23
Jul

quick wah recording

By Phillip 4 Comments
Categories: DIY, Wah, effects, guitar and pedals

Here’s a new clip of the wah that I just built. Once again, I used my Les Paul through the amp simulator in GarageBand (on the Liverpool Clean setting) with my pedalboard in front. At first it’s totally clean, then I add the wah to do some funky whacka-chicka rhythm stuff. At about the 1:00 mark, I switch to a lead tone (Maury’s io super-distortion) with delay. I set up the basic tone, then introduce the wah.

I’m pretty happy with it, but I’m not really objective at this point - I’m too close to it. What do you think? I’m not necessarily looking for a pat on the back, I’m looking for a critique - not of my playing, but of the wah. Is it too bassy? Trebly? Is the sweep too abrupt? Anything you may have to add would be appreciated. I used this layout which is based on the Vox 847, but I changed a lot of the values, so it doesn’t really sound the same anymore.

UPDATE:
I changed the capacitor going into the wiper which, according to Geoffrey Teese, is supposed to replicate the sound of the ICAR taper present on vintage wah pedals. It sounds a lot better now, but I think that the heel down position may be a little too bass heavy. Maybe it’s a too “vocal” in that it sounds more like “whoa” instead of “wah.” I don’t know - check it out for yourself.

ANOTHER UPDATE:
As I mentioned in my last update, the heel down position was still too bassy, so I changed the frequency cap back to .01. It sounds more balanced and the sweep is much smoother now. Check it out. [Sorry about the length of these clips, I just kinda get going and forget to stop.]

22
Jul

my amp

By Phillip 2 Comments
Categories: amps and guitar

I just have to say that I am extremely happy with my amp right now. For the first couple of weeks that I used it at church, I didn’t have the mic (an SM57) set up right. It was too far away from the center and it sounded a little muffled. I adjusted it a little (probably less than an inch) and it made a huge difference. All of a sudden the tone was significantly clearer and brighter, but not too bright.

Right now I have the gains set at around 2:30, which gives me some really nice grind with a lot of sensitivity to pick attack. It doesn’t totally clean up with my Les Paul, but I can always switch out to the strat if I need a cleaner tone. I probably should have switched to the strat on Sunday during “Mighty to Save” for that arpeggio thing, but I didn’t really have a chance to swap guitars. Oh well, it’s worth the trade off.

About 90% of the time I’ll play with no gain effects at all. I’ll step on a pedal for a solo or if there’s a spot that really needs a crunchy rhythm tone, but most of the time it’s just guitar - delay - amp. I am really happy with this amp, and I’m pretty sure that I’ll have it for a long time.

21
Jul

music at Ecclesia - 7.20.08

By Phillip 2 Comments
Categories: Music, Robbie Seay Band, guitar and worship

Jenny & I (and a couple of friends) went to a church in Houston called Ecclesia last night. We’ve been there a lot, and we would probably make it our home church if we lived in (or a little closer to) Houston. I won’t lie, the music is a big part of the reason we like it so much. I know that music isn’t necessarily a part of the biblical model of church, but that’s a discussion for a different day.

Anyway, the main reason that we made the trip last night is that Robbie Seay was scheduled to be there. Robbie is the worship pastor at Ecclesia, but he’s usually touring so we never really know if he’s going to actually be there or not. Fortunately, he recently started including the Ecclesia dates on his schedule on his myspace page, which takes the uncertainty out of the whole thing. I kind of expected it to be an acoustic set with just Robbie, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the whole band.

Taylor Johnson (he has played on a lot of their recordings) was on electric guitar. He sounded really great last night. He’s not a flashy player - he’s more into adding space, depth, and texture. He had this really huge delay going and everything that he played just fit in the song. [I need to experiment with bigger delay sounds, but I'm always afraid that things will get too mushy.] As far as gear, he played what looked like an American Deluxe Tele into a /13 (Divided by 13) amp. He had the standard Line 6 green and blue boxes (delay and modulation), and some other stuff (Fulldrive 2, EB volume) that I didn’t really get a good look at.

They played a good mix of originals, modern worship songs, and even a hymn. It was a really good night of music.

