Category: Guitar

New Wah Pedal Coming

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.

Pedals… or… RIP My Fulltone Pedals

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.

The Playlist Didn’t Work

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.

May Music: Finished

Well, February, March, April, and May all have 10 song RPM Challenge style recording projects (February and April actually are officially RPM Challenges) that were all finished on the 29th day of the month.

May has 11 songs. I just finished mixing the last two.

Is it good?

Nope.

Do I care?

Nope.

Finished Another Song

This song makes nine finished songs for the month. It also puts me over 35:00 for the full run time. That means I can declare it complete by RPM rules. I still have two more to mix though.

If this audio player keeps working it’s going to make me a happy blogging nerd.

MumbleGrumbleMumbleGrumble

I’m doing my best not to let every little thing bother me, but today is starting to feel like one of those days where the whole lock down thing gets to me.

I slept okay last night. That’s a tick in the good things column. The kids are here. That is another one. I played guitar last night and I didn’t suck (any more than normal). Tick. It’s only been a small amount of use, but so far I’m not seeing the same issues I saw with the new MacBook Pro the last time I tried to use it. My backup from the old computer took without issue this time, and with the exception of my copy of the Vivaldi browser acting screwy this morning there hasn’t been any software problems (I closed Vivaldi and re-opened and it’s been fine since).

My wife and my step son have spent the last few weeks becoming excellent cake bakers. Not only that, but they are teaching themselves how to decorate too. They baked their cakes and made their frosting from scratch and are doing all sorts of fun things with the design. Unfortunately they have decided to take a break from baking for a while because… well… we’ve had a lot of cakes to eat lately. We can put the baking and the creativity into the good column, and the lack of more cake forthcoming into the bad column. I haven’t made any of my now legendary Tewksbury Tweets in the last couple of weeks. I don’t think I’ll have time before the kids go back to their dad’s for the weekend. Maybe I’ll have some for when they get back next Wednesday.

The kids are going back to their dad’s tomorrow. That’s a tick in the negative column. We get them today though, so I won’t be upset about it for now. Harry has started watching 30 Rock. I am 99% sure I binged the entire series. He showed me a youtube video yesterday of something hysterical that I totally missed. Apparently, there is a thread throughout the show demonstrating that Kenneth the NBC Page is immortal. They actually come right out and say it once, but you can laugh it off as goofy hickish behavoir, but with all of the little throw away lines lined up one after another… Kenneth is some kind of immortal being.

We can add that as a tick in the good column.

I mentioned in a post over the weekend that I sent an email to Gibson’s repair site. They haven’t responded. Under non-coronavirus circumstances I’d tick that under bad, but with things being as they are the staff are probably stuck at home… maybe… I don’t know how strict Tennessee is being, or how strict Gibson itself is being. I don’t know. I will invent a new category and call it the ambiguous, grey area list and put this there.

There were other things I was going to mention but I’m working now and all non-work related things have been flushed from my memory buffer (that’s a technical phrase).

We’ll talk again later, m’kay?

May Guitars are Done

I managed to sneak in the last two songs worth of guitars for the May Music. Now all of the tracking is done and I am down to three mixes to go. That’s it. Could we be finishing an album in a month project by the 29th for the fourth month in a row?

I Have Some Research to Do

I Googled “luthiers near Boston” and this was one of the things that came up. 40 or so Luthiers to research. I didn’t count the Guitar Centers. They’ve let me down once.

I also may have just sent a message to Gibson’s repairs department. Wiring, frets, and a nut. What would that cost me? They also offer a service that they call “total restoration.” I’m going to be honest here and say that I drooled a little when I read that. I also asked what that entails.

I’m not doing any of this until COVID-19 is dealt with. I’m likely not doing any of it even then, but we’re in quarantine so why not fantasize a little?

Bad Bad Bad

I put lead guitar onto the three songs I put vocals on this morning. I played bad. Three songs, three bads, hence the title of the post.

I got tired really fast too. It was odd. I did play the 335 and found a spot on the neck where the buzz makes it nearly unplayable. So I guess I have another reason to get it worked over.

Let’s get through COVID-19 first, shall we?

May Music is Half Way Finished

Six songs complete. Five more have lyrics written and will hopefully get vocals tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed.

I’m not really feeling any of this anymore. It’s starting to feel like a job. Shit.

Oh, and our dishwasher has completely shit the bed.