Archive - Old Newlistings and News Briefs

Archive of when new amp items and articles were added, News Briefs, editorials. (latest on top)

Note: external links in this archive are not updated and may be broken.

Moved: 14/01/08

Dateline: 18/10/07

Ross Hannaford's gear stolen

Update 22/11/07 - just checked with Mark Sydow and Ross's van and gear has still not been found. See an old white Hi-Ace van? Check it out for rego QRN 479 and phone the police or Mark if you see it.

Alert - Gear stolen from Daddy Cool guitarist Ross Hannaford By blackshadow | October 16, 2007

A tragedy has befallen Ross Hannaford, the guitarist of iconic Australian band Daddy Cool.

In the early hours of Saturday morning Ross Hannaford's white 1989 Toyota Hi-Ace Van (Vic) QRN 479 was stolen from a Yarraville street. The van was most likely stolen by joy riders, but the real loss is the musical equipment concealed under a tarpaulin in the back.

Ross has lost all his amplifiers, his main guitar, and all his effects pedals. True to Hannaford's totally eccentric style, these are no ordinary instruments. They are one-offs and custom mades. Here's a description:

1. Chandler 555 Guitar - customised and hand painted in Red Yellow and Green sunray design (see photo)
2. Ampeg Jet II amplifier
3. rare 5 watt Diason Amplifier
4. Home made amplifier in Diason Cabinet with Peavey 158 Blazer head and Marantz 12? speaker
5. Green and yellow Indian “hippy” bag with Boss Phrase Sampler, MPX phase 90 and Tremit Tremolo pedal

These instruments are totally irreplaceable, and Ross is not interested in anything but recovering his beloved instruments.

Please spread the word and if anyone knows anything about it please contact Mark Sydow at mark@marksydow.com or (03) 9495 6641, or CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 000.
Source: http://blackshadow.com.au/?p=91

Dateline: 04/09/07

ETI readers

Do you have a stash of old Electronics Today International magazines? I need a scan or photocopy of their project;

1402 Sampler Apr/May/Jun 86
and
1402b Digital Sampler Expansion Apr 88

In return I can't make you rich, but I can make your name immortal in these pages, and offer you the ETI projects index. Please contact me if you can help. TIA.

Dateline: 24/8/07

E.D.A. Brisbane

In a TV docco on The Saints it was mentioned that Ed Kupper used “a PA amp built by E.D.A. in Brisbane as his guitar amp”. If you know anything about E.D.A. amps, please write and tell me about them.

31/10/07 - A quick smack to the head from Jeremy Shaw has reminded me that E.D.A. was the name adoped after Hans Overeem sold up. (my excuse is that they are solid-state :)

Dateline: 6/9/07

Concert for Max Merritt

Some of Australia's biggest acts, including Ross Wilson, James Reyne, John Paul Young, Normie Rowe and Spectrum, will perform at a benefit in StKilda next month for ailing soul singer Max Merritt.

“I am finding it hard to adequately express my appreciation for the help and support during my time of extreme personal need,” Merritt said from his home in Los Angeles.

The New Zealand-born singer, who has lived in Los Angeles for the last 20 years, is suffering from Goodpastures syndrome and a perforated bowel. He was recently the inaugural inductee to the NZ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Concert for Max takes place at the 3000-seater Palais Theater on October 21. Tickets go on sale from September 14 through Ticketmaster.

