Tag: Guitar Pedals

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.

Two Rush Items to Note

I have two things I want to comment on that refer to members of Rush.

First, I watched the second episode of Are Bass Players Human Too this morning before work. It focused on Robert Trujillo of Metallica. I knew nothing about this guy as I’m not much of a metal fan, never mind a Metallica fan. I saw them in 1989 when Jason Newsted was their bass player. I guess Robert Trujillo played for Ozzy Osbourne back in the 90’s. I saw Ozzy in the 90’s but Geezer Butler was playing bass at that time. I guess I sort of missed him twice then? Not really.

Anyway, Robert Trujillo is the current owner of Jaco Pastorius’ Fender Jazz bass. The one he ripped the frets out of to turn it into a fretless bass (but what did he put into the gaps? How did that work?). Watching Geddy Lee play Jaco’s bass, even if just for a few seconds, was something that I did not realize I needed in my life. It was a quietly magical moment.

On a side note, Metallica’s bass player owns Jaco Pastorius’ bass, which to many is the holy grail of electric bass guitars, and Metallica’s guitar player, Kirk Hammett, owns Peter Green/Gary Moore’s 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, which to many (including me*) is the holy grail of electric guitars. How did that happen? Does Metallica’s drummer own Keith Moon’s kit or anything? That would be too weird for my tiny brain to process.

Anyway, on to Alex Lifeson. I mentioned yesterday that Lerxst has released an overdrive pedal. It’s called By Tor. The first write up I read said that it had two channels that shared drive and tone controls. I don’t think that’s the case. I think one channel is just a volume boost and only has a level control. The other channel is an overdrive which has level, gain, and tone controls. That makes more sense.

Check out this demo from (the youtube legend) Andy from Reverb. I started watching this last night but had to shut it off before I finished. I’m posting it here so that I won’t forget to watch the rest of it later tonight.

*Peter Green’s Les Paul is probably my definition of The Guitar Holy Grail. The only guitar that might challenge for that tile would be Eric Clapton’s 1960 Les Paul Standard that is generally known as The Beano Burst. It was stolen in 1966 and has never resurfaced. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, but unless some collector gives it back to Clapton we will probably never see it again. The reason it might not supersede Greeny is simply that I prefer the spec of a 1959 Les Paul Standard to the spec of a 1960. The neck is supposed to be thicker on 1959’s. By that logic I would probably prefer 1958’s to 1959’s as the neck is supposed to be even thicker on 1958’s. How’s that for cork sniffing? A little too much, maybe? Nope. It’s never too much.

Waiting List – Getting Close

This post is for guitar players who are in the know about guitar gear.

I added myself to the Analogman King of Tone waiting list on March 4, 2018. Five years and five days ago.

This is what is on the waiting list webpage right now:

Based on that, I should be coming to the top of the list in the next couple of weeks. Assuming they don’t have new supply chain issues or anything. I want to order a new Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal, but if I am going to have a chance to buy a new King of Tone at roughly the same time? I think I’ll hold out for the King of Tone. I mean, I’ve been waiting for five years so… yeah.

Random Photo Thoughts

I haven’t shown Bertha the Houseplant lately. We had to get rid of almost all of the plants because we weren’t sure if they would harm the new cats or not. We had to move Bertha to the top of a cabinet in the dining room. She’s not getting nearly as much sun as she was before but she seems to be hanging in there and staying healthy. I saw evidence of a new branch a week or so ago. I took a picture today that I can reference back to the next time I check on her to see if she’s still growing.

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After last night’s post where I spit balled a new guitar pedal chain, I put together as close to that board as I could.

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The Bonamassa signature Crybaby is at Mike the Bass Player’s house. This is the Gary Clark, Jr signature Crybaby which is really good, but not quite as good. I looked into ordering a Marshall Bluesbreaker reissue pedal last night. Everywhere I generally shop from is out of stock so I didn’t order one. The Blooze Maker is a copy of the original Bluesbreaker. I used the holy hell out of it on this year’s RPM Challenge. It’s super noisy so I kinda don’t want to keep using it, but until I get a real Bluesbreaker, this will be a thing.

The office has two candles burning again. Just ’cause.

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Finally, in closing:

Robin…

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…and Lily.

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Thoughts on a New Pedal Board

I’ve been looking at the reissued Marshall overdrive pedals. If I were to order one it would either be the Bluesbreaker or the Guv’nor. If I got the Bluesbreaker I might make a new pedal board for low-ish gain stuff. I’m thinking it would be the Bonamassa signature Crybaby into the Bluesbreaker into the Wampler Tumnus and that’s all. Then I thought… what about sticking the Fuzz Face before the Crybaby. That way it’s a low-ish gain board with a blistering inferno of fuzz for luck.

Just a thought.

If I got a Guv’nor I would stick it onto the existing stay at home pedal board after the Klon KTR and use it as the paint peeling distortion sound.

