Too numerous to count, Joe.

Of course, one has to realize just how LOOOOOOONG I've been at it, received my first tape recorder for Christmas at the tender age of around 8, started making home recordings of our family ensembles, etc. and had the nerve to attempt "on location" recordings at church within the first year of having that device.

Wasn't long before I wanted more. Stereo deck with the magic of "Sound on Sound" was next, that led kind of naturally into early attempts at multitracking.

Then along came the intense interest in the Electric Guitar that hit my generation so hard by the latter half of the 60s or so. Being a young ham radio enthusiast, the concept of home brewing various bits of electrical/electronics gear was a natural, often converting audio devices designed and built with other intent into Electric Guitar oriented stuff. While in high school, "built" my own two twelve twin amplifier that utilized a tube chassis power amp strip that came out of an old Wurlitzer jukebox. Also found this old 30s or 40s vintage Master Intercom station in someone's trash that turned into a single-ended and wonderful sounding Fender Champ "tweed" class of guitar amp rather easily by tapping into the center lug of its Volume Control with nothing more than a 1/4" jack and a .1mfd coupling cap. That little thing wailed, wish I still had it now. About 5W of low fidelity (no negative feedback in the circuit) overdrive into the built in ~5" round speaker that had the old electromagnetic magnet that also served as power supply filter choke. And the wooden louvered intercom cabinet. Big row of leaf switches across the bottom switched in the screw terminals on the back that were supposed to go to the Remote intercom stations, which I did not have and did not need.

Then there was the day that I accidentally discovered the fuzzbox/overdrive sound. One first has to understand that there was once a time when the music stores and catalogs were not filled with stompboxes and I don't think the term, "fuzzbox" much less "distortion pedal" existed yet. But for some reason I took that first mono tape recorder, tube driven, of course, off the shelf and plugged one of my electric guitars into the mic jack, simply because the mic jack on that old recorder was also a 1/4" phone, I guess. But the recorder itself had no provision for monitoring the input, so I heard nothing. For some reason, I remembered that one of the Output jacks at the back of the recorder would output audio while the recorder was in Record mode. So I used the RCA output at back and a 1/4" plug at the other end of a cable to jack the output of that tape recorder into the input of one of my guitar amps, by then a real Fender Twin.

And -- spent the rest of the afternoon in my own festival of glorious, overdriven guitar sounds.

I somehow ended up figuring out that the audio output transformer of the tape recorder needed a load across it that was lower impedance than the input to the guitar amp (understatement there, the Twin had in input imepdance in the megohm vicinity) and, lacking a "proper" 4 to 10 ohm Wirewound resistor for such in my junkboxes, placed a 6V automobile tailight bulb across instead. Didn't know it, but the filament of that bulb is what added a bit of ersatz Audio Compression.

That tape recorder ended up going to gigs. I would try to hide it on the floor behind the Twin. Driven with humbuckers, the strange and new world of that "Cream" sound was finally mine.

But I digress. As usual.

I don't know how people who cannot handle a VTVM, DMM, 'Scope and a soldering iron get things done in their studios. But I never could figure out Hammond Organ ownership without those skills either *grin*. To me that's half the fun.


--Mac

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