jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

Cool thanks! That piano tone sounds real interesting, especially since it seems to be a stark contrast from the artist that I was going to add the ashly BP41 to (Brian Gibson of Lightning Bolt) loll.

as I recall there were azillion tones in the bp41, like a more capable sansamp rbi

Also I don't think that I've ever come across a Kustom cabinet, looks like it would make nice room decor

they're well made, but the stock speakers with the aluminum domes are not for everyone... the amps are nutty! weird solid state. CCR endorsed them. The fuzz circuit is cool though. I prefer plush amps in the tuck n roll but QC at plush was kinda meh

is one of the tips to drink beer and watch tv while practicing to make sure your hands can work independently when your brain is in standby?

well you're all set for that one now... you would see that ashly around when I was younger... I think the bassist from one of my bands used one into a huge power amp I lent him before he bought an SVT. I thought it had a nice piano-like tone the way he set it... kustom tick n roll may have been part of the sound though, that was a cool ported 3x12

that's weird, when I was on my phone I didn't see that category in the drop down, I thought I just dreamed that bass preamp was a subcategory of amps... yes, I know I'm a mod and a mod oughta know this stuff... but I'm also middle-aged, busy, tired, sometimes inebriated and probably mentally ill

done

Mods can you please add

Name: ASHLY BP41

An oldie but a goodie. Where should I categorize this? We don't have an instrument preamp category. Its not a pedal, an amp or rack fx unit.

He seems to have settled on Jesse Welles on his YouTube channel and most of his social media and is shortly appearing in London on tour under that name.

So we can leave the name?

So let me get this straight while we wait. Jesse here has gone by the surnames Welles and Wells and in the band Welles he spells his surname Wells no E, but had gone by Jesse Welles with an E as a solo artist some years prior to forming Welles the band and now goes by Jesse Wells as the front person of Welles?

Who's on first?

The alternative was perhaps to post on the recent "Merging duplicate artists?" thread. However, creating a duplicate artist is exactly what I'm trying to avoid, Unfortunately if a mis-spelled artist name can't be edited to correct it then adding a corrected duplicate would seem to be the only solution.

Don't do anything. We're on it.

This is baffling. So sometimes he's Jesse Wells, other times hes Jesse Welles... and his band is Welles. And there's a possibility Jesse Welles and Jesse Wells are different people with very similar voices? I cannot get this straight. It's far more confusing than Kurt's goofy name spelling which were obviously a joke...

This s is weird. It looks like thus profile says he's a singer, and group? Wtf. And why does this mouth breather named a band after himself but change the spelling? Gimmee a few to wrap my head around all this.... so i need to make his name Jesse Wells no E and it shouldn't say he's a group, just a singer and guitarist?

Edit: Heres the problem, mods can't change artist names. We should be able to but I've never had the option appear when editing an artist. I was just looking at his profile edit page and the 2 guys who created and edited this artist page screwed it up royally. If I had the power I would delete it and start over with separate Jesse Wells artist and Welles band pages.

@Michael !!!!!! ! !!! !!!!!!

Jim marchi 1 @ gmail.com

No spaces obviously.

I'm doing a '1st ones free' thing this year. If you like it then great let's talk, if you don't like it then oh well. Cost you nuthin' and I added something to my reel.

well, that said, if you have something that needs a more professional mix let me know, I'm available. I'm always available. I work every day if I have work lined up every day. I only mix my own projects drunk.

I deleted something weird I said last night. I was working on some new music for Trash Godz and drank too many beers. It made sense at the time. If you read it yesterday please disregard. I think I spent about 5 or 6 lagers, err hours, on drum editing and got nutty.

I really think if the type of transistor is specified on the pedal then its a separate item, but what do I know.

I had to edit this because I hadn't had coffee yet when I wrote it. It made no sense originally. I get to analog Mike's fuzz eventually.

I'm not sure. It's so situational per pedal and my memory us not as good as it wss 10 years ago. I don't know that it's worth addressing right now but if you really want, here goes.