Source: The Age 6/9/07, p8

Dateline: 28/6/07 We are 3! As Australian Valve Amps comes up to its third birthday I would like to thank the many people who have taken the trouble to write from all over the world with submissions, corrections, or just to say “hi”. Around 1500 in this last year alone. AVA started by accident when I found a few old amp circuits and decided to put them up on the web on the off chance that someone, somewhere might find them useful. So I searched the web for a suitable site to send them to. After a really intensive search I found, apart from a couple of non-technical reviews on Harmony Central, not one of the Aussie amps I had worked on, and with, in the 60's and 70's were represented anywhere. So the first AVA page appeared with a few circuits and some commentry. I thought I was close to the last of a dying breed, that almost nobody would be interested in old Aussie valve guitar amps. Never did I imagine that in three years AVA would grow into a monster of some 200 pages covering more than 60 names, and still be far from complete. Never did I imagine that the cellphone and MP3 generation would have discovered classic valve guitar amps, and fallen in love with the joys of fixing them up and playing through them. And building new ones. It has been a continual thrill to find that in these days of instant microwave-ready push-button everything there are so many still doing what I did in my teens and twenties, buying or scrounging all the bits and learning by doing. Discovering the huge thrill when a new build finally works properly, the deep satisfaction of using your own build on stage, and being in the drivers' seat when something goes wrong (as it always will), or needs to be modified. AVA isn't mine, it's is the product of all the contributors and has taken on a life all of its own. Today the content and direction of AVA is set by the contributors and I am only the stage manager keeping things moving along - this is your show.

Moved: 23/8/07

Melbourne Amp Jam

Hi Roly,

A few of us lovers/owners of vintage aussie amps are trying to organise an informal get together to check out each other's gear.

It'll be at Bentleigh and were looking at Sunday 13 May.
[date to be advised - see link]

You'd be way more than welcome to come along.

The details so far are in this thread; [Aussie Guitar Gear Heads forum]
http://www.guitargear.net.au/discussion/index.php?topic=5071.0

Cheers,
Geoff.

Dateline: 23/4/07

Lobby Loyde dies

Lobby Loyde died on Saturday night at Box Hill Hospital from brain tumors following his long struggle with lung cancer. He was surrounded by family and friends.

Lobby, 66, was born Barry Lyde in Longreach(*) in 1941, and is known for his work with many significant bands including the Aztecs, Purple Hearts, Wild Cherries, Coloured Balls, and Rose Tattoo.

“That we're all still alive is a miracle” he said not long ago in interview, “We used to live close to the bone.”

The history of Lobby's Strauss Warror is outlined by Tony Naylor on our Strauss page.

Thanks to: The Age

(*) for our non-Australian readers, Longreach is a major town deep in the Queensland outback - more Cattle 'n Country than Rock 'n Roll.

Vale Lobby

Dateline: 21/4/07

Max Merritt admitted to hospital

New Zealand-born music legend Max Merritt has been admitted to a hospital in Los Angeles after suffering kidney failure.

Merritt, 66, born in Christchurch, New Zealand, “is going to make a complete recovery” his manager Wal Bishop said today.

He toured Australia in 2002 as part of the Long Way to the Top concert series, which featured other legendary Australian acts including former Easybeats frontman Stevie Wright, Ross Wilson and the late Billy Thorpe.

More at: Stuff.com

Update 26/4/07

Test have revealed that Max is suffering Goodpastures Syndrome, an extremely rare viral infection, but is still expected to make a full recovery. “Trust me to get something rare” Max said.

Moved: 14:24 19/04/07

Dateline: 05/04/07

Berzerkitude

Continuing the policy of AVA leading the charge backward, bringing you the first last (and no, I don't have the circuit for Tesla's guitar amp), this is not the ultimate in ultra-low-noise stereo preamps, but it does seem to be some kind of statement. . .

A fair dinkum valve digital clock using Nixie® neon display tubes (unlike Decatrons they didn't count). These have ten cathodes shaped as numerals and provide an ergonomic readout, unlike 7-segment LED's.

In fact Decatron-driven-Nixies would still make a reasonable fairly simple and good-looking all-gas clock/counter/display. It was more common to use gas “trigger tubes” (a bit like a PUT/SCR) for counting and interstage coupling, but like Decatrons these must be getting rare these days. This clock uses a lifetime supply of 12AX7's for the counting. Who said the Germans don't have a sense of humor?

