I mentioned last time that I traded my Sig:X amp for a bunch of other stuff, right? I got the ZT Lunchbox early last week, and it’s pretty cool. On Thursday, I got the big stuff: the VOX AC30H2 and the Fulltone OCD (v.4).
The VOX is nice. While it’s true that it was manufactured in China, which is not ideal, the craftsmanship is pretty excellent. It is a handwired amp, but it’s not point-to-point or turret board. It is a PCB type of construction, but all of the components are wired by hand, rather than installed by some giant machine. This doesn’t necessarily affect the tone, but it makes the amp less failure-prone and easier to repair if it does break down.
I read a lot of dudes on the internet who bash modern VOX amps because they’re inferior to the UK-built amps from the late 60′s. Well, you know what? The modern ones don’t catch on fire like the old ones did.
This AC30 is quite different from the Custom Classic series that Vox came out with a few years ago. The Heritage series doesn’t have tremolo, reverb, or an effects loop like the CC series did. That’s perfectly fine with me. I’m not a big fan of built-in effects like that. I’d much rather use outboard effects that I can access on a pedalboard. An effects loop would be nice, but it’s not really necessary since I’ll be running this amp clean.
Anyway, I took it to practice on Thursday, and I was having some issues getting it to stay clean. Even though the volume was pretty low (relatively speaking – this is a loud, loud 30 watts), I couldn’t get it to keep from breaking up. I played with it some more on Friday at the house, and I managed to figure it out. The amp has two channels: the top boost channel and the EF86 channel. At practice I was using the Top Boost channel, but I discovered that the EF86 channel is capable of delivering some massive-sounding clean tones that will not break up regardless of how hard you hit the strings. I had the volume at 12:00 (which is really loud), and full chords stayed perfectly clean when I hit them full on.
My pedalboard is currently undergoing some revisions. I picked up a Strymon blueSky Reverberator a couple of weeks ago, and it’s already gone. It’s a really great pedal with some amazing sounds in it, but it’s just too much money tied up in an effect that I’m really not going to use all that much. I’m keeping the Brigadier delay, but I’m picking up a Line 6 M9 to replace the BSR.
I already had the M13, and sold it because it was overkill. However, I really miss some of the weird loopy things that it can do. Things like pattern tremolo, pitch shifting, particle verb, step filter, sweep echo, etc are all really cool glitchy effects that I can use. The reverb sounds won’t be as good as the blueSky, but it’ll be close enough for spacey live stuff.
I also picked up a Musket Fuzz from Blackout Effectors to replace my diy Mayo clone. This thing is awesome. It’s kind of a modern take on the Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi. It has 6 knobs for tone shaping, so it’s really versatile for a fuzz pedal. It can go from mild overdrive tones to wall of sound fuzz. It’s pretty sweet.
I’m liking the OCD more than I thought I would. It’s really open-sounding, even at high gain levels. It’s not overly compressed and you can still hear your basic guitar-amp sound underneath the extra gain.
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In less happy news, I have run into a snag with my Jazzmaster purchase. I found the one that I wanted, checked the seller’s references and sent him payment. Unfortunately, he is now claiming that his paypal account is frozen and he is refusing to ship the guitar until his funds are released. I filed a claim with paypal, told him that I wasn’t okay with waiting and that he needs to ship the guitar as per our agreement. I haven’t heard from him in a couple of days. I know I’ll get my guitar or my money back eventually, but it could be weeks before that happens. Part of me wants to fly out to wherever this guy lives and punch him in the face.
I did a quick video demo of the new strymon pedals and thought I’d share. I’m using my G&L ASAT Bluesboy into my Fryette Sig:X clean channel. I’m using the RAILhead Effects PURE to boost the amp into some light breakup. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with lots of different settings – it just kinda gives you an idea of the character of these pedals.
Anyway, if there’s anything that you want to hear in particular, let me know.
I showed up for soundcheck this morning, plugged in my guitar/pedalboard, strummed a chord and – nothing. I spent a few frantic minutes troubleshooting and determined that my new delay (Tech21 Boost DLA) was the culprit.
