what now

I've just about finished the GPO tin amp. It's such a cool little bugger - I love it. Mostly because it's a little beauty of an old tin, secondly it turned out better than I expected. It's the first amp I've made from scratch using the diagrams on the beavis audio site. Basically, it's like the guts of a Smokey amp. The tin lid is working great as a gain control. Whacking it up full gives some wicked distortion. I fitted a jack socket to allow it to be connected to a speaker cab but as I haven't got one I can't try it through a nice big speaker yet. I'm hoping to get time to record a short vid of it on Youtube soon.

Some new ideas I'd like to do this year.

Make a speaker cab from a rough old wooden box that had French butter in originally. Or it might become one of those box drums that you sit on and drum with your hands.

Make a solid electric dulcimer. There's a brilliant clip on Youtube of someone playing one. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=L-Zt2MwrIwA

Make some more Smokey amp units to fit in cool looking containers. I've got some nice old tobacco tins.

Someone gave me a massive voltmeter that came out of an electric sub station. I might put an amp in that and try to get the needle to move when it's playing. That'll be a challenge.

Have a go at winding my own magnetic pick-ups. That should keep me happy for a while.

Now don't laugh but I've just been given an old Shackleton high seat chair. Remember those corny ads in the 1970s of dear old ladies looking at the catalogs and ordering these tall-legged armchairs? Well I wanted something comfy and free to sit on when I'm working in the cellar and that fitted the bill. You know, sometimes something is so unfashionable and uncool that it's cool for that reason alone. Well this is so uncool that it goes beyond that and becomes uncool again. Ha! It's beige too - yikes. All I need now is a zimmer frame! Actually thinking about it, I might look out for one. I could cut it up and make hundreds of slides. I might pimp up the chair. Maybe turn it into a CBG players version of Jimmy Saville's multi-purpose chair. I bet there's a cable tv channel on called 'pimp that chair'. I'm heading over to Youtube now - bound to be something on there. :)