Source: Bruegmann-Digital-Roehren-Clock (German, Google English translation)

These's a bit of Nixie® madness about with websites and Elektor doing a conventional TTL-to-Nixie neo-60's Sputnik clock earlier this year. I'm more of a magic eye person myself.

Musing

Those cards and letters keep coming in folks. After three years there is finally something to put in the Abbey folder.

Traffic continues to creep upward, hits on the servers, and a stream of e-mails. At any moment I am exchanging e-mails with between 3 and 6 people working through amp problems. I love it when it pays off;

j&m: Man! The audio transformer is unbelievable. I tested it through the aux input on my stereo and it sounds fantastic. I started work on this amp specifically to use in recording situations so the implications this has are perfect. Not only is it remarkably clear, it also has a great element of 'closeness' in the sound. Thanks again...... left to my own devices this transformer would have ended up dusty in the spares box. (almost a crime!) “Three Cheers for Roly!”

j&h (gets confusin' sometimes) had a problem with a Goldentone reverb line that was feeding back and it turned out to be the following tone-shaping cap had gone open. Happy now.

The seems to be quite a bit of refurbishment (don'cha love that word? ;) of old amps going on at the moment - Goldies always; a 20 watt AWA factory PA being re-born as a recording guitar amp; a big VASE; a Lenard - and another old CRO, my first love (sigh).

Many of these exchanges are worthy of a FAQ since problems often cover similar ground - when I get a round toit.

But please, some suggestions when you write. The less time I have to spend fiddling about, the more time I can spend on your problem. So to help me to help yourself...

E-mails

My spam filter often catches ligit e-mails, so to make them stand out start the subject with the brand of the amp or “AVA”.

Whitespace is free on the net. Active whitespace are the spaces between paragraphs of text - and the screen-reader needs more of it than on paper. So Rule of Thumb - hit “enter” twice every 1-to-3 full stops; more often than you would for paper. Your readers will love you.

Save text in plain “.Txt” format, not .Doc or other internal formatted WordPro file - I can't read it as intended and have to strip it to plain ASCII text anyway.

Attaches

Please bundle multiple pix etc into a single Zip file. WinZip is free for home use. (try Downloads.com Tucows.com)

Photos

The quality of photos continues to be great. The standard size of camera JPG currently seems to be about right (from 1 to 2k pixels wide) for reduction for the site using (try Downloads.com Tucows.com). Best to send them raw and let me crop, reduce and post-process.

Circuits and drawings

Unlike pix, diagrammes are turning out to be a bit of a problem, scans direct to PDF particularly, and another reason why I don't like PDF's. But sometimes there is just no other way.

The main problem is scaling. Not just on the net, but wherever circuits have to be displayed on a computer monitor or printed out for bench use - think about end uses before you start. This seems to be a generic problem into the future.

Experience backed by Information Theory says that any diagramme must be able to fit into a single view, mainly so you can see how the major parts relate. Currently the compromise seems to be an A4 page size which comes out around 3 screen wides by 2 screens high - any bigger gets really hard to follow.

But unless it's drawn with a thumb dipped in tar, when you zoom out or it is reduced all the lines tend to vanish!

A large proportion of the 70-odd megabytes currently on this site is actually whitespace in full-size circuit images. But in the end I'd rather have a giant circuit in PDF format, than not have it at all.

So some general tips:

• When laying out, try to aim for an end-viewing size, such as A4. Chop the whole into logical parts on several sheets, such as preamp, reverb, PI-output, power supply, and a first page block diagramme-cum-sheet index to pull it together in overview.
• When drafting; use the whitest possible paper; use thick lines - there are a large range of felt-tip pens, or in your drafting package.
• When scanning, you need to play around a bit to get the best rendition.
• Do put a title or full title block on every sheet, name, make model, date verson, drafted by, sheet n of x, website, (email); you can never put to much information in. ;)

What I'm listening to...