The LED turns on, but it won’t pass a signal. At first it kinda worked, but I could hear it sputter out and die completely. I’m afraid it’s probably an IC chip or something, but it’s impossible to get to any of the components without completely desoldering the input jacks as well as the DC jack since they’re all soldered directly to the board. It’s a really stupid design, IMO.
I guess I’ll contact Tech21 customer support tomorrow to see what they can do for me as far as repairing it. My experience with them will affect whether or not I purchase any more of their products.
I made it through the service okay this morning. I still had another delay on the board (Ibanez DE-7), so I wasn’t completely delay-less. I had to do the dotted eighth thing on one song, so I manually dialed in the delay time to be pretty close and just turned up the delay mix for that one song. It wasn’t perfect, and I had to tweak it a little at the beginning of the song, but it worked out okay.
I think that once I get this delay fixed, I will probably just get an Eventide Timefactor or something like that since there are no more Timelines to be had. Why did I sell that freaking thing? Oh yeah, to buy that Line 6 M13 that I already got rid of. Facepalm.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I finally ordered a Tremol-no™ for my PRS. I never use a trem, but the fact that it’s even present causes all kinds of tuning instability. If I detune one string, the rest of the strings go out of tune due to the change in tension on the springs in the trem cavity. Anyway, bla bla bla – the tremol-no corrects this issue.
The tremol-no is a little gadget that replaces the tremolo claw in your trem-equipped guitar and allows you to lock/unlock the trem whenever you’re not using it. You tighten a screw to lock it down and unscrew it if you want to use it.
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I think I’m figuring out how to dial in my amp (a Fryette Sig:X). I was trying to use each channel to do the function that it’s named for (clean/rhythm/lead). However, I haven’t really been able to dial in a really great hard rock rhythm tone on the rhythm channel. The rhythm channel is kinda vintage-sounding and doesn’t get as saturated as the lead channel.
At our last show, I used the lead channel pretty much all the time since we played kind of a hard rock-ish setlist. Whenever I took a solo, I just hit the FX loop button on the footswitch. The FX loop has a volume control, so you can dial it in to give you a volume boost without adding any gain. It’s a pretty cool little feature. Drop a delay pedal (and maybe an EQ pedal with a slight mid-bump) in the loop and it’s perfect for a solo setting on any channel. Even without those things it sounded fine. I’ll probably set the rhythm channel for a Hendrix-style Marshall overdrive tone and hit it with a fuzz for solos.
Just like everything related to guitar gear, this whole thing is going to be subject to change. I might have a different amp in 6 months. I hope not. Shipping amps is a pain. Thinking aloud: I wonder if I could live with a single channel amp? Do I really need a clean channel? The Fryette Deliverance amps look/sound awesome, but they only have one channel and no effects loop. Hmm. I need to just stick with the Sig:X. It’s super versatile and it sounds awesome. I don’t want or need a different amp. The very notion is ridiculous.
Earlier this week, we played for/with a local intermediate school orchestra on their last concert of the year. Our bass player is the orchestra teacher, so we kinda did it as a favor to him. We played a couple of songs with the orchestra – Smoke on the Water and Kashmir – and then we played a mini concert for the kids at the end of the concert. This was our biggest audience so far, and they seemed to be really into it.
We set up a little handheld mp3 recorder back at the soundboard and we got some stuff recorded. You can’t really hear the bass or the other guitar and we overload the mic a couple of times, but you’ll get the idea.
Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart (Stone Temple Pilots)
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Hysteria (MUSE)
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No One Knows (Queens of the Stone Age)
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The Middle (Jimmy Eat World)
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Slither (Velvet Revolver)
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This is the first time that we’ve actually heard ourselves, and it’s nice to be able to hear what we need to work on. Obviously, tempo is a big issue. Pretty much all of these songs were too fast, especially the first one. I think that Greg (our drummer) was just overly excited. =)
It’s been a while since I posted an updated picture of my pedalboard, so here it is.
