Last night was the first time in eight years that I had the chance to see the mighty Letters to Cleo. I wish I could tell you how many times I’ve seen them now, but I lost count somewhere along the line. I saw them on the Common at a Hemp Fest right around the time their second record came out. I saw them at Merrimack College. I saw them at Avalon at least once. I think I might have seen them at the Hatch Shell once. Did I ever see them at TT the Bears or the Middle East? I don’t think so. It’s The Paradise that throws my memory off though. There were so many that I lost track. At least five before last night, but maybe as many as eight? I can’t remember. Suffice to say, I’ve seen Letters to Cleo a whole shit load of times, and each time has been fantastic. They are just a great live band. I’m hoping that this reunion thing will become a regular happening. A little new music, a few shows in some big cities, and a stop or two at The Paradise… where they belong.
The full photo album is here, but they all suck. Just warning you.
I got my first electric guitar in 1986, I think. It was a Christmas present. A Hondo strat copy with one humbucker. It was a starter kit and it came with a little 5 watt (I think) Peavy amp.
The first pedal I bought was a Dod overdrive. The second pedal was the game changer. It was a Dunlop Cry-Baby Wah-Wah. Let’s just say that when it came to playing lead guitar, Hendrix and Trower and any other wah-loving soloist you can think of had nothing on me. I was out of control.
In 1990 that pedal, as well as every other piece of guitar gear I owned (except for that Dod overdrive pedal), including a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe, was stolen out of my car. I replaced the guitar with a Les Paul Custom, my great big Peavy Chorus amp with a Fender Stage, and the Cry-Baby with another Cry-Baby. Exact same model. I still have it. It’s on my board at the band’s rehearsal space. It was relegated to the back up setup for a while, but I’ll get to that in the next paragraph.
In 2003 I bought my Marshall amp on ebay. The seller sweetened the deal by throwing a few pedals into the shipping box. I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t want them. I actually sold them all save for one, a Dunlop Cry-Baby Wah-Wah. I didn’t use it. I just kept it in the box. then in 2011 I tried to start a band. My 1990 Wah pedal was starting to sound a little worse for wear so I swapped them. The ebay wah was on stage with me for my first show with Lizardfish, but sadly not the second. During one of the last practices before the most recent show it fell apart. Did I write a post about that? I think so. the 1990 pedal went back into regular use, and the ebay pedal is being prepared for a Viking funeral.
Everything changes today though. The UPS man brought me a brand spanking new wah-wah pedal. For the first time in 29 years I won’t be playing a Cry-Baby. I bought a Fulltone Clyde Deluxe and it has way more bells and whistles than anything as simple as a wah deserves. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to be two days before I can actually play the sucker. There’s too much to do!
I expect it will make it’s debut on whatever passes for this years National Solo Album Month failure, and then it will be moved to the rehearsal space when our drummer comes home from his business trip. It’s going to be weird. I think I might feel like I’m cheating on the Cry-Babys…
For a second, at least. Then I’ll be over it and getting all acid rocky all over the place with my swanky new Clyde Deluxe Wah-Wah pedal.
I hadn’t even considered it until earlier tonight when I was listening to a podcast that discussed the differences between playing to a stoned crowd vs playing to a drunk crowd. I have experienced with the drunk side of the equation, but not the stoned side.
If I have my facts right, the referendum in Massachusetts goes into effect on 12/1/16. Our next gig is on 12/30/16, but it’s in New Hampshire. I really want the show that follows that one to be in Mass. I want to see if folks are going to come out to bars equipped with pot brownies or something edible they can use while inside a room with a smoking ban. All bars in MA and NH have smoking bans. Will designated smoking areas outside of bars allow for weed as well as tobacco? Probably not, but maybe.
Drunk crowds tend to get more raucous as the night wears on, so our sets get louder and rock a little harder. They also tend to focus on songs that are maybe not in as good a shape as those we play earlier, because most of the crowd will have left, and those that remain will be tanked. Will we need to do the opposite for stoners? Will our sets need to get mellower as they go on?
I don’t really expect that it will make any difference at all, but who knows. The dynamics of playing in a bar band might be changing slightly due to the country’s changing attitude toward weed.
Band practice tonight. We did the gig on 10/8, then took two weeks off. Last week was the first practice back, but we were short a singer. Tonight was the first practice with all of us. It wasn’t bad. We hacked our way through a few songs that we’re hoping to add to the set for the next show. Nothing was good, but nothing was disastrous either. I’m using the Fender amp now at rehearsals. That’s a big change gear wise for me, but I’m okay with it so far. The Big Muff with Tone Wicker doesn’t play nicely with the Fender. I need to figure out an alternative. It might be time to try out a clone, who knows. Other than that, all is pretty well right now. Part of me is thinking that maybe it’s time to dial back on the all out fuzz box attack and move back into the overdrive world. Not sure. Maybe.
The next practice should be next Sunday, but we’ll probably be off for a couple of weeks after that. I need to practice more this week, and I am really hoping my Les Paul comes home from the shop. Fingers crossed on that one.
Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with my step kids, niece, nephews, family, or any actual people. Don’t let the next sentence or the title fool you.
My poor baby is in the hospital!
Translated from guitar nerd to English, I put one of my guitars in the shop today. I have used a soldering iron in the past, but I have no confidence in my abilities so when I want work done I have to outsource it.
I took a ride over to Guitar Center in Nashua, NH today and dropped my Les Paul off at the repair desk. I was nervous, but the repair guy put me at ease by telling me my guitar looked exactly like his. Hopefully he will treat it with the same respect.
*Robert wipes away a tear*
I took it in for two things. One repair and one modification.
(Why did this picture bring out every spec of dust?)
