mettelus

I have a skiier's (also called gamekeeper's) thumb injury on my right hand which prevents the bottom knuckle from going straight, but I have always used that hand to gauge 9". Because of this thread I had to check... sure enough, right hand is exactly 9"... I never checked the left hand before and that is 9.5"... fretting hand matters most. Actually that makes more sense because that hand gets spread naturally often (especially the pinky)... the tendons between my pinky and ring finger on my right hand are much tighter than on the left (left spreads 180 degrees from thumb to pinky, right is about 160 degrees). Hand stretching exercises do help, but straight line from thumb to pinky is as far as anyone can get. That video is nicely done!

A quick start to see if it is a CPU-hungry plugin is to hit E (global FX bypass) in CbB and see if things suddenly run smoothly. If they do, you can start disabling plugins, with ones intended for mastering (one instance) being used on tracks (several instances) being a common culprit. Some instruments are CPU-hungry as well, which can be mitigated by bouncing (rendering) to a new track and archiving the original track. Playing back "audio only" is significantly easier on the computer than with truckloads of FX in play. Unfortunately, there is no defined list of what to look for, but watching CPU load as you get into mixing will give you a good indication in your workflow.

I guess that would depend on what you are using it for. The benchmarks for the 9900K versus the 8700K pretty much mirror the 33% increase in cores/threads. I have only ever gotten my 8700K to peg during benchmarks (not really applicable), 3D video rendering (also relies on the video card typically), and offhand encryption tools (which are such short duration you wouldn't care). I have had my 8700K overclocked 29% since day one, and the CPU going over 50% is pretty rare. Depending on how many apps you have installed, you may see computer performance drop simply because many have background processes running that are unnecessary. A lot of startup type listed as "Automatic" in the Windows Services app can be setup to "Manual" or "Manual (Trigger Start)" if they only need to run to support an application, and not Windows itself.

Side comment, since I had a coworker that went hiking for the first time in the dead of winter. Wool is used similarly for staying warm for extended periods and staying comfortable (cold weather, sailing, etc.). Base layer is cotton (remove moisture from skin), middle layer is wool (moisture management and insulation), and the top layer is tight-weave and water repellent (Gore-tex products for windbreakers are most common these days, since the Teflon repels most everything trying to get in).

I had this first reaction as well, but wool is hydroscopic, so went to their site. https://support.woolinsulation.com/knowledge/is-havelock-wool-fire-resistant#:~:text=Is Havelock Wool fire resistant%3F The answer is,is fire resistant. Read below for more information. One video is no longer linked from that article, but the last video is interesting (the 3-5 minute portion is impressive). Took 2 minutes to intentionally start it, then they put it out at 7 minutes because it got boring and inspected the damage. [The second half of that video is the same test on synthetic fibers and quite astonishing.]

Finally... Wilkinson Roller Bridge ($33) and DiMarzio Super Distortion ($74). The high E broke (originally 9s) with all of the cycles playing with bridge/nut, so put 10s on it. After assembly, the fret buzz was worse than I expected, so I had to do the fretwork (16" radius block and crowning file... two more tools needed, but I already had both). I took that opportunity to redo the nut* and set the neck perfectly straight. Plays perfectly; the Super Distortion is a bit more bassy than I prefer but is a nice pickup. I may change that out in the future. The neck has absolutely no relief on it (why I used 10s) and has incredible action now. *For the nut... A set of feeler gauges that can be taken apart is the best way to do this: With the neck strung, measure the gap on the first fret for both the low E and high E (mine were .029" and .032") Loosen the strings and tap the nut free. On a flat surface (counter works great), lay 400 grit sandpaper sanding side up... gently sand off the superglue dabs on the nut (face and bottom). Sit the nut on the counter, and separate the gauges... you want the low E at .020", and the high E at .012"... so you need the delta from the first measurement. My low E needed to be .009" shorter (to be .020" after)... so laid the .009" guage on the counter, and used a pencil to mark that end. My high E needed to be .020" shorter (to be .012" after)... so laid the .020" guage on the counter, and used a pencil to mark that end. Using the sandpaper again, I genlty worked the bottom of the nut until the ends were at the pencil marks (will be tilted so the high E is lower). Gently scraped superglue from the neck, and superglued the nut back in, waited 15 minutes and restrung it.

