bry4321

I zoomed in, darn you, @BadgerDave

Congratulations that's a beauty! Look forward to your update.

I reached for a figure through the smoke and the sparks But which one did I save the girl or the guitar Well I made a lot of money got a lot of good press Writing paperback novels like a man possessed Every name was changed every story was true Every priest was me every stripper was you And they danced like angels cast out for being lovers And I wrote their life story on a matchbook cover

Someone posted a review of his performance in Alexandria, VA a couple of weeks ago, with some good pics. Robin Trower’s recent set at The Birchmere, the first of two evenings at the venue, may have been the loudest show I’ve ever taken in in that room.

Hey you were right!

It is looking like: White (including w/b/w and aged white): 3 Black (including b/w/b): 8 Other: (not counting "millions of LEDs" and "install an iPad"): 3 or maybe 4, I lost count to be honest Winner: TORTOISESHELL Just kidding I'm not doing that, and thanks for the suggestions I appreciate them!

I started to do that but can’t tell if my original post and pics would get overwritten so I will remember that for next time!

Someone on HFC had one about this color from a Prototype II a few years ago…maybe not as aged 🤔

Uh-oh

I think it’s too late for that? Poll would now have to read black white bwb wbw aged white engraved checkerboard polka dot/tortoise shell/perhaps get some strings/etc. This has really cleared things up for me!

One step at a time! 🤪

Thank you for taking the time to post this. I have been happy with PirateShip in the past but had no idea PayPay had a shipping option. Will be sure to check that out next time!

