jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I too am tall (5'11") with long, spindly fingers that fit neatly in even the upper frets but can span 5 or 6 in 1st position and my right hand can easily adjust volume and tone on any guitar while playing (they're natural good at every stringed instrument really and play the piano really well for a guy who never took lessons but now I'm just bragging)... I have taught many a small, chubby fingered kid and I feel for you guys, tis an uphill battle for awhile, but determination is the most important attribute of a musician... if you wanna play badly enough you will figure out a way, look at Django Reinhardt and his mangled left hand! Or Tony Iommi's missing fingertips!

always good to read the staff fluently... you and I are part of a minority on equipboard

Big Joe has taken it too far. His collection sickens me when I see it, because it removes so many wonderful pieces from the world, to be holed up in his museum.

that guy tends to cheese me the fuck off in general... every once in awhile he says something I agree with and I am HATING myself for seeing eye to eye with that portly, blues-rehashin' d-bag

sounds like they sprayed it a diluted daphne blue... lousy Asian finishes

true. unless you play it, there's no point in owning it.

not every instrument is always in rotation, but I do rotate the guitars and keyboards that are out and available to play.... and when I am making home studio tracks I get out anything and everything

in general I also rotate ac30s, I always have 1 out downstairs and 1 out upstairs, all 3 heads are always stacked on a 2x12 with the head switcher so I can rotate them at will (in a lvie rig I sue the head switcher to change 2 different ac30s into the same combo cab but at home its just a handy dandy tones selctor where I can change amp flavors/settings etc on the fly with a footswitch, makes for really easy AB comparisons)...

but yeah, I own a LOT of guitars, amps and synths now and I generally will play all of them within a 30 day period, though I have some favorites thatg et more use like my original SG, sunburst tele, Yamaha DX7 and the 60s traynor PA head.... for some reason I always seem to go back to those pieces over and over lately

but recording just guitars this month I think I've already used the tele, the esquire, both SGs, the Greco LP, the silver LP, the epi acoustic, the old classical guitar, the matchless and my traynor... I know I used the selmer at one point but I think I didn't use that track in the finished song

I really gotta defend my GAS here, I use EVERYTHING and as much as I may love a piece, if its not getting used I sell it (unless its taken apart for servicing like my washburn and carvin which I need to rewire... well, the carvin needs more work than just the rewire, ugh, what a hasle! I don't even have the right parts for that one and the old parts are shot)

the head and cab setup is now permanently living in a walk in closet in the middle of the house to prevent it annoying the neighbors too much with the 3 heads, head switcher and a shure wireless on the input and a wireless 58 setup on the best sounding speaker so I can just plug n play and record real fast.... I don't love the 57 or 58 for anything but drums usually but its convenient right now to be able to fire it up, pick a head that's already got my favorite settings, then just remotely record while sitting in my studio corner downstairs... this was a recent idea I had this week.... it also helped that I recently found the wireless gear from my old band's touring setup floating around in another closet LOL, I was about to sell it all when I thought of this... I never have to tear down since I haven't used that closet since I was married anyway

I took the acoustic track, put it thru a phaser plugin set with no modulation, manually swept it across 4 bars (depth to 10 real fast, then slowly back down) and saved the automation, then pasted it across every chorus, distorted only the true midrange and ran some RMS compression across it to make the whole effect squeeze the sound.... way less 'normal' now.... its up real loud in the mix at the moment, but I think it'll come down soon

also, pacing-wise, I am thinking the 1st chorus would be a better place for the 'busker' drop out, once the song builds up itnertia it shouldn't mellow out, should it? the 2nd verse should slam right into the double chorus and then maybe a repetitive outro off the Am/C/D/D9 change from the 1st 4 chorus bars.... maybe a fuzzy, nasty guitar solo at the end (though I have been actively avoiding guitar solo, rockist type stuff on the electronic music up until now)

hmmm, I like the idea of flanging it... I am going to try that.... and maybe the drop out on the 2nd chorus I could flange everything, the whole track and manually sweep it down until it all comes back in

I mean, on a recording I can make ANYTHING sound like ANYTHING if I have to, but its time consuming and involves los of gear and its easier just to use the right tool for the job 1st take then fix it up to sound like something its not.... if I want a P-Bass I will get a P-Bass, if I want a Moog bass sound I will use a Moog... if I want 70s doom guitars I will use an SG into an old 50 watt tube amp with EL34s turned up... unless I am trying to create a real leftfield sound I just use the instruments that make the sound Iw ant instead of fiddling around. You can fiddle all day and never get around to playing.

that's how I look at things! I mean, I just did a recording where a section ahs a Gibson shortscale bass, but I genuinely wanted that tubby short scale sound and the Gibson EB pickup tone for that section so that's what I used.... brrowed my neighbor's bass, did 2 takes, returned it to him an hour later, Problem solved.