Chris Seay is their main pastor, but last night Doug Pagitt was there. I don’t know much about him, but my friend Tommy was geeking out when he saw him. I may write another post about him later on, but maybe not…

19
Jul

do it yourself

By Phillip 6 Comments
Categories: DIY, effects, guitar and pedals

Over the last several months, my pedalboard has been undergoing a transformation. I used to have a lot of effects from established pedal manufacturers, whether from big companies (Line 6, Boss) or smaller “boutique” companies (Barber, Lovetone, etc). However, I have been getting into pedal building as a hobby, and I’m quickly realizing that I’d much rather build a pedal myself than spend twice as much (or more) to have some other dude build it.

Of course, I realize that I’m spending a lot of time building, troubleshooting, and tweaking these effects and I also realize that I have to value my time. The main thing is that I enjoy the process, for the most part. I’m not great with a soldering iron, but I like doing this stuff. I don’t understand why the resistor in R7 does what it does, but I’m enjoying learning about it bit by bit. I’ll never get to the point where I’m ready to start a business or something, but that’s not why I’m doing it.

I like the fact that I’m literally taking my tone into my own hands. I don’t have to compromise if I don’t like the sound that a certain box gives me. I can open up the box and exchange a diode for one that doesn’t clip quite as much. I can change a capacitor if I want more bass. Whatever. Eventually I’d like to get to the point where I’m designing my own effects rather than just building kits and doing mods, but that’s kind of a long-term thing.

At this point I’ve built quite a few pedals: a phaser, tap tempo, overdrive (ts clone), tremolo, fuzz, and wah. I have two pedals that Maury made for me (great pedals, btw), and I only have two retail pedals: a tuner and a delay. Of course, my pedals don’t have fancy paint jobs or anything, but I don’t really care (not that there’s anything wrong with fancy paint jobs - some of my friends have fancy paint jobs). I’d just as soon sand the enclosures so that they’re a little shiny and call it a day.

Anyway, my point is that I’m getting to the point where I’m losing my gas (gear acquisition syndrome) for expensive pedals. I see people on gear forums talking about the latest $300 fuzz and think “I could make that.”

17
Jul

updates to the last DIY post

By Phillip 9 Comments
Categories: DIY, Wah, effects, fuzz, guitar, mods and pedals

Here’s a quick update on the effects post from yesterday. I rewired the fuzz and cleaned things up. I had the ground wires flipped and made some other mistakes. Here’s a new shot.

I also got the “whipple” inductor in for the wah pedal. It’s supposed to be a clone of the halo inductors used in the old Italian wahs. Anyway, I soldered it in, adjusted the pot and was ready to go. It was a little too loud and harsh, so I swapped the MPSA18 transistor in Q1 for a lower gain 2N2222 - big improvement. I still need to tweak it, but it already sounds way better than the old crybaby.

16
Jul

current projects

By Phillip 3 Comments
Categories: DIY, Music, Wah, effects, fuzz, guitar, mods and pedals

Over the last few days, I have been working on a couple of projects. I’m rebuilding my wah using a PCB from General Guitar Gadgets, and I’m building a fuzz using a PCB that Maury designed for his fuzz aka “The Peach.”

I ran into several roadblocks in building the fuzz. I bought some carbon composition resistors, which are substantially bigger than metal film resistors. Maury designed his board to be tiny (since he puts them in small enclosures) and the resistors that I ordered wouldn’t quite fit. Fortunately, I had enough metal film resistors lying around to complete the job. I also managed to order an obsolete part from Mouser, so I had to make a trip to Radio Shack to get a trim pot. The one that they had didn’t quite fit on the board, so I had to rig it a little bit. I’ve put it all together (pretty much), but I’m still having some trouble with the sound. The fuzz sounds really choked or something. I’m sure that it has something to do with the bias, and it’s probably because that trim pot is messed up.

The wah went together a little better, but it’s still not finished. The inductor hasn’t gotten here yet, so once it comes in I should be able to solder it in place, adjust the pot and start quacking. I socketed several of the capacitors so I won’t have to desolder anything if I want to experiment.

