It definitely was. Add in the fact that I did it at 2:00 when it was 90 degrees and we were under an air quality alert, just for good measure 
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7/27/2020 - Squat Day
Up and moving, horribly stressing dreams. I had to use my inhaler yesterday and was immediately anxious, still am now. Maybe hard cardio during an air quality alert isn’t a good idea. Maybe sanding plywood without a mask isn’t a good idea. Either way, normal PWO routine.
Squat
45 x 5
140 x 5
180 x 5
220 x 3
260 x 5
300 x 5
340 x 5
260 - 5 x 5
Assistance - SS w/squat
Ab wheel - 5 x 10
Seated DB press - 40 lbs - 5 x 10
DB curl - 25 lbs - 2 x 10
No SS
DB curl - 25 lbs - 3 x 10
I felt really strong today, but had to put forth a mammoth effort to not let my pelvis tilt forward. Spine felt a little unstable, potentially because I slept pretty twisted. Assistance felt great. I kept my wrists rotated out hard during curls and it made them very difficult - I’ll probably go to 15 or 20 pounds next time.
Also, holy fuck did I sweat. Possible causes: excess drinking Friday; excessive salt Saturday; excess anxiety due to aforementioned inhaler use. Either way, it was gross even by my standards.
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Hey, unfortunately I’d say no - I do still gig occasionally, though less frequently, and social media just works for that type of thing. I have a friend who works with a local radio station and that helps, but aside from inside privileges like that, that’s where social media’s networking function is actually useful. You can just manage a band’s page without making it a personal page, and unfollow anybody who has shit that pops up on your feed.
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Sounds like it’s a necessary evil to a certain extent. I can deal with it but I’ll just enjoy my time away and work on healthier habits with it if I need to use it again. Thanks a lot man.
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7/28/2020 - Bench Day
Had a big presentation for work so didn’t lift until lunch. Normal PWO routine except I did 2 cups of coffee in the morning instead of pre-workout before lift.
Bench
45 x 5
90 x 5
115 x 5
140 x 3
165 x 5
190 x 5
215 x 5
165 - 5 x 5
Assistance - SS w/ bench
Chest-supported DB rows - 40 lbs - 5 x 15
Reverse lunges - 5 x 10 reps/leg
No SS
DB “Plate raise” - 25 lbs - 20, 20, 15
Session went well, work stress is bothering me a little so I had to work harder to focus. Minor inconvenience.
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Lung dropset. They’re gonna be yoked.
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7/29/2020 - Morning weight: 206.0 lbs. Headed the right direction.
We subscribed to Perfectly Imperfect Produce and got our first box yesterday. It’s a fuckton of fruits and veggies for what we paid. And it’s all stuff that was “too ugly” for grocery stores, so that’s kinda cool that they’re trying to do something about food waste.
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Also, I’m at that weird phase of fat loss where I look a lot worse with a shirt on than without. With a shirt, I just look like I have titties and a pot belly. Without one, I at least have pecs and some faint ab lines. I hate that I drop fat from the top of my gut first and then it slowly works its way down, it looks like I’m melting and that’s why I usually abandon cutting weight before achieving anything. Hoping I’m grown up enough now to not be a giant shithead about it.
7/30/2020 - Deadlift Day
I slept like I died and woke up feeling really good. Normal PWO routine, except pre-workout intestinally distressed me…
Deadlift
135 x 3
225 x 3 - whoops shoulda been 230 - better scrap the workout now
275 x 3
320 x 3
370 x 1
415 x 1
460 x 1
320 - 5 x 5
Assistance - SS w/ deadlift
Ab wheel - 5 x 10
Push up with hands elevated 3" to add ROM - 5 x 15
No SS
Band pull apart - 5 x 20
Sumo moved really well, I felt like I could really get my knees open so that I can get close to the bar. Wedged ye ol’ willy into the bar and did what I needed to do. Banged each knee once really hard on the FSL work, but it’ll just be a good mark. Ab wheel felt great and so did push ups, really liked the platforms for extra ROM and hit the pecs hard. Still have to do band pull aparts but had to run for a work meeting.
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@boilerman and @flappinit - set me a speaker PR today. Got a Tonker for $55 delivered to my door and am about to throw it in my Studio Pro. Thing is mint condition. Heavy as balls though.
Edit: installed it and tested it and am very impressed. Red Stripe Transtube amps don’t quite have enough presence (sizzle) for me and their bass is a little flubby. This speaker fixed both instantly and is almost double as loud as the stock speaker. I’ll call it a win.
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Nice man, was the stock speaker just a Peavey generic?
Speaker replacement is prob the best way to get from a good sounding amp to a great one. Gives a little bit of an x factor when played side by side with stock.
My JCM was a good sounding amp through the stock cab. It came with celestion g12t-75s and while it sounded pretty good, it was a bit harsh and it was hard to get the mid-range to poke through when playing live. I ended up buying a Mesa cab with v30s for like $400 from a buddy and it totally brought the amp to life. Probably had a lot to do with the cab construction too. The Mesa was at least 15-20lb heavier than the Marshall. The bass was sick… It was like getting kicked in the chest and mid-range was sweet… The fucker sung with that cab. I was also able to start boosting the treble and presence too. Got a lot of compliments with that setup.
Do you run any OD or anything through the input?
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Stock speaker was a Blue Marvel, which, at the time, was made by Eminence. It’s pretty similar to a Legend speaker, but isn’t as efficient and can’t handle as much power. It’s a great speaker in its own right, but doesn’t have enough bite or bass for the amp’s voicing.