Sorry for long post but I think you need a subscription to view the link. No politics intended and I don't want to get the thread shut down, so moderators should feel free to delete this post or direct me to do so. Maker of Nirvana’s Guitar Sound Copes With Trump’s Tariff Chaos By Daniel Taub | March 12, 2025 5:00AM ET Photographer: James Crump/WireImage Kurt Cobain of Nirvana during the ‘In Utero’ tour at Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, in 1993. President Donald Trump’s noisy and frenetic trade wars are colliding with the industry that pioneered another form of distortion — the rock ’n’ roll kind. Just ask Mike Matthews, who founded New York’s Electro-Harmonix in 1968. The company makes equipment that alters the sound from electric guitars, creating effects used by the likes of the White Stripes, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins. Kurt Cobain’s guitar riff on Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit?” That’s EHX’s Small Clone chorus pedal. But Matthews’ biggest headache these days isn’t keeping mercurial musicians happy, it’s absorbing the hit from unpredictable tariffs “We’re gonna have to continue to buy our raw materials from overseas, even with the tariffs,” Matthews, 83, said in an interview at the Electro-Harmonix factory in an industrial area of Long Island City, just east of Manhattan. “Trump’s policy on tariffs will definitely bring very big companies into America for the manufacturing, but small and medium companies, their volume will not be big enough.” Behemoths like Apple Inc. can spend billions to reshore production to the US and avoid Trump’s tariffs. Companies like Electro-Harmonix aren’t large enough to manufacture all the components they need in the US. Matthews, a Bronx native, booked concerts featuring the Isley Brothers and Chuck Berry while studying electrical engineering at Cornell University. After college, he went to work for International Business Machines Corp. and continued to promote shows, befriending musicians including Jimi Hendrix. As Hendrix and the Rolling Stones popularized distorted guitar sounds in the late 1960s, Matthews began helping an acquaintance make fuzz pedals — the small metal boxes musicians rig on the floor between their guitar and an amplifier. The partnership didn’t work out, so Matthews started Electro-Harmonix and soon unveiled the Big Muff Pi, a fuzz pedal that now comes in more than a dozen variations, with thousands sold monthly for $84 to $330 each. EHX makes more than 150 different reverb, looper, delay, synthesizer and other effects pedals, giving the company about $24 million in revenue last year. At EHX’s headquarters, staffers with soldering irons install circuit boards into aluminum chassis. Others use oscilloscopes and guitars to test the pedals, which are then passed on to colleagues who pack them into cardboard boxes. While a hundred employees work at the 130,444-square-foot (12,119-square-meter) facility, all the components they put together are made elsewhere: mostly in China, along with Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The parts EHX and other companies import from China were hit by the flurry of executive orders that immediately followed Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. A blanket 10% tariff on goods from China went into effect on Feb. 4. By the end of the month, Trump announced an additional 10% tariff on goods from China, starting March 4. The levies and threats came so fast that many American businesses were left confused. Electro-Harmonix and other small manufacturers have little choice but to continue buying components from China. Printed circuit boards and aluminum chassis from US suppliers would cost two or three times as much, Matthews said, and bringing the manufacture of circuit boards in-house is too expensive for a company of EHX’s size. “That would be a really huge investment,” he said. Even before the new levies, EHX had been slowly diversifying its circuit-board suppliers, buying from places including Taiwan to avoid an over-reliance on China. The company can also delay some shipments from China. Given EHX’s “very deep inventories on most all of our pedals we make, we can ride out this storm,” he said. Eventually, Matthews will need to decide whether to absorb the cost of tariffs or raise prices for the first time in 2 1/2 years — a risky move given stiff competition and softened consumer demand for music equipment. Much of the market for musical instruments and items such as amplifiers and guitar pedals — a $20 billion-a-year industry globally, according to the National Association of Music Merchants — is discretionary. Companies such as EHX are competing for customer dollars not just with other forms of entertainment, but also goods already made pricier by inflation, like groceries and automobiles. “I’ll have to scratch my chin to think about it — you know, can I still make a profit?” he said. “You sort of like just guesstimate. Like by raising your prices, what will that do?” In Akron, Ohio, one of EHX’s competitors is facing the same questions. EarthQuaker Devices — which makes overdrive, delay, distortion and other effects pedals used by artists including Radiohead, PJ Harvey and LCD Soundsystem — employs 35 workers who populate circuit boards with transistors, and drill, powder coat and print designs on raw aluminum pedal enclosures. While EarthQuaker found a non-Chinese supplier for the enclosures about six years ago, the electronic components, though purchased from US firms, ultimately come from China, Chief Executive Officer Julie Robbins said. EarthQuaker buys transistors and resistors from components distributor Mouser Electronics Inc., and every order now comes with tariff surcharges, she said. Mansfield, Texas-based Mouser has been owned since 2007 by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. conglomerate. “If they’re unable to find domestic suppliers,” Robbins said, “what chance do I have?” Mouser had eaten the cost of tariffs on Chinese goods from Trump’s first term, but isn’t able to take the hit this time around, said Pete Shopp, senior vice president of business operations at the distributor. “Our costs have gone up — we have to pass it on,” he said. Given the lack of affordable domestic options for components, EarthQuaker is also struggling with how to handle the cost of tariffs. Raising prices now, only to lower them later, isn’t practical, Robbins said, given that retailers would lose money on pedals in their inventory. “It’s really difficult to budget and plan when we have this absolute uncertainty,” said Robbins, who co-owns EarthQuaker with her husband, company President Jamie Stillman. The issues faced by EarthQuaker and Electro-Harmonix can be found throughout the industry. Makers of instruments, pedals, amps and other accessories source items such as electronic components and guitar tone wood from around the world, often with lead times of several months to a year, and tariffs imposed with little warning can upend their budgets, said John Mlynczak, president and CEO of the National Association of Music Merchants trade group, or NAMM. “You have a global supply — things are on boats,” he said. “So when you say tomorrow there’s a tariff suddenly, well, wait a minute, I have products on a boat, I have a container coming in. You’re telling me that container’s now gonna cost more right away?” While NAMM considers tariffs inflationary and therefore punitive for the industry, and encourages its members to contact lawmakers about them, the unpredictability is arguably a bigger problem, Mlynczak said. “Our members don’t know right now what to plan for,” he said. In Long Island City, Matthews is dealing not just with the new levies but also the existing 35% tariffs on goods imported from Russia, where Electro-Harmonix has for decades owned a factory that makes vacuum tubes used in guitar amps. Matthews is hopeful that Trump will find a way to stop the Russia-Ukraine war, ultimately bringing an end to those tariffs. The 83-year-old Matthews is ready to spend less time at EHX and more time fishing in Florida. “I am open and have been in the process of trying to sell the company,” he said. The tariffs on Chinese goods only compound the existing challenges. “It’s a difficult time.”