Vic Wong

Project: Amp Tilt-back Stand

Update: These are on sale now at my store!

Video demo:

Being a working musician, city-slicker, and general disliker of ridiculously loud music, big heavy amps are not my thing. While it would be a great honor to someday be featured on the venerable Rigs of Dad, for now I’ll save my back. My chosen tube amp to date is the classic 10″ Fender Princeton Reverb. Light enough to carry with one arm, and enough power to get me to the Tone-Zone®.

However, one problem I have with smaller combo amps is that they can be difficult to hear in live situations. Amps placed on the floor simply aren’t pointing in the right direction to be heard by someone standing on stage. Sometimes I’ll hike my amp up on a chair, but that also takes up a lot of space and is unsightly. What I need is some tilt-back assembly, which would allow an amp to point upward at an angle.

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Project: DeArmond “Monkey-on-a-stick” Reproduction

The short version…

I love DeArmond archtop pickups! DeArmond “Monkey-on-a-stick” pressure rod mounting brackets are my preferred removable way to mount them, but nobody reissues them. So I made one from scratch with the help 3D printing. They are available at my online store.

I also do reproduction control boxes now: tone/volume, and volume-only. And I also sell replacement compatible top plates and thumbscrews for original vintage monkey-on-a-stick. See my store.

Video demo:

Gold version of my reproduction sticks, looking real handsome on this ’47 Epiphone Blackstone with a rare vintage gold RC1000 pickup

Some background…

Back in the good old ’30s and ’40s it was unthinkable to put holes in that pretty handmade archtop of yours. After all, who knew if this silly fad of guitar “electrification” was going to last? And what if you wanted to pass that pristine acoustic archtop on to your grandchildren? Trad jazz and swing was surely due to make a comeback in about 75 years.

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Project: Custom Audio Technica Microphone Mounts

Audio Technica Microphones are great! But..

Audio Technica lavaliere condenser microphones like the PRO 70 and AT831B are good choices for amplifying acoustic guitars and reproducing the tone of the instrument more accurately than pickups. The soundhole mount that comes with is also quite nice, but after a few months of use I lost the screw and clip attachment on a gig. This made the microphone essentially unusable. I was quite annoyed to find that a replacement mount would cost around 40 bucks! That’s nuts! I mean, sure that’s some fine machining and precision metalwork there, but c’mon… we’re starving musicians here.

The solution?

I really couldn’t stomach spending that kind of dough so I decided to take the much more sensible approach of dropping $300 on a 3D printer, learning CAD off YouTube tutorials, and designing my own replacement.

But in all seriousness, I didn’t want anyone else to have to deal with this. Having someone else design the replacement and put the model up for free is something I would have greatly appreciated, so I gave it a shot.

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