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.

Upgrading my Musicmaster Amp: The Plan

I've discovered two things about making upgrades to an amp. Well, I've discovered a lot of things, but here are two points: 1) it's necessary, particularly with a vintage amp that has seen a lot of wear, and 2) it's not as much fun as buying a new pedal. I really like my Musicmaster Bass amp from the late 70's, and I've decided to take some good advice to, rather than buying new gear (since I'm happy with what I have), do some upgrades. So here's what's on the list. It is threefold.

1) A new speaker - While I really appreciate the sound of a well-broken in speaker, I feel like there's a lot that this amp is missing. With a 40+ year old speaker, it's not surprising that I'm probably not getting everything I can out of the amp, as speaker technology still revolves around a paper cone and a magnet, both of which can and do degrade over time, even with minimal or no use. The thing that sucks is that I'll have to take some time to break the speaker in, but it needs to happen, so better sooner rather than later.

2) New tubes - Or, perhaps more accurately, nicer tubes. The biggest problem here is that I have no idea what's going on with the current tubes. If they are in fact from the 70's (not likely, but possible. The guy I got the amp from said it spent most of it's time in his dad's closet), then they are probably better than the bargain tubes that Fender is putting in it's new amps today, and the fact that they've lasted this long means they've probably still got some life left in them. Or they could be new tubes that he put in right before he sold it to me. I need to research, but either way, this is one area I'll be really concentrating on. Some nice NOS tubes or something like that.

3) A good attenuator - I love this amp. I don't love that it has only one volume knob. Wait, let me rephrase. I love this amp. The sound guy, the bands I play with, and the little old ladies in the third row don't love that it has only one volume knob. My favorite way to play this thing is to turn it to 10 and use my volume pedal and playing dynamics to control the distortion, because that way, it doesn't get much louder or softer, just more or less distorted. But I can only do that in the privacy of my own home when no one's around. So to make this an amp I can actually enjoy playing out with, I need a good attenuator, one that will give me a Master Volume knob that doesn't suck.

The hidden fourth thing on the list, and the thing I should probably do before I do anything else, is take it to a good amp tech and have it serviced. It's got a lot of...peculiarities...that tend to come with a vintage amp. Lots of noise. Loose tube sockets. It's probably got leaking capacitors and all kinds of fun things like that. Just having it looked at and tuned up would put my mind at ease, and it would ensure that any other upgrades I do to it are actually necessary. But the key thing is to do them one at a time so I can actually appreciate what's happening and changing with each upgrade so I can decide what I like and what I don't. I definitely don't want a whole new amp; I like this one just fine!

New Mass Parts

It's been a little while since I've posted anything even remotely musical, but a few years back I wrote some Mass parts for Lent. This was back in school, when I actually knew what terms like "Dorian Mode" meant, so they're, of course, a bit funky and I think I did a good job of capturing where I was at that particular Lent. Well, they've also been my go-to Mass parts during Lent for the last few years, so now that I'm leading more places than ever (and have had some other people ask to do them all over the place), I went ahead and YouTubed (which is totally a word, Firefox spell-checker!) some sketches of them so people could at least hear what they sound like.

So check them out! I'll probably start posting a lot of stuff up there just because it was way easier than I ever thought. And it's pretty surprisingly good quality, considering it's just my iPhone4's video app. Just think, even ten years ago, shooting a video and putting it on the internet took thousands of dollars of equipment and hours of editing and uploading, and now you can do it with a $200 iPhone and a few touch-screen touches. Technology is a b.

Ever feel like everything changes in one week?

So, over the course of the week, I have:
- sold my broken PS3
- purchased a shiny new PS3
- traded my G&L ASAT for a Taylor 314CE-LTD (and am beyond excited about this)
- taken Fishman up on the upgrade offered for their Aura pedals
- moved my compressor and tuner off of my electric board and onto my acoustic board
- Gotten an iPhone4

and all of these are (lame) reasons why I haven't recorded any amp demos yet, and all are things that will likely get written about in the near future. Might as well start now.

iPhone4. Awesome. I've literally had it for just over 24 hours, and I've already used it about six times to find info or use an app. It's incredible. I didn't really want to be this connected to the internet (it updates me whenever I get an e-mail, which is good and bad), but I've already stopped caring. I can take pictures and send them to anyone. I've got like 7 gigs of music loaded on (all of the mp3's I've bothered to collect) and can take them anywhere. It's like a swiss-army knife for the modern world.

