jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

Supro's parent company, Valco, made Airline guitars and some of their for Mongomery Wards department store in the 50s and 60s. All of them overlap Supro models. Eastwood bought the Airline name recently and revived the brand with some modernized reissues. I think the revived interest in department store gear can be laid entirely at the door of jack white. Most guys I knew who used that stuff before just sued it because it was cheap, but jack bought it when it was cheap and then turned it into his signature for awhile changing a lot of people's perceptions of Silvertone and Airline...

interestingly, the stock pickups on supros and airlines look like humbuckers but are actually a really crappy singlecoil mounted in a surplus Gibson humbucker cover to fool newbies! I think the guy in question replaced the shitty stock pickups with phat-cat type humbucker sized P90s.

the email I use for music stuff is pretty well known to long-time forum-heads here: jimmarchi1 @ gmail . com

obviously, remove the spaces, I just do that as a rudimentary but effective form of bot-proofing

if you need some legit info on a piece of gear you are reviewing or some general background on anything music-electronics from guitar to synths to recording equipement fel free to ask. if I don't know off the top of my head I can find out quickly.

guitar rig might be something that the upgrade would streamline.... I don't know a lot about real time software guitar modelling programs like that.... I have some amp and effect plugins but I mostly use them for mixing way down the line, not in real time and seldom on guitar

well the build quality is not up to 80s Marshalls tandards, its going to be a chintzier PCB like what amrshall sticks in the JCM2000s.... with a Marshall you are paying extra for the Marshall name too.... and also krank had some bad press before they went udner. It wasn't to do with their products but with their business practices. I cannot remember what had people up in arms against them but I am pretty sure that whatever it was caused Brendan small to kick them off of Metalocalypse and go back to his 800 2203 and court marshall for the Dethklok endorsement LOL

so kranks just don't sell for a lot.

if you see a 1980, get it! and the OP? maybe your 2 guitarists should look at the Krank 1980 or 1980 jr? they don't make 'em anymore but they're around apparently and they will do what you want.

I mean, I don't know what your application would be? you have mostly traditional stomps on a traditional board.... I think you need an all-in-one programmable looper to organize your effects chain for easy switching

the 1980 models are the only decent sounding Krank amps... they sound great, really. Very much an 800 but with some more gain at the top of the knob if you want it.... and they have that extra voicing knob that can help you get into 900 and Soldano territory when using the additional gain if you are into that kinda thing... I have tried both the 50 watt and 25 watt and almost bought the 25 (I kidna wish I HAD bought it, but I ahd just bought a buncha shit that month and couldn't imagine my justification to the wife).... I haven't seen one of them for years, but they sound nice, very 80s rock and right up your alley.

I am not sold on Krank build quality, but the horror stories I heard back in the day from Krank owners were for the bigger, more complex channel switchers and I suspect that the simplicity of the 1980 design will make them reliable.

how much is the seller asking?

It is important to commit ideas to some medium on a regular basis.

Its funny, I don't do a lot of this until way late in my creative process. I might write down chords or notation well after I have begun producing a finished product in earnest! I avoid working on an idea outside of my head for as long as possible so I have really explored the abstract musical elements internally and know all the things I think I CAN do and which things I ams rue I want to do with it. I find that when Is tart writing stuff down or noodling on guitar or piano it loses something and my scope narrows. I don't generally wanna lock an diea in a physical form until I can already imagine what most of it should sound like.... then I might try to find and name those harmonies as chords, jot notation down, create some sounds etc.... this is really hard to describe and it seems to be opposite of how most pop/rock/dance musicians operate. its probably why my songwriting is a bit different than most people's even though it sticks in some pretty traditional forms.

I've used a lot of hipshot parts apart from the baby grand I gotta,say for as much as they cost versusgeneric shit on allparts? they are great value for dollar when you compare them to bespoke stuff like Rutters.

I think mine's not upgraded. its fine for my uses. I don't know what the upgrade is for.... why don't you google it? maybe it makes them more plug n play with certain multii FX rack gea? I dunno what they could improve on the thing, it does the job.

