Download Steel This Amp
Latest version: 2.0a   (March 31, 2001)

I'd wanted to create a Winamp skin for a long time. I don't really know what kept me from actually doing it, although I have been know to indulge in long periods of intense procrastination.

In December '97, I had spent a couple hours wading (painfully slowly, in the old build of the site) through Winamp.com's skins section. I saw that many of these skins were either 'Fusion-styled' which I take to mean supposedly made out of plastic and metal, or else picture skins. I wasn't really interested in more than three out of a couple hundred skins. I decided I'd like to see a skin that maybe belonged in a rack system - an old rack system, from perhaps the early 80's. I sketched out a rough idea for the skin, then set it aside and did nothing with it. I found it again not long ago, and upon review, discovered that the basic drawing could have evolved in one of two directions. One of those would have led to the finished design of this skin. The other would see light as my second skin, 'Major Tom.' I guess it was a really solid design. I dunno.

When my junior year at college ended in 1999, I came home for summer break. I needed the vacation badly - time for rest. No work. Just drifting through a few months. Along the way, I committed myself to finally creating a skin. I sketched out a new design, reminiscent of the December '97 sketch, but drawing more from the idea of a single, vintage audio component. I patterned it after my father's Akai cassette deck, which he's had since before I was born. It's a solidly machined piece of work: brushed steel, with large metal knobs to set recording levels, a sealed fluorescent VU meter display, chunky buttons and a few LEDs. It's great, and I really wanted to capture that feel of old technology that you can tell has been well used - the stereo amplifier you see in a thrift store that just from looking at it you're able to guess its year of manufacture and what music was played through it.

I created the graphics from scratch in Photoshop. The abundance of round LEDs, which are not found on my father's deck, just seemed appropriate. I also took a liberty by adding the segmented red LED counter; on my dad's Akai, there's a small rollover-style counter that indicates not time elapsed, but revolutions of the tape. I took the skin's counter design, with the plastic magnifying cells sitting over the numbers themselves (look carefully), from an ancient Texas Instruments calculator my dad has sitting battery-less in a pile on one corner of his workbench.

Someone called me on putting my own name on the top of the skin. Everybody seems to make a Sony skin or a JVC or Pioneer skin... I wanted a period design that was independent of any real-world brand name, but I know that the presence of branding on this type of equipment is one of those signs of authenticity. Just as with Sony, RCA or JVC, I wanted something short and simple. 'Moss' fit. That's basically all there is to it.

If you're going to notice something, check out the round Shuffle and Loop knobs. They're one of the things I'm proudest of on this skin. They extend beyond the dimensions of the actual button, and help really give the design credibility. Nobody had really done something like that before.

Steel This Amp now also features a skinned AVS window and a custom AVS scheme to match.

A brief note on the name 'Steel This Amp': When I finished the skin, it needed a name. I wanted something that would reflect the look of the skin, but maybe be a bit clever. I recalled a copy of a book called Steal This Book that my friend Jeremy Bruce kept in his room. Steal This Book was written by Abbie Hoffman, a political activist from the 60s and 70s, and he happens to be a Worcester, Massachusetts native like myself. I thought it was an opportunity too good to miss, so I ended up with a play-on-words title for my skin.

Some people fail to notice the joke in the title, and interpret it as a suggestion - in the last 2 and a half years I've seen at least 10 skins that have lifted elements of 'Steel This Amp' without credit.