Tag: Guitar Gear

Time to Get Ready

Today is a good day.  I got a bonus from work today.  That’s good.  I got my tax documents from work too.  By the time this posts my taxes might even already be filed because my wife is amazing.  That’s also good.  I just spent my lunch break working on a time sensitive issue and I figured it out with a minimum of stress.  That’s good too.

The RPM Challenge starts in less than nine hours.  That’s good, but I highly doubt I’ll be awake at midnight to celebrate.  We have a gig tomorrow night.  That’s good as well.  I’m not nearly as stressed as I was for the last gig and that is doubly good.

There are some things that royally suck but I am not letting them bring me down.  The triumph of authoritarianism over democracy is progressing in the US Senate right now as the republican party makes a farce out of the constitutionally mandated impeachment process.  That royally sucks.  I am beginning to think that secession is a viable option.  Brexit takes place today.  Midnight Brussels time, 11:00PM London time, That’s 6:00PM Boston time, I think.  That royally sucks too.

I’m weighing the good against the incredibly bad and choosing to ignore the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, the bad is infinitely more important than the good.  Today I am deciding that the good will outweigh the bad even though that is amazingly, shockingly naive.  Screw it, I’m going to Disney in a couple of weeks.

For now though, I have to start planning my packing for the gig tomorrow.  I need my Les Paul and my SG, my Bassbreaker 18/30 and my Vox MV50 with the 12″ cab, my full pedal board, the handful of new cables I bought (bright orange so you can see them from space), a couple of backup pedals (looking at you, Keeley D&M Drive) and power cables for each one, the microphones, stands, and cables I took home from the rehearsal room recently, the little pick/slide holding microphone stand attachment, and a new glass slide.  Then I’ll go to Mike’s house and get the rest of the mics, stands, and cables, my gig bag with all my emergency stuff in it, and the little stand I sit my amp on when we play.  Oh yeah, and I have to change the strings on both guitars!  Can’t forget about that!

Sunday after the gig I’ll put the amp and the pedal board (and the associated cables) back into my room where they currently sit (see the pic from last night), Setup a mic, stand, and cable on that amp and on the Bassbreaker 15 that is not leaving my room for the gig, then plug those into the 16 channel USB interface that I also took home from the rehearsal room recently.  I will plug the USB cable into my MacBook and make sure I can get both mic signals into GarageBand.  Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to record guitar parts in stereo.  When I record the acoustic guitar or a vocal or a saxophone I can just swing up one of the mic’s that will be on a guitar speaker and use that.  I also dug out my little acoustic guitar pickup that I got a few years ago and still haven’t taken out of the package.  I can use that to record as well.  I’ll keep the laptop and my iPad and my iPhone good and charged so if an idea comes to me I can play it into one version of GarageBand or another.  Once that’s all taken care of I just have to… you know… write a shit load of songs.  Yikes.

This year is a leap year so we get a whole extra day for the RPM shenanigans.  So really it’s no problem at all this year.

Yikes indeed!

But it’s still a good day.

 

Now It’s Three Days

Yesterday I said I had practiced three days in a row but it was only two.  Tonight it’s three days in a row.  I didn’t play through either of the sets, I just played scales and bad blues scale riffs for 30-40 minutes or so.  I did play through an amp and I did use my pedal board.

Actually I played through two amps at once because I am crazy like that.

Untitled

If I get the chance tomorrow I’ll probably pick and chose a few songs from the set list that are a little more challenging and run through those. Tonight I poked around with some pedal settings. The analog delay is set for a slap back, the reverb has a new setting that seems to be working. I set up a decent boost level. Things like that.

Oh and I played the shit out of the ol’ blues scale.

Tetris

I haven’t plugged it in yet. Let’s hope I got the wiring correct. Fingers crossed.

149/365

I added two Donner pedals, the Harmonic Square pitch shifter, and the Yellow Fall analog delay. I also added the Wren and Cuff Tri Pi ’70 fuzz pedal because after practice last night I decided I couldn’t live without fuzz. I put it before the Klon KTR in the hopes that the Klon’s mid push would fill in the gaps from the Big Muff clone’s mid scoop. If that doesn’t cut through the mix I can add volume with the Spark booster.

Like I said, fingers crossed.

Band Practice Recap or Fuzzy Fun

The main focus of rehearsal last night was working out a set list.  Kevin came up with a rough draft.  I had one little suggestion for a change.  Greg wanted more changes but couldn’t come up with alternatives so we punted.  We ran through the list as it was with the expectation that we’ll edit it during group chats throughout the week.