I’ve had most of this stuff for a while, but the newest addition is the Mayo. It’s a clone that I built of the (now discontinued) Skreddy Mayo, which was a tweaked version of the Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi. It uses different capacitor/resistor values as well as different transistors. It’s the same general sound as the BMP, but it’s a little smoother/less raspy. It’s noisy, but it sounds great for thick leads as well as Smashing Pumpkins-type rhythm tones.
I have a couple of other DIY projects in the works. I built a clone of the Barber LTD Silver (David Barber released the schematic when he discontinued the pedal), but it didn’t sound quite right so I gave it to Maury in the hopes that he could get it working for me. Up next – I’m about to start working on a clone of the Timmy pedal. I used to have a real one, but I (foolishly) sold it. I’m going to get another one, but I figured that I would build one while I wait on the list.
The band I’m in, The Lillian Pearl, had it’s first official show on Saturday. We played at “Woodfest,” which is basically a big party in our drummer’s neighbor’s backyard. They’ve been doing it for a few years now, and they asked us to play for them. I guess about 40 people showed up, so it was an okay turnout for a band no one has heard of. We probably would have had more people show up, but there were a lot of social conflicts going on.
It went okay, I guess. We know these songs pretty well, and we didn’t make any huge mistakes that I could hear. Everyone that we talked to said that the sound was great. The cops showed up after 4-5 songs and asked us to turn down, though.
The next big technical thing to work on will be monitor mixes. We’re using in-ear monitors, and none of us were very happy with our mixes. I couldn’t hear the drums at all, so I pulled out one of my earbuds. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked.
Here’s a pic of the amp backline:
From L to R: my Fryette Sig:X, Maury’s Mesa Triple Rectifier, and Doug’s Ampeg SVT-CL. We faced the amps offstage so that they didn’t bleed into the FOH mix too much. I think it worked pretty well.
Here are some other pics from the show that Jenny took.
We played for a little over an hour. We played mostly covers, but we threw in one original. It was kind of a last minute addition, so we’ll definitely need to finesse it a little bit. I think we’re going to focus more on songwriting for a while. We don’t want to be a cover band, so we need to get busy writing stuff.
It was fun, and hopefully it won’t be too long before the next one.
I am going to take this opportunity to embarrass my friend Jakeb Stunz.
About 6 years ago, some good friends of ours asked me if I would be willing to give their son guitar lessons. I guess he was probably 10 at the time, but I’m really bad with judging how much time has passed. I agreed, thinking that he would probably quit after a few months (like many students do). Well, not only did he not quit, but he managed to be one of the most committed students I have ever taught.
Whenever I gave him something to work on, he came back the next week having practiced the crap out of it. I have gotten pretty good at telling when a student is faking it through a lesson, and I never got that from him (maybe he just got really good at faking it). If he didn’t practice, he told me so and I didn’t have to waste our lesson time looking at him practice. I watched Jakeb become a talented, confident guitar player over the next several years, and there’s only so much credit that I can take.
Anyway, the Stunz family moved to Singapore in June 2009. It’s a great adventure for them, but it really stinks for those of us who call them friends. They came back to town last week for Spring Break, and Jakeb was able to play with the church band again. It was good to see them again, and I was glad to have the opportunity to play with one of my favorite students.
Well, the board is pretty much together for now. I haven’t taken a pic yet, but I’ll get around to it eventually.
My signal goes Wah -Volume (tuner out – pitchblack) – io – PURE – DE-7 – DD-20 (w/external tap tempo)
Here’s the roundup:
Wah – it’s a Crybaby. It’s not “the best wah ever,” but it’s passable. I will eventually buy a new one or slap some new guts in this one, but for now it works.
Volume – I use this for swells and for killing my signal for silent tuning. It doesn’t have the smoothest taper, but it’s completely noise free and it works well once you learn where the sweet spot is.
Pitchblack – it’s a tuner, and it’s black. What’s left to say? It’s really easy to read on stage, and it’s pretty accurate (+/- 1 cent).
