Effects Bay

Today I came across an interesting video for NextLevelGuitar.com and it was a demonstration on using the Boss DD-6 delay for achieving a rockabilly guitar tone. Also, he goes into some ambient delay setting as well. The Boss DD-6 is no longer in production since the release of the Boss DD-7, which I’m sure you can achieve the same tones with the DD-7.

Here is the video submitted by rockongoodpeople:

If you’re interested in the Boss DD-7 you can pick it up for $169.00 at Musician’s Friend. If you’re interested in finding a Boss DD-6, then use PedalNerd to find it on eBay!

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This week’s Free Shirt Wednesday post goes to GuitarX out of Denver, CO. Some of you following me on Twitter saw me mention the Tim pedal. Those that don’t know… Jimmy, EffectsBay.com go-to guy for pedal demos, picked up a Tim from Fat Sound Guitars, and it arrived after a short wait. I know he had super high hopes for the pedal. The day he received it he sent me a text that simple said ‘Order it now’. I’ve never heard/seen Jimmy get excited about a pedal before… so I immediately wanted one.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Paul Cochrane’s Tim pedal, it’s a nice overdrive but the wait is incredibly long. There are some folks that wait over a year to get theirs. You’ll see the Tim on eBay sell for $300+ to the people that can’t wait. Normally, the pedal sells for $169.  So I was a little bummed that I would have to get on a waiting list somewhere.. but where? After some strategic phone calls, I heard that Gary at GuitarX was expecting a shipment of Tims, so I gave him a call, and sure enough it was true, and there was slot available, so I jumped on it. Long story short, I had to wait about a week to get it… which is amazingly fast. I love the pedal and I’m in the process to see how/where to fit in.

During my phone call with Gary I mentioned Free Shirt Wednesday, and he was kind enough to send a shirt along with the pedal. He mentioned that they’re in the process of revamping their web site (It’s quite good and cool as it is now, so I’m sure it’ll be pretty awesome when it’s done). They have an impressive selection of gear including some pretty boutique stuff (ie: Paul C. Tim/Timmy, etc.). Along with effects, they carry amps/cabs, guitars and also offered used items as well.

My experience with my Tim purchase was great. Gary was awesome to deal with, and kept me posted during the process of getting the pedal. Definitely check out his site, and if you give him a call, make sure you let him know that EffectsBay sent ya!

Gary, if you’re reading this.. thanks for the shirt!

Now, if you want to be featured on Free Shirt Wednesday.. it’s really quite simple. Send me a shirt, if it’s music related (ie: guitar builder, band, pedal builder, guitar shop, recording studio, etc) I’ll dedicate a blog post about your biz, band, etc. I’ll take a photo with my aging, slightly pudgy mug and post it. Great simple, cheap form of advertising. Still interested? Then check this page for more info

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I absolutely love tinkering/hacking and generally playing around with electronics. Besides playing guitar, this is by far one of my favorite interests/hobbies. A few years ago, I subscribed to MAKE magazine. If you don’t know what MAKE is and are interested in making cool things found around the house, dumpster, etc., this magazine is for you! I have several friends that subscribe to this magazine because the cool/nerd factor is undeniable.

I came across this MAKE video of Collin’s Lab where he hacks a Big Muff Pi with a Arduino and digital pot. An Arduino is basically a board with inputs and outputs that are controlled by a microcontroller that you can program. You can do all sorts from powering LEDs to running servos, etc. Pretty nerdy. Pretty cool.

Here is the video by makemagazine:

If you want more information (source code for the Arduino, etc) check out the MAKE blog entry for this project here.

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The following is a guest post by Norman Harris of Norman Rare Guitars in Tarzana, CA. If you are interested in guest posting, please contact me!

Here’s a simple answer. A great guitar player. Other than a great player, a great instrument, that is in good playing condition that is well constructed with good woods and is well adjusted.

