KaPLOW! There goes the power tubes… so I decided to take some time and really invest in the overall sound of my Marshall JCM2000 DSL100 by retubing and rebiasing the beast.  I had some great friends in the studio recording a few months ago. The guitar player Andy had a hot rodded jcm900 and I was really digging on the sound. I picked his brain and got some great insight into tubes and amp circuits, feeling brave I decided to jump head first into hot rodding my head (that doesn’t sound right).

So I decided to first try some new power tubes (JJ EL34s). I threw these suckers in and decided that I would go a little lower on the bias then marshall suggests. Personally I think they are a little too conservative with the settings. Marshall suggests a 90MV balanced voltage. This leaves the sound a bit bright and whiny for my taste. Since I wanted something with balls I decided to knock this down to about 87.5 MV. WOW punchy and tight great F**king power tubes.

The problem was that I was still feeling like I really had to blast it to get them to break up nice. After a quick call to my man Andy, he suggested pulling 2 of the power tubes and running the amp at 50w instead of 100w. BAM there it was. I was now replacing all that headroom with a warm crunchy chunk of guitar tone. I was ecstatic.

So now I had to battle the preamps. I ordered some JJ ECC83s (12ax7s) replacements for the original tubes. I threw them in and buttoned it up.. holy shit, that’s a lot of gain. Listen, if you want the most amazing death metal sound you could ever hope for, these are the tubes for you. Me, not so much.. So I followed up the order with a set of JJ ECC832′s these guys should reduce the gain enough to make me happy… Not the case :( although I did throw one on the V4 inverted socket which gave me some really great clarity, I was still unhappy with the overall tone of all the gain stages..

So here we are today. After a few more quick texts to my man Andy, I think I am going to get some Tung Sol 12ax7′s these are supposed to be really warm and chunky. I’m going to couple them with some ecc803′s that will round out the mids and hope for the best… Ill post some sound clips when the new tubes come in.. But I am crossing my fingers that I might just have the right combination…

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Well being that it was my birthday and I have a lot going on over the next few months, I decided that I should go get that sleeve started before I don’t have a chance to get anything done. I called upon my favorite and only tattoo artist Jamie (Jammer) at immortal ink in Flemington, NJ.

I have known Jamie for a few years now, in fact I got one of my first tattoos from her when she first started doing them at the lions den in New Hope, PA.  She has always done excellent work and she entertains the fact that I over analyze everything. I openly admit that I am difficult in the chair, but I am super happy that I have been able to find someone that can deal with it and that does the quality of work she does.

So that being said, she has started a full sleeve for me. Its going to be a hyper mechanical music sleeve with some guitars and piano type contraptions, lots of gears wires etc.  We started with the guitar piece which I love, and we will be doing some more outlines of the other parts in later February. Until then I hope that you all visit her site, she does some amazing things with crafts that I think everyone should own.

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So a friend of ours went away to amsterdam last year. We decided it would be a good idea to turn his cubicle into a pirate ship. A little paint along with some hard work and it came out awesome. Here is a step by step recount of the project.

Step 1: Cleaning Time!

In order to make space for all the great props, we had to completely remove everything from his cube. This took a little finagling and a screw driver, but eventually we were able to empty it out.

One of the most important parts of this project that kept us out of the dog house was that he would be able to work when it was completed. So we really took care to make sure that he had a little “work area”. Considering he is a developer, all he really needed was his computer and keyboard. So it worked out really well.

Step 2: The Props

So What do you need to make a good pirate ship? Well, almost certainly you need a cannon. This one was constructed out of cardboard that I die cut to fold into a cylinder. They I used an old xerox box and some corners off a pizza box to make the base. I painted it all with flat acrylic spray paint.

The other item you need is a mast. I made this out of an old refrigerator box that cut up in the same fashion as the cannon. I made this in 2 tiers so it could easily be broken down to fit into my car. I cut a hole in the center of the masts to stack them with a wrapping paper tube. I also used a wrapping paper tube for the arms to hold the sail. The top was the hardest part, I had to carefully cut and shape a bird’s eye nest out of old pizza boxes and left over scraps. Getting a perfect circle was hard, but a little string and a marker did thetrick.

What is a pirate ship without a treasure chest!! Bob constructed the treasure chest out of old xerox boxes. He put in a faux top which he painted to look like it was filled with treasure. To top it off he got some plastic gold coins at the local dollar store and spread them across the top to make it seem really full. Our good friend Tamara even made an awesome treasure map out of burnt paper.

Step 3: The Foundation

Well, it was easy to see that we would need to paint that walls in order for it to seem like you were on the ocean and in a ship. So we used 36″ white packing paper to line the walls of his cube. It came on a roll it was disposable, strong and cheap, perfect! So we spray painted a base for the ocean and clouds then hung it all up. We then had one of our artist friends, Edgar, paint a mural all the way around of the ship. It came out great!

Then we needed to decide what to do with the floor. As you know, pirate ships aren’t carpeted. A quick trip to the local home depot helped uncovered a 9×9 roll of scrap linoleum with a wood floor pattern.I snatched it up for $13 and we laid it down as the deck of the ship.

The foundation was complete. Now we just need to add some 3D elements to make it really shine.

Step 4: The Devil is in the Details

This was by far my favorite and the most creative part of this project. To make the cube look like more then just a painting with wood floor, we added some little accessories to detail the ship.

The first thing we added some cardboard corner pieces that were crushed in a washing machine box. They were skewed in such a way that it made them look like elaborately carved rails. We then painted them with some textured paint to make them look like wood. We hung them on the walls and made spindles out of packing paper to simulate the ships rails.

We were lucky enough to find an old hammock which we chopped up and used pieces to accent the rails and make it look like cargo netting.

Another quick trip to the dollar store, by Jai, helped us find some candle stick holders that looked like the handles of a ships wheel. We carefully painted and attached them to a styrofoam ring we found and double sided taped it to the monitor.

Step 5: Put on your eye patches we’re going sailing

With everything in place it was easy to drop in the props (sail, cannon, treasure chest). We also had the company phone tech change his phone to say – Arrrrrggghh when it rang. That was really the icing on the cake.

After everything was in place we just needed our captain… One Eyed Willie (goonies refrence).We found him around the corner at the Shoprite and gave him hat and an eyepatch…everything was complete.

Three days, 12 pounds of cardboard, 10 ounces of paint, 3 spray cans and $25 later we had a pirate ship. Needless to say it was a company attraction for the entire month of October. Video and image gallery coming soon!

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