RAILhead Effects io – I have written a lot about this pedal, but I’ll write a little more. This pedal, as I understand it, is designed to be played in front of a clean amp. I think it’s based on a Marshall preamp gain stage (but I may be mistaken), and it gives you a reasonable facsimile of the fabled Van Halen “Brown Sound.” It’s basically a Marshall-in-a-box, and it is awesome. Discovery of the weekend: this pedal gets a really cool light overdrive tone when you roll off the volume knob on the guitar.
RAILhead Effects PURE – It’s a clean boost. I forget how many decibels of volume it adds, but it’s a lot. You can use it in front of an overdriven amp to push the preamp tubes, basically making the amp more distort more. If you have the headroom, it gives you a volume boost. I’m not really using this one very much at the moment – it doesn’t really fit in with my setup right now. I’ll probably replace it with the low gain overdrive that I’m working on (more on that later).
Ibanez DE-7 – This one is surprisingly awesome. I bought one because it’s known for it’s ability to self-oscillate and make crazy noises when you set it for high repeats and play with the delay time knob. Well, it does that and a lot more. The “echo” mode is a really great analog-sounding delay. The repeats are really warm and dark, and it just sounds fantastic. I used this all day yesterday at church and even managed to get some dotted-eighth type sounds (even though it doesn’t have tap tempo). Really cool, and cheap. They’re like $70 new and you can sometimes find them used for like $50. When I play with TLP, this one will probably go in the amp’s effects loop and I’ll just switch it on for solos or whatever.
Boss DD-20 – this is the working man’s delay pedal. It’s got presets so you can have up to 4 different delay settings to cycle between. This is really handy for going from an ambient/reverby kinda sound to slapback to dotted eighth to reverse (or whatever). It also has a jack for using an external tap tempo switch. It isn’t the best-sounding delay I have ever used (that would probably be the Damage Control Timeline), but it sounds pretty nice. It is extremely functional, and very affordable – I think I paid $150 for mine.
I’ve got a Voodoo Lab ISO 5 mounted underneath the board (Pedaltrain PT2) powering everything.
I still need to add a low gain overdrive. I used to have a Timmy, but I (stupidly) sold it after I bought my M13. I should probably get back on the waiting list, but for now I’m going to build my own. David Barber made the schematic for his now discontinued LTD Silver publicly available about a year ago, and a lot of DIY pedal guys have made circuit boards available. I bought one and ordered a bunch of parts, so I’ll need to dig out my soldering iron and get to work once everything shows up.
A couple of other things on the radar: the Strymon Brigadier Delay and the Strymon blueSky Reverb. I really want both of these. If/when I get the Brigadier, it will replace the DD-20.
Well, it was an interesting experiment, but the M13 is now history. There were a lot of really cool sounds in that box, but ultimately it wasn’t for me.
First of all, the delays and reverbs are really great. Not as good as the Damage Control Timeline that I used to have, but much more flexible. If you want to run 4 delays at a time, you can do that on the M13. Likewise, there are lots of great reverb sounds. I will definitely miss the particle verb setting.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of drawbacks. For one thing, not all of the effects are great. The overdrive and distortion tones leave a lot to be desired. Ultimately, I was able to get some decent tones after much tweaking and EQing, but I still wasn’t blown away. I didn’t really care for the wah and filters either. I’m getting much better wah tone out of a used $40 Crybaby. The modulation tones are pretty hit or miss, but I don’t really use chorus, tremolo, flanger, or phaser (except for one song) anyway.
Finally, the thing is huge. It isn’t part of your pedalboard – it is your pedalboard. That’s fine if you’re totally sold on all the effects, but I wasn’t. I sold it a few days ago, and I’m in the process of reassembling everything. I still had some of my old pedals, and I ordered some replacements. My new board will look something like this once everything comes in:
As always, the pedalboard is a work in progress. I would love to pick up some of the new Strymon stuff. The Brigadier delay and Blue Sky reverb look really cool.
Bottom line: pedals are more fun than multi effects, and they usually sound better.
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