The Whatever Thread .. For Gear!!

[Gone Fission]

wat

Wot
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pqC563bX_w[/youtube]

[Eivind August]

Anybody tried the IdiotBox Lost Ark? Suddenly popped up in a search, and it seems really fun.

[youtube][/youtube]

[mcatano]

I bought a Model:Samples yesterday. It is very fun.

[Dandolin]

Anybody tried the IdiotBox Lost Ark? Suddenly popped up in a search, and it seems really fun.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NNQHXekp7s[/youtube]

I no haz, but
1) that sounds really good!
2) I freaking love my Landphil!

[goosekevin]

i know there are a few wah/volume pedals on the market but are any of them any good?? looking at both things and want both in one enclosure if possible to save space

[MechaGodzilla]

the problem with wah/vol pedals in the past was, as stu castledine says on his site

if the pot is set to get a good wah sweep, it won't go silent in volume mode, and if it's set up to kill the volume, there won't be enough treble in the wah.

i don't know if more modern stuff gets around this somehow.

[Blackened Soul]

Not to ruffle everyone's buggies but I still really don't get the whole aluminum neck thing... Other than fan worship and "metal cool" I find it odd that this caught on so much more than carbon fiber for instruments made for extreme turnings. I've played both and to me they do about the same thing... Except cf handles tepature changes better and is a over all more stable material and is made in a mold so it can be any shape.. But hey who am I to say... I do wonder though if Moses stopped making necks because of the aluminum craze taking away business or if it is the drop in the amount of musicians being able to make actual money from gigging

[oldangelmidnight]

I've never played a guitar made of carbon fiber but every other thing I've touched made from it feels plasticky and weird. Aluminum just feels good.

[mcatano]

Carbon fibre layup is a pretty engineering-intense endeavor. If it's not being made from stock tubes, then you need either very expensive 2-part CNC moulds or a foam inner structure that you wrap and then vacuum bag. It makes sense as a material either on the extremely mass-manufacturing level (eg, bicycles that come in 3 or 4 sizes, or substructures that can be used across a number of parts; golf club shafts, anything else that's a tube shape with random bits attached) or on the extremely high-end boutique level (anything related to F1 or other things that go fast; custom/bespoke manufacturing of things like made-to-measure racing bicycles).

I think also the things that make carbon fibre a very appealing material in something like a bicycle/motorsports/aerospace—ability to add and subtract weight where you need/don't need it, ability to tune stiffness or flexibility by orienting fibre strands—aren't really things that guitarists care about. Feeling like your guitar neck needs to be more vertically stiff while maintaining lateral compliance is maybe a very niche complaint to have? So you could very much make a guitar that is extremely lightweight out of carbon fibre and it would be cool and work and everything, but it might introduce more problems than it would solve and be wildly cost prohibitive on anything but a mass-manufacturing level.

Guitarists are also, as a lot (and I am part of this lot), super duper conservative; and the modern electric guitar is a pretty mature technology that doesn't really have any objective performance measures associated with it (ie, put the same cyclist on a 40yr old racing bike and a 2020 racing bike and the equipment difference will make a notable difference in objective results, everything else being equal). I'm sure you could measure some sort of notes-per-second test and maybe see some sort of difference? But again, most guitarists don't give a shit about that (while most amateur sports people are obsessed with marginal gains and will pay huge money to achieve them).

Aluminum solves one problem (the need for a truss rod), and introduces a bunch of others (temp-related tuning instability, weight, neck dive). Those guitars never had any real mainstream traction when the technology was innovative or at least new to the market, and the amount of people interested in aluminum neck instruments now is still small enough to not have attracted the attention of FMIC/gibson/etc. There are a few cult-popular bands who all exist in a pretty closed network of like 1 degree of separation from Shellac/Sonic Youth, and an even smaller number of Deadheads who want a TB rather than a Wolf and EGC/Dev Nations/etc are catering to that small scene and their fans/followers. It doesn't really seem like there's enough broad interest to make a particularly viable mid-level/Rickenbacker-sized business out of making aluminum instruments (sorry EGC), because otherwise someone would be doing it (sorry EGC) and FMIC would be trying to put them out of business with alu teles/etc.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Personally, and this is just me, I think carbon fibre guitars look horrible and aluminium guitars look cool. I'm a deep person I know

I'm sure I could be convinced otherwise if someone fun made a carbon fibre instrument but mcatano is right about the manufacturing. Aluminium is just standard CNC machining.

FWIW I'm not 100% convinced on aluminium either, though I am interested. Played one and it was great and seen a lot of bands sound great with them, but I've also seen a lot of great wood guitars

I had a Vigier with a non adjustable graphite core truss rod and metal (brass alloy I think?) fingerboard and that was super practical and sounded and felt amazing. So I'm open to other novel ideas.

Agree with mcatano I think the lack of uptake and business proves that the downsides outweigh the upsides for the mass market.

[Jero]

the problem with wah/vol pedals in the past was, as stu castledine says on his site

if the pot is set to get a good wah sweep, it won't go silent in volume mode, and if it's set up to kill the volume, there won't be enough treble in the wah.

i don't know if more modern stuff gets around this somehow.

Pretty sure the DOD FX-17 didn't have that issue.

[John]

I think Morleys are immune to that, at least the optical ones

[Davin]

the problem with wah/vol pedals in the past was, as stu castledine says on his site

if the pot is set to get a good wah sweep, it won't go silent in volume mode, and if it's set up to kill the volume, there won't be enough treble in the wah.

i don't know if more modern stuff gets around this somehow.

Pretty sure the DOD FX-17 didn't have that issue.

It kinda does. Not so much that it doesn’t go fully silent or the wah doesn’t get into the higher registers, but more so that the sweep is really off for one setting when you set it up for the other. I have mine set, sort of, where I like the filter sweep sound (I like it because it’s really synthy sounding for a wah) but the sweep on the volume is pretty off. It’s all kinda crammed into the middle of the sweep so it silent or very quiet for about the first quarter of the throw, then sweeps really quickly to full volume well before you reach the toe down position.

That said, they can be had cheap and I really like how it sounds more like a synth filter than a wakka wakka wah.

[tremolo3]

the problem with wah/vol pedals in the past was, as stu castledine says on his site

if the pot is set to get a good wah sweep, it won't go silent in volume mode, and if it's set up to kill the volume, there won't be enough treble in the wah.

i don't know if more modern stuff gets around this somehow.

Pretty sure the DOD FX-17 didn't have that issue.

It kinda does. Not so much that it doesn’t go fully silent or the wah doesn’t get into the higher registers, but more so that the sweep is really off for one setting when you set it up for the other. I have mine set, sort of, where I like the filter sweep sound (I like it because it’s really synthy sounding for a wah) but the sweep on the volume is pretty off. It’s all kinda crammed into the middle of the sweep so it silent or very quiet for about the first quarter of the throw, then sweeps really quickly to full volume well before you reach the toe down position.

That said, they can be had cheap and I really like how it sounds more like a synth filter than a wakka wakka wah.

^ My experience with the FX17 as well. No matter how I set the trim pots, there's always a tiny "blind" spot for either the wah or the volume.
Still, the best wah pedal I've used and even when I'm not using it, I won't sell it.
DOD missed a great chance to reissue this with a better footswitch, an LED, some modern graphics and maaaaybe some sort of clean boost.

[coldbrightsunlight]

No more aluminium Vs carbon neck debate y'all.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9Ca16nH_Lc ... orfcfsoaqh