Tag: stomp boxes

What’s in the Bag?

Hey Robbie, what’s in that big bag?

Untitled

I’ll tell you in a second…

Last night’s band practice wasn’t very good, but it was okay.  We hadn’t played together in about a month and it showed.  I half expected that I would have forgotten how to play every song.  That wasn’t the case, but it didn’t mean I didn’t screw up left and right and get lost now and then.

I had a disconcerting technical issue.  I think I know what it was though.  After 2-3 songs my volume level dropped to almost nothing.  It was weird.  One minute I was roaring like a tornado of Big Muff Fuzz, and the next I was a whisper.  I thought it was my uni-vibe pedal as a light that usually doesn’t light was lit from the minute I plugged in.  I figured the battery was dead.  I bypassed it on the board but it didn’t solve the problem.  Screw this, thinks I.  I pulled my tuner off the board and bypassed everything else.  The signal path was guitar->wah->fuzz->tuner->amp.  The problem persisted.  So I bypassed everything and plugged straight into the amp.  It worked.  So I have it narrowed down to those three pedals.  I am acting under the assumption that the amazing Big Muff pedal has a dead battery.

So what’s in the bag then?  Speak of the devil, it’s my pedal board and all of my pedals from Mike the bass player’s house.  Now I can add all the new pedals to the board, replace all of the 9-volt batteries with the new DC Brick power supply, and rearrange the whole thing to get the most noisy fuzz boxy mess imaginable!  I’ll let you know when it’s up and running again.  There will be an I-am-so-cool-check-out-my-pedal-board picture, I’m sure of it.

Caution: Bad Guitar Playing

There are three new devices that need to go on my pedal board.  There will eventually be a fourth, but for now it’s three.  Here’s a video of me noodling with the new toys.

 

A Joyo Ultimate Drive (which is a clone of a Fulltone OCD)
A Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail analog delay
And for the first time ever, a DC power source for the pedals!  It’s an MXR DC Brick.  No more 9-volt batteries for me!*

 

*well… I think I have more pedals than the brick can handle, so maybe a few more 9-volt batteries.

G.A.S.

So I’m trying to get back into a band. If they’ll have me, the band that I tried to start a few years ago that carried on quite nicely without me after I bowed out might be willing to take me back. Still just talking, but I’ve got a list of covers to learn and we are trying to schedule a meeting.

It’s got me doing something I shouldn’t be doing. It’s got one of the medical conditions I suffer from flaring up.

G.A.S… Better known as Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

The last time I played in a band for reals, I had a bunch of stomp boxes. The obligatory Dunlop Wah, a Morley volume pedal, a DoD flanger, a Boss digital delay, a DoD octave divider, and a Boss chromatic tuner, along with my Marshall combo’s channel/reverb switch. I would string them together, all with 9 volt batteries, on the floor at my feet whenever we played. I was always kicking them around to get them in and out of my way, depending on the song.

The other day I started looking at pedal boards to sit all of these things on so that I would have less to set up and break down. It’d be nice to have a power supply too, in place of all those batteries.

That lead to thinking of what additional pedals I could acquire. I use things in GarageBand that would be nice to have in real life. An MXR phaser. A univibe. A pitch shifter. Those are realistic, but thinking of them lead to unrealistic things like harmonizers and tape echoes (drool).

Next thing I know I’m bouncing between eBay and musiciansfriend and guitar center looking at amplifiers. The last time I was in a band for reals with Mike the Bass player I played through a Fender Combo. After that I used a sweet Marshall combo in Break Even. Today I was thinking that an old Fender Twin Reverb would be awesome. I’d need to get a Fuzz Face too. Then I thought, I’ve never owned a stack before, what does Fender have for stacks? How much does a decent Marshall stack with two 4×12 cabinets cost?

Oh goodness gracious, please stop me now.

G.A.S. There is no cure.