Tag: Guitar Gear

Boss

When I was a kid and starting to become obsessed with guitar gear, there weren’t a lot of options around. My local music stores carried pedals from DoD and Boss for the most part. You could find occasional Ibanez, MXR, or Electro Harmonix pedals, but for the most part it was DoD and Boss. The few pedals I owned were DoD. Every time I took a Boss pedal for a test drive I was massively underwhelmed. Those music store visits back in the late 1980’s lead to a lifetime of not liking Boss gear. To this day I have never owned a Boss pedal because I have never played through one that I liked. The closest I’ve come is a Keeley pedal (the Super Phat Mod) which is a modified version of a Boss Blues Driver pedal. I like the Keeley pedal, but I don’t love it (unlike my Keeley D&M Drive which I absolutely adore).

I have never consciously boycotted Boss, I just never wanted anything they sold…

Until now.

A few years ago a couple of companies released super sophisticated amp load boxes. Universal Audio put out the Ox, which seems like the greatest thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately you can almost buy a car with the amount of money you need to shell out for an Ox.* Boss released a similar item called the Tube Amp Expander. The reviews I watched made the thing look pretty amazing, though maybe not quite as amazing as the Ox. The price was similar though and I never gave it a second thought.

Not long ago Boss released a new product. It’s a smaller version of the Tube Amp Expander. It’s called the Tube Amp Expander Core. It has all of the functionality I would want but at a much lower price. Granted, $700 is a ton of money for something like this (in my book, at least) and I don’t know if that price is before or after the orange shit clown’s Japanese tariffs. It is a low enough cost to make me consider it, but probably still too high to actually pull the trigger. It would be really cool to be able to run a direct signal out of my Fender Deluxe Reverb and into my Audio Interface, or even directly into my Macintosh.

…….it’s Boss though…. if I tried one out, history dictates that I would be disappointed. Still…….. oh the places I could go with a box like that. We’ll have to see how the economy holds up in the near future. There’s a really good chance the orange shit clown could collapse the whole country which would take the decision to blow $700 on a reactive load box out of my hands, you know?

Anyway, here’s a video that I can drool over as I watch it over and over again.

*Slight exaggeration

Line Check: Complete

Band practice is supposed to start in 43 minutes. As of this moment we’ve all chimed in that we’re good to go for today. Fingers emphatically crossed that nothing changes.

I did a line check with all of the gear I want to bring today. I am massively downsizing the pedals and massively upscaling the amp situation. Also… I’m going to play the SG. I don’t know why. I am just feeling like today should be an SG day.

Everything is working. The new reverb pedal sounds cool. Here’s hoping nothing falls apart over the next 41 minutes and we actually have a practice today. It’s going to be painful. I have no calluses on my left hand finger tips. I’ve only played for about five minutes and already I am hurting, big time.

Bring it on, kids!

Gotta

Gotta go to IKEA to return something.

Gotta go to Best Buy to return something.

Gotta go into the city, Cambridge, to pick something up.

Gotta find two 9v power plugs for guitar pedals. I know I have a bunch of them around here somewhere. Probably need to grab a power strip too.

Gotta setup the guitar rig I want to use for the next practice (tomorrow?). Guitar (Gibson Les Paul Standard) -> Duel overdrive pedal (Keeley D&M Drive) -> Digital reverb pedal (TC Electronic Hall of Fame 2) -> Amp (Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 which does not have a built in reverb, hence the digital reverb pedal). We’re going simple for a while. My big pedal board is making a ton of awful, squealy noise and I want to rip it apart and see where it’s coming from (guaranteed it’s the power supply).

Gotta write and record some music. There are only three days left in March and I haven’t written or recorded any music this month. I still want to try and get something in for the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month challenge. Probably not likely, but we’ll see.

I also need a shower because… ewww, gross.

Delivery

The last time I bought something form guitar center’s website they gave me a delivery date, told me the package was out for delivery, and then didn’t deliver it. They did this two or three days in a row. When it finally arrived they had failed to pack the power cable and when I complained they asked why I needed it… it was a guitar amplifier… was I supposed to use it without power?

I had forgotten about all of that when, this weekend, I ordered a pedal from guitar center’s website. Today is the delivery day. It has been showing as out for delivery since 9:36am. The estimated delivery time says it should arrive between 11:30am and 2:30pm. It is now 2:47 and it has not been delivered yet.

Yeah, I should have known better. I’m never getting that (relatively) cheap little digital reverb pedal, am I. I’m an idiot. Just call me sucker.

ADDENDUM: I got an email notification saying the package was delivered. I guess all it took was me complaining about it on the internet. Heh, as if.

Oxblood

Question: What is the most expensive Gibson Les Paul on Earth?

Answer: Jeff Beck’s super modified 1954 Les Paul Standard, commonly known as the Oxblood Les Paul.

Question: How much did the Oxblood sell for?

Answer: It is commonly believed that Beck bought the guitar for about $300 in 1972, but two days ago it sold at auction for $1,315,708.

Beck’s wife put up his gear collection for auction and the results were pretty staggering. While the hope was the guitars would be bought by people who would actually play them, I think it’s safe to say that most of the big tickets are going to museums and private collections where they will likely be on display and never actually touched again. That’s sad, but at these prices what can you do?

There were a couple of guitars that I would have bid on if money were no object. The Oxblood and the Yardburst being the two big ones, but there were supposed to be some signature models and prototypes of signature models (of the Oxblood, at least) that I would have liked to get my greedy mitts on.

Still… I think I would rather we still had Jeff Beck playing all of this stuff rather than having to live in a world without him. That would be way better than this world.

