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I gotta hand it to Fender, these new amplifier designs are amazing:

I wouldn't mind building one of those for myself.

Just posted a tutorial on how to mount the pots and the LED for a cigar box Stella amp build. Let me know what you think!

Today Newt Gingrich was on the front page of the newspaper, and the front page of the business section had a picture of a man walking through airport security while still wearing his coat and shoes.

HELP SOMEONE HAS KIDNAPPED ME AND SENT ME BACK IN TIME TO THE 90s!

On the other hand, wait a minute! It's time to buy Apple stock at 7 bucks a share!

(Here's the Semisonic lyric I was thinking of when I wrote the title: "Closing time - time for you to go back to the places you will be from.")

I just put up a quick page on how to mount a speaker to a cigar box if you are making a cigar box amplifier. All you need is a drill, a couple of bits, a screwdriver, and pliers.

As you can see, you drill the holes in the box to make the speaker grille you want to have. Then mount the speaker to the box with machine screws and nuts.

(If you don't have any machine screws and nuts around the house, believe it or not Home Depot has half a wall of machine screws and nuts in little baggies, you just get the size you need. I got 1 inch screws so I knew there wouldn't be any problem with the length. These screws are 6-36 screws, if you are using a different diameter of screw then you would use a different diameter of drill bit for the screw holes.)

My web host recently moved my website over to a new server, and there were some issues with The Move. Sadly I didn't notice these issues until a week after it happened, which basically ruined any chance of turning this into a smooth recovery. In fact, I didn't even know A Move was taking place because I didn't check the e-mail account my host sent the notification to. My bad.

So Hello! This website is coming to you from exactly one week in the past!*

In all seriousness, I have all of the content that I added over the past week available to me, and I will be adding that back in as time allows. And if you have placed an order in the past week I have either already sent it or I will send it tomorrow.

I have, as far as I know, fixed all of the issues related to The Move. But if you come across anything weird or something you think should be fixed, or a missing page, or what have you, PLEASE let me know, right here in the comments. (If you do not see a link for posting comments, click on the title of this post and it should show up.)

Thanks!

[*] I can't wait to see who wins the big game on Saturday, the Bruins or the Canucks! (My money is on the Bruins.)

For Christmas I had a number of people on my list, and I had no idea what to get them. After a bit of thinking I decided to get Sugru for everyone!

Mainly, I wanted a couple packs of sugru for myself but wasn't sure I could go through the entire 12 pack in 6 months. Sugru does have an expiration date and I didn't want to waste it.

But wait, what is sugru? Sugru is an adhesive, moldable, permanent silicone putty. What does that mean?

Think of things that would be better in your life with a little silicone putty. Your paring knife is wicked sharp but the handle is just a little too small? Build a new custom handle! You like your eyeglasses but they don't have the little pads that keep them from slipping down your nose? Add new pads! Got a crack in your lens cap? Fix it!

I got one 12 pack of sugru from Adafruit, and on Christmas at the party I opened it up and let everyone take the colors they wanted. I had never used any before but I jumped right in and cracked open an orange pack. I used that to repair a frayed iphone cable and used the other half of the pack to insulate my mom's house key (she keeps freezing her fingers on it when she goes to unlock the door.)

Everyone loved the sugru and instantly thought of a ton of things to do with it.

For my next pack, I'm going to repair a broken doll and fix the broken clip on my pedometer. I haven't done it yet though. Turns out the instructions point out that if you are susceptible to allergies, or if you have sensitive skin, you probably want to wear gloves while handling sugru before it cures. I am neither susceptible to allergies, nor do I have sensitive skin. But a year or so ago I developed a sensitivity to traditional photographic chemicals and I had to switch to non-traditional photo chemicals. And about a half hour after handling the sugru I noticed that familiar prickling skin feeling that I got when using film developer.

So I'm relegated to using gloves. That's okay I guess but I don't have any gloves on hand, so it'll have to wait until I can get to the store.

If you are interested, check out all of the cool things that people are using sugru for!

I have a plan for a full sized telecaster (actually several telecasters, but let's start with this one first). Alas, the wood that I bought for it badly warped before I had a chance to even cut out a body outline, so I scrapped it. I had that wood sitting around for a couple of months and then it went from perfectly straight to super cupped and twisted in less than a week.

As far as the plankocaster goes, I'm still chipping away at it. I made the first mistake! I was levering wood out of the neck pickup cavity only to discover that I was really denting the surface of the guitar with the lever action. So instead of a nice straight 90 degree cut into the wood, it's much more rounded.

I've started planning and gathering materials for a concert sized cigar box ukulele. I know I have the right cigar box around here but I have to dig it out of my pile. Not sure exactly where it is. And I can see the neck wood, it's in the far corner of the room. I'm going to have to move quite a few things to even lay a hand on it, let alone move it.

Great classic motown groove:

Great lyrics, great voice, great build up:

This is smooth, you wouldn't expect smooth from a ukulele and acoustic bass:

But when I'm up visiting my mom for Thanksgiving, I can turn it up to 11:

I decided I wanted to make a telecaster. My first plan was to build a body blank by gluing up a bunch of pine planks we have around the house. I had it all figured out, but when I explained my plan to my wife, she quickly proved it would never work because I'd have to plane the boards down too much, so if I wanted the right depth I'd have to glue them three deep and three across and if you figure out the math and divide the cosine by the tangent of the hypotenuse we totally don't have enough wood.

Then she said "Why don't you use those big thick boards we got from your mom?"

Big thick boards? Holy moley! There are three of them, all of them too small for a tele body, drat. I tried to fit them together in a way that I could glue them up to make one body but there was no way to do it that made sense.

I'm still not sure what I want to do with the other two boards, but this one I decided I'd turn into a plankocaster. Simplest possible thing.

And, I'm going to do it without the use of any power tools. As my wife says, if you're working with hand tools, you make mistakes way slower. (She built a book case and put the dados in with a wood chisel!)

Here's the board. I figured it was pine. It's super light, and when you tap it, it rings like a bell.

It's totally amazing and I can't wait until I completely screw it up. First step is to tape up a plan:

Make sure it's lined up square on the plank:

Start chiseling out wood:

And when that smell hits the nose. it is the most amazing thing, this isn't pine, it's CEDAR! And it's very fractury, it wants to split along the grain like nobody's business. I better make a stop cut all along the neck pocket just in case:

It comes out so fast and so easy I'm taking it really slow:

I can't tap it the other direction because it splits like nobody's business and I'm afraid the chisel will get away from me!

Here's a night's work:

Look at how tight that grain is! And how massive this tree must have been!

Like I said, I can't wait until I completely screw it up.