There have been units around for years both for home use cleaning jewelry, etc, and for use in various industrial/manufacturing processes, including being used in electronics manufacturing, where I've seen them used to clean PCBs and other electronic assemblies & parts after they undergo a "dirty" manufacturing step like wave-solder, in order to remove all flux, dirt, and oils.
They used a heated tank of solvent that was agitated by ultrasound transducers to greatly increase cleaning ability and decrease cleaning time. The first time I saw one like that was in the late 1970s. I worked in the government/military-related electronics and aerospace industry.
There is no real reason cloud recording isn't a perfectly valid, legal way to record stuff where even the owners could benefit. But no, judges intervene based on old laws and politics take a while to catch up and realize it is not 1980 anymore. Wake up people, the new world is coming, and floating out of the window before you know it.
Your contention that government can effectively oversee itself
Um, no. I never said anything about government overseeing itself, I talked about us, the people, overseeing government. So both times I said the below, you thought I was talking about government overseeing itself?
The way your post was worded, yes, it seemed as if you thought that all we needed was just some more "oversight committees" and other government cruft whose only job is to make it appear like there's some sort of control or limits.
As far as we, the people, being the oversight, that's been our job all along from the beginning.
"When people fear their government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the Spirit of Resistance." - Thomas Jefferson
Unfortunately, over the last number of decades, our educational system has been compromised (many, including myself, believe this is no accident) such that people have become effectively cheated of a proper education, and have become ignorant, fat, and lazy.
They've not been taught the value of freedom, the importance of their duties as citizens, nor how to think critically. US history and the history of the revolution for independence, and the history and background of how the founders came to the conclusions they did and why the Constitution was written the way it was hasn't been taught in any meaningful way in our public schools for a long time.
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people." - John Adams
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free...it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." - James Madison
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." - James Madison
Additionally, the moral standards of our society have also been heavily attacked as well over the last number of decades, as God has been all but banished from the public square. Freedom of religion has been perverted to now mean freedom from religion, which was never the intention.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." - George Washington
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded...on the gospel of Jesus Christ!" - Patrick Henry
but there's a quote like "ideally we would have no government, but that is not practical, therefore we do have government" that I've seen attributed to Thomas Jefferson).
I too remember something similar, and I'm also not sure who/where the exact quote came from.
George Washington had something to say along similar lines.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquenceâ"it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington
Far too many people these days view government as their friend, when nothing could be further from the truth.
They need to make a +1 awesome mod for your post. What design did you use for the amp? I've been considering building one myself, and keep looking at replicating a Trainwreck, the costs of the transformers are quite prohibitive though. I have quite a few old valve amps spare, but they never seem to have enough current on the HT
Sorry, just noticed your reply.
Wow, thanks for the kind words!
Unless you plan on gigging in some fairly large venues, a Trainwreck clone may be a bit much power/volume-wise. Those things are *loud*! I know from personal experience. And, they don't really get into their "sweet-spot" until you get some serious volume going. A basement/garage/bedroom amp it is not. I don't even know of a club in my area where I could really play one.
Now, the Phat-Ass is much more bar/club and even home-jammer friendly, depending on which power tubes you stick in it.
The design is a custom design based partially off of a combination of a Matchless Spitfire/Lite-IIb preamp utilizing both triodes of the 12AX7 preamp tube in parallel, rather than the more common cascaded triode gain stages found in most guitar preamp designs, with a custom power supply and custom power amp sections based on the Weber Speakers "Smokin' Joe II" 18 watt EL84-based amplifier and the legendary Marshall 1974 18W amp.
As a matter of fact, the majority of parts for the build can be sourced through Weber.
One of the Weber Kit Builders Forum members, ScottVA, did most of the development and prototyping of this design, with some help and suggestions from me via the Weber forum, I'm quite proud to say.
Most people buy the basics of a Weber "Smokin' Joe II" amplifier kit, with some items of the SJ-II BOM either dropped or substituted as shown in the above PA16/PA26 BOM link. For instance, instead of the stock Chinese electrolytic power supply filter caps, I used much higher quality German F&T brand electrolytic caps, and instead of the stock generic Chinese coupling caps, I substituted them for Mallory 150 series caps.
Weber is extremely flexible in this regard, and will let you substitute or drop/add just about anything in their amp kits. You don't have to buy stuff you don't need or don't want. The big advantage is the savings in getting almost everything needed from one source and with one shipping charge.
You could probably buy 90%-plus of the entire PA16/PA26 BOM for the prices I've seen just for one of the Trainwreck transformer sets from some boutique suppliers. It's ridiculous. The Weber iron works fine, costs a fraction of those "boutique" transformers, and sounds fantastic.
The same Weber iron set also works great for all the common power tube choices for this design...6V6, 6L6, EL34/6CA7, and KT66. Just change the power tube cathode resistor value (or add a switch to change between values) to use a different power tube set.
Whatever you do, please, *PLEASE* learn and observe electrical safety rules and procedures. Even a small tube amp can kill you easily or cripple you for life.
No, because if some private corporation sends jack-booted thugs to my door, they'd better bring plenty of body bags. I have the right and the ability to defend myself from assault by another private entity. My neighbors would also join the turkey-shoot as well, I'm quite certain.
