Come on now, we're a lot classier than that.

I already know his name because it was posted on there. I don't give a fuck, I just remember he made amps and sold them through HC. It sounded like some shady shit went down.

I am curious, for no good/real reason. Did something go down?

Dunno, mr titan is registered here, but nevar poasts. He has a certain proclivity towards abrasiveness though, so i can't say that i am 100% surprised that someone somewhere has built beef wif him.

I like "built beef"; that is a good turn of phrase. In return I give you a fine typo: huxxah!

That is a fine typo. Near palindromic. Some vague echo of the occult(hex, hexe, hexen etc). Double x's always a good idea. Still retains enough mug-clinking-ness to its pronunciation.

What does it mean in our language?

Hmm... I suppose it should be in celebration of something particularly diabolical- the occult angle, or the hint there of in the word- to differentiate it from the standard everyday huzzah. For example "I have summoned forth the ghost of Johnny Unitas to lead my armies in the overthrow of Luxembourg, where I will install my cat as its ruler" is a huxxah! sort of event.

that wouldnt surprise me at all.

There was certainly bad blood over at the sloclone forums as many of the higher ups there feel that he took all the popular slo mods that the community had put together over the years and packaged them up as the titan. As a result people have stopped sharing stuff and the forum has ground to a near standstill. Real shame as there aren't many places with decent discussions on high gain topologies. Places like MEF or AX84 have lots of knowledgeable folks but they aren't into the modern 4+ stage designs although they have been incredibly useful in helping me design my KT88 power amp.

Titan was just one of many who used sloclone as a jumping off point for commercial endeavors really. Because of the type of site that is, it will always attract that type of members. Same thing with Ampgarage. Frankly, it is the same thing with Freestompboxes too. People are real fucking lazy. And way too many people are looking at DIY and trying to make businesses out of it. Not that there is any huge problem with that, but for the fact that 99% of them, have no interest in creating anything new at all, just copying and underselling someone who has actually done the work.

Of course, the way KF did it was maybe a little different than some, and he did wind up building more of his own thing. It was maybe a little interesting watching him go from what seemed like very rudimentary amp knowledge, to building a SLO, to starting a thread to go through every part of the slo and what modding it would accomplish, to starting a company. For the SLOclone contributors, one could see how that might be a bit off-putting, if they chose to interpret the course of events that way.

Honestly i don't really give a shit, and i am glad that he was able to make the jump from ampnoob to a dood who can sell a bunch of the things. Honestly, i think it is supernaive for anyone on those forums to be surprised/angry that there are folks lurking and leeching with commercial interests.

ANYHOW. That was all a long time ago, and i kind of assume that the OP might be referring to some new beef.

Interesting! My take on the situation, for what it's worth -

I also thought that he had survived the sloclone incident, but he kinda slowly faded. IIRC, he now has a kid and more family responsibilities or something about those lines. He was never disrespectful to me, but a certain incident with someone on this forum kinda rubbed me the right way. A job is a job, and no job should be put aside for such an extended period of time.

Is there new beef to be heard

Audible beef.

Fresh audible beef.

Deliciously fresh audible beef.

Yar, one of the reasons my amp took so long (aside from me paying him) was that he had a kid, and kids tend to demand attention.

Eh, he was a bit gruff in the dealings but nothing I would not expect from a "guy who builds amps who also sells them" sort of business. He responded to my e-mails, and we kept contact well enough. Also, I really like the amp he built me.

And while I appreciate the modded-slo argument, pretty much all amps are just modified versions of their predecessors. What, didn't it start with the Bassman which people modded to get more gain which became the Marshall line which people modded to get more gain in a tighter package which became the SLO. There are more intricacies than that, I know, but essentially if you design something, then tell other people how to do it, then do nothing with it yourself ... well ... people are going to start doing something with it.

Oh sure, everyone in that game learned for copying the last guy. Let no ones work escape your eyes! Hell I owe everything I know to Merlin Blencowe! Certainly I think some of the beef with the slocone crowd was that he was using smash's PCBs which were made for non comercial use and it has that written in big letters on it and you agree to use them as such when you buy them. I can see why that would rub people up the wrong way as you're basically saying thanks suckers. One of the DCCE pedals we're doing is going to be a muff variant and we started dicking with the circuit using madbean PCBs. They're non-commercial use as it turns out so its back to the drawing board there. Truth be told we'll probably not pursue the muff route anyway. Neither myself or Phill like them and theres already 2500 variants to choose from

The acceptability of cloning is an odd one. I'm certainly not interested in copying anyone but neither are any of my designs terribly unique or fresh. Theres a dude on HCAF who makes really well put together marshall clones and if I was state side and was looking a jube I'd give him a call. Does he have any great insight into the circuit or does he just have great lead dress? Does it matter? Nick of dunwich amps (hangs in the HCFX doom room largely) is an EE PhD. and he does a lot of stuff based on the old orange and matamp designs and he really knows his stuff. I have no idea how he makes any money from it though as his prices are insanely good for the spec of the components he uses, perhaps he doesnt and he's doing it for the love?

As for the titan beef, there was the whole wiring the treble pot backwards combined with the modded roccaforte shenanigans. Perhaps thats finally bitten him on the ass? That alienated a lot of the established modders and builders that posted at the time. Certainly the likes of JerryP, James Peters and a few others got involved beyond where they should have, it got ugly and most never came back. Kind of a shame. even Olaf (duesentrieb) sacked it off which is the guy I miss the most as he is a stand up guy and helped me with a lot of my stupid questions when I was first dabbling in tubes. I guess a lot of them didnt see Zach as being legit as he went from building weber kits to having his own line in the space of a few years in quite a public fashion and there is big dollar is shrouding this sort of thing in mystery and mojo which is bullshit. Certainly a lot of the 5150 modders would go fucking sick if you let their secrets out of the bag and most of them a common knowledge anyway.

Ah, memories...