I am glad @abacab posted that video above. The first 20 seconds of that is pretty much everyone's initial reaction to Blender in a nutshell. Blender is fun to play with, but can be frustrating at the same time (as is most software at the start!). Learning the keyboard shortcuts is crucial to do just about anything. Start small and be realistic with learning it. Tutorials like the above are extremely helpful and often specific to task.

Good grief, they must have found the box they advertised last year....

That would be a big negatory on that one, good buddy. Definitely check out the build instructions on these kits before buying. Page 14 of the pdf on that page is the reality check for you: "Install the harness There is no cavity access on this guitar, which means you will need to feed the components in through the treble side F-hole. Fish the neck and bridge leads and string ground out of the body and solder them in place following the diagram. Once soldered it's time drop the controls into the guitar and then up through the mounting holes. This is a tricky job, our #0255 Archtop Helping Hand and #0107 Jack Installation tool make easy work of it. Another method is to first tie strings or rubber bands to the shafts of the pots and switch and pull them up through the mounting holes. For help with this technique, see our Trade Secrets article “Fishing a volume control out of a semi-hollowbody for soldering.” Once the switch, jack and pots are secured install the knobs." A small piece of metal (i.e., even a needle) on dental floss can be fed through the pot/jack holes and out the f-hole. A small magnet will let you grab them a lot easier. I would run a couple feet of floss first and tie them off to things that cannot fall through the holes. Even doing this and tying them to the pot shafts requires a little finagling to get the pot vertical (can push the wire as well). If you build this, definitely get new pots so you only do it once. In reality it is not too terrible, but when you finish you feel like you deserve a medal in perseverance! When I was testing the LP out, I looked at that PAF Pro for a second then remembered what it means to take that out... screw that, lol. Quick edit: Just realized the "Set the Intonation" on page 16... that bridge is a piece of meat, so I would not recommend it if it is identical to the one I got (probably true). Also, the bigger gap to the screw heads is from the stop side, so I would recommend installing the bridge backwards (screw heads toward the stop). That picture is misleading... those slots are shallow, so the angle he is using on that screwdriver will strip the slots easily. Plus the pickup ring cannot be lowered, so again the best attack angle is from the stop with the bridge backwards from that picture. My Epiphone 335 bridge is brass with deep slots, heads on the stop side - never had an issue with that one!

