Eeeee, I just ordered a guitar amp! And not just any amp, a proper vacuum tube one. Feast your eyes on this orange monstrosity!
I think my favourite feature (and a significant part of why I chose this one specifically) is that it has a switch at the back of that goes between "Headroom" and "Bedroom" modes. In Headroom mode, it puts out a full 15W, or 7W if you flick the "half power" switch. In Bedroom mode, that's dropped to 1W and 0.5W at half power, but it doesn't appreciably change the actual sound of the thing, it's just not nearly as loud so you can play it inside without annoying the shit out of your neighbours or significant other.
I'm also getting a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Gen 3 USB audio interface and a Two Notes Torpedo Captor load box so I can hook it up to the computer and do some proper recording. (This page has a good description of what a load box is: https://travelingguitarist.com/what-is-a-guitar-load-box/. I only found out about them last night as I was researching how to hook the amp up to the computer since it doesn't have a headphone jack or line out.)
EXCITE!
I don't really have a decent place to keep the new guitar amp I'm getting because it's about 2cm too deep to fit sideways beside my desk so I did some DIY today and built a little platform for it to sit above the power board in the corner!
Got some more bits and bobs for my new guitar setup. The tuner is going to be immediately useful — saves me having to get the iPad out and plug it in in order to use the tuner in BIAS FX Mobile — but the cables are useless until the load box and audio interface arrive in a few weeks (the guitar amp itself was in stock, but neither of the other items were).
Because I'm a huge dork, I took some fancy photos of the amplifier today. 😁 https://www.flickr.com/photos/virtualwolf/albums/72177720301086416
(Image descriptions: an extremely retro-looking orange guitar amplifier with a wheat-coloured grill on the front, and two up-close photos of the various dials on the top of it.)
The load box arrived! It's very cool being able to have my sweet tube amp sounds but also being able to record them straight to the computer without fucking around with a microphone setup.
The load box comes with a license to use Two Notes' "Wall of Sound" DAW plugin that simulates speaker cabinets (with a limited selection of their full suite of available cabs), and it always amazes me how tacky audio software user interfaces tend to be. 😂
Also my next batch of guitar-related bits and bobs arrived. Looking forward to getting the new strings onto my guitar, I realised it's sounding pretty muddy at this point given I haven't changed them since I bought it two years ago. 😬
There we go, one fully restrung and intonated guitar! (I haven't chopped the overhang fully off the top of the strings yet because I'm not convinced I wound them around the tuning pegs enough. Going to give it a couple of days and make sure it's not slipping out of tune.)
I can definitely tell how much brighter the sound is with the new strings, even without having plugged it into the amp yet.
@virtualwolf You have soooo much fun ahead. Be sure to share your recordings when they’re ready! What kind of music do you play?
@drh I'm a huge metalhead but I'm VERY much at the "still learning" phase right now, so I wouldn't say I technically play _any_ sort of music. 😅
@ninja Haha nice!
@virtualwolf so much tack (and wasted c/gpu to render the damn things)
@drveej Haha totally.
Huzzah, the audio interface arrived! Now to wait for the load box so I can actually, y'know, make full use of said audio interface.