jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

necro-post!

I have 2 more really nice dirt boxes to reports on:

1) TC electronic ND1 Nova Drive - sadly discontinued! This pedals is an all analog 2 in 1, kinda like the visual sound Jekyll/Hyde... but with digital encoders for knobs to allow preset saving, also has a switchable buffer, MIDI in for remote preset changes and assigning expression pedals to knob functions. The footswitches can be configured a few different ways (traditional independent switches, either/or/off switching and preset mode which allows banks of 2 presets without an external MIDI controller or the G Switch). The 2 sides can also be routed serially with either side as the 1st effect OR in parallel! The OD is a tubescreamer variant. It reminds me a lot of the Voodoo lab sparkle drive featuring flatter midrange than a TS9 as well as a clean blend. The distortion side is a rat with a treble and bass tonestack and it sounds REALLY good. Because it doesn't have the crazy filter control its hard to dial in EVERY 80s Rat sound, but it hits the main tones as well as being capable of a lot more. Works well as a tough, brit sounding OD with the gain down too. Tone controls make it easy as heck to mate to any rig. My favorite way to use this pedal is with both sides engaged in parallel to blend a really complex overdrive tuned to add dirt to specific frequencies. It works better boosting a tube amp on the edge of breakup than ANY OTHER DIRT BOX I HAVE OWNED, though you really have to play with the parallel setting to get the most out of it as a lower gain drive. The preset storage is so awesome when making complex patches using both sides of the pedal. Its also nice to be able to recall a preset and retune the bass and output to suit different guitars and restore to another preset location. This is the best dirt box I have ever owned. Taken indivivually both sides are pretty decent, but when used together with all the routing and preset capabilities it schools simpler dirt machines. All the functions but the preset storage are pretty intuitive. Programming complex drive textures is fast and fun and the ability to save them means you can just forget about it all and play when its time to jam.

Behringer super fuzz.... sounds shockingly like a vintage univox with the addition of treble and bass controls. Surprisingly low self noise. Box is shitty, but hey, it was 20 bucks. The tone is RIGHT THERE. I want to be a cork sniffer, but I can't in this instance, the Behringer super fuzz sounds THAT GOOD.

I am partial to the fernandes revival and function guitars from the 80s, generally very nice for not a lot of dough compared to similar tokais:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fernandes-The-Revival-Right-Handed-6-String-Solid-Body-Electric-Guitar-Black-/371600852436?hash=item56852305d4:g:LLkAAOSwhDdXD7LU

here's into-sound, good deals to be had from this dude, but he isn't terribly knowledgeable and his English is sketchy:

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/into-music?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

there's this song I like to play in the key of D on my Tele and it goes something like "this postshould be in the guitar forum, oh yes it should..."

for rock? Led Zeppelin 1, the whole album, for rock on a tele cannot be beat.... supposedly all tele, wah wah, fuzz pedal and a 1x12 supro combo (maybe a 1624 dual tone)... if I have to pick 1 song fron LZ1 its "good time bad times" - I'm not a big Zep or Pag fan, but those opening chords are a grabber and are also some of the fattest Tele tones ever aid on tape. And yes, the SOLO to stairway was played on that tele thru one of those weird Supro student amps thata re like tweed champs with a 6x9" oval speaker... that tele once belonged to the Yardbirds and had also been played by Clapton and Beck.... but all of LZ1's 6 strng electric parts are supposed to be that guitar and a 1x12 supro combo (though some people swear it was 1x15 thunderbolt, honestly all the supros sound very similar, I have owned some).

for country/roots? Elvis Presley's cover of "Polk Salad Annie" with james Burton on tele... and pretty much anything Burton ever played on, he's a lord of the chickin' pick... I am loathe to admit it, but I am quite partial to this tune's dueling country teles...

https://youtu.be/9F_FN4ygjTo

special award to ALL the stones songs written by this guy in this whacked out tuning:

http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/gallery/9ffa918cb0adc1326d72df321dacff7d30d6e055.jpg

I am missing the pinecaster I kept in 5 string open G before Lucian was born just looking at his evil grin there!

maybe I'll build another old style tele with a brass, 5 saddle bridge....

