Gear Purchases

Well, I had an acquisition roadmap (aka budget & timeline) to get gradually get my must-haves on the effects front and just made a little, spontaneous detour to boost land. I ordered an Xotic RC Scott Henderson (copper) yesterday. I'm only just getting the new Plimsoul warmed-up. Keep in mind, I'm dealing with that squeaky kid-voice in my head, pestering my soul with his incessant: "Are we there yet?" My response: "No son, it's gonna be a little while longer. Sit back and enjoy the ride." ~m

the RC is like a tubescreamer with no mid hump, treble and bass controls and I think they omit the clipping diodes, but technically its kind've a drive that doesn't produce its own grit until you crank the gain to 10.

If you open up an RC, AC or BB you can just look at the PCB and see its TS808/9 lineage. The BB really looks like a TS9 inside, it just jumps out at you. Not criticizing, these pedals sound much different than a stock Ibanez/Maxon. Just sayin'

Not a fan of the Plimsoul, though I didn't leave the store with one to try at home so maybe I am being hard on it (I have a long standing personal loathing of Mike Fuller going back to 1999 when he ticked me off at a guitar show, so I give his pedal designs a lot of crap... which is easy since its mostly dressed up crap masquerading as new ideas).

Interestingly the owner of Xotic used to work at Fulltone wiring up Fulldrives.

what about a blackface fender amp for your pimsoul and Xotic booster... fulltone and xotic stuff is very blackface fender-loving (another reason I don't like any of it, it tends to try to UK-up American amps and can be way too middy thru actual british mps (which is basically my whole arsenal of amplifiers... the new ones Canadian in origin, but its pretty much an early Hiwatt circuit, BRITISH).

I'm going to totally blow your mind here and ask you what you're boosting with the AC? I mean, you don't have a tube amp, right? Why boost a transistor or Modeller's DSP chip? You could just turn the amp level up.

You are kinda missing the point of boost, its not just about levelling up. Its about slamming the 1st triode stage in your amplifier so it compresses and distorts in a way it wouldn't if you just turned the volume up to 10. If you don't have a triode out front in your amp's pre its like "why bother?" at least to me... I have heard tales of people boosting pedals into other pedals and talking about how great 'stacking' drives is or whatever. But a good investment would be a good tube amp you REALLY like the tone of when set pretty clean with the volume below noon. If said amp has as much gain as a JCM800 you will find you don't need a ton of dirt effects anymore. Maybe the RC boost and a fuzz.... if its more of a 60s fender thing with the later, non-cathode-follower tone stack, the world is your oyster. Chain up the effects, most pedals of all types are voiced to sound good through that classic '62 preamp with the sparkly top, thumping lows and slightly scooped midrange.

now my turn to do acquisition, bought an 80s Fane ceramic 12", 8 ohms, not a medusa, not a crescendo, one of the lower power handling ones from the early 80s Laney AOR combos/cabs... I might get an early 70s cast frame Fane POP 50 and a Medusa 150 RI if I like this first foray, but the Pop 50 and Medusa are 16 ohm speakers (its hard to find Fanes, even the RIs, so you kinda get stuck with whatever impedance, which sucks) and I like pairs of mismatched 8 ohm speakers wired in series for 16 ohms, so I'll start with this Laney-era stamped frame and see what I think....

now do I replace the Greenback or the CTS Alnico from the closed-back 2x12? I am thinking Fane/Greenie mix to start.... the CTS alnico has great cleans but a very limited sweetspot when pushed. It gets mushy kinda fast when hit with real man't wattage. I think the CTS is the lower efficiency of the pair being 1 or 2 dB less efficient than the Greenback.... the fane is probably 1 or 2 dB more efficient than the Greenie, so we're looking at a serious sensitivity mismatch if I mix the CTS with the fane; the fane will drown the CTS out

