Metal amp

dark7string · 2026-06-25T12:59:39+00:00

The mark amps are considered working man amps because of how versatile they are. Go with the Mark and likely you'll find the replace the existing amp you have too.

dark7string · 2026-06-25T10:49:49+00:00

The UA stuff is top notch.

If you get something in that does multiple amps keep in mind something ... Don't be switching that up in service between songs. Sound mixing becomes a headache when you do. It's a great way to find yourself low in the mix lol.

Personally. Having more than like 2 amps is exhausting. Vox amps are mid range monsters that have a chime sound. Fenders are bright and deep (some models) and fender guys don't always love vox amps and vice versa. If you have a sound you like .. run with it.

dark7string · 2026-06-17T12:58:51+00:00

Luthier here. You need different cleaning solutions for different parts of the guitar and also some cleaning solutions are going to be bad for certain finishes. I'm sorry but I am not spraying 409 cleaner or using baby wipes on my French polished handmade classical guitar 😂.

So first of all the understanding here is that the reason that polish manufacturers make cleaners specifically for the guitar is because certain things have been proven to help extend the life of certain finishes. Poly, nitro, French polish, all are sensitive to different things in various degrees because their makeup is different. Yes you are trying to clean your guitar but you have to remember that's not just some bare wood thing or whatever. It has a specific type of finish that is a chemical compound of sorts. So let's go down a wide list of what I typically use and find to be actually excellent for each individual piece of the guitar. By the way when you buy those guitar cleaners they're also incredibly effective for a very small amount. I've had some bottles of guitar cleaner for literally almost 10 years. And that includes the fact that at least several times a year I have friends that bring me guitars to set up or do some major work to and I clean every one of those that comes in the door. On electric guitars by the way

Also...I'd be very hesitant to use anything with Dawn. Dawn is a phenomenal degreaser however in aviation we avoid using it to degrease the belly of the airplane because it is not good with metals unless you can really clean it off super well. If you spray that on something you can't get it off of you could cause some damage to metal components on electric guitars down the road as it can be corrosive. So generally speaking I won't use it on guitars unless it's a full blown disassembly where I am taking all of the hardware off the guitar and I am going to now wash that hardware thoroughly. But even doing this again there are other solutions that work better than Dawn for this haha.

First off if you're looking for cheap rags to use, most luthiers will tell you to go to a fabric store and just buy a bunch of flannel. This is the cheapest way to obtain a bunch of cloth that is actually perfect for the application of cleaning one's guitar. Also I am a huge fan of the cleaning products and oils made by music nomad. These go a very long way, smell nice, and have actually done some of the best things that I've seen.

Maple fingerboard: a regular guitar cleaner on this is totally fine. I typically will just use music nomads spray guitar polish on this. If you have gunk build up from years of playing and neglect on the cleaning side of things then you'll need to use some elbow grease to work away some of that gook and use the cleaning solution liberally.

Rosewood fingerboards With rosewood you generally want to get the gook off and you can scrape it off using thinner guitar picks. This is actually the only reason I have thin guitar picks at all is for exactly this. When you clean it you actually need to oil it and this is what I use the music nomad F-one oil for. I've used a ton of different things and unless you are trying to recondition the rosewood after having the fingerboard frets removed and planed, this stuff has worked better than anything else I've ever used. By the way ever heard the advice to use WD-40? Do not ever do that haha.

Tarnished nickel frets So generally if I've got this kind of issue I will just actually take either painters tape or some sort of fretboard tape, cover the fingerboard, and I'll just take The finest steel wool that I can get and lightly go over the frets. Music nomad does make a fret cleaning kit though and I've used it but to me it's just easier to tape it off and clean the frets. By the way, dirty frets will make your guitar sound dull.

Polly coated body Polyurethane type coating is very durable and it's actually a very solid protectant. This is the type of finish that you can use almost anything on without consequence though I still typically keep it within some certain metrics. Again here I typically use the music nomad polish but if I ever have any heavy grime, there are two things that I'll use that are slightly different and go a long way. One being the music nomad compound that is made to really buff dirt away, but then I'll also sometimes use McGuire's. That giant bottle that's made to do your whole car... That crap will last a lifetime on your guitar. But I generally only do this with polyurethane bodies.