Fine Tone Woods
Quality tone woods are in very short supply these days. There have been embargoes placed on quality woods due to environmental restrictions. Tampering with rain forests, cutting down trees, has left a void and because of such high demand for these tone woods, it is very difficult to find quality aged tone woods. Back in the day, woods used to make fine instruments were aged 50 to 100 years prior to them being used on instruments. These days because of demand, woods are being artificially aged. This is not the same as the natural process of aging. Brazilian rosewood is in very short supply and rare woods dealers are finding their stash diminishing each year.

Spruce, which is the preferred wood for tops and sound boards of guitars, is also in short supply. Adirondack spruce, which is some of the highest quality used for sound boards, is extremely scarce. Substitutes of lesser quality have to be used in order to keep up with the worlds thirst for fine instruments.

Fingerboard materials such as ebony and rosewood are also becoming scarcer. Manufactures are looking for alternative substitutes for all these woods. Good woods make for fine sounding guitars.

Fine Design
A guitar will only sound as good as its design and construction. Bracing patterns, neck shapes, fret sizes, neck angles, bridge design are all part of the design components that make up a fine sounding guitar.

Fine Luthiers and Manufactures
Each Luthier and manufacturer has their own style and design that they prefer. This is what makes each guitar sound different and have its own personality. Acoustic guitar makers each use their own preference in wood, bracing, and cosmetic design. This is what makes each brand slightly different from the next. Electric guitar manufacturers use different pickup designs and each produces a different sound. For instance Gibson Humbucking pickups produce a fatter and warmer sound than Fender’s single coil pickups. Rickenbacker pickups produce a chimey sound associated with groups from the British invasion. Gretsch guitars use DeArmond pickups. This is the choice of many Rockabilly musicians. Other manufacturers use variations to come up with and produce their own sounds.

Pickup Alloys
The wire used to wrap pickups in the old days used specific alloys, many of which are no longer available. Manufacturers have tried to go back and figure out what they used years ago to produce the great sounds these pickups were getting. The amount of winds used, specific metals that were used, and other factors are being studied to come up with the best combinations to enhance tone.

A Guitar being in Fine Adjustment
A guitars set up is of prime importance to its tone. If the action is too high or too low, a guitar will not produce its optimum sound. If a guitar’s frets are not dressed properly, a guitar may sound more like a sitar than a guitar. Materials used at the nut and the bridge also determine a guitar’s tone. Pickup, height adjustment on electric guitars also is very important to maximize a guitars tone.

The bottom line is that nothing makes a guitar sound good but a great player. Great players need fine tools, just like a great carpenter needs fine tools.

When all of the above is in fine order, voila great tone!

Keep rockin and pickin!

Norman Harris is the owner of Norman’s Rare Guitars in Tarzana, California. Norm specializes in high end vintage guitars in addition to basses, amps, and accessories.

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I came across this video today. It was quite cool on many different levels.  I’ve always been interested and intrigued by Nels Cline, so this was a cool view into his style. Looks like he stopped by the ZVex shop in Minnesota to talk about the ZVex Box of Metal distortion pedal. The video was submitted by russianmusicgear.

I definitely thought it was odd that Nels would be into this pedal (judging the artist and the pedal by the cover), but after hearing his reasoning.. it made good sense. I think it’s important to not stereotype pedals to the genre of music you’re in, there could always be hidden/useful traits that can be greatly applied in your style of music.

If you liked what you heard coming from the ZVex Box of Metal, you can pick up one for yourself at Musician’s Friend for $219.00.

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In July, I announced the winner of the Porter Pickups – Custom Pickup give away, and the winner was Laurent Berta. He received the pickups, and promised a photo of him with his snazzy prize. I received the photo, and wanted to put it up on the site. Congrats Laurent. Let us know how the pickups sound.

I’d also like to thank Brian of Porter Pickups again for offering this custom pickup set for the give away. Please remember to check out Porter Pickups to see if they can hook you up with some proper tone!

