Presenting the slimmer, sleeker pedal board:

I know, somehow it's less colorful than it has been in the past. So that's kinda sad.

What you're looking at is the result of the last year of deciding exactly what I needed and what I didn't, then trying to find the best of each thing that I could. Notable is that I only have one delay pedal (for now), the newly acquired DD-20, after finally losing patience with the awkwardness of the DL4. I still really like the way that the DL4 sounds, but I've been using my DD-7 on my leading board and have realized just how little I need dual-delays to get the big delay sound that I use most often, and, well, the DD-20 just does more for less space, and has an extra preset. The thing I will miss is that it's missing an expression knob/pedal, which the DL4 had, but I wasn't overly pleased with how the DL4 worked with the expression pedal. If I get a legit analog delay, I will probably be set. Also, no POG. Again, I really liked the POG 2, but if I'm being completely honest, I never used it. And that thing was a beast in terms of real estate, so it got the axe.

I put an expression knob on my Tap-a-Whirl which is something I saw James Duke do and thought it was a great idea. Just cannibalized it from the expression pedal that I was using on the gone-but-not-forgotten DL4. And my drive section is what it is. I was kind of surprised that my favorite drive pedals didn't make it on there, those being the Signa Drive and the Morning Glory. I love both of those, but each of these pedals just add more "weight" to the signal when they're on, and I thought that was probably the most important thing for a drive pedal to do, at least from this board. If I had room for one more drive pedal, it would be the Fulltone Fatboost because I love what that does to push other drive pedals, but I couldn't find a non-awkward way to get it on there. The Timmy has a new chip in it, too; I couldn't quite get behind the one that was in there, so this guy told me to try swapping it out since it's got a chip socket instead of just a soldered chip, and I did, and it kind of blew me away. The actual chip cost me $1.04 with tax from a local electronics shop, and is a version of an LM1458 (I think...). Which seems like I should know exactly what it is, but I don't feel like opening it up to check. But it took me exactly 30 seconds to mod, and man, that guy rocks now. I used to find it a little harsh, now it's smoother. And weight.

Anyway, the current chain (for the pedal nerds like me out there) is:

Guitar -> JHS Little Black Buffer -> MXR Dynacomp -> Vox Wah -> Gravity Drive (a.k.a. Bluesbreaker clone) -> Fulldrive 2 (non-MOSFET for extra street cred...also it sounds pretty awesome) -> Timmy with new chip -> Ernie Ball volume pedal -> Boss DD-20 (with tap tempo) -> Cusack Tap-A-Whirl -> Boss Tu-2 -> Boss RV-5 -> BBE Sonic Stomp -> Amp


...but it will probably change next week.

Long absence? What long absence?

...been quite a while. Sorry. Maybe. I've been busy making music and such, which is I guess the whole point of this thing, but also, I just haven't had too much turnover in gear or change in drinking. Maybe I'm getting old and boring. Maybe.

I am currently in the process of auditioning drive pedals. Behold!

I traded an '81 TS9 for a Fulldrive 2 and a Fatboost, and am trying to figure out which 3 of the 8 drive pedals that I have are going to make it onto the board. I've been having a lot of fun with the Morning Glory, but I've never really sat down and done a large-scale shootout of pedals, more so just picked one, played it for a while, picked another one, played that one for a while, etc. And somewhere along the line I ended up with 8 overdrives. I've also streamlined the rest of my pedalboards, but that's a topic for another post, probably once I'm done figuring out which drives I want...

New Speaker, Old Cocktails

In the course of cycling through gear, some guy offered me a trade involving an Eminence Cannabis Rex, and I thought, sure! I'd been tentatively thinking about replacing the speakers in both of my amps, more so to see what kind of a difference it would make than anything else, and this was one of the "good" ones on the list for the Blues Jr., so I decided to go for it. So I opened that puppy up, made the swap (which was way easier than I'd been expecting, if not a little tedious) and also messed around with my reverb tank, while I was in there. The reverb tank repair didn't take, but the new speaker sure did...

I've been using my Blues Jr. a bit more than my Valve Jr. for when I've got my big-boy electric guitar rig going, mostly because I've found that some of the things that I do to add clarity and punch also add a little bit of harshness to the signal. The combination of my buffer, compressor and BBE Sonic Stomp all make for a crystal clear clean tone, despite the endless effects pedals around, but with all of that clarity, I had to start turning my brightness and sparkle controls all the way down to keep my ears from falling off. I haven't had a chance to run my new speaker through my big rig just yet, but in plugging it in to make sure things worked, this speaker definitely delivers. It's just mellowed things out a bit. Not detracting from the high end or anything like that, but everything just sounds so much more pleasing to the ear. The speaker has also been broken in, which is good, and it's got plenty of bass, which I always appreciate. I've got some more testing and tweaking to do, obviously, but I think it's fixed the issue, which is a great feeling!

I also recently got an e-mail from a prominent cocktail blogger saying very nice things about my site, which was awesome but at the same time made me realize it's been months since I've posted about anything non-guitar-related. Not that that's the end of the world, but things have been a bit one-sided. So to update that side of my personality, I've been drinking about as much as usual, but not really anything exciting or new. I see a huge upswing in the abilities of bars to accommodate the drink snob like me, but it's still probably going to be years, if ever, before we get back to the bar, circa 1957. Not that it's the bar's fault; that lies mostly in the hands and tastebuds of my peers, who would still rather have alcohol be a means to an end, rather than an experience for the palate. Call me old-fashioned, but if I'm going to have an adult drink, I'd prefer it didn't taste like something a kindergartener would enjoy.

But to that end, my time spent drinking out almost always gravitates towards the safe choices. It's impossible to mess up a Gin and Tonic, the old liquor on the rocks takes literally no thought on the bartender's part, and the varieties of craft beer available in the St. Louis area make me wonder if I could ever make it through every beer in existence. My opportunities to drink from the comforts of my own home bar have been more limited, too, though more due to my own laziness than anything else. My liquor collection is as impressive as ever, and I now have access to 7 different bitters, orange flower-water, Allspice Dram and Falernum, but have yet to really experiment with a lot of it. Part of it is, after a night of work, I just prefer the ease of a beer or a scotch, rather than rattling up the shaker. Part of it is that I'm less than satisfied with my ice-making capabilities. I think I'm getting old and crotchety. And still only 26!

Perhaps I'll get back to a place where I'm drinking something exciting more regularly. Everything is a cycle, as they say.

