Keep Your Hands Off My Stack

I seem to be hemorrhaging money lately - Besides all the usual bills this month, I was hit with a $200 assessment from the condo association for a new roof, my books for next quarter cost me $198, $158 went to the BMV for new tags, my notary commission needs to be renewed at $65, and, for the first time in my life, I had to pay money to the IRS. This was mostly due to a small inheritance from my father that bumped me up into a new tax bracket - an inheritance that was just enough to bury him and pay for the central air system that crapped out two days after I got the check. All of this is even after I had them withhold 10% of the inheritance money towards taxes, plus I usually take zero deductions and have an extra $10 taken out of my check every week so I get a healthy refund. All in all I managed to blow through over a grand in unexpected expenses in about a week. Ah well.

I haven't had much time to devote to guitar lately, what with finals and all, but since I know some of you guys are interested in various ways to make noise, I thought I'd showcase some of my gear. I think I've mentioned all the guitars, so here are the amps and what has made its way onto my pedalboard, with my thoughts:

The Pedals:

1.) Rocktron Hush - Simple but effective noise gate.

2.) Johnson Switch - controls the clean/dirty channel on my Fender Champion 110.

3.) Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz - The guy at the pawn shop threw it in cheap when I bought my amp. I've really only found it useful when teamed with a more conventional fuzz pedal like the Big Muff - together they can create a cool sludge-rock sound. otherwise it just sounds like static from a transistor radio added to the signal.

4.) Dod FX-30B Gate/Loop - I'm not using the gate side, I mainly intend to use this as an effects loop for all the dirt boxes, but I haven't gotten around to rewiring the board for it yet.

5.) Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi (Russian) - One of my favorites. I had a Russian-made model from the 80's a long time ago, I'm glad to say this one sounds even better. You can get everything from Hendrix to Brit-pop to metal with one of these.

6.) Guyatone MD-3 Digital Delay - actually sent to me by accident by an eBay seller that I bought another (much cheaper) item from, he decided to let me keep it rather than mess with shipping it back. Delays aren't real high up on my personal "useful" list of effects. but for free it's fun to play around with and get space-rock noises out of.

7.) Expression pedal for my Zoom 505.

8.) Danelectro DJ-14 Fish & Chips Equalizer - One of the cheapest pedals on my board, and probably the most useful. Nice for tweaking or as a clean boost pedal. These little Danelectro boxes are around $20 and are a great deal, just don't stomp on 'em too hard.

9.)Danelectro DJ-9 Surf & Turf Compressor - Picked it up on eBay for $10. Nice for stuff with a lot switching between clean and dirty sounds.

10.) Rocktron Silver Dragon - My latest addition, and one of my favorites. Actually two pedals in one case - a tube-preamp on the left and a solid-state distortion on the right. most opinions on low-voltage tube preamps seem to either be "complete & utter snake-oil" or "best thing since sliced bread" - I'm probably somewhere in between, but it definitely seems to add a nice warm tone to my solid-state amps. When teamed with the distortion, it can produce the sound of a hundred cats being set on fire in a steel dumpster - which is to say, I like it. The only drawback is it has a huge 14-volt wall wart adapter, so I can't use my 1-spot.

11.) Control switch for Behringer V-Amp2 - see below.

12.) Zoom 505II Multi-Effects - The first effect I bought, with the idea "If I buy this, I won't need to spend money on separate effects pedals". Yeah, right. Still nice to have to play around with effects that I haven't yet been able to talk myself into, like ring mods and envelope followers. Also nice since it fits in a gig bag, keeping me from hauling around the whole pedalboard if I want to go to a friend's house.

The Amps:

1.) Danelectro Honeytone - I remember when these came out and I wanted one but couldn't convince myself to drop $40 on it. I wound up finding this one on eBay for $10, and it would have been a bargain at the original price - gives really cool vintage overdriven tube sounds (well, as close as you're likely get for $10) at volumes that won't have the police at my door.