Bluesbreaker into Tumnus though… that could be fun.

Oh woah is my gear acquisition syndrome.

The Pain The Pain

I told my beloved wife Jen that I was going to take a page out of the Brian Adams playbook today and play it ’till my fingers bled. I didn’t go quite that far, but I am in so much finger tip pain that I had to stop a little early. I put lead guitar parts onto five of the remaining seven songs. My playing on the fifth song was atrocious, not because I suck (though, naturally) but because my finger tips hurt so much I couldn’t make them do anything. Ouch town, population me.

I will finish the last two songs, but it won’t be for a while. I might try again after dinner. I might wait until tomorrow. I can’t say yet. What I do know is that I have finished tracking a total of 12 songs so I am at the point where I could stop, apart from mixing, and call this year a win. I am pleased.

As always, I went into this year’s RPM Challenge with a specific gear setup in mind. Pedal-wise I was going to use my Klon KTR to push my Keeley Super Phat Mod. I never got on with that Keeley pedal and I was going to force it this month. Then the Marshall Bluesbreaker hype hit. Marshall released a pedal called the Bluesbreaker, which was supposed to make your amp sound like the amp Clapton used on the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton record from 1966 but doesn’t, in the early 90’s and discontinued it after a couple of years. Fast forward to the 21st century and John Mayer uses the pedal on one of his records and suddenly the used market prices are through the roof and every boutique pedal manufacturer on Earth is either making a direct copy of it, or cloning it and modding it. I own a direct copy.

There was a rumor a year ago that Marshall was going to reissue the pedal. That rumor appeared to come true last week though it wasn’t until a day or so ago that Marshall actually verified the rumor was true. All the talk made me want to use my copy. I put it on the board and used the shit out of it. Today I was using it like crazy. Sometimes with the Klon KTR pushing it and sometimes just by itself. It’s not the kind of sound I usually get up for, but I have been seriously digging it the last few days, and for some reason using it with the neck pickup on my Les Paul today was a little slice of bliss.

What does that mean? Nothing. I just thought I’d share, that’s all.

I used my Les Paul on four of today’s five songs, and my SG on one. I was planning on using the SG for the two I didn’t get to as well, but now that I need some time to heal I have no idea what I’ll actually use on the last two. Probably the Les Paul. Either way, I took some obligatory pics.

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Also… selfies… because I suck at being cool.

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Also, I am rearranging how I keep my work and personal laptops on my desk. My desk suddenly feels very small.

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Okay, now I can break for lunch. Maybe watch a TV show for 45 minutes or so and then start mixing again.

Progress, babie. Progress.

Oh yeah, here’s a video on the Marshall pedal. Just so you know what I am talking about.

Wait List

Back in March 2018 I added my name to the waiting list for a guitar pedal. The company is called Analogman and they make phenomenal stuff. Probably the most famous item in their catalog is a duel overdrive pedal called King of Tone. At the time the backlog of orders was taking about two years to process. I put my name on the list thinking I would probably have a King of Tone of my own by March 2020.

Remember what went down in March 2020?

By the time Covid hit the wait had already grown. I think I was expecting my number to come up in 2021 (I think). Then Covid slowed everything down more. I haven’t inquired when I should expect it to be my turn to buy a pedal, but I did just read a story that mentioned Analogman recently started working on orders placed in 2018. Hey, that’s me! The article also said they had to redo about 100 circuit boards because some prick managed to slip fake capacitors past them and they all had to be replaced. Damn it.

It will be my turn someday. Someday.

On a slightly related note, if you remember back in June of 2020 when George Floyd was murdered by police officers and riots broke out all of the country, I did a lot of bitching about a pedal builder who first decided that store windows were more important than police officers assassinating citizens before doubling down on his complete assholeness by verbally attacking his own customers for having the nerve to call him a racist when his behavior was about as racist as you can get. I declared I would never use his pedals again (he actually told at least one customer that they were not worthy of using his pedals so I guess he wanted me to stop using his stuff) and put the pedals I owned (there were two, with a third stuck at the band’s rehearsal room) into a box at the bottom of my closet where they can rot for eternity. Then Reverb and Guitar Center cut ties with his company as well. Now, two years later, he’s shutting down. I’m not sure if he’s going out of business or just scaling back to a tiny work-from-home type of thing, or if maybe he’s going to move manufacturing overseas, or what.

While I would never wish harm upon another human, I can’t help but think that going out of business couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, you know? As one who works in customer service… it’s not hard to not verbally assault your customers. Really, it’s not hard. It’s also not hard to not be a racist asshole, but that might be asking too much from some people. I guess.

Hopefully this is the last time I will ever talk about this prick.

Also, hopefully my turn to buy that Analogman pedal will be coming up soon. Four years is a long time, you know?