Music, opinions, and portfolio of Mark Eagleton, musician and web developer in Northern CA.
This is where I tell you what I really think. This website doesn’t support comments by design, that is what your blog is for!
I’ve written before about my love/hate relationship with my K&K Bass Master Rockabilly Plus. In short, the sound is phenomenal, but the execution is awful. After suffering with its flaws for the past 15 years, I finally decided I’d had enough and modded it.
My pandemic staycation project: a Rick-Tone Trem-O-Drive for my Champ, Airline, and Rickenbacker single-ended amps.
I bought this cool 1960s breakout tube amp/two-way speaker combo on eBay a few weeks ago for about $65. I serviced it, cleaned it up, and made a few modifications to make it a little more versatile for shop use.
This 1996 Fender Hot Rod Deluxe came in complaining of a soar throat. The output was quiet, but would crack loudly at the attack of a heavy strum. Dirty tube sockets? Broken solder joints? Dusty pots? Probably.
My buddy Ivan uses this combo-ified 1963 Band-Master as his backup. It suffered from a phantom crackle that would only appear after being warmed up for an hour or two. It had been in and out of another shop for over a year, and the problem was never successfully addressed.
Somewhere around a decade ago, the Bottom Dwellers’ PA head took a flaming shit. It started smoking. It was out of warranty, and rather than deal with repairs and not having a PA for a while, we replaced it with a Mackie PPM1008. Ever since then, the Carvin PA has functioned as my amp stand.
The illusive phantom crackle that plagued this early 60s Fender Bandmaster for years has finally been purged.
About three or four years ago, I found myself falling down a rabbit hole of tube amp repair videos. It started innocently enough with the humble idea of building a custom foot-switchable preamp/mixer for my double bass. That lead to me building a few guitar stomp boxes. Before I knew it, I was watching hours and hours of tube amp repair videos every week.