Pedalboard Update - July

Here's what I'm running with right now:

Guitar -> (Fuzz Face) -> JHS Buffer -> MXR Compressor -> VOX Wah -> EHX POG 2 -> Bluesbreaker -> Morning Glory -> Signa Drive -> Tap-a-whirl -> Boss CE-2 Chorus -> Volume pedal -> Boss DD-7 (with tap tempo) -> DL4 (with expression knob) -> BBE Sonic Stomp -> Boss Tuner -> Boss RV-5 -> amp

I did what we all do and got sick of what was already kind of working, in favor of something that might work better. It looks really different because I moved a lot of stuff around, but the only actual new pedals are the Cusack Tap-A-Whirl, which I'm still getting used to, and the JHS Morning Glory, which is awesome. And also the Fuzzface, though that's not a normal part of the board, since I don't normally need fuzz, but it's really easy to plug in if I need it. I also cleaned up some of the mundane stuff. I moved the buffer underneath the pedalboard, like so:

So that all I need to do is plug in to the bottom of the board, and it looks pretty slick. I got a second Pedal Power 2+ and mounted it underneath, so now every pedal has it's own channel on a power supply. And because I now need to run two power cables, plus an amp send line, from the board, I home-made a pedal snake by getting two long power cables and zip-tying it all together. I think I need to get some kind of covering for it, though, since you can't run it through your hands. I'll look into that.

The only thing that I know will absolutely change in a bit is I've finally caught up with 2008 and ordered a Timmy. So that's going to go in the place of the Bluesbreaker pedal, which is great but isn't as versatile as the Morning Glory, which based itself upon the Bluesbreaker anyway. But for now, I'm using the Bluesbreaker as I would the Timmy; as a cleanish boost and to push the other overdrives. I love the expression knob on the DL4, since it lets me control whatever I want, which right now is just repeats on all of my delays. And so far the layout is working out pretty well, since it's protecting the pedals I want to protect (compressor, sonic stomp) from my foot while giving me good access to the rest of them.

As far as amps go, I'm digging my Valve Jr. for plugging straight in, but with the pedalboard I'm finding I like the ability to tweak some of the brightness out, so my Blues Jr. lets me do that. I've really only been working things out with my new Strat, though, so we'll see what happens when I try out my other guitars. But for a good Strat, this setup is pretty killer.

I wasn't sure this day would ever come...

In spite of my sporadic posts (which is, I promise, the last time I'm going to talk about that), I've actually been quite busy with moving around guitar gear lately. Too busy, in fact. Maybe one of the reasons why I haven't been posting much is because I could never figure out what gear to talk about, since I was getting so much new gear so often. And it's come to the point where I'm now doing one of the most difficult things I've ever done related to guitars:

I'm down-sizing.

I looked up the other day and I had 9 guitars. 9! I don't have 9 sets of hands! How could I have that many? The fact is, it just kind of happened over time. But it made me realize just how much money I had tied up in cheap guitars, with about four different plans to upgrade them and make them my own. But I can't justify 9 guitars. So I'm selling off two of them to make some money to, you know, actually upgrade some of the others.

Best example: I've had an Epiphone Les Paul forever. But what I really want it some kind of ES-335. So I bought and Epiphone Dot, with the thought that I'd eventually upgrade all of the hardware and the pickups and end up with a very good guitar. But what I've realized is, that was kind of my plan all along for the Les Paul. So what am I going to do? Sell the Dot and another guitar and finally make the upgrades that I've wanted to make. I still want an ES-335 someday. But if I upgrade the pickups on my cheapie Les Paul, then someday when I do get a nice Gibson ES-335, I can just swap out the pickups and have a guitar to drool over. And in the mean time, I can get pretty good tone from my Les Paul, and I can then sell it with the original pickups and not lose any money.

I'm not sure why it took me 9 guitars to figure all of that out. I've been putting money in to my pedalboard for years, only having recently slowed way down and concentrated more on upgrades than on buying new things because they're shiny. Amps are the same way; I got nicer tubes and am on the waiting list to have Bill M mod my Blues Jr., and in the mean time I've been digging my Musicmaster way, way more for how clear of a tone it puts out. And that's even with a 35 year old speaker. Something about the hand-wiring, I'm sure.

So yeah, this isn't an exciting post. More like a "responsible" one. How boring.

Pedalboard Update - October 2011

I figured I needed to put SOMETHING up here, so here goes. A lot of my gear has made rapid shifts in the last few months, what with buying lots of guitars and getting other ones setup, but the pedalboard has been relatively constant for a while now. Actually, strike that. It's been completely consistent. I can't really even remember the last iteration of my 'board that I put up here, but this one is only one pedal off from what I've been rocking for about 2 months, so there's that.

The main thing that's changed has been the positioning of a lot of the pedals. I usually find myself using the overdrive pedals to give me a different flavor, then use the RC booster almost entirely as a solo boost, which is why it's extremely easily accessible there at the bottom of the board. Next to it is the CE-2 because I love that pedal but it's on/off switch is really, really old, so sometimes it doesn't exactly respond when it gets stomped on. So it's in the bottom row so that I'm not all off-balance in the event that it doesn't go on or off right away. The sonic stomp and the Dynacomp are both always on, so their position doesn't matter as much; I really liked the Dynacomp in the position that I've had it in forever because it's out of the way, but I've been running out of room so I had to get creative. I did take off the speed-knob attachments though, so now it's nearly impossible for me to turn those knobs accidentally with my foot while I'm going for another pedal. And I was able to work a legit fuzz in to the board. I really like this one so far, but I need to play with it a lot more to really figure out how to dial in the fuzz sounds I like. But this one (the Barber Trifecta) plays nice with buffers, so it was nice to not have to put it first in the chain or anything like that. But as for the signal chain:

Guitar -> JHS Little Black Buffer -> MXR Dynacomp -> VOX Wah (Modded for true bypass) -> Xotic RC Booster -> Gravity Drive -> Analog.man TS-9 (modded to TS-808 specs) -> Barber Trifecta Fuzz -> Boss CE-2 Chorus -> Voodoo Labs Tremolo -> Ernie Ball Volume Pedal -> Boss DD-7 (with external tap tempo) -> Line 6 DL4 -> BBE Sonic Stomp -> Boss Tu-2 Tuner -> Boss RV-5 Reverb -> Amp

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this setup. I got another Keeley modded BD-2 that I love, but between that and the Gravity Drive (which is a Marshall Bluesbreaker clone), it didn't make the cut. I had it over my Fuzz, but now that I have a fuzz, I couldn't find the room for the BD-2; it will probably find a permanent home on my leader-board, which is my next project. But this setup lets me do everything I need to do. I've got a low-gain drive (Gravity Drive) and a medium-gain drive (Tubescreamer) along with a dirty fuzz (Trifecta) for when I need that. I've got a solo boost that will further drive whatever drive I have on, or that will make my clean tone sparkle for a lead or push the amp a bit more. I can stack the drives too, if I want (I like both the gravity drive and tubescreamer on at the same time). I can use a Wah and delay for some ambiance, or fuzz and delay for pad work. I can use tremolo, chorus and/or delay to do crazy stuff. My tuner also functions as a kill switch if I need to stop all of my delay or feedback or what have you. And with my buffer, compressor and Dynacomp, my clean tone is rich and full in spite of the 50+ feet of cables between my amp and guitar. The only thing I can't do is POG-type stuff, but I'm not sure what I'd cut to make room. Maybe the fuzz? We'll see how much use it gets.

