Gasalcoholics anonymous? whoever said this was a help group?

[dubkitty]

i think the headstock on the paisley one is angled back so a string tree isn't necessary.

[MaxMaps]

Finally got around to playing my brand new JEL20 amp - super sleezy 80's tones out of this bad bitch and more than enough gain on tap. I am going to look forward to really learning this amp and see how I can tailor it what I am currently playing. ( which is 80's bullshit )

I am having a bit of a pedal board crisis at the moment, as my metro 16 tiny pedal train is just too small and awkward to place my new pedals ( my dunlop wah and chorus pedal) - so I am going to have to get a larger board. Only problem is that I am fucking broke until February ( really low sales for the past four months) so anything non critical is going to have to wait. I did find a temporary set up so that I can comfortably play with my new toys until I get my spending under control. The wah is prefect and I have just scratched the surface of the chorus pedal.

I also have beaten both of my guitars to the point where they are not intonating and are in dire need of a set up - I am really lazy about string changes ( particularly when it comes to my jackson) so I am either going to have to take them to my homie Jay for a proper cleaning / set up or just do it on my own.

[dubkitty]

been working with the WIIO clone, trying to find the sweet spot that feels most like a loud, distorted stack. i'm getting close, but it's hard because the only serviceable amp i have at the moment is the Hammond reverb amp which is not a good A/B example between clean tone and mock amplifier distortion...with the WIIO gain below 25% it sounds almost exactly like the "clean" tone from the amp . i like the lower gain settings, but it really seems to come to life and snarl with the Gain knob around 50%. much more and it's too sloppy. so i've been doing tiny tweak-and-tests for 3 hours and am about ready to stop. i think it'll be a keeper, but i need to twiddle with it some more to dial it totally in before i decide how much i like it. i found one setting that made me grin, and i need to find it again. if i still wrote songs i'd write one about how much i hate A/B testing, perhaps a pisstake on Rush's "Free Will." i get the night off because i'm going to Becky's; i chose to go tonight rather than my other option of going tomorrow because it would force me to stop testing. i also need to play quieter with the speaker closer to me...i'm not that loud, but my ears are whistling at just-heard-a-DJ-set level. maybe i should get a home VU meter LOL. it's times like this that make me question my decision to abandon 6L6/6V6 amps because i was tired of clean Fender tone.

[Paul_C]

With all of your different Telecasters, do you notice any differences from the different positions of the string trees? The string tree on the left is slightly farther out than it is on the one in the middle, and the paisley one doesn't seem to have a string tree at all. I was checking out a bunch of teles at a local shop and noticed that the string trees seemed to be in all kinds of different positions. Sometimes it seemed to just be based on where the Fender logo decal was. And some models have two string trees.

I have a Peavey tele-style guitar with a string tree on the two high strings, but the middle two strings are always really sproingy and sometimes I wonder if they'd be more stable if I added another string tree.

It can make a difference, but adding a couple of extra winds for the D and G strings works just as well (IMHO).

The pink paisley one has staggered Sperzels on and doesn't need a string tree for how I play it.

[dubkitty]

to give you some idea of just how burned out i am at the moment, when i initially checked out the Virus i completely missed that fact that the Mode (i.e. level of crazy) toggle is actually a 3-position switch, not a 2-way as i thought. so there's another whole layer of stuff to unpack there which i somehow just...missed.

i hit the wall yesterday after blowing my ears out trying to test the WIIO. i literally chose the earlier of two options to visit my gf so i would have to put down the guitar. my ears were so bad on the way to Becky's that i couldn't hear anything well on the This Is The Kit CD on the car deck other than the bass and lower mids...i had to wind the treble up to 3 and cut the bass to -3 which is the total opposite of my usual listening approach. they're still whistling like a teakettle that's almost ready to come. i have to stop working so hard on stuff because it's burning me out and making me dislike doing it. i was so stressed that we had a pretty bad night and am currently at home gnawing on lorazepam and ironing things out over text.

i'm not even going to think other than in vague terms about the FEB until the So High So Low arrives, because i'm pretty sure that'll go on. i have a couple of ideas about repopulating the board, but they're too complicated to delve into right now. i'm pretty sure i'm done with the Attack Delay as a active-duty part of the setup. even if it comes back from EXH at 100% i still don't trust it any more. i'll probably change expression pedals and try the EP-3 from the AD with the Randy's Revenge. i found it hard to get the EP-2 to sweep smoothly. that whole thing is in its hard case packed away where i don't have to look at it until it becomes relevant again.

