PJSprog
Elite Member
22°F and clear skies this morning, going up to 32° today. It snowed most of the day yesterday, but we got zero accumulation from it. Ground is still too warm. It was still snowing last night at 7:30 when I went out to close up the chicken coop. More predicted for Thursday.
Did some digging into an old bass guitar preamp last night. It's a special model made by a company that closed some time in the '90s (Pearce Electronics BC-1 w/ Billy Sheehan modification). It was in a sealed road case in the basement of my last house when that basement flooded with 28" of water. The case was floating, and I thought no water got into it. Apparently, some water did get in. Looks like the preamp itself stayed dry, but the moisture in the road case caused everything to corrode. My multimeter probing told me there's scarcely a decent ground connection to be found in it ... which explains the ugly hum and weird LED activity when I turned it on last weekend for the first time since the flood, 5-1/2 years ago. So, I'm going to have to replace all of the fasteners and clean all the ground connections in the chassis and on the pc boards. Pearce didn't make a whole lot of these to begin with, and as the years pass, they are becoming like unicorn horns, especially the ones with the factory modification. On the bright side, the electronics all look good, so it's just mechanical stuff. I even had to drill out three stripped screws to get the top off. I'm wanting to use this for the new music project. It has a unique sound, combining a clean channel and a specially designed distortion channel. The only other way to get this sound is from another company's digital modeling unit (Line 6 Helix). Billy himself was trying to talk me into getting a new Helix a couple of months ago, but I'm not quite ready to shell out the $1000 for one just yet. Going to rebuild the old unit first. If that doesn't work, well ...

Ted, nice that you can still be your little girl's hero.
Eric, we have several levels of license plates here in The People's Republic of Illinois; regular, personalized, and vanity. The fees vary based on the type of vehicle and plate level. For a passenger car, regular issued plates are $101/year, personalized are $108/yr, and vanity are $114/yr. For motorcycles, regular is $41/yr, personalized is $48/yr, and vanity is $54/yr. Vanity plates are all letters, and personalized are any letters with numbers at the end. I have the same "MUSIK 1" plate on my car and my Honda Goldwing. I've had that plate since 1994. And for those wondering, The Wife's plate is "Love My Boys."
Did some digging into an old bass guitar preamp last night. It's a special model made by a company that closed some time in the '90s (Pearce Electronics BC-1 w/ Billy Sheehan modification). It was in a sealed road case in the basement of my last house when that basement flooded with 28" of water. The case was floating, and I thought no water got into it. Apparently, some water did get in. Looks like the preamp itself stayed dry, but the moisture in the road case caused everything to corrode. My multimeter probing told me there's scarcely a decent ground connection to be found in it ... which explains the ugly hum and weird LED activity when I turned it on last weekend for the first time since the flood, 5-1/2 years ago. So, I'm going to have to replace all of the fasteners and clean all the ground connections in the chassis and on the pc boards. Pearce didn't make a whole lot of these to begin with, and as the years pass, they are becoming like unicorn horns, especially the ones with the factory modification. On the bright side, the electronics all look good, so it's just mechanical stuff. I even had to drill out three stripped screws to get the top off. I'm wanting to use this for the new music project. It has a unique sound, combining a clean channel and a specially designed distortion channel. The only other way to get this sound is from another company's digital modeling unit (Line 6 Helix). Billy himself was trying to talk me into getting a new Helix a couple of months ago, but I'm not quite ready to shell out the $1000 for one just yet. Going to rebuild the old unit first. If that doesn't work, well ...

Ted, nice that you can still be your little girl's hero.
Eric, we have several levels of license plates here in The People's Republic of Illinois; regular, personalized, and vanity. The fees vary based on the type of vehicle and plate level. For a passenger car, regular issued plates are $101/year, personalized are $108/yr, and vanity are $114/yr. For motorcycles, regular is $41/yr, personalized is $48/yr, and vanity is $54/yr. Vanity plates are all letters, and personalized are any letters with numbers at the end. I have the same "MUSIK 1" plate on my car and my Honda Goldwing. I've had that plate since 1994. And for those wondering, The Wife's plate is "Love My Boys."