Still crazy on Spicks 'n Specks (ABC Wed, 8:30pm) and particularly RockWiz (SBS Sat 9:20pm), Julia Zemiro, Brian Nankervis, and the amazing James Black on Teli and Hammond.

helenk writes: Absolutely loved Rockwiz DVD [“Two for the Show”], especially Brian Nankervis being a complete dick as the pseudo muppets Swiss Chef in the extras. It was like a flashback to rehearsals for Let The Blood Run Free. You are totally gorgeous for sending me that and I love you!

My particular favorites, roughly in order, are;

• Private Number - partly 'cause Ed and Linda can't take their eyes off each other and seem to have some special 'contact' going there.
• Stop Draggin' My Heart Around - always liked it.
• Islands in the Stream - knew it, but this reading really grew on me.

Honorable mentions to;

• Stray Cat Blues - Chrissy's such a spunk.
• Long Distance Love - been a Little Feet fan from whenever, and this has always been a personal fave singalong because of the idiosyncratic timing of the vocal. Saw them live in the House of Stouch and they still sounded great.

Neville Brothers - Brothers Keeper
Buddy Guy - Damn Right I've Got the Blues (Mustang Sally)
Little Feet, South Oz rappers Hill Top Hoods on Triple-J, and old country gig tapes of The Hip Pedlars and Crooked Hearts. Bondi Cigars were good on The Basement (ABC Thur 10:30pm).

Tip of the month

Take care on the roads, particularly gig nights, and protect your hands during the lug.

Moved: 9/4/07

Wolfmother Grammy

Dateline: 13/2/07

Andrew Stockdale and Myles Heskett of Wolfmother
Pic: The Age

Wolfmother have added a Grammy award for Best Hard Rock Performance to their three ARIA's. Andrew is gigging a classic Moody and the flying-V logo can often be seen in their backline. Well done guys.

In related news Ken Palethorpe reports that the classic Goldie shown with Mia Dyson at the Falls Festival seems to be following her around, so we assume that she is also gigging a classic Aussie valve amp.

Disco Inferno

Dateline January 18, 2007 - 12:39PM
By Renee Switzer

Explosions and fireballs rocked Melbourne's south-east overnight when a huge warehouse fire caused up to $20 million damage at an industrial estate.

Country Fire Authority incident controller Troy Thornton said 15 trucks, “hundreds” of guitars and amplifiers, 150,000 litres of engine oil, 500 pallets of fibreglass, drums of hydraulic oil, mattresses, and a large amount of plastic were consumed in the blaze.
...
“It was a very loud fire and the heat was so intense we couldn't get our crews into the actual premises for some time.”

Graphic T-Shirt

You may not be able to buy an air guitar T-shirt but you can now get one with a built-in graphic analyser.

Soundies note: not machine washable

Source: http://www.bestel.nl via Elektor

Dateline: 26/12/06

James Brown has left the building

“The hardest working man in show-business”. What can you say about James Brown? A hugely driven and energetic performer, remembered by his musicians as a perfectionist ogre who noticed and fined musicians for errors.

Of a heart failure following pneumonia, age 73

Dateline: 16/12/06

Coda - Ertegun Dies, 83

Ahmet Ertegun, who founded Atlantic Records in 1947, has died in New York aged 83 after falling at a Rolling Stones concert and suffering a head injury.

Atlantic artists include Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Cream, Led Zepplin, Sonny & Cher, and Crosby Stills Nash & Young.

Backing and session musician on many of the Soul era classics include Booker-T and the MG's, the Bar-Kays, and the Memphis Horns; also immortalised as the core of the Blues Brothers band.

Overseas visitors

Having resisted the temptation to decorate AVA with cynical seasonal sprigs of snow-covered Holly, or even sorry soot-encrusted half-burnt gum leaves falling like some hellish antipodean snow, I finally made the following concession to the season of garish gee-gaws and too much to eat.

December '06
Greetings, all.