I really think most people could get away gigging and recording with a decent solid-state amp that has an upgraded speaker to make up for missing/over-emphasized frequencies. My amp doesn’t have a Presence control so I went with a fizzier speaker to fix it.
I’ve heard great things about those Mesa 4x12’s, that’s gotta be a killer. I’m currently building a 1x12 open/closed convertible cab with an Eminence Red, White, and Blues speaker to use with a Bandit I’m turning into a head (bought it for $100 because the cab/speaker were crushed but the amp itself was good). Trying solid 3/4" thick pine for the cab and am gonna stain it deep blue to match the Bandit chassis. Got some cool old brass furniture corner protectors to add to it too and will use expanded steel instead of cloth speaker covering. Industrial antique-chic?
I actually use a Caline copy of the MXR Super Badass distortion pedal into the input of the Studio Pro. The clipping style just jives a lot better with the Studio Pro’s clipping and it gets REALLY metal with the volume at noon and gain at 8 o’clock (unity volume is at 8 o’clock as well, so it’s a lot of boost). The pedal has a full 3-band EQ so I can still boost mids and highs for chugs and stuff. Not a bad little pedal for $34.
Do you overdrive the Marshall up front or do you just use the amp’s gain?
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Agreed 100%. Unfortunately for me and the band I was in it was a necessity to have a massive amp just due to the fact that our drummer was so loud. Gigging we could’ve gotten away with smaller amps due to the micing situation, but if you carve out your tone loud and just drop the volume it ends up sounding like shit. The sound engineers at the shows we played HATED us because we were so loud.
I used to run a TS9 into a 7 band eq into the front of the Marshall. No drive, tone at noon and level a hair away from max on the TS. EQ, if I remember correctly was essentially just a HP/LP with a big boost in the mids. Sounded super snappy and chunky, and I just rolled back volume and turned off the tubescreamer for “cleans” which were slightly driven due to the volume being so high on the amp. I love the sound of power tube saturation… the point where it’s clean but it’s barely breaking up and super wide sounding. It’s funny I used the drive 1 channel on the head, but had gain set to like 2-3 because it was so driven on the power tube section.
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That sounds badass man. Make sure to share pics of it when it’s done. All this talk is making me want to break out the half stack again and blow my neighbors away. I haven’t turned it on in probably 4 years haha.
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I feel it dude, the last drummer I jammed with was a monster. My ValveKing could keep up, but not with a good clean sound. Gain, no problem. But it would get too much power tube distortion at rehearsal volume and I didn’t like it for what we played. I do love me some violently-too-hot tubes though. I’d imagine those two pedals would do really well going into a Marshall like that. I find that 6L6 power tubes don’t cook as well as the EL34’s so I always went with preamp distortion.
Will do! Hoping I can get a decent video of the whole setup going. You should definitely give the neighbors a wake-up call sometime. This quarantine has really pushed me to get back into music and I think I’m probably better now than I ever have been, which is cool. Just gotta find people to jam with…
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Haha yeah man… Unfortunately (but actually fortunately) I haven’t missed a beat with the whole quarantine stuff. 2 of the guys at work haven’t been coming in so work has actually been busier than what is typical, on top of the never ending heat wave this summer has been.
I really, really should pick up the guitar again. My fiancee and parents also got me a sweet 5 string banjo for my 30th b day a couple months ago and I haven’t spent nearly as much time with that as I’d like either.
That’s definitely a difficult thing to come by. It’s especially difficult to find people that mesh well together. I guess I’m fortunate that I know multiple drummers and vocalists who are pretty open minded, and I’m also friends with. The thing that prevents us from making anything of it is time… I think I sent you one of my SoundCloud links a while back… I have like 4 of them lol… I used to write and record 1-2 songs a week and now I’m lucky if I even THINK about playing guitar 1-2 times a week.
Also, I remember seeing your video of the guitar you built, it was awesome. You should post some more music stuff up in your log, or maybe someone should start an off-topic thread…
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Thanks man, I think I will. Do the people that do guitar/music videos at home just record two audio tracks for the video and mute the camera mic while they play? If that’s the case, I’ll have to look into software for that. I’d like to start doing low level demos of some of the cheap gear I’ve stocked up on. Either way, I’ll try and put more stuff in here. I do think it would be cool to start a musician’s thread on here. I could never be on a guitar forum, people are such dicks on them.
I would assume that’s how it’s done, one mic for voice recording/description and a mic or DI for whatever your sampling. Get a vid of you playing and talking about it and lay the audio track over the vid, mute camera audio.
Pretty sure REAPER has video capability and it’s technically “free”. Amazing program with a ton of great features, you might want to check it out if you haven’t already.
I think I’ll have to give Reaper a shot. I’ve been bumbling my way through Audacity lately and it’s not great. Syncing tracks is rough and I can’t figure out how to calibrate for latency. Doesn’t help I’m a mediocre-at-best guitar player. Haha
Definitely give reaper a try. I used to use audacity back in HS before I… aquired… a different program.
Got a new computer and reaper does everything the …aquired… program did and is super user friendly. There is definitely a learning curve but once you get used to the layout it’s great. Lots of free eqs effects and compressors too.
What does your chain look like? How much latency is there?
Edit: I should be more specific. Do you do mic - interface - USB? Or are you using a mic input into the soundcard