Effects Bay

Today’s pedal line is from Michael Stettes. 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 pedallineeffectsbaycom. Every Friday I’ll showcase a pedal line submission. Make sure you include any links to your band or music page.

I play bass (and do some light synth work) in Sam Cooper & The Sleepwalkers, a Wilco-ish, Sun Kil Moon-y sort of band that I love dearly. We just did a winter EP called “Snow” and you can download the three songs off it for FREE at http://samcoopersolo.bandcamp.com/releases. It includes an original as well as two covers. So if you wanna hear some slackers put their own spin on “Kiss From a Rose” as well as the Christmas classic, “Walking in the Air,” boom, do it. I mean, it’s friggin’ Seal, man. Get some.

The Bass: I’m only using one bass guitar right now–a MIM Fender P-bass that’s been completely gutted, sanded down, and rebuilt to emulate a 60′s P-bass in every way. Electronics have been replaced, frets have been sanded, and it’s been repainted with a nitrocellulose laquer (ReRanch Sonic Blue) with the headstock matched. The coat has started to become a little seafoamy with time, but that’s just fine. Here are a few pics, one with me in it from a gig a little while ago. The pic with the driftwood came from the luthier who sold it to me, and he didn’t include the tugbar, but I wouldn’t have used it anyway. I also put a sizable nick in the headstock that I’m irked about, but like the luthier told me to do when I bought it from him, I’ve been “playing the hell out of it.”

The Board: I use a modified Pedal Pad AXSII. It’s really heavy but it’s super durable. I loved the board but since I bought it used, the carpet wasn’t in the best condition. I ripped it off, painted the bare wood black, and drilled some 12″x12″ aluminum sheets into it. They’re lightweight, and good for adhesive strips of velcro. I’m thinking of modding it further by drilling a handle between the wooden flaps so I can lift both up at once.

The Power: I use a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 and have a Visual Sound 1-Spot plugged into the PP2′s outlet. The only thing I don’t like about the PP2 is the fact that because the barrel connectors are straight, it’s hard to fit them in tight spaces, like on pedals with 9v jacks on the side right next to the jacks. That’s where the 1-spot’s angled connectors come in. I have the PP2 attached with velcro to the underside of one of the flaps, reinforced by super glue. Super-glue is awesome. I’ve noticed some minor noise that I think is likely ground-loop related and cuased by the daisy chain, so I’ll likely get a Voodoo Lab ISO-5 at some point to supplement MAH POWAH.

The Cables: Most of the connections on the board are made using Planet Waves Solderless Pedal Board Cables. I strongly recommend them. Easy to make and use. I have a couple of DiMarzio Patch Cables, an Armor Gold one, and a few cheapies of origins unknown. I use a Monster Rock cable from the guitar to the board. People say Monster is overrated, and that’s probably true, but their Rock cables coil extremely well, look good, and have never given me an issue. From the board to the amp, I use an Armor Gold cable.

Korg Pitchblack Tuner: Nice and bright. Does its job and does it well. The footswitch has gotten a little glitchy over the years and I might repair it soon. I’d prolly get another if I had to replace it.

Boss DF-2 Super Feedbacker & Distortion: Many reviews knock the dirt of this pedal, but I actually dig it. However, I don’t use this as a dirt pedal live. I solely use it for its feedback function in combination with my other pedals to create cool, droney soundscapin’, which is why I don’t mind it being in front of the compressor. I’ve toyed with the idea of getting the new Boss FB-2 Feedbacker/Booster as a replacement, and storing the SF-2 for safekeeping since it’s discontinued. Oh, and I had a guy put a purple LED in mine, because fuck red.

Ashdown Dual Band Compressor: A buddy of mine had this sitting around his house and just gave it to me. I had never messed with a bass compressor pedal before. I was definitely missing out. I almost always leave it on now. It’s got a pretty big footprint, but I love the sound it gives me. Plus, the EQ on it is really powerful.

Fender Sub-Lime Bass Fuzz: What a cool pedal in both looks and sounds. Rockin’ ballsy vintage bass fuzz. Comes with a price though: learning curve, weighs a bit, and some of the controls are under the pedal. I’ve thought about having it rehoused by Walrus Audio and renaming it the “Sub-lemon-al Bass Fuzz” (see what I did there?). Still, I love it. This is my go-to pedal for dirt live. I stack it with the El Oso if I need even more.

