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Maybe a dumb idea for this application, but toothpaste works really well as a mask when spray painting.  Let it semi dry, spray your next colour, then a few hours later rub off the toothpaste with some water. 

Obviously you will want to test this first before putting it on anything expensive.  But I've used the technique for doing painting on props where you want bits of colour to show through from underneath other colours.

Oooh, this is intriguing, and cheap! Will my flouride free toothpaste work? Lol.

Definitely going to be trying this one out sometime along with the frisket.

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I do it a lot with testors paint and like you said as long as I do not put a clear coat it looks really cool. The instant I hit an enclosure with epoxy pour all of my detail work and contrasting shades and matte/gloss goes out the window.

Its always such a let down when you lose that contrast. I guess I probably shouldn't worry too much since it's highly unlikely any of my pedals will see life as a piece of gigging equipment.

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Mention Josh Homme and I'm in! Some real Icarus vibes with the culture there, love it!

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Glad the Dude abides! I have been lucky enough to catch both queens and them crooked vultures live and vultures was out of this world, such a great show and you could tell they were all really into it and having a blast.

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I can't begin to tell you how jealous I am. Was supposed to see QOTSA for the first time in Fall of 2017. Woke up to go to the bathroom at 2am the day of the show, and my back went out on me on the way. Spent the next four days on the floor. I was only 25 too... Still one of the scariest moments of my life. Someday I'll get to see them

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Mention Josh Homme and I'm in! Some real Icarus vibes with the culture there, love it!

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Sounds awesome. As soon as I read glossy on matte, I thought black. I guess, let it dry teal good and try not to scuff it.

That's kinda where I'm leaning. In a perfect world there'd be a spray on finish that would let the paint's own finish through, like an invisible hardener. But I think 2020 taught us how far we are from perfect..

You could maybe mask the design or create a stencil with frisket film or liquid frisket when switching between a matte clearcoat and glossy clearcoat.

dave

I'd not heard of frisket before, definitely might be something to practice with and see what I can do. My past experience tells me getting fancy like that will take plenty of practice before it looks halfway decent haha.

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I've been thinking for sometime about finishing a pedal with a matte finish, but a glossy design on it. Has anyone had any success doing something like this?

Particularly I'm looking to put a glossy black on top of a matte black, something where the graphic doesn't necessarily look too visible in certain lighting. The only thing I can think of right now is to hand paint with my glossy Testors model paint on a matte enclosure. Only issue there is the paint won't be clear coated for protection as any spray clear will turn everything matte or glossy depending on that clear coat.

Any tips, tricks, or suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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Thanks fellas!

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Hey folks!

Got a quick little fuzz here for ya. It's a KMA Fuzzly Bear on vero viz tagboard effects. Simple Volume and Gain controls plus a Bias control labelled Skin/Meat. Needless to say I definitely lean towards the meat side.

Graphically a very simple look, just black font & outline. The font is a Cyrillic styled font. The name comes from a brown bear that served in the Polish army in WW2 - look it up, the story is pretty unreal. Taking inspiration from the industrial fuzz tones and bear connection in the original name, I created this pedal to have a sort of Atompunk/Dieselpunk aesthetic from the Soviet side - very simply, to the point, and gnarly. My Green Russian Muff also sits in the Soviet side of the Atom/Dieselpunk series, while my Raygun Youth and U-235 both sit on the western/American Atompunk side. Hoping once I get a website up for all my projects (not limited to pedal building) I'll be able to give a clearer look at these little series I'm working on.

Apologies in advance for the rats nest that is my wiring. I'm still no good at making vero look anything remotely clean.

I'm in love with this enclosure! What did you do to get the color gradient? I'm assuming the design is then etched, yes?

Sting was better with the police
Byrne was better with the talking heads
Even Bowie was only as good as the band that backed him at the time (although one of his most stunning abilities was putting those bands together)

And Gwen Stefani was immeasurably better with No Doubt. Still salty about that one...

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I enjoy hearing those slightly off beat hits

I'm learning drums and this is giving me hope after listening back to my practices.

Love it! There's always something about the way a certain person playa a certain piece of music that adds an element that I quite enjoy.

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I think the hardest thing for anyone who loves human musicianship to see is a human to be replaced by a machine. Its like, if you want to use the machine, great. But couldn't you have just started with the machine and let the human use their talent somewhere that we'll get a chance to experience it rather than on the cutting room floor?

A human made the machine and another told it what to do.

People record musicians all the time and have other musicians come in and play parts instead. I've had my parts on other peoples' albums replaced and I've done the replacing. How is THAT any different? But most people would say that's perfectly reasonable. The songwriter wanted something else and decided that what they ended up using was better for their song. But the second the source of that sound is a particular piece of electronics it's bad (all this other artificial stuff is fine, though).

It's not like ALL of Copeland's parts were replaced by a machine, just like the Thriller album didn't use one beat source (human or machine) exclusively. This may be hard to accept but a studio musician is just a tool in the same way that a machine is.

EDIT: I should say, people can have whatever emotional reaction they want to art and that's fine. But I think people should reexamine their prejudices, because some of them are received criticism. I believe the dislike of drum machines and the dislike of any autotune whatsoever are mostly received criticisms and not honest assessments of the art.

