Cheapness and Resentment

... Are the midwivesof invention.

Tom Lee is having its annual Factory Blowout Sale, a mass dumping of a lot of stuff whose prices get slashed (to reasonable) in an effort to reduce inventory. It's a lot like the original Filene's Basement in Boston; lots of people sifting through piles of mostly rubbish and lots of scratch-n-dent guitars, keyboards, etc.

Normally I avoid Tom Lee like the awful plague it is. It's full of salespeople who take customer service seminars from Attila the Hun and every standoffish, unqualified-ly arrogant video clerk/record store cashier on earth.

I once bought a guitar there that was missing a switch tip. The price was too right for me to not buy it. The salesman made it seem like I shouldn't leave with it because it was damaged. "I'm going to replace the electronics anyway," I told him. He literally smirked at me and said, with no effort to hide his disbelief, "Oh, you think you can do that?"

I delayed no more and left.

The only time a salesperson ever approached me in a Tom Lee is when I took a picture of a guitar. This jerkoff acted like I was holding the place up.

So any chance I get, I like to screw these people. I once stumbled on some used parts at the repair bench (I was looking for some very small parts for a bridge). They didn't have what I needed, but I bought the used bridges very cheap. I may have spent HK$5-600.

I sold these original Steinberger bridges to a nice man overseas for about US$1,100.

Tom Lee doesn't have a beard, that's my pubic hair. Gotcha!

So as we can see, I don't like the place, the people, any of it.

But I like bargains, and I like 'technical resurrection;' making something 'broken' (only to those too dumb to know how to fix it) work again. Or better yet, get something to perform a function other than its original purpose.

D'inand I went to check it out, since I can usually find a few things in need of repair that are affordable and worth the time and effort.Amidst the crush of people, I found something potentially (there's a joke there to be made below) useful and, more importantly, cheap.I found a Mesa Boogie Accelerator pedal (originally for the Revolver rotating speaker) for HK$300 (about US$35).

The pedal is a CC (continuous controller) with a single jack in the front, and an LED on the side, but the basic aluminum housing is exactly like the Ernie Ball volume pedal, with the side-mounted switch, no doubt made in the same factory:But mine's blackPedals like this are basically like having an extra hand.The small protrusion on the left side of the pedal is attached to a switch. This way, you can use your foot to control things while your hands are full of guitar.If you're busy playing the guitar, you can't do things like hit switches, adjust knobs, or feel up drunk chicks.

Rock and roll. For example, a 'wah wah' pedal is basically a tone knob contolled by your foot. The 'wah' sound is created by going from bass to treble very quickly; the 'ow' sound is the opposite direction. It can mimic human vocal characteristics. Jimi Hendrix used it. It's one of the signature sounds of the theme from Shaf t.And 70s porn soundtracks. Bow-chicka-bow-wow... Before I took the pedal apart, it had only one jack on the front. When I removed the jack, it turns out the 1-hole faceplate with MESA/BOOGIE written on it was just  a cover, and the original 5-hole plate was underneathin much heavier stock. These pedals are made from aluminum and built like tanks; the 5-hole plate is steel.The Boogie version of the pedal is wired to be an on/off control for the effect, and the foot pedal itself is a way to control the speed of the effect. 

ButI want to turn it into a volume pedal. As we can see, the pedals are identical in terms of construction. It's the innards we need to work on.

I stripped out the old potentiometer (there's that joke) and ordered a new one from Ernie Ball for US$25:I will pick it up at my mother's house when I am in the States, and when I get back, I will put it in the pedal, wire it up, and have the world's only Mesa/Boogie volume pedal.

And all for about HK$500 (US$60). The Ernie Ball version pictured above is at least US$120.It's not even black.So cheapness and resentment are not always bad.