Oh yeah. I also got a VOX coily cable. Because I want to be Jimi Hendrix. But mostly because it's really convenient to not be stepping all over my cable all day long. I do like what this particular cable does to my tone, though.

...someday I'll come back to this blog....

So here are the things that have changed in my life since I last wrote here:

• Started using my Musicmaster to play out a little more. It's awesome. It makes me rely on pedal-based overdrive since it doesn't have a Master Volume, but I've been doing that anyway. It's also way lighter than my Blues Jr. and it sounds wonderfully hand-wired. If that's even a thing it can sound like.
• Took my Strat in for a complete setup and my Mustang in for repairs. Free plug for Skip Goez. He knows what's up.
• Am switching bank accounts. Bank of America has earned my ire.
• Wrote a whole new Mass for the upcoming changes. The non-Catholics here probably have no idea what that means, but it's kind of a big deal. I will hopefully have some YouTubes up at some point; right now I'm working on finding some compositional software to get it all written out professionally. Any suggestions?
• Speaking of writing, I've had two different book ideas pass through my head, and I need to get started on two talks that will be happening shortly.
• Have a Barber Trifecta Fuzz on the way that should be here today....and my board has changed, as it is wont to do, ever so slightly since the last update. But I've been playing out a lot more and I like where it's at now. But yes, the fuzz will require shuffling everything around, since fuzzes don't like buffers and as it stands right now, the buffer is the first thing in the chain.
• Turned 26. So that was fun.
• Still have to do a review of the Gravity Drive. Long story short, it's a Bluesbreaker clone! And I love it.
• I never thought I'd do a bullet-point-format post? I guess I am getting to be like Karl....

Splendid.

Ben

New Gear: Westbury W20 "The Tube" Overdrive

So the last few weeks have been a bit crazy; sorry! As promised though, here's a quick demo of a pedal that I got in a trade on Craigslist. I like it, but I can't justify keeping it so it's out on the Gearpage as we speak, with perhaps a stop on eBay in it's future. So if you like it and you're interested, shoot me an e-mail!

I present, the Westbury W20 "The Tube" Overdrive:




Here we've got a Gretsch hollowbody going into the tube, into my Blues Jr. And some less-than-spectacular playing, combined with some in-demo tuning. Recorded on the iPhone. All the makings of a rock star, I tell you....

It's an interesting pedal. Clearly, it's not transparent. The closest comparison I can make is that it's similar to a Tubescreamer, except that there's a 12ax7 tube in it so it's much warmer. From all of the information I can gather, it was made in Japan in the 1980's, then re-released by Nady once they bought Westbury. There are some people who really, really love it and seek it out since it's super rare. It does have some pretty nice drive at lower gain levels, but it's just got way more than I think I'll ever need. Maybe not though. I'm kind of on the fence, but I'm not in love with it.

You knew this day was coming....

I've been a little frustrated with my pedalboard for a while now. I know, I know, a guitarist saying that he's not happy with his gear is like...I don't know...something. Point is, we all expected it, right? Well, just this night I've undergone a pretty drastic re-imagining of my electric rig. There are some old favorites that have migrated back on, and some pedals that have been on the board since the beginning that are either absent, or will be quite shortly.

This all started when I got my shiny, legit Tubescreamer and the tone faeries announced their presence in a flash of lime-green light and with the unmistakable sound of a mid-range hump. And I (almost) never wanted to turn it off. Then, I thought, I like this compressor, and it should always be on, too, so let's throw that in there. Then, I started to play around with my volume pedal as a means to control how much drive my amp was getting, so that one was "always on", too. Little by little, pedals moved from my looper to just in front or behind it until I had more out than in. Then, I began to find some minor annoyances with the looper itself. Nothing drastic; an LED on the first loop that decides to work intermittently. The not-so-silent switching. The space/weight it takes up. It made trying to experiment with stereo amps very awkward. Some of the buffers in the pedals (most notably the DL4) would add a noticeable amount of treble just by virtue of being included in the signal chain when that particular loop was engaged. These are all minor points, to be sure, but I think you can see where I'm going with this....

Yeah, it's gone.

Not gone as in "gone forever" gone, at least not yet, but I gave my board a good, hard look and just sort of found myself subtracting off things that I never used. The backup DD-7 is cool, and it's not something I'll never do again, but I was using it so infrequently, particularly when I can just tap in a short quarter thing on the DL4 and get the same effect. I also literally never turned on any of my distortions (Aria Disnortion or the Keeley-modded DS-1) in a live setting, preferring instead to just stack my drives, so since they weren't pulling their figurative weight, I wasn't going to carry around their literal weight. The signal chain, as of May:

Guitar -> JHS Little Black Buffer -> MXR Dynacomp -> Vox Wah (modded for True Bypass) -> Analogman TS-9/808 Silver Mod -> Fulltone Fulldrive 2 MOSFET -> Voodoo Labs Tremolo -> Boss CE-2 -> Ernie Ball Volume Pedal -> Boss DD-7 -> Line 6 DL4 -> BBE Sonic Stomp -> Boss TU-2 -> Boss RV-5 -> Amp(s?)

Basically, this is all of the stuff I need. I've forgotten how much fun it is to play with a Wah and a Chorus. And literally the only reason why I can possibly do this board is because of the Little Black Buffer and the really good cables that I made earlier. That thing really is magic, because there's no discernible difference between my board and going straight in. I mean, I'm sure a difference exists, but it sounds amazing to me. The Fulldrive might turn into two or three other ODs, but for now it's versatile enough to stay on the board. The TU-2 acts as a kill-switch if my delays are getting ridiculous (the one biggest benefit to having the looper), and the outs on the RV-5 means that I can run in stereo if I so choose.

This definitely isn't the end-all, be-all, but it's where I'm at now. Having to lug around an 80+ pound pedalboard was getting tiresome, so even if this is 5 or 10 pounds less, it's going to make a difference!

Need to play acoustic AND electric?

So as is apparently my style, I posted furiously for a few days and then did nothing for a week. This has got to be murder on my readership (if any), but maybe it will make it sound cooler if I say that I was busy working on side-projects. That's what rock-stars do, right? Side-projects? Like when Bono teams up with Elton John to...help him move his couch...or...something. Bam. Side-project.