the big fuzz test is thus also postponed. i'm just not up for being an audio optometrist right now. "what's better this?...or this? this?...or this?" <repeat 70 or 80 times>

i also made some adjustments to the test setup by moving gear and furniture around. now i can sit in an armchair instead of on the sofa--which is the difference between a pat on the back and a hug--with everything spread out on the coffee table in easy reach, including the Hammond amp head next to the coffee table and speaker moved closer to my seat so hopefully i'll hear better at lover volumes. i also wondered about whether i was getting an adequately accurate impression of the WIIO from the amp due to how early the amp distorts and thought perhaps the fact that i was using the Tokai Les Paul, which has fairly beefy pickups, might be pushing the front end of the amp too hard so i switched it out for the Duo Sonic which has the meekest pickups in the house. it's hard to evaluate a dirt box when hitting a low "E" on the neck pickup makes the amp break up as much as the box set on 30% gain. perhaps i'll get a better reflection of what things do this way. i should also diagnose the tube problem in the AC15 which seems to eat tubes like they were chips, but i don't feel like digging through the Tubes Box and finding known-good EL84s in particular because i have a number of Chinese brand ones that i got as spares but are decidedly sub optimal. i'm probably going to take this weekend off from effects stuff as much as posstble...my brain hurts, and needs to rest.

obligatory GAS content: despite myself i looked at a few demos of things hat could go on the FEB and realized partway through a Loomer demo that the reverb side of the Loomer does a much nicer Soft Focus setting than the eponymous Catalinbread reverb i've been using, and also does a respectable hall sound and a pretty convincing rendition of the SPX90's quasi-reverse reverb. and that Keeley sells it as a standalone item. here comes an reverb A/B test

[dubkitty]

waiting on an e-mail from Keeley re: whether you can turn off the fake tremolo bend on the Realizer's (boy, they caned the MBV references for this line, huh?) reverse setting. if you can i'm all over it. three weird reverbs in the space of one that's very similar to an option available on the newer one?

turned everything down as much as i could and still hear what i was doing today. using the Duo Sonic and the Strat--which surprisingly was a tidge lower in output than the DS--helped a lot, though a cleaner amp would still help. i think i've got the WIIO dialed in. it's very tricky to adjust, but there's a sweet spot just past the edge of big-amp breakup where it actually behaves like Townshend's amp on 70s live recordings (to an extent): quiet and almost clean when you play softly, a great slab of distorted, meaty goodness when you smack it up. it almost reminds me of the infamous "fuzz that cleans up with the volume knob" except that it doesn't get terrifically clean and it all happens by your touch. don't know what its fate in my dirt setup will be...that'll depend on what i do with the other categories (distortion, regular fuzz, batshit crazy fuzz) and what room is left. i'm going to test the chorus on my SCF and see how it compares to the Boss CH-1 i'm using. if it can do both, there's room for another fuzz or something.

getting somewhat forcibly stopped in the development process has actually been a good thing, i think, because it derailed the conventionalities i'd unwittingly imposed on the equipment. i've been fixated on the SCF as a flanger and never really messed with the other settings because back when i got it i didn't like chorus. something made me say "hey, you missed something..."

i don't like that things are up in the air again, but i like that it's making things different. as the main board monolith has sucked more matter into its singularity it's become kind of oppressive and kind of predictable...even with new verbs, delays, and/or fuzz swapped in it does about ten or twelve things that i can combine into sonic cocktails, if you will. it would be nice to play in a band environment only because i could reduce everything to a limited palette. "i KNOW i'm never using ring mod on these songs, so..." i wouldn't really mind being cut back to just a tuner, the Dirt Tripitaka (distortion, nice fuzz, nasty fuzz), the quack box, the SCF, the Menatone tremolo, the Flashback, and the Ghost Echo. that's most of what i was using on my loops along with the Boss Slicer which i'm not into now.

[dubkitty]

i'm really happy with the other CMC boxes. the MKIII is everything you'd want a MKIII to be, and he adds a separate volume knob to the three standard controls on the Buzzaround, letting you use the lower settings on the Timbre and Balance knobs and thus adding different voicings a regular Buzzaround can't do. even with how much i've been testing and hating testing, i didn't want to stop playing the Buzzaround. with the additional lower-gain options it's like a Katzenkönig on steroids. possibly my best new box of the last 12 months, certainly box of the year so far LOL.

i think i'm going to sell the Cantrell wah. it's the only wah i've ever really liked because it has a knob that lets you set the toe-down frequency so it can sound like Jimi Hendrix with a head cold or a MuTron in a bad mood. but i guess i'm just not a wah person...this is the only time i've ever owned one in my life, and "wah sound" never enters my mind when i think "what should i do now?" when i think of sweep effects, i think envelope filter. it's also a pain in the ass to cable and make space for with my huge setup.

