
Rusted drop link bolts on a Fiat Panda Mk2…
The anti-roll bar drop links are very close to the ground on the Fiat Panda, which means after many years and miles – the salt and moisture often seizes them completely. Normally, to remove them you’ll hold the nut in place using an Allen wrench or mole grips, and then turn the nut using a […]

Budget tubescreamers construction comparison: Joyo Vintage Overdrive vs Behringer Tube Overdrive TO800
This post briefly looks at comparing two of the budget favourites when it comes to classic sounding, mid boosting overdrive pedals. In the UK, both pedals can be found around the £20 mark second hand, and both use either a 9V battery or a standard centre-negative pedal power supply. Both are built in China, with […]

Opening up a Johnson Blueline 50R
This arrived to me with a broken volume potentiometer (the board itself cracked which is a common problem for amplifiers with potentiometers that are PCB mounted directly and then suffer an impacted on the shaft), as well as an intermittent fault with the overdrive channel. After replacing the potentiometer with a modern Alpha one with […]

1×8 scrap wood cab
Housing a Jensen C8R speaker, for my Hotone Purple Wind, I used some scrap bits and pieces and made something rather wonky, but still sounds nice. After purchasing some veil netting and corduroy style fabric from Button Boutique in Wellingborough…

Teisco/Silvertone/Kawai style guitar repair
Pictures show the general chronological order that I decided to renovate this guitar in. Bought from a nice chap via Facebook, this is a 70s Japanese made two pickup instrument that has definitely been played and has seen better days. I very proudly went to make the whole thing functional and to try and improve […]

Award-Session “The Punk” 100W transistor amp
On my travels when collecting up odd and repairable guitars, basses, keyboards and amps, one of the rarities encountered was a variant of the Award-Session Sessionette amplifier – namely an adapted version of the 100W bass amp they did. The combo houses a 12″ Celestion G12-75T, rated at 100W, to match the fact that the […]

Building batten photo frame, for an A3 sized print
So, Mum wanted to know whether we can get an A3 photograph of the children and their partners together with her. I said to her, that I could do one better and I’d love to build a frame from scratch for it. So, this is what happened… Note: Most of these photos were taken using […]

Extreme Customer Service…
Spotted at Wing Yip, in Birmingham – a couple suffer a puncture and most of the staff come along and try to change the tyre. I haven’t seen service like that from most franchise garages, let alone oriental food superstores…