Anyway, despite the fact that I haven't said anything much about guitars in a while, there have been some updates/upgrades/poor decision-making on my part that you'll likely be hearing about in the next few days, but the punchline is that I have actually been quite busy over the last month, playing a lot of guitar and leading a lot of worship. Basically, playing music rather than writing about the things that help me play music. I thought I'd tease you with a shot of what I've been rolling with for about a month now. It's a good, small board for leading via acoustic or electric that has everything I need and nothing I don't and manages to get it all onto one Pedaltrain Jr.

It also draws inspiration from Kristian Stanfill, because of course I can never just make my own decisions, but the idea is, like he says there, just to have some basic electric tones and to let your electric guitarist really do his thing, not step on any toes, things like that. But The acoustic side runs through the Hardwire tuner, the Fishman magic pedal and the Strymon OB.1 and then to my direct box and on out to the house. The electric goes through the Boss tuner, the MXR compressor, the Tubescreamer and the Boss DD-7 to the amp. This lets me do a lot of rhythmic things, clean or dirty, and lets the guy who is focused on making electric guitar noises make the crazy, lead-sounding ones. And of course this board is getting broken up as we speak because I'm going to be playing with my big electric board over the Easter weekend...but I'll probably come back to this, or something like it, very often. Maybe with some reverb, too.....

On Transparency and the Theory of Guitar Tone; or, New Gear - Analog.man TS9/TS-808 Silver Mod

I get the feeling that with every bit of gear I get, I move further away from Karl and closer to James Duke. I still think Karl has some great tone and some of the things he does with delay makes me weep. I think James Duke is more like me, though. I'm really messy and stuff. I try to be transparent, but no matter how much I clean myself up, there's still going to be little bits of me left behind. Like a slight mid-hump. I think the thing I like most about his gear is that he's got a few pedals that are "always" on. Now, of course, that doesn't actually mean always. Just, maybe, 80% or 90% of the time. Or maybe actually always. With this last little bit of gear acquisition, I think I've figured out why.

"Transparent" is one of those gear buzzwords that people like to throw out there. From a technical standpoint, I suppose it means that whatever you put in, you get out. The equilization doesn't change, or the level is the same, or there aren't any little nasty digital artifacts or fuzzy analog distortions or anything at all. Or maybe it means that it will preserve your playing dynamics. Or that your guitar and your amp sounds like your guitar and your amp. As a marketing tool, it's an awesome concept. You can buy this new piece of gear and it won't hurt the tone that you've worked so hard to find for so long! As a logical concept, what the hell does that even mean?

What does "your guitar" sound like? Can you even hear "your guitar" in a vacuum? The very nature of the electric guitar is that it interacts with an amplifier. What does "your guitar" sound like? Largely, that depends on what amp you are playing through. A Fender American Standard Stratocaster is going to sound one way through a Fender Bassman amp, and a very different way through a Marshall "Bluesbreaker", and still another different way through a Vox AC-30. Even the impedance of the guitar cable that you use will change how your guitar sounds. And then, what about effects pedals? Every pedal, if it's True Bypass (another great buzzword that can mean pretty much anything) or buffered, is going to affect your sound. If it's connected to your guitar and amp, off or on, it's going to change things. The war is often in how much or how little of a change. Even the most "transparent" of pedals is going to affect your sound in some way. It would be impossible for it not to.

Here's the point. I recently was able to do a straight up trade of my Boss BD-2 with the Keeley Mod in it, for a pedal that I've been questing after the entirety of my guitar journey. From day one, everyone always said, you've got to have a Tube Screamer. Everyone has played through one at one point or another, and it's a major piece of gear that shapes the tone of some of the greatest guitarists who have ever walked the earth. John Mayer. The Edge of U2. Eric Johnson. Stevie Ray Vaughn. Rory Gallagher. The list goes on. So I researched it, seeing that there are many variations. The original Ibanez TS-808 is the Holy Grail, with vintage ones easily reaching $500. Then there are reissues, and mods, and copies, and "new" versions, and everything under the sun. My Fulltone Fulldrive 2 is (in "Vintage" mode) a Tube Screamer clone. The Tube Screamer is literally the most copied, most sought-after pedal in existence. So, naturally, there are good ones and better ones. Most people who are being honest will admit that there is a difference between the $500 one and the $200 reissue and the $100 sound-alike, but they will also admit that they're pretty small differences, not usually justifying all that extra money, and that they all sound "good" (if you're really interested in the full history, there is a really good rundown from analog.man). So as a result, I was happy with my Fulldrive 2, because it's pretty close to a Tube Screamer. Close enough for me, anyway. Until now.

What I got was originally some kind of TS9 (probably a reissue) that was modded to TS-808 specs and then beyond with analog.man's "silver mod". Basically, it's "better" than the original TS-808, but the changes are super subtle, so subtle that you likely wouldn't be able to tell unless you knew what you were looking for and you had both the original and the new version in front of you. In blind tests, most of the differences are so subtle as to be non-existent. But for many, getting a mod done is a good way to get vintage tone for a fraction of the cost and with some upgraded reliability. For me, it only cost me my BD-2, and considering I got that pedal for a significant discount, it was something I just couldn't pass up.

 Pictured above: Tone.

Here's where all of that talk of "transparency" comes back in. I've been playing around with this TS9 for a little while now, and I really like it. It's not "transparent" in the sense that it doesn't affect your tone. It does do a really good job of preserving the dynamics and feel of your playing, so in that sense, it could be called "transparent". At "unity gain" (a fancy term for the same volume level coming in as going out, and no extra gain added), my guitar sounds very similar to when the pedal isn't there, except that it's a little thicker sounding and it's got more sustain. For those of you who aren't familiar, those are generally good things. I know I really like it. Then you can play with the gain knob and get all different levels of distortion, and it's all really smooth sounding. Not harsh. Which is good when that's what you're going for.

I like the idea of an "always on" pedal, because if you like your tone more with it on, why would you ever turn it off? And I think this one is one of them. I've got a DynaComp in my chain right now that is always on, too. Is it going to give me the same tone as going from my guitar straight into my amp? No. But then, I'm not sure I really like that tone, at least not with the guitars and amps I have. It's thin and a bit brittle. Not awful, since my guitars aren't awful, and not something that can't be fixed with a few upgrades (which are most certainly next on the chopping block), but definitely not pleasing to me. I like my tone much better when I've got my compressor going, even though it is by no means "transparent". And now I like it even more with my modded Tube Screamer. It sounds like awesomeness. And I've still got all of the weight of my playing dynamics.

The point is, in many fewer words, if it sounds good to you, then it's good. If it inspires you, then it's good. Jimi Hendrix used a tone-sucking coiley cable his entire career. Mark from the David Crowder*Band has a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor pedal in his chain. That pedal, objectively, sucks. But ask him about it (because people definitely have), and he'll tell you, "I like my tone better when it's on." And really, that's all that matters.

