Re: Setup of the day

[crazyzeke]

Also it’s worth adding that the fact I’m now using two amps adds to the “bigness” anyway.

Sure does; I'm a big believer in bi-amping, I think every guitarist should try it. For me it's either two guitar tones with a chorus (used as more of a stereo expander) or one for guitar, one for organ sim. When you're the sole guitarist in a band you gotta get creative, know what I mean?

[hulakatt]

It’s a JTM45. I have no interest in lugging a 4x12 down three flights of stairs every time we gig!

My jtm45 and 4x12 live in my workshop in the basement and I really just don't gig anymore anyway

[MrShake]

Yesterday's live show. Newly "finalized" board, new amp, turned up to "5" for the first time.

Except for finally being confronted with proof I need to pot my new pickups during the first song, and needing to fine-tune my settings, it was glorious raw sonic material to work with.

Finally, the volume and headroom I've been chasing. I just think I need more speakers to fill things out a bit.

[hulakatt]

As someone halfway through rebuilding a Hiwatt cab, do not get a vintage Hiwatt cab, the construction is not what makes them legendary, it's the speakers. Out of the cabs I've worked on, old jcm800 plywood Marshalls are solid and cheap and Orange cabs are friggin tanks. I do not prefer the speakers in either though and would heartily recommend Greenbacks for lower dbs and classic sounds or Fane types like the Reeves Purple speakers for more clarity, kick and fidelity. It looks like the Reeves cabs are much better built than the Hiwatt cab I'm restoring as well. What's killing me is the joints are all just butt joints instead of something like finger joints like Reeves uses. Since the didn't uses great joints, they reinforced the crap out of them to make them roadworthy so they're obscenely heavy and still not the most robust cabs.

I do not know what type of construction the current Hiwatt cabs use, they may be much better built.

When I'm done fixing up the cabs in my shop, I'll have a green Orange PPC412 with Scumback m75's and the Hiwatt SE4122 with Reeves Purples and I'll be pretty set. I'll load the spare speakers in my old jcm800 1960a and sell it off.

[crazyzeke]

Originals band jam/song learning session at bassist's house, using the Affordapedal rig. In years gone by - including say 2001 or so when I remember paying £90 for a brand new MXR D+ reissue - I'd have been even more amazed than I am now about how little could get you so much. I'm not kidding, some of these pedals outclass myriad BOSS/DOD/DigiTech/Ibanez etc stuff I've had at a fraction of the price. The Dolamo Vintage Overdrive there is literally the best sounding standalone overdrive pedal I've had, and I've had dozens including ones people say have "the tone", you know?

Essentially there's a giggable rig there in a pinch and it includes two gain stages, chorus, flanger (the way I've rigged up the Space-C with the B output gives it a hi-band flanger tone), delay. Excluding the custom MOSFET boost pedal on the far right, the total expenditure for this lot is £166.97, which is apparently £92.91 in 2001 money (adjusted for de-inflation basically)... equivalent to literally the MXR pedal I mentioned earlier. Insane value. It pays to not be a pedal snob I suppose.

[MrShake]

Originals band jam/song learning session at bassist's house, using the Affordapedal rig. In years gone by - including say 2001 or so when I remember paying £90 for a brand new MXR D+ reissue - I'd have been even more amazed than I am now about how little could get you so much. I'm not kidding, some of these pedals outclass myriad BOSS/DOD/DigiTech/Ibanez etc stuff I've had at a fraction of the price. The Dolamo Vintage Overdrive there is literally the best sounding standalone overdrive pedal I've had, and I've had dozens including ones people say have "the tone", you know?

Essentially there's a giggable rig there in a pinch and it includes two gain stages, chorus, flanger (the way I've rigged up the Space-C with the B output gives it a hi-band flanger tone), delay. Excluding the custom MOSFET boost pedal on the far right, the total expenditure for this lot is £166.97, which is apparently £92.91 in 2001 money (adjusted for de-inflation basically)... equivalent to literally the MXR pedal I mentioned earlier. Insane value. It pays to not be a pedal snob I suppose.

Totally with you. Amazing what SOUNDS one has affordable access to, if not labels.

Speaking of back in the day...



Lost about 45 minutes in this today, Harley Benton P90s and DF-2. No reverb, no nothin'. Part of the fun of a new amp is feeding it old pedals -- but I'm older, more skilled, really taking the time to dial it in, and damn this box sounds good into a big, clean amp.