Quick followup... I do not have enough patience to wait 14 days for the clear to cure... it can cure when assembled and I will final polish it later. It is assembled and tested, will put comments on that below: Wood - China has mahogany reserves, so some of the best mahogany on the planet comes from there, especially if you want one-piece bodies (this is not). The mahogany from there also tends to be lighter in my experience (less mineral content). This guitar is structurally sound with great sustain and play-ability. Edit: I grain-filled the mahogany which ended up being a mess... it is simply dust, so removed that all and proceeded without it being filled. Without using the filler, it will require more coats of clear to get the glass-smooth surface. Veneer - There are pinch marks on the tail and narrow points on the body from when this was clamped down. I did not go to town smoothing this (the clear can be smoothed instead), but what this does is take more stain than the rest. In hindsight I didn't need to be as dainty with the veneer... a neat trick is to dust coat the surface, then sand the color all off with 600 grit. However... this veneer is only 4 mils thick, and when wet sanding the surface, the water did soak under the veneer in the area of the holes. Solution to this is not wet sanding at all... sand with 400-grit and 600-grit (for color coats), then when clear is on 600-grit, 1500-grit, 2000-grit... then use finish polishing compound for cars, then car wax (ONLY on the final clear coat!!... the clear will not stick to wax!). Frets - I didn't touch the frets and was sort of shocked that they are leveled (only tapped them with a mallet to ensure seating). One has a slight buzz, which can easily be taken down with 600-grit sandpaper. I did not adjust the truss rod after assembly, only made it straight as an arrow after gluing the neck in. These are standard profile Gibson (I put bass frets in myself), but are fine for short term. Nut - The nut is a little high. For anyone doing this, do NOT buy fret files... the way to deal with this is to loosen the strings and knock the nut off (it is superglued, so taps free easily). Sand the wood smooth, then use a file on the back of the nut to lower the height and check it at times by stringing it back up. This keeps the curvature of the nut and prevents grooves from losing that arc. When done, superglue it back in. Wiring harness - This caught me offguard at first, it is totally "unconventional"... basically vintage, with bleed circuits on the tone pots. I had to force myself not to pass judgement when I saw this and ran with it how it was (even using all of the wire). There is little room to play at the pots themselves, but they have excess wire, so using the entire lengths gave me a rat's nest in the cavity. I didn't foil the cavities at all, and no issues; however, if anyone opts for split coils, definitely copper foil the cavities. If anyone gets this kit, the wiring doesn't have instructions, and StewMac wants you to buy their video set. PM me and I can walk you through that harness. I think it was 11 solder joint to complete "as is." Pickups - These are essentially Epiphone pickups... the neck is fine, but the bridge is muddier and weaker than I want. This could be the pickup or pots, but I glanced up at the Epiphone 335 I have, and I did replace that bridge with a 30-year-old PAF Pro (is black so looks like the pickup is missing on the tobacco burst). @Grem this reminds me... if you are going to make a 335 kit, wiring through the f-holes is a PITA... easiest way is to first use a magnet to run string on a needle, then tape that to the wires. This guitar kit came with (nasty, i.e., pre-corroded) 9s, but they pulled a lot more harmonics and sustain than I expected. Bridge/saddle - This thing is a piece of meat!... it seems like chrome-plated pot metal, and the screw slots are not deep enough to attack at the odd angle required. Setting what intonation I did was a PITA, and the slot on one is already marred. I have already been looking at a Wilkinson locking roller bridge to replace this (my Epiphone has brass hardware!... unfortunately it is easy to chrome-plate pot metal... when you buy brass you know it is brass.) Bottom line - This kit has "what matters" (i.e. the wood/neck) to make it usable for long term. If looking to make it into a go-to guitar, it will need pots, pickups, and bridge at a minimum. For me, I need to 1) lower the nut (free), 2) replace the bridge pickup (maybe both) ($30-$60), 3) replace the bridge ($20), and 4) replace the pots (possibly wiring) ($12). From my experience, pots are common replacements even in "good" guitars," so not a big deal. Tips and hindsight - Pre-coloring... Sand the mahogany near the binding to get these smooth (there is a small lip there, and the binding is wavy on the surface), then is much easier to get color off the binding if not masked well later on without taking color off the wood. Dust coat the veneer with color, then sand it all off (400/600 grit at most, nothing harsher)... this will give a smooth wood with no pits. No wet sanding (the glue in the holes will absorb this and start to warp up, even when you get to the clear coat sanding). The color kit that came with this had enough to do two guitars (3 cans of clear); the clear StewMac sells goes on very nicely. The lock washers for the pots/switch cannot be used (cannot get a full thread on the nuts)... I only used the top washers and nuts for these. Wrap tape on a drill bit to know depth... I went with the recommended depth for each screw from the assembly manual. Tools I used (not included): 400, 600, 1500, and 2000 grit sandpaper Masking tape Screw driver set Drill and bits (I think 1/16th was the biggest used) Lacquer thinner (to soak the spray nozzles in). Be careful with this... it is highly flammable Mallet (rubber/plastic) for frets and stop bushings Hammer - had to use this on bridge bushings, BUT... can unscrew the stop stems and swap them to get these in Finish polishing compound Soldering iron with a temperature knob and solder. I got an iron for $20 years ago... pre-tin the tip (helps with heat transfer, and due to the odd angles from the harness I ended up pulling solder on the tip then adding wire (over half of these required melting existing solder on that harness) Small eye bolt - I ended up using one from a door hook set to hang the guitar for spraying (where the strap lock went afterwards) Again, if anyone has questions on a kit, shoot me a PM. I think the fun of these is that they are original... you can do what you want and make it yours. I did not modify the head stock (yet), but there is room to play there as well. I have 6 coats of clear on mine, so can play with logos till the cows come home and never need to refinish it.