Mind blown! I've got some learning to do and a tube amp to add to my wish list! I was digging the Plimsoul last night. Kept it simple with the Descimator. Realizing also that Robin Trower I am not. ~m

what the heck are you using noise reduction for? The ISP unit is as good as it gets, but if you are running high end pedals the noise should be pretty minimal with the gain maxed and anywhere below it should be dead silent unless your pedal is malfunctioning (although I seem to remember the plimsoul having more self noise than I found to be acceptable in anything that's not a vintage style fuzz, still negligible)

though again the ISP is your best noise reduction option, any noise reduction or gating gadget is eating your tone and dynamics... best to avoid using unless your noise floor is utterly intolerable (as in a hiss, hum or buzz that's almost as loud s your guitar signal)... given what you are runninginto you may not notice the loss of bandwidth, but I assure you thru a better amplifier and some high sensitivity speakers you would be very surprised switching the decimator in and out.... the decimator is for straight up metal guys who play with monstrous amounts of gain and compression that makes their noise floor impossible even for stage work.... the rest of us (sane people) are pretty much good without.... as a rule you want only gadgets that ADD to your tone, anything that's designed to take away unpleasant artifacts is probably also taking away something desireable

use decent quality cables and stay away from cheap stomp boxes and you should be fine... unless you are starting a Morbid Angel tribute band

how's everybody getting on with their new pedals and such lately?

It seems mention of the Plimsoul brought some polarizing views. I'm still digging it though realize it has a very narrow sweet spot for my setup. Th bottom end gets pretty muddy and I haven't yet nailed it. All in all, it adds a nice texture through the Blues Cube Stage. ~m

I am actually more polarized about solid state amps.... I see one and think "what a great design.... for a paperweight." I know I am being unfair, but hey, I learned with tubes. Only ever owned 2 solid state guitar amps I think.

no wait, 4 if you count these 2 bass amps that could be used for guitar and keys in a pinch!

I began my career on a great 1963 Fender Princeton Reverb (I wish I still had that amplifier), and I have been picky ever since!

I've had a hard time getting my settings for the Digitech CR-7. The Analogue setting is great, so's the studio setting but I like the vintage setting the most as it allows me to get close the my small clones sound but is more versatile. Onlky reason I replaced the small cone was because even with the adapter nothing would power it unless I used a 9v battery.

The phaser is dialed in and sounds great think its on the 4 stage setting but I also use the 2 stage and 10 stage settings a lot too. Which is a really great pedal and very versatile too.

The wah is well a wah and does what a wah does. Now I have changed the pickups in my Gibson to the Duncan Distortions I noticed a hell of a lot of treble being stolen from the guitar which doesn't bother me too much cos these pickups are very very bright with my setiings when the guitar goes direct to amp. But the brightness stops it getting muddy with loads of distortion or rolling the tone and volumes down.

The Rat is set up with the distortion 3/4 the way up, the filter at half and the volume maxed out. It does get fuzzy when both pickups are used which has its uses but not many for me. I really like the rat though.

The Blackstar boost is doing its job great and i now use it to get a very slightly driven sound so I have a slightly dirty clean that I just use distortion with depending on what I'm doing the boost is great to give me a slightly cranked amp sort of tone for somethings. I need a new 60cm cable thoughto go from the phaser to the chorus

wow, 3/4 up on a rat is like soloing turf to me, but I tend to use a lot of boost to get some distortion from the 1st tube stage of my amp, so maybe at unity it would just be a thick distortion. I will have to try it at unity gain 3/4 on the distortion knob....

the vox wah is a bit of a tonesucker to be sure, but its got THE midrange growl.... at least to my ear.

I keep starting my review of the TC Nova Drive for EB, but it seems too glowing and I stop. I am really keen on using both the tubescreamer and rat sides setfor low gain, a little boost in parallel and EQed to add grind and crunch in different frequency ranges with some clean mixed into the TS side.... right now I have a lead preset dialed in that's meant to be big-muffish, but tis not doing it for me. Much better as a rhythm pedal for me, the distortion as a lead sound is a bit 80s and the tubescreamer OD is just so bluesy, though it is pleasing with my strat or tele in a 90s way.I wish it had an assymetrical clipping option to make it more SD1ish than TS9ish. For soft-clip diodes-in-feedback-loop ODs I just prefer the OD1/SD1 I guess. But the OD is hella useful as OD on low frequencies blended with the rat for upper mids and the rest of the frequencies as clean boost. Sounds a lot like my Traynor's natural breakup at 5 or above on the MV (which is HELLA loud).

