@Randy120, thanks for that link. You even provided a link that addressed my very scenario!! 😁😎 (In my case, a 45 watt amp. Close enough!) "In practical terms, this means if you connect a 50-watt amp to a speaker rated at 50 watts (or more), then you’re good to go. However, connect a 20-watt speaker to the same 50-watt amp and you run an increased risk of the speaker failing at some point down the line ... probably in the middle of your showpiece solo."

No, Doug. Thanks for the response but I didn't explain well. I confused things talking about it. I know the Celestion is a 50 watt speaker. It's good with the Quilter. My concern is running the Quilter 45 into the little 20 Watt Orange 8" cab.

Great idea for a subject.

Will I blow it up? Calling you electronics experts! In a moment of uncontrollable GAS, when Musicians Friend had one of their Stupid Deal of the Day, I clicked on a Quilter 45 Microblock Amp. Which was a perfect example of just that, GAS, since I didn't have a cab at the time to play it through!😬 Since then I have made a cab with a 12" Celestion Rocket 50 and it sounds great. It turns out my clicking without thinking has been fun. But! The 12" cabinet is still too large and heavy to take to my weekly jam. I'm thinking about an Orange PPC 108 8" cabinet. It's really tiny and my local store has one so I could grab it before my jam Wednesday. It's 8 ohms but only 20 watt rating. (I can not find any smaller speakers that can handle more than 20 watts.) If I play at the low volumes typical of our jams will I blow out the speaker or, worse yet, blow up the amp? I'm willing to risk trying it if my only risk is the speaker. But I don't want to risk the amp. The impedance match so I don't think I should melt the amp. But I want to check with some of you that know more about this than I do.

Welcome back, Dan. I'm sure you had a great, relaxing time and are, as you said, "Eager" to get back to it. Sometimes a little break is just what we need in our practice. I know there are those that preach we never take a day off practice but I have found sometimes that break can be just what we need. Maybe I'm self justifying. My wife and I are taking off one week from today for a cruise to the Bahamas and then a few days in the Keys. My wife was very relieved to learn the guitar is not going with!😮

@Randy120, Robbie is a great player and I have a couple of his TrueFire courses. I also watched one of his TrueFire broadcasts to promote his courses. As you said, he "has some good ideas. " Interestingly, he is also, apparently, a recognized interior designer in Nashville.

I just received a promotional email from Premier Guitar on their Ebook, "Guitar Pedals – Mastering Guitar Effects by Rob Thorpe". And if you purchase this you get 10 other eBooks as a bonus.. If you go to this link you can see the list of freebies. I'm going to order it. And I should have done so before posting this so I could have reported. But I didn't. But it's only $20. And for those of us going down the rabbit hole of tone obsession it will probably be interesting. If you go to that link it will then link you to a full description of the book. when I get a chance to read some I'll add a reply with my thoughts.

Ben, congratulations on the new guitars. It's always fun seeing your new acquisitions. I especially like that first one. Beautiful. I've never heard of a "Dark Fire". And I never thought I would be congratulating you on a new Tele!!!!!😮 And congratulations on the first ever, at least that I have seen, quadruple NGD!😁😎 If I had to bet on who would have accomplished that it would have been on you! 😉 Ron

I wanted to say that Neil! You beat me to it😂

@Simira, very, very pretty. Very enjoyable. And a nice job of recording it. I sure hope that you will participate often in the Monthly recording challenge to document your progress.

@NeilES335, very nice. And nice job on the recordings, doing both the melody and rhythm. Very, very pretty.

Neil, I'm not so much wondering about where the human fits into this. I have software that slows down a song that I am trying to learn. That software will loop a section. It will combine these. I have software that will change the key. Now this, Spark, will download the song and display the chords for me. I don't even have to try and figure out the chords. I have GuitarPro to play the song for me and I will try and play along, again slowing and looping. Who knows what other learning tools I have on my hard drive that I've forgotten about. I haven't tried it but I've seen the guitar with lights on the fretboard that actually show one where to place fingers when playing a song! All these tools and I'm still struggling to learn!😲🥵 Remember stories of Clapton and others playing the lp on the turntable and then moving the needle back to the start of the section he was trying to learn? Repeating it over and over. The old days analog looping😉. They were able to learn having to do it like this and I struggle with all my tools? It gives me pause.

Henk, What monthly subscription are you referring to?

Ok! I just tried it again and no problem. Agreed this is wierd Hello World

I think you're right. I believe I saw it was introduced at NAMM.