I ditched my meds and now I feel creative as hell but I can't get it out onto paper.

that's what my wife used to say.... on her meds she was completely uncreative, but off her meds she could never finish anything... I always suggested she finish her stories and revise and edit them back on her meds but a lot of tiems she would go abck off them ebfore she got stable enough on them to do anything productive with her limited creative output from her crazy spells.

It was weird watching the whole thing because my creativity and productivity functions nothing like a bipolar persons. i'm nutty but mostly just from PTSD. I'm creative, but I go about my creative projects like a run of the mill worker ant, not a grasshopper.

I actually tried the baby grand on my old Carvin semi-hollow before retiring her and I really liked it. I recommend it to anyone looking for a music-sounding 1 piece replacement for a wrap bridge who also wants lower tension on bends because they wanna use heavier gauge plains trings than 10 or they wanna switch to flatwounds

if I know what you're writing about I can hit you up with some actual specs of products.... I actually AM a resource, as I can read a schematic for just about anything music-technology and know how it works. So for isntances if you are writing a boutique OD review Ic an tell you which ones are secretly subescreamers just by taking the back plate off and looking at the PCB, opamps, diode configuration and feedback loop....

I actually attempted to write some content for the site, but Michael felt I was way too detail oriented and long-winded and I just couldn't figure out how to edit my article without losing the parts that I thought made it a good review/buyer's guide. I am just not cut out for journalism. Ask me for a page and you get a book! My prose is tight, direct and concise.... but there's a lot of it and I spend so long one very sentence making it convey maximum info with minimum words that I just cannot edit beyond the 2nd or 3rd draft! And Michael wasn't sure what I should cut either but he felt it was definitely long and a bit boring at times LOL

Don't feel bad, I probably had a lot more formal training than you but I'm a pretty rusty sightreader anyway because I just don't need to sightread a lot of notation these days. It doesn't come up a lot as a guitarist unless you play classical.... and when you are reading through a aprt on your own just to decipher it you can go as slow as you need to, right? so no worries

but the theory behind being able to read a chart? that's irreplacable

I gotta tell ya, the FCB1010 has proved to be a pretty solid MIDI floorboard... I wasn't expecting much when I decided to go with a cheap MIDI controller, but damn do I like mine. I don't even think it was ahrder to program than something pricier. At least not for my application where its commanding a bunch of disparate MIDI gear on different MIDI channels with different CC and program changes coming across different channels. That would be hard and time consuming to set up with any footboard. After a year I can say the behringer is reliable. I know you asked me about that Terry and Ic an now tell you I think its built like a tank and once it is programmed for your needs the internal CPU that controls the MIDI logic just NEVER CRASHES or GLITCHES. NEVER

backs of cars... an hour or two in green rooms. I am a bit of an anti sleeper anyway.

I was too when I was in my early 20s, then I became one of those 'army ranger' type sleepers like you describe who needs sleep but can get it anywhere at any time of day, like in the van, mid-day on the way to the next show... now I'm old and 'normal'

honestly, I have been disappointed by every new, off-the-shelf guitar priced under a grand that I've picked up since about 2008 except for the Mexi-made Fender classics and the sub-$1000 models in the new Yamaha Revstar and the Reverend line.... every other new guitar I've played at a reasonable price has been better than most of the herd USED TO BE but far inferior than the cream of the crop in the sub-$1000 category before the Chinese and Indonesians got so entrenched in the manufacturing.

And I haven't played a good epiphone in 20 years. They're more consistent but even the pricey ones suck a rat by my yardstick.

Fender amp gain is garbage.

solid state amp gain is garbage... high gain stuff didn't sued to be fender's thing even in tubes, but I gotta admit they've gotten a lot better at it. At first it was just some custom shop amps that had nice dirt channels, but now you can go buy a supersonic for a few hundred bucks and get a pretty passable fender clean and a nice dirt channel in one amp that looks like a fender oughta look. So fenders not being good for dirt? not so true anymore.

