the happiness, excitement, and general contentedness thread

[Kacey Y]

i have to ask: how did the person in the video know what dog poop tastes like? though that might be way more information than i'm ready for.

(I hope)

[BitchPudding]

Things are coming up Milhouse for my personal life. My daughter is gonna be starting pre school soon. Shes a little social butterfly so of course shes excited. We are too! (If not a little sad that our last baby is heading to school. :,) ).

My son's grades are up in math! Dude is heading to high school next year, so I'm glad to see him put in some effort to up his grades before he starts. Math ain't easy, I myself completely sucked at it. So I'm very proud of his progress.

I'm still waiting on the results of my ADHD evaluation from my Psychiatrist, but I finally am on an antidepressant. Just gotta wait a month to start seeing the effects. Should notice a difference in time for the next Phantoms show, so maybe it'll be more of a spectacle if I'm able to live without fear.

[dubkitty]

one of the preamp tubes in my Princeton Reverb went wonky, and so i got out my box of tubes to find a replacement and popped in an old RCA short plate that was the first good tube i found. it improved the sound so noticeably that i went through all my other 12AX7s and found a GE and a reissue Mullard. replacing all three of the Groove Tubes 12AX7s made the amp even better, and i was already happy after replacing the awful stock Celestion with a Jensen. i downloaded a service manual so i can figure out which tube comes first in the chain etc.; i like GE and Amperex for V1 and Telefunken for the reverb driver which i want as clean as humanly possible. i’ll swap the AX7s around tomorrow so the GE is V1, and try the other 2 in either position of V3/V4 (v2 is the reverb driver, weirdly enough). i still have to get a 12AT7 for the reverb driver. RCAs are a bit crunchy for V1 but are nice in V3 or V4. but it’s so much better that it really raised my spirits. i guess i need more GE and Amperex AX7s because they’re my favorites. better preamp tubes would probably be good for the AC15 and the Hammond reverb conversion head. for the record, i don’t think power tube brands matter much, but the right preamp tubes can make a dull amp sing. i still might look for some old Tung-Sol 6V6s because i have an ancient one that’s a magic tube in my Electar Tube 10. small rig improvements make me disproportionately happy.

[D.o.S.]

Scooped mids are the bees knees.

[dubkitty]

i spent years trying to "get away from the Fender sound" in amps because i played Fenders with 6L6/6V6 power tubes most of my life. i really like my Laney VC30 which needs to be fixed because it's more or less an AC30 with a Marshall tone stack, and i have a couple of other EL84 amps, but when i got the Princeton it was like coming home. mids are fine and everything, but i like a lot of treble and a lot of bass. i mostly use a cabinet with a 12" Weber California JBL clone; if i could get away with running a 4-ohm extension cabinet with 2 8-ohm Webers, and i probably could because tube amps aren't strict constructionists about "AT LEAST 8 OHMS TOTAL," i would be a happy kitty. i still need some flavor of Marshall, though, and like the Origin combo amps a lot. like my guitar travels which are mainly about different pickup voices, i would like to have a selection of amps with different power tubes. i have a Kalamazoo Bass 30 amp that runs on 7591s like some of the old Gibson tube amps and a MusicYo Epiphone Electar amp with one 6V6 that's a tiny terror as well.

[echorec]

So I'm driving to the GA border from TN, and I see this guy next to me with a Strymon sticker on his car. --I like Strymon pedals, but I loathe fanboys of any brand. I can't imageine making myself a walking advertisement, in lieu of developing a personality. As a lifelong resident of the Bible belt, I can pretty much size up anyone based on their car and choice of personal advertising. Basically, I expect this guy to be a young douche.

Anyway...I'm coasting at 60 in a 45, just before entering a 55 (all the locals do 65+ on this road). Strymon sticker guy is way behind me and guns it to 65 and then immediately jumps into my lane (right side) and throws on his turn signal. Of course, I have to jump into the left now to avoid smashing into him.

I lower my passenger window, tap the horn, and give him the one-finger salute. (no, this wasn't road rage. I was fully anticipating this, and was mentally watching this unfold in slow motion.) Would I have flipped this micro penis off, if he didn't have a Strymon sticker? ---No. With basically anything else (MAGA, Roll Tide, Wide Spread Panic, Dixie Pride), I would've just ignored him. As I said, it's the Bible belt, you don't want to antagonize hostile cave people.

