GRollins

Naptha, aka charcoal lighter fluid. Cheap. Readily available. Leaves minimal residue (once the goo has been cleaned away). I use it all the time in my shop and around the house. Note that it's flammable--by definition--so don't smoke or allow any sparks in the area. Grey

Having lost several family members (including both parents) to cancer I know first hand that it's an implacable foe. My wife had cancer and has been clear for years, but that doesn't mean that it won't come back. For every "miracle cure" such as my brother-in-law, there are still far too many who don't make it. Here's hoping that some bright young lad or lass manages to come up with a genuine, no-kidding way to stop cancer in its tracks. Grey

If I recall correctly, Grohl had a drum battle with Animal from the Muppets. Again, he was careful to "lose." Flames and smoke were involved, but both survived the battle, though I'm not so sure about the drum kits. It was great. I can't say that (most of) his music suits me (although I thought his one-man prog rock thing was interesting), but as a human being...he's absolutely top flight. I'd love to have him as a next door neighbor so I could just hang out with him. He seems like he's super fun. Grey

Yours Is No Suite Judy Blue Eyes? Yes, both bands used vocal harmonies, but I don't know that that alone is enough to qualify as making them sound the same to my ears. After all, they both use guitars, too! To me, Yes's vocal work is one of their defining characteristics. ELP, for instance, only had Greg Lake singing, so harmonies were out of the question, excepting multitracking in the studio. Steve Howe's musical hero was Chet Atkins. It shows in Howe's playing sometimes...when he's not displaying rock or jazz or classical influences... I confess that I was rather surprised to find out about his liking for Atkins, but once you listen to his playing you can definitely hear some country-ish riffs. As far as I know, none of the other members of the band claimed country influences. My kids listen to bands that use vocal harmonies. My objection is the same as with the '80s hair bands--they all sound the same. They've discovered a formula that's popular and they're flogging it for all it's worth, but there's so little to differentiate the bands from one another that, while I admit that the vocals are tight and sometimes clever, I find the overall result to be rather sterile and repetitive. Grey

High End audio trick: Depending on what you're running on those lines, you might consider running each outlet to a separate breaker, preferably 30A. For little stuff like keyboards (10-30W) or mixers (what...5W?), it's not worth it, but if you've got power amplifiers on the line, it can make a difference. Heavy current draw on the line can lead to a drop in line voltage. Also, it used to be that the design of breakers meant they used a coil to drive a solenoid to trip the breaker (probably still true, but I haven't looked into it in a while and things may have changed), and high current causes a drop there, too. This is seriously tweaky, guilding the lily stuff, but if your head's in that space it's worth considering. Grey

It's not just a rumor--aspirin and other drugs can make your ears ring. If you've already got tinnitus, it will make it worse temporarily. Once the aspirin (or other offending drug) is out of your system, you'll be fine...or at least back to normal, whatever is normal for your hearing. Grey

Another possibility: The bones in your ear--hammer, anvil, stirrup--can become disarticulated. Not good. Grey

Having seen ELP Legacy in 2017, I can attest that they had a guitar player covering the keyboard parts. Yes, it worked. It was one of those things where I hovered between "I can't believe it works and works as well as it does" and "Wait, something's not entirely right, here." Part of it was, no doubt, the cognitive dissonance of seeing Keith's keyboard parts coming out of a guitar, but... Carl Palmer was 100% authentic. More power to him. Grey