I have less gear than I used to. Honest.

at work? no worries... I have more than enough time to post to EB, my coworkers are slow as balls, I can slack off and still get more done than Sonya the slug.... people never fail to amaze me! a lack of motivation can really drag people down to inhumanly low levels of productivity. I know a few people who whose jobs would be more productively filled by reptiles!

phew, disaster averted

for cheap but nice strats to modify why don't you go on ebay and look up "into-sound"

hes a Japanese guy who consigns a lot of 70s and 80s lawsuit guitars in player condition so they are a bit cheaper than old MIJ has been lately. Shipping is costly, but its reflected in his pricing.

dump the epi case, the difference in profit between an epi and the vastly better gibby case in used sales will be a few pounds sterling...

at least I the USA we are talking about a $10 difference in used case sales.... keeping the Gibson case will help you resell the Gibby if you decide to get a nicer LP... not having the original case for a cheapie USA LP typically drags the value down and attracts bottom-feeders to the sale

if you are goig to keep 1 case for gigs, keep the one legit one, please

do NOT sell a Gibson harshell case!!!!!!!!!!!! if you join a band you will NEED a hardshell case and even a knockoff will cost you more than you can sell the one you have for. Seriously, NEVER gigbag a set-neck at a multiband bar (pub) gig!!!!!!!!! more than my tendencyto throw it, a gigbag in bars fulla drunks is what beat my beloved white, jv strat to pulp... pummeled to shit by assholes, the gig bag did nothing to protect her (one local new years eve gig in 2007 in particular, I ahd fun but poor old strat did not). Picked upa fender hardhsell in a trade and checked the the damage before it became detrimental. If she were a set neck she woulda had an irreversible neck damage with the abuse she tolerated...

KEEP YOUR CASE unless you want a Les Paul with a headstock repair. SERIOUSLY

don't be a boob over raising funds to mod a jap strat...

I swear to god, sometimes it seems like everyone with a lick of financial sense came to colonize America.

hollow bodies and semi hollows look big on anyone of slight build.. if I weren't around the 6' mark I would look really foolish with my lawsuit 335 being pretty skinny for a dude... so most women get dwarfed by full size archtops (most of them), 335 sized semis and guild/Gibson jumbos... and obviously the big archies like the super400, byrdland etc... but they are not really as big as all that. they just look huge standing up, particularly if you're a slim lady (and lets face it, most musicians are slim because food costs money)... I briefly owned a similar chet atkins fully hollow guitar (practically a loan I returned it so fast) and it was nothing compared to a full size Guild or Gibson jazz box. Not as deep and not as big overall around the body profile. Very comfortable. I was just unable to keep it for financial reasons (they are pricey and not particularly versatile, though great).

I played in a band with 5' tall, 100;bs brunette on vocals.... I will see if I can find any pics of her with her guild jumbo... its so funny

I don't know that I would call Steve Vai or his sidemen low gain players. Not Brutal, but I don't get my signal that distorted usually.

Blues guys are their own thing. They come in a handful of flavors (generally based on the influence their heroes have had on their gear selection), but they are generally analog purists if they can afford to be. Working blues musicians I know will generally have a cheap, Chinese production tube amp that has a decent clean and then lean on the 'ol tubescreamer if they are on a budget. I think I would go with a PODHD instead, but that's me. They play small bars with bad PAs and a hotrod deluxe goes a long way for them.

There are a lot of touring country guys toting the axe FX these days, same goes for the pop world, but in rock its mostly the heavy guys going the high-end digital route. In rock it seems like the heavy players always jump on the new technology. I remember as a kid heavy players were all about rack systems with separate preamps and power amps sandwiching fancy studio processors which were the peak of guitar technology though they are now reviled by most and used by some for overtly gimmicky sounds (I did happen to like my SPX90, why did I sell that processor again).... I feel like the guys going with Fractals and Kempers are definitely in that tradition (I've seen a come abck of 80s rack mounted preamp/fx/power amps setups lately too). I don't know if its a legit shift from integrated tube amps though.

The trouble with the Kemper is there's nowhere to try the darned thing! I would love to profile all my amps and just take the Kemper to gig, but only if the sound AND FEEL is 100% there. I don't want to be told I sound great through the mains but feel like I'm holding my dick in my hand while I'm on stage! The older I get the less gain I resort to. I don't play clean often, but my sound has a punchy dynamic that's a little different than what the mass of hard rock and emtal people out there will be shooting for. Think 70s hard rock. I finally tried a POD HD500 and it sounded pretty close but the dynamics were off. I only ever tried an Axe FX1 and it shined in the FX department and the sound of the amp models was even better, but it stil didn't have the same reactive quality as an amp at mid to low gain settings... and there's magic speaker reaction going on in my rig too. old school celestions being pushed right to their wattage limit really react to your dynamics.