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Today’s pedal line is from James Hume. If you have a pedal line (doesn’t have to be in a board) for your rig, please email me a photo, bio, description of pedals and routing to Every Friday I’ll showcase a pedal line submission. Make sure you include any links to your band or music page.

Hi, I’m James Hume, and I played in the band Midnite Hobo for two years (for any of you that read Questionable Content: questionablecontent.net)

The lineup:  Right to Left
Korg PitchBlack Tuner -> Boss CS-3 Compressor -> Vox Standard Wah -> Custom modded Danelectro Pastrami Overdrive -> Dunlop High Gain Volume Pedal -> Electro Harmonix Little Big Muff Pi -> Danelectro Cool Cat Fuzz -> Boss DS-2 Turbo Distortion w/ turbo switch (beneath the dano overdrive, connected with the green cable) -> Electro Harmonix Memory Toy Analog Delay -> Boss BF-3 Flanger run in stereo to a Laney LX 20 and a Washburn BD 30 bass amp.  All these pedals are powered by a Godlyke Powerall wall wart adapter with an 11 point daisychain.

On the shelf/still being built:  Boss Os-2, Ibanez Weeping Demon Wah, Rebote 2.5 Digital Delay, Ibanez Tube Screamer with 808/9 toggle, as well as symmetrical/asymmetrical clipping, Ampeg Scrambler, Ross 4/8 Stage Phaser, Small Clone Chorus with depth knob.  I build and do most of my mods myself, for example the clipping mod on the Dano Pastrami is an LED clipping diode mod, swapping the original red LEDs that clipped symmetrically for a 1n914 and either a bright Blue LED poking through the first O in Distortion (like the ds-1 keeley mod) and a 1n4001, which switches between an open, more classic sounding breakup and a more modern, more compressed sounding distortion.  The turbo switch below the pastrami is also homebuilt, and the ultrabright blue LED is pretty blinding.

A couple of notes on my rig:
First things first, the pitchblack.  It’s a great tuner, haven’t had any problems since I bought it three months ago.  The strobe tuning mode is cool, and works a treat.
The CS-3 was bought at a similar time, and is great for just grabbing and holding the notes.  I keep the sustain wide open to just keep the notes going with whatever distortion I use, and it works a treat.  It also keeps the broken chords and arpeggios going long enough so you can go get a bite to eat and it’ll still be going.

The Vox is just standard.  The switch stopped working about a year after I got it so I got it fixed with true bypass and a decent switch.  Pot’s a bit scratchy, so that needs to get fixed, and the curve on the wah seems pretty off with distortion, like there’s a real edge on the filter… But no problems aside from that.

Like I explained above, the Dano is a lovely bit of open, tube-y grit that works well in front of everything else.  It goes all the way from clean boost to a light, crispy breakup, all the way to a top boosted , full on Crunch.  Nice little pedal when stock, even better with the mods.

Dunlop High-Gain Volume pedal is great for doing massive swells, and works perfectly behind the dirt.

The Little Big Muff is just what you’d expect.  Rock solid and reliable, sounds wonderful in conjunction with the flanger and delay to get those David Gilmour-esque tones.  Pulling back on the volume pedal means I can even get a nice, smooth overdrive sound out of if.  Again, wonderful pedal.

The Dano CC Fuzz is pretty basic, fuzz to flab to fizz, and I’m planning on replacing it with a zvex fuzz factory as soon as my local shop has one in.  Can’t wait to get ripping with that beast.

The Turbo Distortion is a pretty boring pedal, if I’m entirely honest.  Rather flat sounding, so it’s getting replaced soon as well, probably with an Xotic BB Plus Preamp.  Still, it works for now as my standard distortion, kicking the turbo switch for solos.  But still, not my first choice.