And? This somehow does not apply if those "jack-booted thugs" call themselves "the police"? Oh, because the consequences are different?
It's different because the private jack-booted thugs don't have armies and artillery and an air force and the force of a national government behind it.
Well that isn't always the case. History shows that the consequences of your example can rise to the same level of the consequences of doing the same to "the government's" jack-booted thugs.
I'm sorry, but this isn't medieval times nor a feudal system where Lords and Guilds did what they wished under the authority of a King and/or the church. Even then, they needed the permission of, or at least a blind eye turned, by the ruling powers to do what they did. If a Lord or Guild defied the King (or the church in some cases), their heads would roll.
Which is why we have things like oversight of what the fuck government is doing, along with finely detailing exactly what government is allowed to do, and if government isn't explicitly permitted to do something, government is forbidden to do it.
Which is why the first thing that's done by those desiring more government power or those wishing to corrupt that power is to corrupt, compromise, and/or make effectively powerless those oversight bodies. Usually by appointing themselves and their allies as the overseers.
One need only look at the career path of the majority of those tasked with oversight...private sector job/career, to government position overseeing their field, to again employed in the private sector by those he benefited while in government at outrageously high salaries...usually as a "consultant" that has one or two meeting a year to maintain the fiction.
Your contention that government can effectively oversee itself and prevent itself from abusing it's own power is ludicrous to the extreme.
It's the fox guarding the hen-house writ large.
And finally;
"History also shows that as government grows, liberty decreases." - Thomas Jefferson
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." - Thomas Jefferson
"The essence of government is power, and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." - James Madison
"That government is best which governs least." - Thomas Paine
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people." - John Adams
You'll have to forgive me if I take their opinions over yours. They have a bit more credibility and positive track record when it comes to the subject of freedom and government size, scope, and power.
Which also has nothing whatsoever to do with the previous comment.
I simply answered the question that you asked. Don't ask if you don't want, or are afraid of, an answer.
Maybe you should bitch at the guy who brought up the Reagan defense in the first place, since it obviously eats you up enough to keep this stupid shit going.
Again, I simply answered your question. Stop asking questions on a public forum you don't want answered.
You're the one that interjected the Obama bullshit in the first place, the burden is on you to ask him, not me. Go ahead and give him a call...
For the last time, that has nothing to do with answering the question you asked. I simply suggested you ask someone with first-hand knowledge and experience.
I've never seen a human pancreas, but I've looked at untold thousands of people during my life.
Great analogy!
Wait, except that pancreases are *internal* organs and so impossible to see without imaging or surgery/autopsy, and Marshall tube amplifiers with their legendary logo is the backdrop for innumerable concerts seen by untold numbers of people the world over, and that Marshall has become part of the cultural lexicon because of numerous musical icons, Jimi Hendrix (James Marshall Hendrix) being among them.
But, yeah, other than those little things, it's a perfectly valid analogy.
It would seem to me to be natural "geek-behavior" for geeks to note the technology disconnect on a piece of electronic equipment that has become so iconic, embedded, and ubiquitous in musical and popular culture (Spinal Tap? "It goes to 11! That's one louder, innit?"), and later use that factoid "Sheldon Cooper"-style, "Did you know, that...?" in an awkward attempt to participate in a conversation with a group of non-geeks talking rock bands and guitarists.
Why is it whenever someone criticizes Reagan or Bush (or any Republican for that matter) there is always someone at the ready to through Obama into the conversation?
Probably the same reason that whenever someone criticizes Obama, there is always someone at the ready to throw Bush and/or Reagan into the conversation.
But are they not in the position of a bank laundering money for gangsters?
No more than Google/Youtube, hard drive makers, creators of encryption algorithms, or any other hosting/storage or ISP related businesses are.
Is the phone company liable for things like ransom/extortion demands, violent threats, or drug transactions made over their systems? Auto makers liable for transporting criminals committing crimes, illegal drug transportation, or for 14-YO Suzy illegally consuming alcohol and losing her virginity in the back seat to an 18-YO? Is the water company liable for someone drowning in their bathtub?
So, no. They are not in that position at all.
It's a ridiculous, facetious, ingenuous, illogical, and baseless bit of convoluted logic being used to end-run around established law, legal rights, protections, and legal procedures in order to step on someone doing something in another country where it's legal that powerful interests in the US don't like while simultaneously establishing and expanding the precedent for more and more-egregious end-runs around "inconvenient" laws, individual rights, and legal restrictions on government power.
But hey, let's give government more power to fix the problem of...having and abusing too much power? Hmm. Can't quite put my finger on it, but something doesn't make sense with that plan. I'll ask my Congressman.
"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
What the fuck does that even mean?
Probably about the same thing Obama would mean about Fast and Furious if he were ever to testify about his knowledge and involvement in the criminally-negligent-at-best actions taken by the DoJ in that investigation at some (improbable, unlikely) future official hearing into it that would actually subpoena him to testify. See also: Eric J. Holder.
Oh, and just to keep my geek-card and cred up-to-date and current, in that first link to the pic of my personal amp, that monitor on the floor to the left and the big blue-green box behind and to it's right, partially hidden behind the footstool, is a working SGI Octane system.
I pull it out every once in a while and fire it up.