2.) Behringer V-Amp2 - I just got this, and honestly haven't had much time to play with it yet, but from what I've seen it's really cool. The V-Amp2 is an amp modeller, allowing you to get the sound of everything from a Marshall stack to a vintage Vox in a tiny digital package. The V-Amp is akin to the wildly popular Line6 Pod series, at a much lower price. The biggest gripe people seem to have with Behringer is hit-or-miss quality control, so time will tell.

3.) Fender Champion 110 - I've talked about this amp here before, basically it's your standard small practice amp, but it does a nice job with that legendary clean "Fender sound". Sometime when I get brave enough I plan to replace the speaker with one of the specialty models from Eminence, but that's a way down the road...

Living in Twilight

...So the Steelers won, although the downright lousy officiating left a bad taste in my mouth (I don't think it changed the outcome of the game, the Seahawks dropping 4 passes and missing 2 field goals took care of that). I was watching the game at a friend's house with him & his Bengals posse, I was seriously tired of the whining by the end of the night.

Glad to report that Mom is back home and doing okay, it will be a long recovery but in some ways she already seems to have improved from her pre-surgery condition - we were sitting in her hospital room talking while waiting for her discharge paperwork, and I noticed she was sitting with her legs crossed - she hasn't been able to do that in about six months. They should be taking her staples out sometime in the next few days, I'm going to drop by this weekend to check on her.

Unfortunately, absolutely nothing interesting on the internal combustion front. I've been jonesin' for a ride on the bike, and then we get a cold snap that makes that a total impossibility. I found out my stepdad will be going to bike week this year, but haven't had a chance to talk to him about it yet.

The only other news of interest is what the UPS man brought me:

Hamer Archtop in Bullion Gold.

Musician's Friend was closing these out for $199 and I don't have anything with dual humbuckers, so I thought I would give it a shot. It was backordered for two weeks and I think it came directly from the factory to me (it was still covered in sawdust). I took it in for a professional setup and it plays like a dream, the guys at the shop were very impressed with it and blown away when I told them the price I got it for ("That's gotta be way below cost!"). I've also got a compressor pedal & a mini-amp on the way, I'll post some pics when they arrive. Oh yeah, I forgot - I also got in on a deal from 357 Customs - this is a chopper builder that has an association with several musicians, most notably Zakk Wylde and Toby Keith. They had a deal where if you ordered a $150 MP3 player from their merchandise section (no, I don't know why a motorcycle builder is selling MP3 players), you allegedly get a free Zakk Wylde signature Epiphone guitar, which sells for $800. (They did a similar promotion about a month ago, but it was if you bought gift certificates & die-cast models). Needless to say, there was much discussion in the guitar forums about whether or not the deal was legit - after clarification from the company and Wylde's camp it appears that it is, but the guitars aren't scheduled to ship until March, so we'll see. (I was looking for an MP3 player for a Luddite friend of mine who has a birthday coming up anyways.) After that, I'm swearing off any gear purchases (at least until my tax return arrives - there's a Washburn hollow body I've had my eye on...)

Yeeesh...

...that's the longest I've gone without posting in a while. Sorry about that, it's been a week filled with overtime, emergency dentistry and car troubles, but I won't go into that right now. No new projects of note, I had hoped to have a new guitar to show you, but it's on backorder. I did pick up one of these:



It's pretty slick - plays like a full size, but small enough to stash just about anywhere (even, say, in a locker at one's workplace, if one was so inclined). The only other thing I've come across lately worth mentioning is this book, which pretty much sums up my interests lately to a "T":



If you're not familiar with Billy Gibbons, he's the guitarist for that little 'ol band from Texas. Even if you're not a fan, realize that Jimi Hendrix called a then-unknown Gibbons "one of the few guitarists I'd pay to see". Then listen to the riff in "La Grange" and recognize, fool. He's also a prolific collector of custom cars - everyone remembers the Eliminator coupe, but he also lays claim to such rides as Kopperhed and CadZZilla. Then there's his collection of guitars - most notably his '59 Les Paul dubbed "Pearly Gates", but there are dozens & dozens of others. "Rock + Roll Gearhead" is essentially a coffeetable book - half cars, half guitars. How kick-ass is that?!?

