Guitar Center has a used Vox AC15 amplifier on their website that is listed in great condition and listing for under $500. A few minutes ago I tricked my beloved wife into agreeing to let me buy it. Ain’t I a stinker?
I further read the listing and it says it will be shipped from it’s current location to a local Guitar Center store where it will be available for curb side pickup.
Oh.
Well.
You mean I’d actually have to go to a store and briefly interact with another human being? Yeah… maybe I’ll wait and see if I can get someplace to ship a used one to my house.
When I finished playing on Thursday night, June Music had nine songs with all of the rhythm guitars. I had an idea for a 10th song, but it was just a single chord change. On Friday after work I found myself wishing that I had more to do. I’ll have to do leads eventually, but I like to save that for last, and I still have to write and record the vocal parts before I get there. What to do?
I wrote out music for two more songs, that’s what. I invented new stuff for me to do. Today I recorded the rhythm guitars for those two. Neither one is the 10th idea I had socked away, so now there are 11 songs with guitar/bass/drums and one that’s still only a snippet of nothing.
When I finished the second song today I saw that my MacBook’s battery percentage was still above 70. I didn’t want to stop. That’s when I remembered there was a song left over from April that had everything except lead guitar. I brought that up, finished it off, and now I have a song that’s ready to mix.
There was also a ton of battery left, and I still didn’t want to stop. What to do next?
I’ve mentioned about 100 times that in 2015 I started a project where I would re-record the least awful songs from all of my prior RPM Challenges and stuff. Every so often I try to get some work done but I never seem to finish anything. Screw it, thought me. I picked a song out of that batch, scrapped all of the guitar parts that were already done and did ’em again. When that was done I picked a second song. When that was done… my battery was below 10% and I had to help cook dinner.
In the grand scheme of things it’s all stupid and pointless and silly but damn if it didn’t feel good.
For the June and April songs I didn’t use my pedal board. I played the 335 into the RYRA The Klone and the Keeley Super Phat Mod. I had the gain dialed pretty far back on both, but with the Bassbreaker 15 that was enough for some good, chunky distortion. For the lead on the April song I just upped the gain on both pedals a smidge
For the 2015 Project songs I only did rhythm parts and I switched back to the pedal board. The most recent plan for this project was to use the same setup I use with Lizardfish. I followed that rule for the pedals but that’s it. Technically the 335 is still retired and not allowed to leave the house, so it’s not a Lizardfish thing. The Bassbreaker 15 has never been used with Lizardfish, though I still have the idea of pairing it with a Vox AC15 and using that with the band. Guitar Center’s website has a listing for a used AC15 for under $500. I am really tempted.
The signal path today was 335 to Klon KTR to Keeley D&M Drive (just the Dan side) to the Bassbreaker 15. The problems I was having when I first switched to that have been fixed. As expected, lowering the output level on the KTR by a ton really did the trick. No more mushy compression. Everything sounded clear and dynamic and great.
I noticed one other little detail. For one of the 2015 songs, a song that was written for the 2014 50/90 Challenge, I had previously added rhythm guitars to it. The song requires a clean sound and a distorted sound. When I recorded them before there was a little weirdness in the transitions that I hadn’t done on the 50/90 recording. I didn’t catch it until a couple of days after I finished the takes but it was reason enough to redo everything. Today when I finished each take I listened back to just the guitars, with everything else muted.
I don’t think I’ve done that for any of the recordings I’ve done since March, and I’ve only used the 335 on the most recent songs, so maybe it didn’t happen… When I had the distorted guitars solo’d and there were no other tracks playing, I realized that the microphone is actually picking up a little bit of the acoustic sound of the guitar. You can hear the pick hitting the strings. It’s really subtle, and you can’t hear it within the full mix, even when the guitar tracks are cranked. Either I was bashing the guitar really hard, or the amp isn’t as loud as I thought it was. I might go back to some of the old songs and see if it happened while playing a solid body guitar. Interesting.
You know those super annoying Facebook adds? You know how they pull things from cookies on your machine? They just got me. There was an add for a sale on reverb.com for one of my guitars. It’s not really my guitar, it’s just the same year, make, and model. 1979 Gibson ES-335 Pro. I bought mine on ebay for $700 in 2000. Mine is a factory second, so the sales price doesn’t actually apply here, but this reverb add is currently listed at $3,285.
Yikes!
That’s not why I’m writing this though. One of the pictures included in the sale listing looks like a magazine add for the 335 Pro that is complete with the specs. Cool!
My favorite part of this add is all the things that are white that, thanks to a heavy smoker in the guitar’s past, on mine are yellow. Maybe I should name my guitar Nicotine. It would be fitting.
I wrote up two new ideas for June Music this morning before work. Nothing special. I sketched out the song form after work and tonight I put rhythm guitars down. It was the ES-335 into the RYRA for cleanish sounds for all but part of one of the songs. The one heavy piece brought out the Wren and Cuff Super Russian for some sick fuzz.
I have a little idea for one little snippet that might become song #10. Once I figure out the rest of that, it’s on to melodies and lyrics.
