Juan Wayne

Dubious Randomness

You’re here, and I’m sure there’s some sort of a reason, most likely an awful mistake, but I’ll make it worth your it.

There’s mainly 3 things here, because I AM 3 things: a Musician, an Electronics Engineer, and a Big-Mouthed Asshole. So in order of appearance:


Here you’ll find all about 230, my band, which also has its own YouTube Channel, Soundcloud, Bandcamp and is also on Spotify and every single digital store. There’s also some collaboration work I’ve done with immensely talented people, so check them out, or what the hell, contact me and maybe we’ll do something.

Analog Multi-FX:

Yeah, I did that shit.

It’s an all-analog, yet digitally controlled, Multi-FX unit for musical instruments.

How awesome is that? I even took some of my old DIY, shamelessly cloned guitar pedals, and I re-cloned them into easy plug-and-play modules you just throw in, set up to taste, arrange in any order, store presets… it’s limitless, it’s analog, and nobody has ever done anything even remotely close to that. Check out the videos, it’s fucking awesome!

Other bullshit, mostly tech stuff:

So the previous category was about me being an Electronics Engineer, while this one is more about me being a big-mouthed asshole who incidentally happens to be an Electronics Engineer.

The thing is, I like arguing about pointless shit like the effects of tonewood on guitars (which is a debate mostly led by flat-earthers) and the magic behind snake-oil capacitors.

I don’t do it out of sheer arrogance. Honestly, there was a time when I couldn’t tell the difference between pickups on a guitar by playing the damn thing, and I didn’t use the knobs on my guitar (seriously, not even the volume – I was 20-something, not 10, so go figure). Now I know about those things and in quite some depth, so I try to help when I can. Otherwise, I shut the fuck up, but if I don’t, I’ll try to post it here, not only on thegearpage.net or the likes.


There’s some other stuff that I’ll just throw into More Randomness if I feel like it. I wanted to try and keep this from getting too bloggy, but who knows. We’ll see how it goes.

Alright that’s it.




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I ran out of the old Schaller strap locks. I love those motherfuckers, I trust them with my life. So like everything I love in life, they were taken away.

Poo-hoo poor little whining me!

Well go fuck yourselves, I’ve been through this shit way too much. First the Lynx Zero (A.K.A. Axe), the best deodorant ever made, then Ketchup Cheetos (they came back down here but didn’t taste the same anymore), and now the old Schaller strap locks…

If only they had kept the screws separate from the button! Nope, use ours or go fuck a duck in the ass.

Dude, think for a second! Re-shaping the wood is, in my book, to be avoided at all costs whenever possible. There’s no standard size of anything across different instrument brands, and there’s stuff like Gibsons where even both screws are different on the same instrument, so using the original ones is crucial, which I’ve been doing that on every guitar since I got my first Schaller set.

Well, I finally ran out of the old ones and it’s not easy to find legit ones anymore, so stubborn asshole me actually wrote Schaller (I don’t know what I was expecting, really).

Who knew the owner himself was going to reply? As expected, I was told there’s not even the slightest chance they’re ever bringing the old-school ones back, ever. Seems like the success of the S-Locks blow away everything else, and a snarky “unbelievable!” in the end served as the punchline for turning a very polite message into an even kinder “go fuck yourself”.

I still have my observations about the new design, and even though not everything is bad about them, there’s some stuff they should’ve left alone, the screws being the most important part to me. Besides the thread issue, now any kind of torque applied to the button is now transferred directly into the screw. That could definitely complicate things in the long run.

I just don’t get it, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m kinda butthurt they didn’t thank me for my suggestions and offered me to take over the company.

Nah, seriously, what the fuck was I thinking?

I recently posted a capture from Fender’s Game of Thrones Sigil Collection, and boy did people get their panties up in a bunch about the infamous Jaguar bridge.

Well, here’s a thing:

I’ve said a bunch of stuff about this bridge all over the internets, stuff like “It’s a fucking work of engineering art that most of us never bothered to learn how to use properly.” Yeah, arrogant asshole me said that, and I stand by it.

The thing is fucking genius, but people just can’t figure it out.

The whole design of this bridge, which is in itself tragically misunderstood, is purposefully made so that no rolling parts are required (this gets mentioned a lot).

