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Still finishing-up the cabinet on this amp. I had a couple setbacks and the holidays and cold weather has not been allowing me to get the tolexing done. I did tolex the rear panels Tuesday. Next up is to fill some knot cracks in the cabinet body and then wait for another nice 75-degree day that coincides with a day off work like I had Tuesday.

For now, very very much needed cold rain in Central California so I'm not complaining.

My DAW died on me (Roland VS2480) so I've also been busy getting a new setup going in my home-studio. I've switched to Cakewalk SONAR Professional and boy am I liking it A LOT. Thinking I will probably upgrade to full Platinum version.

What's "cold weather" in Central California?

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http://pdfelectronics.com

If I told you that, you Canadians would be in full-on ROFL-mode!!!

But seriously, yeah we are total whimps. "Cold" to us here is if it dips to 30 degrees Fahrenheit as the overnight low. On days like that it might get up to 40 for a high. Right now it's about 61 degrees outside. Nice tolexing weather.

But our extreme weather is in the summer... we can get over 110 degrees several days in a row.

Right now we are in an epic drought. It's at the point where it's an emergency situation. There are entire towns where all of their deep-water wells are dried-up and farmers are letting their fields go fallow. Not a good situation for one of the main food suppliers of the entire continent to be in.

I've been reading about the drought. That's very scary for fellow North Americans.

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

I finally had a day where I felt pretty good, the weather was beautiful, and I had all day to do nothing. So I spent all day yesterday tolexing the cabinet body. I am happy with the results for the most part. I need some practice on inside corner curves, like where faceplate cutouts go. I can't figure out how to get the entire inside lip covered cleanly to save my life. Outside corners... well about half of them turned out ok but that's the real reason they make those chrome corner "protectors" right?

Hoping for the "big reveal" this Monday night at our next rehearsal. If not then, next Monday for sure and just in time for our next show!

On the drought front... We've had a pretty good stretch of rain and snow over the last month or so. Many reservoirs are at the highest level they've been at in several years. The big unknown is the amount of snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. If the mountain-pass highways are still closed mid-June, we'll know it's been a good year. Something fun to watch is the Yosemite National Park website for the progress on plowing the Tioga Pass Road (state highway 120.) It's a dangerous and slow process and there are communities on the other side of the pass that need it to open quickly every year because they rely on the tourism $$$. In heavy snow years it can open in late June or even early July! Something fun to do every spring/summer is ride the motorcycle on the Sonora Pass highway on the day it opens. In a good year, it's like riding through a snow canyon with snow "cliffs" 8 to 10 feet high on either side of the road at the top of the pass. Makes for cool pictures.

The trick on inside corners is to insert a gusset before tolexing, then mitre your corners and glue over top. I'm sure the reveal will go well.

Always interesting to hear about how others live in this world. We had a light winter, with onyl a could of snow storms and it seems an early spring - at least so far.

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Thanks. I'll look into that technique Stephen.

The reveal went great! There were tears and all of my worries about how this would turn out went away with the first blow of the harp... it sounds absolutely amazing. Kenny was blown away. The sound is so fat and it has the perfect amount of breakup without any feedback in it's ideal setting.

"That's the sound I've always been looking for" was what Kenny said. Our other guitar player, Dave, who has played with him for 22 years was blown away too. He'd been trying to help Kenny get his "ideal tone" for years. He was using a modified Laney LC15R and a Fender Champ and had pretty darn good tone from those, but sometimes needed an overdrive pedal and sometimes hearing the harp was pretty tough. They were also lacking in that compressed "fatness" that you could get if you had a full-on Bassman 4x10 or a Sonny Jr. Dave said "this is the tone we have always been searching for but could never get."

Time will tell if he wants me to make any tonal adjustments after he's put it through its paces for a few weeks. I told him not to be afraid to ask because I fully expect that will need to be done once he's used it for a while. I am thinking we may need the VRM... we'll see how the first show goes next weekend.

He loved the design too... another worry I had because it was a shot-in-the-dark picking out the colors for the cabinet. Turns out it's his favorite color!

I'm going to try and get him into my studio this week for some recording tests. We are about ready to start a new album so I want to get my technique for micing this amp down before we all get together. Plus - I want to post some clips! I've got a few forums waiting to hear this thing.

Must be feeling proud!

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Yes. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face Monday evening.

This is such a huge blessing to him because there is no way he could ever afford an amp of this caliber. The "band fund" had been steadily growing over the last year and it covered the whole cost of the parts and I donated the labor and a spare output transformer to the cause.

And I scored a really sweet deal on the speakers... special thanks to the head-honcho at Jensen's USA distributor who pointed me to it! Those P10R ALNICOs sound great for this purpose and have the added benefit of making the amp lighter than if they were ceramics!