Driving them nuts

[Zipslack]

Peeling the plastic is a lot like picking a scab.....very hard to resist the temptation.

Amy the only one that sprays amps with Febreze to remove the nasty smells? When I used to do repair work at home, my wife would complain a lot. Bar amps and cheap Korean amps are the worst - first has that beer/cigarette odor, the Korean stuff just has ridiculously obnoxious glue for the tolex. Liberally spray with Febreze deodorizer and let sit outside for a little while to "air out".

[imaradiostar]

I love peeling that plastic film off, I don't think I could stand not to.

Almost as much as I like taking the thing apart the day after the warranty runs out.

I hate it when Chinese (or other new) equipment has the plastic under all the pots and knobs and bolts and you have to loosen everything just to remove it...or have chunks of plastic stuck and hanging out all over the place. I ordered a new lathe for work and it's a giant mess of protective plastic on all the control panels.

jamie

[Enzo]

Oh I recall that happening on stuff LOOOONG before we started getting things from China.

[Jazz P Bass]

I worked at the USA office of an Italian equipment manufacturer that shipped everything by sea.
They covered all exposed metal with Cosmoline.
Yuck!

[Enzo]

OH man. When I was a kid, getting into electronics, it was not all that long after world war two. Tons of military surplus, cheap. And lots of stuff was coated in cosmoline. For you youngsters, cosmoline is like sticky Vaseline jelly, a waxy, greasy goo. If someone has a better description, lay it on me.

They used to sell Jeep parts in cosmoline. You could buy a surplus army Jeep in parts form. A sort of Jeep Kit.

[g1]

You could buy a surplus army Jeep in parts form. A sort of Jeep Kit.

I remember those ads from the back pages of comics and magazines. Always wondered if they were legit as they were like 50 bucks or something? Fortunately I never succumbed. I can only imagine what the shipping/duty costs etc. would have been. Don't think my parents would have been impressed either.
But there was a lot of cool stuff to order in those back pages. Looked cool anyway, but most of it was probably of similar quality to the offshore stuff we run down today.

[soundguruman]

I used to have a business partner, it made for more opportunity to share silly ideas. We came into possession of a large supply of resistors and caps. They were surplus items, and most were high precision but odd values. Like 221k and 1612 ohm resistors, stuff like that. Meanwhile, I used to work with a guy, and my partner knew him well too, and teh guy was super anal about parts. He was convinced that everything was super specific and he would go so far as to order the exact same 4558 ICs from Peavey and Fender and Korg and whoever, and stock them indeividually in brand drawers.

SO partner and I designed an amp, and we figured to use the parts we had. SO that 221k resistor in the plate with a 1612 ohm cathode resistor for a preamp stage. And so on. Then we figured we'd have someone take it to the other guy for service, and we imagined him going nuts trying to figure out what those values were for. After all, if an amp had 1% 1612 ohm resistors, they must have been selected for something, right? ...MUST HAVE. It would never have occurred to the guy that the selection was cheap surplus part availability.


Alas, we never actually did the deed, but it was fun scheming.

This is how PV designs amps, or used to. They buy up parts that did not meet specs and design amps out of them.
Thousands of parts, otherwise thrown away or recycled, became guitar amps.
Also, made a deal with the government to pay workers less than minimum wage. Otherwise the workers would collect welfare checks.
And so with the surplus parts, and the underpaid workers, PV was born.
Enzo "could be" the next Hartley PV.

[Enzo]

This is how PV designs amps, or used to. They buy up parts that did not meet specs and design amps out of them.
Thousands of parts, otherwise thrown away or recycled, became guitar amps.
Also, made a deal with the government to pay workers less than minimum wage. Otherwise the workers would collect welfare checks.
And so with the surplus parts, and the underpaid workers, PV was born.

How do you come up with this endless stream of utter baloney?

[km6xz]

Once I read a post where he was essentially correct but it was such a shock that I forgot what it was about. All other posts.....eh, no.

[J M Fahey]

Progressive effects of alcohol
Effects at different levels

BAC (% by vol.)-----Behavior---------Impairment

0.06–0.09------------Blunted feelings----------Reasoning
----------------------Disinhibition
----------------------Extraversion

0.10–0.19------------Over-expression---------Reasoning
----------------------Emotional swings---------Staggering
----------------------Anger or sadness--------Slurred speech
----------------------Boisterousness----------Gross motor control

0.20–0.29----------Loss of understanding----Severe motor impairment
---------------------Impaired sensations-------Loss of consciousness
-----------------------------------------------Memory blackout