Heavy Fuel


Here it is, the reason for treason itself: the Diezel Einstein! 50W of pure English electricity powering six (yes, six!) 12AX7s and a pair of EL34s. A Celestion V30 mounted in a custom-sized Zilla cab beats the fear of God into the air and sends it flying out across the room. Truly awesome amp, awesome sounds. Image

The channel switching works in a different way to most amplifiers. There are three “Modes” of the preamp: Clean, Crunch and Dirty. There is also a second switch which takes you to channel 2, and channel 2 is your “lead” channel. Each channel has it’s own 3-band EQ, gain and volume controls and so you can configure your two channels however you want. I was worried that you would be restricted in the sounds you can get from this (i.e only clean/crunch or crunch/dirty available on the footswitch), but the channel 2 boost is so great that even on Clean the switch to channel 2 gives you enough dirt to be going on with!

 

Basically it’s awesome. I’m glad I got it.

 

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Some recreational Sunday afternoon guitar playing. Notice the lack of pints; the pub next door was closed.

I’ve also been meaning to put some photos of anything interesting that comes through the shop, and this week there have been a couple. A chap brought in a MIJ Strat from ’89/’90 in pieces (and I mean in pieces. The only thing attached to the body was the neck). After a day under the hood with a soldering iron I got it looking like this:

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All in one piece (ish). More to the point, all seems to be working electrically; this is one of the few times I’ve had to actually re-wire something properly rather than simply solder things back on where they’ve fallen off, and it took ages to stop getting it wrong!

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Awesome paint job as well.

And here’s what happens when you don’t learn to pick properly! This is the front of a Faith Jupiter that a kid bought a few months ago. Somehow his picking technique leads him to pick through the strings, lacquer, paint and into the wood. Claims that this was due to a “defective paint job” were met with raised eyebrows.

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In an effort at damage-control I’ve fitted this lovely tortoiseshell pickguard. Note the pale blob under the E string beneath the pickguard; that’s another, bigger hole.

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