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i'm so glad someone thought this was funny

JUST FUCKIN' KILL HIM

12XU2A3X3 wrote:alright so i have a few questions about the Chuck Collins HP-1 reissue:

1. What's the deal with the graphics, i see some with them and some without. WHY?

2. These fuckers are up to like $300, are they worth it? I played chanks, ex-stripes, HP clone, it was cool, but it was really low gain. Does it sit well before/after other stuff for stacking only. I have an Infanem Driving Notion which i feel like is getting me so a similar place, maybe?

1) AFAIK, the unlabeled units were produced before Chuck got the rights to the Interfax trademark/graphics. They were made from NOS parts and leftover pieces when *that crazy guy* (as Albini refers to him) passed on.

2) I believe the prices not only reflect the obvious supply/demand curves, but at some point the leftover parts had to have run dry and then sourcing *new* NOS parts had to be factored in to the overhead.

I have a blank one, bought used for $180 summer 2012. Worth every last red cent. I'm considering another, new.

It's very interactive with guitar volume. Tone control, not so. It almost bypasses it completely. Tone on 0 is audibly different from Tone on 1, but from 1-10 it sounds unchanged to me. But its vol-knob interaction is about as sensitive as a MK 1.5 Tonebender/germanium FuzzFace...and I'm pretty sure the circuit has its roots in that family tree. It's a 2 transistor effect, most of them being a mix of ge/si but some being all silicon. "The sound" of Albini's original is the hybrid design, and the originals had less output volume (that's how Albini dimes both sliders NP; I've never been able to do that with mine as output was increased) but still have ridiculous amounts of gain on tap, most of which comes from the Input gain control (left slider).

It has a high noise floor almost like a Ram's Head Muff, and single coil pickups will be extra sensitive to ANY AND EVERY stray EMF/source of hum. On 'high' settings fretboard finger noise is also very much pronounced...which helps one improve their technique to compensate for the sensitivity.

But dat sound....it's incredible in front of a DMM and Goodbye24 in particular. Especially if you bend strings. And nothing, nothing else I've tried has the same kind of touch response. It's a very peculiar beast, the way it combines muff-like sustain with germanium fuzzface nasal growl and dynamics (somewhat). When you gently brush your strings with a fingertip, they ring like a bell. If you use a metal, glass, ceramic, stone etc pick...you get a lot of that Big Black grind. Regardless of what you use, when you dig in, things get compressed and sputtery, yet still sound very fuzzy.

If I had to, I could get away with it being my only dirtbox. It's that special, and useful.

Hollow-body electric + HP = infinite sustain.

Woah! Thanks!