Gear Purchases

one can never go wrong with the blue MXR BC108 fuzz, just a classic bright 'n splatty silicon fuzzface with well matched transistors so it cleans up to a chimey OD when you roll back your guitar volume a hair....

you might think its too bright for the extremely toppy AC4, but I think germanium fuzzfaces have a tendency to mud up, even my homebrew silicon fuzzface is a little muddy when hitting an amp that's breaking up

if money's no object the tonebender mk 1.5 ciruit is the god of fuzzfaces to my ear, the vox tonebender and original arbiter borrowed this circuit with a few tweaks (vox brighter, arbiter darker).... if you can find a good clone with proper Mullard OC44 germanium transistors its a fine thing... real ones are rare as hen's teeth

the MJM 3 knob Brit Bender sounds great thru little ac4 type amps as well and the brightness can be tamed.... really for small amps the holy grail is a arbiter rangemaster clone, turn it up full so its distorting on tis own as well as pummeling your amp and you will be rewarded with some amazing fuzzy, cocked wah midrange ass kicking. Well kept secret, super amazing.... remember that all fuzzface, tonebender and rangemaster type devices must be placed directly after your guitar to operate correctly... they can act all weird if they aren't the first thing your guitar sees!

Well, I now have a Vox AC4HW1 with a 30W Reaper speaker inside. Only got a few minutes to try it out, I'll have to wait until Friday to spend some time breaking her in.

question: do overdrive pedals & solid state amps mix? wondering what to expect and if i'd be wasting my time and money in purchasing an Messner OD pedal while owning a Blues Cube Stage amp. ~m

that's an aesthetic question

Hah! Short quip and a good laugh. Thanks Jim! I've had very good luck with the Blues Cube and pedals with one exception: Plimsoul. I answered my own question with the Lex whose pre-amp sounds awesome through the BC when cranked. There's just so much info on the interwebs its hard to know what to believe. Just gotta hear it I guess. ~m

in all seriousness I seem to remember watching a blues cube demo where they hit it with some ODs from the boring old TS9 to some boutique fancy pants stuff and if the audio was to be trusted it behaved enough like a tube amp to satisfy anyone not doing an AB comparison....

Didn't really want to make a whole new thread for something that can be answered fairly quickly. So my case for the Pedaltrain 1 has gone from a bit roughed up to falling apart and being held by superglue and tape. So I tried to find a case from Pedaltrain and...

We do not sell cases as stand alone items, just as a bundle (case, board, velcro, etc). That is the way they are shipped from our factories and doing this helps us keep costs low.

If we sold the cases separately, the cost would effectively be the same amount for an individual case as it is for the bundle.

So, I'm trying to find a new case while trying to keep the old one from falling apart. So far, my only choice is the Mono Pedalboard Tour Case which was supposed to be $170, but apparently Musician's Friend will sell it next month for $140. Well worth the cost, but still a massive amount considering how much money I've spent as of late. Haven't anyone that sells the Pedaltrain 1 case alone. I saw Brady Cases, but I'd need a custom version and that alone would cost more than I care to drop.

Any suggestions, guys?

Also, in case anyone cares to know, there are two problems with my case. First, with the case lying flat and front, the bottom right corner easily pops out. I think a screw broke, but I might be able to get a new one in. The other problem is... catastrophic to say the least. The Previous owner may have dropped something heavy on the back of the case because the wood gave in on one side. I'll think of a way to fix it, but it's quite cumbersome to manage.

I have to make this suggestion, sorry:

guitar + cable + amp = problem solved

Yes, a fantastic solution considerong the genre of music I play requires plenty of effects and would sound very odd going straight into an amplifier.

Jim, if I could, I probably would. Hell, I've entertained the idea a few times, but that just can't happen because our music is not straight rock or anything. However, I appreciate your efforts to make me a straight rocker (for lack of a better term).

I already pre-apologized, I just ahd to...

we don't use a lot of effects in jazz either, by the way... excepting Pat Metheny of course, but no one takes him seriously

"Oh you!"