If you've played a bunch of old silicon fuzz faces they all uses bc108s (or 109s, basically the same general purpose bipolar, apart from the max voltage rating anyway... bc549, bc46 etc etc, same with varying noise performance... american versions are 2n508x series). And yet silicon FFs can vary as much as germanium versions. They're all over the place because arbiter didn't sort for hfe or change any bias resistor values to suit the individual transistors they used. You can have ones that sputter out, units that sing with searing sustain, velcro fuzz faces, but they're all same bc108 transistors inside... the huge sonic difference are tolerances within transistor batches. You can't account for that with different items. Same pedal, same year, they look alike, they use the same type transistors, they aren't the same, or don't behave the same way despite looking the same inside and out. I would be open to separating germanium and silicon FFs if we haven't already. Germanium is lower gain but usually doesn't sputter out and its darker in tone due to an inherently limited input impedance (although that can be adjusted with negative feedback and emitter bypass resistors, that would be a different pedal).

This stuff is a rabbit hole and it spreads misinformation about 'mojo' parts. I could put up with separating germanium from silicon uf there's 2 versions of an old fuzz with differentcosmetics where the change in appearancedelineates a change in components, usually there isn't. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't analogman make different sub-models that say what transistors are used right on the pedal though? That's a separate item, no doubt. Is it worth worrying about right now? I doubt it.

On the other side of the argument Ac128s or nkt275s won't vary much from another germanium device in thus primitive circuit apart from the rotten noise performance. Those transistors were chosen because they were cheaper than oc44s, 76s 77s which woulda been in the hurst designed sola tonebender they copied. And there were better germaniums at the time than gary chose.

But if its printed on the pedal it's a separate item to me. If it has an extra control, even a pot to adjust the bias voltage divider because cheap germanium semiconductors have poor temp coefficients it's a different pedal because you can mis-use that knob to make tones a pedal without a bias pot just can't. I could stomach separating fuzz faces but it's no indication of what you're getting aside from germanium is typically darker... if nothing is specified on the pedal then I say no... but whatever; guitarists are gonna do what they gonna do and when you push the pimple down it pops up someplace else! theres a song in that somewhere. I like chatting with you when I'm slacking off work but I think overall the stuff you're worried about isn't really high priority right now. There's a site wide update going on, both cosmetic and back end. Can all these merges wait until the big changes are implemented? Most kids on this site aren't cork sniffing this hard but if someone wants to go there I've been rolling my eyes and leaving it alone. If someone is shopping sunfaces they should buy whatevers available since the waitlist on new ones is years long. You can't even buy a klon branded centaur anymore, nor should you buy a used one, its batsh!t. Your choice of speakers shapes your sound more than anything else anyway... and dudes aren't even playing through speakers these days.

Yeah, I've been trying to clean up the Marshall amps on here while I'm stuck at my computer. I also went through and tried to clean up Airline brand guitars a bit today. Maybe a new standardized naming convention for certain brands would help.

As a former montgonery ward era airline amp owner I feel your pain. Don't kill yourself over it. It'll all be undone within 30 days :(

Both posts are spot on. Yes to the brand merges. Yes to trying AI. This is what AI us good for.

Sure LTD should just be LTD in my book. Edwards should have the ESP dropped too if you ask me. And you did. But whatever. The guitars are such a mess on equipboard they're impossible to clean up. I tried to tidy up 20th century fender and marshall amps only to have all my work undone in a week or two, I hadn't even finished when the duplicates sprung back up 6 fold like an amplifier hydra... I'll never put that kind of effort in again unless I'm being paid. People want a confusing mess just so a single item is listed exactly the way they want on their profile or an artist page and who am I to fight them? Its user generated content. Let them generate the puzzling content they deserve. But the klons should be merged because having separate colors perpetuates the myth that they sound different.

As far as LTD goes, I'm not as certain, I'll let others weigh in. If it's anything like Squier is to Fender then maybe it should remain separate? 🤔

LTD is ESP's squire... when I was a kid ESP was a custom shop and there were only a handful of off the shelf models, mainly signature models like the Metallica ones. They are separate brands. ESP stands for quality. LTD is the beginner brand. Do not merge. I appreciate that that ESP didn't spoil its name with cheap guitars like hamer, jackson, schecter, kramer etc did. They made a separate brand. You buy an LTD you get a serviceable far east student guitar (although early on the LtDs were cr@p)... it's just the same shape as an ESP though. Separate brands! Edwards was always the lawsuit guitar brand. They used to be nice but I haven't played one in awhile... I understand they have an upscale clone brand now called navigator. I don't think any of them should be merged. They use different shops. They're different enough. I would not trust some metalhead from youtube who plays with so much gain that you can'thear the differencebetween a strat and an SG. Go with what's on the headstock. I'm sure at this point even the most modest LTD is a great value though.