One BIG consideration with this kit (especially in colder weather) is that lacquer needs to be warm to go on well. Definitely have an area that does not share air with your living space (that can be heated) when it is cold outside. Lacquer fumes are rather nasty, and it sputters rather than sprays if it is not warm.

Camera on phone makes everything brighter than it really is, so will have to wait on those, but first two coats of clear are on. 6-8 more coats and a couple weeks to cure. The finishing kit has enough in it to do three guitars; wasn't expecting that. The whole point of these is so they are custom. Hardware/electronics are easily replaced, so all that matters is the wood. Interesting thing with these cheaper pups is you plug in and sounds vintage. Newer high-end pups need to be rolled off. Let's see... tools and extras used so far... 6" clamp, Gorilla glue, two pieces of scrap wood, 400 and 600 grit sandpaper, lacquer thinner. Drill, screwdrivers and soldering iron should be it for the assembly.

Oddly enough, these went out of stock shortly after the OP, and they didn't come back in stock until about a month ago. The notification went to my spam folder, so I didn't get to work on it until a couple weeks ago. Overall the wood for this is very good, very little fret touch up required (just the sharp edges), neck glued in with ease, etc. The binding had vertical "nicks" in it which I first thought might be a blade, but seems more an extrusion issue with the machine that made it.... but easily sanded out. The veneer is actually around 4mm thick, so 400 grit works on the flame maple to smooth it out. More than anything, this kit is a "wood finishing project." I assume the electronics are the cheapest one can get, but will finish the assembly with the stuff it came with first pass and see how it does. I got the cherry burst finishing kit (vintage amber and cherry red), which turned out well since I wanted it more orange... easy to mix the two on the surface. I just put the first coat of sealer on it, but will check back on progress as it goes.

That is a bit surprising, but pinning nodes more firmly will allow for standing waves to resonate longer. In theory, if you put a pin hole in the center of a drum head (Bessel function) it should kill it completely, but there is more physics to it than math.

Reminded me that I need to revisit this one.

LOL, what a hidden gem this thread is!! I have only been logging in every few days and only opened it because the title was weird. Did they put a restriction on advertizing this as "50% off most Spitfire titles for 28 hours with Code - [ ]"??? Just in case they did... for those late to the party, the code is at the 5:07 mark in the video in the OP.

Now Vojtech just need to steal the "smoky cloud" graphical artist from iZotope for marketing materials The support manuals could also use an overhaul. Part of that is the boilerplate format used for them and the fact that they have to be geared for folks who only own that plugin, but it still takes users a bit of effort to delve into the Edit screen and feel comfortable in the guts of many applications.

Promo email came in with an interesting 2D model that looks 3D Not sure if that link embed anything, but worth a try. I guess the promo is for email subscribers. I was going to post that link but is to me, if you subscribe to their newsletter it should show up for you (is Moho Debut 13.5 + 100 Brushes Content Pack + Characters Content Pack for $79 (versus $119)).