Its best to have 1 of everything.... its my life's work to fill every inch of my house with guitars and synthesizers

nah, that acoustic is super high passed, compressed really hard, run through a harmonizer on a delay, recombined and compressed some more and then given plenty of reverb send! But I could do more I guess, whadaya have in mind? you were really helpful with the drum sound

Strats are fun, so I'll look into that. My least favorite guitar I played was an Epiphone Les Paul. Don't remember exactly which model, but it was higher end, with the gray burst.

I can't stand Epis... I am a well known Epi-hater on this forum! Love legit Gibsons, own a pile of them, but you have to sift for the one that's right for you... they have more variation within a model than fender because Gibson USA does more handwork than fender even at the Nashville plant whereas fender USA is very automated and because they sue self leveling finishes on most models there's less sanding changing the neck shape from what the CNC machines carve... Gibson fine tunes the carve by hand and then does a whole lacquer finish process that's a lot of hand sanding so the variations build up. Boom will knock on this, but it means that within a given model like the SG standard that you are likely to find oen that's a perfect fit for your hands if you are willing to play 100 of them

335s, I just love the whole 335 style! if you can come up with 6 to 8 hundred bucks go on ebay and buy a 70s Yamaha SA model, my SA1000 is a real ass kicker and it cost me less than 700 a few years ago... the later ones (post 85) aren't as well made in my experience, though they have slimmer necks, more modern style frets, hotter pickups and a true ABR1 type bridge (if you care about that, I don't)... but if you like the 335 and don't have a lot of scratch stay away from the current crop of epis from china and korea and look at the old Japanese lawsuit 335 styles

its likely the wood, bass is really sensitive though you will run into guitars with dead spots too sometimes

although I don't think quality guitar/bass techs when I think Guitar Center, I wouldn't let any of those boobs touch one of my babies! google search, there's probably someone more competent working out of their house or a mom-and-pop store within driving distance of you

this seemed a lot better yesterday when I was blaring it on the hifi system instead of my studio monitoring setup while drinking wine and cooking short ribs... its got a lot of weird spots because of the cut and paste approach to writing I tried. Hrm

A properly setup guitar oe bass should be buzz free at every fret though cheaper instruments can suffer from dead spots even when perfectly setup....

Thanks. Its just the whole tone scale, but i played it with ferocity through a weird sound... I thik I spent longer making the guitar sound (it was even asntier during tracking) than I did actually playing the part.... this was like some 1 take johnny shit.

I'm small, but I am not a sissy when it comes to good tone... though shortscales sometimes have their place in sections of songs (recently used one in a bridge for a chunky guitr-like bass sound to contrast the fat moog synth bass in the verses and choruses)... on stage I wanna hear man bass

drums? mostly electronic,, but there's a loop from my stash that's all room mics on a delay and through flanging, EQ, bandpass filtering, dirty compression etc that's live playing and I used that to set the swing for all the drums on the track..., but the bass and such is programmed with alternate swing, leading 16th notes instead of lagging, though most of tis in 8ths

there's a huge amount of processed DR55 kick and highoassed drumulator kick in here too... my 1st two drum machines still tickle me 20 odd years later... both of those machines have really lame/dated kick sounds on their own, but used together they are very interesting... the great thing about the old analog roland machines is if you lock in a 4 on the floor every kick will record a little different and when you loops that you automatically get some 'live' variation but with that 808 kinda tone... the emu is obviously lofi samples, like a poor man's linndrum and the sounds are really mid 80s studio sounds with gated reverb built in and everything and a real lack of dance-music thump whereas all the dr55 has is throbbing low end, no attack at all even when you treat it like an 808 kick... you get the idea, serious nerd stuff here! Its just really fun to use the 55 as a trigger for the emu and loop up the results instead of pasting samples... why have the same kick as everyone else doing dance oriented stuff?