Don't buy in to the marketing, or even feel free to disregard what I say. Play with what sounds good to you.

Tap Tempo Troubles...

(Sorry, this is a super technical and probably super boring entry, but if you're into electronics, enjoy! If not, just go watch that Ryan Adams clip I uploaded in the last entry. It's way more interesting.)

So you remember how I said that I had an ingenious plan to make both of my DD-7's sync up to one tap tempo? By home-brewing a Y cable that split the signal and sent it to each delay? Turns out my soldering sucks.

I would tap in a tempo, and first of all, the delays would only kind of get the idea. Like they'd catch three out of four times I'd step on it. Then one would be a few milliseconds off from the other, so they would drift in and out of sync. Kind of a cool effect, to be honest, but definitely not what I was going for. What could I do? I could of course get one of those cool tap tempo boxes that has two outputs. That would be the easiest. Though if you're looking at my current pedalboard, you'll notice that there's not much room left, so it probably wouldn't have fit. And this was more fun.

Step one involved ordering an insert cable. An insert cable is used to send and receive information from a device. It's got a Tip-Ring-Sleeve (TRS) end on one side and two Tip-Sleeve (TS) ends on the other, where one gets the signal from the tip, the other from the ring, and they share a sleeve. That's pretty much the only kind of split cable with 1/4" ends that you can buy without having something specially made. Since quality literally does not matter to me, I got an $8 job (with shipping and handling) from Zzounds.

Step two was to find a TRS jack. Radioshack to the rescue. $4.

So then a little bit of wizardry. I took out the old jack, saving as much wire as I could on the leads and making a note of what wire went to the Tip (or carried the signal) and what wire went to the Sleeve (or was the ground). Then I connected the Tip and Ring terminals together on the new jack with a little bit of wire that was laying around (you can literally use anything) and soldered it in place. The last step, solder the signal wire, which previously was attached to the Tip, to the Tip/Ring connection, and the ground wire to the Sleeve terminal. Put the little box back together, et voila.

Now, when I tap in a tempo, both DD-7s get a strong signal because I'm not compromising the integrity of the cable, and they both stay in sync. There is, of course, a downside. If I were to use a normal (a.k.a. unbalanced, TS, Mono) 1/4" cable, pretty much like all guitar cables you ever come in contact with, the Ring terminal will come into contact with the Sleeve, short-circuiting things and making it not work. So this is only a stereo tap tempo pedal from now on. Though I would think that if I used a TRS -> TRS cable, it would still work perfectly...something to experiment with. If only I OWNED a stereo cable...

...just don't tell Loopmaster. I may have voided the warranty. ;-)

Pedalboard update for January

Okay, so what started out as me just wanting to add a few pedals turned into a full-blown cable-building frenzy which has only just now concluded. And the end result is probably the slickest 'board I've ever put together. Mostly because, when I was in Home Depot looking for a wire stripper, I came across some cable tie mounts which were running $2 for 10 of them, so I said, "Why not?" I also ran across a quality multimeter which I needed and a 10-foot piece of 2x10 that eventually became a soldering workstation, but that's neither here nor there. Point is, new pedalboard!

 As you can see, there's a lot of new stuff on there. The current signal chain is:

Guitar -> JHS Little Black Buffer -> Strymon OB. 1 Compressor -> volume pedal -> loopmaster bypass strip:
Tuner out: Hardwire tuner
1. - Fulltone Fulldrive 2
2. - Boss BD-2 (Keeley mod)
3. - Pigtronix Aria Disnortion
4. - Voodoo Labs Tremolo
5. - 2 Boss DD-7s
6. - Line 6 DL4
7. - Boss RV-5
-> BBE Sonic Stomp -> Amp

That's a lot of changes. The astute readers will note that things look an awful lot like Daniel Carson's latest board. That's not entirely by accident. I prefer to think of it as a blend between him and James Duke. Mostly, the fact that we've got a volume pedal, a compressor and a tubescreamer of some kind that's almost always on. I actually had an MXR Dynacomp for about a day that I'd gotten used from guitar center for $40, but it had this nasty mechanical throbbing sound that was probably some sort of malfunction, so back it went, but it reopened my eyes to how much a compressor really adds to a guitar. Does it color my sound? Sure, everything does. But I think I like my tone better (95% of the time) with my OB.1 in the loop.

I also blatantly stole the dual DD-7's synced to a single tap tempo from Carson, but it's great. I love the DD-7, and I've been trying to find a delay like it so I can run dotted 8ths on one and quarters on the other, or quarters and halfs, or just have one doing reverse and one analog, or anything like that. I kept trying out tons of different delays to make it work, when it turns out that all I needed was just another DD-7. And if you're going to try to sync them yourselves, be forewarned; it's hard to find a cable that will do what you want it to do. It's not a good idea from an audio perspective to split your signal like that, so no one really manufactures a cable that will do precisely that, because there's no market for it. I had to invent my own using three separate hunks of cable and a whole lot of solder. But it was fun, and now things are awesome.

They also both have the RV-5. I wanted the RV-3 for a long time. I don't really want to pay $130 for a pedal that was $80 a year ago, though. I don't care about Radiohead. Also, the RV-5 has a modulated reverb that everyone seems to love. Just got it in the mail today, slapped it on, and considered my board to be complete. But the modulated reverb does sound sweet.

Here's what I'm particularly proud (and anal) about:

Yep. All those glorious cable ties. I got some black ones while I was at Home Depot. And you can see my JHS buffer, still hanging out underneath there on the left side, still making my tone awesome without giving away that he's the one to blame for the awesomeness. Booyah.

So that's that. For now. Board rigged up with a bypass looper, a great buffer, and Canare GS-6 cables with G&H Showstopper plugs. I can't possibly complain about my board's tone-sucking abilities anymore. Now any sucking that happens is my own fault. Or my amp/guitar's......

A quick update from guitar world...

I should never bother saying "done!" when it comes to guitar. I know, I keep referencing how my gear constantly changes, but it seems like I'd learn to be okay with the constant change, to not feel the need to say that I've found the perfect rig for me....oh well.

Right now, I've started the long, yet rewarding, process of soldering up my own patch cables for my entire board. I had some solderless cable kit from Livewire, which was okay. It was really convenient. The cables suck, though. Really unreliable when you move them around at all. Which, with my (and most other guitarists') inability to pick a setup and stick with it, is not exactly a good feature.

