/085 - When It Rains It Pours

New friends/projects from 2 Craiglist deals today.

I have a thing for old Yamaha amps. They sound great and can be had cheap, though prices are steadily climbing because the secret is out. Got this from a guy who was downsizing in preparation for a move to Europe. It seemed hard enough to move across the US, I can’t even imagine hopping continents. Anyway, he said it has had an issue blowing fuses in the past but right now it works great other than needing some contact cleaner on the pots. I really didn’t need another amp, but for $25 I found it hard to resist.

These ugly pedals! I had the chorus many years ago and remember it fondly after giving it away to a young guitarist. They don’t sound bad as is, but a quick internet search tells me there are a bunch of mods that can be done to these (Fab chorus, overdrive, and echo if the image isn’t clear) and I am apparently a glutton for a long project list. Why mod? Why not. haha

/017 - Treasure

Well that escalated quickly.

As I mentioned, I wanted to find a means to play a few old (60’s) tapes that were correspondence between my wife’s grandmother and her family back in Japan. I sent an email two ads on Craigslist and both got back to me, so I went for it. $45 for everything (except the guitar) in the first picture. The Sony in the top left works, but runs slow. The speakers had some foam that disintegrated so I’m sure that the insides are full of it. Top center is an old record player. Powers up but has an issue with the drive so it jams after about 5 seconds. Passing that project on to someone else. The two tape units in the center don’t do anything when plugged in, but are both full of tubes so maybe there’s a guitar amp conversion project there for me some day. The Webcor unit (also tube) plays and records, and came with that wonderful old mic! Plugged my guitar in and that sounded great too. Looking forward to spending some more time with this.