DIY Files: Pedalboard

Since deciding to get back into music as a hobby, I have tried to be as frugal as possible. However, my G.A.S. has been rearing it's ugly head again, and I have acquired several effects pedals, with several more on the way (gee, thanks, eBay). Since pedal setups can quickly become an unholy mess of cables, it's easiest to have a place to keep them all. There are commercially available solutions (ranging from pretty cheap to rather expensive) but I have always preferred to build my own.

Now, this isn't you standard how-to file, as there are plenty of places on teh Internets where you can get that kind of thing. I'm gonna tell you how I build things. To start with there are three basic rules:

1.) Scrounge whatever you can - the less you buy, the better. Many of you are lucky enough to work somewhere that usually has lots of scraps and other useful stuff in the dumpster. If you don't, drive around on trash day and look for stuff. If you still can't find any, drive around until you see a bunch of kids on BMX bikes or skateboards playing on a homemade ramp, and ask them where they got the wood to build it. Chances are they "found it" somewhere - that "somewhere" is more commonly called a "construction site". DO NOT steal stuff from the construction site - but there's probably a dumpster there, check it for scraps.

2.) In a perfect world, we would all have huge workshops, beautiful workbenches, and instant access to any tool we could possibly need. However, in MY world, a "proper workspace" is "any workspace with enough room and a power outlet". For example, you will probably notice from the pictures that follow that this construction project took place entirely in my kitchen, as I don't have a basement or garage, and it was 5 degrees outside. You will also note that I am single. If married readers decide to get sawdust all over the wife's kitchen, do so at your own peril.

3.) You may have heard the old adage, "Measure twice, cut once". This is untrue. Measuring is for dance majors and Frenchmen. Same goes for safety glasses.

Okay, the first step is to gather the wood that has been scrounged for this project. For my purposes, this consists of a chunk of plywood about 40" x 16" (anything over about two-and-a-half-feet will work), a plank that is at least as long as the plywood is wide, and a chunk of 2"x4" (length is not as important with the 2"x4", but you want it as least as half as long as the piece of plywood).

(On the far right is a roll of carpet, we'll get to that later). I cut any funky ends off the plywood so it's more or less square. Next, I held the plank up to the plywood and marked the length (technically, this is not measuring) so it's the same as the width of the plywood:



I grabbed the nearest sharp implement and cut the wood. Next, I took a straight edge and drew a line (again, not measuring) from opposite corners, dividing the plank diagonally:



...and cut it:



(That's the kind of sweet line you can only get working freehand, with a $15 jigsaw equipped with a dull sheet-metal blade). Now, I put the the two "ramps" on the plywood, and put the 2"x4" between 'em. This is just a mock up for now, but, you can see that the ramps will provide the incline to the pedalboard, and the 2"x4" will provide horizontal support. After everything was lined up, I marked off where the 2"x4" hit the ramps and pre-drilled a few holes:



To add an easy power option, I picked up a cheapie power strip (less than $4 at Sprawl Mart) and set it in the middle of the 2"x4", and marked the outline (after taking twenty minutes to find the marker I misplaced):



Next, I took a big hoarkin' drill bit and drilled four holes near the corners of the power strip:



That's pretty much it for the "construction" phase, now we move on to the "assembly" phase. Here's were the carpet comes in - I picked up a roll of "automotive carpet" (available at Sprawl Mart, Autozone, Pep Boys, etc. - less than ten bucks). It's thin enough to be easy to cut & work with, but durable enough that it'll hold up for years. I prefer black. It's easier to pre-carpet the parts before assembly:



Now I can screw the ramps to the 2"x4". Of course I wasn't able to find the holes I pre-drilled through the carpet, so I drilled new ones.



It's kinda nice to have handles on your pedalboard - in the past, I have just picked the most gnarly-looking heavy-duty grain bin handle at the hardware store and mounted it top and center, but I was able to find some cool-looking black handles for the sides this time. I pre-drilled some holes for them:



Next, I moved on to carpeting the plywood. Some people might tell you that this would be a good time to put down some glue or contact cement on the plywood to keep the carpet secure, but why do that when you can get a good workout by shooting several hundred staples into it?