Devi Ever U.S. Fuzz: Gated, sputtery doom. Lacks a little low end, but I can adjust the amp for that and it’s good for smooth, synthy, saw-like fuzz. It’s actually off my board now (I had stolen it from my guitarist and he wanted it back, d’oh!) I now have a clone of the U.S. Fuzz that Noisekick FX did for me called the “DEUS,” which means “GOD” in Latin, but also pays tribute to the original: Devi Ever US. The clone has an an additional toggle switch for more low end. I combine it with the Hummingbird for cool pulse sounds.

Heavy Electronics El Oso Bass Distortion: Use this when I want a mostly clean tone with a background of sizzle. Thank you Blend knob! Sayer, the proprietor of Heavy Electronics, is an awesome chappie, and you really can’t go wrong with his pedals. Ever.

Earthquaker Devices Hummingbird: This is essentially a tremolo, but Earthquaker refers to it as a repeat percussion pedal, which is probably more accurate. It’s all chop, can get really fast, and its depth goes all the way to silence. Exceptional pedal.

Danelectro Cool Cat Chorus: While this can definitely add some thickness to the dirt and the drones, this is strictly a placeholder pedal. I will soon be replacing this with the Source Audio Soundblox Bass Envelope Filter. And yes, I’m getting the Hot Hands to go with it. I’m torn on whether or not I should get the “Pro” version of it. If I get a bigger board though, I’ll keep the Cool Cat because I like the spund of chorus on bass, but in that instance, I may replace it with the Tech 21 Bass Boost Chorus.

MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay: You see this bad boy everywhere for a reason. Solid, dark, analog delay. I’ve tweaked the internal controls for more modulation.

Line 6 Verbzilla: There are two main things I use this reverb for. The first is the Octo setting for thickening the feedbacker drones and for other shimmery things. The second is the Ducking verb, which is really ideal for bass guitar. It responds to your playing dynamics. The louder you play, the less reverb you hear, so your signal isn’t muddied, and when a note rings out, the verb fades back in. Plus, the Verbzilla has a trails switch that I think is ideal for delay/reverb pedals.

The Amp: Nothing fancy. Just a little Ampeg BA115 Combo.

Thanks for reading! i know I probably included a lot of details you don’t care about, but I personally like reading that kind of stuff, and thought others might as well! Again! Free songs! Seal! http://samcoopersolo.bandcamp.com/releases

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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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Early on in my guitar youth, I always had a chip on my shoulder about Stevie. Not sure why, because I never really listened to him, etc.  I was young and had a narrow opinion of music and styles. When I began to actually ‘study’ guitar a little bit and wanted to improve myself and learn, that is when my eyes and ears opened. I began to respect quality of play regardless of styles or genre of music. I started to *hear* tone and marvel at effortless play, that was truly inspirational. Stevie Ray Vaughan definitely captures that, but the point that blew me away was watching an episode of Austin City Limits with some old live footage. I was absolutely blown away by how he played. His aggression with the guitar, but how clean it was sounding. How effortless it appeared for him to lay down some serious licks. At that point… I said… “I get it now.. yeah, I get it”. He was amazing guitarist on multiple levels.

I was excited to see a pedal board of Stevie Ray Vaughan the other day. His set up is very basic, tube screamer, vox wah and a couple of Fender amps. The tone definitely goes beyond the Strat and the gear. His hands and gnarly thick strings help. But you need the soul. Over the years his pedal board changed in configuration, and I’ll include the description that talks about the set up. The full article and other shots of gear can be found here at Premiere Guitar.

Ibanez Tube Screamer: Stevie upgraded as new versions came out – TS-808, TS-9, TS-10 Classic. A fan reports that the chip in Stevie’s pedals was probably the RC4558 chip for clean boost.

Wah-wah: Vox wahs from the ’60s. Occasionally connected two together.

The usual setup in the later years was Ibanez Tube Screamer TS-10, Vox wah, vintage Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face, and Tycobrache Octavia. For a brief time he used a Univibe. Roger Mayer Octavias were used prior to the Tycobraches. Cesar Diaz installed matching germanium transistors in the Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face body to increase transistor life.

