Crazy stuff you did as a kid with your gear

[Tman]

Back in high school days a bandmate of mine took a hammer and a chisel to a law suit Ibanez LP to add a middle humbucker for some Ace Frehley vibe. It looked pretty good unless you removed the pickup ring. The worst I did was drill out the headstock of a cheapo LP copy to replace the crappy tuners with a set of Grovers. One oddball thing I did was stuff slices of sponges between the frames and cones of my speakers to lessen the speaker buzz. I was using cheap '70s solid state combos back in grade school and would crank them with a EH "Power Boost" in front. The cheap speakers couldn't handle it and the cones would buzz after a while.

oh no-tman-you have divulged the true secret of the "brown" sound-now everyone will know it wasn't the variac,the big-bottle sylvanias.or the paf's

It was brown sound alright......real crappy. Cheap SS combos pushing their 10" speakers with double their rated watts. Talk about cone break-up. After a few of those sessions they would buzz at any volume until they got the sponge treatment.

[Mr. dB]

I used to plug a cable from the Ext. Spkr. Out jack on my Vox Cambridge Reverb amp, to one of the input jacks. By adjusting the volume and tone controls, various wild oscillating noises would result. Very "Metal Machine Music" except I was doing it in 1969. Adding reverb and/or tremolo to the mix was fun too.

[asopaque]

i'm getting my G&L P-bass refinned at some point from a cherry sunburst with white pickguard (which i've never really liked), to a black body with black pickguard.

so, i took black sharpie pens to the body and pickguard, just to see what it was gonna look like.

this happened a couple of weeks ago, does it still count?? i mean, i'm a grown adult, but it seems i can still be stupid.

(actually, i really like the bass in black, and it's just perfectly punk rock now, until i can afford the refin. I'm happy!)

[ayh]

As a kid .....?? Man,It's 30+ years down the road ,and Im still doin stupid s*** with my gear !

In the 70's ,we all had to strip the finish off our guitars & refinish 'em natural.I ended up with some horrible re-fins,luckily they were pretty much Asian Kays and stuff like that

[demonufo]

In the 70's ,we all had to strip the finish off our guitars & refinish 'em natural.I ended up with some horrible re-fins,luckily they were pretty much Asian Kays and stuff like that

I've got somebody's 2 pickup Teisco Delray on the wall at the moment that had that treatment (not by me, might I add!). And it's got the upper horn cut off it too.
I've been wondering for the last 6 months whether to throw it out, or put it on the bay. But I really can't be bothered to pack and post the damn thing, so the bin is winning the argument at the moment.

As for stupid things, I've not done that much
About 15 years ago, when I first started out, I did throw a real cheap strat clone that I hated across the rehearsal room once, but it landed quite gently, on it's back. Despite landing a good 20ft from where I threw it. Turned out after I dumped a humbucker in the bridge, that it was actually one of my favourite guitars, ever.
Actually, stupider than that, with same guitar, broke the truss rod adjuster whilst experimenting with the action, and knowing absolutely f' all about how they worked at the time. Still played beautifully. With fat frets and fatter strings, I just dug in real deep. The bow didn't bother me that much (which to be fair, wasn't that bad). I guess this was no great loss on a £109 MDF bodied Encore though.