Hello all.. this is definitely off topic. I mentioned in the past that I purchased a Schecter Ultra VI – (similar to Fender Bass VI which is similar to a baritone. It’s a 6 string bass tuned one full octave below standard. That’s what separates it from a baritone. Totally playable in standard tuning). When I purchased the Schecter it does not come with a hardshell case. Not even a gig-bag. So, that’s an issue for me. I was packing it around in a guitar gig bag with the headstock sticking out of it. It didn’t leave the house much, so it was a low priority, but now I’m in a project that uses that guy, and I need to pack it up. Time to pick up a hardshell case for it.

There were people finding alternative cases for it, but I came across a Schecter Bass case that works perfectly, and wanted to mention it here since I do get a lot of Ultra VI searches from Google, and I’m sure eventually they’ll be looking for a hardshell case as well.

What I found that works wonderfully (and recommended on Schecter’s site now) is the Schecter SGR Universal 6 hardshell case. It fits Model T, Diamond J, Diamond P Custom, Riot and Ultra VI. I just received mine today, and it fits perfectly. It costs $119 and can be picked up at zZounds.com

Hope this is helpful to some Ultra VI owner somewhere!

Now… back to pedal talk!

The other day I watched the Brian Setzer Rig Rundown by PremiereGuitar. Here they interview Brian’s guitar tech Tyler Sweet for the full details of his rig. I thought it was pretty cool. The guy definitely likes his vintage gear. His #1 guitar is a sweet 1959 Gretsch 6120 into a Fender Bassman 6G6B circuit design with the solidstate rectifier (vs. tube). He pretty much uses one effect and that is the Roland Space Echo RE-301.

Watching this made me think about how odd to have your tone soooo dialed in, that flexibility really isn’t an option. I mean his tubes are vintage (NOS) even. Then again, when I think of Brian Setzer, he is definitely locked to a certain style and era. We’re also seeing what he’s using on tour. I wonder while chilling out in the house he sometimes busts out the B.C. Rich and Mesa Boogie amp for some riffage. I doubt it.

I’m also curious if he’s messed around with some of the boutique amp builders that do model that circuit. I definitely understand the argument of vintage components with their varying tolerances are not reproducible today. Let me know what you think of this!

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The following is a guest post by Jon Patton. If you are interested in guest posting, please contact me!

There’s a certain mystique and excitement in finding a new effects builder: not just someone whose boxes are rare sights on pedalboards, but someone developing something beyond clones of the same old tired, overdone circuits. So on the first snowy day of 2012, I made my way up to Joppa, Maryland, to talk with Luke Orsie of Luck Duck Pedals and demo a few of his creations. Luck Duck Pedals are made in Orsie’s home, where he hand-builds each pedal, right down to the etched circuit boards.

Here’s his creation process is in a nutshell:

He then passes the box to Brittany Howard to add unique artwork. I wanted to add a special note about the art, because it’s what first brought these pedals to my attention. I’m a bit of a sucker for both hand-painted stompboxes and cartoons. Although some people don’t care what the pedal looks like, when a small builder is just starting out, eye-catching visuals help set them apart. Making each box a one-of-a-kind collectable doesn’t hurt, either. Here’s Britanny Howard talking about her process:

Though he has dabbled in cloning some well-known time-based and tremolo effects for custom orders, Orsie managed to find some of the creative space left in the dirt pedal market with his bread and butter pedal, the Luck Duck Overdrive. The LDO puts two common clipping modes (LED and MOSFET) into the same enclosure with a familiar 3-knob control layout. Orsie gigs regularly with his band, and the 2.0 version of the LDO reflects the tweaks he made after frequent live use.

The pedal matched excellently with a Vox AC30, with a more assertive character of its own compared to other open overdrives like the OCD.

Here’s what it sounds like [Disclaimer: I am a writer, not a videographer! I kept the demos as simple as possible]:

We used a Fender American Standard Telecaster and Vox AC30 (amp settings here) for all demos.