Loop Selector – Stevie had several MXR loop selectors in the early ’80s, one of which is in the author’s collection.

The splitter box which later replaced the loop selectors was one input and six outputs to the amps. No preamp, but resistors to cut down the noise. With the Vibratone he used a Variac AC power regulator.

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I came across a couple of Instagrams from Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. He mentioned “Back in tha  studio”. On the page he posted a couple of gear shots, and I knew the guys here would be into seeing stacks of guitars. Let’s see, I see a ton of Jazz-blasters, a couple of Travis Beans, SG, ES-335, Fender Bass VI, Les Paul.. what else? Comment below!

Here is a close up shot of the right-side guitar rack:

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For a long time I’ve been interested in a baritone and/or a Bass VI. I absolutely love those Cure songs with the Fender Bass VI. And I also loved the baritone growl of Silkworm and Bottomless Pit recordings as well. For those of you that aren’t familiar with a Bass VI, it’s a not quite like a bass, and it’s not quite like a guitar and it’s not quite like a baritone. It’s a guitar that is tuned a whole octave lower in standard E.  Normally Bass VI gauges (and they may vary depending on manufacturer, etc but the ones I’ve used are .84 to .24). You can definitely get lighter.. or heavier to suite your taste. A baritone is often tuned to A (perfect 5th lower) or B and sometimes in C.

I’ve been eyeballing a Fender Bass VI for a long long time, but they’re hard to come by, especially the original vintage guitars. You’d be expecting to pay a high price for sure. I don’t remember when, but Fender re-issued the Bass VI for a short time and apparently those aren’t that great. One alternative is the Schecter Ultra VI (they also created the Hellcat VI – available for $599). This guitar is set up like the Fender Bass VI, and Robert Smith of the Cure uses these along with his Fender I believe. I know Schector also makes standard guitars  for him as well. If you cannot afford the Fender Bass VI, this is a great option. You can pick a Schecter Ultra VI for $649 at Amazon.com currently, not a bad price for cool guitar tones.

Below is a video by SchecterGuitarTV:

As for me, I found a Travis Bean modified to be baritone and I’ve been experimenting with the A tuning. I would love to do the E octave lower but the neck scale won’t allow it, so possibly some day down the road I might pick up the Ultra VI.

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I was working on a fun project for a friend of mine. My friend had a Joe Strummer Fender Artist Series Telecaster, but he was unhappy with the pickups. We talked about pickups over a year ago, so I contacted Brian at Porter Pickups and he hooked me up with a Standard Telecaster set. My friend and myself were excited to get them in.

A few nights later he swung by my house to get them installed. I’ve installed humbuckers in various guitars, and swapped out pickups on my Stratocaster, but this would be my first Tele job. I was psyched to work on something different, so this was a great opportunity. When learning something new, I find doing a search first on YouTube to be very handy. I found this great video to keep me out of trouble when taking apart the Tele by SeymourDuncanChannel:

What I liked about the video, was the experience this guy showed. When you do things more often, you usually tend to learn to do it faster and better and avoid common mistakes that would make you back track or slow down. His first point was using a set of digital calipers. I love my calipers, and if you don’t own one, you should really think about it. Totally removes the guess work.. in just about everything. I love my calipers! To remove the bridge plate, you need to push the saddles forward so the screws can be removed. By measuring and writing down the values of the saddles, it’ll get you back in the game as far as intonation goes when you put bridge back. Again, smarter vs. harder. I love it. He also talks about using something to cover your work area on the guitar so you don’t mare the guitar when unscrewing/screwing screws. Definitely important to not cause damage when you’re trying to actually fix something.

The telecaster swap out was easy, but it is definitely more involved than a Stratocaster. There are more pieces to remove and is more difficult getting the wires routed, but overall, it was easy. The first step for me was to replace the neck pickup. I took note of what lug the signal lead was connected to the switch and where the ground needed to be connected. After completing that, I went to the bridge. The original bridge had a two connections for ground. One to the bridge plate and that hopped to the main ground connection, so I connected the ground of the pickup to the bridge plate connection.