The Memory Toy is a beautiful piece of kit.  It’s currently replacing a busted Rockburn delay which I was trying to mod (stupid bloody surfacemount components) and has been working a treat. It does wonders for just layering your tone, but my only problem is the mix knob.  At noon your tone isn’t all there!  At 11, it’s almost there, but the delays aren’t strong enough to double your playing, and the further back you dial it, the more the clean signal is boosted!  It just makes things difficult to intuit as far as signal blend goes.  Anyway, it’s an awesome analog delay and I just love cranking the time and the repeats until just before it starts oscillating:  pure heaven.  I physically can’t live without a bit of delay in my line, because I would just miss the lovely fullness it gives.  It’s also great to play around with

And finally the flanger, which I love for splitting my signal and flanging the parts out of flanging phase with each other.  Lovely and lush when you run it stereo, but equally nice in mono.  Still need a gig with a stereo mix to try it out, but it should be awesome when I get that going.  I love all the modes on it, especially the Gate/Pan setting.  Mono signal with distortion and a bass guitar has an awesome gated, percussive feel, a lot like a sequenced synth which I love!

My guitars at the moment are an Epiphone Les Paul Special 2 and an American Standard Squier strat that’s been vintaged and scalloped from the 12th onwards.  Both are Fun guitars, but I’m looking at getting rid of the Epiphone and replacing it with a lovely Ibanez RG 470 with a Fernandez sustainer.  Sweet sweet sustain

My pedalboard is an Ikea Gorm covered in loopy Velcro, and I’ve got so much gear I’ll be expanding over into another one quite soon, not quite so Velcro covered.

A bit about myself:
I’ve played a couple of different instruments in a couple of different bands, from j-rock to metal covers of Lady Gaga, queen to The Rolling Stones.  My real passion, however, is mixing and getting everything to sound just right.  I love mixing everything, and generally do the set up for my bandmates gear if they don’t know that the hell they’re doing.  My most recent band was Midnite Hobo, an all-ages-of-rock band formed and based in Singapore.  We broke up three months ago with the end of school, as both our lead singer and other guitarist left.  Since then I’ve just been letting my G.A.S. Get to me, hoping I run out of things I want before I run out of money, but isn’t that the life of a musician?

Regards,
James Hume
A.k.a. Darth Achaeron
Follow me on twitter @darthachaeron

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I’ve been pretty excited about Electro-Harmonix Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi as soon as I heard about it. Basically, in a nut shell, this is a new Big Muff, using the Germanium transistor (vs. silicon). Apparently EHX found a stash of NOS Germanium transistors and are putting them to use. This Big Muff Pi is a little different since there are two modes. There is a overdrive section and a distortion section, and the sections can be used to cascade into each other. You would get two pedals for the price of one. The Overdrive section is basically the EHX Germanium OD pedal.

Here is the official description:

The Electro-Harmonix Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi overdrive and distortiuon pedal is a classic 1960′s overdrive based around a hand-selected germanium transistor. To get the best results from the E-H Germanium 4, just set aside some time to practice in a quiet room—just you, your amp, and the Germaium OD. The interaction of each control will reward you with many different flavors of exceptional vintage overdrive.

In addition to a Gain control, the Electro-Harmonix Germanium 4 overdrive lets you control Bias for attack and the circuit volts for that sweet spot found when a battery’s voltage dips.

The Gain control adjusts the amount of input signal that is fed to the Electro-Harmonix Germanium 4. The more the knob is rotated the harder the germanium transistor and drive components are hit. The Bias control adjusts the current gain that is sent to the Germanium transistor. It works together with the Voltage control to attain the over all tone. The bias control works specifically with the Germanium transistor. The Volts knob controls the amount of voltage that is applied to the Germanium OD. Set at full, 9V is applied. When set at minimum, 3V is applied. By limiting the voltage a number of interesting saturations can be set up for variations in tone.

A footswitch turns true bypass on or off.

The Electro-Harmonix Germanium 4 runs off of a 9V battery or you can connect a 9VDC adapter capable of delivering at least 100mA to the 9V power jack. The optional 9V power supply from Electro-Harmonix is 9.6DC-200BI (same as used by Boss and Ibanez) 9.6 Volts DC 200mA. The AC power adapter must have a barrel connector with center negative. The battery may be left in or taken out when using an adapter.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find some really good demos. I did find this one, but the amp/effect sounds a little off.. not sure. Video looks great though. The video is by mikemattdemo:

You can pick up the Electro-Harmonix Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi for $99.75 at Musician’s Friend.