Next I screwed the top onto the support, only breaking one drill bit in the process. After that, I used some zip ties to secure the power strip through the holes I drilled in the 2"x4" (of course, I often have to use a screwdriver, ice pick, steak knife, etc. to find the holes through the carpet):



Next, the batteries in the drill go dead. Of course, the spare batteries/charger got unplugged at some point. I stopped and made a sandwich.

After a couple hours' charging time, the handles were mounted (sorry, black handles on black carpet aren't real visible in this pic - they're more visible in the next one):



One thing I didn't count on by following my "no measuring" rule is that my plywood was just barely shorter than my carpet, so I didn't have enough carpet at the edges to fold over both ends:



But, hey, don't the Chinese use the same word for "crisis" as "opportunity"? In this case, it was an opportunity to use some carpet scraps and my hot glue gun:



That's pretty much it for assembly. Next, I took the whole thing upstairs and mocked up where I wanted my pedals to go:

(Left-to-right is: Zoom expression pedal, clean/overdrive amp switch, Danelectro Tuna Melt tremolo, Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi, Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz, Zoom 505 II multi-effects unit).

The patch cables I used are the cheapie multi-pack available at any music store. Some people swear by cable kits that allow you make custom lengths, such as Planet Waves or George L's, but I'm not the king of Siam, so the cheap ones will do.

For a long time, there were only a few options for powering your pedalboard: 1.) Use individual 9-volt batteries for each pedal (inconvenient and expensive in the long run); 2.) Buy an expensive multi-pedal power supply; or 3.)Use a inexpensive (and potentially noisy) power supply without isolated outputs. A relatively new product is the 1Spot power supply (a similar product is available from Godlyke:



The long and short of it is that most 9-volt adapters are around 200 milliamps, and even then, most pedals only use a fraction of that (some effects, such as digital delays, are the exception). The 1Spot is 1700 milliamps max, so it can power many pedals (someone on a forum made a claim of somewhere around two dozen, although I probably wouldn't recommend that). The 1Spot uses a "daisy chain" that plugs into the adapter and has five outputs. Additional daisy chains can be connected together.



The adapters that are built into the daisy chain are the standard center-negative 2.1mm barrel connectors used by most effects manufacturers (Boss, DOD) but you can get different adapters to power other pedals (like Moogerfoogers and older MXR pedals). As a last resort, you can buy an adapter that simply has a 9-volt battery clip on the end, for really oddball pedals or ones that don't have an AC outlet at all (like my Big Muff):



After the power is sorted, velcro is added to the bottom of the pedals so they can be affixed to the board. The nice things about the automotive carpet is 1.) after a little while, the nap in the carpet "fluffs up" and obscures all the staples (although if you're really anal, you can go over the staples with a black permanent marker), and 2.) it is "fuzzy" enough to act like velcro - all you have to do put the stiff side of the velcro on the bottom of the pedals. You can staple-gun a few strips of actual velcro running the length of the board if you want it to be more secure (if you are playing gigs somewhere and have to leave your board unattended, you might want to zip-tie or even bolt your pedals down to the board). One problem with the velcro is that some pedals won't work well - for example, my Big Muff has rubber "feet" that wouldn't come off (the soft screws stripped out immediately when I tried to loosen them) and prevent any velcro on the bottom of the body from reaching the board. To solve this, I heated some wire and pushed it through the feet - this allowed me to wire a small pad of velcro directly to the feet.



Many people drill holes & use grommets to route all their power & signal cabling on the bottom side of the board. I didn't do this because I'm a long way from having my pedalboard in any kind of permanent state (FedEx is bring me an EQ pedal as we speak). I simply took a length of velcro and made some loops to hold my cables down where I wanted them.

