I am starting to work on some recording projects and need a working amplifier.  I had MS ship over my studio guitar amplifier, a very nice one, from the US, but, silly me who didn’t even think about the power requirements, the amp has no internal transformer like a laptop and can only work with 110 volts.  But, I had a brilliant idea:  I can go to Hua Qiang Bei, the electronics capital of Shenzhen, and China, and I guess the world.

I got a tip from Davide to visit some stores in the area that sold mixing boards and microphones and ask there.  I was successful at step one:  locating these stores.  The salespeople though weren’t selling what I was looking for, but they directed me to “Electronics World” across the street, which is yet another of these 4-5 story enclosures which comprise hundreds of independent shops.  I asked one of the guards where they sold transformers (bian4 ya1 qi1).  I couldn’t understand his response, but he gestured off in a certain direction, so I pretended to understand and thanked him.  After walking down one corridor of mini stores and eyeing the wares, I began to notice a lot of power supplies and plugs.  Perhaps this was the place.

And it was.  The nice woman showed me two heavy transformers, about the size of a shoebox.  After explaining what I was looking for and showing her a picture of the back of my amp, we settled on the 600 watt transformer.  I walked back outside and to the bus-stop, quite pleased with myself.  But, as I should have known, when I got home and plugged it in.  It turned on briefly, made a horrible noise, and shut off.  Dead.  Reality set back in and I cursed at the idea of having to go back to Hua Qiang Bei.

I went the next day and the nice lady switched out the fuse.  Oh, it was that simple?  Just an old fuse or something?  She gave me a couple of extras and we tested it.  It seemed to work fine.

Back at home, I plugged it in and turned it on again.  This time, it made a horrible loud buzzing, but didn’t shut off.  Now, why didn’t I hear this loud buzzing when I was in the store.  Oh wait, it was Hua Qiang Bei which is perpetually full of multitudes of screaming people.  Makes sense.  Well, back to reality again, I though, “How in the heck am I supposed to record with this awful buzzing in the background?”  There was no reasonable answer, but I decided to at least try the amp.  I plugged it in, turned on the power…BOOM!  Fuse blown again.

OK, I give up.  I could always have someone replace the transformer, I guess, but I do plan to go back to the US someday and don’t want to have to change it back again.  Besides, there is zero guarantee that the electrician will do a good job.  I could end up burning the whole apartment complex down.  Forget it; I’ll just buy a new amp, a little cheapo studio one.  That’ll be fine, I’ve got a nice effect rack.  It’ll work.  The next day, I learned about “Music Heaven” in Shenzhen and checked it out.  Not bad!  It’s another collection of stores, about 3 stories worth.  The owner of the place that I tried out is a big fan of Paul Gilbert and had his picture playing guitar with him proudly displayed, so I thought that was fitting.

I’ve got an extremely heavy paperweight now, my shoebox-sized transformer, unless someone wants to take this thing off my hands.  Return it to the store?  Forget it.  Welcome to Hua Qiang Bei.