I'm still looking at all of the hundreds of apps that are available. I need to decide if it's worth it to pay $10 for a strobe tuner from Peterson (way cheaper than a Strobostomp 2, but how often would I use it?) and look into some sort of dock for my car so I can use it as an mp3 player. It's just incredible that I can fit everything I ever need into a device that weighs less than a pound. Technology rules.

MLB 2K10 cheats.

I love baseball. I love videogames. For the longest time, the only baseball videogame I had was R.B.I. Baseball II for the Nintendo Entertainment System. And it is glorious, except that Ozzie Smith and Nolan Ryan aren't still in the major leagues. So now that I have a sweet PS3 slowly sucking my time away from me, a while back I decided that I wanted to get a baseball game. For those of you who aren't as well-traveled as I am, there are two basic choices: MLB The Show and the MLB 2Kx franchise. I went with the latter, though I find myself regretting it a bit.

I have a problem with sports videogames in general because of simple economics; it's not necessary for a game developer to put much effort into a sports game, as the competition simply isn't there and, frankly, sports fans are plenty happy with a mere simulation with pretty graphics, and on top of that, you need to release a new game every year. For reference, some of the best games ever, such as the Final Fantasy series and Fallout, take many years to develop and perfect, and the result is a stunning game that crosses the boundary into "art". But as a result of the economics of the sports game market, you usually get the same game year after year with slightly better graphics and updated statistics. But a lot of the most important parts of playing a game, namely, gameplay, sometimes get left in the dust.

And so it is in MLB 2K10. Each player has stats, which is good. What that means is, in any given play, a pitch from a pitcher to a location will result in some sort of hit or a swing and miss from the batter. All of these calculations are done in the background, but the results are sometimes not convincing. Like when you're working a batter inside, and somehow he manages to hit a fastball that's in on his hands and drive it to the opposite field. That's pretty much impossible in real life, but because the game said "this batter will hit the next fastball", location doesn't seem to matter much. Or, even worse, if you're a great pitcher, you're only going to give up little bloop hits or shots up the middle. Because the game doesn't know how to realistically portray a strong ground ball through the defense, since the defense seems to cover the entire field at times and none of the field at other times, depending on who's batting. All in all, you get the feeling that some batters are going to reach base no matter what you do, and that's a very helpless, depressing feeling for a videogame.

Way, way worse is their My Player mode. Way worse because I was so excited about it. You get to make your own player. I want to be a pitcher, so now I can be a pitcher. And it is cool that you have to slowly work your way up through the minors to get to the majors, and develop your skills as you go. What is completely and utterly frustrating, however, is that you have no control over when you leave a game as a starter, and the AI tends to handle managing decisions with all of the tact and strategy of, well, a crack-addled 12 year old. Some situations that I have encountered: I'm pitching a complete game shutout into the 9th inning, and it's not really a close game (say, 4 run lead). I'll get two guys out, then give up a base hit and be taken out. I'm in the 7th inning, have just given up two runs to make the game a 2-2 tie with the bases loaded, and I'll be left in to get slaughtered (when you're in a tight spot, your control gets terrible and sometimes you can't even see the strike zone, so you're pretty much screwed). I'm ahead in a 9-2 game with a low pitch count, and I'll get randomly taken out in the 8th after having retired the first batter I face that inning. All of those managing decisions are, objectively, wrong, and they're just some of many.