I just tested it as well and could add a comment. I didn't leave one but was provided the box to do so. I just didn't save it. (I just had nothing profound to add😉)

Anyone seen this? Know anything about it? I certainly do not. But at first glance it appears interesting. From the web page, " the smart amp and app that jam along with you using intelligent technology. Play and practice with millions of songs and access over 10,000 tones powered by our award-winning BIAS tone engine. " It appears to, among a lot of other things, use an app to grab just about any song from Spotify or Youtube or Apple music. It will then display the chord chart and you jam along. Or you can tell it, "Follow my guitar" by voice command and it will provide drum set and bass to your playing to jam with. And it has USB output to plug into your DAW. Plus what they call "Hyper-realistic amp modeling and effects". I am not in anyway recommending this because I just told you everything I know about it. But it seems to have a lot of potential as a learning tool. And, at $224 (US), I was somewhat surprised. I expected it would be more. Link to the product page. Your thoughts?

Probably would be a great topic for a Live Lesson, Steve.

Greg, As long as it is a custom backing track, yes. If you look at my list of files (second graphic above) the top six have a word "Change" in the far right. That means those are the custom backing tracks. If I click on that it will take me to the next window where I can make the desired changes to it. As the graphic above for "Wonderful Tonight". Then you redownload it with the changes. With the non-custom backing tracks you can still downlad. I failed to mention above with the regular (non-custom) backing tracks you can download four different ways: 1) With vocals 2) Without vocals 3) full Version 4) guitar only

I don't think we have had a conversation here previously about Karaoke Version Backing Tracks. Possibly, but I don't remember it. And, no, this is not about gear. But it's a learning tool. This conversation doesn't belong in Technique, so it doesn't belong there. Possibly "Open Talk"? But I stuck it here. And this is about backing tracks not jam tracks. You don't fire it up and try your improvisational skills. One picks your particular song. Then you pick the backing band members you want (more about that), hit "play" and then you have your band accompanying you. If one goes to the link I provided above and then click on the "Guitar" tab, it will take you to the list of guitar backing track. It will present you with lists: "Top (I assume that means most popular) Guitar Backing Tracks", "Most Recent Backing Tracks" and "Free". There are a few good free ones: House of the Rising Son, La Bamba, Amazing Grace. Of course the fun is choosing from their huge list of available tracks for purchase at $1.99 each. They claim 30,460 songs to choose from. I think it would be difficult to not find a backing track to the song you are trying to learn.These are, IMHO, high quality tracks that sound real, not the MIDI sounding Guitar Pro files or Ultimate Guitar Tabs files. When you click at the bottom of "Top" backing tracks it will take you to a menu where you can choose Decades, genre, key, language, etc. I just find it easier to use the search function and type in the name of the song, such as "Black Magic Woman". It came up with both Santana and Fleetwood Mac versions. Or you can type in the artist, such as Santana. It came up with, I believe, every Santana song ever recorded, including his duet with Willie Nelson, "They all Went to Mexico"! 😲 (That's from Santana's Havana Moon album. His worst ever. But I digress😴.) When you pick a song it will take you to a page where you can listen to a sample of the track. As you can see, you can choose with or without vocals, if you want to sing along, with all the parts or just the guitar, if you want to practice just the guitar. If you purchase this backing track you get all four files with those parts. But here is where it gets fun! They also offer custom backing tracks for $2.99. This is what I invariably purchase. You, well, customize it! The customization is nearly limitless. Change instruments, key, tempo, vocals. You make changes, download it. Make more changes, download it. Ad infinitum. And once you have purchased it you can come back and change it months or years later and download it again! Perhaps an example. Here is my list of songs I have purchased. I was learning Wonderful Tonight for my weekly guitar Jam. There are three guitar parts and we took the different parts for the jam and then switched during the jam. I added and removed different guitar parts and added and removed vocals and then took it to my jam. We practiced with the different parts. (and provided the files for my buddies). It's just three guys with guitars but if we had a bass player or drummer, in a real band setting I could see how helpful adding removing those parts would be. Sorry about the long post. You can see I'm a fan boy of these tracks. I hope you find this helpful.

It is sure to be a great live lesson, Steve! And great to be back to a Live Lesson after the holiday pause. I'm looking forward to it.

This was just discovered somewhere😉

Terry, welcome to you and good luck. Please keep us up to date on your progress. And, ^^^, exactly what @DianeB said.

@Wim VD1, @gotto's word "breathtaking" was descriptive and accurate.