I think I have an rca 5751 in the top boost channel of my matchless clone... the parallel triode input is way too hot with a 12ax7

Someone gave me a modern champ600 reissue. Hated it. But it had a little bit of headroom because it has a fixed mid cut built in via RC networks that are essentially a fender tonestack with the knobs set at 5 between the triode stages with the volume control just like in any blackface fender. Fenders throw away a lot of gain in that tone control and this fixed setup provides a more typical blackface fender, all knobs at 5 response, I usually don'tset a blackface that way personal... the modern ac4tv is similar topology but the tone knob barely throws away any gain, in fact it's the 5e3 topology where turning it up past 5 boosts treble gain effectively reducing headroom because there's negligible loss to the power amp and midrange is flat instead of attenuated. The el84 also has inherently lower headroom than the 6v6. A good mod fir an ac4tv would be to remove the tone control and replace it with a framus mid cut control centered at 1khz... switching to a lower gain 12ax7 variant would also help and be non-destructive. You could try a 7025, 12ay7, 12at7, 12dw7 (half and half 12ax7 abd 12au7) etc. I think I had a mullard ecc81 in my ac4hw and mone had the top boost tone stack but I think it had just the 1 stage with cathode follower, not the 2 stages and follower of a real ac30. So pretty good headroom although it really shined cranked up. The cabinet w as s boxy sounding especially with the stock greenback. It sounded better through an ac30 cab. It still was a less complex sound than it's big brothers. I sold it to @Narcist awhile back. Maybe 6 years sgo? He was into it.

It's very similar to a champ or tweed princeton, just setup for an el84.

Nah, JJs in the power section. I actually have a pretty decent tube collection for someone with so few tube amps, since I had a family member into ham radio. I also had an AC4 that was alright, but way too boxy and low headroom.

Wheew. Those old el84/6bq6s are getting thin on the ground. Hate to see them burned up without recordings for posterity.

The handwired ac4 is the best current production model. Sold mine to another equipboard member awhile back, it was nice but not for me. I like push pull. The phase splitter just adds complexity to the natural breakup of an amp.

(upgraded with a Weber DT10 and NOS Mullards) is by far the best. I do plan to upgrade to either the 2X12 AC15 or an AC30 eventually, especially for the effects loop.

I hope you didn't put nos mullards in the power section. An ac10 has lower plate voltage than a 15 or 30 but it's still an el84 pressure cooker. I would save nos power tubes for recording in a vox amp.

PS: Would you agree Alnico Blues are infinitely better for a Vox than Greenbacks? I really think you need the darker speakers to tame that high end.

I really like blues. Old and new. Lately I've been using a reissue blue paired with a g12h30 55hz ceramic for a best if both worlds sound. I don't like the current g12m greenback. I like the old ones. I also like g12s and g12l speakers and use both. My blonde ac30 currently has a pair if roland g12s speakers with pulsonic cones from right before the fire wired up in parallel for 8 ohms to give it a kite marshally bite. It gas a master volume so those speakers suit it, I use it for 70s rock tones. Still voxy but not british invasion voxy. I sold the greenbacks it came with. Sounded like trash.

My other favorite amps are the old 5E3 Deluxe and Silvertone 1484.

You could build a deluxe in an afternoon. Try an ampeg mercury or a Gibson titan or lancer though. Also try a 1483 bass head. Schools the 1484 to my ear. Tube rectified goodness.

Yeah the current ac10 and ac15 are just low watt top boost ac30s, although the 10 cuts other corners. The old amps, every model was really really different preamp circuitry, at least from about '60 onwards. I don't actually like the top boost and took the rear top boost add-on off my 62. I did add 100pf bright cap but mine is a bass model so the coupling cap us 1000pf, not a 500pf like a top boost or normal model. I usually put a 1000pf in the brilliant channel if all my ac30s even top boosted ones. Better lows and mids on the brilliant.