Oh, there's no doubt that Owner Of A Lonely Heart worked for Yes financially, but I can't stand it. I never cared much for the Eagles, either. Their musical influences include too much Country for my tastes. I remember when Joe Walsh joined the band. I hoped he'd bring more Rock to the mix. The opposite happened. They Country-fied Walsh. I was SO disappointed, but I'm sure he made gobs of money. Right about the same time as 90125, there was a fabulously successful hard rock formula making headway: Take Marshall master volume heads, Look At Me, Ma, I've Got Attitude pseudo-bad-boy vocals (frequently with harmonies on the chorus), and Big Hair, turn the crank...and out pop Quiet Riot, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, KISS, and a horde of others that you can scarcely tell apart musically without a score card. Okay, okay, KISS wore makeup, so they were easy to distinguish if you were looking at them, but really... The buying public had a seemingly infinite hunger for the recipe, evidenced by the fact that they gobbled up albums by the truck load even though it was all the same thing over and over and over and over... Anyone who liked one of the bands generally liked at least a half-dozen of them (no surprise, given their similarity) and concert halls were packed. It was one of the most stunningly successful formulas, ever. I think I could have stood one or two, maybe three bands like that, but the tsunami of like-sounding bands was just too damned much. Metallica, it seems to me, might qualify as the exception that proves the rule. They're actually musically creative. I've somewhat grudgingly come to appreciate them, but I admit that their growly, angry vocals wear on my ears after a while. I mean, who wants to hear someone sing "I love you" in a tone of voice more appropriate for an axe murderer about to go on a rampage? I miss the days when bands sounded, you know, different...Led Zeppelin didn't sound like Santana. Janis Joplin didn't sound like Grand Funk Railroad. Iron Butterfly didn't sound like Jethro Tull. The Grateful Dead didn't sound like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Joni Mitchell didn't sound like Yes. Part of my distaste for 90125 is that Yes forsook a unique sound for something perilously close to generic mass produced product. Ugh. However, it kept bread on the table, so I tip my hat to them. They were more courageous than I would have been under similar circumstances. And bwess their widdle hearts, they went all-in and adopted the haircuts of the era as well. (...though I, for one, don't think the look has aged well...) Grey

I regard that as Yes's "disco era." I hate it, but can't really argue with their decision--they had to eat and the musical landscape had changed drastically from when they were filling arenas touring in support of Fragile and Close To The Edge. Their new musical direction worked, which is more than many bands could say who attempted the same thing. It kept them alive and kicking until they could move back to more prog-ish material later. It just didn't work for me. The video (like many MTV style videos) mystifies me. Not one image in there makes sense in the context of the song. Why would they be playing in a derelict house in the desert? Why are tropical birds outside the window of the desert house--the habitat is wrong. Why does a TV explode? None of it makes sense...but then I tend to think in more linear terms than you find in the average video. And is that Chris Squire in the fight scene? Weird. (Man, I miss Chris...) Grey

