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The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

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  • #16
    Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

    Originally posted by Will S-T View Post
    Mate we need to catch up for a toke!
    I live out near Calder Park Raceway and work in Sunshine,
    we manage a few properties in Yarraville too.
    We have alot of work do's at the Commercial, it's the "community services" pub.
    Would like to know more about your amps also.

    Cheers

    At first i was thinking of Sandown raceway, which of course is over the other side of town; only later did i realise you had said 'Calder', and thus are out here on the western side. Indeed we should catch up sometime, i can be anywhere at anytime, so let me know and we'll do it. Look forward to it.
    Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

    STALKER NO STALKING !

    Comment


    • #17
      Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

      Originally posted by Diocletian View Post
      How come you've only got 556 posts? I seem to see you posting all the time on here, I can't believe you have such a low post count.

      Yeah, i have noticed similar things with other members. Some seem to be almost invisible yet they have huuge post counts, and others seem to be everywhere but they have low post counts. It's a strange thing. All i can think is that maybe some people seem more noticeable because of their user names and/or avatar pics, or maybe because of the content of their posts. I know my post count has never been tampered with or altered, that's for sure.

      I once saw Grumpy say something that i felt applied to me also, and i have since seen someone else say the same thing about themself....something along the lines of whenever they, (or I, in my case), post, it seems to be the death of that particular thread, or when they start a thread, it sinks like a stone. I came close to using this particular talent recently when a Yngwiestein thread about 'Lord Yngwie' re-surfaced recently as a zombie thread and i thought maybe a post from me might finally kill it, hahahaha.

      Oh well, if i'm right about my thread-killing capabilities, i can always serve the forum as a weapon against zombie threads i guess........

      ...."Oh NO !! Look out guys !! A zombie thread !! GET CRUSTY !!!!!!"

      hehehehee !
      Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

      STALKER NO STALKING !

      Comment


      • #18
        Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

        Ok, i'm just looking around here for some pics of my guitars to post. The camera i was given is funny...a very early Sony 1.3 MegPixel job that uses a floppy disc as it's storage medium, it slides into the side of the camera. It's very primitive by today's standards, probably barely as good as most people have in their mobile phones these days. But at least it might give you a bit of an idea, so here goes.....

        First, my Les Paul...I won it on Ebay for a very good price, but it had been hacked around and had a middle bucker added. I did a lot of work, did a great job of filling the hole but it was just toooo hard to make an invisible repair on the sunburst top, so in the end i re-finished it in a sort of dark candy apple red with a black burst within the red finish. The pics won't really do the new finish justice, but here's the 'before and after' anyways....('before' pics on the right, 'after' on the left...)
        Last edited by crusty philtrum; 02-14-2009, 06:56 PM.
        Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

        STALKER NO STALKING !

        Comment


        • #19
          Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

          Here's the Tokai Silver Star Strat ('Silver Star' are the 70's replicas) *after* i fitted the Callaham bridge, BK pickups and used cream covers and tortoiseshell scratchplate.....you can see it also in the second pic in it's original form next to my '74 Tele Custom, which used to be sunburst until a while ago when i stripped what was left of the finish....and boy, it sounds so much better without all that goop all over it !! You may notice that the Tele has a custom scratchplate and control layout, i did that many years ago, it works well for me.

          Then there's the Hamer USA Studio Custom.....
          Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

          STALKER NO STALKING !

          Comment


          • #20
            Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

            I presume you started off living in NSW/Sydney.Did you live at one of those awful places for immigrants with the Tin huts?There was one near where i grew up in Melb. Most of the people there were from England and the Kids attended the same high school i went to. We thought they were really cool because they had British accents like all our music heroes of the time[Mid 60's].
            When did you move to melbourne? Have you ever spent much time " on the other side of the river"over on the eastern side of town?
            sigpic

            - http://www.soundclick.com/bands/defa...?bandID=804435 -
            - https://soundcloud.com/mr-ds-bigband/tracks -

            Warning: May contain traces of NUTS

            Comment


            • #21
              Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

              Originally posted by GoldenVulture View Post
              I presume you started off living in NSW/Sydney.Did you live at one of those awful places for immigrants with the Tin huts?There was one near where i grew up in Melb. Most of the people there were from England and the Kids attended the same high school i went to. We thought they were really cool because they had British accents like all our music heroes of the time[Mid 60's].
              When did you move to melbourne? Have you ever spent much time " on the other side of the river"over on the eastern side of town?

              Yeah, we went to a place called 'East Hills' on the outskirts of Sydney when we arrived in 1971 and stayed briefly in a 'hostel', which were those round tin huts, exactly as you describe. Then we were transferred down south of Sydney to a place called Wollongong, and went to the tin-hut hostel just north of there in a little suburb called 'Fairy Meadow' (yeah, i know, i know...!!!) I was 15. At that time, the Free/Deep Purple/ Mannfred Mann tour came down here but i was unaware and missed it !!!

              I went to school for a year at Dapto High School, a southern suburb of Wollongong. Wollongong was a huge industrial town based around the steelworks at Port Kembla. Dapto is well-known for it's racing track, esp. for greyhound racing and the trotters.