simulated amps, I wanna get on board, but its scary to be ampless.... its like taking half my instrument away and turning it to 1s and 0s.... I feel like it wouldn't work the other way, with a virtual guitar and a raging tube stack.

oh yeah, out of nescessity I purchased a slightly different Fane Classic 50 from '82. Pulled from a more upscale Vox solid state amp of the era. Its a 12/50 magnet and voicecoil like the one I have already but with a small aluminum dust cap instead of a large paper dust cap and it may have a different cone. I won't know until I can put it side by side with the 83. Should be a little brighter, which makes sense for a Vox OEM speaker. Got her for a pittance but she won't get here for weeks because I bought her from a guy in the UK. Oh well.

heads up to Liam, apart from Laney amps and some Crates of the era, apparently there are a number of 80s Vox models equipped with 50+ watt Fane Classics. The venue series got them as did the escort I think.

what do you think of the kemper for lower gain sounds? It seems like, even moreso than the axe FX, metal/post-harcore/ultra-high-gain players rave about the Kemper, but I don't run into a lot of people saying it replaced a vintage AC30 or Tweed Fender on stage for regular rockin'.

The fcb1010 is most def thepoorest. Midi board out there. But itwascheap as all get out and will serve long enough to justify the 60 bucks I spent. A lot of guys tour with these things so they must be somewhat sturdy. I just plan to dosome lical gigs with it and maybe track a record.

okay Narcist, I scooped up an '82 Fane Classic 12/50 8 ohm speaker with a lead cone and small aluminum dustcap to replace the dying CTS. I am hoping the lead guitar classic 50 will mate well with the general purpose, large dust paper cap model I already have. So I am good unless 100 watts RMS power handling is still not enough for the mighty YVM1 tube amplifier. I can't imagine these speakers won't take it, the amp could only put out 60 watts RMS at best and MAYBE 100 watts peak.

I managed to cherry pick ths speaker off of Ebay for a pittance, so I can get on to organizing the rig. A big (for me) pedalboard seems cheapest so I think I am going with your suggestion. It occurs to me I don't need to put the MIDI controller on the pedalboard. What do you think of a slightly smaller pedalboard with the pedals? I could order 2 small ATA cases to fit the pedaltrain and Behringer footboard and just connect a 3 foot MIDI cable between them when I set up.

http://a0.amlimg.com/NjNmNWRlZWY2MTkzMjE4ZDAwZDM2ZDg4NTU5YjNjZGGiqGTvsBg4mlw8tmvxIHQdaHR0cDovL21lZGlhLmFkc2ltZy5jb20vMWFkZGJlNDI0MTM0Y2IxYWVmMTUxN2NhYjUzN2Y1NmU4ZTU1Y2Q1NGE1Y2ExYmFlYzM1NDFhYzhhYjA3ZGUwYy5qcGd8fHx8fHw3MDB4NDY1fGh0dHA6Ly93d3cuYWR2ZXJ0cy5pZS9zdGF0aWMvaS93YXRlcm1hcmsucG5nfHx8.jpg

looks 90s

https://reverb.com/news/guitaronomics-how-much-does-it-actually-cost-to-build-a-guitar

I'm not going to be baited on the dream theater issue again. They are all accomplished instrumentalists in their idiom for sure. Practice whenever you are not sleeping or working and you will catch up. Like this guy:

https://youtu.be/_EqHVfXkCkA?t=18s

he has his guitar in the Jacuzzi, that's whats up

Petrucci?!?!! ARGH!

I'm a big fan of saving channel, send and bus presets too. If I have a routing setup I really like across the whole mixer I will re-save a project under a generic name, zero the faders and then delete all the tracks and automations so I can start new pieces with the mixer set up the same way. Working analog I really love SSL consoles and some of the digital live sound boards for this reason. The recall is such a time saver setting up a mix session. When I did this for a living I was a stickler for recall sheets for the outboard gear even after a mix was printed and sent to be mastered so that I could reuse any ideas I had while mixing on the next artist. Or better still I would do recalls for another mixer I was assisting so I could reuse their ideas.

All that sidechain compression reminds me of a trick I learned recording rock bands. Its a variation on New York compression where you toss different compressors with different character on 3 to 4 sends and then sidechain their response or even just throw an EQ before the compressor to tune the whole send to low shelved, bandpassed or high shelved. Then you can compress whole groups of tracks in parallel across specific frequency bands and blend the FX return in as much or as little as you want for each 'band' to reshape the frequency response and dynamic range of the mix simultaneously without losing any of the punch or immediacy on the individual tracks. It allows you to just peak limit while recording and then leave pretty much everything but vocal and bass uncompressed. I am not sure what thisform of parallel compression is called because I only know a handful of guys who do it.

