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. 
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.
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:
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!
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.
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.