What I'm watching: Xmas DVD's - Pink Floyd in concert at Earl's Court with a “who-needs-drugs?” lightshow. RockWizz Duets: Two for the Show; fave track Stop Draggin' My Heart Around. The intros have a lot of interesting background for trainspotters.
Credits “James Black is God.”

Air Guitar Shirt

I want one! I want one!(*)

Yeah, I know, everybody picked this up. Must be a lot of frustrated guitarists out there.

Australia's CSIRO has designed a T-shirt with fabric sensors that can be used to imitate playing guitar - so-called air-guitar.

It works by embedding sensors into a shirt, allowing a computer to recognising and interpreting arm movements and produce the sounds of the instrument.

In this podcast [5mb], Dr Helmer talks about how the air guitar shirt works and how the same technology could be used for different applications.

(* there are only two, one white for Abba covers bands, and one black for Sabbath cover bands)

Gold-plated balony

Are gold-plated 6.5mm connectors any better than the silver ones? They make great equipment bling, and there's nothing generally wrong with them that isn't already wrong with 6.5mm connectors generally. And that's a lot. Wherever you have a choice, use something else, such as XLR's.

Wipe out

Do you have a cloth in your guitar case specifically for wiping down the strings and fretboard after you have played? Do you give her a caress before putting her to bed?

Simply wiping the sweat and finger grime off your strings will make them last several times longer, stops frets corroding, and grime buildup on the fretboard itself.

Summer's coming, so be careful not to leave any band gear in the car - none of it likes it.

Clean up

Two great new-found tools have been generating a lot of work on the site; CSE HTML Validator Lite v6.5 is quicker than going on-line for the W3C HTML Validator, and drops you into the editor right on the found errors which is very quick for correcting simple typos etc.

The other is Xenu LinkCheck which hopefully will significantly reduce the number of “Not Found” errors in the site statistics.

Xenu also finds orphans, items not actually connected anywhere. This exposed a few megabytes of pix that were uploaded in error, or not actually scripted in. So a few items previously lost in the wash should now appear, and some wasted server space has been recovered.

There were over one hundred items spanning twenty-some pages, and it's a fiddly error-prone process, so if you find anything still “broken” after a couple of attempts, please let me know.

What I'm thinking about: reissues, and the Playmaster 102/3; how good Maton amps like the Series-10 look.

Server Outage

The Elands.Com domain had an outage his week (28/11/06) for a few days, now back up. Even my SysAdmin doesn't know what it was. Remember, the keyword “OzValveAmps” will find both Elands and Lucidtone sites in most search engines. Both addresses are in full in the heading.

Moved: 18:16 01/12/06

“Goldentone” name for sale

Got a multi-drop in my e-mail advising that the historic Goldentone name is up for bidding on e-Bay, $1000 reserve. [in keeping with AVA's non-commercial policy I'm not posting a direct link, but for commentary visit forums]

And to clarify; no, this is not what I have previously alluded to.

I can now tell you that I was aware of the now-re-released Rex Basskings in red, white and blue. (see Mixdown at your local music shop).

When Lamberti's stopped amp production they were left with a stock of around 100 built Bassking chassis' which went into storage. I understand that a number of components, electrolytics in particular, have been replaced across the board, and that suitable speakers had to be sourced.

All I can say on the other, is that it is a name every bit the equal of Goldentone, but any re-issue will be an up-to-date traditional valve design.

Moved: 01:22 06/11/06

Site Stats

Site

60MB, 1500 files, 140 pages, 1000 photographs, 235 diagrammes, 15 sound files, from over 200 contributors.

Visitors

Hundreds of users every day, about one-third from Australia and New Zealand (Aotearoa), the remaining two-thirds from all over the world - Poland, Argentina, France, Czech Republic, Italy, United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Japan, India, Brazil, Germany, Philippines, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Croatia (Hrvatska), Hungary, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Thailand, Portugal, United States, Israel, Switzerland, Turkey, Chile, Russian Federation, Hong Kong, Aruba, Poland, Uruguay.

New Articles = *

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