Just a couple cheap hangers from Wally World and a couple pieces of 2X4, weighed down by the Bassman 100 head (the Bassman was heavy enough, the Peavey PA was added after)
Music near and by Doug Cassidy Anacortes, WA 98221
Just a couple cheap hangers from Wally World and a couple pieces of 2X4, weighed down by the Bassman 100 head (the Bassman was heavy enough, the Peavey PA was added after)
Pignose Hog 30
The Pignose Hog is supposed to be a portable battery (and AC) powered bass amp. It does work ok for that. I played some surprisingly long outdoor jams with it on battery power. It keeps up with a couple acoustic guitars, no problem. Unfortunately, it has old school rechargeable batteries (at least mine does, I bought it around 1997), which means they die (permanently) fairly young.
The Roland Micro Cube runs on 6 AA batteries or AC. It will hold its own with an acoustic, and I’ve even used it for bass while playing with an acoustic player. But, it wont go very loud and when it does, it starts to distort the speaker pretty badly. The good thing about this is the amp modeling. No, it doesnt really sound like a Mesa on the R-Fier setting, but it does try. Also it has some FX and reverb, so thats cool.
The Hog really only has one sound, and it’s not that fun to play guitar thru; there’s not even any reverb. My micro cube had a blown speaker, so it was about worthless.
Hmmm, if only I could combine the best features of each amp, I’d have a pretty cool little portable amp…
Well, I do have a screw gun, a skill saw and some plywood…
I’VE GOT IT! The FrankenHog!
The guts come out of the roland real easy, just a few screws:
Likewise, the Pignose just unscrews:
[br]
Guts of the Pignose: I mainly took this apart to change out the power switch so I could switch on both amps at once. I replaced the rotary 1P1T with a toggle DPDT. I put the cool pignose knob on the master volume.
[br]
Here’s the pignose speaker fitted into the new board. Note my use of extreme fancy quality plywood, finished with a few swipes of ultra-fine 60 grit sandpaper.
[br]
Attaching the Roland guts to the front:
To get it to fit, and to be able to access what was originally the back (and had now become the top), I bent down the chassis and moved the circuit board to the new location:
When I installed the front into the cabinet, there wasnt much room to put plugs into the Roland part. I’ll need a 90* angle cord.
Its ALIVE! I take the “headphone/line out” from the Roland into the rear input of the Hog. It works pretty well. I like having the verb and FX in the hog as well as the distortions on tap.
Stratocaster Mod, featuring
[br]
Bridge on in Series, out of phase switching, funky capacitors, ‘tele’ mode, neck and bridge
The show of a lifetime. 2005. Photos by Dug.
Photos from the night Tim and James Moffitt, Mike Rothmeyer, Samantha and I ate at the Dragonfish and saw a killer Bauhaus show. Circa 2005.
After playing with the wiring of my strat, as i was winding up and tuning my strings for the umpteenth time, I was thinking it would be cool to cut the pickguard in two. Be able to leave the pups’ half on the guitar and play with the wiring by unscrewing the other half. Kinda like on a tele, i guess. You could test new wiring without even putting the bottom half back on if you’re careful
I picked up some of these connectors they are quite easy to wire, I hacked those mounting plates off the sides. Nice and small.
Then, while doing that, I thought, well, if i had a d-sub extension cord, I could just cut it in half like this with one end male, one end female. Get out the dremmel and try to cut off all the extra stuff on the ends. I dunno, might work.
Something to think about, if anyone is going to try to do this and have it be really good looking, you’ll need 2 pgs for every module. Because, youre going to have a kerf cut out of the pg and you’ll need another bottom, cut at least a kerf width taller, to make it match up exactly. It looks ok with the saw kerf cut out of it though. I had Josh’s dad saw it with a pretty thin bandsaw blade.
The + and – of all three pups, plus the ground (trem/body/etc) and hot to jack are on the connector. There was one spot left over, I stuck a grey wire on it just on the weird chance that i need it someday.
Here is how Wolf did it
(www.1728.org/indexfun.htm)
Wiring Diagram
Phase switch: top; Bridge on with Vol and Tone override below
Phase switch (puts neck in opposite phase.)
Bridge Override or “Blower” or “11 switch” (Engages bridge pup only, volume and tone out of circuit)
5 way switch:
Master Tone, Master Volume.
[br]
And here’s where i put the switches:
Tones: Well, afa the 5way, the different tone is N+B: Twwwannngggy. It’s cool for countryish.
The phase switch (when N+B or N+M) makes it thin and hollow on clean tones. Usefull for funk rhythms. On dirty sounds, the out of phase is pretty cool sounding, the distortion fills it in, gives it an “inside-out” kinda sound.
Bridge Override or “Blower” or “11 switch” (Engages bridge pup only, volume and tone out of circuit): This is really cool. Its just a little bit louder and treble-iyer than regular position 5. Nice to be able to hit that for full power blast.