Quick feedback on the above. The 500GB EVO Plus I ordered didn't arrive till yesterday, and I just cloned/installed it (the PN from the above article only works on the 1TB model, so I blew it off and not sure if the article above also applies to the 500GB model anyway). The old drive was a WD Black 256 GB, but was throwing security errors (if rebooting, but not from a cold boot) and the Recovery partition was 453MB/500MB which was flagging it red in Macrium Reflect. I have two M.2 slots so pulled the F drive and used that as the clone slot. Cloned with Macrium Reflect and bumped up the Recovery partition to 1GB, and the Main partition to fill the rest of the drive. This video shows how to clone/reset partition size (I time stamped it at the partition size part if anyone is interested). Be sure to power down/unplug the machine when swapping any hardware! Swapped drives, put the F back in and booted to the UEFI. Fast Boot was enabled, so disabled that (to ensure nothing was remembered from last boot), and the boot was already set to the new EVO Plus. Restarted and the machine ran identical as with the old drive (so far nothing has asked to re-register, etc.). Now to the benchmarks. Samsung's Magician won't benchmark competitor drives anymore (used to), so could only test those two drives. C Drive: 970 EVO Plus - Sequential Read: 3494 MB/s, Write: 3065 MB/s, Random Read: 125,732 IOPS, Write: 105,468 IOPS F: 970 EVO (NOT Plus) was in x2 Mode - Sequential Read: 1764 MB/s, Write: 1707 MB/s, Random Read: 132,080 IOPS, Write: 111,572 IOPS Didn't realize that drive was in x2 till the benchmark, so went back into UEFI and set to x4 mode (disables SATA 5/6 connections) F: 970 EVO (NOT Plus) in x4 Mode - Sequential Read: 3502 MB/s, Write: 2536 MB/s, Random Read: 134,033 IOPS, Write: 115,478 IOPS Bottom line: even in X4 mode, the EVO is not noticeably faster than the EVO Plus in the main drive slot and was actually slower for sequential writes. That WD Black 256GB was actually a bonus item when I built the machine, and not exceptional to begin with. I may consider that one the "first SSD I toasted," since running SFC/DISM checks the past few months was throwing repairable errors.

Ironically, the 970 EVO Plus (500GB) is 40% off at Amazon and I bought one before this was posted to replace my C drive. It should arrive tomorrow, so I will check the part number on it and benchmark it when I put it in the machine (probably this weekend). The specs on Amazon are pretty straightforward, so this should be an easy return if it isn't the real one.

This has been their model for years though. Unfortunately, those who jumped in at some point with MPB/MPS were suddenly seeing what was offered with the next upgrade as lackluster... one or two products upgraded each year, then paying again for something they have already. Throwing in things that not everyone may want is only going to entice so many. So many digital products have matured to the level that grabbing the last version before they went subscription will suffice for most people. If someone is using for business and pulling in enough revenue that the percentage of upkeep is tolerable, then it may have merit.

Didn't get to deep into that one since it immediately reminded me of the old joke of "How do you you get an Italian to shut up?" (Either tie his hands behind his back or make him sit on his hands). Word choice took it right off the plate as objective early on, so I only made it about 30 seconds in

LOL... On my phone here so clicked that wondering why the link didn't work! No more underlines allowed ?

Another consideration is weight and how much you need to baby the amp. Tube amps are significantly heavier and susceptible to sudden shock. If sitting in a studio this is not a big deal, but carting it around is another matter. MOSFET technology has been in use for well over 30+ years now, but as Craig mentioned, the final 1% can be a big deal (more for studio than live in my opinion)... and the circuit designer also plays a massive role in the quality of the end product. That said, the plethora of both pre/post FX is another consideration... I have seen folks running chains through a laptop, and the amp was simply another PA system for them. Bottom line, as also mentioned above, people attending a gig are not going to be as uptight regarding hardware as they are for appreciating LIVE music that is performed well.

TDR Kotelnikov, MCompressor, ReaComp (all free and work in CbB). TDR Kotelnikov also has a Gentleman's Edition (not free) with a few more features.