It has more to do with reputation than with "can't be done otherwise". A 50 cent-a-pop DSP probably has enough power to simulate the good ol' vacuum tube sound.
Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. For 40 years I've worked at music stores and been in bands, never mind being an amp tech/designer/builder, even worked in avionics and military-related high-end electronics systems, heard many of the very best DSP studio rack processors made costing many thousands of dollars, and my ears and everything else I know and have learned so far during all this time convinces me that, although DSP has gotten much, much better compared to even 5 years ago, it hasn't arrived yet at the point where the human ear can't tell the difference.
DSP guitar tone, clean or overdrive/distortion/effects, does not sound like real tubes *yet*. They will probably get there, I'm not saying it won't happen, maybe quite soon. It's just not there yet.
There's one solid-state amplifier made starting in 1975 that sounds great for jazz guitar. The Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus 120 amplifier. Beautiful clean sounds. It does have a distortion function, but *nobody* used it once they heard it!:)
Don't get me wrong. If you're in a local small-town working bar/dive band that is mostly there for the $40 to $80 a man per night, and not trying to impress anyone with your tone except the bar owner...just enough, that is, to pay you and keep you on the booking rotation, and you don't want to carry any more than absolutely necessary nor tie up more money than you absolutely have to in an amp, something like one of the "Line 6 Spider" combo amps will "get it done". Sorta like when old people...well, never mind.:-/
Those type of DSP solid state amps are also great for those just starting out, as it has a bunch of effects in software already, no effects pedals or rack effects, cords, etc to bother with, and they're dirt-cheap as amps go. If it breaks, throw it away and buy another just like a disposable lighter.
And yes, I do prefer the vacuum-tube amps, not only because of the sound, but also the warm feeling of old electronics:)
4 tubes total. two 12AX7 dual-triode preamp tubes (one a parallel-triode preamp gain stage, the other is the "long-tailed pair" style dual triode inverter/driver tube) and two KT66 beam tetrode power tubes in cathode-biased push-pull Class AB, producing around 30 watts. Volume and Tone controls, Standby/On and Power On/Off toggles. That's it. It sounds fantastic. You can't find a Volume/Tone control setting combination that sounds bad. I keep finding wonderful new tones and sounds almost every time I play it.
The sealed-back dovetail pine cab finished with Tru-Oil gunstock finishing oil with a Baltic birch plywood baffle has a pair of Celestion G12T-75 12-inch 8 Ohm guitar speakers wired in parallel for a 4 Ohm total impedance. It sounds absolutely gorgeous. Combined with that amp, some serious guitar tone-heaven.
I took the amp head into the local Guitar Center store shortly after I'd finished it. They had *nothing* that sounded anywhere near that good. The manager finally noticed the small crowd gathering, and (gently) asked me to cease after he started hearing a couple people asking if I sold amps like that one.:D
Oh, and since you mentioned a "warm feeling from old electronics", here's a little something that's sure to make wherever it is at just a little warmer. And louder. A *LOT* louder.
I believe that anyone younger than 30 now stands a damn good chance of never seeing a vacuum tube or even know of their existance.
Wrong.
If they ever attend a rock concert or watch a video of one (or if they ever take up electric guitar or bass) they'd see walls of them. Usually with big script logos that say "Marshall" or sometimes logos that say "Fender", "Soldano", or "Mesa-Boogie", with a few other brands that are less well-known and typically considered more "exclusive" like Matchless, Framus, Dr. Z, Top Hat, Divided by 13, Bad Cat, Victoria, etc etc.
All the top guitar-amplifier makers' top-of-the-line pro-level models brag of being "all tube". DSP has not yet been able to equal the tone, "feel", and response to the player's nuances that vacuum tubes exhibit. It's really, REALLY hard to model all the variables that affect the sound of an electromechanical device like a vacuum tube with digital signal processing.
I build and sell custom vacuum-tube guitar amps myself, as well as provide service and repair for vintage & modern tube guitar and bass amps. I can also occasionally be found on a stage in a club, or on a festival stage somewhere, playing guitar. I've been doing both for about 4 decades now.
The government can suck money directly from your paycheck, or bust down the door of your house, or drag you off to jail. A corporation can not.
And why can't a corporation do anything of those things? Government, that's why.
No, because if some private corporation sends jack-booted thugs to my door, they'd better bring plenty of body bags. I have the right and the ability to defend myself from assault by another private entity. My neighbors would also join the turkey-shoot as well, I'm quite certain.
Government, however, can send in SWAT teams, the Nat. Guard, or even the full-on military. Legally. On behalf of the corporations. That's why a relatively weak central government is one of the keys to maintaining freedom.
Corporations and other rich & powerful interests cannot corrupt government powers and departments that do not exist. It's the only real protection there is. This is why the Constitution was written to severely limit Federal power.
Governments are made up of greedy, weak, power-hungry, corruptible people, and most everyone has a price. Government oversight only works until the people in the oversight panels/committees, etc, are themselves corrupted/compromised.
There will always be government corruption, no matter what safeguards you put in place. The only way to truly and effectively limit the damage it can do is to limit the size, scope, and power of the central government.
The more things government is tasked with, the more powers and money you give it, the more opportunities for corruption there will be, the more attractive it makes it to corrupting influences, and the more damage it can do.
