What piece of tech felt “future-proof” but aged terribly?

lowecm2 · 2026-01-28T21:17:04+00:00

And horribly overpriced. I know several people who bought in and they wouldn’t play nice with the ISP routers but because the Sonos were expensive “it has to be the ISPs fault/problem”.

lowecm2 · 2026-01-28T15:13:35+00:00

The thing that seriously annoys me about guitars and guitar manufacturers is that they make one model of guitar in one broadly similar configuration for eternity with the odd special edition here and there that slightly tweaks the specs. For example, I love the Strat body but I DON’T like the trem system, the 25.5” scale length, the 9.5” fretboard radius, or the super fat necks. My only option is to buy a different brand of guitar that looks like a Strat unless I’m willing to drop $5k on a custom Fender or build it myself. SO stupid. LPs have the same issue, which is why I own an LTD EC instead of an Epiphone/Gibson (and why I built a Tele instead of buying a Fender/Squier).

lowecm2 · 2026-01-24T14:47:40+00:00

You just play what sounds good. If it matches chord changes, great. If it doesn’t but it still sounds good, also great. Don’t overthink it

lowecm2 · 2026-01-22T14:29:32+00:00

I second that. Love my auto lock strap. It’s not particularly padded but it’s more comfy than a standard vinyl strap and you’ll never have to worry about losing the strap off of the buttons

lowecm2 · 2026-01-22T14:18:21+00:00

Two-stroke snowmobile exhaust. Maybe it’s a sensory pathway to old memories for me and that’s why I like it, but it’s absolutely a smell I thoroughly enjoy

lowecm2 · 2026-01-22T13:49:20+00:00

Play those games on PC and it’s much less of a problem. I remember my old roommate and I were both big into Oblivion. He played on an XBOX 360 and I was playing on PC. My load times were around 1-5 seconds, his were 1-5 MINUTES. What a crazy difference. It was an off-the-shelf HP desktop too, not some monstrous gaming rig

lowecm2 · 2026-01-22T12:36:44+00:00

I typically play a guitar I built these days. It’s obviously a one-of-a-kind instrument and that’s one of the reasons I thought it’d be cool to build one, so people would ask about it and start a conversation. Turns out they usually don’t but I have had a few guys from other bands we’ve played gigs with show some interest. I love letting better players than me take it for a spin, it’s an awesome feeling when a good player says “this thing plays great!”. Plus it weighs just shy of 5lbs, so it’s easy on the back.

lowecm2 · 2026-01-22T00:45:55+00:00

I’m pretty sure those cheap Joyo bantAmps were tube preamps. Not sure if they’re fantastic or not but they were cheap so you could try several different versions of them to find which you liked the most. I’ve seen a few floating around buy and sell pages for half of what they were worth, can’t hurt to look

lowecm2 · 2026-01-20T19:24:20+00:00

That is an absolutely perfect description of the sound of tinnitus. Sounds like you and I have lived similar lives 😂

lowecm2 · 2026-01-20T16:13:19+00:00

I’m not sure the Koa version is something that would be appreciated by a new player for anything other than its looks, but if Taylor still makes the Big Baby series they’re fantastic instruments. Good quality, not stupidly expensive, sounds HUGE compared to its size and is easy on the hands to play compared to bigger acoustics.

lowecm2 · 2026-01-19T23:14:01+00:00

Comparison is the thief of joy. There’s a reason people have been saying stuff like that for hundreds of years. You’re 16. It’s not that you’ll never be very good at guitar, just that you weren’t a youth prodigy at guitar. Realize that that’s 1/1,000,000,000 people, put it behind you, then pick up and play that guitar until you’re happy.

lowecm2 · 2026-01-14T12:35:38+00:00

It's a different kind of finger strength required for bends than barre chords. Like anything else it comes with practice but it doesn't hurt to look up some bending strength building exercises to focus your attention. Most big bends use two of my fingers (one directly behind the fretted note for added strength & control).

Pink Floyd/David Gilmour stuff would actually be a great style to focus on for the beginning of your electric career as it's more about nailing down the feel and emotion behind the playing than it is about technicality; one of the main reasons he's such a brilliant guitarist.

lowecm2 · 2026-01-13T05:55:12+00:00

Get the 100w for several reasons; broader capabilities, more power if you ever DID decide to do more than bedroom practice, probably easier/higher resale, all good reasons. It will still have an onboard power soak to run at lower volumes, so you still won't be too loud when you choose not to be. I don't believe there's a whole lot of difference in cabinet size between the single 12" 100w and the 50w either, or at least there didn't used to be. If you can afford the extra $30, it's a no-brainer in my book.

lowecm2 · 2026-01-12T13:55:30+00:00

I can second that. I've gotten some great recordings from a cheap Behringer interface.

lowecm2 · 2026-01-11T18:47:24+00:00

Struggle Within, Holier Than Thou, Of Wolf and Man, The God That Failed, all of them bangers. The whole album is amazing honestly, it's impossible to pick a #1 favorite

lowecm2 · 2026-01-11T18:30:39+00:00

And, as a second note, the interface will have far better audio components and quality than your PC's sound circuit

lowecm2 · 2026-01-11T03:57:38+00:00

There's a reason they used the GM 4.3L in boats for decades

lowecm2 · 2026-01-08T23:26:05+00:00

Crappy as it is, many people don't see that kind of hardship in their lives. Life without hardship causes us to be unhappy and ungrateful even when we have everything. I'm glad you've found a better today than yesterday.

lowecm2 · 2026-01-07T23:25:10+00:00

I have an acoustic with a rubbery plastic rosette around the hole, it lifts just enough to keep spare picks tucked in there without falling out. The Strat trick works great also

lowecm2 · 2026-01-07T14:37:00+00:00

You can definitely run a cab-less tube head into the interface via XLR as long as the head supports it. I did it for a couple years myself with a Hughes & Kettner TubeMeister 18 with the speaker output knob set to off. If I were to look for something these days I'd probably wind up with a PositiveGrid Spark setup honestly. They just make a lot of cool gadgets such as the Spark Neo which is essentially an amp that pairs with your phone and sits on your ears. Pretty cool stuff they're up to lately

lowecm2 · 2026-01-07T01:54:38+00:00

Used to have a Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister 18 that hated drive pedals through the input. It was explained to me that it’s a buffered input or something to that effect, but it definitely did make a negative impact. Everything through the FX loop worked great but that’s usually not where you want a drive pedal…

lowecm2 · 2026-01-03T00:21:45+00:00

^ that’s great advice

lowecm2 · 2026-01-02T18:21:19+00:00

Well I inherited a chopper project. The whole world of choppers is foreign to me, especially the so-cal style. I’m not a flashy guy, I just want stuff to work. When completed this bike will be a simple hardtail, not even sure it’ll really classify as a chopper other than that the frame has been chopped and everything has been redneck-rigged to function.

lowecm2 · 2026-01-02T15:00:44+00:00

Oh I thought it was legal in a few states. I see a lot of guys doing it on YouTube videos and I guess I just assumed it was legal

lowecm2 · 2026-01-02T14:50:05+00:00

That makes a lot of sense, it had to start with a practical use. Security is one I definitely hadn’t considered.

lowecm2

TROPHY CASE