Everything was set up and tested out:



Works great. One thing I should mention is that this pedalboard has a pretty extreme tilt (45 degrees) - some of the commercially available ones are just a flat board, and most only have a slight rise. The reason I did this this is 1.) It's easier to build, with only one diagonal cut, 2.) I prefer it, because it forces you to poke at the pedals gently with your toes, rather than stamping straight down on it (as a big guy, I could easily destroy some of less rugged pedals on the market by accident) and 3.) when I am playing I am usually sitting down in front of my computer, and it makes the pedals easier to see. So, that's what I did with my holiday weekend. I can't imagine that anyone has read this far unless they're at least considering building one of these, so email me some pictures if you do and let me know how it turns out.

...and to all a goodnight

Just wanted to wish everyone Happy Holidays, have fun and be safe. Just some odds 'n ends before the brief Xmas hiatus:

-I may be posting an interesting postscript to the saga of the missing Dodge. Stay tuned.

-I haven't had a chance to plug in the Big Muff yet, so no reviews on the sound. I'm not too crazy about the looks - one of the things I liked about my old one was that it looked like it was built in a Soviet factory - it was ugly-ass green, made of riveted together plates of steel, and had three big, black, chunky knobs on it. I could practically picture a guard in an ushanka with a Kalashnikov over his soldier, walking out on to factory floor after the fall of the Soviet Union and announcing, "No more tanks! You build these now! For American who plays the rock-and-roll!" (Why do the Russian stereotypes that live in my head only speak broken English?) The grey-faced, babushka-clad women would never miss a beat, and would start solemnly assembling the new contraptions for the Imperialist westerners. I'm amazed it wasn't labeled in Cyrillic, for God's sake. The new one looks too "modern" (albeit a Communist-bloc occupant's idea of modern). And the finish is some kind of textured powdercoating that looks durable - too durable. One of the cool things about my old one was that it was all dented and scarred and half the paint was missing. It really added points to my punk-rock cred. Maybe I'll tie the new one to my bumper and drive around for a while.

Since there's a complete lack of content in this post, I'll point out two new (to me, anyway) bands that I've been digging lately - Straylight Run (coolest namesake ever) and Hawthorne Heights. Check 'em out.

It's heeeeeeeeere...

Sing along in the age of paranoia

Odds 'n' ends...

Well, the missing Dodge has been found. Turns out it was taken by Mr. Smithers, the owner of the haunted amusement park. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for...

...oh wait, that's not it. What I meant was, my roommate took the license plates and his parking tag off in anticipation of having it towed to the junkyard. This turned out to be not such a good idea, because someone reported it as abandoned (even though we contacted three members of the condo board and told them what the situation was. Nobody is rushing forward to own up to it). The good news is that the insurance company offered him $2900 for the car (he paid $1800 for it a year ago). And the impound lot is right next door to the insurance adjusters' office.

No real news on the "projects" front, as the weather here has been terrible and is looking to get worse. The first rumblings of cabin fever have begun rattling around in my head, so I oughtta be in real good shape a few months from now. I wonder sometimes if my focus here should be more narrow and worry that I've gotten off-track lately, but I noticed a pretty good jump in traffic the past few weeks, so I guess I'm doing something right. I'll just keep rambling, let me know what you do/don't like.

Work continues on the studio, and I still fear losing my better judgment when it comes to buying gear. I decided to stop by the pawn shop the other day just to look around, and I left with a Fender combo amp, a Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz pedal, and a Danelectro Tuna Melt tremolo pedal. I rationalized these purchases as best I can: 1.) I only paid $90 for the amp, which is the same price as the crappy practice amps with half the power that I have been looking at; 2.) The Hyper Fuzz is a bad-ass pedal (think The Melvins and Deftones) that is no longer in production, and I got it for $39; and 3.) the guy threw in the Danelectro for free, since it had a knob broken off (I had it dissembled and rigged a new knob in 15 minutes). Still, I think I'm gonna have to skip the big guitar show next month. I instructed the guy at the pawn shop to physically remove me from the premises if I show up in the next 30 days.

Since I liked the picture at Drew's site so much, I ripped him off and created a collage of some of the pieces that will be coming together in the home studio. (Please ignore the fact that he has lots of cool vintage gear, and mine is all crappy new stuff).



