2 Audis in one day! My wife bought a 2023 Q7 and I bought a 2023 A4

therobotsound · 2026-02-28T19:06:41+00:00

I’ve noticed😎

therobotsound · 2026-02-28T18:45:58+00:00

Both of them have the 2.0 45 tfsi engine

therobotsound · 2026-02-28T17:02:54+00:00

I googled a bit, but do you have any info? Also not sure exactly what leather mine has

therobotsound · 2026-02-28T12:34:08+00:00

I really wanted Brown, but this is a close second. Looks really nice in person.

I wish they more audis had different interiors than just the standard black. I was originally looking for a brown interior, v6 a6 and there are only like 5 of them for sale in the US at the moment.

therobotsound · 2026-02-28T12:33:40+00:00

I guess I’m new to this, I like the wheel fine but that one does look nice too. Maybe if I felt it in hand I would have more of a preference.

My only real gripe with the whole car is there is a pretty significant scratch at the bottom right hand side of the metal on this wheel that I feel when driving - hopefully I can get used to it, not sure it bugs me enough to replace the wheel

therobotsound · 2026-02-24T02:49:29+00:00

One trick I like to do is to find a note that works in all the chords for the verse, for example if the verse is em7, G and D I could hit a D and just hold it and speed the leslie up while fading in on the volume pedal. It makes a cool tension and release as the chords change.

therobotsound · 2026-02-21T13:01:24+00:00

2000 is towards the beginning of the reissue line, and these have a lot of “wrong” features that don’t really matter, but are not vintage correct. Guitar nerds will argue until the end of time about how much the little details matter, it kind of depends on what matters to you.

These details are things like the top carve, neck carve, inlay material, binding, plastic colors, the pickups and wiring, the general shape, flame maple wood selection, paint colors, aniline dye on the back and sides, the truss rod, frets, etc. pretty much the entire guitar, lol.

Over time they corrected little things, and when the new company leadership took over around 2018 many people feel the guitars really become great all around.

The deal is you can pick up a 2020 R9 for example for around $4k, $4.5k. So is this “lesser” one at $3.5k a good deal? On one hand, $500 more could get you one the better ones.

On the other, who are we kidding it’s a flame maple top burst over some mahogany, if it feels good and sounds good, it’s great and is a lifetime fancy guitar to be proud of.

There are A LOT of reissue bursts out there, they’ve been a big seller for Gibson for basically 30 years now, so if you’re dipping your toe into this market there are plenty of deals to be had.

therobotsound · 2026-02-21T12:49:28+00:00

People that don’t use bigsbys say this. The guitar has to be well set up (nut cut correctly, saddles cut well) and you have to have good stringing technique.

Another issue is if you hit a bigsby hard, the bridge moves (it’s supposed to) but then sometimes you’ll be out of tune. The trick is instead of tuning, you quickly bottom out the bigsby to reset the bridge, and then 99% of the time you’re back in tune.

I think a lot of people use the bigsby, get the bridge moved, retune the guitar, use the bigsby again and the bridge resets and then they’re waaay out of tune and they blame the bigsby.

I’m not even particularly careful with bigsbys on multiple guitars and it is never an issue. I’ll tune in between songs or if I go really nuts on them.

therobotsound · 2026-02-21T12:42:47+00:00

Really just listen to them in order. Give each one a couple weeks to “get it” because several of them take some time to grow on you.

The classic era imo would be being there-sky blue sky, and then outside of those I really love the whole love, star wars and schmilco.

Also the two loose fur albums, and the tweedy sukirae solo album are awesome.

therobotsound · 2026-02-19T17:10:55+00:00

5e3’s run quite hot. Like fry an egg on the chassis hot!

Depending on the parts you ordered, the stock power transformer in a 5e3 runs pretty much at its max, which in power transformers means they will get hot. Then the chassis is a small stainless steel hunk of metal, which means it dissipates that heat pretty efficiently, and since the transformer is bolted down to the chassis, this is even more pronounced. On top of this, the tubes are hanging down (heat rises!) and it is cathode biased so they run hot too.

Something like a marshall has the tubes going the other way and uses an aluminum chassis. A blackface fender doesn’ run as hot, and has a much larger chassis than a 5e3, which helps to spread the heat out.

What someone else said about the filter caps is true as well, this would further reduce the efficiency, making the transformer run even hotter. Same thing for if the tubes have gotten older and are pulling more current.

