Modify Apple’s MagSafe 2 into MagSafe 1

2018/12/18 Doktor Ross Sewage8 Comments

Apple Computer is such an annoying corporation. They make these tiny changes to their stupid cords because they expect all of us to be rich tech bros upgrading our shit constantly. Well, I’m a cheap skate and I’m still rocking a seven-year-old laptop. But I did lose my charger. It was a MagSafe 1 charger. You know what’s incredibly hard to find now? MagSafe 1 chargers. Well, it turns out MagSafe 2 is the same fucking thing, just slightly different in size.

I picked up this old charger off craigslist for $20. It was late, we met in front of a grocery store, and I didn’t realize it had the wrong end until I got home. Dammit. Do I call the guy back? Do I try and sell this one myself? Or do I fuck it all up on my own DIY like I always do? You can guess the answer.

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Vacation

2018/11/10 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

Checkout in the shop will be closed for a few weeks as I’m going on vacation. It will be open again November 28-29, then closed again for a couple more weeks while I go on tour. It will open again December 16.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you want some art for holiday gifts, browse away for now and mark the dates. Keep in mind the time for shipping! Cheers.

Aesthetics of Sickness Book

2018/11/062020/08/26 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

G.O.R.E. Corps, ten hut! Check out this excellent new book coming out featuring tons of gory metal artwork, including moi, with great features on the artists and a foreword by legend Jeff Walker. Pre-order now and get 15% off with the code IWANTGORE15‬

https://heavymusicartwork.bigcartel.com/product/aesthetics-of-sickness-the-gore-archetypes

DIY Spew Tanks

2018/03/13 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

So you want to spew like the pros. Or, at the very least, the idiots in our band. Before our last tour with GWAR, we rejiggered our entire system of blood delivery. Based on a system devised by Sean, I made a revised version of a self contained blood tank that could send pressurized spew to the wanting masses.

Sean first got the idea to use plastic pipes for self-contained blood spewing some years back. It involved sealing and pressurizing plastic tubes with common Schraeder bike pump valves. Everything was customized for each individual costume, though, and require fragile gravity feeds. Years later, I came up with this diagram after thinking about how a spray bottle worked:

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70000 Tons of Gore Metal

2018/02/10 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

Last year, Exhumed was invited to play the 2018 edition of the annual 70000 Tons of Metal cruise. I hadn’t played with Exhumed in almost a full year’s time while their former bass player, Matt Slime, filled-in for me. He’s logged in more time playing with Exhumed than I have since “replacing” him. I actually did offer Exhumed to take Slime in my stead, because a nice cruise seemed like it would be a good reward for hard work. Well, they insisted I go and I got to enjoy my second 70000 Tons.

I played the boat two years ago with my fellow hooded cannibals. It was a wild ride. We’re obviously not the main kind of draw that the cruise has, it being mostly populated with power metal bands from Europe. They do get a few good death and thrash bands to even things out a bit for the attendees who like something more than just songs about ale and vikings on long boats.

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Operating Theatre: Shure GLX-D Digital Guitar Wireless

2018/01/20 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

I finally got the Shure GLX-D wireless system once my old Sennheiser wireless’s screen crapped out on me before our last tour. I am glad to say I was super happy with its ease of set up and its performance. It’s built tough all the way through and cuts down on the peripherals I need to set up during a fast change-over.

But… there’s always a but… I had a SLIGHT problem with it on the last tour. User error. I nabbed a cable out of it quickly at a bad angle and snapped the tip off inside the wireless. I was a little afraid to even try and open this thing, but I had nothing to replace it and was halfway through tour so I was stuck.

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Blood of Docs – Building Doctor Jones

2018/01/152018/01/15 Doktor Ross Sewage2 Comments

In my last post about building a costume, I detailed fleshing out a character from our mythos. For our last tour, however, we also added a character for the beginning of the set to introduce the narrative. Like any beginning of a set for a blood-spewing band, we needed a character to kill and come out spewing to capture our audience in the whirlwind of gore to come. Introducing, and then sending to his final resting place, Doctor Jones.

Photos by Johnny Perilla from nextmosh.com

Since we were out with GWAR, a decapitation was out of the question. That’s practically a trademark of theirs. But I wanted something splashy, so I settled on ripping someone’s face off. This was only my second two-part mask mold, but it went infinitely easier than the first.

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Operating Theatre: Ampeg V-4B Part 2

2018/01/102018/08/27 Doktor Ross SewageLeave a comment

My amp is older than me. I’m middle-aged and I’m falling apart. Why should my amp be any different? I’ve done some other work on it before [Part 1], but ye olde Ampeg V-4B was well overdue for a recap job.

It still looks better on the inside than me.

“Recap” means replacing capacitors. More specifically, electrolytic capacitors. After decades, they age and will drift from their original rating or even die. In the tone section of an amplifier, this isn’t always a big deal. It might change the tone. In the power supply, though, capacitor drift is a bigger deal: like, expensive-impossible-to-replace-power-transformer-blows-up big deal. The should be replaced before that happens.

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