Sometimes it's really only possible to recognize an earlier victory that you've captured only after you've put a whole lot more hard work in. Going through this slog was pretty tough. And it was only after starting to go through it that I'd realized the possible mess I'd gotten myself into.

Here's a view of the carnage after the fact (what we'd won)...

It was an auction site that was new to us, and a slightly new way of bidding, so there was some discomfort, naturally. But the site and the auctioneer also made available something I'd never been able to do before on eBay: Actually go look at the real, physical items I would be bidding on!

So we've been doing a lot of work to put information into the wiki here on the site. We've completed the catalog of all the pedals we have. This doesn't include just the brand-name already-assembled pedals by larger manufacturers. We actually also undertook a lot of work scanning different websites and companies that offer more than just the run-of-the-mill pedals and found ourselves drawn into kit pedals and pcb-only pedals. Now, of course this site is about tube amps, and tube amps alone, while they take us to the promised land of heavy music, they won't alone keep it interesting.

We've been meaning to post something about our encounter with Lace Pickups a couple of weeks ago, but just saw this from Brian Wampler's YouTube channel. It just was posted today on YouTube:

We bring you the Natural Music Guild of Santa Ana / Massie Amplifiers "The Vibe" 5 watt amp.

Yes, there's been a hiatus in posting. We're pretty sure that for the most part, you don't care about the story why. Maybe we'll get to that in the coming days. It's a sad tale of a tragically flawed leader. Bye-bye KLBP.

So let's pick up at any old random spot... Actually this isn't a random spot, but it may seem that way to you... We've picked up a lot of tube amps in the past few months that we haven't shared yet. We picked up a few Marshalls. We picked up a VHT gone bad (and sold cheap!) that was going to start life as an 18-watter, but that we're going to turn into a 50-watt beast. And there are more still...

It's been a while since we've posted here. Unfortunately, the sad truth of the matter is that we've gotten involved in a community radio project. The hope of which is to give ourselves a radio presence locally here in Long Beach, California, and also with the audio stream that will be flowing online from the station. Unfortunately, there's been some legal developments, which naturally are taking our time instead of working on actually building new content and building the business here for Thermionic Studios.

Back around in 2010, I found on eBay what was claimed to be an Randall Amp head (RG-80) owned by George Lynch on the Tooth-and-Nail tour (Dokken's second album).

I ended up having to purchase the amp when the offer I made on eBay was accepted!

So you may remember that we had taken in a 1980s Randall "RG100 Classic". While we didn't take any pictures of the amplifier when it first arrived here at Thermionic Studios, we did take some after we'd broken it down a bit for repair. We also took pictures of some of the repair work, including using Bondo where necessary.

Well, here's the finished product.
(More pictures and many more notes inside...)

Goddamnit does Bondo stink. It's really bad.

It smells so bad, that it reminds me of an incident when I was in college, when my friend and I got drunk on potato vodka and rode our bicycles to the local mall. At the mall, we wandered into a Kay-Bee toy store. While we were in there, goofing around, my friend, Anton, cracked open a liquid glitterglobe that was on the end of a pencil. He proceeded to flick the glitterglobe juice on me. The juice had an odor that hit me almost immediately, and as a result, I laughed so hard I peed my pants...

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.