I really want a MIDI controlled fuzzface , tonebender or maybe univox superfuzz clone for leads, but good like finding that. I could get a midi-modded NYC big muff, but that's my least favorite muff variant pretty much :-( and I don't really like the muff anyway.... maybe if I modded the fuzz circuit myself after I got it.... otherwise its a Line6 M5 modeler for leads and I'll get some nice modulations and more delays too

Its not crazy high gain like some pedals these days. its just how I have always liked my distortion, has to be very thick distortion rather than a lighter more overdriven distortion. I'm just wondering having the volume maxed out will push the first preamp tube won't it? like a boost does?

Did you try the rat at 3/4? I want to get a MXR fuzz, can't remeber its name but its in a purple housing and is a custom model. I think its the custom lafuzz or what ever its called

Yes, I always play pedals to have a little bit of clean boost into the amp for rhythms and a whole lot for soloing. And less gain than a lot of guys will use.... I probably play with half the grunt from my pedal you do, but I have my amps working ahrder, I guarantee. I will sound just as distorted digging in, but will get a cleaner tone backing off without disengaging any gain effects. Hard to describe, years of studio work taught me a lot about gain structure, the effects of compression on guitar distortion and also the way little bits of distortion accumulate as you chain up lots of imperfect voltage amplifiers.... my preferred SD1 setting is (get this) gain at 3:00 or less but volume set above noon for a massive dirty boost, treble wide open or close to it!

I actually seldom turn the gain on any pedal past noon. But I run my amplifiers LOUD, BRIGHT and HOT. The input on my traynor is always set to 10 and the master is set around 10:00 to 2:00 based on how much volume I can get away with (because more is better) so the whole amp is ready to break up if I slap the strings hard, but sounds mostly clean.... I run my fawn ac30 at half power in hot mode with the volume turned to at least noon and sometimes the master dialed back a bit to like 3:00, the matchless gets used at full power lately with the EF86 at like 9:00, master disengaged, for a deep, midrangey clean that sounds like its ready to explode... the '62 I generally use turned full upon either channel. Sometimes the Fawn and Matchless swap roles, I've just been into the Matchless clean more than the Vox clean and really into the great, cutting tone of the reissue Vox's hot mode....

when I was a kid I used to turn all pedal controls to 10 and then dial back everything but output until it sounded good, I always ran my dirt pedal volumes at 10 and SLAMMED the front end of my amps FOR YEARS because it sounded good... I kept that u until I got a big muff and realized that trick was not good for the big muff.... but I started doing it again with my tonebenders and fuzzfaces (etc) in under your bed, so there ya go, full circle

But yeah, I made a cheesey 80s patch with my Nova Drive today that has gain at 3/4 and a little less boost from the output as well as a different balance of bass and treble than I would typically use... fun, really nice with my master volume at 1, less nice louder. At least to my ears, a lot of people might dig this tone, its just not very "jim". Its thick and mushy, like a gooey blanket over my chops.... on the other hand its a bit fuzzy, throw on a little echo and its downright Gilmoury in a "wall" sense... and I can get away with MURDER riffing thru this 75% gain setting, there's SO much distortion with all of my guitars its just so easy to noodle allover the neck and pretend I'm joe satriani. Good for playing slash licks too... I should put a crybaby in front of it and do some 8 bit echo for a truly 80s sound! It definitely is a little too "sludgey" for my usual rhythm style. When I play with this much distortion on my rhythm it has a more complex character and is less buzzsawy!

Holy hell, FANE!

What a great sounding ceramic driver for rock. Fairly flat down to bottom E, aggressive, pretty early breakup (50 watt speaker paired with a 40 watter being driven by a 50+ watt EL34 amp with over-spec transformers at 3), full but defined bass, puncyy attack, compressed decay, chimey but subdued top end... god's midrange. All celestions have some sort of presence peak in the upper mids and are either flat in the lower mids or in the case of more modern models they are scooped from 1k c/s down to like 300 c/s. Not the Fane 50 watter. Its got a wider, less steep mid-boost from like 800 c/s to maybe 3k c/s? not sure, but I hear the thicker midrange and like it. It would flatter a lot of amps, especially a blackface fender. The highs re a bit too subdued for me so I am glad I have bright, aluminum dome USA alnico with this speaker. It balances things a bit, but I am a treble junky and one of the differences between the Traynor and a Hiwatt CP103 is that 2 out of 4 of the hiwatt channels are bright channels voiced for treble while all 4 of the Traynor channels are flat. Also, the Traynor's 1st stages are grid leak biased, which sounds cool as hell like a tweed fender, but the Hiwatt is modern cathode bias preamp tubes across the board.... Slightly different sound that along with the voicing makes a difference in treble response. I'll bet if I added bright caps to channel 1 & 2, changed them to cathode bias and reduced their coupling cap sizes for less bass into stage 1 of V 3 (the resistive mixer triode) I might be able to get away with 2 fane 1250s.

