Thermionic Studios

We've been pretty clear, at least in an earlier article, about our feelings about Metallica, so we won't belabor them here. However, in order to be consistent with and to those feelings, it seems only fair to give credit where credit is due. Metallica is launching a reissue project where they're taking their cassette release from 1982, "No Life Till Leather", and remastering it and apparently a bunch of other material, and releasing it.

So Pat Furlan has a really great Youtube channel showing him repairing and modifying lower-power (and a few higher power) tube amps. This particular amp is a GREAT sounding Gibson GA-5T, also known as the "Skylark". Watch a very competent tech describe his troubleshooting and fixing of a tube amp:

Fans of old Orange and Matamp amplifiers rejoice!

Planet of the Amps has lots of old amps for you to drool over. Planet of the Amps was put up by Joel Wheeler, who owns Electric Amp Company, USA.

It just so happens that a lot of downtuned Fuzz/Doom bands (starting most famously, with Sleep and their crusade to get as many old Oranges as they could to revive them...) LOVE the sound of the amps that Planet of the Amps features.

Most of the metal that's up on Bandcamp is screetching banshee or growling cookie monster nonsense. My own belief, is that bands put out music like this because they can't get vocalists who are any good and end up doing the banshee/cookie monster stuff to cover up that fact. How these bands ever get listeners is beyond me. However, we've found a few gems to share with you and they will hopefully tide you over for the next few days...

Whether on purpose, or just by dint of fate and coincidence, you've probably heard of the Donovan song "Hurdy Gurdy Man", but you probably never learned what a Hurdy Gurdy is.

Check out this Turkish electric Hurdy Gurdy awesomeness:

If this isn't one of the coolest things you've seen in a while, please feel free to use the contact form to complain to me. :)

(Another long post...) So this is an amp we received at Thermionic Studios a few months back. We've finally had an opportunity to take a look at it. It was a "steal" off eBay at $150 + $30 shipping. It stank of stale cigarettes. The headshell was dinged quite badly. The tolex, while a cool pattern, was brittle, ratty, and tearing off in multiple spots. This amp had clearly been abused. Even the original Randall nameplate was trashed and had to be repainted.

This article is more for humor's sake than anything else... However, that doesn't mean that the opportunity still cannot be taken advantage of. When I get myself a new band together, I have a feeling that I'll be giving this a shot, if only for the fun of it.

I had a great time sitting in with Tim at The COAR Radio show, on Thursday Feb 19th. I was invited to come back on the 20th, but was unable to do so. I came to San Jose to help my mom with an eye surgery. She had to be seen for her post-operation check exactly the same time that I would have gone in on Friday, the 20th. So unfortunately I wasn't able to join him again. Fortunately, and more importantly, my Mom's eye surgery procedure was successful...

Hello! I have come up to the San Jose area for a few days and have met with an old radio broadcasting friend, Timothy J. Tim and I used to have a show on KFJC (89.7 FM, Foothill Junior College, Los Altos Hills) called the Tuesday Radio Tabloids where we would get a bunch of ridiculous tabloid stories on the air and take phone calls on them. (I also worked on the air at a commercial radio station called KSJO, before it got sold off and went Spanish-language, but that's another story...) As happens, our careers took different directions, and I moved to Long Beach.