Luthier Tools

I don’t know how to use any of this stuff.

15 Watt 1X12 Tube Amps

I’ve watched this video a bunch of times and I was watching it tonight because I couldn’t fall asleep.

They compare three 15 watt combo amps with a single 12 inch speaker: Fender Blues Junior, Vox AC15, and Fender Bassbreaker 15. I have a Bassbreaker 15 and it’s currently my #1 amp for playing at home. I mentioned earlier that I’m on the verge of talking myself into buying an AC15 too. I want to run the two amps together and if I can get enough volume out of the combination they might turn into my gigging rig (assuming the Coronavirus ever allows us to play gigs again).

Just posting the video (I bet I’ve posted this one before) to try and psyche myself into buying the Vox. That’s all.

It’s 11:30. I think I’ll be able to sleep now. Goodnight, everyone!

Therapy

There is something delightfully therapeutic about bashing the holy hell out of an electric guitar when you’re in a state of near permanent near panic over a global pandemic. The plague might get me, but until it does I’m going to vent all of my frustrations through bad music and mediocre guitar playing.

Amen and all that.

That’s a Lot of Noise

I played a lot today. More than I expected.

When I finished playing on Thursday night, June Music had nine songs with all of the rhythm guitars. I had an idea for a 10th song, but it was just a single chord change. On Friday after work I found myself wishing that I had more to do. I’ll have to do leads eventually, but I like to save that for last, and I still have to write and record the vocal parts before I get there. What to do?

I wrote out music for two more songs, that’s what. I invented new stuff for me to do. Today I recorded the rhythm guitars for those two. Neither one is the 10th idea I had socked away, so now there are 11 songs with guitar/bass/drums and one that’s still only a snippet of nothing.

When I finished the second song today I saw that my MacBook’s battery percentage was still above 70. I didn’t want to stop. That’s when I remembered there was a song left over from April that had everything except lead guitar. I brought that up, finished it off, and now I have a song that’s ready to mix.

There was also a ton of battery left, and I still didn’t want to stop. What to do next?

I’ve mentioned about 100 times that in 2015 I started a project where I would re-record the least awful songs from all of my prior RPM Challenges and stuff. Every so often I try to get some work done but I never seem to finish anything. Screw it, thought me. I picked a song out of that batch, scrapped all of the guitar parts that were already done and did ’em again. When that was done I picked a second song. When that was done… my battery was below 10% and I had to help cook dinner.

In the grand scheme of things it’s all stupid and pointless and silly but damn if it didn’t feel good.

For the June and April songs I didn’t use my pedal board. I played the 335 into the RYRA The Klone and the Keeley Super Phat Mod. I had the gain dialed pretty far back on both, but with the Bassbreaker 15 that was enough for some good, chunky distortion. For the lead on the April song I just upped the gain on both pedals a smidge

For the 2015 Project songs I only did rhythm parts and I switched back to the pedal board. The most recent plan for this project was to use the same setup I use with Lizardfish. I followed that rule for the pedals but that’s it. Technically the 335 is still retired and not allowed to leave the house, so it’s not a Lizardfish thing. The Bassbreaker 15 has never been used with Lizardfish, though I still have the idea of pairing it with a Vox AC15 and using that with the band. Guitar Center’s website has a listing for a used AC15 for under $500. I am really tempted.

The signal path today was 335 to Klon KTR to Keeley D&M Drive (just the Dan side) to the Bassbreaker 15. The problems I was having when I first switched to that have been fixed. As expected, lowering the output level on the KTR by a ton really did the trick. No more mushy compression. Everything sounded clear and dynamic and great.

I noticed one other little detail. For one of the 2015 songs, a song that was written for the 2014 50/90 Challenge, I had previously added rhythm guitars to it. The song requires a clean sound and a distorted sound. When I recorded them before there was a little weirdness in the transitions that I hadn’t done on the 50/90 recording. I didn’t catch it until a couple of days after I finished the takes but it was reason enough to redo everything. Today when I finished each take I listened back to just the guitars, with everything else muted.

I don’t think I’ve done that for any of the recordings I’ve done since March, and I’ve only used the 335 on the most recent songs, so maybe it didn’t happen… When I had the distorted guitars solo’d and there were no other tracks playing, I realized that the microphone is actually picking up a little bit of the acoustic sound of the guitar. You can hear the pick hitting the strings. It’s really subtle, and you can’t hear it within the full mix, even when the guitar tracks are cranked. Either I was bashing the guitar really hard, or the amp isn’t as loud as I thought it was. I might go back to some of the old songs and see if it happened while playing a solid body guitar. Interesting.

Anyway, here’s a picture.

Specs

You know those super annoying Facebook adds? You know how they pull things from cookies on your machine? They just got me. There was an add for a sale on reverb.com for one of my guitars. It’s not really my guitar, it’s just the same year, make, and model. 1979 Gibson ES-335 Pro. I bought mine on ebay for $700 in 2000. Mine is a factory second, so the sales price doesn’t actually apply here, but this reverb add is currently listed at $3,285.

Yikes!

That’s not why I’m writing this though. One of the pictures included in the sale listing looks like a magazine add for the 335 Pro that is complete with the specs. Cool!

My favorite part of this add is all the things that are white that, thanks to a heavy smoker in the guitar’s past, on mine are yellow. Maybe I should name my guitar Nicotine. It would be fitting.

Two More Songs

I wrote up two new ideas for June Music this morning before work. Nothing special. I sketched out the song form after work and tonight I put rhythm guitars down. It was the ES-335 into the RYRA for cleanish sounds for all but part of one of the songs. The one heavy piece brought out the Wren and Cuff Super Russian for some sick fuzz.

I have a little idea for one little snippet that might become song #10. Once I figure out the rest of that, it’s on to melodies and lyrics.

Sweet Tones

I took my laptop into my room to record some guitars. I had every intention of working out the kinks in the KTR/D&M Drive combo and then without really planning it I unplugged the board and plugged in the new RYRA The Klone pedal. Then I did something that would not have happened without Coronavirus.

I was planning on selling a guitar (my Strat) and some pedals so that I could buy another amp. With the lock downs and all there was no selling anything so all of that stuff is still here. When I took the D&M Drive out of storage I also pulled a few other pedals, thinking I might experiment. One of them was the Keeley Super Phat Mod. I bought that pedal a couple of years ago and I tried but I never really connected with it.

Tonight I put it into the chain after the RYRA and… it sounded really good.

It worked pretty much perfect with the first two songs I worked on. On the third I should have lowered the gain on the Keeley by a lot so the tone is way heavier than it should be. The fourth and final song of the night was just the RYRA because it’s freakin’ awesome.

i still only have seven songs in progress, but now they all have rhythm guitar. As for the guitar itself, I used the ES-335 and it went really well. No issues at all. The intonation is good, a lot of the buzz is gone (not all, but a lot) and it just felt and sounded good.

Robert is pleased.

Do I Need Frets?

As I watched this I looked at my 335 to make comparisons.

This looks bad (but maybe not as bad as I thought. My Les Paul is probably worse):

This isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It might actually be kinda good:

This teeny tiny piece of research made me feel a teeny tiny bit better… except that my Les Paul looks A LOT worse than this. Yikes. (oh, and I was trying to do a step from a different video to see if my neck was warped, that’s why the strings are touching the frets in this picture. In case you were wondering)

I also ordered a very cheap set of luthier tools from amazon today. At least I’ll be able to take measurements and maybe adjust the intonation myself. The electronics though… I’m not touchin’ that with a 30 foot pole.