Oh, lordy...where to start? This could be a really, really long post in a really, really long thread, but I'll keep it brief for the time being, in part because supper is nearly ready. A few random points, in no particular order: --Speakers for stage/monitor use with built-in amplification are irrevocably compromised. Period. To keep the weight down they use switching power supplies which for various technical reasons cannot supply current when the amp demands it, so dynamics are badly compromised. I've got an old Hafler P500 (stereo, 250W/ch) on the island in the kitchen because I'm recapping it. I have some much lighter QSC amps that I bought (stereo, 350W/ch) because I was tired of carrying the P500's ~70# weight to gigs. Yes, they're lighter. So what? They sound like shit compared to the Hafler, in spite of being 20-30 years newer. Zero, and I mean zero dynamics. No low end. Zip. For me playing bass, this is a Really Bad Thing. Why are they so pitiful? Switching power supplies. (partly...there are other problems, too) Don't argue with me about the fact that they're spec'd for 350W and should sound better/louder/whatever. They're horrible by comparison. I keep them because I'm not 20 years old anymore and my back doesn't much like the Hafler's weight. But the sound of the Hafler? Light-Fuckin'-Years beyond the QSCs. No goddamned contest. A deaf man could hear the difference just because the Hafler literally shakes the floor and the QSCs struggle to blow a mosquito off course. Mind you, Hafler wasn't really even high end...more like mid-fi with an attitude. Real high end stuff is a totally, whole, 'nother order of existence, but it's gotten so bloody expensive that I had to opt out. Doesn't mean I can't hear the differences, just that nowadays a decent turntable costs five times what an entire high end system cost back in the '80s. I can no longer justify that sort of financial commitment. --Have you noticed that speakers don't have distortion specs? There's a reason for that. They're terrible. Absolutely terrible. Studio monitors and live speakers have ridiculous distortion levels. We're talking 5-10% or more. Er...and you were obsessing about 0.1% vs. 0.01% distortion in your electronics? High end speakers have lower distortion, but it's still at scary levels, so they don't brag about it because once you start that discussion, things spiral out of control very quickly. --There was a thread here recently where a member was trying to argue about guitar players and how loud they play. Suffice it to say that there are perfectly good reasons why guitar players play loud. One of the compromises that "pro" speaker manufacturers make is to go for efficiency. When you make that choice, there are inevitable consequences, one being compression. The suspension of the driver itself has to be stiff to keep the driver from tearing itself apart. But...that means that the driver will not respond to dynamics the way it should. The poster didn't want to hear that, but we all have to face our learning curve sooner or later. Hi-fi speakers, by contrast, are far more linear in terms of dynamics. Play with the cone of a butyl rubber surround hi-fi driver, then play with a pro driver with a crimped paper surround. Notice how much stiffer the pro driver is? That will manifest itself as compression. Want to try an experiment? Take a bass and play it through a stereo system. Lots of laughs. Don't blame me for the shredded drivers, though. You'll bottom the voice coils against the back of the magnet structure and they'll be destroyed. Think of it as a learning experience. Then sit back and meditate on the "why" of the destruction. Very educational. --There are people who care about the Nth degree of sound quality and there are people who don't care a whit as long as they can hum along with the song. Neither way is right or wrong, it's just different priorities. There are people who had simply never realized the differences out there. I loved those people when I was toiling in the high end audio market. Play them something good and there's this period of a minute or two where their faces fall apart, because they had never known that reproduced music could sound so beautiful. After that, you own them. Utterly. They will do absolutely anything to experience that again. Then the next guy through the door asks how loud it will play and you know there's no point in wasting time trying to open him up. Sell him something loud and send him on his way. He's happy. The guy with the good stuff is happy. Some people care. Some don't. It varies. Some people have ordinary equipment because they either don't know it can be better or can't afford better. Some people have good hardware, but don't really need it; they would be just as happy with a "hum along" system, but the salesman did a good job on them and sent them home with a more expensive system than they truly needed. The world is full of people who are satisfied with ear buds because they're convenient. For that matter a lot of people these days are driven by convenience rather than quality. That's their choice to make. Grey

I'd be happy to give my wife a musical instrument, if only she'd play it. (#24 was a while ago...) Sadly, I keep hearing that she waits until I'm gone, then sneaks in and attempts to play one of mine (guitar, hammered dulcimer, etc.), then decides that there's more to it than she thought and gives up. I guess I should be flattered that I "made it look easy," when I was playing, but in the long run it does take a little effort. I'd be glad to help out if she'd only let me. She's got a semi-decent recorder of her own, but doesn't even know where it is. Why give her something she'll only lose? Grey

I had no idea he was sick, so this came out of the blue for me. Now they'll recast Black Panther but it'll never be right. I'll always see Boseman in that part, no matter who they hire to do the job. Grey

Stewart MacDonald has long shank pots. Luthier's Mercantile. Allparts. Think luthier supply houses. Also Antique Electronic. As far as standard parts houses, I don't remember anyone mentioning Allied, but luthier places are more likely to have an array of long shank pots. Don't count on a center detent--that's likely an OEM item that Ibanez had made to spec at the time. If you're clever, you can use two pots (on the same shaft) to construct your own, but it's bulky and inelegant. Depending on how well-stocked your junk box is, you might be able to steal the shaft out of another pot and install it in your ailing pot. Note that this is a fairly invasive procedure, but I've done far crazier things in the fifty-odd years that I've been doing electronics (and gotten away with more than my fair share of them). Grey

