Clean-dirty on orange tiny terror

[kingjj]

C'mon guys... Really. This is a public forum, I care, right? Take it to PM or Email.

Chuck

thank you chuck. i just wanted to learn more about hotrodding amps and the "tiny terror" seems to be somewhat popular for mods and home spuns. i was trying to understand why this amp and this guy calls me names. can you help me in my quest?

[J M Fahey]

Hi kingjj
However you mod it, you'll still have those 15 Watts.
Personal opinion, anybody can disagree of course,if you want to get straight into the Mod road, I'd try to get *any* 30 to 50W used tube amp, for cheap, so I already have a chassis, transformers and sockets, to save time (and $$$) and build there whatever I want.
There's a lot of downplayed tube amps out there, which "weren't played by somebody famous".
Or even dirt cheap PA amps (think Bogen and such) which already sport grey hammer painted metal cabinets , "Tiny Terror style", if that's your cup of tea.
Good luck.

[Gibsonman63]

Back to the point

There is an easy solution. Just stick an SM57 in front of your amp. Find the sweet spot on the amp volume-wise and amplify it through your PA. Position your amp where you blast yourself with it and put it in the monitor mixes for everyone else. Your soundman will love the lower stage volume and will be able to do a much better job keeping a good balance. You will get a lot less guitar amp bleed into the vocal microphones which will help the monitor mixes a lot.

[J M Fahey]

SPAM alert.

SPAM ROBOT ALERT
The post above, and others like it, was not written by a human but by a piece of "artificial intelligence" malware/spyware/worm/you name it , written specially to invade forums as this one.
It becomes member (it can easily bypass those "captcha" skewed letters), reads posts, and when it finds some phrase or name (trademark) repeated many times, posts a pre-written phrase which it probably has loaded in some kind of library; it sounds somewhat logical.
Example: if the topic says *Stratocaster* a few times, it may post "I love/hate my *Stratocaster*" which sounds like some poster's opinion.
What does it gain from that?
It usually includes some link to sell or promote something, either in the body of the message or in the "member's" signature.
In this case, in different posts by the same author, it plugs:
check this: flute lessons and
check this: play drums
The SSGuitar forum was hit up to 30 or 40 times a day by "new members" by SPAM like this, until stopped by Forum owner JoeCool.
I ask moderators here to be alert and block such spam from the beginning, because it can get annoying real fast.

[Steve Conner]

The offending posts have been nuked and the member banned for a week, my standard punishment for spambots.

(I don't ban them permanently because I think the ban works by IP address, which could affect anyone sharing an IP address with one.)

[J M Fahey]

Just from reference, some action that has been taken at SSGuitar, successfully so far:

I've blocked a couple IPs and hostnames of the worst offenders as well as usernames and emails, we should be clear for a while.

1) there *is* a lot of spam
2) what it looks like, so next time they see a strange post which talks about something unrelated or sounds like written by a stoned/drunk person is really machine-written SPAM.
3) Never ever click on the blue lettered text that apears at random in the post: best case they take you to the spammer's promoted page; worst case it loads a virus in *your* computer and uses *your* computer, bandwidth/resources/money to spread itself somewhere else ... signing as you !!!
4) some spam also appears in the sender's signature.
Never click anywhere unless it comes from a known member and the posting makes sense and is a legitimate answer to something that is being discussed.
5) This "intelligent" spam reads the forum and posts "automatic/generic" answers to some keywords they recognize as being repeated time and again.
Example: there is a topic about Stratocasters: the spam software finds that word is repeated and posts "I also love my Stratocaster" which sounds logical.
Sometimes it's funny or ridiculous, somebody writes "the sweet sound of my Stratocaster" and they post something ridiculous as: "I love my sweet Stratocaster with vanilla cream and chocolate shavings"
So: if the answer is absolutely ridiculous or unrelated, it probably *is* spam, specially if it contains some clickable link.

Noticed even more today. It seems to be coming from "new" members entirely, so I set up a better captcha on the registration page as well as required an 8 character long password that can't include the username instead of 4 of any character. Frequently if you make these steps a bit harder "real people" spammers won't bother, and bots can't figure out how to do it either.

**edit**
I was curious how Aron controls spam over at diystompboxes.com since he has the same forum software and I noticed his registration page has 3 easy questions you have to answer to get in. (How many leads on a resistor, who makes the les paul guitar, and how many pickups on a telecaster). Pretty good idea. If we keep getting more spam in the next couple days I will probably try implementing something like that as well.

continues

[J M Fahey]

Just google 163data.com.cn , you will be (badly) surprised.
For powerful Karspersky to study it, means it's a real menace.
They have 4 other known servers, and an estimated 20 "disposable" ones, meaning that when one gets banned or blocked, they create new ones.
The 3 easy (for humans) questions should catch most automated new memberships.
*I* got banned in a couple sites because I PM'd members on the first day , without having posted anything yet.
Oh well.

They just keep on coming, eh?

I added a couple IP ranges to the ban list and they are seeming to help. Already caught a handfull of wood-be-spammers since I did it this morning.

Yeah, we're good now. We were having between 15 and 30 new members sign up PER DAY the last few weeks. Now it is down to the forum average of 3 or so.

**edit**
The last two days we have been averaging 30-40 "blocks" per day on the ban list. It had been only 5-8 before. And I added a note on the banned page that says to email me (admin@XXXXXXXX.com) if you think your ban was done by mistake. No one has emailed me yet. I think we got it for now (bout time).

Please keep alert and point to SPAM posts.
Thanks.