Now, it used to be easy to pitch complete games in this game. Batters have no patience, so I would routinely throw complete games with my pitch count below 90, but then they made a patch. Now, it's become extremely difficult. And it's difficult to throw a complete game in real life. For one, batters take a lot more pitches, meaning that most starting pitchers will reach 90 pitches somewhere between the 6th and 8th inning, depending. But what I hate about this game, what drives me absolutely crazy, is that it cheats. In real life, if a pitcher is having a good game, but not a great game, he will be taken out in the 7th or the 8th, and the bullpen will get the final outs. In MLB 2K10, the game checks on the 26th out, does a calculation to see how good of a game you've had as a pitcher, and how close the game is, and will either leave you in or call in the closer to get a one out save. In real life, if the game is close in the 9th, unless I've only thrown like 90 pitches, for the love of everything holy, bring in the closer to start the inning. Don't let me get two outs, tantalize me with the possibility of a complete game, then jam the closer in there in the last minute. That's just mean.

The problem is that this game bases everything on the almighty pitch count, which is something that bad managers rely on. Back before they kept track of pitch counts, starters would routinely throw 140-180 pitches a game, and would sometimes touch 200. Now, you're lucky to throw 100, in part because I think that human beings like round numbers. A better system, and one of winning managers (read, Tony LaRussa, manager of the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals...), is to actually look at what's going on in the game, have a job for every pitcher in the bullpen for all possible situations, and use them accordingly. If you consistently gave a major league closer one-out saves, he'd do terribly because it communicates a lack of trust.

Also , when I throw a 98 or 99 or 100 mph fast ball, you should not be able to catch up with it. My current pitcher has an electric fastball, but guys are getting hits off of him all the time. When I go from a 99 mph fast ball to a 77 mph changeup, they swing and make contact like it's nothing. That should be causing serious problems to all kinds of batters, but it seems to only be the pitchers that I can strike out with three straight 97+ mph fastballs (with good movement!), which is not very realistic.

Also also, if you're going to make a baseball game where players can be called up from the minor leagues mid-season, then please make sure that you have actual players in the minor league affiliates. I'm tired of seeing generic players with weird names show up on major league rosters.

You have one job to do: to simulate a real-life game, with real players who actually exist. And you have a whole year to get the stats right. Do it. I'm not going to buy another game from the MLB 2Kx franchise unless they prove they can fix these issues, because it just frustrates the fans who want to play through a whole season or a whole player's career. And, for the record, the St. Louis Cardinals (or any team at all, for that matter) would never let Albert Pujols slip through to free-agency, and yet, that's happened each of three times that I've played My Player mode for a few years and there's nothing I can do about it. Twice, no other team even picked him up. Really? No team wants the greatest baseball player currently playing, and perhaps one of the top 10 players of all time? No one?

Sorry...I just had to get that out...

PS3 vs. Guitar

So I have what's called an addictive personality.

I find one thing that I love, that intrigues and drives me, and then I devote myself entirely to that thing until I either master it (if it is a task that can be mastered) or kill it. This makes me good at things, but somewhat bad at people.

It's something that's given me the drive to learn guitar well enough to lead people in worship without being a distraction over the span of a summer. Like, literally, I had never touched a guitar, and then I spent multiple hours a day over a summer learning how to chord and strum, and I came back to school, ready to lead. And even that's not all that impressive to me, because it's just one more thing that I've been obsessed with.

The impetus for this post is that I just recently got a PS3 and have been playing Fallout 3 like it's my job. It's a game that speaks perfectly to my personality: long, lots of strategy to master, an over-arching goal that takes a lot of dedication to complete. What actually sucks is that it's started taking time away from my guitar, to the point where I have to make a concerted effort to get any playing time in on most days. And since I will probably be playing it for like another month, it's going to be a tough month for guitar.

(Fallout 3. Booyah.)

I just read a post on a new blog I found, WorshipWithGuitar that talked about how playing guitar should be more fun than playing with a PS3. That really spoke to me in this particular situation, because as of right now, it's about 50/50. I still play when I feel the need to create, or when I need to get ready for a Mass, but it's not the first thing I go to when I want to have fun, and hasn't been for a while. That really, really, really needs to change.