...oh yeah, one more thing. I would never advocate music piracy on a public web page (even though mashups shouldn't be considered piracy, but that's what all the hubbub is about), but "a friend of mine" downloaded American Edit by Team9 and Party Ben on Dean Gray Tuesday, and assures me it's amazing - he's been listening to it all week. There is already a ton of info out there about the album and the controversy surrounding it, so I won't get into that here. Needless to say you should find a copy and download it before the record companies stomp it into oblivion...

Bright antenna bristle with the energy

Many moons ago, I was a bass player. To be blunt, I was pretty lousy - strictly a root-fifth kinda player, but I enjoyed it. I had a couple of roommates who were a decent guitarist and a passable singer, respectively, and we would jam together once in a while.

The main reason I played bass was the same reason as 90% of all the bass players in the world - I was never a very good guitarist. Seriously, go see some local bands (you don't do that enough anyway) and talk to the bass players - almost all of them began as guitarists, but started "filling in" on bass as a necessity. Sure, there's the occasional guy who grew up obsessed with Geddy Lee or Jaco Pastorius, but those guys are weird and usually wind up composing sci-fi rock operas in their parents' basements. See, guitarists & singers are a dime a dozen. Drummers are pretty common, but are frequently replaced due to their tendency to drink all your beer & sleep with your girlfriend (but they're the ones with a van & a rehearsal space, so it's a fair trade). There is always a shortage of bass players, because nobody's that into it. I mean, really, if you were an average kid growing up in the suburban wasteland of America, did you wanna be Eric Clapton or Jack Bruce? Jimi Hendrix or Noel Redding? Eddie Van Halen or Michael Anthony? I rest my case. Nobody likes the bass player. That's okay, though, I looked at it as job security.

My favorite part was the gear - I had a beautiful Ibanez bass, as well as several others. I had an insanely large Trace Elliot amplifier rig that I got for a song when the company was sold off. And oh, the stompboxes. I had dozens of 'em. Everything from your everyday Boss & DOD effects to vintage Electro-Harmonix boxes and outrageously expensive pedals from boutique manufacturers. I had to build a massive pedalboard with a custom wiring system to hold 'em all. I would run a synth through a ring-mod through a flanger and just get the trippiest space-rock noises ever.

After getting out of school and suddenly finding myself with a job and a car and a mortgage, I didn't have much time to play and was pretty much perpetually broke. One day I was sitting in my home office, paying bills and generally lamenting my lack of funds, and my eyes wandered over to my gear. Thousands of dollars' worth, just sitting there, gathering dust. So I slowly sold all of it off via eBay, and that was that.

What's the point of all this? Well, as I've mentioned, I recently bought a new Mac. It came with the requisite (and handy) iLife apps, including iDVD and iPhoto, but the kicker was a relatively new addition: GarageBand. I opened it up and played with it a little. I like to edit together vacation videos & family photos into movies to give as stocking-stuffers, and initially I thought "This might be a cool way to add some simple background music". As I played with it a little more, I realized: I could actually do something with this, music-wise. Sure, it's not ProTools or Logic, but it's a surprisingly feature-rich program for home recording, considering it's free. It's light-years ahead of the little 4-track PortaStudios I used to play around with. And just like that, I was back into it. I bought a simple USB keyboard to use as a MIDI controller, but that wasn't enough - soon I was dusting off my old mics and heading to eBay to bid on some basic mixers and cables. My town is blessed (or cursed) with both Sam Ash and Guitar Center retail locations, and it wasn't long before I was headed their way (during a freak snowstorm, no less) - I needed a guitar. I am consciously trying to restrain my budget, so I bought the cheapest Strat they had in stock. I could practically feel my wallet itching at the effects counter, but I settled on the least expensive multi-effects pedal I could find. Weird, because I was always an analog snob before when it came to effects. I have started tearing my home office apart in order to dig out everything I'll be using, and to re-wire the computers to do what I need. It'll probably be awhile before I have anything I'm ready to share with the world, but someday I hope to post some stuff here. I will post some pictures of my "home studio" setup as soon as it's in order. The bad news is, the big Guitar Show is coming to town in a month - Lord help me...