[friendship]

man I've got a wah in the trunk I haven't used in like 12 years and every time I think about selling it I'm like "but what if I need a wah," but guess what? I have not needed it once. why do I keep this thing lol

[dubkitty]

from the "so now what?" file:

Saturnworks declined to do the looper fader project. they said they're too busy and to check back in late summer or fall. fuck that. i'm too old to wait around. so i thought about it and realized a solution was staring me in the face. i can use a second iteration of the same Ernie Ball 6165 volume/pan pedal on the looper A and B outputs to fade them out that i use to select the inputs and occasionally fade them in, and use the mini pedal i got for the 1440 as a output fader (rather than a input fader as originally planned) at the right side of the looping board since it won't fit on the deck with the 2 big EB A/B pedals. the two A/Bs will sit side by side like a pair of pump organ or aircraft rudder pedals with a Ditto on either side so it's easy to do a fade-in and a fade-out simultaneously. i'm not so worried about the 1440 which is, in part, there to serve as a repository of prepared stuff to call up (though that remains to be implemented). since it has that automatic 99-second fadeout feature i could get away with not using a VP with the 1440 at all. i'll have to swap the power supplies around between the FEB and the looping board; i need the space on the looping board its supply occupies, and the Truetone from the FEB can hide underneath; conversely, there's plenty of room on the FEB for that big Gator supply to sit because as of now there's only three things that are definitely going on the board (Octron, Shallow Water, assumedly SHSL). silver lining: the custom box was quoted at $369; i got a second EB A/B off Reverb for $100, and my brain came for free. so fucking there.

going to keep working on culling fuzzes for the main board. i have to go slow because otherwise my ears get tired out and i lose clarity and definition. in part this is an exercise because certain boxes, the Great Wall and Distortion+ in particular, are foundation stones of my approach and unlikely to go anywhere. they're the two constants in the fuzz module and always have been since i got them. when i cut down to three fuzzes, those were two of them. i think the third was an Algal Bloom or a Tone Reaper. one reason i'm going to A/B the SCF's chorus setting with the CH-1 is because if i lose the CH-1 i can rearrange things to make room for a sixth fuzz (or two double-wides). or i could retire the Ibanez PM7 phaser. phasing is my least liked and least used modulation, and i basically have it there in case something comes up where phaser is appropriate. i hardly ever turn it on other than for variety, and don't think in terms of phaser sounds.

the FEB is packed away until the SHSL arrives sometime in late February; i'll get it out to pull the power supply, but other than that it's retired for now. definitely the least important of the 3 boards for my ideas. if i get super-Franciscan i could just put the Octron on the floor next to the main board and go. i'll be sitting down, so it wouldn't wander around too much. the FEB is a luxury, not a necessity. i have to have the big board, i have to have the loopers...i don't have to be able to do funny little lo-fi tweaks and watercolors.

still waiting to hear from Keeley as to whether you can turn that annoying fake tremolo bar effect off on the Loomer/Realizer. it seems like an absolute Soft Focus killer, but i can't get past the bendy shit.

[dubkitty]

i hunted through a bunch of demos and finally found a Pedal Partners (yuck) video explaining the Realizer's controls and yes, you can turn the bend off by setting its assigned knob to zero. so i ordered the fuck out of it off Reverb at $200 from Japan. well, $241 with tax and shipping. still less than on Reverb. i just can't pass up a chance to have decent versions of all my favorite reverbs from my Yamaha and Alesis rackmount units in a single board spot. happily i was able to get the relatively normal-looking Keeley version rather than the Pedal Partners hot pink one. i like pink, but this took the concept "pink" several levels too far, so i'm glad i won't have to look at it. this undoubtedly ousts the Catalinbread Soft Focus which currently occupies the Stunt Reverb spot. maybe that will go live on the FEB. if not, it's the Spring Stuff Sale. it's not bad in any way, it's just less versatile. i actually quite like it, but functionality is king in the absence of notable differences in pleasantness. if it wasn't for the plethora of other sounds i love on the MidiVerb II i'd move it, and my Yamaha SPX90 and GEP50 have already packed their bags. why didn't i just get a Loomer for $40 or $50 more? because i don't like the fuzz side and it's too big. and because i'm over my Kevin Shields fx phase...i think i understand what he does, and why and how it's different from what i do. i'm trying not to deliberately sound like anyone any more, though i'm stuck with my teenaged influences unless i have a TBI. those reverbs are all great and will work in decidedly non-shoegaze applications.

[K2000]

I picked up a Frazz Dazzler and a MAE No fuzz. They are both really great. Frazz Dazzler is more versatile while the No simply does the thing it does extremely well. Both seem very usable which is not always my experience with heavy fuzzes.

[dubkitty]

i was looking at demos and the first one of the Frazz just used it to make racket, which i'm not opposed to, but it kind of helps to have some kind of context that's recognizable. then i found one that showed different stuff. it and the No are both interesting, and could indeed be useable in some contexts. that kind of sound would overwhelm anything else in a loop, though, so it wouldn't work for me now. maybe if i go in a Merzbow direction.

[friendship]

I feel like someone mentioned the fairfield circuitry ~900 earlier but I can't find it. anyway it came up on CL and my life is boring and my Crazy Horse doesn't play well without a buffer, which I no longer have since I took the tuning pedal off the board. is it good?

[Blood_mountain]

I haven't bought anything in ages, but have a Fairfield Roger That landing today. I'm interested to see what kind of racket I can make with it.

[dubkitty]

that's a really interesting pedal. i still haven't heard the demo that convinces me, though. i need to know what it does to clean sounds, not just gain.