You said the split shaft is about to break and that it was visible in the picture. I don't see it, but whatever. It just looks bent. Superglue won't work. It doesn't stick to most plastics. In fact, I use cut-up pieces of milk jugs (polyethylene) in my shop to keep super glue leakage/squeeze outs from getting all over things. I knew someone who attempted to glue the plastic handle of a shower faucet back together. It lasted about a day. In addition, the fumes from the glue made a hazy mess on the surface of the plastic. Claims that super glue will stick to anything are hopelessly optimistic. It works best on things with a slightly rough surface (e.g. ceramics); smooth surfaces aren't good. Superglue doesn't do all that well on metals, either. If you do decide to use super glue, make sure the metal is scrupulously clean. I'd use a paper towel to rub lacquer thinner across the inner surfaces. Lacquer thinner will clean most anything off of anything. At the very minimum, use isopropyl alcohol. Note also that super glue is not very good at space filling, meaning that it doesn't fill gaps. If you're going to glue it, I'd suggest epoxy with a wooden insert. If nothing else is available, cut a toothpick in half with a sharp knife and epoxy the two halves into the gap. Note that epoxy is only so-so at sticking to metal, but it's better than super glue. If the shaft was brass, you could solder one or more pieces of copper wire into place, but from the picture it appears to be aluminum, so soldering is out. If, by chance, you can bend it back into place, it would be a good idea to shim it, regardless, whether it's broken or not. I'm not a big fan of T-18 shafts, but you find them everywhere. You just have to live with it sometimes. Good luck. Grey

Perhaps I missed something, but I didn't see any information as to what's actually wrong with the pot. From the picture it appears that the shaft is bent. If that's all it is, a gentle pry with a screwdriver will generally set things right. As to whether a 250k can be substituted for a 100k, the answer is...it depends. Lacking a schematic of the circuit, I can't say...and I'll bet the schematic will be unobtanium. Me? I'd ream out the hole and put in a standard pot. As long as you can get the knob to fit and look right and it does the job electronically, it won't matter. Or wouldn't to me, anyway. You may feel differently. Long-shaft pots can be a pain to find sometimes so there's a limit as to how much PIA I'll put up with in a situation like this. Or maybe more information was given and I just missed it. That happens when I'm short on sleep (which is pretty much all the time). Grey

I'm seeing 175,219 Covid 19 deaths at this point, so...yeah, we're now officially > 3x the death toll of the Vietnam war. I'm not sure what basis someone might have for differing on the assessment of that particular datum., but I'm sure that's just a failure of imagination on my part. Note that the real death toll is almost certainly higher because there are people dying of Covid who are simply ignored because "he was old and it was just his time to go" so no one does a test. The poor guy goes in the ground and the fact that the virus hastened his demise doesn't get tallied--especially with some people being averse to testing. Still waiting for some dimbulb to pop up and claim that Vietnam was a hoax and any reports of soldiers dying there are fake news. It wouldn't be any stupider than some of the other tin foil hat notions promulgated by certain people. And in other news, we're approaching 5 x the death toll from traffic accidents in the US last year...but I guess some stupid nitwit thinks that's a hoax or fake news, too. Grey

For those who might be interested, today's Covid 19 death count is 174,290, still slightly below the 174,954 representing 3x the Vietnam war death count. Tomorrow's Covid 19 death toll should easily exceed that figure. All in six months or so. Some hoax, eh? Grey

My buddy that I parted company with actually looked kinda smug as I was telling him that things were over. A cat-got-the-canary look. Given that he got two canaries, so to speak, maybe he felt that he came out ahead. I am assuming that there was some deep psychological thing driving him to go after my girlfriend and my other buddy's wife, but what it might be I do not know. It's not as though he had expressed any ill will towards either of us that would explain the matter. We weren't band mates, or at least not at that time. We had played together years before, but that had run its course and he had pretty much quit playing by the end. At least I didn't have to deal with that, too. Grey