Ok, first of all, I want to say I was not attempting to be snarky, or passive aggressive, or retort your response. You're a smart dude, so I thought this
would be a worthwhile spot to explore more sides to the discussion.

I never said machine playing replacing human playing is objectively bad. I understand that the writer has full control over their art, and can do with it what they want. One human being recorded to replace another isn't less of a shame, to me, than is a machine replacement - barring a downright poor original performance of course.

I think that's part of why so many people love to hear demo and working tracks of their favorite songs. Personally, I love getting to to aurally explore that creative process. Hearing the first demo, the second demo, then the final is such a fun exploration.

Of course, this is all just my opinions and musings based on my experience. I personally don't like electronic centred music because its just not my jam. Doesn't mean the music is objectively bad, nor does it mean I dislike all electronic instrumentation.

But I also don't listen to music in order to objectively judge its quality as art. I listen to it for a lot of reasons, but never that. So for me, the consistency that a drum machine may produce over a human drummer doesn't do anything for me. I enjoy hearing those slightly off beat hits, or the tempo speeding up or slowing down ever so much, and when you replace that with the consistency and, sterility if you will, of a drum machine, to me that's a shame. That's all. Doesn't mean the drum machine version is bad. It just changes my personal interest in that song.

This also is not an explanation for a lot of the 'purists' either. I wholly understand where you are coming from with that, lots of people will argue that makes music objectively bad.

Like I said, just wanted to explore another side of the argument.

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The reason statements like the one I replied to are frustrating to me is because they come across not only as profoundly ignorant of the songwriting process and artistic process of producing, but they ignore what actually sounds good to listeners and replaces it with some high-minded concept that there's a particular line that one must not cross before your song is declared as sucking out of hand. I mean, we're on a forum dedicated to essentially destroying the purity of the tone of an electric guitar, why's that okay? Hell, why use an electric instrument in the first place, shouldn't you stick with an acoustic? Maybe everyone should go back to gut frets, after all you're not a REAL musician unless you custom temper your instrument for each key! You've heard of listening with your eyes? This isn't even that, this is listening with your abstract principles.

You could also argue that his point was from another, more emotional bias that I think many of us tend to have as people who play instruments.

We could argue this point was not about the perceived quality of human created vs machine created music. As musicians ourselves (some of us farrr less skilled than others, myself included), many will often recognize and respect talent when we see it. And, for myself at least, it feels like there's talent being wasted when its replaced with machine made music. That doesn't invalidate the quality of the machine made music. But it does feel like his talent is being negated by that artistic choice, which reveals our bias as musicians ourselves, as by extension, it feels like like a negation of our own perceived talents.

Again, that's where our stance reveals it's bias. We also start to get into things at this point, like what is the personal & professional relationship between Sting and Copeland - if Sting didn't want to use Copeland's talents, why did he stick around and not take them elsewhere? That's for them to know, and only them.

People can boogie down to whatever they like. I think the hardest thing for anyone who loves human musicianship to see is a human to be replaced by a machine. Its like, if you want to use the machine, great. But couldn't you have just started with the machine and let the human use their talent somewhere that we'll get a chance to experience it rather than on the cutting room floor?

Just a thought.

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First day of virtual school year with 3rd grader and Kindergartner. 



Edit:
So far, 3rd Grade is going perfectly.  Kindergarten is extremely taxing though.  My son keeps disengaging, which is expected at his developmental stage, but it means we have to 100% supervise to support him.  I need to go do my own work.

You've got this!

The third grader will do fine so long as they didn't struggle in class. As the year goes on you may need to keep them engaged a bit, but unlikely that the difficulty of the work will get out of hand.

As for your kindergartener, yeah, keeping them on task will be the most difficult aspect. I'm not sure what their online work looks like, but from the people I've communicated with, they've found the most success in trying to combine some of their lessons with things already going on in daily life for the family. For example, they can join you and/or your spouse while making dinner, and using that as a chance to practice counting ingredients, sounding out their names, what letter they start with, etc. Keeps the kid a bit more engaged, applies what they are learning, and helps you kill two birds with one stone.

Like I said, not sure if you can find a way to make that work based on what their work looks like, but hopefully it helps!!

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Seeing the options everyone has for school has me jealous. Elementary school district I work in is all-day in-person, mayyybe 1/7 of the kids are doing online, so its almost a packed house, only enforcing 3 feet of separation, no windows are open, teachers are allowed to give 5 minute mask breaks - because supposedly you can't get COVID without at least 15 minutes of unmasked exposure....what the... - lunch is in the cafeteria rather than the classrooms, and at recess I'm to encourage kids to all stay 6 feet away so they can take their masks off, because OF COURSE 5-11 year olds want to play with their friends with 6 feet of separation. Oh, and when I tried to get kids to put their masks on within 6 feet of each other, the principal told me "they're fine, we're outside and they're not physically touching each other." Oh, and because they're children who either cannot fully grasp the reality of the virus, or are taught incorrect info at home, chasing each other around around the playing yelling "I'm giving you coronavirus" is one of the most popular games.

Oh, and the county fair is still on over labor day weekend. Masks will be mandated, but this is rural NW Ohio, we'll see about that.

On another note, anyone have a hazmat suit for sale??

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