Anyway, that was extremely satisfying. I can't remember the last time I flipped someone off and it made me chuckle. Usually, I'm dealing with illogical, unstable people. This time, I was dealing with some dumbass kid, and it was more of a Dennis the Menace moment, rather than I hate your existence and I want you to be vaporized moment. (anyway....little pleasures)

[dubkitty]

i found two nice GE 12AX7s and an Amperex on eBay for like $25 each on average, so i’ll have exactly the preamp tubes i want in the Princeton. i’ll have to see what works best; in the past i’ve liked Amperex in V1 and GE for the rest. the RCA will come out because it’s inherently a bit fuzzier which isn’t great in the PR but should be good in the Hammond head.

i’m grateful that’s working out because things are kind of sucking right now…my gf’s having a depressive episode which has been educational as to how much of a drag it was for my partners to listen to me when i was like that. i’m staving off depression by working somewhat obsessively on guitar projects.

[BitchPudding]

One month of Lexapro. Big change from when I last posted. I have a waaaaay better handle on my emotions than I did before. I feel like I function way better now without this cloud of fear hanging over everything I do. Way less doomer about things now.

ADHD diagnosis was inconclusive. Potentially my anxiety was so bad it was causing ADHD like symptoms, so my meds have been upped. If I'm still having trouble a month from now then we'll know for sure.

But fuuuuuuuuuuuck it feels so good to not want to hurl from worry anymore.

[dubkitty]

when an antidepressant starts to work it’s a wonderful thing.

[cosmicevan]

I got turned onto one of these self help guru / healer types...Dr Joe Dispenza...and I got into it and followed his methods. By doing so, I changed my life and healed my auto-immune disease(s). I no longer take 12 pills a day for ulcerative colitis or an every other week biologic shot for psoriatic arthritis and I have ZERO pain in my body from inflammation. It's nothing short of a miracle and this dude has a formula to do it...well, it's really the same thing that religion and tony robbins and 12 step program and any number of self improvement methods say just packaged differently.

It's all about how your thoughts matter. If you wake up and think angry thoughts, you send chemicals through your body that align with those thoughts which ultimately leads to disease over time.

In any event, the mind body connection is real.

[dubkitty]

i wound up changing out all of the tubes in the Princeton except the rectifier, which is a weird tube i haven't seen before. it's SO MUCH BETTER. it's not so much that it's cleaner, though the power tubes are, as billed, "less gainy" than typical...it's that the distortion is less enharmonic and thus more pleasant to the ear. it's so improved that it sounds good running the 8" Jensen and the 12" Weber D120 clone together, where it was too distorted before to sound very good with the Jensen. it's now

V1 Amperex 12AX7
V2 Telefunken 12AT7
V3 GE 12AX7
V4 GE12AX7
V5+6 Tung-Sol 6V6GT (modern)
V7 Fender 5AR4

i'm really grateful i have this stuff to work on, because my shit is dragging otherwise. i did have a great (if exhausting) Wednesday, when i met Poppy the baby pygmy hippo at the Richmond Zoo in the morning and then saw Bob Mould tear up the Black Cat. may have been the best show i've seen of him with Narducy and Wurster. but i'm having intrusive depressive thoughts constantly bugging me. even when i'm happy, my brain will start telling me i hate myself, and it gets tiresome arguing with it. it's really helpful for my spirits to look at the stuff i worked on and go "wow, that worked." it's keeping me from working on loops and other stuff, though, so i'm hoping to end this phase of guitar projects soon.

[cosmicevan]

i wound up changing out all of the tubes in the Princeton except the rectifier, which is a weird tube i haven't seen before. it's SO MUCH BETTER. it's not so much that it's cleaner, though the power tubes are, as billed, "less gainy" than typical...it's that the distortion is less enharmonic and thus more pleasant to the ear. it's so improved that it sounds good running the 8" Jensen and the 12" Weber D120 clone together, where it was too distorted before to sound very good with the Jensen. it's now

V1 Amperex 12AX7
V2 Telefunken 12AT7
V3 GE 12AX7
V4 GE12AX7
V5+6 Tung-Sol 6V6GT (modern)
V7 Fender 5AR4

i'm really grateful i have this stuff to work on, because my shit is dragging otherwise. i did have a great (if exhausting) Wednesday, when i met Poppy the baby pygmy hippo at the Richmond Zoo in the morning and then saw Bob Mould tear up the Black Cat. may have been the best show i've seen of him with Narducy and Wurster. but i'm having intrusive depressive thoughts constantly bugging me. even when i'm happy, my brain will start telling me i hate myself, and it gets tiresome arguing with it. it's really helpful for my spirits to look at the stuff i worked on and go "wow, that worked." it's keeping me from working on loops and other stuff, though, so i'm hoping to end this phase of guitar projects soon.

If you've never tried meditation...this is your sign to give it a shot. The stuff I got hip to is all about losing bad thoughts for good.

[dubkitty]

not to sound sarcastic, but as the very definition of an old hippie i tried that back in the 20th century. turns out it doesn’t play well with my bipolar 2 or the ways my brain is tweaked by antidepressants. there’s stuff running around in my brain that’s even more difficult to control than normal consciousness. i made a piss-poor Buddhist whether medicated or not.