Yesterday I posted a little recap of the June Music project so far. I mentioned how the Keeley D&M Drive didn’t play nicely with the Klon KTR the way the OCD did. It just dawned on me why.
Light dawns on Marblehead, as the saying goes.
I was running the OCD at 18 watts. That’s why. The D&M runs at 9 watts. 18 watts gives more headroom. It can handle more signal before it craps all over itself. The KTR puts out a tidal wave of signal. An avalanche of signal. A city sized asteroid plowing into the Earth at a zillion miles a minute of signal.
18 watts gives enough headroom to handle the signal level. 9 watts does not. That’s also why dialing back the output level on the KTR made things sound better.
I spent my lunch break dicking around with my ES-335. There was a horrible buzz on the first and second strings between the 3rd and 5th frets. Bad. I played around with the action, trying to get rid of that buzz. I brought the bridge up a couple of screw turns and the problem is about 85% fixed. There is still a little buzz on the 3rd fret of both strings, but not nearly as bad as before. The 4th and 5th sound pretty good. I also checked the tuning at the 12th fret and the intonation seems to be pretty good still. I was pleased so I took a couple of faux artsy pictures.
I should also note that I have no idea what I’m doing. Is raising the bridge a little the correct way to deal with some fret buzz? I am guessing not. I probably need to play with the truss rod, but if anyone knows for sure, it’s not me. Maybe I’ll do some youtube research and see if there’s a better way.
A few weeks ago I sent a message to Gibson’s repair facility with some questions on what they can do for my poor, mistreated guitar. They never wrote back.
I figured I’d give a quick update on the June Music project even though no one else on Earth gives a shit. I give a shit, so here we go.
There are seven songs in the works. All have the MIDI tracks, drums and bass, complete. One has a piano as a placeholder for the melody. Three, as of this afternoon, have rhythm guitars.
Two songs used the KTR and the D&M Drive pedals. It was my first crack at substituting the D&M for the OCD. It didn’t work well. I had the output on the KTR maxed and the drive off. The D&M didn’t seem capable of handling that signal and it got really mushy. I used the ES 335 on the first song I did and wasn’t happy with the sound. The string buzz may have been making it worse so I switched to the Les Paul. It was a little better, but not much. So two songs have less than good guitar sound. It’s good enough to roll with for now. I don’t think I’ll change it. The third song used the Les Paul but just the KTR. I wanted a cleanish sound, so I shut off the D&M. That sounded pretty good.
After I was done I set to some major tweaking and found something that was much better. I lowered the output on the KTR, lowered the output and the gain on the D&M, an added a little treble on the KTR. That was better. I will try recording with that setup. I was hoping to just use the RYRA The Klone pedal this month but the whole racist pedal builder shit made me want to experiment with the gig setup more. I also pulled a couple of other overdrive and fuzz pedals out of storage. I might try pairing different things with the RYRA. We can sort of consider June as Lab time. Let the tinkering continue.
One thing I do know… it’d been over a week since I had played at all. With all of this quarantine, social distance shit going on… playing is good for my mindset. If I don’t play for a longish period of time I start getting under people’s skin. The more I play the easier I am to be around. It’s definitely a good way to work out my quarantinie frustration. I knew it would be, but I think I have some evidence to support that original theory now.
Playing helps me not be an asshole… therefore I should play more.
The guitar was played today and recordings were made.
The Keeley D&M Drive doesn’t play with the Klon KTR as nicely as the OCD did and there’s some mushy, flubby tone on two of the songs to prove it. I’ve got it figured out though. The tone will improve. The new wah was also recorded for the first time. There were many, many takes. I screwed up many, many times.
The Fulltone OCD has been replaced by the Keeley D&M Drive and the Fulltone Clyde Deluxe has been replaced by the Dunlop Cry Baby.
My pedal board is Fulltone Free* and while using those two pedals that I had already owned for years prior to Fuller’s bullshit** made no difference at all to the universe as a whole, dumping them soothes my conscience and maybe it’s even the karmically correct things to do. Most important, no one is ever going to come to a bar where I’m playing and see any of that guy’s work in my gear.
I’m not doing business with some racist who thinks that storefront windows are more important than the public execution without trial of a man whose crime was allegedly passing a bad $20 bill while black, and while in his eyes my support for life and equality over business might mean I am both underserving of using his products and unable to piss standing up, I stand by my belief that his words mark him as a piece of shit and I don’t want to have anything to do with him or his company or his products ever again.
I feel better.
*My little/backup/stay at home pedal board is over Mike the Bass Players house and has been since January. I understand the irony of the stay at home board not being at home, but that’s irrelevant. That board currently includes a Fulltone OCDge (complete with Fuller’s signature on it). That board still needs to be cleansed, but I promise it will be before I actually use it again. For now, it’s staying where it is until the coronavirus crisis has passed.
**I’ve written about this over and over again, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about here is a story from Guitar World, and here is another from Guitar.com.
Someday I’m going to want to cork sniff again and I’ll upgrade to some super swanky boutique wah pedal, but until then I’ll stomp the crap out of this puppy.