I am flattered that you have no idea what's live playing and what's sequenced.... tis so mixed for ever instrument

and all the hand percussion is live played by yours truly and looped, but its heavily treated with filters, ring mod, pitch shift, etc

my methods are hard to explain, like the whole drum bus is distorted to high heaven and compressed like hell but in parallel... tel_nobody said ithe drums sounded too polite last week so I pumped the stereo mix out into some effects pedals and then back in through a compression and folded it back at a low sample rate with the clean version 50/50I know a lot of tricks, listen to my whole soundcloud and learn

and yes, tis a 1st draft, I need to get the transitions smoother and do some level adjust, riding the faders but pre vocal I don't wanna do too much

this is based on that WORK IT animated gif, the lyrics are like: work it, push it, work it harder etc etc

I literally 'wrote' this to the sequncer/DAW, just flying by the seat of my pants a few bars at a time and not thinking... Zach and I have had this 10 minutes a day project going where you just print whatever your instincts tell you too and keep going... so far its been good to me whether the song is done or not

oh, and more importantly, thanks!

I was trying to homage garbage's 1st/2nd albums but also the who, sheep on drugs, chemlab and KMFDM as well as pastiche some very early house music from the music box era back when it hadn't veered off so far from stuff like frnakie goes to Hollywood... by the time I was hearing house music it was definitely the full on acid thing or it was slick r&b influenced stuff like 10city, all the new wave was gone

I did a lot of nutty stuff with this... misuse of outboard and plugins. Th whole thing was inspired by the lick played through an old frontman DIed from the speaker output inot a eureaka but I split it and blended some tempo synced moog filter back in via a sans amp... it was crazy, just making noise to inspire better music.... in the end I did more normal recording, like the straight les paul into traynor recording, but man, prior I was going nuts using all my toys on every source... guitar preamps coloring VSTi's etc just way out there

I deleted the 1st draft, see below for rough mix of final track... way better! nd the original version wasn't so shabby

aren't they short scales? I like big basses personally, they sound... right. More like a classical double bass or grand piano whichboth have tension and string length giving great overtones. Once in a while a short scale Gibson bass has its place, but usually P Bass scale.... and the mustang bass is even shorter than an EB2, isn't it? just like a mustang is 3/4" shorter scale than a Gibson and a full inch and a half shorter than a strat/tele???

fender periodically reissues these student basses (even the vintage musicmaster was basically a mustang bass) and they are just not.... fit for duty! not to my ear

easy to play though

just go on ebay and get a used mexi strat... in fact, contact Atomic Music in Maryland via ebay and ask what they have in your price range, tell 'em you're looking for an affordable mexican made fender strat, preferably something better than a standard or maybe a standard that's been upgraded by the previous owner (the standards are still way better than an affinity, but why not go whole hog and get something fancy if you can afford it)

they haggle, though they haggle more in person because shipping's a hassle... great guys though, good prices and a lot of wiggle room.... they don't sell new guitars or amps or synths or anything... awesome store! even their truly vintage pieces go for the low end of blue book value

I have bought and sold so much stuff with them.... I know my SG standard and AC30HW2 came from there... not sure what else.... I have a lot of stuff

so yeah, see if they can scrape up a Mexican fender for peanuts, I've seen some pretty nice mexi strats there for cheap... I once got an aerodyne tele there for like $400 no joke, great guitar, but I traded it back towards the ac30

uh, sorry, erm, um... I, uh, well, I got sidetracked, never even started a cover... I actually had thrown The Cure's "lovesong" into 6/8 time and really folked it up, but after getting the whole idea worked out I ran out of free time to get a take.... then I got inspired to start another original and its consumed all my free time since.... I guess I should return to that and actually put a mic up and do it this week... its funny, I had an acoustic miced yesterday, but I didn't even think of it

I find it hard to stay focused on covers recording-wise.... I don't think I've ever been in a band that consistently had a cover in its set unless it was a sideman gig and I don't count all of those, the whole set;s like a cover set from the hired guitarist's POV... under your bed would periodically toss a cover in our live set but none of them were ever recorded and we generally would just pick something right before a gig... we used to warm up with other people's tunes at rehearsal, so on the road we could just draw on that vast pool of warm up tunes we all knew, we might quick hash it out at soundcheck and make sure Elissa could get through it well w/o cheatsheeting the lyrics.... but 9 times out of 10 we played an original set

anyway, yeah, I'll do this cover this week... after much deliberation I think I am tied to folking up a goth song and I think its the Cure....