              Ya know it's funny you mention the thing about the accent....i was very self-conscious and got mocked a few times for using English words rather than the local equivalents, and for my different pronounciation of words, so i worked very hard to drop any 'English-isms' that would draw attention to me. Funny, nowdays it's very cool to talk that way. I also got called 'Suntan' as i was very white compared to the Aussie kids....I didn't enjoy school here in Oz very much at all, and got out as soon as i could and got a job at the Post Office as a Telegram Boy....hehe.....

              I loved that job, out and about on a pushbike all day (all weather, too!) delivering telegrams, and the Post Office had these weird regulations....you could grow your hair as long as you liked, but you could only grow a beard during your holidays, not on the job. So of course i grew my hair down to my bum. telegrams are long obsolete now, but back then they were THE way to get a message delivered fast, other than the telephone of course. There was a music shop just a few doors along from the Post Office, so it wasn't long before i bought a locally made amp, a Diason, and then not too much longer, i got them to get me a 100 watt Marshall....the full stack. They weren't available here so it had to come out from England, took a year to get here, but people used to visit me just to sit in my room and cower in the shadow of it !! Hahaha! The music shop sold about another 4 simply because of me showing mine to people. It wasn't long before it was doing active duty on stages up and down the NSW south coast.

              My folks moved to Melbourne in the late 70's but i stayed in NSW, then started to travel widely, including up and down the QLD coastal areas working in circuit bands. I came down here occasionally with bands and would go visit my folks. Eventually i moved down here in 1991, and have been here ever since. Best place in the world. I have always lived over on the east side, which i love, but the last time i had to move (2002) things were getting tighter and the only place i could find that i could afford (I rent) was this place here in Yarraville, in the inner west. Yarraville is now a very upmarket area, but as usual, i am on 'the wrong side of the tracks' in an industrial area, noisy and dirty.....but then again....it may be just like me, hahaha!
              Last edited by crusty philtrum; 02-14-2009, 07:54 PM.
              Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

              STALKER NO STALKING !

              Comment


              • #22
                Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

                Keep those questions coming....sarcasm, abuse, money....everything accepted here...... ; )
                Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

                STALKER NO STALKING !

                Comment


                • #23
                  Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

                  What exactly is a "Crusty Philtrum"?

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

                    Originally posted by Lucid_Lunatic View Post
                    What exactly is a "Crusty Philtrum"?

                    Hehehe..OK....I'll hafta quote myself from Reggie's earlier question......


                    "My user name here at SDUGF? Hehe....ok.....the 'philtrum' is that little channel under a person's nose, where the 2 little ridges run from the bottom of the nose down to the top of the top lip. The 'crusty' is like when a little kid runs around with a runny nose and it dries up....on the philtrum. It's a kind of more polite version of a name i used to use somewhere on line once..."Snotboy'....in fact, i think i have noticed a member here known as 'Snottyboy' or something similar, so it was probably lucky that i went with Crusty, hehehe."

                    cheers, neiL.


                    ....I likes the way it crackles when I smile....Hahahaaa
                    Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

                    STALKER NO STALKING !

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

                      Tell us about your amp builds???

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

                        Originally posted by Will S-T View Post
                        Tell us about your amp builds???

                        Amps? Well....I was always interested in electronics since the age of 10. As a young guitar player, I dreamt of being able to service my own amps and maybe even modify them. I satisfied some of my curiosities in the late 70's/ early 80's by doing mixing for friends' bands and building bits and pieces for PA systems and the occasional guitar pedal (I'd been making 1-transistor boosters to go in front of non-master volume amps ever since i was about 16). I could build impressive gear, but i didn't have any theory at all, so if something didn't work, my troubleshooting skills were extremely limited.

                        In 1991, I got a copy of 'The Tube Amp Book' by Aspen Pittman of Groove Tubes fame. That led to me going to TAFE (Technical And Further Education), a kind of college for the trades-orientated skills. I simply did the first year and then went away and compared what i'd learnt about transistors to the valve (tube) circuits in old textbooks i'd been accumulating. There was no internet at that time (1994-5)...well, not for me, anyway.

                        About that time, i built my first tube guitar amp. A Marshall 18 watter, 2 x EL84's. It was built into an old locally-made combo using transformers scavenged from an old tube PA amp. I had no dummy load back then, so basically after endlessly re-checking my work, i simply switched it on. It worked, and sounded great ! Even the tremolo circuit that I'd grafted in from an old Gibson circuit worked ! That amp was built for the guy who did the serious work on the headless guitar pictured here on page 1, part of an exchange deal we had....i build him an amp, he did the hard work on my guitar. He was doing guitar repairs in a shop, and several well-known players heard this amp and loved it.