The holes on each stud of the bridge allow you to adjust the inside screw with a hex wrench. These screws are pointed in their bottom ends where they make contact with the inside of the mounting inserts, which are concave, and should give you a perfect rocking motion of the bridge as the strings are loosened and tightened back by the arm bar, with minimal friction. This ensures the right pivoting position and no slipping around during operation, preserving the original setup you did. How awesome is that?

If everything is set correctly, the rocking bridge and the arm bar movement should be precisely synchronized, and you should be as stable as a Tele.

Now there’s some names thrown around when talking about these bridges, supposed solutions to the many “issues” these bridges carry with them; mostly Mastery and Staytrem (nothing against them, let the record show that).

First off, whatever your feelings about these designs are, please stop calling them “superior”.

Arguing about superiority between Fender’s and other later designs based on his own is like comparing Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan. Kobe might beat him on a 1 vs 1 game today, but it’s simply because he took over where Jordan left off and then put his own spin on it, while Jordan basically changed the entire game. The dude came up with shit people had to digest for a decade before they could wrap their heads around what the fuck was going on.

That was Fender, and many other greats of the time, with or without room for improvement. They changed the game, and that’s what engineering is about. That’s why I call this bridge “a work of engineering art”.

That said…

What bridges like Mastery address is the issue of the stock offset saddles being slotted like a screw, which causes the strings to pop if you’re too aggressive on your hybrid picking. If you’re not, then don’t worry. I’m a hamfisted asshole in my playing and my strings don’t pop. Besides, it doesn’t allow you to intonate strings individually. The bridge consists of two solid, deeply slotted slanted bars, attempting to achieve some sort of fixed string compensation which cannot be fine tuned. Like it or not, that’s what they offer.

Another frequent issue that is addressed would be rattling, but if you take a few minutes to set everything correctly, this is another issue that should go away on a stock bridge.

Another name that you’ll hear is Staytrem. That’s just a Mustang bridge, and it does the same thing, fix issues you shouldn’t have except for the aforementioned popping which, unless you’re Gregg Koch, shouldn’t be an issue. They look cool as fuck though, just as the Mustang, and you can intonate strings independently, but here’s the last thing…

One anecdotal item that came up just yesterday, arguing this very issue elsewhere, is that a couple people had felt the harmonic nature of the guitar was not the same after switching bridges, so take that for what it’s worth. Others didn’t care. I would, but I also like my Les Pauls heavy and I don’t mind a square neck joint, so there’s that.

All in all, there’s a lot of the usual mythical horseshit going on around about these bridges, but in the meantime nobody takes the time to set them up properly. The same thing goes for the electronics on these things, which I’ll leave for another day.

Set them up before spending hundreds on pointless “upgrades”, or 15 bucks on a Mustang bridge. “Leo got it right” seems to be a running gag for a good reason.

Alright, way back when I got this thing running I promised myself to not let it turn into one of those dark, humid and sorta basement-smelling places on the internets.

So as all things in my life, I went right ahead and did exactly that.

Well truth is, I actually do write a lot, mostly on forums about gear and shit. Not gonna lie, I’m kind of an asshole with a big mouth and some academic formation to back it up, so I spew a lot of crap around about capacitors and pickups and all that, and who woulda thunk it, some people actually find it useful, and even funny at times. I happen to be a colorfully talking fella, or so I hear.

Note: I’m a native Spanish speaker, so I’m a colorful asshole in translation, and maybe that’s what people find funny.

What’s the point then? I’m gonna start posting that useful/funny crap here, just for the fuck of it, even if that means straight up posting self-copypasta from those same forums as if they were new stuff. Who cares? It’s good info anyway and I’m gathering it here as I either come up with it or simply dig it up from those joints.

Some basics to get out of the way, mostly to get the ball rolling:

– Wood DOES make a a difference in tone on any electric instrument, anyone claiming the opposite is a flat-earther.

– Paper-in-oil capacitors sound the same as ceramic ones, I don’t care how much money you spent. They do look cool though, but that’s pretty much it.

– Any Op-Amp labeled 4558, in any way, shape or form, is a 4558. The end. I don’t give a fuck who made it or when, it doesn’t make your Tube Screamer clone any special.

That’s it for now.