you might want to invest in something more rewarding to play... what's your max budget?

ah, their les paul copy.... cool finish on the top! I am always eyeballing the one with the sparkle (or is it silver flake, whatever) top but then I'm like, eh, its a lot of money for a Korean guitar.... I never see the sparkle ones as cheap as you got yours

good score, 600 clams sounds like a deal in this economy

closed it and set it aside.

How do you sleep at night!?

FILTH PIG! you sleep with both eyes open!

still at it?

http://equipboard.com/forums/dj-electronic-music/topics/dj-headphone-for-good-sound-qualty

if you are itching to buy those Pioneers just go buy them already....

you can use a pair of closed back over-ear headphones at home to listen for pleasure, sure, lots of folks do... before there were dedicated DJ models the over-ear style was out there and very popular with more than just musicians overdubbing vocals in a recording studio. I'm not sure I would rely on them to produce/mix original music, but they'll be better than ear buds or consumer PC speakers for those purposes. Then again, there's a lot of dissent on the whole 'headphone producer' thing on this website. So again, just buy them or something at the same price point with the same features. Personally I'm an Audio Technica guy when its comes to sealed, DJ style headphones.... but the ones I like cost more than what you're looking at....

I am 99% sure he used to build the Lemon amps.... I suspect he stopped making them, there's not a huge market for that sort of thing for some reason

and I think he presses singles for swervedriver now

isn't he the guy who builds those "Lemon" amps that are yellow clones of the old orange Overdrive heads?????????

he's the ONLY person making a legit Orange with modern components.... I want to know him, Terry!

well, they are a bit different, the SD1 is very much an assymetrical clipped tubescreamer with less of a lower-midhump built in... the OD1 is the basis for all TS/SD1 type pedals with diodes clipping the feedback loop and not the whole signal (they call this 'soft clipping), but its very different, more primitive, and other than a huge bass rolloff built in, its much flatter (there's also 2 versions, the original uses a discontinued opamp and that one sounds noticeably different, some say it sounds better)

the MXR GTOD dude mentioned is very much a flatter TS9/TS808, a lot like the 90s green rhino whereas the Custom Badass I favor is more like an SD1 with OD1 mids that lets you reboost the bass and also gives you a switch to give it the tubescreamer low-midhump... then there's the green rhino mk2, also technically a Dunlop, has fully variable midhump or cut along with the 100hz bas boost, but otherwise has the TS symmetrical clipping, basically a super tweakable GTOD.... then there's the Zach Wylde which I believe is very much the same pedal as the GTOD, but with more mid push getting closer to a stock TS9 like the dude used to use out front of his 800s before the Dunlop deal.

these are all very similar designs on paper from the OD1, the genesis of this style of circuit, through to all the hot rods like the way huge or the crazy configurable Pallisades by EQD... a change of diodes, opamps, input cap and tone pot value revoice the whole effect pretty drastically (until the rest of your band comes in and swallows those nuances LOL) which is probably why this style of pedal is so popular with modders and small builders... and they sound pretty good, very much a classic tone now in and of themselves

in diode clipping distortions, there's this type, the 'soft clip', then there's 'hard clip' with diodes clipping the whole signal to ground right before the output or sandwich between 2 opamp stages which would be like a DS1, rat, DOD 250, distortion+ etc and then there's dynamic clipping, which ahs diodes to a transistor stage's bias potential within the opamp/IC and that's the discontinued Voodoo Lab OD, Fulltone OCD, the joyo OCD clone etc.... tis a cool idea and it would be nice to see it applied to other clever pedals like the Klon design that only diode clips the high frequencies and then relies on some antural transistor overload giving the klon its marshall-esque rresponse.... if the diode section on the klo were more dynamic I think more people would sue it for heavier distortion instead of just a boost or light OD.... I should make that pedal

anyway, even the lowly DS1 CAN sound quite good even though we al love to hate it... I am a known tone snob, but I am also a creative musician and I am not afraid to make a bad sound into a good through context, so I don't think anyone should discount any dirt box unless they try it in their rig and it just won't do what they want (and even then, it might be useful to you in another situation)