I'll definitely check out that Tech 21 XXL, I've heard good things about the Double Drive 3X and Tri-AC for the Vox thing.

I'm an ac30 fanatic. At one point I had 4. It's a bad@$$ sound on it's own but it likes a little push sometimes. I'll use the xxl into my non-topboost brilliant channel when I can't turn up real loud or if I just want a lot more grind and sizzle. The vintage ac30 overdrive is very polite even at 10. More of a growl than a crunch. I've never heard a pedal that apes it perfectly but the catalinbread vixen amp in a box is in the ballpark into a blackface fender with british speakers instead of jensens or oxfords or whatever us in the new ones stock. I haven't tried them all though. Hell, my new blonde ac30 doesn't quite do it.

I thought the centaur sounded best into non master marshalls when you can't dime them out. But I'm also good with a boss superoverdrive or a rat in that use case. In fact I always like a rat with the gain down.

Obviously I take everything apart and figure out what makes it tick.

When it comes to the diodes I find it hard to believe the difference between a 0.35 forward voltage is going to be audible compared to the regular 0.3V, and with the latest KTR's switching diodes I'd assume Bill tweaked something else to make up for the change.

I would think you could just dump 50mv to ground before the diodes for a similar clipping response at the same gain settings as the original. Ir you have a separate gain and blend control with single gang pots. I have tons of different germanium diodes in my parts drawer and they all sound the same back to back hard clipping a boosted signal although not always at the same gain settings.

Bill teased a Klon clean boost at NAMM years ago, and there's a few videos on it, but then he went silent on it oddly. I think the JHS Prestige is the same concept in a one knob format, but I can't find much on the circuit. I know Tone Ranger Audio on Instagram built one that looks really solid too.

Any fet input op amp would work. There are lots of great low noise options from burr brown these days I would use over a tl072. A lot of them aren't even expensive anymore. If I recall, one half is the controversial buffer and the other the amp... anyway you could do single amps and mix and match. You need a fet input for the buffer do as to avoid loading your pickups but anything will work for the amp stage. You could ty hrow a 5534 in as the clean boost. Linear as hell and super low distortion and noise... 18v might be a little low for best performance th joygh and a 5534 is current hungry too. But irs do-able with a suitable boost converter and a good voltage regulator and a couple resistors. I would never pay for a klon boost lol. I could build a better one for cheap. If I were doing a clean boost I would probably just buffer one half of a 5532 with a k170 fet fir a 1meg+ input impedance and use the second half of the 5532 as a servo and only put 1 cap in the audio path in the feedback loop to set bandwidth.

Oh, thanks on the Hot Cake!! I've tried nearly every classic drive circuit and think it deserves its due, especially since you can still get one from the man himself.

I had one, it was a great pairing with my old as hell ac30. I forget why I sold it. If you want more balls in a similar style try a tech21 xxl. Instead of overloading a non inverting opamp stage it uses an inverting tl071 to slam some crappy low-slew non-audio op amp also with non-inverting input grounded and the tone and harmonics control are nested in the feedback loops l. Clever. Great with a vox or a tweed deluxe type amp like those little 50s gibsons, supros or an ampeg jet or my mercury. A little noisy at high gain but its plenty of gain for mist rock with the drive turned all the way down. It sorta picks up where the hot cake leaves off. It's a real sleeper too. Someone gave me mine. Dig it.

I was around when they were newly advertised in the guitar rags and I wouldn't shell out the 200 some bucks to get on the waitlist. Hindsight being 20/20 I shoulda signed up for my whole family and sold the damn things off at the peak fervor when Bill stopped making them but before they were de-gooped and copied. I hate to say this but I've used a real one and the soul food wss close enough for mist folks, especially people who just use it as a clean boost (wtf?! You can just make a tl072 buffer/boost on 18 volts for like 10 to 20 bucks guys... the charge pump, box and hardware are the priciest part, the secret sauce diodes are effectively out of circuit at low gain settings, not clipping, you just hear the "eq" of the distortion side blended in a smidge, and the diodes are completely out with gain full anti clockwise. Gains a dual pot. Its both an input level to the diodes AND a blend pot between buffer and diode clipping).

