The thing is most of music discussion is “heres a song” but nobody really tries to listen unless its already a song they like. Thats fine its not a criticism but the overall discussion lacks a dive into what music is as not something to be consumed or background noise but such a strong medium for emotion.
I want something like a megathread for music every month where whoever partakes will share not only songs but albums or bands where we talk about what it means to us and why it should be considered for listening. Giving each other recommendations and engaging with each others choices and why it gives us resonance.
I grew up with my dad being a musician. Every car journey, every school holiday i would browse his huge selection of CDs. We’d write music together he’d remix my tracks id review his and we’d discover band after band after band together.
For me this was like half my personality just sharing even if we didnt have the same taste at the time id learn to appreciate his and him to mine it just hit different. Watching him rehearse and play live, giving feedback on what he had been writing.
Bring back music, bring back standing in a HMV using the disintegrating headphones to listen to random tracks.
Anyway yeah id like to see if me running a monthly or idk quarterly music comm megathread would be something the peeps would like.
I remember sharing some electronic stuff with some guy and called it EDM and he said ERM NO SWEATY THATS NOT EDM and i instilled a hatred for genre purists ever since. Its electronic wub shutup you dickhole
Imagine conflating Darude, Phuture, and Haddaway
Couldn't be me
I bet you sniff tube amps for the right temperature
...OK, to be absolutely fair, the Mesa Boogie DC-3 is prone to component failure in its power amp section, and smell is one of the first indicators that you've lost a coupling capacitor and/or screen grid resistor (or two) and your power tubes are about to red plate and burn up. You'd give that thing a sniff every so often too. Mostly I just hit it with the instant-read thermometer, though.
...the sniff test is less helpful on the Peavey 6505 (or 5150, same diff) because it has the opposite problem. The traces on the PCB are just a little too narrow (even in the later revisions where they over-flow them with extra solder) and the fucking molex ribbon cables connecting the mains input to the power amp board are WAY too small, so what typically happens to those is that the tube heater supply circuit burns itself into oblivion because 6 VDC at whatever amperage is just a little more than the goddamned fucking 28 AWG wires in the accountant-friendly ribbon cable can take, so you will randomly lose heater supply current altogether. This is sometimes accompanied by a burning smell when the molex cooks, but once the wire is gone, you just don't have tube heaters anymore. This can also affect the preamp stage's tubes. So the sniff test works here, but really only as the catastrophic malfunction is actually happening.
...then there's the Mesa Rectifier series, where it just looks like Randall Smith was on copious amounts of peyote and wanted to jam-pack as many parts as he could fit onto a single-layer PCB, and the end result looks like a new-old-stock Sprague orange drop capacitor spares bin threw up all over it. The traces on these boards are so fucking tiny, so petite, so demure, that it's pointless even having protection fuses in-circuit because THE PCB IS THE FUSE. You'll definitely smell this one if and when the magic smoke gets out.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Airpods
I am not an audiophile. I am still allowed within 500 feet of a Sam Goody.
I wore shure se315’s half my life to the point MULTIPLE guys flirted with me after seeing them.
They were dude magnets.
Otherwise sennheiser but those were not dude magnets
Wondering what a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50xes gets you
You can tell when my 70's Fender Champ is working because it smells like stale beer.
#SilverfaceGang represent, lol
My 70's Princeton Reverb smells like burning whatever cleaning chemicals I used on it after rescuing it from a scrap heap and trying to scrub off the bird shit 30 years ago. And very confused Radio Shack capacitors wondering how they got to where they are. ...I should swap those out soon.
Edit: Incidentally, if you're ever looking to clean the tolex on an old amp, the secret sauce is convertible top cleaner for cars. Meguiars Convertible Top Cleaner (P/N G2016, not to be confused with the all-purpose detailing spray) was one of the best you could get, but they discontinued it a few years ago. If you can find old stock, it's worth snagging. Otherwise, 303 Tonneau Cover/Convertible Top Cleaner (P/N 30571CSR) is decent, and I had all right luck with Bling Sauce "Topless Sauce" cleaner on an old Marshall MG100. You will need to remove the amp chassis and the speaker before you spray this shit anywhere near your amp, though, since it's water-based and will do not-nice things to electronics and speaker cones.
My amp collection makes my garage look like a pawn shop lmao. Found my champ at a yard sale in the owners garage. He was using it as a speaker for his radio. 100 bucks, some new caps, and a new speaker and the thing is one of my main recording amps.
That's awesome. My Princeton was in a warehouse full of old CRT monitors and terminal machines that were slated for disposal. I was working for an e-waste recycler/disposal company at the time that would buy stuff by the truckload from the local Army bases, repurpose what could be resold as a functioning desktop PC, and part out the rest for salvage. Somehow a '74ish Princeton Reverb and another silverface-era Bassman 12" combo wound up in with a bunch of e-waste. My boss let me take both home for $50.
I ended up selling the Bassman about a year later for pizza money because I was flat broke and didn't know what I had. I literally thought it was a bass amp
That Bassman story hurts, they sound so nice and nasty cranked with a touch of boost. My favourite amp in my collection was actually one a friend of mine made me to shut me up: an almost one to one clone of the original Randall Smith modded 1965 Princetons.
I'm going to try saying 'sniff tube amps' to other people now to see if it's also their activation phrase
It's like the Voight-Kampff test, but for figuring out if someone has ever intentionally done amp tech work