*Somebody* was a naughty little corporation, and didn't pay enough in "campaign contributions", lobbying , and political favors, hmm?
Let their example send a warning to you others out there that think you can just go around doing business without us getting our "vig", like it was a free country and open & fair marketplace or something!
Not to take away from your excellent comment, but gasoline was more like a dime a gallon in the '40s according to everyone I've known who was alive then. The lowest I ever paid for a gallon of gasoline was seventeen cents, around 1970 (there was a gas war). Even then, the normal price was about 25-30 cents. thirty years later the price quadrupled (I was paying $1.05 in 2000), six years later it had nearly quintupled and has gone down by a third since then.
Well, I'm 54, so I'm not old enough to know personally. Just from what my parents and older relatives told me, and so for the purposes of that post, I looked here:
It appears from the chart there that the retail price was right around 18 to 20 cents a gallon. Doing a Google search nets a number of results, however, from the totality of what I've been able to read and deduce from the various sources, it looked to me like 20 cents was a safe median estimate for that period.
But, as you agreed, that doesn't really change the overall point.
That's why we had the rampant inflation in the '70s. Thankfully (for the 1%ers anyway), Nixon instituted wage/price controls that allowed the businessman to get richer by selling more goods via export to counties that hadn't impoverised themselves with foolishg wars, while normal people saw their buying power decline. The '70s inflation is what paid for the VietNam war. I'd prefer they'd taxed those who benefitted forom that war to pay for it, rather than shielding them from the cost.
It helped the huge corporations, but it was a disadvantage to entrepreneurs with small and medium businesses, both in raw financial terms, and as a barrier to their ability to enter and compete in the market. It also partially paid for the wildly-expanded entitlement programs during that time, which are now taking the lion's share of the Federal spending, now dwarfing every other government expenditure, including the military and all the wars.
Unfortunately, because it's inconvenient for certain political ideologies, people have taken to disputing it for political reasons, not realizing they're simultaneously disputing Calculus when they do so.
[sarcasm] Oh, please! Calculus is *so* subjective! Only those terrorist teabaggers and the 1% would try to muddy the water with that "mean value theorem" scheme to rob the 99% !
I must have pissed of somebody that had a fresh batch of mod points, though. LOL!
My last 10 or 15 posts across two or three of the recent past/. articles, all in a straight timeline from a couple posts back in this thread, were near-simultaneously modded down within a minute or two of each other.
I find it hilarious! I'm glad they wasted them all on me, and not some other poor, innocent poster that had the unmitigated gall to disagree with them. I contribute enough +4-+5 insightful/informative/interesting posts consistently that I'm not worried, even if they sock-puppet modded my karma down a notch or two. My karma would be back in no time. It's happened before and will probably happen again.
That's fine. It only proves I'm right and that they didn't and/or don't have an argument. And, that they have all the maturity of a 2-yo.
If I'm pissing off people like that, I *must* be doing something right! Heh!
The argument that the value of money is dropping is just false. I even took the time to make a graph!
I can make graphs as well to show anything I want. That graph means less than nothing. It doesn't mean you're using the correct/consistent formulas or that you're not including or excluding certain variables to obtain a result that backs your opinion, but NOT necessarily reality.
No matter how much you wave your hands or how many or how pretty your graphs are, it doesn't change one basic fact: If you print more money without adding any value either in goods or labor, the actual worth of a single unit of that currency is reduced.
If you increase the number of slices in a single pie, those slices must become smaller. You must then have more slices to equal the same amount of pie you got in a single slice before.
It's like you're trying to disprove basic arithmetic.
Basic supply/demand theory is entirely classical and neoclassical, based on the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, most definitely pre-Keynesian. Inflation due to money supply isn't a new concept.
After the conquest of South America, prices in Spain skyrocketed due to the influx of gold and silver into the economy. Proving that it happens with fiat currencies, gold-based currencies or any unit of measure that used to account for value, you plebeian.
I'm a "plebeian" why, precisely? You just basically agreed with the whole main thrust of my position in this entire macro-thread.
The leaders in both America and the UK are essentially trying to mothball their own economies while transferring their wealth to Asia. They do NOT have YOUR interests at heart. They have their own legacies to financially float and it won't be in the UK. Yes, your fucked!
Wow! Someone else on/. who is capable of critical thinking, understands what's going on, and doesn't buy into the propaganda!
Bravo, Sir, bravo!
Now, all we have to do is cut through all the propaganda, disinformation, deliberate self-imposed general state of ignorance/stupidity, ideological warfare, and political partisanship to educate the drooling masses of the US/UK Idiocracies.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been units around for years both for home use cleaning jewelry, etc, and for use in various industrial/manufacturing processes, including being used in electronics manufacturing, where I've seen them used to clean PCBs and other electronic assemblies & parts after they undergo a "dirty" manufacturing step like wave-solder, in order to remove all flux, dirt, and oils.
They used a heated tank of solvent that was agitated by ultrasound transducers to greatly increase cleaning ability and decrease cleaning time. The first time I saw one like that was in the late 1970s. I worked in the government/military-related electronics and aerospace industry.