It's a pretty creative circuit; the power supply and clean blend were innovative at any rate, the distortion part is just a better voiced distortion+ with supposedly cooler sounding germanium diodes (although all germanium are electrically similar and have the same forward voltage drop) and an op amp with a higher slew rate than the lm741, but that's any op amp, the 741 is the first remotely usable chip ever, they kinda suck for audio... but I laugh when the tl082 chip is touted as being a great hifi opamp by pedal guys. I guess its good compared to the Japan radio corp op amps in most boss and ibanez classics and as mentioned, anything can run circles around a 741 despite it being touted as the source of the rat tone that's BS, it's just the source of all that hiss. In pro audio you see tl072s, the low noise version of the tl082, in lots of affordable gear and trident 80 series inspired mixers from the UK and even that we're not super thrilled with, well I'm okay with it but many recording folks aren't. They are not the best for noise and distortion and can do weird phase inversions that sound awful if the input signal approaches the voltage rail(s) which us probably the real reason they used a charge pump to double the power supply to 18 volts. On 9 volts you could easily get the IC to flip shit with a clean boost out front. In pro audio they're typical run on at leas +/-15v and so it would probably take over 29 volts to freak the thing out, line level is a little better than 1 volt, in practice lower, we don'tboost stuff up as hard as guitarists do, despitepickups putting out like half a volt at best rock guitar players are 'ganiacs.' You never know what a guitarist might throw at an input, they've been trained by tubes to assume all amplification devices will handle it as gracefully as a 12ax7 but it's not always the case. Anyway, I'm just nerd ramblin'

EDIT I should get a bunch of those tle2072 chips that are the texas instruments upgrade to the tl082/72 and build some 'centaur' boosts lol. Itll be clean as hell and totally noise free with high quality modern resistors and panasonic FC caps in the power supply and for decoupling. I could use the other op amp stage on the IC as a servo to remove DC and take all the capacitors out of the signal path making it perfectly phase coherent like a straight wire with gain. Folks eat those gimmicks right up even though you'll never hear it in a mix.

Maybe I could sell them to Mayer fans for like 300 bucks apiece lol. I could call it the pretty boy blues booster plus. The plus is for the 200% profit I would make above parts and labor. But the pedal game is for chumps. Just ask Billy Finnegan... it takes a Josh to sell the same old same old at big enough scale to quit your day job. And I'm a Jim, not a Josh.

I see you have a hotcake! Super cool design!! It leverages the poor slew rate of the 741 op amp more audibly than a rat.

@Michael - should we merge the 2 centaur colors?

... I don't really think like a marketing guy...

Thank gawd for that. Stay gold, Ponyboy.

In my head, basic informational videos lead to people buying important stuff like conditioners etc through affiliate links but probably not.

I don't think it's just in your head, a video that went hard on the importance of power conditioners, that encouraged people to go to EB to see what models were being used by their favorite producer, or just to see what was popular in general could do some real good.

The challenge there is that EB gear logs are mostly about what artists/performers use, and there's way less logged about what well-respected Engineers & Producers actually use.

So EB can tell me what kind of power conditioners Travis Barker and Deadmau5 use (I'm not kidding here), but not what Bob Clearmountain and Steve Albini used... which kind of caps the excitement/wow-factor of EB for someone coming in hot from a video about great studio-craft.

Yeah, in a big commercial setup like electrical or clearmountsin's place that burned down you usually have a separate electrical system purpose built to provide clean power for audio with its own ground stake so all audio gear is isolated from other appliances and HVAC... there'll be some regulation to prevent surges and brownouts but aggressive conditioning is for home and project studios where appliances with motors share ground and a fuse/breaker box with the studio gear... and live venues... most theatersonthe east coast don't have separate power for HVAC etc. Anywho...

Tangentially: I wonder if Vintage King has an affiliate program?

I vaguely know the founders but, its probably best if Michael reaches out... even if they don't it doesn't mean they are closed to the idea. Never hurts to ask

All points taken. You m.j ake lots of sense. I don't really think like a marketing guy and I'm not a good businessman.