It's also giving me a chance to develop my soldering skills, which is awesome. I'm using Canare GS-6 cable and G&H Showsaver plugs, which have a copper core so they conduct really well. I was going to use GS-4 cable, but for 50 feet of cable, the difference was like $15. The plugs were the expensive part, by a lot. I'm making 22 cables for my electric board and 3 or 4 for my acoustic one, which is more than 50 plugs. I kind of sprung for good ones, but even the cheap ones would have run in excess of $100 for as many cables as I'm making, just for the plugs. I guess I figured, it's probably cheaper in the long run to do it right the first time.

Pictured: ingenuity!

I've got a lot of work to do, but it's fun to have a project. And once I'm done, I won't really have any more excuses to put more money into my effects, other than perhaps buying more effects....but I'll finally have some rationale to upgrade my amps!

New Gear: JHS Little Black Buffer

It's been quite a while, but if you are at all like me, you know that the Christmas season makes things busier, rather than more relaxing. Something about working for the Church seems to transform me into Bizarro-Superman, where I only work weekends and holidays mean I'm at work (church) for five Masses in 48 hours. Such is life.

Between Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, my normal Sunday that followed, and a week-long trip to Chicago for New Years (well deserved and well received), I've been much too busy to string two words together on the internet, but I assure you that the time spent in real life (hereafter referred to as RL) was well worth it. Time to refuel and relax, and spend time with the people I love. That is, after all, what the holidays are all about!

First, a bit of bad news. Yesterday, Sunday, directly following my noon Mass, I slipped on my awesome gold String Dog Cable. I love this cable. It sounds boss, and I've yet to hear guitar tone as nice as simply going guitar -> String Dog Cable -> amp, mostly because I think that the tone faeries that they've somehow managed to enslave and bind within the insulation of said cable are at their happiest when there are none of those tricksy pedals getting in their way. But beware if you get this cable, on a tile or otherwise smooth, hard surface, it is very slippery. Low coefficient of friction. I've almost bit it a couple of times in the past, but this Sunday I couldn't catch myself, and I landed on my guitar. Kind of.

Luckily for me, I was using my now-relegated-to-backup-status Breedlove. Lucky because the Breedlove is built really solidly, whereas my Taylor probably would have had some serious damage. There appears to be almost minimal damage to the guitar itself (though appearances can definitely be deceiving), but the electronics aren't quite unscathed. The guitar has developed an interesting grounding issue, to the point where I get a very off-putting hum that randomly flares up during moments of quiet contemplation, and which render the onboard tuner sometimes useless. When plugged in. Unplugged, it's just fine. But in my position, mostly useless. So my options, as I see them, are to either get it fixed, which probably won't be too bad, or use it as an excuse to catapult myself towards an premium guitar. I love excuses. To be continued...

I did get a bit of an early Christmas present to myself, in enough time to wire up my electric board and play for two Christmas Masses. Normally it makes me really nervous to go out and play some untested gear for the first time, but let's just say that I was completely in love with my tone. I give you, the JHS Little Black Buffer.


Since my latest incarnation of my electric board, where I have my old-school, tone-sucking Volume Pedal first in my guitar chain, I'd noticed, well, a lot of tone-sucking. Particularly when I'd engage a loop that had a pedal with a buffer in it (mostly my delays) and I'd get an extremely noticeable increase in highs simply because of the presence of a buffer, any buffer. The true-bypass strip was doing it's job, but it was doing it a bit too well. The problem being, I thought that all of my buffered pedals buffers sucked too much to move to an always-on position.

So I did what I always do when faced with a gear-related decision: I checked what some trusted sources had done to combat the problem, then copied them completely. For this one in particular, I noticed that James Duke had recently gotten a buffer from JHS and loved it. Some quick perusing of some sound clips of theirs and I was hooked. I also want a lot of their drives, but that's neither here nor there. $95 later, (free shipping, no less) and my order was on it's way to the factory.

(I should note a dissenting (kind of) opinion. Karl likes the Fryette Valvulator buffer, which has an honest-to-goodness tube in it, and can also serve as a regulated power supply for a few effects, which is really handy. As it is also like $240 + shipping, and the sound-clips on JHS' website were sufficiently impressive, I saved a little money. Still, tubes.)

Got it on the Monday before Christmas, and installed it thusly:


It's all secret, strapped to the bottom of the board. It's almost like it's not even there, just hanging out, making my tone insanely better without garnering any attention of it's own, just like a buffer should. The chain is guitar -> Pedalboard bypass -> buffer -> everything else, so that the first thing the guitar sees is, effectively, about an extra foot of cable and jacks, then the buffer.

Let me just say, wow. I've taken to plugging straight in lately because I really like tone, and this buffer gives it all back. Only I still get to play with my pedals and I get complete control over my volume/distortion level with my volume pedal. All the life, all the snap, all the feel, all the vibe, all the everything is there. Buffers are cool. Get one.

And it makes me laugh that every guitarist I talk to who has put a buffer on to his board says the same thing, that they can't believe what a difference a buffer makes. And yet most guitarists don't have one. Particularly for me (my style is very much rhythmic, as opposed to lead, which makes sense since I grew up leading worship from an acoustic and am not a "good" guitar player by any stretch), where clean tone is really important, having an actual clean tone that is, well, clean, is huge. Get one.

New Pedalboard

So, after having successfully predicted that I was done re-arranging my pedal board, I've re-arranged it some more! Things really haven't changed since May though, which is a shocking amount of time considering that I play electric guitar.

This was spurred by two events: one, my recent purchase of an MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay (which I need to play with more, but I've been looking for an actual analog delay for a while now, and I got a pretty good price on it), and two, I was watching Daniel Carson (Chris Tomlin's guitarist) take me through a song I already knew (Our God, in this case), and he finished with a shot at his pedalboard and something just clicked. He's definitely not the end-all, be-all of guitarists, but he needs to get tons of different sounds and he does so pretty simply. So I simplified.

First, I had to decide what effects I actually use. So off goes the Wah, the Chorus and the eq pedal, since I've never actually turned any of them on in front of people. I do intend to take a bit of good advice that James Duke (John Mark McMillan's guitarist) gave only to me (and anyone else who would read his blog), and that is that, just because it's not on your board doesn't mean you should sell it. I don't know how to use chorus, but that doesn't mean I never will, and my CE-2 is a really good chorus that would probably be somewhat hard to find again. And as much as tastes change with electric guitar playing, who's to say I won't want it some day in the future?