I had some gear issues.  Four or five songs into the setlist I switched off my spanky new Fulltone OCD ge for a second and then switched it back on and… nothing.  Huh.  I kicked it a couple of times and it came back but started cutting in and out.  I shut it off again and left it that way.  There’s a bad cable in there somewhere.  I’ve been using the backup board at practice while I fiddle with everything on the main board at home.  I mentioned a while ago that I took the fuzz pedal off the main board, but I still have one on the backup board, a Wren and Cuff Tall Font Russian.  With the OCD off I was able to switch the Tall Font on and it was pretty stable.  Okay then, for the rest of the practice I’m using fuzz.

The volume level with the fuzz on was the same as it was with the OCD on, but as soon as the band started playing I vanished from the mix.  The Tall Font is a Big Muff clone and that’s a common issue with Big Muffs.  All of the mid range frequencies are scooped out of the fuzz pedal so there is nothing in the sound of the guitar to differentiate it from the bass guitar on the low end or the cymbals on the high end.  The work around is to just turn up the volume on the amplifier.  I turned up until I could hear myself in the mix again and all was almost well.  The problem now is how things work with the fuzz off.  If I need to play clean the guitar will cut through the mix the way it’s supposed to and the volume change will result in everyone being nuked right out of their sneakers.  The fix for that is to use the volume knob on the guitar.  It doesn’t clean up perfectly the way a Fuzz Face circuit does, but it worked well enough.  I ended up turning the neck pickup volume way down and leaving the volume up on the bridge pickup.  When I wanted clean I just switched pickups.  All problems solved.

After an hour or so we needed a bathroom break and I did some troubleshooting.  I unplugged the cable coming out of the OCD and replaced it with the cable going into the amp.  That eliminated the problem.  Did it actually fix it or did I just get lucky and putzing around put everything into a state where it wasn’t cutting out anymore?  I don’t know.  I do know I needed to turn the volume on my amp back down.  I was happy to be back to overdrive, but I was also sad to put the fuzz away again.  I do so love a nasty fuzz sound, but I’m just more into a good overdrive now.  All these options.

My playing as a whole was okay.  I felt a little weird rhythmically, as in I was rushing sometimes and dragging sometimes and just funky (not in a good way) here and there.  I was trying to keep my hands relaxed and it worked.  No finger pain, no fatigue.  My elbow started acting up again though and by the end of the night it hurt noticeably.  It actually still hurt this morning.  It’s starting to feel a little better now though.

The band sounded fine.  We were focusing on songs we haven’t played in ages so there was rust, but when we hit things that are current for us we were pretty good.  The show on Saturday is going to go well.

I have the backup board at practices but I am definitely using the main board at the gig.  When I left last night I was 100% set on using the Deluxe Reverb as my amp.  By the time I went to sleep I was starting to waffle on whether to use that amp or the Bassbreaker 18/30.  I think I’m starting to lean toward the Bassbreaker.

I need to practice, practice, practice.

Four Days and 10 hours until gig day.

Major Guitar Geek Out Moment

I just had a guitar geek moment.  Like, a major league nerd-o-rama guitar geek moment.

I bought an AB/Y switch recently and finally got around to test driving it.  I dug out my 27 year old Fender Stage amp (though I didn’t dust it off, as you can see in the clip)  and paired it up with my new little practice amp and BAM, two amps at once.  Then I put a phaser on one amp but not the other and BAM, a wet/dry rig.  Can you believe it?

Please forgive the video in portrait mode, I hate that but I was balancing the phone against the box the new switch came in.  Sorry.  Also, forgive the mess, as always.

A Little Hero Worship

I promise I didn’t buy either of my Fulltone pedals because Robin Trower uses them.  Well… the wah pedal I did… and someday I’ll probably get a deja-vibe too… but the OCD, nope.  I picked that over the Trower signature model.  There, I told you!

 

And just to prove the point…

Two Amps

I don’t have an A/B switch, or an A/B/Y switch, but I do have a DoD Flanger with a stereo output.  I’ve never used it with two amps though.  I’ve always wanted to play with it.  I have both of my tube amps at home right now, a 22 watt Fender Deluxe Reverb and a 15 watt Fender Bassbreaker.  This weekend might be time to experiment a little.  Two Fender amps kinda defeats the purpose, but they do sound very different so it won’t be a total loss.

Here are a couple of videos, for research purposes…

 

Fuzz

We had a band practice today. It was the last one before Friday night’s gig.

The band agreed that from this point forward… no more December gigs. This month has been suck after suck after suck, and there just isn’t time to work on the music. Practice went well today, apart from the singer having a cold and having to take things easy. We cranked through all three sets as quickly as possible and we were all toast by the end. Fingers just didn’t respond the way they should have. It was tough, but over all there were few disasters.

I took my amp and my pedals home in the hopes that I will be able to work on all of my pedal settings through the actual amp I want to use at the gig. Unfortunately there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do what I need to do, and it will require volume to get it right. Still, I hope to spend some time with it. Fingers crossed.

Four days to the gig.