The “Wah”ddle is a wah with a toggle to switch between extreme sweeps on the wah/whoa continuum. The defaults are very close to Vox (“wah”) and the Crybaby (“whoa”). Internal trim pots can give you more control over the sweeps. Although some other builders (e.g. Area 51) are making multi-flavor wah pedals, the simplicity of being able to go between the two most classic voices with a single toggle switch is appealing. An optional improved buffer makes the wah play nicer with dirt pedals. Somewhat rare for a wah, it also has true bypass switching.

Usually I prefer a Vox’s wah to a Crybaby, but this one surprised me. The “whoa” side was a great match with the AC30 and LDO. The pedal sweep was smooth all the way through without any obvious bumps.

Here’s a demo, first clean, then with the LDO:

The Comrade Duck is a limited edition pedal, a somewhat unusual silicon-germanium hybrid based on the Electra distortion. It has asymmetric clipping (meant to mimic power tube distortion) and a bright switch. It has a much raunchier character than the LDO.

I had fairly high hopes for this pedal, but it did not match up with an AC30 as perfectly as the LDO. The lack of a tone knob on an already fairly bright pedal meant overemphasizing the AC30′s chime without filling out the sound. And like most asymmetric clipping pedals, the harmonics created make chords unpleasant. But it fared much better on single-note lead work—producing a thick, complex sound. I’d like an opportunity to try the pedal with a Fender or Marshall, or with a cranked lower-wattage Vox-style amp, before passing final judgement.

Here’s the video:

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of this small but promising pedal builder. You can find Luck Duck Pedals on Facebook. Be sure to check out the photos of their work for extended descriptions of the pedals. Luke Orsie can be contacted at luckducksboxhotmailcom. Additionally visit them on Etsy and Flickr.

About the author: Jon Patton is a writer, musician, and (unfortunately) day job schlub in Baltimore, Maryland. He writes music reviews for Driftwoodmagazine.com and makes guitar noises in the band Midway Fair.

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A while back I talked about Steve Albini and his band Shellac playing in my home town (a town he called home as well). The opening act of that show, and for the other west coast dates in 2011, was Helen Money. I didn’t know anything about Helen Money, so I pulled some YouTube clips and was surprised to see it was a solo act, playing a cello with effects and loops. Very interesting. I was very excited to this as well as Shellac.

Alison Chesley who uses the stage name Helen Money plays with an assortment of overdrives, delays and loopers to create a very haunting sound scape. I spoke with her after the show, and we’ve been talking about doing a full on interview here on EffectsBay, so hopefully that will still come together in the near future. I bought her CD “In Tune” after the show and it’s damn good, and would highly recommend picking this up for some great atmospheric instrumental music. Also, it was recorded at Electrical Audio – nuff said.

Why I’m writing about her today is because I came across an interesting video by GearWire where she talks about some of the effects she uses to help her shape her sound. Her pedal board has evolved since this video, but I really liked how she explained why she uses a few of these pedals.

Some of the pedals featured in this video were:

ProCo Rat 2
Boss PS-6 Harmonist
Boss DD-7 Digital Delay
Fulltone Ultimate Octave
Boss RE-20 Space Echo
Boss RC-20 Loop Stations

Alison has also laid cello tracks on albums for Bob Mould and The Broken Social Scene. She is incredibly talented and innovative. If you get a chance, be sure to check out Helen Money!

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Looking over various Pedal Line Friday submissions and many pro pedal board breakdowns, I’ve seen multiple ways to mark and record the settings on pedals. Usually, you see good old masking tape or gaffers tape on the pedals themselves. Sometimes you see mailing labels like Avery labels, etc. Often the tape leaves gunk behind and or tears depending on the age of the tape on the pedal. Avery labels are really hard to remove and can damage your pedals, etc.