Once that was settled, I rethought my chain, mostly because I saw a cable in this video going from Daniel Carson's guitar straight into the volume pedal. And my volume pedal's always been in a loop. Which means I never turned it on as much as I'd want to. I decided that I wanted to try using my volume pedal as an always-on kind of pedal, even though it does suck some tone. If that really bothers me, I can just go find a good buffer. So here's the chain as of November:

Guitar-> Ernie Ball Volume Pedal -> Loopmaster bypass strip:
- Tuner out: Hardwire Chromatic tuner
- Loop 1: Fulltone Fulldrive 2
- Loop 2: Boss DS-1 (Keeley mod)
- Loop 3: empty
- Loop 4: Voodoo Labs Tremolo
- Loop 5: Boss DD-7 (with tap tempo, just to right of bypass strip)
- Loop 6: MXR Carbon Copy
- Loop 7: Line 6 DL4
-> Amp

With my pedalboard bypass securely fastened (via both velcro and a zip tie) to the top right corner of my board.

What I like about this setup is mostly that the volume pedal gets in on the action. I'm not very happy just setting my drive somewhere and keeping it there during the whole song. Hitting another boost or something just feels really...discrete to me. Mathematically speaking. Which, in this case, means the opposite of discreet. It was really noticeable to me when I kicked on a drive, and that kind of bothered me since I feel it should be a smoother transition from a clean part to a dirty part. Continuous.

What it all boils down to is that I've got more playing to do. I need to get a good feel for how my effects interact now. I also have an open space where I can plug in a flavor-of-the-week effect, be it a drive (I've had my eye on a Bluesbreaker for a while) or a POG or whatever. Maybe even something that can change from gig to gig. And I think I'm still on the lookout for a Trem with a tap tempo (really digging the Cusack Tap-a-whirl), and there's a good chance I'll end up with some kind of buffer before everything's said and done. But before I go all crazy and buy tons more stuff, I need to just get better with what I have! But that's not as much fun as buying new pedals...

New Gear: Taylor 314ce-LTD, and Bonus Gear Review: Fishman Aura

...so much for having a lot to write about, huh?

Seriously though, this month has been crazy busy. The biggest thing has been, in the last two weeks I've played in two weddings while attending three (including one that was my best friend). That's a lot of extra stuff to do when you already don't really have a weekend. I've got another wedding this weekend, and Halloween coming up the week after that...it's a good thing I don't have a day-job, because I'm exhausted!

Anyway, all that is a big fat excuse, which I don't like doing. What else have I been doing with my time? Playing with my new child. Meet the Taylor.


Solid (Sitka Spruce) top, solid (Brazilian Rosewood) back and sides. Ebony fretboard. Built in November of 2001. It's got the older pickup system which actually sounds pretty darn good with no effects. Satin finish which is not perfect, but nothing more than a ding or scuff which is probably pretty good for a nine-year old guitar. Speaking of the age, it's in a great place for an acoustic guitar; the neck is still perfect and the tone woods have really opened up. Great depth of tone fingerpicking, flat-picking or strumming. Definitely brighter than my Breedlove (I mean, it's a Taylor), but that helps it play even better in a full-band setting. And as much as I try to not be the guy who's affected by the name on the headstock, you can feel the quality in this guitar as you play it. I'm not sure quite how to describe it; "delicate" would be the wrong word, but maybe "fine"? The wood resonates together so that you can feel it in the guitar, against your hands and in your gut.

And it only cost me my ASAT. Sad to see it go since it was my first "real" electric guitar, but I honestly can't justify having a premium Telecaster that never gets played. This gives me two acoustics so I can have a backup (you know, when I'm wrecking it for 20,000 fans), and in fact was quite a bit in the black for me, as trades go. I just couldn't pass it by. Plus, I LOVE (in case you haven't figured it out yet) the Squier CV Telecaster if I ever need a Telecaster, which is a bit more cost-effective. I'm thinking I need an ES-335 of some kind first, though...

But anyway, the second half: Fishman no longer sells their Aura pedal in a locked-in flavor, like the "Concert" model that I bought sometime last year. Instead, they sell a one-size fits all pedal that comes pre-loaded with some Dreadnaught images, but comes with access to the entire library of images. Big bonus: if you have a Dreadnaught guitar, a Concert guitar and a nylon-string guitar, you don't have to buy three pedals. You can customize your one pedal to have any images you need. I thought that they should have done that immediately, but the fact that I could upgrade for really cheap is just as good. A bit more exciting is that there's a whole set of images for the Taylor 314ce, which means I didn't have to fiddle around too much to find some images that really make my guitar sound like my guitar. It's also great because there's no practical reason to have more than three or four images per guitar; I mean, how many different situations are going to come up where a different shade of tone is going to be just perfect? I've settled on a solo-acoustic tone, a band tone, and two different finger-style tones, but I can't think of any other needs. 16 presets is nice, but I only need like 3.

All in all, it's great having a brighter guitar that I can play with in a band and a more balanced guitar that I can play in a solo-acoustic situation. Or, having a backup acoustic that can be tuned to something crazy to make things go smoother when I play out. I keep telling myself that my Breedlove is going to be my workhorse guitar and my Taylor is going to be my "nice" guitar, but I can't seem to put the Taylor down...

Bits and Pieces and Guster

Played my ASAT at Mass this last weekend. Haven't played that guitar in a while. It was the tone I was going for all along, particularly on the closing song "Your Grace is Enough". Neck pickup, tone rolled off about 95%, Fulldrive 2 on light mid-humped drive and with the extra boost engaged during the solo, with some untimed analog delay going to make it sound huge. Perfect. I love playing electric. Can't believe I've been neglecting my fancy Tele for so long!

Which sucks because my constant opportunities to play electric may be numbered. Not sure yet, but I may be picking up another Mass to lead on Sunday morning, meaning I won't be able to volunteer anymore. I'll be lucky to play electric (without being the worship leader, that is) once a month!

Oh yeah, and I picked up a Boss CE-2 that looks like it's lived a hard life but sounds spot-on. Not that I use chorus all that much, but it really is a great, iconic pedal so I couldn't pass on it! So far I'm mostly using it to add some depth to my delay when I'm playing pad work, and using it on a heavier setting on occasion when doing some lead work. I really need to listen to more music that uses chorus, because it's not something I've got a natural affinity for, a lot like my tremolo. Though I did recognize some nice light chorus on an acoustic rhythm guitar that was being picked on a song that was huge in the 90's (and naturally I can't remember what song it was, but think of all those great bands from the late 90's).

And last point, I recently re-discovered Guster, after having listened to them almost nonstop in High School. I love that they don't take themselves too seriously, and their sound is so diverse and unexpected from song to song. A great band.

I'll leave you with one of my favorites:



Typewriter. Classic.

It is finished.

Well, it finally got here.