personally I am the enemy of huge pedalboards, so for live I just do "my sound' which is mostly amp based, but when I am recording anything goes.... I think I have the least stuff I've ever owned right now, but its still a lot... last time I made a record with a band the horde of gear was obscene and I think we tried everything even though a handful of amps and 1 old fuzzbox wound up stealing the spotlight for most of the album! but it wasn't my turing rig for that band, I barely used my road plexi or the 'barney' metalface and used a new reissue a lot more because it just worked.... and a lot of the time the overdrive is actually a boosted fender and not a marshall because THAT worked. On its own that fender dirt was not so special, you don't think blackface twin and power amp distortion, do you? but with the bass and drums it was great....

so what makes a great fusion sound? I don't know, what does the song want? what kind of tones do the other musicians bring to the party. I can't just blanket answer such a broad question. I think the real key ehre is that if you are playing professionally you should acquire new stuff but try to avoid selling stuff because it might surprise you later. I only reluctantly thin the heard now that I am not a pro.

oh yeah, they're like Trussarts only with more evil in the cosmetics

that chrome t-bird would kick so much ass if it wasn't autographed allover! Its making me wish my 2 silver gibsons were chromed like that... I guess I'll have to break down and get a Normandy in chrome one of these days....been eyeing them for years now. Again, what a shame everyone on that teen-pop tour autographed that bass :-(

I like the EB5, looks like a solid rocker

I can't seem to figure out what makes this guy tick from the schematic, but I suspect that the FoxRox Octron is a similar design, just refined.... the Octron is a bad ass effect by the way, very clean analog octave up and down, nothing like it... way cooler than a Mutron or EHX

I think Jeff Beck used an Octivider on Blow By Blow... I also think they may have reissued this pedal back when they reissued the tonebender professional mk2 a while ago, so if you want the original circuit there's a cheaper option.... why not get someone to clone it for you? you're Australian, your country is loaded with talented small builders like Paul Crowther of Hotcake fame.

check out an octron though, they are cool as fucking hell, all analog made by one of the best electrical engineers in the guitar FX business

it would be cool to hear a recording of the sound your friend's Octivider is making that you're in love with...

yeah, she's from an era when everyone was trying to make a cleaner analog octave effect.... most old octave pedals like the Mu-tron Octave Divider and the EHX Octave Multiplexer (the 2 most famous and in my opinion best 70s octave boxes) create their high and low actaves similarly to most octave-fuzzes, using diodes, but if I am not mistaken the Colorsound does something completely different to get a clean analog octave down that's responsive to your playing more like the early Roger Mayer 'octavio' built for Hendrix that used a small transformer in some arcane way to make a really reactive octave up... but not unlike the Mayer pedal, I have no idea how its accomplished.... unique pedal right there, I don't think they made a lot of them either... I've never seen one, and if I haven't seen one then its pretty uncommon

also, pretty much all solasound and colorsound pedals are worth a mint, highly collectible... I would think the octave divider is worth a good $500 US in the current market just given its rarity and cool factor

your studio is far better equipped than my 'music corner' over here LOL, y'know, if you were talking about the audiotechnica 40 series, I am a huge fan of those mics, they definitely do a stereo version, so maybe that's what you liked so much? those AT mics are way underrated, I actually prefer them to a lot of more famous LDCs

SCROOODEGEDY BOOGEDY BOOOGEDYBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

dildocuntshitmurderopediRECTOSLUTENmurderenkillipedifuckeraass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I seriously wrote a song for that 'work robot' animated gif and am halfway done the programming/recording... its like house music with raunchy guitar... I gotta come up with a 303 pattern next just to up the cheese, then I have a couple guitar amps to mic up for choruses

I just can't afford to be that invested in fancy microphones anymore... you can do a lot with anything better than a 57, get 2 or 3 flavors and you're fine unless you need to record a live kit.... but I can't really do drum recordings in my house, so who cares about that imaginary scenario

I love some RCA or AEA 44s.... wish I could afford to keep one lying around my house :-(

oh, sorry Terry, you got it

that's an RCA 44BX, great old ribbon mic

fuck it, I am totally keeping the DAW open and going back and forth