Strat
There is no real reason cloud recording isn't a perfectly valid, legal way to record stuff where even the owners could benefit. But no, judges intervene based on old laws and politics take a while to catch up and realize it is not 1980 anymore.
Wake up people, the new world is coming, and floating out of the window before you know it.
[bigcontent/media+lawyers}
PULL!!
[/bigcontent/media+lawyers}
Strat
The way your post was worded, yes, it seemed as if you thought that all we needed was just some more "oversight committees" and other government cruft whose only job is to make it appear like there's some sort of control or limits.
As far as we, the people, being the oversight, that's been our job all along from the beginning.
"When people fear their government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the Spirit of Resistance." - Thomas Jefferson
Unfortunately, over the last number of decades, our educational system has been compromised (many, including myself, believe this is no accident) such that people have become effectively cheated of a proper education, and have become ignorant, fat, and lazy.
They've not been taught the value of freedom, the importance of their duties as citizens, nor how to think critically. US history and the history of the revolution for independence, and the history and background of how the founders came to the conclusions they did and why the Constitution was written the way it was hasn't been taught in any meaningful way in our public schools for a long time.
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people." - John Adams
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free...it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." - James Madison
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." - James Madison
Additionally, the moral standards of our society have also been heavily attacked as well over the last number of decades, as God has been all but banished from the public square. Freedom of religion has been perverted to now mean freedom from religion, which was never the intention.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." - George Washington
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded...on the gospel of Jesus Christ!" - Patrick Henry
but there's a quote like "ideally we would have no government, but that is not practical, therefore we do have government" that I've seen attributed to Thomas Jefferson).
I too remember something similar, and I'm also not sure who/where the exact quote came from.
George Washington had something to say along similar lines.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquenceâ"it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington
Far too many people these days view government as their friend, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Strat
They need to make a +1 awesome mod for your post. What design did you use for the amp? I've been considering building one myself, and keep looking at replicating a Trainwreck, the costs of the transformers are quite prohibitive though. I have quite a few old valve amps spare, but they never seem to have enough current on the HT
Sorry, just noticed your reply.
Wow, thanks for the kind words!
Unless you plan on gigging in some fairly large venues, a Trainwreck clone may be a bit much power/volume-wise. Those things are *loud*! I know from personal experience. And, they don't really get into their "sweet-spot" until you get some serious volume going. A basement/garage/bedroom amp it is not. I don't even know of a club in my area where I could really play one.
Now, the Phat-Ass is much more bar/club and even home-jammer friendly, depending on which power tubes you stick in it.
The design is a custom design based partially off of a combination of a Matchless Spitfire/Lite-IIb preamp utilizing both triodes of the 12AX7 preamp tube in parallel, rather than the more common cascaded triode gain stages found in most guitar preamp designs, with a custom power supply and custom power amp sections based on the Weber Speakers "Smokin' Joe II" 18 watt EL84-based amplifier and the legendary Marshall 1974 18W amp.
As a matter of fact, the majority of parts for the build can be sourced through Weber.
Here's a rough BOM (Bill Of Materials): https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0AvaJlN_t-xVwdDR1T05nN2UwcGNDd1EtY1o4MmVSNGc&single=true&gid=0&output=html
Here's a chassis layout: http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Tech/PhatAss16_layoutfromsjII.jpg
And a schematic: http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Tech/PhatAss16rev3.jpg
One of the Weber Kit Builders Forum members, ScottVA, did most of the development and prototyping of this design, with some help and suggestions from me via the Weber forum, I'm quite proud to say.
Most people buy the basics of a Weber "Smokin' Joe II" amplifier kit, with some items of the SJ-II BOM either dropped or substituted as shown in the above PA16/PA26 BOM link. For instance, instead of the stock Chinese electrolytic power supply filter caps, I used much higher quality German F&T brand electrolytic caps, and instead of the stock generic Chinese coupling caps, I substituted them for Mallory 150 series caps.
Weber is extremely flexible in this regard, and will let you substitute or drop/add just about anything in their amp kits. You don't have to buy stuff you don't need or don't want. The big advantage is the savings in getting almost everything needed from one source and with one shipping charge.
You could probably buy 90%-plus of the entire PA16/PA26 BOM for the prices I've seen just for one of the Trainwreck transformer sets from some boutique suppliers. It's ridiculous. The Weber iron works fine, costs a fraction of those "boutique" transformers, and sounds fantastic.
The same Weber iron set also works great for all the common power tube choices for this design...6V6, 6L6, EL34/6CA7, and KT66. Just change the power tube cathode resistor value (or add a switch to change between values) to use a different power tube set.
Whatever you do, please, *PLEASE* learn and observe electrical safety rules and procedures. Even a small tube amp can kill you easily or cripple you for life.
You can start here: http://www.weberorders.com/forum/index.php?topic=944.0
(I'm the first poster)
There's
It's different because the private jack-booted thugs don't have armies and artillery and an air force and the force of a national government behind it.
Well that isn't always the case. History shows that the consequences of your example can rise to the same level of the consequences of doing the same to "the government's" jack-booted thugs.
I'm sorry, but this isn't medieval times nor a feudal system where Lords and Guilds did what they wished under the authority of a King and/or the church. Even then, they needed the permission of, or at least a blind eye turned, by the ruling powers to do what they did. If a Lord or Guild defied the King (or the church in some cases), their heads would roll.