Once everything was soldered, I tested. I think it’s pretty critical to test before everything is locked down! Pretty obvious right?  After getting the pickguard re-secured. I tested again. After adjusting pickup heights and securing the bridge plate, I tested again. I wanted to make sure that I did not break a connection during the reassembly, and if I did, I would probably have an idea as to what caused it.

Below is a photo of the Telecaster with the pickguard, bridge plate and pickups removed.

Here is a photo of the completed pickup swap out with new Porter Pickups

So we plugged this guy into my amp, and pickups sound AWESOME. If you’re looking for swapping out your pickups, I would highly recommend contacting Porter Pickups. Hot damn.

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I saw 300guitars post a YouTube video of a Fender Factory tour from 1959. I’m an absolute sucker for old (or new for that matter) factory tours. I really enjoy seeing how great things get made. I really dig old footage to see how things looked back in the day. Imagine the Fender factory in 1959. No air conditioning. No respirators or proper ventilation. Limited safety precautions on dangerous equipment.  But seeing how they took pride in their work is quite inspirational and humbling.

Over Christmas I had an opportunity to watch some great slides and film footage of my inlaws. Normally.. that would suuuuuck, but it was really cool seeing how people dressed back in the 50s. There was definitely some magic in the air post-WWII.  I definitely related to that with this factory tour.

Here is the factory tour from 1959.

Please take note at 5:58 – Abigail Ybarra

This video is a much more recent tour of the Fender Factory, but what blew me away in this video was at 6:18. Here we have Abigail Ybarra again! She was winding the pickups the whole time. Imagine, that she wound Hendrix pickups, Clapton pickups, Springsteen pickups.. crazy. I like the ju-ju factor there.

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I know that this isn’t a pedal, but the quality of effect from this unit.. is pretty awesome. I’m talking about the Fender Vintage Reissue ’63 Reverb unit.  This is a a all tube (6V6, 12AX7 and 12AT7) reverb head. It’s built to do one thing.. and one thing very well… reverb. There is a on/off footswitch available, and creates instant retro-surf-twang reverb. I’ve heard about these for years, but today I saw some sound clips.. and this thing sounds great.

Here is the official description of the unit:

The ’63 Fender Reverb is a replica of the original 1963 Fender tube reverb standalone unit. Features a solid steel welded chassis and all-tube circuitry. Includes dwell, mix, and tune control. Fender ’63 Reverb is brown with tan grille cloth.

Fender Vintage Reissue ’63 Reverb Unit Features:

* 6V6 Groove Tube
* 12AX7 preamp tube
* 12AT7 tube
* Dwell, Mix, Tone controls
* On/Off footswitch included
* 10-1/2″H x 18-7/8″W x 7-1/2″D
* 13 lbs.

I mentioned I saw some sound clips. Here you go, there are three to check out. All are short clips by fendermusical:

’63 Reverb Demo Clip 1

’63 Reverb Demo Clip 2

’63 Reverb Demo Clip 3

You can pick up the Fender Vintage Reissue ’63 Reverb Unit for $649.90 at Musician’s Friend. If that price is rockin’ your world you might want to check out the Boss FRV-1 Fender ’63 Reverb Pedal. I talked about it here.

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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A friend of mine just sent me a link to Musician’s Friend with a pretty sweet deal on Fender Jags. I have to admit there has ALWAYS been a part of me that’s wanted to own one of these, but never pulled the trigger. I have a theory that the switches intimidate me, I’ll talk to my therapist about this later today to confirm.

Regardless, Musician’s Friend has a pretty great deal on these. The manufacturer list price on the Fender Jaguar HH Electric Guitar is $1,110.00, it WAS on sale for $889.99, but is now on sale for $599.99! That’s $510.01 off of list (45% off).

Here are the specific details on the guitar:

Just as Kurt Cobain modified his ’65 Jag with humbucker pickups and fixed bridge, this Fender Jaguar electric guitar has two special-design MIJ Dragster humbuckers to reduce noise and produce fatter, darker tones and an Adjusto-Matic bridge with anchored tailpiece in place of the tremolo. Classic Jag features are still onboard including the short 24″ scale for easier string bending and a unique set of controls that include pickup selector on/off sliding switches and switchable lead and rhythm circuits.

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