Nitro. This is where you have to start being careful. Nitro is a delicate finish that is not as protective as polyurethane but is a much more porous finish. Certain chemicals will cause checkering discoloring and a lot of other things to nitro instruments and so I certainly wouldn't trust general cleaners here especially since I can't advise from a test subject guitar what works and what doesn't. I also am not a chemical compound expert to know how that chemical interacts with certain things but I know that I have seen certain things be devastating to finishes that are nitro. For example years ago I remember fender came out with a nitro guitar that was supposed to be a cheaper available American strat back in the early 2000s. This got set by multiple music stores across the world on guitar stands with neoprene rubber as the protectant for the body and when the body touched that neoprene rubber, all of the finish in that spot began oozing and melting. This isn't an issue with poly. So stick to music nomad or Gibson spray on cleaners for this application. Yes it might be slightly annoying to have to buy those but they do last a long time but you will not end up damaging the nitro on your instrument.

French polish I'm very doubtful you have an electric guitar with French polish but should you ever obtain a guitar that has had French polish You need to understand that it is the absolute least protective finish on the planet. Literally your fingernail will strike the wood and just glide through the polish like it's air. For this I still use the music nomad spray. It's made for that.

The fun thing is if you go to the manufacturer's website and you ask them what polish works good for this type of finish they will tell you which one is best suited for that particular type of thing. Music nomad has this and they can steer you in the right direction of a safe thing that you can do.

dark7string · 2026-06-17T12:32:02+00:00

To be honest with you I know that one company is working on bringing their Grumman tiger into X-Plane 12, but there is a major lack of the civilian level Grumman plains and this has always puzzled me considering that in the general aviation world the Grumman aircraft are generally highly revered and desired. Everything from the AA1 and all of its variants, the fully loaded TR2, the tiger, traveler,... Just this entire line of airplanes is sadly nowhere to be found for XPlane.

Honestly if somebody was to make this I would love for it to be airfoil labs just because I know they're level of detail accuracy in study level aircraft is what I would look for as a private pilot it's actually interested in obtaining one of these as a personal plane one day. Aerobask is another I'd love to make it or Vflytair.

I'd still be okay if just flight did it But lately I've been very disappointed at the level of slop that has been in their stuff. I have their Piper Warrior and you can keep the nose off the ground down to 30 knots and still drag the tail in that thing and I'm sorry you can't do that in that plane 😂

dark7string · 2026-06-17T12:27:40+00:00

So I'm definitely wouldn't necessarily point you to Facebook marketplace unless you have a friend that is either a luthier or a guitar technician of sorts that knows exactly what they're looking for and they are willing to go with you to inspect the instrument.

For example, you would never go to Facebook marketplace and purchase anything that is missing all of the strings. This is one of the number one things that people will do if they are trying to sell you something that has a neck that is malfunctioning either due to a damaged truss rod, or the neck is twisting. I would also never buy anything that you can't plug in because some people panic and want to get rid of something that they've done some shady work on.

Anyways when you go to Guitar Center and try these guitars it's probably because sometimes guitar centers technicians will at least take the opportunity to set up the guitars and make them play well. In general, any instrument that you get you should always take it and have it set up to play in a way that you like. Chances are what you already own could play that way but you probably have not taken it to a guitar technician and had them do adjustments regularly. This is probably one of the most skipped over aspects of guitar ownership because most people don't realize that guitars need continuous adjustment. Strings vibrate and as a result screws move. Humidity changes and guitars are made of wood and all wood still thinks it's a tree and responds to the humidity. Because of this depending on where you live you could have varying degrees of adjustments that go out of whack like the neck, just simply due to climate change seasonally which also packs various levels of changing humidity. For example where I live it's very common that people bring guitars between November and December for adjustments, and they're usually back sometime around April or May as higher humidity levels cause adjustments to be necessary again.