First, see the little switch in the bottom left? The one labeled Rhythm on one side and Treble on the other? That switch selects which pickup is active. The pickups are the two gold rectangular things with the six flat head screws. When the switch is on the Treble side it’s the pickup on the right, next to the bridge (commonly known as the bridge pickup). When it’s on the Rhythm side it’s the pickup on the left, close to the neck (commonly known as the neck pickup). When the switch is in the middle, both pickups are on. I bought this guitar in 1990 and through all that time the switch has never gone into the Rhythm position. You can push it there, but it doesn’t catch. I am getting the switch either fixed or replaced. Whichever gets the job done.
The second thing they will do is just a modification. I am getting the bridge pickup replaced. When I bought the guitar in 1990 it had two after market pickups. From day one I had wanted to replace them with the closest I could get to the stock pickups that would have come with the guitar when it was made in 1978. That would be Gibson Classic ‘57’s. I think it was 2006 or so that I finally did it. Larry installed them for me (he also fixed the bridge pickup’s tone pot which had never worked. He tried to fix the pickup switch but was unable to. That’s why when I dropped if off at the shop today I had a new switch in the case). The pickups sound okay, but they were a little disappointing. The tone is a little on the trebly side, and the output level is pretty low. The stock pickups on my ES 335 Pro are Gibson Dirty Fingers models. Those suckers sound incredible. I am replacing the Classic ’57 Plus pickup in the bridge position with a Dirty Fingers.
Those are the two reasons I brought the guitar to Guitar Center today. While I was there and talking to the repair tech, I added a third job. This one is a repair.
See the hole in the finish there? That’s been there since the day I bought the guitar. As I was looking at the guitar sitting on the counter while the tech was filling out the work order, I couldn’t take my eyes off the hole. I am 100% positive that it is much worse than it was in 1990. What I am not 100% sure of, but what my gut feeling is telling me, is that it is worse than it was three weeks ago at the last Lizardfish gig. I feel like the pace with which that hack in the finish is growing is accelerating rapidly. The tech is going to do a repair on it. It won’t look the same as the finish surrounding it, but it will stop it from getting worse. That’s all I care about. That repair is going to take a couple of weeks and it will cost about as much as the other two combined. It will be worth it though. For some reason it jumped out at me today as something that needs to be taken care of right now. No more waiting.
So my poor baby Les Paul is going to be at the doctor’s for two weeks or so while it gets all fixed up. I am going to miss her, and I am going to worry about her. I wish she had a cell phone so I could call her and check in on her every couple of days.
Please please please please please let my baby come home in one fully functioning piece.
I had always wanted to do it, but prior to last March I didn’t have the means. Since last March I just didn’t have the guts.
I played guitar through a tube amp at full blast.
It was Glorious.
I have been reading up on overdrive pedals lately. Specifically the Klon Centaur. To me, the point of overdrive was always to make my guitar sound distorted without sounding like a heavy metal wanna be. I think I was sort of missing the point. Maybe an overdrive pedal isn’t meant to make you sound like a rock god, but instead maybe it’s just supposed to make your low volume amp sound like a loud, broken up tube amp. That made sense to me.
That was all well and good for a solid state amp, but what about a tube amp? I bought a Fender Deluxe Reverb last March, knowing that if I cranked it I would be able to overdrive the tubes and thus distort the sound. Of course that would require a huge amount of volume which even with my little 22 watt sucker would be more than I want to deal with. I read an article that suggested using an overdrive pedal with the volume knob up all the way, and the gain knob down all the way. The pedal isn’t going to distort your sound (much), but it might push your tubes up to the point of distorting for you.
The other day while I was getting my stuff together for the Lizardfish gig I tried it out with my Fulltone OCD pedal. It sounded pretty good. Not exactly broken up, but not exactly clean either. I planned to start using that setting after the gig. (no changes like that will ever be made without being used in rehearsal for a while at least)
Tonight I decided to try it with my Joyo Ultimate Drive pedal, which is an OCD clone. I wanted to see if the clone sounded as good as the real thing. It did. I was pleased, and spent about 45 minutes just noodling.
Then I just did it. I looked at my amp. I looked at the volume knob. How high do I have to turn that sucker before the sound starts breaking up? I had no idea at the time, but now I do. You start getting some nice overdrive at about 7. When you’re up to 10 it’s pretty sweet. It doesn’t sound heavy by any stretch, but when I kicked on the overdrive (volume at 10, gain at 0) it sounded really cool.
As for the volume level, when I got to 3 it was loud enough for me to want to turn it down. 10 was significantly louder, but the volume level seemed to stop going up around 6. Extrapolate… volume ceases to increase when the tubes are over saturated? Sound logical.
When the volume knob hit 10 though… oh it was glorious.
Now that Lizardfish is again in a lull between gigs I can once more turn my attention to feeding my Gear Acquisition Syndrome. I’ve been researching five items. The first three on the list are necessary replacements for gear that has either been malfunctioning or underperforming. the last two are more of a would-be-nice list rather than must haves. They are replacements for current gear that is actually working just fine.
I could add a few other items, but I’ll stick with this for now. My Gibson ES-335 Pro has Dirty Finger pickups and they are insane. My Gibson Les Paul has Classic ‘57’s and they are kinda wimpy. I want to put a Dirty Finger into the Les Paul to angry it up a bit. Also, the pickup selector switch on the Les Paul hasn’t worked since the day I bought it. It’s time to fix that. Finally, my Cry Baby that lives on the band pedal board died. I’m using it as an excuse to upgrade rather than just get it fixed.
The two pedals are Big Muff clones and I just want ‘em.
Inside the Red Head's Head 