I've herd Pat a few times mainly because the yses the same guitar I have stowed awake. Using those wind instrument sounds on a guitar is pretty funny to me.

Also, isn't jazz moldeable? Improvisable? Like that free jazz thing?

Maybe you should make your own pedal and make it a part of your own new sound. That would end the need to have so many pedals and it would make you stand out.

Narcist, do you have a video of your band playing? I'd like to see what 1. You look like and 2. What your music sounds like.

not everyone likes free jazz... some jazz is rigid and structured, some is not... it like the difference between a symphony and a piano sonata.... the altter can just be loose riffing on a theme or two that you perfected and wrote down while the former is a highly developed, fully arranged gesamtkunstwerk (may have misspelled that)....

I hope you're enjoying the AC4 though....

Well, I don't play experimental music. Maye alog the road, I would try something like that.

Anyways, I don't think so, but I'll ask. We don't film very much, so finding film of me playing electric guitar would prove difficult. The kind of music we play is basically a mix of christian rock and latin. Think Hillsong and Juan Luis Guerra.

I think I posted a photo of myself sometime ago. I'm on a phone, so no way I'll dig.

Haha, you keeping asking about it as if I don't already love it. I just finshed my exams and I plan to fall into a coma untilprobably around 2 or 3 in the morning. Maybe then I'll start making quiet noise until something comes out of it. To be honest, I'd love to focus my playing into more math rock regions. Hearing the confindence of players going straight into an amp with not even a touch of reverb is a wonderful thought to muse over, and I think Clever Girl did that very well.

Free-from jazz is strange to say the least. I do enjoy a few tracks I've encountered while researching it, and the idea of just loose jamming for no reason is quite romantic to me, but I guess some people would disagree. The YouTube comments are quite callous... I don't know why I still read them.

A few hours ago, I found out my Blackstar HT Dual sold. I'm quite surprised! Anyways, I've racked up enought monies to a new, more streamlined rig. I was thinking of getting a Keeley Katana, but I'll save that for later. I need more gain on tap for right now which is why I am starting with a Magnetic Effects Satellite Overdrive now. I'll have a bit of leftover money I can save for when I get some other materials.

Also, within a month, the wood on the back of my pedalboard has made half its progress in peeling off.

the gain to headroom ratio on the ac4 is not in favor of headroom... the preamp has plenty of power to drive itself into fuzzy solo turf in normal mode without even hitting the power amp hard.... add a boost or OD out front and you are talking molten gain... use hot mode and turn up a little and prepare to obliterate all cleanness

its never going to cover metal though, so if that's what you need don't bother buying stuff

if I were you I would invest in a load box cab-sim since your church won't let you use the internal speaker in the amp, then you can use it as a glorified FX processor and even run delay and reverb after the amp if you want

check out the affordable mesa unit, dump your money into that

I believe there are other plans going on with the electric guitars soon enough... Not sure, though. A Mesa Cab Clone sounds good, but Glenn Fricker makes it sound like crap. Anderton isn't helping much either. Two Notes sounds like a good alternative, though, but not now.

Yeah, Satellite overdrive, Black Fountain delay... That's it. There's a tuner as well, and the loop station that'll stay home. Pretty good.

I had a cab clone, it was fine.... I only ditched it because it didn't have all the cuntionality I wanted. Used as intended it was good for the money. I am sure the impulse response, digital cab sims are btter, but they cost an arm and a leg. The reactive load in the mesa was pretty nice sounding.

I can't understand how one could need a lot more gain with the low headroom AC4. I enver even managed to get the gain to 10 in hot mode, halfway up and it was getting silly for such a small amp

Thing I love about the Vox is turning up the volume when playing live provides most of the necessary gain (usually only needing a OD just to get a bit more crunch).

If you're wondering, the Katana was more of an afterthought for when I need I need to play through a super clean amp sim. It sure looks like the "leave it on all the time" type of pedal. Somwthing which the Vox is already capable of.

Speaking of, did you ever finish up that MiDi rig?