I'm not chasing teh kurtdz, but I'm all over the mid-'90s alt-rock riffs of my Les Paul/DS-1/clean amp teenage years. I don't know how to play "Stars", but I've been ripping it off for 20 minutes.

Maybe I'll slowly add the HF-2.

And don't believe what any snobs say, it sounds great.

[crazyzeke]

Totally with you. Amazing what SOUNDS one has affordable access to, if not labels.

Exactly. In fact I worked out a better way of chaining which is, run the dry output of the Cool Cat to the input of the Space-C and then you can toggle on the hi-band flanger effect and get this massive wall of sound thing without it being swamped in drippy chorus.

I'm going to replace my motley collection of adapters etc with a budget pedalboard and some combi-adapters, plus spare leads (needed some of those for a while). And there will be one of the following on there, bought and shipped for the princely sum of £20 :-

And don't believe what any snobs say, it sounds great.

Damn straight, sexy blue guitars for the win . Is that the one where if you hold the foot switch it'll do a sympathetic note? The GT-8 has a mode like that somewhere, as well as a similar Hold Delay thing.

[crazyzeke]

THE REWIRED ORGAN SIM BOARD



My old organ sim pedalboard had always been kinda messy, sitting on a tiny platform not ideal for a volume pedal etc. Really considering I use it for paid gigs, it was overdue some kind of upgrade.

So I bought this from Amazon, fairly cheap but looked sturdy. I honestly think it's made from the same kind of Formica laminate material that you might use for kitchen worktops - it really looks and feels the same, very smooth. Came pre-velcro'd on the board itself and a surprisingly generous amount of velcro for the pedals, but also a small strip of the non-hook side I assume as a replacement for any that might come off the Formica board itself. Nice touch. Great value - doesn't flex much if you apply lots of weight to it so it's a good spot for any UK OSGers who need a cheap but decent board... with a caveat.

I also ordered some Stagg long patch cables, knowing I didn't have enough from the old board and wanting more for my Affordaboard anyway. Problem was - and I wonder if anyone else has encountered this - the damn cable heads were so big they would barely fit through the "shower curtain holes" for cable routing, even when hammered (yes I did try). In the end I had to just use brute force the compress the plastic, forcing it through with my thumb which days later still hasn't got all the feeling back so it's probably bruised inside . So that wasn't fun especially as I kept changing the order and the routing isn't just as it appears, so it was super important everything was colour coded. I had to use white twice but it's super easy to spot where, so I know how the routing works, and the most commonly used effects are on the bottom.

I'm able to have the reverb pedal on the bottom left so the cable to organ amp is an easy insert, plus sideways mount the clean boost (top right) as the guitar signal is spurred from the B9 pedal dry output, and run a cable from the top to the guitar amp. The wireless kit for the guitar is also on there, again to save routing and complexity. As you can comfortably screw the back panel on I was able to route all the mains cables bar one inside too. The clean boost gets used elsewhere so having it be easily removable was important.

Massive fiddle - I haven't done a proper pedalboard in years - but totally worth it. Everything works, there's very little mains hum compared to there being a little the way I had it before (there is a high pitched whine on the Lester G rotary but you'd have to crank the gain on the Dolamo Vintage Distortion to really hear it clearly) but yeah, worth the effort. So much so I'm considering buying another board, perhaps with a more easy to work with set of colour-coded cables, for my Affordaboard as when I reused the old organ sim board, as usual not all the pedals fit on there - you can get five. Whereas on the Affordaboard as I don't need a volume pedal I can use the space for another couple of effects and have all the budget pedals on it. Everything can be mains powered including the volume pedal which couldn't as I didn't find a 12v adapter until now (why does it need 12V mains when it takes a 9V battery?)

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Word to the wise - don't buy these cheap Neewer power supplies, even for a cheap pedalboard. The 9V power daisy chain adapters work fine but the actual wall wart itself introduces insane amount of low end mains hum, at about unity gain with the guitar signal. Totally unusable anywhere.

[Jonesie]

Grabbed a couple of new pedals today when I traded some gear in. Wampler Tumnus (Klone) and a JHS Kodiak (Trem). Both sound pretty great with the rig.

