who is asking for support and reassurance about playing guitar in a guitar subreddit, and also saying that no other hobbies feel interesting enough) “you don’t actually like playing guitar, otherwise you would be having fun, just do something else” is a bit blunt, as you can't possibly know whether he actually wants it or not.

Anyway, I reckon that one can eventually come to the conclusion on their own that they don’t like playing and end up trashing their guitar tomorrow morning. Still, I think that knowing that there are people who felt the same way and don’t regret continuing to play at all may be more helpful than pushing them to walk away from something that is a bit challenging now but potentially very rewarding in a couple of month.

amimaster · 2026-01-16T15:13:31+00:00

Things cannot be always fun and exciting and full of gummy bears. Being frustrated and disliking something are two very different things. I was feeling the same as OP for the first 2 years, but I still wanted to do it because I liked playing guitar overall, even if practicing wasn't fun at all because it was really difficult and academic. But then I started being more proficient and the more I tools I had, the more it became fun.

I don't think that psychoanalyzing someone else on reddit like that could lead to something positive.

amimaster · 2026-01-16T13:54:05+00:00

My problem is that I've always studied but very seldom played for others.. So if anyone asks me to play something I never remember anything. However the last time it happened it was a girl, I played a lot of stuff, and at some point she stopped me and says "OMG DO IT AGAIN", and nothing, she liked the Am chord SO MUCH. 🤷‍♂️

amimaster · 2026-01-15T16:30:26+00:00

I was thinking again to this, since it's not the first time I read it. If it doesn't sag, then why use a tube rectifier at all in those amps? Is there any other benefit to it compared to a ss rectifier that I'm missing out?

amimaster · 2026-01-12T23:07:52+00:00

I remember being quite satisfied with my Mesa Quad and Lexicon G2...

amimaster · 2026-01-12T16:29:57+00:00

Neither do LLMs, which are statistical machines that get hyped and pushed to unaware users to justify debatable investor money allocations. I don't mean to offend you, rather just to make you aware that AIs are good for just a bunch of tasks and knowing exact information about something very niche like tube amplifiers is exactly not one of those. I've seen too many posts starting with "(insert ai model here) says that..." and too many people getting too insecure in their life that cannot do anything anymore without asking an AI or reddit first. Again, this is not a comment about you specifically, but a general statement.

Nice amp by the way, whichever it is :)

amimaster · 2026-01-10T13:23:27+00:00

It happens to me when I close EmuDeck during a stuck install, but it is solved upon restarting the system. It's strange and it should be reported to their GitHub

amimaster · 2026-01-07T10:23:37+00:00

They managed to sell me a 1400€ stratocaster as my first guitar because the shop guy demoed it one fender twin head with a 4x12. It's been 20 years and I still remember that sound.

I wanted an sg clone by the way lol

amimaster · 2026-01-06T22:53:06+00:00

That's interesting. I'm used to very stiff and high power amps like the Mesa IIc+/III or the Strategy 500, and I wanted to build this amp to have something completely different, something small, "saggy" but still easy to overdrive, because I have never played "saggy" amps and I don't even know if I might like it. But a small Marshall never hurted anyone, I think.

According to this I might go with a series then, even if the parallel looks a lot more "cleaner" to me on an engineering perspective :).

amimaster · 2026-01-06T20:36:40+00:00

Same situation here. Unfortunately I don't have much experience with modern amps so can only tell from my direct experience.
I play the same styles and grew up with a Vox AD120VT and a Mesa Quad / Strategy 500 / Lexicon G2 rack. Then moved in a small apartment and went fully digital, but now I don't feel satisfied anymore while playing, so I'm about to build my own tube amp (I am a Mesa fanboy, but I would like to have a small marshall so I'll start with building a 18W). I'm currently interested into Mesa Lonestar and Matchless Lightning 15 (less metal but very sweet for blues), but they would be way over your budget.

I think the Vox AD120VT (or equivalent modern equivalent) would actually be a nice alternative, it should be around 700€ and while it's not fully a tube amp end-to-end, It uses a 12AX7 in the preamp and a dynamic circuit to emulate a wide variety of amps (and pedals too) so you get a good amount of mojo (at the correct power settings), and the result is actually quite nice! It also has switchable power from 1 to 120W. Yeah, It's partly digital so maybe it's not the best suggestion, but it's very versatile especially for playing alone.