I wanted to create something that guitarist could use but address these problems. I went in search of a sticker that sticks… but removes easily. It was a challenge to find something that once applied won’t move or shift on the pedal, but as soon as you want to remove it or replace the label with new setting values, would come off very easily. I believe we found a great solution to this problem.

I also wanted something that looked good. Not just hand drawn circles or simple check marks next to the knobs, etc. like you often see, but something that complimented the pedal nicely.  I created pre-defined formats that could be applied to various pedals including boutique styles, etc.

The label system is super easy. Look at your pedal and note how many knobs and if there is an appropriate label for that manufacturer. For example there is a Boss 4 knob version. You would use a Sharpie (or other permanent marker) and draw a line from the center point out to the edge (ruler makes it tight!). After your settings have been marked on the label remove it from the sheet and apply it to the pedal. If it’s not straight, no worries, it peels off, then re-apply.

If you have an odd-ball pedal, no problem, you can use single knob labels and apply those, or use another style. For example, MXR 3 knob will work for many of the 3 knob boutique pedal enclosures out there.

Another great feature is the ability to set multiple settings. You might need to track multiple settings on a single knob. Color markers could be used to identify the different preset needed.

So you’re thinking of labeling some pedals – how do you get your hands on these? I’m offering a label pack that will get you the following labels:

3 Ibanez 4 knob labels
3 Ibanez 3 knob labels
3 MXR Wide 2 knob labels
3 MXR 1 knob labels
9 MXR 2 knob labels
12 MXR 3 knob labels
9 Boss 4 knob labels
9 Boss 3 knob labels
6 Toggles labels
54 single knob labels

This should cover many of the average boards out there, and still have extra labels in hand. Having extras is the whole point. Next month, you don’t like your previous settings.. peel off the label add a new one. Simple.

You get all 111 stickers for only $9.95 + shipping! You can order by clicking the ‘Buy Now’ below. Shipping will be calculated via PayPal.

Looking forward to seeing some of these labels on upcoming Pedal Line Fridays!

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The following is a guest post by Dan Vuksanovich of WhyISuckAtGuitar.com. If you are interested in guest posting, please contact me!

I’m a classically trained guitarist and a former information technology consultant, which makes me a guitar nerd with an insatiable craving for the latest and greatest technology. I also play in a local cover band, for which I need a tonally flexible rig which is easy to transport and doesn’t break the bank. The solution? You guessed it: amp and effects modeling.

My rig consists of a Line 6 HD500 with a QSC K8 powered PA speaker for stage volume. That’s it. All my gear combined, including my guitar, weighs less than fifty pounds. I used to drive a Mini Cooper and had room for all my gear with tons of room to spare. While our other guitarist and bassist are lugging in their tube half stacks, I’m at the bar having a beer.

Yup. I’m the weirdo on stage with nothing behind me but the wall, the “amateur” who hears the whispers and snickers of sound guys behind my back. All the whispering and snickering stops, though, during sound check. This past Saturday I literally had a sound guy insulting my rig to my face during load in. He was desperately searching for a way to not let me go direct into the house PA. I asked him, nicely, if we could just give it a try. He said OK. I played for about 10 seconds during sound check, paused, and then heard him say sheepishly, “Uh, that actually sounds pretty good.”

So how do I do it? How am I the one guitar player who can coax direct tones from his modeler that don’t feel like an ice pick in the ear? Here are some best practices for getting good live sound from a modeler:

Not all modelers are created equal – There are lots of wild claims out there about tone quality by companies that make amp modelers and multi-effects units. The problem is that tone quality is subjective, so the manufacturers can basically claim whatever they want. Now, I’m not going to tell you what you should and shouldn’t buy, but I will say that if you buy a $99 entry-level modeler, don’t expect it to sound like a $3,000 Axe-Fx. My POD HD 500 cost about $500, and for my purposes it gives me the best bang for the buck. It might not sound 100% as good as an Eleven Rack or an Axe-Fx, but let’s be honest here, I play at local bars and clubs, not Madison Square Garden.