Which is why we have things like oversight of what the fuck government is doing, along with finely detailing exactly what government is allowed to do, and if government isn't explicitly permitted to do something, government is forbidden to do it.
Which is why the first thing that's done by those desiring more government power or those wishing to corrupt that power is to corrupt, compromise, and/or make effectively powerless those oversight bodies. Usually by appointing themselves and their allies as the overseers.
One need only look at the career path of the majority of those tasked with oversight...private sector job/career, to government position overseeing their field, to again employed in the private sector by those he benefited while in government at outrageously high salaries...usually as a "consultant" that has one or two meeting a year to maintain the fiction.
Your contention that government can effectively oversee itself and prevent itself from abusing it's own power is ludicrous to the extreme.
It's the fox guarding the hen-house writ large.
And finally;
"History also shows that as government grows, liberty decreases." - Thomas Jefferson
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." - Thomas Jefferson
"The essence of government is power, and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." - James Madison
"That government is best which governs least." - Thomas Paine
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people." - John Adams
You'll have to forgive me if I take their opinions over yours. They have a bit more credibility and positive track record when it comes to the subject of freedom and government size, scope, and power.
Strat
Which also has nothing whatsoever to do with the previous comment.
I simply answered the question that you asked. Don't ask if you don't want, or are afraid of, an answer.
Maybe you should bitch at the guy who brought up the Reagan defense in the first place, since it obviously eats you up enough to keep this stupid shit going.
Again, I simply answered your question. Stop asking questions on a public forum you don't want answered.
You're the one that interjected the Obama bullshit in the first place, the burden is on you to ask him, not me. Go ahead and give him a call...
For the last time, that has nothing to do with answering the question you asked. I simply suggested you ask someone with first-hand knowledge and experience.
u mad?
Strat
I've never seen a human pancreas, but I've looked at untold thousands of people during my life.
Great analogy!
Wait, except that pancreases are *internal* organs and so impossible to see without imaging or surgery/autopsy, and Marshall tube amplifiers with their legendary logo is the backdrop for innumerable concerts seen by untold numbers of people the world over, and that Marshall has become part of the cultural lexicon because of numerous musical icons, Jimi Hendrix (James Marshall Hendrix) being among them.
But, yeah, other than those little things, it's a perfectly valid analogy.
It would seem to me to be natural "geek-behavior" for geeks to note the technology disconnect on a piece of electronic equipment that has become so iconic, embedded, and ubiquitous in musical and popular culture (Spinal Tap? "It goes to 11! That's one louder, innit?"), and later use that factoid "Sheldon Cooper"-style, "Did you know, that...?" in an awkward attempt to participate in a conversation with a group of non-geeks talking rock bands and guitarists.
Strat
Why is it whenever someone criticizes Reagan or Bush (or any Republican for that matter) there is always someone at the ready to through Obama into the conversation?
Probably the same reason that whenever someone criticizes Obama, there is always someone at the ready to throw Bush and/or Reagan into the conversation.
Like Obama. Maybe you should ask him?
Strat
But are they not in the position of a bank laundering money for gangsters?
No more than Google/Youtube, hard drive makers, creators of encryption algorithms, or any other hosting/storage or ISP related businesses are.
Is the phone company liable for things like ransom/extortion demands, violent threats, or drug transactions made over their systems? Auto makers liable for transporting criminals committing crimes, illegal drug transportation, or for 14-YO Suzy illegally consuming alcohol and losing her virginity in the back seat to an 18-YO? Is the water company liable for someone drowning in their bathtub?
So, no. They are not in that position at all.
It's a ridiculous, facetious, ingenuous, illogical, and baseless bit of convoluted logic being used to end-run around established law, legal rights, protections, and legal procedures in order to step on someone doing something in another country where it's legal that powerful interests in the US don't like while simultaneously establishing and expanding the precedent for more and more-egregious end-runs around "inconvenient" laws, individual rights, and legal restrictions on government power.
But hey, let's give government more power to fix the problem of...having and abusing too much power? Hmm. Can't quite put my finger on it, but something doesn't make sense with that plan. I'll ask my Congressman.
Strat
"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
What the fuck does that even mean?
Probably about the same thing Obama would mean about Fast and Furious if he were ever to testify about his knowledge and involvement in the criminally-negligent-at-best actions taken by the DoJ in that investigation at some (improbable, unlikely) future official hearing into it that would actually subpoena him to testify. See also: Eric J. Holder.
Strat
Oh, and just to keep my geek-card and cred up-to-date and current, in that first link to the pic of my personal amp, that monitor on the floor to the left and the big blue-green box behind and to it's right, partially hidden behind the footstool, is a working SGI Octane system.
I pull it out every once in a while and fire it up.
Strat
It has more to do with reputation than with "can't be done otherwise". A 50 cent-a-pop DSP probably has enough power to simulate the good ol' vacuum tube sound.
Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. For 40 years I've worked at music stores and been in bands, never mind being an amp tech/designer/builder, even worked in avionics and military-related high-end electronics systems, heard many of the very best DSP studio rack processors made costing many thousands of dollars, and my ears and everything else I know and have learned so far during all this time convinces me that, although DSP has gotten much, much better compared to even 5 years ago, it hasn't arrived yet at the point where the human ear can't tell the difference.