I took my laptop into my room to record some guitars. I had every intention of working out the kinks in the KTR/D&M Drive combo and then without really planning it I unplugged the board and plugged in the new RYRA The Klone pedal. Then I did something that would not have happened without Coronavirus.
I was planning on selling a guitar (my Strat) and some pedals so that I could buy another amp. With the lock downs and all there was no selling anything so all of that stuff is still here. When I took the D&M Drive out of storage I also pulled a few other pedals, thinking I might experiment. One of them was the Keeley Super Phat Mod. I bought that pedal a couple of years ago and I tried but I never really connected with it.
Tonight I put it into the chain after the RYRA and… it sounded really good.
It worked pretty much perfect with the first two songs I worked on. On the third I should have lowered the gain on the Keeley by a lot so the tone is way heavier than it should be. The fourth and final song of the night was just the RYRA because it’s freakin’ awesome.
i still only have seven songs in progress, but now they all have rhythm guitar. As for the guitar itself, I used the ES-335 and it went really well. No issues at all. The intonation is good, a lot of the buzz is gone (not all, but a lot) and it just felt and sounded good.
As I watched this I looked at my 335 to make comparisons.
This looks bad (but maybe not as bad as I thought. My Les Paul is probably worse):
This isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It might actually be kinda good:
This teeny tiny piece of research made me feel a teeny tiny bit better… except that my Les Paul looks A LOT worse than this. Yikes. (oh, and I was trying to do a step from a different video to see if my neck was warped, that’s why the strings are touching the frets in this picture. In case you were wondering)
I also ordered a very cheap set of luthier tools from amazon today. At least I’ll be able to take measurements and maybe adjust the intonation myself. The electronics though… I’m not touchin’ that with a 30 foot pole.
Yesterday I posted a little recap of the June Music project so far. I mentioned how the Keeley D&M Drive didn’t play nicely with the Klon KTR the way the OCD did. It just dawned on me why.
Light dawns on Marblehead, as the saying goes.
I was running the OCD at 18 watts. That’s why. The D&M runs at 9 watts. 18 watts gives more headroom. It can handle more signal before it craps all over itself. The KTR puts out a tidal wave of signal. An avalanche of signal. A city sized asteroid plowing into the Earth at a zillion miles a minute of signal.
18 watts gives enough headroom to handle the signal level. 9 watts does not. That’s also why dialing back the output level on the KTR made things sound better.
I spent my lunch break dicking around with my ES-335. There was a horrible buzz on the first and second strings between the 3rd and 5th frets. Bad. I played around with the action, trying to get rid of that buzz. I brought the bridge up a couple of screw turns and the problem is about 85% fixed. There is still a little buzz on the 3rd fret of both strings, but not nearly as bad as before. The 4th and 5th sound pretty good. I also checked the tuning at the 12th fret and the intonation seems to be pretty good still. I was pleased so I took a couple of faux artsy pictures.
I should also note that I have no idea what I’m doing. Is raising the bridge a little the correct way to deal with some fret buzz? I am guessing not. I probably need to play with the truss rod, but if anyone knows for sure, it’s not me. Maybe I’ll do some youtube research and see if there’s a better way.
A few weeks ago I sent a message to Gibson’s repair facility with some questions on what they can do for my poor, mistreated guitar. They never wrote back.
I figured I’d give a quick update on the June Music project even though no one else on Earth gives a shit. I give a shit, so here we go.
There are seven songs in the works. All have the MIDI tracks, drums and bass, complete. One has a piano as a placeholder for the melody. Three, as of this afternoon, have rhythm guitars.
Two songs used the KTR and the D&M Drive pedals. It was my first crack at substituting the D&M for the OCD. It didn’t work well. I had the output on the KTR maxed and the drive off. The D&M didn’t seem capable of handling that signal and it got really mushy. I used the ES 335 on the first song I did and wasn’t happy with the sound. The string buzz may have been making it worse so I switched to the Les Paul. It was a little better, but not much. So two songs have less than good guitar sound. It’s good enough to roll with for now. I don’t think I’ll change it. The third song used the Les Paul but just the KTR. I wanted a cleanish sound, so I shut off the D&M. That sounded pretty good.
After I was done I set to some major tweaking and found something that was much better. I lowered the output on the KTR, lowered the output and the gain on the D&M, an added a little treble on the KTR. That was better. I will try recording with that setup. I was hoping to just use the RYRA The Klone pedal this month but the whole racist pedal builder shit made me want to experiment with the gig setup more. I also pulled a couple of other overdrive and fuzz pedals out of storage. I might try pairing different things with the RYRA. We can sort of consider June as Lab time. Let the tinkering continue.
One thing I do know… it’d been over a week since I had played at all. With all of this quarantine, social distance shit going on… playing is good for my mindset. If I don’t play for a longish period of time I start getting under people’s skin. The more I play the easier I am to be around. It’s definitely a good way to work out my quarantinie frustration. I knew it would be, but I think I have some evidence to support that original theory now.
Playing helps me not be an asshole… therefore I should play more.
Inside the Red Head's Head 