As mentioned yesterday, I am done with Fulltone and that SUCKS. The OCD pedal is amazing. The Clyde Deluxe Wah pedal is Earth shattering. I have a pedal I can use in place of the OCD (the Dan side of the Keeley D&M Drive is more or less an OCD clone) but I don’t have a suitable replacement for the Clyde Deluxe because no suitable replacement exists, at least not in my travels.
If you look back through the vast ocean of posts on this page you’ll find the one that mentions me first buying the Clyde and how it felt like I was cheating on 20-30 years worth of playing Dunlop Cry Baby wahs. When I first realized I was going to have to buy a new pedal my first thought was to just get a new basic, simple Cry Baby. Then I thought… I don’t wanna. I have grown accustomed to the uber nerd cork sniffing that comes with using a boutique brand pedal. I wanted more of that.
I went to Reddit and started a thread asking for ballpark alternatives to the Clyde. I had a few recommended to me. I spent some time on Google, and some time on youtube and everything I was told to check out sounds amazing. They also are really, really expensive. My Clyde Deluxe isn’t the most expensive pedal I own, but it’s probably #3. Maybe even #2. Do I want to spend $250-300 for another wah pedal? Yes but… probably not.
So I guess maybe I’m going back to Dunlop after all. It’s not a bad thing, the Cry Baby line is great and served me well for pretty much a lifetime. Unfortunately, there are something like 11,036 Cry Baby models to choose from. They have signature models for almost every guitar player alive. I think they might even have a signature model with my name on it (no they don’t, sarcasm).
So I went back to youtube and dug around. Some of them are just ridiculous. The Slash model has a built in distortion pedal. Lame. Nope. Their higher end non-signature pedal has a built in boost pedal. Not quite as lame but still lame. Nope. I don’t want bells and whistles this time. I had that and it broke my pathetic little heart. I just want a pedal I can stomp on and make my guitar quack like a duck on acid.
I made my choice. I was going with a Gary Clark, Jr signature model. I went to amazon and put one in my cart. Delivery date estimate? End of June. Oh for crying out loud. I found it from another amazon seller but it was significantly higher priced. Damn it! What was my #2 choice? The Joe Bonamassa signature. That was more expensive than the Clark, but not as expensive as the more expensive Clark. Oh okay, we’re going with the alternate choice.
The Joe Bonamassa signature Cry Baby wah-wah pedal should be delivered on Monday.
Having a conscience sucks.
Here’s a That Pedal Show episode where they mess with wah pedals… because.
Sometimes it sucks having a conscience, but what’s a red head to do.
Look back through this page and you’ll read me singing the praises of a guitar pedal company called Fulltone. Also notice that you never see me singing the praises of a guitar pedal company called JHS, but that’s another story.
I own three Fulltone pedals. Two are OCD overdrives which are hands down the best higher gain overdrive pedals I’ve ever played. The third is a Clyde Deluxe Wah. I have been chemically dependent on wah pedals since the first time I heard “White Room” back when I was in Junior High School and I will go to my grave feeding that addiction. I’ve owned a bunch of wah pedals over the decades and the Clyde Deluxe is so much better than all of the others that there is no comparison.
Fulltone is a guy named Mike Fuller. Yesterday he posted some stuff about the Black Lives Matter protests that make me never want to touch any of his stuff again. I hate it when politics get in the way of something unrelated to politics, but I have to listen to my conscience because, unlike many of my fellow Americans, I like to think I’m a decent person.
Mike had it out with a guy who runs the “Fulltone Pedals” Facebook page yesterday and some screen shots were posted to reddit. I am going to try and post them here but I don’t know if reddit requires permissions to view their images without a login. If you can see it, cool. If not, oh well.
So I have an OCD on both boards. On the main board I will replace it with the Dan side of the Keeley D&M Drive. That circuit is based on the OCD and it sounds fantastic. I don’t know what I am going to do for the back up board. Is it time to buy a Rat? For the Clyde though…
I’ve never played anything that was even close to as good. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. I’ll have to buy something. Wah pedals are like water to me, I can’t live without them for very long. I’m looking for suggestions. It’s research time.
Okay, so yesterday when I posted the playlist from hearthis.at that had all of my May music project songs on it, it embedded into the post okay, but it only played the first song. Jerk.
So here are links to the 2020 music projects so far. I don’t do this because I expect anyone to click on them, I just do it so I can look at it and say, “awwww.”
I’ve already made a trello board for June. Starting in July the tracking gets weird because July through September fall under the 50/90 FAWM challenge. I still want to try to have at least 10 songs started and finished during each calendar month while slaving my way toward a total of 50. Like ya do.
I still have one song from April that is unfinished. It just needs a guitar solo and a mix. I might complete that today and tomorrow and then be ready for June. I don’t want to declare any gear restrictions but I am thinking it’s just going to be my ES-335 and my RYRA Klone pedal. I’m a little worried about the buzzing on the first string of the 335 though. I might try to raise the action a smidge but that will probably screw up the intonation… though the intonation might already be screwy. The guitar did sit in the cellar for almost two years.
Who knows. Well see.
The year of music projects will continue, starting on Monday.
Inside the Red Head's Head 