Here are some pictures:

Here’s the fuzz. I’m not finished wiring this one up. I haven’t wired up the LED or DC jack yet (I haven’t even drilled the hole yet), but neither one of those is necessary to test the circuit. The wiring is still pretty unkempt, but I’ll shorten those wires before I consider it finished.

Here’s the wah. The wires are still pretty long, but I’m not sure how much cleaning up I’m willing to do. I’ve seen some really well-organized wiring jobs, and this is not one of those. I’ll probably use some wire ties and shorten a couple of wires, but that’s about it.

You can see where the inductor is going to go when it finally gets here. Hopefully I’ll just be able to solder it in and play without having to do any serious troubleshooting, but we’ll see…

10
Jul

drum programming

By Phillip 10 Comments
Categories: Recording

I’ve been trying to add drums to my basic GarageBand recordings, and I’m realizing that I pretty much suck at it. I think the main problem is that I never really pay all that much attention to drums when I listen to music. This is kind of a problem when I try to write my own drum parts and I have no point of reference.

I’ve been going back through my iTunes library over the last couple of days and transcribing cool drum parts. Figuring out the basic beat is easy enough, but making it sound like music (adding dynamics, fills, etc) is the hard part. It’s like learning a new instrument.

I have Reason and Ableton Live (and I know how to use about .02% of what they’re capable of). Any tips? How does Rewire work?

08
Jul

lyrics

By Phillip 7 Comments
Categories: Music and worship

I am no good with lyrics. They’re usually the last thing that I pay attention to in a song, whether I’m listening to or writing one. I guess that’s why I have always preferred to write instrumental music.

Instrumental music can be classified into two sections: absolute and program music. Absolute music exists for it’s own sake. There is no hidden meaning or symbolism anywhere. It’s just sound. Program music is the opposite. It’s supposed to convey some hidden meaning, like the tone poems by Strauss trying to describe Nietzsche or Don Quixote or something like that. I have never been able to write programmatic music for some reason. I’m not sure why, exactly. Maybe it’s too specific.

Anyway, back to lyrics. I don’t think I have ever written an entire set of lyrics to a song. I have written songs with my wife, but she has done most of the lyrics. My lyrical contribution has been limited to suggestions such as: “why don’t we say ‘this’ instead of ‘that’” or something along those lines.

My attempts at lyrics always seem to end up being trite. Maybe I’m too critical. There are a lot of stupid lyrics out there. It seems like anyone who can string together a couple of buzzwords can write a generic praise song (”I could sing of your love forever” anyone?). That’s not what I want to do.

Anyone have a similar problem?

06
Jul

Interesting Sunday

By Phillip 1 Comment
Categories: Music, family and worship

Today was our “Seventh Inning Stretch” at church, which means that all the kids ages 4 and up get to go to big church. Basically, I think it’s a reason to give the children’s workers a day off, which is fine. We do several songs that the kids do in their service, which can be fun.

My son Jackson usually goes with me to sound check at 8:30 and he usually brings his Nintendo DS to play while we’re working through our set. After we’re done with sound check, I put his DS next to my pedals on stage. Well, Jack was sitting with Jenny on the front row this morning and during the announcements/message introduction time, Jack decided that he wanted his DS. He just got up, walked on stage, grabbed his DS and sat back down.

Jenny and I were immobilized by shock, so we didn’t really react, except to stare with our jaws hanging open. After I realized that today’s message was about self-control, I just had to laugh at the irony.

Afterwards, Jenny asked him what he was thinking about when he did that. He said something like “well, I thought ‘yes, no, yes, no, yes, no,’ and it landed on yes.” Jack is a pretty funny kid - mostly when he’s not trying to be.

03
Jul

Quick Overdrive Demo

By Phillip 3 Comments
Categories: Audio, DIY, distortion, effects, guitar, overdrive and pedals

Here’s a quick demo of the ITS8 overdrive. Here’s the basic progression:

1) clean
2) od gain @ min, level @ 3:00
3) gain @ 11:00
4) gain maxed

It doesn’t sound as good as it would with a real amp, but you get the idea.

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