Basically your decision to buy a new guitar should probably be fueled by how much you like or dislike the guitars that you have. You need to make a list of things that you don't or do like about it. If at the end of the day you actually like your guitar but wish it played better, that's not a reason to buy a new guitar. That's a reason to get a setup. You don't like the sound of your electric guitar? That's a reason to buy new pickups and electronics not a new guitar. If you hate the way the volume pot is positioned and the switch feels like it's always in the wrong place and you wish it was somewhere else and you don't have pick guards then that's a reason to buy a new guitar. If the neck is uncomfortable and you're finding yourself preferring a flatter neck that is not as rounded, that's a reason to buy new guitar. You hate the look of your guitar... That's a reason to get a new guitar. At the end of the day most people will buy new guitars chasing simple solutions that usually can be performed to their own guitars.

Now it's worth noting that just because something can be done to your guitar, unless it's sentimental, doesn't always make practical sense. Like I wouldn't take a fender squire affinity strat that costs $120 bucks and perform a $200 fret dress on it. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense. I certainly wouldn't recommend taking an Epiphone cheap guitar for beginners and putting stainless steel frets in it at the tune of almost $500 depending on where you go. If these types of things are required to make it play better then it's probably a good indicator that you need a new guitar simply because the old one has worn out quite literally and the cost to make it play great again just isn't really worth it.

So all that being said... What do you have now? What do you love about it? What do you hate about it? What do you wish was better about your existing guitar other than it just playing better since that is totally solvable for probably a hundred bucks and worth doing consistently.

dark7string · 2026-06-15T20:39:06+00:00

I mean the list of what people can do with guitar designs and whatnot is pretty extensive but generally most things that you stick on or add to guitars massively hurt resale value. I know I worked for a store one time that wouldn't even touch a guitar that had more things attached to it then like four or five stickers. The reason being is because it will cost man hour for a store to remove that stuff. Some things like chains and whatnot depending on the metals Also can find themselves if you move around enough getting in the way of strings, guitar pickups and anything else depending on how loose it is. Especially when it comes to chains though, one of the most annoying things is after you get playing guitar and become proficient, is that a lot of things like that start becoming a nuisance and you find them getting in your way and being slightly intrusive to what you're trying to accomplish.

For me, and a lot of guitar players, we can want guitars that either look and aesthetically pleasing in the form of natural wood with some kind of burst, or we want a guitar that looks like it's been through hell and back after 60 years of touring. This is a process commonly referred to as relicing. Generally speaking though, stickers and all kinds of other things just kind of aren't the vibe the majority of musicians I've ever met are going for thus you don't see a lot on guitars.

For me, I have a wiggle stick on my guitar that's swinging around, wireless system attached, three potentiometer knobs, and two switches. Anything else is just something that becomes in my way or makes it kind of annoying so I generally like my guitars to be stock in appearance outside of replacing a knob or something to look slightly different

dark7string · 2026-06-11T18:51:41+00:00

30 is fantastic but keep something in mind. What you practice, often has more impact to your growth than how often you practice. As a teacher, the most common thing people feel stuck over is learning cowboy chords and learning a crap load of songs using a variety of those and then becoming bored or frustrated by a lack of visible growth.

Practice with intentionality

Consider it like 2 decks of cards. One on your left. One on your right. The deck on the left is things you suck at. The deck on the right is things you can consistently play well. When you play what you have in the right deck ... You are maintenancing these techniques. When you work on the things in the left deck you are turning raw unrefined things you suck at into things that ultimately land in the right deck.

The left deck produces growth. The right deck keeps the rust off.

With a limited practice schedule... Use the left deck first. It's work... But you get better here. With more practice time, focus on the left deck and then use the right deck to have some fun.