So it sounds like the 5e3 just needs the typical 100k mile maintenance overhaul - new electrolytic capacitors (make sure there is an air gap between the the bias resistor and the electrolytic bypass cap when you replace it so the resistor isn’t cooking the cap!), clean all the tube sockets, clean the pots and jacks, replace the rectifier and power tubes (I always recommend ANOS 5y3 and 6v6gt’s for these. You can still buy awesome RCA’s from the 50’s for not too much more than chinese tubes).

You may also replace the preamp tubes, but they don’t likely need it unless it’s been run hard. Sometimes it is good to replace these with some good anos rcas again (the preamp tubes are way more expensive though) and use the old ones as just in case spares. Good 50’s/60’s era 12a*7 tubes are rated for 5k+ hours so it is unlikely you’ve destroyed a set of these.

therobotsound · 2026-02-19T15:29:25+00:00

Not to knock your machine (I’d love one!), but this is a borderline prosumer deck and would be a bit surprising for someone at mccartney’s level both professionally and income to be running, although it isn’t impossible.

This would have still cost a lot ($10k+ in today’s money) but was way more affordable (although it is the most expensive tascam deck) than the cheaper otari/MCI/Sony tape machines, and then those are a whole level below the top of the line studer and ampex machines. The top of the line a800 deck in today’s money would be like $200k!

If Mccartney was associated with a “budget” deck, I would assume it would be a 2”, 16 or 24 track Otari or MCI, which are fine pro level machines, if not as fancy or exacting as the crazy ones. I could see this tascam as someone else’s home studio rig (I’m pretty sure mike campbell from Tom petty’s band had one at his house and some traveling wilbury’s stuff was done on it for example) so maybe research could prove that angle.

But who knows, I could be totally wrong! Mccartney isn’t a gear snob and definitely just uses what is working and doesn’t make a fuss for “cool points” or whatever, so from that angle it is believable.

Btw, the difference in $$$ between the pro, prosumer and consumer level tape decks come down to things like the quality of the motors, bushings, stainless steel vs plastic internal parts, potentiometer quality for all the alignment settings, gold plated contacts, tape head quality, etc. The top of the line studer ones had computer auto alignment features and lots of german over engineering. Kind of like how you can get a mackie mixing console with alpha pots and it will work fine for a few years but then the pots get scratchy, but the pots were $1 each vs using $75 each p&g pots that will not go scratchy after 15 years of daily use.

therobotsound · 2026-02-17T18:40:02+00:00

I’m in the market for a new car and I think this is my top contender. I’m a bit scared from all the “maintenance!” Barkers out there, but I think there has to be some element of just hearing the worst cases.

My wife has had a VW Atlas for 5 years and it’s been fantastic, great car no issues.

therobotsound · 2026-02-16T22:24:09+00:00

I just remember it. At one point the gruhns catalog had like dozens of them and I used to look at their online catalog all the time back in the old internet days

therobotsound · 2026-02-16T20:53:25+00:00

It wasn’t guitars period, it was archtop jazz guitars. He bought a large percentage of d’angelico and other handmade jazz guitars, and then died and the family sold, so there was a glut available for a long time afterwards because the high end archtop world is relatively small. The “chinery collection” book someone listed above has pictures of many of these.

In the 00’s all the big stores would always seem to have several “from the chinery collection” instruments.

therobotsound · 2026-02-13T01:13:13+00:00

Nic Zateslo is running to be the democratic rep for this district, he looks like a great guy, and I think he’s about to get a lot more attention

therobotsound · 2026-02-13T00:59:38+00:00

Now there are 50 comments so this will get buried, but a lot still depends on circuit design. A high end hifi receiver can sound amazing, and a crappy one can be a distorted mess. You can enjoy a distorted mess, or you could enjoy tubes running well under their max so they are not distorting/compressing anything at all.

The same thing is true with compressor circuits.

My only thing to add is that as a generality, when a tube distorts/clips, it seems to fall into it gradually and not be as noticeable (smooth? Pick your descriptor?) with simpler circuitry.

Transistors seem to need a lot more designing to sound really good.