I put my order in just about six weeks ago, and my Loopmaster bypass strip, tap tempo and pedal board bypass arrived today. I had about ten things to do today, but upon finding a long, thin package on my doorstep this afternoon, I put aside non-childish things and spent the better part of the day getting things set up. Step one (cut a hole in the box?) was to take a side trip to the he-who-must-not-be-named and pick up some more patch cables. And by some, I mean lots. I ended up going with a kit (or three) made by LiveWire, simply because I needed to get the biggest number of cables at as cheap a price as I could, and I got these for around $6 per cable. And it's DIY, meaning that I got every size I needed without any guesswork, which was a huge plus. I am planning, some day, maybe, on getting some really nice cables of the solder variety, simply because, well, I could have paid just a bit more and gotten fantastic cables instead of generic ones, but I also play on a weekly basis and could not have waited for shipping. But first impressions are that they conduct signal passably well. I did have a digital multimeter on hand to check them after assembly, and had to re-assemble two of the twelve I made, so that saved me tons of stress.

The little box next to the strip is a tap tempo. I used the Boss FS-5U for a long time, and it works perfectly, but I could never get velcro to stick to it, and it took up an awful lot of space for a tap tempo, so I went ahead and got one while I was ordering. All the functionality, 1/4 of the size. The box next to that, with the fun stickers on it, is called a pedal board bypass. Basically, I've got everything routed so that I have one consistent and easy-to-reach place to plug in my guitar and amp (marked G and A, respectively), instead of having to find the right place on the bypass strip or to track down which pedal is last and first in my chain. A small touch, but I really like it. I was also going to try to zip-tie it to the bottom of my pedal board, underneath the wah in my picture here so that the I/O ports would seem to almost be a part of the pedal board, but there wasn't quite enough clearance. Still good this way, though, because I can see what I'm doing.

And so, for the last time (until I completely change my setup again...), my chain is:

Guitar -> Strymon OB. 1 -> Loopmaster bypass strip:
1. Vox Wah
2. Boss GE-7
3. Fulltone Fulldrive 2 MOSFET
4. Keeley DS-1
5. Voodoo Labs Tremolo
6. Ernie Ball Volume Pedal
7. Line 6 DL4 -> Boss DD-7 (with tap tempo)
Tuner out: Hardwire HT-2 tuner
-> Amp.

The logic here is that the Strymon compressor is always on, and is true bypass anyway, so it doesn't need to be in a loop. The bypass strip has a master bypass switch, so I can clear out everything and go guitar -> compressor -> amp when I feel like it, and it has a tuner out so that's not in my signal path anymore (though I really don't mind that particular tuner's sound when it's off). The only other thing I have to say is that it's almost like Loopmaster makes their stuff specifically for Pedaltrain pedal boards. The bypass strip fits perfectly on one slat, with the right angle cables hanging neatly down through the first open space. Very orderly and awesome.

I'll leave you with a spaceship shot, since I've never done it and I now have like twice as many LEDs looking back up at me. Happy pedal board day!

Bits and Pieces

I'm watching some Cardinals spring training (no idea how incredibly excited I am for baseball season!), and decided that I have some spare time, so time to give my neglected blog some love!

In my last post, I put up a new 'board picture, which hasn't changed just to change; I'll be playing a lot of electric actually out of my house in a Mass-type environment, so booyah. The actual chain is: Guitar -> Vox Wah (modded for True Bypass) -> Digitech Hardwire Chromatic Tuner -> Strymon OB. 1 Compressor -> Fulltone Fulldrive 2 MOSFET -> Keeley DS-1 Distortion -> Boss GE-7 EQ-> Voodoo Labs Tremolo -> Ernie Ball Volume pedal -> Boss DD-7 Digital Delay (with Boss FS-5U for tap tempo) -> Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler -> Fender Blues Jr.

New additions include: Line 6 DL4 and Strymon OB.1. I got the DL4 in a trade; I got rid of my Epiphone Valve Jr. which has been seeing virtually no playing time for about 6 months now, and picked up a pedal that, while likely not the end-all, be-all delay pedal, is really quite good, really versatile, and has been used by a lot of the artists that I'll be emulating in playing worship guitar. The new compressor is, in a word, great. I don't have a lot of compressor experience, but I do like how it can go from subtle to apparent (but not super squished), and putting it before my 'drives gives me options in terms of shades of dirtiness with the three differently voiced clean boosts. At extreme settings, it makes a nice way to turn a dirty rhythm part (via the Fulldrive) into a great lead boost with just a stomp or two.

I've also been using my G&L ASAT a lot more exclusively, and I've really grown to love the tone. I'll always be on the lookout for a great Tele, (in addition to a great Les Paul, a great ES-335, a great Les Paul Jr...), but I like this one's sound. It's definitely not a Tele, despite all appearances, but rather, it's warmer. The middle setting is great and complex (and lets me get away with not having a chorus on my board), and the bridge can get a lot of the Telecaster twang, but without ice-picking it. The tone pot is also great, giving me usable tones on pretty much the entire spectrum. My Strat will always have a place, and will never leave me, but I think my G&L is going to be my No. 1, at least for the time being.

One other notable sweet-McAwesome things I've been playing with; I love my EQ pedal. It's just a stock Boss GE-7, but I love the versatility you get from having a stompable EQ. Right now, it's being used to give me that sweet "suck" tone that's semi-popular in indie and emo music nowadays. I'm just going to call it my "telephone" pedal, because that's what it sounds like on this setting (boost the 1.6KHz, cut everything else) is like a really lo-fi, far away sort of sound, and it's just fun. But I mean, think about the versatility; I've used the GE-7 as a clean boost, in this setting, or it can be used to fix any problem frequencies or sweeten your tone, give you sparkle, give you clarity, fix your boost, whatever you want to do. It is a pretty crappy buffer, and this being literally every pedal I own that I'd use for electric, I'm starting to perceive a bad sort of tone sucking, but there are some potential solutions on the horizon.

Probably the coolest solution, at least as far as I've seen, is the Carl Martin Octaswitch. I like the idea of being able to take the pedals I already own and like, and programming them to be able to turn one stomp into a sound. It's not as versatile in terms of on-the-fly changes as having a bypass strip, but enough preparation would make that mostly obsolete, or at least, a lot less common than having a good preset. And it's true bypass (or has a buffer if you'd like), so it will give me the least number of pedals and cable for each situation. I do think that some tone-sucking is actually a positive thing; Jimi Hendrix did some things with effects that should have just killed his tone, but only the insane would say that his tone was bad. But I'm also running like three times as many pedals as Jimi Hendrix ever did, so there's a lot more stuff to get in the way of tone.

So basically, if I had a grand lying around, I could get a great pedalboard (I love the PedalTrain boards, so I'm looking at the Pro, which would neatly fit everything I've got now and an Octaswitch, and also have a rolling hard-case), a new power supply to power my DL4 (I'm using batteries right now, and it makes me nervous), a switcher, and maybe even upgrade my patch cables, but that one's less important since, like I said, I actually like a little bit of suck. Anyone want to make donations? Tax refund is on the way...but I should probably pay down some debt first...