If you’d asked me a few weeks ago I’d have said the KTR without question, but the Ryra has been growing on me like crazy. I’m not sure anymore.
I just put the KTR on the bedroom board so everything RPM Challenge from here on will use it.
Which do I prefer? With a potential return to band practices coming someday (I hope), It’s a question that must be answered.
Crap… do I need to get my hands on yet another fuzz pedal? Uh oh.
I accomplished two things tonight with a little guitar playing. First, I made myself a tiny bit less sad over Bellana going away, even if it was for only a few minutes. Second, I think I may have convinced myself to not use retail therapy to make myself feel better even if only for a few minutes. Well… I avoided retail therapy again. I went to the Rush website earlier and bought a couple of t-shirts. As stated in a previous post today, I am in a rare period of my existence where I feel the need to resupply the wardrobe as it were. Whatever, I almost bought a new Fuzz Face pedal (the Joe Bonamassa signature. It’s supposed to be geared toward humbuckers where Fuzz Faces are more traditionally geared toward single coils even though I am pretty sure that is just bullshit based on Jimi Hendrix, but I digress) but instead I took the little mini Fuzz Face I already had and put it into the signal chain and used the shit out of it.
The only things I had ready for recording were leads on the two January Record Every Month songs, and on one re-recording. I decided that all tracks recorded this evening would be with great big gooey gobs of fuzz. The Fuzz Face on the two January songs and a Big Muff clone on the re-recording. I always always always have a Big Muff on every board at all times. I love fuzz pedals, and Muffs (despite their awful, terrible, horribly sexist name) are my favorites. They are the smoothest and the filthiest, both at the same time. Fuzz Faces have that spitty quality that really bugs me when I am playing chords (usually) but is okay when I am playing leads. Big Muffs are awesome for rhythm too, but only if there’s an overdrive pedal in the chain after them that boosts the mid range frequencies. Something like a Tube Screamer or (preferably) a Klon. So I don’t keep the little Fuzz Face on the board and only pull it out when I am in the mood. Today I was very much in the mood. Actually, I have been since before Christmas, which is when I started jonzing for a new one, but today was the day I decided to act on it.
So when the time came to play tonight, I gave in to the urge to go ape shit on the fuzz. While my playing was particularly shitty, the tones were pretty effin’ gnarly and they made me happy.
Here is a shitty little blurry (why?) pick of the Fuzz Face pedal. It’s a Dunlop Band of Gypsies Fuzz Face Mini that is supposed to be modeled after the pedal Jimi Hendrix used on the live album Band of Gypsies, which may actually not have been a Fuzz Face at all but instead a custom octave fuzz with the octave circuit removed that was just stuck inside Fuzz Face enclosure. If’n you believe the stories and all.
And here we have a picture of my very dusty Wren and Cuff Super Russian. It’s been sitting on that spot on my bedroom floor since February and I really should dust all this stuff before the knobs get all noisy and scratchy. This is my second favorite Big Muff clone. My favorite is on the big pedal board in the cellar. It’s a Wren and Cuff Tri Pi ’70 and it’s probably pretty dusty too. It’s based on the original Big Muff Pi pedals that Electro Harmonix made in the early 70’s. The Super Russian is based on a Russian made Sovtek model from the early 90’s. They are both viscous little bastards and I love playing them.
The Bruins are spanking the Washington Capitals tonight and it’s glorious. I started watching season two of The Witcher, even though I am kinda over the whole fantasy sword and sorcery thing. This show’s not bad though.
None of this is making me miss Bellana less, even though she hasn’t even left the state yet, never mind the continent. It’s going to be a long six months.
And that, boys and girls, is what you call a long and rambling blog post that uses a lot of words to say very little. Enjoy.
It’s 9:30pm. I’m sitting at my desk on a Windows machine (why?) watching last Friday’s That Pedal Show (finally) and thinking that I should post something without having any clue what to post.
TV? I finished Foundation last night. Two thumbs up, says the guy who never read the Azimov books. I watched both Walking Dead spin offs today. World Beyond was good. Fear wasn’t. At least I don’t think it was. I have to fess up that it was so boring I was barely paying attention to any of it.
That Pedal Show has an old SR&D Rockman headphone amp on the board. I haven’t gotten far enough into the episode for them to use it, but it did send me on a hunt. I used to own a Rockman headphone amp. Which model was it? Ebay and Reverb searches make me think that it was a Soloist. The original Rockmans apparently had a little gain control on the back. Mine didn’t. I know it wasn’t an X100 because my memory seems to think that the X100 was the latest and greatest model when I bought mine and I didn’t want to pay the full price so I bought an older model used. I used to use it to record a direct line into Mike’s Fostex cassette 4-track recorder. Larry had a couple of the rack units. The Sustainer, the Stereo Chorus and the Delay… was it called the Stereo Delay? I can’t remember. I do know the Sustainer was awesome as a direct signal into the 4-track. I would think about buying a Soloist for the nostalgia value, but I don’t want to spend $100. I need them to be cheaper than that.
Okay. So I am going to get into bed and maybe watch a little more That Pedal Show, or maybe go look for a new TV show, or maybe just watch a random Futurama, or maybe just go to sleep. As mentioned in a previous post, I am so freakin’ tired.
Until next time, good night everyone.
I search for boutique wah pedals and get link after link telling me I have to get my hands on the wah pedal I dumped into my closet when that frat boy fucker in California went on his idiotic racist rant following the George Floyd protests and implied that people who put more value on a human being’s life than on their neighbor’s windows are both unworthy of his products and incapable of pissing while standing up. Fuck that guy. I’m never using his pedals again, I don’t care how amazing his fucking deluxe wah pedal is.