I hate to say this because its so against my ethos, but have you guys considered going with some obsolete modelling system like the POD HD that has been replaced by Helix? They sound pretty passable and probably a world better than what you're using and you can kidna cerate a tone for every tune and recall them on the fly during your set like I do with my complicated analog MIDI setup. I'll bet you could score a couple HD300 floorboards for a couple hundred each. Then you would wanna disable the cabinet mdoelling but plug the output into the FX loop input of your practice amp to bypass the toen controls and stuff and just get a neutral sound with plenty of headroom (get where I'm going with this? taking it to 11). You could have each of their tones have a boosted version for when they wanna step up the volume and sue all of their amp/speaker's headroom but otherwise they could have the pPOD output at like 8 on a given patch so they have some space to make it louder as you described in your other thread.

dude, Terry, I know you musta lived at your rehearsal space illegally when you were in your 20s right? I know I did!

that's true. i understand NOTHING. that's why I asked. ok.

I wasn't trying to be nasty.... its just, hey why not read a basic book before you ask questions? if it doesn't give you enough info to be able to solve your own problems then you will at least know what you want to ask instead of just pissing in the wind....they say there are nos tupid questions, but I feel like asking the wrong questions is on the stupid side of the questioning spectrum... asking questions thata re meaningless will get you uninformative answers.... getting a little informed on your own (we have the INTERNET for god's sakes) and formulating meaningful questions is the way to go here (and in every situation where you are completely in the dark ona topic)

you're not going to boost a power amplifier beyond the capabilities of its components running off your amps particular power supply.... again, get a bigger amp that will work for most of your needs below 10 (unless its a tweed fender, then it'll go to 12, but a watt of power is a watt of power regardless of what's on the faceplate), turn it up and then roll your guitar volume down a couple notches for most of your set until you need full power, then roll back up.... alternately, replace your stock speaker with a more efficient model. Speakers translate potential power (wattage) into sound pressure. Efficiency or sensitivity is rated in decibels and the curve is lorarithmic so a 101 dB speaker trsnalted wattage about twice as effectively as a 98dB speaker, effectively dounling the sound pressure from those watts allowing you to get more volume out of them in a given airspace. So get a very efficient guitar speaker, then you can 'go up to 10' when you need that extra volume using the guitar volume control method I just suggested. Or if you want to boost a dirt pedal up too try putting a clean boost after it. Any old thing will do feeding a solid state amp... which I assume is what you're dealing with.

You're probably never going tog et an uncolored boost in volume at any point in your chain.... something always reacts a little differently when goosing your elvel up electronically but you can get lose if you're careful. The key is having enough headroom from your amp and speakers. Get a bigger amp or get more efficient speakers or whatever, then you can 'go to 11' alld ay like Nigel.

you guys need to eat less than twice a day, sleep on the floor (2+ band members to a bedroom), own only 2 pairs of boxers and 2 or 3 pairs of fucked up, holey socks.... just pay your dues like the rest of us did. Stop whining. I've been homeless sleeping on aprk benches.

what you don't understand about electronics is, well, all of it... just buy a professional amp, dude

this is not complicated stuff... dedicated presets on hardware reverbs are the 'fakes' developed to reproduce studio techniques on tour whereas you just need to treat your DAW as a tape machine and get clever like they sued to in the 80s, 70s, 0s.... well always before computers took the joy out of music production

hahahaha

articles that favor science over opinion? I'm not sure which articles you wrote but a great many of them , while useful for youngsters in a general way, contain downright electronic and acoustic falsehoods regurgitated as received wisdom

work harder, save money... buy a plexi RI or an 800 just to try the classic route

man up, cut costs and put all your money ito gear....e ventually its self funding but it requires a great deal of self-denial that your generation seems to be afraid of... all you kids say the same things but man, I did without cable, internet, furniture, a car etc and invested ing ear between 1998 and 2004

for punk start with a gunned tube amp and a little clean or dirty boost.... by dirty boost I mean a tubescreamer, SD1 or klon with the gain way down and the output cranked

Terry, the big muff is NOT a fuzz, its an extreme distortion

and reverse reverb can be achieved with a few pieces of dedicated hardware but is generally achieved by printing and reversing a reverb send in a recording...