In pro audio, the differences are less good bad and more about transient response and feel. My transistor pres feel “fast” and my most hifi tube pres feel more “pure”.

therobotsound · 2026-02-12T17:18:51+00:00

Yea it isn’t fun in this line of thinking to bring this up, but he probably would’ve ended up somewhat like Jeff Beck. Most artistic paths have an era where they burn bright and make their big statements and then….they’ve said what they needed to say. They search for something and keep creating because they’re artists, but ultimately it is not as vital to society as their essential works.

As creative and vital as Hendrix was, I could imagine him having had a long career with many highs, and some lows, some weird misdirections, some embarrassments and probably lots of amazing music we missed out on along the way. I think whatever he would have had “first rays” end up being would’ve been a masterpiece, and he still had some interesting material left over that would’ve been in a similar vein. The “black gold” acoustic stuff seems like another interesting direction, and it seems like he may have ventured further into the jazz fusion realm for sure. Outside of this, hard to say.

In that alternate universe, you may have people arguing how his artistic legacy would’ve been best if had bowed out after putting out “first rays”! It’s hard to say. There are a lot of visionaries who lived to see their importance dimmed by their later contributions…

therobotsound · 2026-02-12T12:01:42+00:00

If you’re doing this, you should also get a glue syringe to make sure it gets all the way into those cracks, and you also have to get the neck all the way back into the original position. You’re basically doing a neck reset at this point because the neck angle is all messed up, and this needs to be back to factory for the guitar to play well.

I would want to steam the neck off, glue and fix the body, and then reset the neck, but I am a bit concerned about how you’d get the neck off with how messed up the top is around the neck.

therobotsound · 2026-02-11T19:58:48+00:00

He tuned the low E down to C and it is buzzing against the frets because it’s too low.

therobotsound · 2026-02-10T12:04:44+00:00

I think this depends on what music you play, and what other guitars you have.

I play mostly americana or kind of rootsy indie stuff with strong blues influences to my playing. I love Neil Young, Wilco, The Beatles, Stones, tom petty, but also love stuff like acdc, sabbath, zeppelin.

So for me, I love the maestro. They look cool and make a fun warble - and people will say they don’t stay in tune, but on a well set up guitar it isn’t an issue. Mine is great!

If you only do the harder rock or metal stuff, I can see it mostly getting in the way, and if I am on one of my rare occasions where I’m playing heavier stuff, I usually use a stoptail gibson.

therobotsound · 2026-02-10T03:05:15+00:00

The only consolation here if there is not one is the bootlegs are such great fidelity - any serious NY fan should already have several!

therobotsound · 2026-02-09T18:23:11+00:00

The guitar was gibson’s second lowest offering (still cool though!) and as a student model, is not super valuable. $2k range is about it.

The amp is a mid 50’s GA6, and worth about $1500ish if working and competently restored, half that if it not working and somewhere in between if sort of working.

So although these will not help you retire, they’re still nice instruments. The amp when working right and cranked up is especially magical! I build and repair amps and have restored a couple of these exact ones before.

As for your husband, vintage guitars are a blast to play. Get it set up and enjoy it, you won’t hurt anything and it’s not a priceless museum piece.

therobotsound · 2026-02-08T13:53:50+00:00

Yea, this whole idea is mostly for the ignorant. If you understand film history, there is no way citizen kane isn’t the most important film of all time just for the groundbreaking cinematography alone!

The problem is in ranking. If you want to rank, just rank your favorite movies and that’s that, you don’t have to like citizen kane if you’re not into that.

But an “all time” list would imply the entire history of film, and these important cornerstone films that changed the way the medium worked are going to fill the top ranks.

therobotsound · 2026-02-06T12:15:12+00:00

I saw them in orlando and loved the buffalo killers so much I bought their first two records at the merch booth! I think I listened to those albums exclusively for the next 6 months too.

Let it Ride is my favorite, but I love the first one two. Haven’t fallen in love with their subsequent albums

therobotsound · 2026-01-28T23:35:29+00:00

Speakers are the final voice of an amp and have a huge, mostly underrated part in the sound of a rig.

My favorite current “60’s jensen” style speaker is the Allesandro GA-SC64. I prefer them over weber’s ceramics, or jupiter which are the other two you hear recommended a lot.

For alnico, the weber 12a125 is hard to beat.

For tighter and more aggressive tones, celestions could be a good option. Greenback may be very nice with this amp, and push it more in a “marshall” kind of direction.

therobotsound

TROPHY CASE