DSP guitar tone, clean or overdrive/distortion/effects, does not sound like real tubes *yet*. They will probably get there, I'm not saying it won't happen, maybe quite soon. It's just not there yet.
There's one solid-state amplifier made starting in 1975 that sounds great for jazz guitar. The Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus 120 amplifier. Beautiful clean sounds. It does have a distortion function, but *nobody* used it once they heard it! :)
Don't get me wrong. If you're in a local small-town working bar/dive band that is mostly there for the $40 to $80 a man per night, and not trying to impress anyone with your tone except the bar owner...just enough, that is, to pay you and keep you on the booking rotation, and you don't want to carry any more than absolutely necessary nor tie up more money than you absolutely have to in an amp, something like one of the "Line 6 Spider" combo amps will "get it done". Sorta like when old people...well, never mind. :-/
Those type of DSP solid state amps are also great for those just starting out, as it has a bunch of effects in software already, no effects pedals or rack effects, cords, etc to bother with, and they're dirt-cheap as amps go. If it breaks, throw it away and buy another just like a disposable lighter.
And yes, I do prefer the vacuum-tube amps, not only because of the sound, but also the warm feeling of old electronics :)
Here's my personal amp that I built recently.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Testament%2030/cabhead03.jpg
4 tubes total. two 12AX7 dual-triode preamp tubes (one a parallel-triode preamp gain stage, the other is the "long-tailed pair" style dual triode inverter/driver tube) and two KT66 beam tetrode power tubes in cathode-biased push-pull Class AB, producing around 30 watts. Volume and Tone controls, Standby/On and Power On/Off toggles. That's it. It sounds fantastic. You can't find a Volume/Tone control setting combination that sounds bad. I keep finding wonderful new tones and sounds almost every time I play it.
The sealed-back dovetail pine cab finished with Tru-Oil gunstock finishing oil with a Baltic birch plywood baffle has a pair of Celestion G12T-75 12-inch 8 Ohm guitar speakers wired in parallel for a 4 Ohm total impedance. It sounds absolutely gorgeous. Combined with that amp, some serious guitar tone-heaven.
I took the amp head into the local Guitar Center store shortly after I'd finished it. They had *nothing* that sounded anywhere near that good. The manager finally noticed the small crowd gathering, and (gently) asked me to cease after he started hearing a couple people asking if I sold amps like that one. :D
Oh, and since you mentioned a "warm feeling from old electronics", here's a little something that's sure to make wherever it is at just a little warmer. And louder. A *LOT* louder.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Junk/monster.jpg
I believe that anyone younger than 30 now stands a damn good chance of never seeing a vacuum tube or even know of their existance.
Wrong.
If they ever attend a rock concert or watch a video of one (or if they ever take up electric guitar or bass) they'd see walls of them. Usually with big script logos that say "Marshall" or sometimes logos that say "Fender", "Soldano", or "Mesa-Boogie", with a few other brands that are less well-known and typically considered more "exclusive" like Matchless, Framus, Dr. Z, Top Hat, Divided by 13, Bad Cat, Victoria, etc etc.
All the top guitar-amplifier makers' top-of-the-line pro-level models brag of being "all tube". DSP has not yet been able to equal the tone, "feel", and response to the player's nuances that vacuum tubes exhibit. It's really, REALLY hard to model all the variables that affect the sound of an electromechanical device like a vacuum tube with digital signal processing.
I build and sell custom vacuum-tube guitar amps myself, as well as provide service and repair for vintage & modern tube guitar and bass amps. I can also occasionally be found on a stage in a club, or on a festival stage somewhere, playing guitar. I've been doing both for about 4 decades now.
Strat
Yeah, I've heard stories about you "Dotslashers". :D
Strat
No, because if some private corporation sends jack-booted thugs to my door, they'd better bring plenty of body bags. I have the right and the ability to defend myself from assault by another private entity. My neighbors would also join the turkey-shoot as well, I'm quite certain.
Government, however, can send in SWAT teams, the Nat. Guard, or even the full-on military. Legally. On behalf of the corporations. That's why a relatively weak central government is one of the keys to maintaining freedom.
Corporations and other rich & powerful interests cannot corrupt government powers and departments that do not exist. It's the only real protection there is. This is why the Constitution was written to severely limit Federal power.
Governments are made up of greedy, weak, power-hungry, corruptible people, and most everyone has a price. Government oversight only works until the people in the oversight panels/committees, etc, are themselves corrupted/compromised.
There will always be government corruption, no matter what safeguards you put in place. The only way to truly and effectively limit the damage it can do is to limit the size, scope, and power of the central government.
The more things government is tasked with, the more powers and money you give it, the more opportunities for corruption there will be, the more attractive it makes it to corrupting influences, and the more damage it can do.
This isn't rocket-surgery, people.
Strat
I'm sure it's only a glitch - a temporary set-back.
Not so "temporary" for Mr. Kinney, unfortunately. :)
Strat
It feels like a pump and dump but there's no way to prove it.
It feels much more like "The Chicago Way (tm)". Daly-machine politics and tactics at their best (worst?).