Guitar -> Peterson Strobeostomp -> Wampler Tumnus -> Wampler Belle -> Freakshow FX Rabbit (Rat) -> MXR Script Phase 90 -> JHS Kodiak -> J. Rocket Clockwork Delay -> ZVex Super Hard On -> (Not pictured) Lehle Little Dual Splitter, A-> Marshall Origin 20 Head // B -> Fender Supersonic 22 Combo

[crazyzeke]

AFFORDABOARD - Draft #1

Obviously the Ibanez PDM1 and clean boost don't count as part of the Affordaboard.

Plus it's a messy, thrown together effort as it arrived about an hour before I was due to leave and go jam with the bassist for the originals band so the wiring is mostly out of the way but not neatly tucked underneath via the curtain holes, plus stuff like the PDM1 not being flush with the board lip is a bit irritating especially if I want to sidefoot and trigger a bunch of effects on/off at once, but it'll do and the mixture of old and new patch cables works so yep... time to get playing!

[X-Ray Spex]

AFFORDABOARD - Draft #1

Obviously the Ibanez PDM1 and clean boost don't count as part of the Affordaboard.

Plus it's a messy, thrown together effort as it arrived about an hour before I was due to leave and go jam with the bassist for the originals band so the wiring is mostly out of the way but not neatly tucked underneath via the curtain holes, plus stuff like the PDM1 not being flush with the board lip is a bit irritating especially if I want to sidefoot and trigger a bunch of effects on/off at once, but it'll do and the mixture of old and new patch cables works so yep... time to get playing!

I'm guessing the clean boost is the grey box at the front? Where'd you get it from?

[crazyzeke]

I'm guessing the clean boost is the grey box at the front? Where'd you get it from?

It is indeed, on the "volume pedal" part of the board (I wanted the option to add one in future like I already have on my organ sim board).

This is a made-to-order boost based on the same MOSFET circuit that was later used in the Catalinbread Super Chile Picoso circuit - I sold mine years ago so my friend Mark, who is a proper engineer and guitarist and currently building me a custom amp into a Laney LC30-II chassis I gave him, offered to make me one. Ended up being a birthday present as my gf at the time bought it for me, and it's a great present because it's basically always in guitar signal path.

Still wish I'd kept the original SCP though.



The thing is, mine was earlier than that. It was vinyl wrapped, not a screen print painted or whatever box, didn't have the toggle switch and was hand-built by Nicolas really really early into the company's life, so it'd be worth a fortune now I'm sure. The one Mark built is good but I think my original SCP was a bit quieter, as in less apparent noise when placed before gain pedals.

[GreenKnee]

The new SG went through the full rig last night. Amusingly, the P90s have that much punch that I didn't use any drive or fuzz because the Bassman was only just managing to keep up, all I needed was the tuner and the DMM.
I suspect the speakers are playing a big part in the breakup as when I put the Bassman through the speakers of the Twin there was a lot more volume and headroom in the amp. I have found myself 1 used C12K, just waiting for another to pop up somewhere so I can make the change - on really don't want to buy new and have to break them in as I remember it took a long time to break the speakers in when I first bought my Twin.

[stevejamsecono]

The new SG went through the full rig last night. Amusingly, the P90s have that much punch that I didn't use any drive or fuzz because the Bassman was only just managing to keep up, all I needed was the tuner and the DMM.
I suspect the speakers are playing a big part in the breakup as when I put the Bassman through the speakers of the Twin there was a lot more volume and headroom in the amp. I have found myself 1 used C12K, just waiting for another to pop up somewhere so I can make the change - on really don't want to buy new and have to break them in as I remember it took a long time to break the speakers in when I first bought my Twin.

Jesus. You win, sir. What a setup.

[crazyzeke]

Jesus. You win, sir. What a setup.

Yeah very much seconded! SG Special into split Bassman alone is cool but when you start adding the pedals it's like

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I don't really like speaker breakup personally so most things I use have some kind of G12T-75 speaker or similar (one of my Laney cabs has a H||H speaker that's voiced very similarly and has a close power rating) that is dB efficient - also means I can use two 1x12" cabs and still have more than enough stage volume.

Part of the reason I didn't get on with the AC30 I had was the bluebacks - I wasn't prepared for how little they could handle the power and would add to the overall compression. Plus bigger speakers you can get more bottom end for rounded cleans. I had a Fender Twin Reverb (early 00s Blackface reissue) and my god the speakers in that were beautiful, almost the equal of any high wattage Celestions.