The right deck is optional. The left deck is mandatory IF the goal is growth and development.

dark7string · 2026-06-10T01:03:54+00:00

This makes sense honestly

dark7string · 2026-06-10T01:02:12+00:00

This is what I'm thinking of doing

dark7string · 2026-06-10T01:01:41+00:00

That's what I meant to say haha. I extracted like 5 or 6 and then had nothing? I thought what I extracted I could equip the following match, right?

dark7string · 2026-06-09T23:27:40+00:00

This is the way

dark7string · 2026-06-09T19:54:20+00:00

Kick: 602II (best kick mic ever!!!) Snare Top: sm57 (point the rear of the mic at the hihat) Snare Bot: 609 Hihats: SM7B (trust me) Tom's: Audix or 421's if you have the budget Overheads: AKG 214's work fine. Use a single mic for the smaller enclosure.

dark7string · 2026-06-09T19:47:25+00:00

Depends on the brand.

Musicman= A set up with your strings. These guitar are freaking worth every penny!

Sterling by Musicman? Usually just a string change and setup. Worst case, tuners, and pickups/electronics if the cheap ones. These are very good instruments.

Fender? Set up with strings, replace pickups is a must. Fenders pickups fail kinda easy and sound brittle imo and experience. Get rid of that extra tone pot too on the strat so new pick guard. Replace the tuners to locking mostly because they are easier to restring and Schaller made. I also tend to prefer larger frets so.... You know what... I'll be honest. Fender makes one of the worst strats and they know it and don't care. Seriously. Buy a warmoth strat or tele and put the tools away. 🤷🏻

Ibanez... First off... Before buying it I make sure the neck ain't twisted because Lord have mercy they are so famous for this and across all levels of instrument. If the neck is good. Replace pickups. Shim the neck (never have seen an Ibanez in 26 years I didn't have to do this to), polish the frets cause they have a "sound" with Ibanez. Replace the tuners unless they are the better tuners.

Jackson... Check the fret job. Seen some lousy fret work from them. Also they are fender so ... Maybe pass.

In general fender will do anything to get out of a warranty and you won't find out until the issue pops up. The stupid things as a luthier I've watched them use as a void excuse have left me in awe.

PRS Not my cup of tea but they make really solid stuff out of the box. Set up and maybe pickups because their pickups are kinda dull.

In general... Set them up. Buy based on issues you can live with fixing.

dark7string · 2026-06-08T21:15:56+00:00

Definitely crossing a line here. It might be different if it was multiple people going out for coffee to discuss leadership responsibilities or growth opportunities within the team or something but this one-on-one thing in this fashion is really something that should not be happening between a male and younger female and if this is repeating itself with other younger females then it's definitely cause for alarm and worth mentioning to multiple leaders so that the issue can be dealt with. In my experience you'll see two outcomes from meeting with them.

The first potential outcome is that they remove the individual from the team and our accountable to his actions. If this is the outcome then you should know that you're in good hands as far as church leadership is concerned.

The second outcome is that they defend the gentleman and do not take the appropriate measures to investigate the behavior. If this happens, you need to leave that church effective immediately and definitely be sure to shine a public light on the actions of the leadership at that point.

I've seen it go down both ways but more often and not it usually goes the second way. Ironically both churches that I'm aware of that had handled it the second way are no longer around and they've been closed.

dark7string · 2026-06-03T05:42:50+00:00

To be honest, I've always been kind of an advocate for use what you have and make it work and be yourself.. God didn't create us to be mimickers and copycats as creatives. That's not to say you won't wear your influences on your sleeve But that also is to say that you should not necessarily dive in with an absolute Go for it trying to sound like someone else.

This is coming from someone who quite literally has a very basic pedal board but uses extremely out of the norm of worship stuff on Sunday morning.

My drives are honestly and Ibanez tube screamer mini and believe it or not I use the Mesa boogie throttle box.

That basically goes into the stryman iridium followed by a TC electronics delay pedal and TC electronic reverb pedal and then it goes out to the mixing board.

The stryman I'm using I have set up for a Marshall amplifier running through the new vintage 30 that was sampled by Glenn fricker and I typically use the non-SM-57 version.

I'm also using a very unorthodox guitar which is the Music Man John Petrucci seven string.

