Originally submitted at Sports Authority
Features 32-ounce bottle Wide-mouth opening for easy emptying and refilling Removable lid with opening for sipping GATORADE® graphics Dishwasher safe
Says Gatorade but holds water!!
It's green. It holds water. It says Gatorade. You can squeeze it. WATER - it's what your body needs. Zero calories. I drink that stuff every day.
(legalese)
This Austone Vibrostomp is one of the bigger pedals out there, with a footprint of 4 inches by 4 inches. The pedal contains both TREMOLO and VIBRATO. For my March show I pulled off two pedals from my board, a tremolo and a chorus pedal, and replaced the two of them with an Austone Vibrostomp.
A toggle switch selects between the tremolo and vibrato modes. Another switch selects a HIGH or LOW range in the LFO (high and low speeds). The LED glows with the rate of the modulation - COOL!
The inside of the enclosure was signed by Jon Bessent. RIP. Austone products are no longer in production.
A client had a 535 with a missing button for the switch. But where to find one? I was looking all over the interwebs but wasn't having any luck. And I wanted to give the dude a working pedal so he could do a gig.
So I went all old school and made a trip to the hardware store. I got some thin wooden dowels and some nice birch buttons. I cut and whittled down a section of the dowel. Then I drilled a small hole in the button and glued the section of dowel. Bam!! New replacement button in natural wood color. With a little spray paint these would look just like the original.
Later I finally discovered some authentic Dunlop plastic replacements at www.newoldsounds.com - they cost more than the wooden ones.
I built a paint booth that resembled a telephone booth. It's basically an open box covered in plastic. The ends were salvaged from an old coffee table. Some wood scraps and plastic sheeting from Home Depot completed the necessary supplies.
I put in a hook in a cross member in the top of the booth. There was another hook in the little neck stick in the guitar. This way the guitar could hang in the booth between the paint layers.
First up is a lacquer sanding sealer. I brushed on 8 coats of sanding sealer, lightly sanding after each application. Basically, you keep putting this stuff on until you don't see any wood grain texture. You can still see the grain but you want to check the texture. This is a critical step. You don't want your guitar body to be all rough like an unfinished piece of plywood.
After the body looked good I moved on to primer. I used Duplicolor Filler Primer that I picked up at an auto parts store. Again, I used lacquer, since I planned on using the Duplicolor lacquers for the paint and gloss coat. Everything has to be compatible so it can all stick together.
Anyway, I put on so many coats that I used up the whole can of primer. Once the guitar turned gray I could see a few spots where wood grain was showing through. I just sanded through those and put on some sealer until it was good. For small grains I just gave it an extra blast of primer.
The project starts with a raw unfinished Perle Destoyer body. Loads of elbow grease and sandpaper are needed to make the body as smooth as possible. The photos shows the guitar with a "neck stick" and masking in preparation for the sanding sealer process. The short window of warm weather in Seattle is the time for body finishing.