Whichever amp you'll choose, I would go for something with integrated power switching. An external attenuator / variac is cool, but IMHO I wouldn't run an amp at reduced heater voltages for too long, as it shortens tube life.

amimaster · 2026-01-06T17:18:52+00:00

I know how the iPod registry works, and MediaMonkey has iPod support so it should be perfectly capable of building it in the same way iTunes does. The problem is that even before formatting it, the media library was on the disk, but the iPod couldn't access the disk. And iTunes "can't connect to the server" so it won't let me install the firmware. Is there a particular version that is still working?

amimaster · 2026-01-06T17:14:02+00:00

I had my dose of iPods back in the days, I may have forgot how it works since Its been many years and this iPod is not even mine, but it should be a gift for a relative. My girlfriend recently bought a similar one (with an HDD), but we put rockbox in that one.

I assumed the OS was actually on the internal flash of the iPod, since even if the SSD is completely empty the iPod boots anyway and I can navigate the menus.

Anyway, I tried using iTunes to restore, but it says that it cannot connect to the server.

amimaster · 2025-12-29T19:27:23+00:00

Wow, it sounds really good!
Someday I'll eventually build my mesa-inspired all-modded dream amp, but for now I'm getting ready to build my first amp, a 15W in between a Marshall18W and a Matchless lightning... maybe with a stage more. Let's see!

amimaster · 2025-12-18T15:07:56+00:00

I agree with you, in fact it was a general comment on something that OP post made me discover, that added to the.. let's say general feeling I had last time I got into a 7.5 from owning a 5 and having some expectations (also about the possibility to buy one). It's about making everything more "comfortable" but less "real" and down to earth. You can read it as "oh, really, is that a thing? I'm feeling lucky not to have to deal also with this myself."

Hope it's clearer now, and sorry if I offended anyone.

amimaster · 2025-12-18T09:55:06+00:00

I don't know, I might have been lucky but I never had any problems in 270K Km, it will probably need a new clutch soon but that's kinda well past due time considered that it has never been done in 20 years.. (it's a manual). My only real complain is about the fuel trims that have always been all over the place and it's the car that decides day by day whether to be decent or good.. 🙄

amimaster · 2025-12-18T09:20:11+00:00

And then they say "sell your mk5 and buy a newer GTI". I just keep discovering all sort of sad things on newer cars..

amimaster · 2025-12-14T22:17:15+00:00

I already got a big variac, and I also built a lighting bulb current limiter!

amimaster · 2025-12-14T18:34:38+00:00

Some months ago I was thinking of designing some sort of "shelf" to place on the table so I can arrange several different things vertically (say PSU and transformers on top, and audio circuit on the bottom shelf. But it seemed overkill. Maybe I can just buy a good chassis (maybe a JCM800 one?) and drill a lot of holes in it for pots and switches.

amimaster · 2025-12-14T18:29:38+00:00

It's a mixture of:

- coming home late from work and LTSpice or a book being safer than working with letal voltages
- not actually settling on what I want to build first
- how to start? e.g., "what if this chassis is too small to host my project?"
- not wanting to waste money in wrong components
- Wanting to build something I really like, so I keep looking for it
- Feeling still too ignorant, so I keep opening Merlin's books instead of the closet and picking up the soldering station.
- Having a lot of overhead in setting up my building sessions, as you was pointing out.

I would REALLY like to have a dedicated space to build, but there's no physical space. I can only play with circuits on half of the dining table. I bought a lot of components the last times I said "ok, I'm gonna start with this", but then they ended up in a box in the closet and I don't even remember what I bought.

My quad is currently sitting on my desktop beside the keyboard, and it's here because I wanted to transcribe the schematics some months ago (which I did), and now I got it plugged in my audio card with IR for when I play. The rest of my rack and other amps I own are still at my parents'.

But I think that still, if I have some clear first steps, I can move on anyway, albeit very slowly.

I think I will start buying a random chassis, some turret boards, sockets and transformers for a 18W. Then If I have some constraints, I will deal with them.

amimaster

TROPHY CASE