                        It continued...more 18 watt builds, and i started making little 4 watters as well, based on the Vox AC4 circuit from the '60's. Then variations on Fender circuits and all sorts of beasties. Some were built into pre-exisiting amp cabs and chasis. For some of them, i attempted to make cabinets, but i was limited in the area of cosmetics, mainly control panels. I never made the same thing twice, every project was like a prototype in some way. I've since been able to make some improvements, but i figure they are handmade amps, one-offs, and so i should celebrate the fact that i can't quite get that 'factory perfect' look. I don't even have a workshop, cabinet work is done in the kitchen with mostly hand tools. I knew early on that i'd be able to make amps that worked, but i wanted to be able to make amps that sounded even better that commercially-built ones. Between all the construction, i get various service and repair jobs.

                        I've spread myself a bit wider and have built tube mic pre-amps and hi-fi stereo amps. Nowdays, I only work on tube gear, i've never built a kit, and i've never built a guitar amp with a master volume. And i've done so much of it, i'm just about burnt out. There are about 30 amps scattered around Victoria and New South Wales. mostly with friends of mine, who all have more than one. There are about 5 mic-pre's, the best one being here with me. There are also tube-driven spring reverb units and other custom things with some of those guys, too.

                        I looked at going further with all this, but decided it is only a secondary thing to playing, so i have backed off a bit. I have plenty of my own projects on the go, usually held up by jobs for other people.

                        Ok...pics....some of these have been posted before, but this is an appropriate place i guess. Keep in mind the limitations i have to be able to build the cabinetry, and i can tell you they all sound great, as i'd never be happy for them to leave home unless they did. (yeah, they're kinda like my kids......)

                        bless their little hearts, hehe
                        Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

                        STALKER NO STALKING !

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

                          First, the 30 watt stack, Fender-based sound with trem. Each cabinet has 2 x 10" Jensens. Belongs to a mate of mine in Sydney. Six weeks of working day and night, but it probably the best pub-rock (pub = bar) amp i've ever heard, and i wished it was mine, hehe.

                          The little head is an AC4, which has an EF86 preamp into an EL84 power tube. Originally a part of a combo i built, the chasis was sent back to me for some tweaks, so i decided to build a head cabinet for it before i sent it back.

                          The mini half-stack is another AC4, i have yet to wire it up, but it will have a tube rectifier (EZ81) and tremolo. The cabinet holds a low-power Celestion 10. It was originally built for a friend of mine but he passed away some years ago so i rebuilt it as a tribute...the 'PP' on the front of the head are his initials. Of course this one will stay with me.

                          The last one was another AC4 combo that lives in Sydney.
                          Last edited by crusty philtrum; 02-16-2009, 12:22 PM.
                          Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

                          STALKER NO STALKING !

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

                            My Matchless/ Vox 30 watt head....it now has all cream knobs and a fabric-covered front panel with white piping in the cabinet. I've played it out a couple of times, and it's an impressive amp, although i am still tweaking it and have yet to build the circuitry for the all-tube effects loop.

                            Pics 3 & 4 are my microphone preamps (2 channel) with it's separate power supply.
                            Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

                            STALKER NO STALKING !

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

                              FFaaaaaaarrrrrrrkkkkkk! I'm in love.......with your AMPS!!!!

                              Now, I'm an organ donor, but what will a lung or a kidney get me?
                              Children and wives are also collatoral, as are "Dirty Deeds, done dirt Cheap"
                              I really need someone to build me MY amp!

                              Does Golden Vulture have one of your rigs?
                              Do I need to cut off his pinky finger (Resevoir Dogs) to get one?
                              Give me names and addresses!!!!!!!!

                              Oh, BTW, Linda Rondstant told me a little secret to stop the "Nose Drizzles"

                              and subsequent Crustiness!

                              Will.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Re: The Well part LVII...Crusty Philtrum

                                Originally posted by Will S-T View Post
                                FFaaaaaaarrrrrrrkkkkkk! I'm in love.......with your AMPS!!!!

                                Now, I'm an organ donor, but what will a lung or a kidney get me?
                                Children and wives are also collatoral, as are "Dirty Deeds, done dirt Cheap"
                                I really need someone to build me MY amp!

                                Does Golden Vulture have one of your rigs?
                                Do I need to cut off his pinky finger (Resevoir Dogs) to get one?
                                Give me names and addresses!!!!!!!!

                                Oh, BTW, Linda Rondstant told me a little secret to stop the "Nose Drizzles"

                                and subsequent Crustiness!

                                Will.

                                Hehehe....well, being a smoker, having some spare lungs might be handy....hehe.....

                                None of the amps are with forum members as far as i know, although one did get traded to someone i've never met, down in Geelong i believe. (That was the only amp i've built that the original owner has parted with....and that guy is now very much regretting having parted with it).

                                I remember the Linda Ronstadt thing....would i then have to be called 'Tin Philtrum'? Metal Philtrum? (and after a few years, it may have turned into 'Rusty Philtrum'? Or maybe even Coke-free Philtrum?

                                If you have any ideas on what kind of amp you want, Will, you can always PM some ideas to me so i could give it some thought. All these things are usually at least 50% planning before a hole has been drilled or a soldering iron switched on.
                                Lumbering dinosaur (what's a master volume control?)

                                STALKER NO STALKING !

                                Comment

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