also I have purchased an A/B true bypass looper from NUX with MIDI implementation and in loop A I have an old DOD chorus (CE2 with shittier bypass) and in loop B I have a behringer superfuzz which really nails my old univox when the tone controls are set flat. I am shocked at how well Uri and the other fuckers who work for his evil empire copied the old pinkandblue BEAST while lowering the noise floor. But its a pretty simple circuit even compared to a big muff.

Effects/amp rig is thoroughly MIDI implemented and I'm programming presets and its 99% analog and a mix of all sorts of shit that works:

Nux looper

DOD Chorus FX60

Behringer Superfuzz

Radial Switchbone active ABY in Y

TC Electronic Flashback X4

Stage left (Hiwatty side)

TC Electronic Nova Drive

'68 Traynor YVM1 head set to be mainly clean

sealed 2x12 w/Fane classic 12/50 and CTS 40 watt alnico from '68

Stage right (vox side)

Radial Bones passive ABY in Y

Vox ac30 handwired in hot mode at half power, cranked

Matcless HC30 in full power using the Pentode channel at the brightest 'click' setting set to be mostly clean

Weber Head Switcher

Stok AC30HW combo cab with a celestion G12 Blue RI and a WGS Reaper 30 bass cone speaker

all program changes commanded by Behringer FCB1010

still working out my presets

truth be told I am very happy with dry using any amp combination or just a little fak tape echo tapped into time....

scratch everything I said abut playing my pedals loud, I just realized you said your Rat's output is dimed. You are a gainiac. You hve tone of gain and boost from the gain knob and you slam the front end of your amp for tube saturation. Over the top for anything but soloing. Volume jump would piss off a lot of FOH engineers too!

I've lowered the gain a little on the rat a few days ago because these pickups are very hot and it was making it very fuzzy compared to the Gibson 57 classic and plus. I like having a lot of gain though its just how I like to play and I'm not too into soloing myself, I will do the odd solo but I mainly play rhythm because that's what I like to do I guess, never been a soloing kind of guy unless I'm doing a cover of something.

I like really pushing the front of the amp with my distortion, the boost and overdrive on my pedalboard don't really push the amp much and only set a bit past 12o clock on the volume. I've always done the full volume and almost maxed or maxed distortion thing though. I don't even play metal, I play alt rock, punk etc. I like low gain but happiest with tons of gain.

These distortions I have are great though and I may put a pair in the Epiphone and put gold covers on them

how can you play rhythm with all that gain? how can you hear your playing and dynamics?

then again you aren't driving your speakers at all, are you? My ac30s only have like 30 to 40 watts handling total and the sealed cab is only up to 80 watts from 50 because my Traynor ate a greenback last week. Fuck Chinese clestions. FUCK EM! I like to have my power tbes compressing and my speakers growlin' and cruncin' whenever I dig in. That's man's distortion.

Now on to speakers that ADD to your tone:

I think you would like a Fane, this speaker has subdued but bell-like highs reminiscent of a G12H, really defined lows without thump and a super aggressive but brit midrange but without the 'presence peak' of a lot of the celestions with aggressive mids that exibit upper mid-spikes that cut the mix but are described by players as sounding beamy and fatiguing. This is more subdued like a greenback, but without the mushiness in the mids and the compression in the lows. Plus when the speaker starts growling the treble doesn't disappear like a greenback. Its like having a 65 watt creamback mated to an EVM12L or something. Hard to describe. It has a lot of character in its breakup character but manages to sound flatter and more hifi than most other aggressive speakers like celestions and jensens. TMI? Anyway, this speaker would suit you. I like the 50 watter a lot, not too dirty, not too clean, good medium efficiency rating at 98dB

try some old fanes, you probably have better access to them than I do. Its a struggle to find them here in the states. The real deal ones are early 80s Classic series or anything full-range from the 70s. There are lots of varitions with differing magnet weight, gauss, voice coils, dust caps and cones, but they all have a similar character from what I can tell. I am sticking with fane classic from the 80s since they were imported to the USA in larger numbers than earlier (and built into 1st gen Laney AOR cabs and combos that were popular when I was a kid) and also because you can find the published efficiency specs to pair them with other brands effectively. Some time in the late 80s fane had a fire and went into receivership and all the secret recies were lost and they aren't even the same company now.