In my head, basic informational videos lead to people buying important stuff like conditioners etc through affiliate links but probably not. I think you're right and the glamorous stuff like mystic germanium transistor boutique fuzz pedals that claims to replicate Jimmy page's iconic stage tone are probably the best path to internet domination.

Also, I love music theory channels on YT, and consume that kind of content on YT nearly everyday, but it is an incredibly saturated space, and I don't see how learning about secondary dominants or "why you should care about the circle of 4ths/5ths" is going to drive people to EB.

Exactly! We're a gear site. The all singing all dancing king of gear sites. Let's stick to our mission.

If equipboard will host it, I'm planning on doing a video on roland space echo maintenance... I need to change my tape loop and I might as well do it on camera and also explain the mechanical stuff for the edification of the youngsters. I'm also thinking about a video covering balanced and unbalanced lines as well as the different types of inputs and outputs you'll encounter on recording gear and the best ways to connect both types of lines if you have to mix and match. I could cover sources of AC and RF noise on lines and how to remove it in a home studio with domestic electrical and lots if appliances on the breaker. I guess I could go through conditioning options and recommend different isolation transformers on the sales tip. Do you think that sounds useful Ken? Or is it waste of my limited time?

Edit: It just seems like you won't actually become the next stevie ray after seeing a video tutorial about how to sound like stevie ray, you would need TO BE the next SRV! And I think that the audience for that kind of thing is highly restricted because several newbies who are into that outgrow that mentality or quit music every hour. But man are the kids on here uninformed about basic hook up stuff they need to know. They're acting as yh er ir own engineers and guitar techs but no one taught them how. I mean Kevin can probably do the 'how yo sound just like so-&-so videos' I just think there's more to equipboard th as n that even though hero worship and the promise of wi sdd h fulfillment is a big part if our thing.

The Origin is fixed cardioid (though it has a pad and hi-pass). The Spirit is the one with the multiple polar patterns.

no figure 8, no deal.... I'll have to score a couple spirits to test out, I wonder if I can get demos

music theory is a great idea, but ricky beato has that cornered guys... the rest are great ideas for lemmings... what about "here's how things actually work, now use that info to be creative in your own way!" The best fx order for example is what wets you your own sound. Van Halen ran phasers into distortion. In the 90s we ran distortion into all our modulation usually, both fine. Do you. But, if you boost a dirtbox into modulation you need to know you can't boost a lot, modulation pedals lack headroom usually, better to boost after with a dedicated vlean boost, always on.... if you know how it works then anything can work. I digress.

I'm not sure what my timeframe would be on this, but I might wanna violate my self-imposed prohibition against speaking bon camera and do some production and maintenance videos if you guys will host them. I could do music theory lessons but my version of teaching is "WHY CAN'T YOU DO THIS!!! WHAT ARE YOU WORTHLESS!!! GRAAAAAAHHHH!!!!" so not that. I'm a little calmer explaining technology. I also might want to do videos in character, like as Yanosh the eastern block sound guy.

I know I said be like that pedal show, but they don't do "this is the best way to do things" they explore many ways of skinning a cat and explore the topic from a real tech standpoint that unlocks creativity.... they also spread some misinformation, but its unavoidable in music.... headed in the right direction

supposedly on a component level the signal path is virtually identical, there was a pcb layout change IIRC and I think a slight cap value change you can't hear... I mean, on stage in a band you can't hear the difference between like jack and sh!t on your pedal board and no one else can but people make much of this nonsense

Its option B, never knew! Pretty groovy.

My guess is that there's a little auto tune algorithm running out front of the pitch to midi but I have no idea really.

Wait, who is Laura Lee? I either forgot or never knew.

Sadly, guitar and midi just don't mix unless you're using a midi floor board to switch fx. Currently Sonuus makes the best monophonic midi converters for stock guitars... they really are best with bass though, put really h eww as by flatwounds on and you can play a bass mono symth... woohoo. I have one. I seldom use it. All the cool stuff I would do on bass freaks the the Sonuus out... makes more sense to play keys or program a sequencer.

there's a mod who's a post/mix engineer... I fix and mix podcast and presentation audio all the time. If I didn't I would starve, you don't get 12+ LPs each year.

Someone probably got it already if you can't find it.

Why don't you repost in guitars and delete this version?