End rant.
So where do I go? There is Xotic and Jam Pedals. They are both supposed to have excellent wahs. One company that I know nothing about keeps popping up too. Real McCoy Custom, or RMC. they seem to have a ton of models, all with stellar reviews, but only a few are in production. Is that info correct? They are pretty expensive and there aren’t a whole lot of dealers (just one in Massachusetts).
I’m thinking when the time comes, this is probably where I want to go. The RMC10 reviews are all stellar, but I’m only seeing RMC11’s for sale around here.
One of these days.
This week’s episode of That Pedal Show is once again forcing* me to change things in the bedroom recording nook. They keep doing this to me!
The topic is using overdrive pedals in a band setting and it didn’t really teach me anything I didn’t already know. The what not to do examples were things that I used to do all the time, and the what you should do examples were things that I have decided were good ideas over the last 6-7 years or so. I guess I’m like Fredo Corleone. I’m smart.
Nope, what got into my head was just one of the pedals they used for the demonstration. They were using a Rat. Last year I bought a decent Rat clone. It’s on the table next to my desk but tomorrow it’s totally going on the board and getting used on some November Music stuff.
Inspiration, babie!
*Ain’t nobody forcing me to do jack. It’s just inspiration. Oodles of inspiration.
Ready for a lunch break post?
I still can’t get to the editor on a Vivaldi non-private browser window on my work laptop. It works in a private window and it works on Vivaldi on every other computer in my personal computing universe. What up?
I’ve had a couple of good nights sleep lately, but I still feel tired. I think the Covid is finally wearing my out. I put all new parts onto my breathing machine last night, which was nice, and I slept like the dead for over seven hours, which was nice, but I’m still tired today.
Did I mention the Bruins advanced to the second round? I think I need to start watching the Penguins/Islanders series. I don’t like either team, but the Bruins looked like world beaters in the first round so I’m cautiously optimistic about all possible opponents.
Music, right? I want to do car music tomorrow morning, but I don’t have anything written. There are two songs from this month that are ready for lyrics, and three more from the past couple of months too. I have to write ’em before I sings ’em though. I’m hoping that tonight before bed I’ll be able to sneak some writing in. I’m doing a challenge to record at least one song every month and I have one for this month that’s ready to mix. I just don’t know if it’s as good as some of the other things I’ve worked on this month. We’ll see.
Also music: The recording nook right now has the Vox AC15 plugged into the normal channel and the pedals are a Klon Klone, a Rat klone, and a Muff klone. I think I need to swap out the Rat for something else, and I’m not 100% sure I like the AC15 on it’s own. Maybe it’s time for the Bassbreaker 15 to come back. What I really want is my Deluxe Reverb, but it’s still at the band’s rehearsal room at our bass players house. What to do, what to do. Tone, am I right?
The kids are at their dad’s for the next couple of days. I miss them already. Harry went to school this morning and Bellana just left a minute ago. I am sad. I want them here 24/7 because I am greedy and selfish. Crud.
I should do some sunrise pics soon. I don’t know what my nana-sitting schedule is like off the top of my head, but there is a holiday weekend coming up. There’s also a wedding anniversary for someone coming up too. I wonder who?
Okay, fat boy, back to work.
I took the cat’s advice and played my new guitar.
I messed with my little recording nook pedal board a little. I took out the Wampler Plexi Drive Mini for the Chicago Stompworks Mr Vermin Rat clone.
I didn’t record anything. I just played. Loud. Jen and Harry had to step out for a minute and I took the opportunity to see if I could get the little Vox AC15 amp up to band practice volume.
Normal channel… master volume on about five… channel volume up to about seven… 106 decibels. sweet.
Note the tone control on the AC15’s normal channel is wired backwards. I knew that and I set the amp appropriately. Why then was my sound so super toppy?
Because the tone control on the Rat clone is also wired backward and while I thought I had it set super bassy it was actually set super trebly.
Amateur.
I told myself I wasn’t going to buy more guitar gear until at least my birthday, and then it was going to be fixing problems with one of my two 40+ year old guitars.
And then tonight I bought a Rat pedal.
What the hell is wrong with me?
This week’s That Pedal show covered Octave-Fuzz pedals. Those are fuzz pedals that split the signal in two and double the frequency of one. That way you hear the note you played along with a second note one octave higher. It’s cool, but it was never my thing.
I always preferred the opposite. Split the signal an cut the frequency of one in half. That gives you the note you played plus a note one octave down. You knew that though because math, right?
Back in high school I had a pedal that did the octave down thing without adding in the fuzz. It was a DOD Octapluss. I was never a pedal guy, at least not until five or six years ago. I used to be set with an amp overdrive channel and a wah wah pedal. That’s all I needed. More often than not though I’d have the Octopluss too.
When I joined Lizardfish I wanted to use it but it had died on me somewhere along the way. I was sad, but somehow I’ve survived. I picked up a pitch shift pedal a while ago for times when we cover a song that has guitarmonies. I barely ever use it, but today I switched it on. It can do the same pitch shift my Octopluss did. It’s not the same though. It’s digital and it actually works too well. It’s not ratty and random like the old pedal. It actually makes me sad.
The new pedal is a super cheap knock off of a popular Electro Harmonix pedal (at least I think it is). Someday I’ll probably upgrade to the real thing. Why? The printing on the pedal is too small to read. Even with my glasses on. I just can’t see it. I have to take a picture with my phone and zoom in in order to know how to set it up. Crazy.
Inside the Red Head's Head 