I'll just shimmy my way into this discussion.

I'm currently at a whopping eight pedals plus the volume pedal. Anyways, new ones are the Black Fountain delay and the Boss RC-3. Here's what I have to say about these purchases:

The delay is, as it is constantly said, VERY DARK. I thought everyone was joking, but Jesus, this thing will turn my amplifier into a fan quite easily. Delay time is not as long as I wanted, but I guess I'd need something like a Giga Delay for that kind of stuff. Even with the fluid set low, it warbles a lot. Swells especially, sounds like I just threw a chord into a barrel of oil. The wild card here is the organ setting which, in all regards, is a slow spring delay. I love it, and it compares well as a normal reverb.

The loop station... I've been using this SO MUCH, mainly for covering songs and then making up random crap and layering over it. I'm trying to figure out just how much can be done with this, but It's quite limited if you don't have the dual footswitch. Fumbling with those tiny rubber buttons are a pain, and stopping it is worse. Other than that, It's accurate, no delay mistakes (fixed by an update, this thing connects to your computer!). Only thing is that because it connects to your computer, you can upload stuff from the "Boss Tone Lab". Not my cup of tea, definitely not touching that application.

Now... a dual footswitch, a new overdrive, and some method of fitting that footswitch below the Supernatural... Soon, folks.

wow, 9 pedals? the boss looper is not the best, The TC stuff schools it but it can be costly unless you catch a blowout sale or really trawl ebay and reverb like I did for my flashback.

Your description of the oil can simulation sounds like a real one, warts and all. I am glad people are finding a use for that sound and I am also glad the simulation is non-toxic. Interestingly the toxic "oil" dialectric fluid is not black as I recall, but black fountain is a cooler sounding name than Adineko.

before I slam on your pedal use I will have to check myself because I currently have a decent amount in my rig with polytune, 80s DOD chorus, Superfuzz, Nux MIDI A/B looper Radial ABY (also used non-midi for a global mid-boost if I want to boost a low output in a way that gives me more of a P90 response, so that can count as 2 pedals), TC Flashback X4, TC Nova drive and the MIDI footboard to control it all... plus the 3 amplifiers probably count as an effect what with my switching and stereo layering abilities...

That said, everything gets out of the signal chain and delay is an un-buffered dry pass through. I am mainly just using 2 patches, heh; a tiny bit of stereo tape echo (2 repeats, dotted quarter setting) mixed low into the matchless and the traynor for cleans, and a nice rhythm crunch with the same delay into the dirty Vox at half power and hot mode and then the Nova drive with a parallel drirt/boost setting hitting the Traynor for a good Pete Townshend thing. Oh, and the superfuzz is a riot into my heavy analog echo setting for soling if it ever comes up. Just jamming with buddies I really don't have a lot of call to step out in front of the band like that, its just a trio riffing or playing covers in a garage for kicks. The rig was really overkill for what I'm up to lately, but when my son gets a little older I'll be glad to have it worked out for the next band.

I guess I'll keep the chorus as its not hurting anything. I think I could easily go mono with just the Hiwatty tone right now and lose everything but the nova drive and jam out quite happily. That's mostly how I play at my house lately. If I wnt a different sound I have guitar options at home...

EDIT: I'll stop busting everyone's balls about effects though because I really enjoy having presets with all these effects if I really want them

Well, if you happen to look at my board again here, and take into account how few years I've been playing, then perhaps you'll take note that I am in some aspects at a... "crossroad". Every pedal on the left is a sort of slightly higher-end quality, while everything on the right was the result of no money and loans.

With that in mind, I have every focus on replacing the pots on the guitar, then actually getting more new pedals to replace the old one. I'm thinking something like an Emerson EM Drive and probably one of the Walrus Audio drives. After that, I just need a suitable chorus, which gives me ample room to add a dual footswitch and make my pedals more comfortable.

you already have like 2 high voltage tube overdrives....