Your home amplification method matters – The way you amplify your modeler when you’re not playing at a venue is a huge consideration. The goal here is to make your bedroom setup as much like a live setup as possible. Enter the QSC K8 powered PA speaker. Yes, it cost me $600. Yes, that’s more than the cost of the POD, but I need to be able to hear what my tone will sound like when I get to the venue, and what better way to do that than with my own personal PA? Let me state the inverse of this for total clarity. If you run your modeler through an amplifier, even if it’s directly into the effects loop, the amp will color the sound… a lot. Therefore, if you try to go direct into a house PA after you’ve tweaked your sound through your amp, you’re in for a shock because it will not sound even remotely like you remember it sounding at home. What you need is a full frequency, flat response (FRFR) powered PA speaker. This works out perfectly because at home the PA speaker will be your amp, and at the venue you can use it as a personal monitor for stage volume that you can control.

Be the opposite of a kid in a candy store – All those models! All those effects! I can make my guitar sound like an alien spacecraft if I want to! Time out. Listen, there might be 600 amp models and 4,000 effects to choose from, but all you really need is a few usable live sounds. I’ve got four: acoustic, clean, crunch and saturated. Instead of going crazy and filling up every available effects slot just because it’s there, spend some time researching a typical signal chain for the type of sound you want. For example, my saturated sound is the one I use most on stage, so I needed to make sure that it was just right. I started with the assumption that I would use one of the high gain amp models, noise gate, reverb, and potentially a distortion pedal to smooth out the gain. I’ve got a bunch of empty effects slots and one empty amp model slot (I could run amp models in parallel if I wanted to) but my sound is just the way I want it.

Listen… really listen – There are plenty of ways to dial in awful tone with a modeler. You’ve got to use your ears to find something that works, probably even more so than with a real amp. Being an 80′s metal guy, my initial assumption was that I would use the Marshall high gain amp model. No matter what I did, though, I couldn’t dial off the shrill high end on the Marshall. I tried the Mesa Dual Rectifier model instead, and it was perfect. It gave me exactly what I wanted: a sleazy, nasty tone at the lower frets for chugging and riffing, and a sweet singing tone at the higher frets for soloing. I experimented with a few distortion pedal models to smooth out the gain as much as possible, but couldn’t find one I liked, so I decided to try compression instead. Bingo! That was the one missing ingredient and it completed my saturated tone.

Some sound guys will help you – One night we had a sound guy who I thought was just interested in insulting my rig again, but it turned out he wanted to help me out with my sound. There’s a difference in volume between bedroom and stage can create some EQ problems. At bedroom volumes my sound was not quite powerful enough so I cranked up the bass, which sounded great. At stage volume, though, the bass simply too much and the sound guy told me as much. He used his equipment (and his ears) to help me EQ, and I’ve had those settings dialed in ever since. He also helped my fine tune the levels of my patches so that I could switch back and forth without forcing him to use the faders to bring the volume up or down.

Modeling isn’t perfect, and it isn’t for everyone. Does our other guitarist’s tube half-stack sound better than my POD? A little. Is it worth it to me to lug around over 100 pounds of gear in an SUV to make my tone a little better? Absolutely not.

Ultimately you’ll have to make your own decision, but I can assure you that quality live sound with a modeler is possible. You just have to avoid the pitfalls.

About the author: Dan Vuksanovich received his Master of Music degree in classical guitar performance from the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University in 1999. He currently teaches and blogs about how to get better at guitar via his website, www.whyisuckatguitar.com.