Yellowstone would be good, but I tend to think in terms of something space-related that we don't see coming...alien invasion or a meteorite strike, but that doesn't mean we couldn't go for the gold and have a three-fer. Imagine Yellowstone, the ugly-assed aliens from Independence Day, and the meteor(ite) from Armageddon or Deep Impact, all at the same time. Yeah...let's get some serious apocalyptic action going here! I want Jeff Goldblum and Morgan Freeman on my team. Further casting to be announced in the coming weeks. Oh, and can I have Gal Gadot? She doesn't have to be in the movie, I just want her hanging around in my real life. Hey, a guy can dream, can't he? Grey

If you're still trying to come up with a way to back away from your band mates, call it "social distancing of an extreme nature." Maybe a name will make it easier. Whether you have a big conversation with these guys or not is up to you. Maybe it's one of those times where you could just kinda fade away, citing Covid or other obligations, and avoid confrontation. I know my "extreme social distancing" from my erstwhile friend was difficult. To this day, things happen and I think that I'd like to talk to my buddy. No can do. I don't even know where he is anymore, although a friend said he thinks he heard him DJing on a radio station in VA years ago. Who knows? It's difficult to let go of people you care about, but sometimes it's best in the long run. A formal goodbye might give you closure by drawing a line...before and after. Yesterday I was close to them, today I am not. On the other hand, it's hard to do, so maybe it would be easier to just fade away. You can try to change their minds, though I doubt it will work and probably lead to a great deal of animosity. People of that nature are emboldened by the social climate these days; they don't back down because they sense that they're on the ascendancy and feel that their time is coming. In that, they're right, but it doesn't equate to being on the right side of history. There are numerous historical examples of this sort of social movement coming to the fore. In hindsight, not one is viewed in a positive light once the dust settles. That doesn't mean that they don't do it again and again and again... We're in for a rough ride over the next couple of years and your friendships are not the only ones that will be tested. Pretty much everyone will face this sort of crisis. I've lost several friends and acquaintances since the rise of He Who Must Not Be Named, though no one I'm truly close to, fortunately. In some cases I can't say that I'm surprised, but in one case it came out of the blue. I had no idea that he felt that way about certain issues. I look at current events as a litmus test of peoples' personality. They reveal their underlying nature in adversity, whether good or bad. Sometimes it's an unpleasant surprise. If you choose to remain close to your friends, it will cost you, even if it's only ongoing stress. Is it worth the price? Grey

One of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life was to tell one of my two best friends that our friendship was over. Twenty years of close friendship down the drain. He was sleeping with my girlfriend and my other friend's wife. Gawd, what a mess. It was a fraught conversation. My (ex-)girlfriend--who was present for the conversation--was eating it up, which revealed something about her that I had not known--that she was the kind to take pleasure in drama and pain that she had helped create. Well, fine, sweetie-pie. Wish you two well. As it happened, my (ex-)friend and (ex-)girlfriend married, but it didn't last long. I guess I had the last laugh. Still waiting for the chuckles to begin, but it's been quite a while and I still don't feel the least bit mirthful about the whole thing. Anyway, sometimes it's not easy to have those conversations. You have my sympathy. The choice is yours, of course, not mine. I'm sure my advice is clear enough. It's worth what it cost you. You'll have to weigh a hundred factors: Friendship, music, safety, your daughter's safety and comfort, and all the other things on the scales. You read the dial and decide what to do. Grey

By this coming weekend, the United States will cross the dividing line equaling THREE TIMES the death toll of the war in Vietnam. That's 58,318 lost in Vietnam times 3 = 174,954. Our current death toll from Covid 19 stands at 172,511. Given that we're losing about a thousand American citizens a day, we'll get there Friday or by Saturday at the latest. Okay...okay...I get it...they're not really dead. They're just playing dead, right? They're going to jump up and yell, "Just kidding!" and go back to their lives. Their loved ones will wipe their tears and be grateful that it was all just a cruel hoax. What with all the suddenly empty graves, it'll be a while before professional grave diggers need to dig more holes, so they'll be out of jobs and need Federal assistance to get by. Get a bill going to give them financial support. Show some compassion, people! Grave diggers need to eat, too! What the hell is wrong with people that we can lose more people in six months than we lost in the entire, drawn-out, dragging-on-forever Vietnam war, but they don't care? Sickening, is what it is. (...pun intended...I need gallows humor to get past how callous some people are about the suffering of fellow Americans...and the rest of the world, for that matter...) Grey