Remember, if you like reading about these pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

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I’m excited about today’s Free Shirt Wednesday submission. Today we’re talking about Avatar Speakers! First off, I have to say I’m a HUGE fan of Avatar speakers, and I own two cabs now. I also personally know a few other musicians that are sporting Avatar cabs.. and love them.

Avatar Speakers is located in Dalton Gardens, ID and they build quality cabs using quality speakers. They do NOT do custom cabs, but you can pick from their various styles and load them up with your speakers of choice (Celestion: Vintage 30s, G12H30s, G12T75s,  Greenbacks,  Classic Lead 80s, Hellatone 30s, Hellatone 60s and G12K100s). You pick the tolex, grill cloth, open or close back and the correct Ohm and you’re good to go.

The best thing.. is their pricing. They have fantastic prices on cabs, and often have deals. I’ve seen their G212 Custom cab go for $299 with a pair of Vintage 30s in there.. but you have to keep an eye on their site to catch these deals. They also offer “Scratch-n-dent” items as well.

Along with purchasing a fully built cab, you can just buy the speakers (which are priced nicely) or just buy the cabinet. They’re great to deal with, and they build and ship quick.

Here is a shot of my new rig. This is a Rivera Knucklehead 100 on top of 2 G212 Custom cabs (top cabinet is open back – Vintage 30 and G12H30 / bottom cabinet is closed back with dual Vintage 30s).

If you’re looking for a great guitar or bass cab, you need to check out Avatar.

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Wow. Just stumbled across the Pigtronix Philosopher King Compressor and Sustainer. This is a great pedal.. with lots of sonic potential.

The Pigtronix Philosopher King is a compressor, sustainer, distortion and polyphonic amplitude synthesizer. Combining our award-winning Philosopher’s Tone circuit with a next generation envelope generator, the Philosopher King takes tone several steps further with a full set of ADSR (Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release) controls including swell, fade, hold level, speed range, one-shot mode, selectable auto reset, CV i/o and expression pedals for swell and fade times.

With the Swell and Fade functions switched off, the Philosopher King provides transparent optical compression with endless sustain on tap. Adjustable compression (ratio), sustain (threshold) and treble (2k cut / boost) controls allow the musician to tailor the nature of the effect to meet the needs of the material at hand. From a subtle dash of added punch to massive, over-the-top howling sustain, the Philosopher King delivers clean, powerful optical compression. The grit control blends in a layer of sweet harmonic distortion that plays nice with other gain pedals as well as amplifier-generated tube distortion.

The Philosopher King’s swell function provides a pick triggered volume swell effect. The volume swell can be reset at any moment by muting or held open by continuous playing. This “slow gear” type effect is smooth and controllable with variable timing from extremely fast to very slow.

The fade function can be used independently of the swell and is also pick triggered. A major new feature of the decay cycle in this pedal is the ability to fade out from peak level only partially, bringing the audio down to a predetermined level, set by the hold control. The hold level is then maintained until the player releases the note to close the cycle. With the auto reset turned on, the cycle will begin again immediately, creating undulating amplitude modulation and even pulsating tremolo stutter effects at faster decay settings. With the auto-reset turned off, the player determines the exact timing for the beginning of the next cycle.

Another new feature is the one shot mode, which causes the Philosopher King to run through the swell / fade / hold / release cycle regardless of what is played after the cycle is triggered. In this mode, the Philosopher King creates complex waves of amplitude modulation on top of the music coming from your instrument. A trigger input jack allows the swell and fade functions to be controlled by an external source such as a band mate or drum track.

Here is a video by pigtronix

You can pick up the Pigtronix Philosopher King Compressor and Sustainer for $299.00 at Musician’s Friend.

Remember, if you like reading about these pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

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