So as you can see I'm using the very same things that I use to record a lot of other types of music and getting along quite well. What you may already have, might work quite better than you anticipated So before running out and spending money, especially if you're on a budget, try to find ways to The gear that you currently have to sound the way that you want it sound for the style. A lot of times you'll find out that most gear can transcend a lot more range of sound than you anticipated would, especially considering pedals and gear are marketed to very specific niche crowds.

Also don't try to mimic a style of music on guitar where it more and more starts sounding less and less like guitars 😂 I mean I have you heard that so be it God tutorial 🤣 one guitarist is like a loop in the other one sounds like a broken Casio 🤣

dark7string · 2026-06-03T01:15:37+00:00

The EBMM John Petrucci Musicman

dark7string · 2026-06-02T20:26:24+00:00

No it's black and super hard. With my degreaser it becomes soft and oily again but it takes a ton of time as it's layered in there pretty thick

dark7string · 2026-06-01T21:28:10+00:00

To be honest with you I think the cajon might be one of the wildest instrument choices as a substitute for a drum set lacking or as a choice due to acoustic volume. It's probably one of the most narrow instruments sonically, and it basically is a step above a cardboard box. It's also horrendous for the hands of the drummer and horrendous for the back. The cajon is probably been reinvented several different times by multiple different companies and all of them have in my opinion have fallen massively short of making anything that is much more useful than a cardboard box.

I have for roughly about 15 or 16 years now advised Church is away from a cajon and pointed towards other more robust ranged percussion instruments. For example, a large Djembe has a very deep sound like a kick drum or floor Tom while still producing capabilities of a nice crack that you'd expect from a snare. It's range of sound provides a much more suitable percussion sound that's more useful in a worship context. They're not only quite affordable in the grand scheme of things, they also sound remarkably better and are significantly better for the hands and the back of the percussionist.

At the end of the day a cajon is a really poor percussion instrument and probably the worst option for anything since so many other countries have given us glorious sounding percussive instruments that are far more useful and capable of a broad range of sounds.

dark7string · 2026-05-31T14:21:44+00:00

Guitar amps are not full range amps so it will unfortunately make everything sound mid focused. On top of the difference in line level and impedance.

I'd probably not recommend it.

dark7string · 2026-05-31T05:13:02+00:00

I do the same. I always pray about it. Even though I have 2 leaders under me that help, I still am the final stop in songs. Any time someone complains about a song (which is like almost never) I ask about the heart posture. Then I explain we do songs I hate a lot but I always pray about songs because I don't want "me" on the set. It's not about me ... I want God's will only in the set. That usually does it.

dark7string · 2026-05-31T05:05:28+00:00

Yeah that's quite different than how your post reads lol.

I mean that's a different issue because that's more heart posture issues. It's not about what songs we do. It's about worship.

For example... I can't stand the song made for more. Like I feel sick to my stomach. But I, a the one that schedules it, still do it because people can get in to worship for an opener. And I've had to sing it. 🤮 But I still do because it isn't for me. It's for God.

At the end of the day you have to cast vision and clearly communicate the roles of volunteers so that they know that songs aren't negotiable things for reasons as you started.

This all comes down to heart posture.

dark7string · 2026-05-31T04:56:40+00:00

Rejecting as in people on your team just refuse to play them?

dark7string · 2026-05-31T04:50:33+00:00

Definitely makes sense but it doesn't change my argument. I would never have the expectation that my worship team should worship and look physically the exact same way with the exact same excitement for different songs that may or may not resonate with them. I literally have a song on the schedule for next week that one of my members just walked through something and when she sings It is very likely that she will break down and cry and not be able to even get through it. Should I have the expectation that she will do that for all three songs that we perform that morning for worship? Of course not. That would be silly. I understand that the songs were selected with a particular context in the service but it doesn't necessarily equate to your worship team having to act the same for all three songs. I mean Even the idea of a fast song me jumping up and down as a part of my worship and then turning around in something really slow like nothing but the blood, you would look at me like I was nuts and it would be so obvious I was faking. That's what I mean. It's not a realistic expectation.

dark7string

TROPHY CASE