Strat
*Somebody* was a naughty little corporation, and didn't pay enough in "campaign contributions", lobbying , and political favors, hmm?
Let their example send a warning to you others out there that think you can just go around doing business without us getting our "vig", like it was a free country and open & fair marketplace or something!
Strat
Not to take away from your excellent comment, but gasoline was more like a dime a gallon in the '40s according to everyone I've known who was alive then. The lowest I ever paid for a gallon of gasoline was seventeen cents, around 1970 (there was a gas war). Even then, the normal price was about 25-30 cents. thirty years later the price quadrupled (I was paying $1.05 in 2000), six years later it had nearly quintupled and has gone down by a third since then.
Well, I'm 54, so I'm not old enough to know personally. Just from what my parents and older relatives told me, and so for the purposes of that post, I looked here:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2005/fcvt_fotw364.html
It appears from the chart there that the retail price was right around 18 to 20 cents a gallon. Doing a Google search nets a number of results, however, from the totality of what I've been able to read and deduce from the various sources, it looked to me like 20 cents was a safe median estimate for that period.
But, as you agreed, that doesn't really change the overall point.
That's why we had the rampant inflation in the '70s. Thankfully (for the 1%ers anyway), Nixon instituted wage/price controls that allowed the businessman to get richer by selling more goods via export to counties that hadn't impoverised themselves with foolishg wars, while normal people saw their buying power decline. The '70s inflation is what paid for the VietNam war. I'd prefer they'd taxed those who benefitted forom that war to pay for it, rather than shielding them from the cost.
It helped the huge corporations, but it was a disadvantage to entrepreneurs with small and medium businesses, both in raw financial terms, and as a barrier to their ability to enter and compete in the market. It also partially paid for the wildly-expanded entitlement programs during that time, which are now taking the lion's share of the Federal spending, now dwarfing every other government expenditure, including the military and all the wars.
Strat
[Where to put the chip?] If they put it on my shoulder, I'll be very angry...
Help!!
I'm in a positive-feedback loop!
My name is Banner...
Just her suggestion puts a chip on my shoulder that makes me angry at her suggestion that adds another chip...aaagh!!...
[clothes rip]
RAWR! HULK SMASH!
Strat :D
Unfortunately, because it's inconvenient for certain political ideologies, people have taken to disputing it for political reasons, not realizing they're simultaneously disputing Calculus when they do so.
[sarcasm]
Oh, please! Calculus is *so* subjective! Only those terrorist teabaggers and the 1% would try to muddy the water with that "mean value theorem" scheme to rob the 99% !
Why do you hate poor black people?
[/sarcasm]
Strat :D
Like I said, facts are wasted on this guy.
Yeah, I get that feeling as well.
I must have pissed of somebody that had a fresh batch of mod points, though. LOL!
My last 10 or 15 posts across two or three of the recent past /. articles, all in a straight timeline from a couple posts back in this thread, were near-simultaneously modded down within a minute or two of each other.
I find it hilarious! I'm glad they wasted them all on me, and not some other poor, innocent poster that had the unmitigated gall to disagree with them. I contribute enough +4-+5 insightful/informative/interesting posts consistently that I'm not worried, even if they sock-puppet modded my karma down a notch or two. My karma would be back in no time. It's happened before and will probably happen again.
That's fine. It only proves I'm right and that they didn't and/or don't have an argument. And, that they have all the maturity of a 2-yo.
If I'm pissing off people like that, I *must* be doing something right! Heh!
Strat
The argument that the value of money is dropping is just false. I even took the time to make a graph!
I can make graphs as well to show anything I want. That graph means less than nothing. It doesn't mean you're using the correct/consistent formulas or that you're not including or excluding certain variables to obtain a result that backs your opinion, but NOT necessarily reality.
No matter how much you wave your hands or how many or how pretty your graphs are, it doesn't change one basic fact: If you print more money without adding any value either in goods or labor, the actual worth of a single unit of that currency is reduced.
If you increase the number of slices in a single pie, those slices must become smaller. You must then have more slices to equal the same amount of pie you got in a single slice before.
It's like you're trying to disprove basic arithmetic.
With graphs.
Strat
Basic supply/demand theory is entirely classical and neoclassical, based on the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, most definitely pre-Keynesian. Inflation due to money supply isn't a new concept.
After the conquest of South America, prices in Spain skyrocketed due to the influx of gold and silver into the economy. Proving that it happens with fiat currencies, gold-based currencies or any unit of measure that used to account for value, you plebeian.
I'm a "plebeian" why, precisely? You just basically agreed with the whole main thrust of my position in this entire macro-thread.
Did you reply to the wrong post?
Confused I am by your post, yes.
Strat
The leaders in both America and the UK are essentially trying to mothball their own economies while transferring their wealth to Asia. They do NOT have YOUR interests at heart. They have their own legacies to financially float and it won't be in the UK. Yes, your fucked!
Wow! Someone else on /. who is capable of critical thinking, understands what's going on, and doesn't buy into the propaganda!
Bravo, Sir, bravo!
Now, all we have to do is cut through all the propaganda, disinformation, deliberate self-imposed general state of ignorance/stupidity, ideological warfare, and political partisanship to educate the drooling masses of the US/UK Idiocracies.
Yeah. We're fucked. :(
Strat