also, know that you can't use 100% wet on a negative predelay reverb, you have to use the internal mixing from the hardware because its actually delaying the dry signal a little to produce the effect of the reverb starting a smidge before the dry signal

reverse predelay is a specific effect unique to a few devices with powerful buffering in hardware but was invented by printing any old reverb to a separate track on a recording and nudging it forward.... on tape we did it by printing the reverb to a separate deck and then starting the deck with the reverb track(s) ahead printing to a free track on the master deck and reel

honestly, in your country they could have fallen victim to all manner of poisonous animals

those guys (ween) live about 45 minutes from my house in New Hope (or they used to).... as a kid there was a good chance I could catch them playing the odd all ages show in New Hope when I would truck up there from northeast to embrace the queer country coutnerculture.

hahaha... no. I don't do prog rock and I saw smashing pumpkins on every tour until they dissolved after machina... no reason to ever see Corgan again

some letters wound up being populated easily because I could only remember 1 or 2 artists for that letter... some had lots of candidates because one act stood head and shoulders above the rest for that letter.... but some letters were so hard to narrow it down to even 2 options! the alphabetical method was interesting

alright, I'll do a highlights list 1 for each letter, then I have to get back to work:

A - Alison Krause and Union Station

B - Bauhaus

C - Cake (barely edging out the Cure just on sheer musicianship.... each guy plays like 3 instruments, often in the same song)

D - David Bowie (close tie with Depeche Mode and Dick Dale)

E - Elvis Costello dead tied with Einsturzende Neubauten

F - Front 242

G - Garbage

H - Hole

I - Iggy

J - Jesus Lizard (barely edging out Jeff Beck simply because as great as Jeff is at guitar, a whole night of his music gets tedious as a fan)

K - Killing Joke (barely edging out KMFDM)

L - Lush (close tie with Les Paul)

M - Metallica (close tie with Ministry)

N - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

O - Orbital (just 2 guys pushing buttons, but still memorable and fun)

P - Portishead (close tie with Porno for Pyros and the Parliament Funkadelic all-stars)

Q - Queens of the Stone Age

R - Rage Against the Machine (close tie with Rollins Band and the Rolling Stones)

S - Steely Dan (close tie with Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden)

T - Teenage Fanclub

U - Urge Overkill

V - the Vandals

W - Waylon Jennings

X - all I've got is X-marks the Pedwalk even though I was dragged to that little show

Y -

Z -

I am stuck on the last 2 letters, I may never have seen a Y or Z act. I can't think of a single one.

your dad played you greenday? that makes me realize I am probably way closer to your Dad's age than yours.

yes, it was very spinal tap, though to the best of my knowledge all of OUR drummers escaped with their live

it will take me longer to remember than to type them all... and that will take me all day

tough break... I was in a band that went through 5 drummers during the first 2 years of our career.

oh, okay, that's not how you were putting it over in previous posts, I stand corrected... so you just lost 5 songs?

it sounds like this is more YOUR record than a band record and people are going to sense that exclusion and not be dedicated to it unless you buy their loyalty or return them an equivalent favor for their pet project (which sometimes can be non-musical like helping a drummer repaint his house)

hmmm, the G polepiece should be highest on a 50s or 60s style strat pickup as they are compensated to amplify the smaller wound strings that were often quieter than the 2 lowest wounds and the plain strings (Gs used to be wound universally, unwound Gs were innovated by british players who sued banjo strings in place of the stock wound one) and despite the common use of a plain G 11 gauge or less by most strat owners the very high G polepiece is thought to be a part of the original recipe strat's signature sound... if the G si the highest polepiece then Boom is wrong...

this one is out there, but I have run into weirder things... consider that the neck wood may have harmonic dead spots that aren't heard the same by each pickup (every pickup on multiple pickup is under a different harmonic node)... this may be intrinisic to the enck but more likely given the symptom it may be an issues with the way the neck is coupling to the body in the pocket or the amount of relief on the truss

address all of those neck issues before examining the pickup just to be sure that your pickup