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Today I was super stoked to see a new Rig Rundown featuring Nels Cline of Wilco on PremiereGuitar. I’ve been a fan of Nels from a distance for years, but never really got to learn about his gear until this blog. Coincidentally, I did a pedal board breakdown of his board a while back (you can read it here – Nels Cline – Wilco – Pedal Board), but this video is fantastic. Nels really goes into detail about his guitars, amp and his effects. I really like it when artists go into ‘why’ they like a particular pedal. That kind of insight is very useful when looking at new pedals to purchase or understanding issues you might be having with your current pedals.

Here is the video by PremiereGuitar:

Here is the breakdown of pedals of his main guitar board:

Boss DD-7 Delay
MXR Phase 45
Crazy Tube Circuits Starlight
Crazy Tube Circuits Vyagra Boost
Fulltone ’69 Fuzz
Crowther Audio Hot Cake
Electro-Harmonix Pulsar
Bigfoot FX Magnavibe
Boss Digital Delay (DD-3?)
Boss VB-2 Vibrato
Klon Centaur (gold)
Boss FV500H Expression Pedal
Digitech Whammy
Fulltone Mini Deja Vibe
ZVex Fuzz Factory
Boss CS-3 Compressor
Boss TU-2 Tuner
Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2+ x2

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Not too many things get my undies in a wad, but this sure the hell does. Just saw on Pitchfork that Disney is selling a Joy Division (Unknown Pleasures album) inspired t-shirt featuring Mickey Freakin Mouse!

I guess I should explain some things, I’m assuming that everyone in the world has been touched by Joy Division. Joy Division was a fantastic band that formed in the early punk days in Manchester, and later defined itself in the post-punk movement as band that had things to say on a level rarely seen prior. Ian Curtis, the front man of Joy Division was battling epilepsy and depression, which inevitably led to his tragic suicide in 1980 prior to their first North American tour.

That band defined my late teens and twenties and I was quite moved by the emotion in the lyrics and how they composed their music. Their skills as musicians were still rough but that never got in the way of expressing their emotions and creativity. As a guitarist just learning my instrument, I was always inspired by that band. Unknown Pleasures and Closer were two of my favorite albums that got tons of play.

A Mickey Mouse ™ shirt does not honor the memory of that band or the album. Boooo. I’ll get back to talking about effects again. If you’re a fan of Joy Division, let me know what you think of this by commenting below!

Unknown Pleasures.. as it should be

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I’ve been using D’Addario EXL 110 .10-.46 for years on my guitars.  I’ve thought about changing gauges, but the thought isn’t strong enough to move away from that current gauge. Back in the day I use to go to my local guitar store for strings.. but the music stores around here totally over charge for strings and picks. I absolutely hate it. I started buying my packs on Musician’s Friend to save a few bucks. Then I moved up to the 10 pack D’Addario EXL 110 to save just a little more.

When I was at Amazon looking at 10 pack prices I was surprised that D’Addario now offers a bulk box solution! The D’Addario EXL 110 bulk price is $69.05. So let’s do some math.

Standard single pack (MF price) is $3.99 / pack

Moving up to the 10 pack ($36.99) it breaks down to $3.69 / pack (saving .30 cents per pack for a total of $3.00 if you bought 10 individual packs).

Now, if you move up to the bulk solution which has enough for 25 packs, the break down is this. Bulk price is $69.05 divided by 25 comes down to $2.76 / pack. That’s a $1.23 savings from the single pack price of $3.99. So $1.23 * 25 would come to a total savings of $30.75 if you go with the bulk solution. I can think of plenty of things to spend $30.75 on instead of strings.

I ordered my box yesterday. Can’t wait for re-string guitar day this week!

Things are hectic around here. My son is having his 11th birthday party and scrambling to get things all dialed in. Time sure flies. Pretty crazy. In the midst of the craziness, I came across this interesting video of a person playing a Fender ’66 Reissue Jaguar into a Zvex Lo-Fi Loop Junky and playing a lead on top of that with a ZVex Fuzz Factory and using a Ebow. I thought it was pretty cool. It fit my mood today perfectly.

This video was posted by PanaceaTheCure:

Enjoy!

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