It's interesting to read the different takes on this. Some people appear to read it as variations on "why can't we all just get along?" and miss, utterly, what I think is the salient point: Is it worth the risk to your health and--potentially--life to play with people who don't take Covid 19 seriously? Advice to talk it out, etc. is well meant, no doubt, but useless in the face of a microscopic virus that has no ears and couldn't care less about your political leanings. It's a crappy world when a public health issue has become politicized. This shouldn't be red or blue, it should be about sick or well; live or dead. The fact that some have politicized it says a great deal about their world view. (Then they complain about a thread with a political subtext? Er...right.) Stay safe...that's what I say. And keep your daughter out of toxic environments. As recent (and historical) events have clearly shown, there are things besides germs that can kill you...one of them is racism. Whether your band mates are a direct threat or not, there will be others who gravitate into their orbit who just might be a problem. Grey

"A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." The quote remains true. It is precisely because of this that we are in the position we're in. These people weren't "convinced" before, they were simply...forced underground by shame, I guess you could say. If you somehow manage to shame them again (and good luck with that...) then they will still be of the same opinion. You're not going to succeed in changing them. They want to be the way they are. It's an emotional matter to them, not a logical one, and you can't argue with an emotional person from a logical stance. They will never listen. They have a deeply vested interest in maintaining their "it's about personal choice" or "it's about freedom and patriotism" or "it's bogus" views, none of which are based in facts; they're based on emotions being inflamed by others with their own agendas. They're proud (note: another emotion) of their positions and see any attempt to change their minds as validation of their crackpot notions. You become the enemy. In their eyes, you're the one who's been duped by nefarious "others" and have no realistic basis for argument. And at the end of the day, you'll still be at risk. As far as the protest post above goes, this sort of thing is precisely why this needs to be talked about. Here is a real world case where someone's life is at risk because of peoples' ignorant attitudes. The person in question happens to be a musician, so he posts his problem here. Suppose he had a band mate with a habit of swilling large quantities of beer before driving the band's van between gigs. Would that discussion be fair game? The putative drunk driver would be putting the band members (and equipment) aboard the van at risk. The argument "well, I've done it lots of times and nothing's ever happened" gets advanced, and perhaps sways some minds, but I think most would agree that drinking and driving aren't a good combination, so anyone in that van would be in a state of elevated risk...yes? But--oh dearie, dearie me--it might offend someone to discuss the problem, because...I don't know, maybe they're worried that the drunk driver's reputation might be harmed or he might get arrested or something, so the attempt to talk about the problem is hushed up. Yet the risk remains, in spite of the attempt to tamp down on the discussion. Nah. Stupid people who refuse to acknowledge that they're putting others at risk--for whatever tin hat or ignorant reason--need to be exposed. They are an active threat to the people around them. Worse yet, it's a threat that's growing as people deny the science of the matter. If, as a nation, we turn from science to superstition and ignorance, then we will all lose in the end. Man, it's a cryin' shame that our nation has lost its spine. All it takes to bring us to our knees is a little piece of fabric across our mouths and noses. Suddenly, half the nation's reduced to whining, sniveling five year-olds who throw tantrums and refuse to do the right thing. Can you imagine what would happen if we were confronted with an even more dire threat? Complete capitulation. The end of America. Disgusting. What happened to our "can do" attitude? I guess we've gone soft. Too much couch time. Too much junk food. Too much junk science. Too much abdication of reason and rational thought. Bah! Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here. Grey