Something I’m Thinking About

The RPM Challenge is about three weeks away. I’m thinking about what to do as far as guitar gear and I think I have an idea…

132/365

I would add a Crybaby wah pedal to this. It would be off the board to the right, but in the signal chain it would come after the Fuzzface and before the Dyna Comp. Pedal chain law requires a Fuzzface to come first. It’s an impedance thing. I’m not an electrical engineer so I don’t really get it, but it’s true. wah->Fuzzface sounds terrible. Fuzzface->wah sounds… okay.

I’ve wired this for power but I haven’t put velcro on the three new pedals. Outside of that and adding the Crybaby, I am all set to try this out… someday. Saturday? Sunday? Someday.

Guitar playing… I haven’t forgotten about you, my friend and favorite hobby and possibly unhealthy obsession. Just need to make some time.

He’ll be Proud

My step son, Harry, will be proud of me. I just finished watching Better Call Saul. He really wanted me to watch it. He was raving about it all the time. Now I’ve watched the whole series and he can finally talk to me about it without worrying about spoilers.

FYI, it’s as good as everyone says it is. Go watch it.

Subject change. I mentioned that I bought a few new guitar pedals over the last week. I haven’t had a chance to try them out yet. I’m debating whether I want to integrate them into the board I use at home, or should I make a brand new pedal board instead. I’m leaning toward a new board. Just for a while at least. Just for schnitzengiggles.

Subject change. We have a couch delivery scheduled for this morning. The delivery window they gave me is pretty long. It extends into my work day and it overlaps two scheduled meetings. Here’s hoping we get lucky and the truck gets here early enough to not mess anything up.

Subject change. Our mouse hunting cats had a target last night. We woke up in the middle of the night to see them chasing a gross little teeny tiny rodent around. At the time, the little bastard got away. We don’t see any signs of the prick this morning, but the cats are clearly still on high alert. We live in the woods. One of the biggest rivers in New England runs smack through our town. Mice are a part of life. Still… go get the little home invading asshole, cats. Do your job. Protect your house.

Okay. Time to go start the day. That delivery truck is going to be here… eventually.

A Whole New World

Amp sims. Pedals that digitally simulate classic amplifiers. Prepare to enter a whole new world of guitar rabbit holes, Robert. I don’t see this as a replacement for my tube amps, I see it as a quieter alternative for home recording. Finger crossed it’s acceptable.

Nothing to Say

I’m down to the final minutes of my lunch break on this fine Friday afternoon. I am pretty exhausted from a lack of sleep over the past… month(s) but I’m hanging in there. I had some Purdue Popcorn chicken and some peanuts and some sugar free Hershey bites for lunch. I really want a drink of water but I still have to wait the better part of an hour before I am clear to drink anything. That’s a gastric bypass patient thing. If you know, you know.

Fed Ex delivered a package today. I am not home to get it, but it contains a new guitar pedal. If I read the amazon shipping notes correctly, it’s a compressor pedal. The first I’ve ever purchased. I have this weird idea of using cleaner guitar sounds for this year’s RPM Challenge in February and a compressor will be a part of that. I bought an MXR Dyna Comp because it’s super simple and it will let me squash my clean signal down to a delightfully mushy… mush. There are two more pedals coming over the weekend. One is a Flanger, the other is an Amp Sim. I don’t have room on my pedal board for any of these kiddos and I don’t have open slots on my power brick… so I am going to need to get creative, I think. It should be fun. I don’t think I bought a single guitar pedal during all of 2024. I know I bought a couple of microphones for band practices that haven’t actually happened yet, but no pedals.

There are a lot of tentative plans for the weekend. We may be messing with our living room and we may be going to some stores for research purposes. I hope to spend some time wandering around town taking pictures with my new/possibly antique (though probably not) camera. I got a gift card for the sugar free bakery in Salem, NH for xmas. I haven’t bought anything from them in about a month, but now I am definitely going back and getting some cookies. Good stuff.

What else… I thought there was something else… One of our cars is going to get a break job. That wasn’t the thing that I am forgetting though… am I going to go shopping for a new iPhone? That’s definitely on the to-do list before we go to Florida at the end of the month, but is it this weekend? I don’t know.

I have to start practicing the guitar. The band is hoping to reconvene (hopefully for real this time) at some point after this weekend. I need to get ready for that. Which guitar should I bring to the first practice? Probably the Les Paul Standard that my wife got me for my 50th birthday in 2021. I really dig that guitar.

I know I had something else I wanted to write about but it has slipped my brain entirely. Don’t get old, kids. This is what happens to you when you get old. Stay young for as long as you can. Unless you’re already old like me in which case… sorry, folks. We had a good run, I’m sure.

Flashback

I watched a video on youtube tonight of a band playing in a bar in DC back in the late 90’s. I saw the band play in a bar in Cambridge at around the same time… maybe about a year earlier. Whatever. That’s not the point of the post.

The point of the post was that I had what seemed like almost a full sensory flashback. I could smell the cigarette smoke, I could feel my ears ringing from the volume, I could feel the heat of the room and the crush of the people packed into the tiny space… it was weird and also kinda wonderful. The video was 26 years old and I almost felt like I was there.

How weird was that?

Seriously, underground bands playing live in the 90’s was the absolute best musical thing ever. EVER.

In an unrelated note, I have three guitar pedals in my amazon cart right now. If I pull the trigger on it, I hope I’ll have a band to use them with. We’re looking at trying to start up again next month, and next month is the day after tomorrow. Cross those fingers, kids.