It used to be only for mixing with a big console and analog gear because of latency issues, but there are so many compressor plugins with great blend controls now that its easier to get away with in the box if you are careful. You can still get phasing if you don't create a dry bus that compensates the dry tracks for the little bit of latency from the FX send though.

With mixing any type of music we are all students. Every song is a learning experience. You can reach a point where you know it all when it comes to recording or sequencing the music, but mixing is like the visual arts, always more techniques to discover or to learn. If it sounds great it is right, so anything the gear or software can do should be explored thoroughly when mixing to keep thigns from sounding stale.

Don't panic newbie! Its a head, so no biggie, I could recone the speaker but why bother? I have boxes of 25 to 50 watt speakers. Its just got too much peak wattage for a all but the toughest 50 watt drivers. I think going for 70 to 100 watts per speaker will solve the problem.... I've destroyed more money in speakers than you've earned in your short lifetime.

amp's fine, just powerful as hell for a pair of EL34s, way more punch than a marshal 1987 or 2204... and I own like 6 tube amps anyway? I forget. Maybe it just 5 now. 3 30 waters, a 5 atter and the 50 watter... oh no, 6, I picked up that laney 50 watter I haven't tried yet too... shoved in the gear closet right now.

Fighting fish, hysterical but they shit within 30 seconds of a tan cleaning.... got one as gift in 1998. I didn't MEAN to kill the little fucker, and yet.... Sionara Mr Miyagi!

yeah, he blew out a greenback fucking with my pedals while I was playing... I was probably killing her anyway... little man spiked the output on a drive pedal and was like "AH! it too loud!"

how are the twins? got pics?

just the 2 year-old boy

View post on imgur.com

I do the same thing with my supporting drums and repetitive vocals. Thts trick to the cut off filter you gotta work the res too, thts something a lotta people who do house today are missing which made house back in the 90's and early 2000 great, they just set the res in one spot and work the cutoff, you don't get that pulled from water / mud vibe.

I don't listen to a lot of EDM anymore so I had no idea people forgot how to swell a filer correctly... if you open/close/sweep the filter and reduce or increase resonance into distortion or a limiter you get a lovely squeezing, slurping effect that will make all the druggies flip out

N yea I'll sometimes throw a delay in too (a synced one tho.), only time I use un-sync is to breathe a lil more life into the environment processed into a channel with a wider stereo image.

I am way into detune/delay for overt automatic doubletracking type sounds, but I am a giant Beatles fan, so...

I've never tried tht noise technique your talking about, I'mma have to give tht a try when I get some down time.

I love white and pink noise.

and I just read your second post too, imma throw tht into a list of things to do too.

gated reverb with synced predelay is going to blow your mind.... you can filter the whole FX send to do some amazing "risers and downers" just on the reverb sound during transitions.... add in a reversed 808 ride synced to a half bar, gradually decrease the resonance while opening the LPF and you are all set...

what tricks do you have WHorse? I am dying to know, your shit sounds pretty damn good.

hmmm... of course, I can change tempo with the tap button and I have 2 expression pedals for feedback and delay level (and in the tone print software you can assign additional user parameters to each knob) so I can tweak the shit outta that delay regardless (which I won't because I'll be busy playing the guitar)

I was more thinking about access to the other junk. Because every room sounds different I might need to get at controls for the drive, fuzz and maybe even the chorus and tweak at sound check. Plus racks are nice and neat but they are kinda heavy and a pain in the ass. I've been there. I couldn't justify it with only 3 rackspaces used before, this time it'll be 1 space and a drawer or two. THe pedaltrain will be lighter I'm sure. The rack is like signing up to have a 3rd/4th amp head

Its so much easier not to have all this stuff, and its only a few things by many people's standards... drive/distortion, fuzz, chorus, echo, routing. I think YOU have more effects... so does Liam.

I want to get it all organized cheaply, so maybe cost will decide. I am still fucking with the speakers in my closed back cab and that's a minimum for $50 investment every time I try swapping one of the drivers out. I don't have a lot of choice since I'm demolishing vintage CTS speakers (though they sound righteous as they take the beating), I also ate a spare Chinese-made greenback and I am concerned the 50 watt fane classic is unhappy with the traynor's unbridled power too.... it doesn't SEEM that loud maybe because the frequency response is so much flatter than a marshall of similar wattage but its louder than a 747 and fat as god's balls... just not fatiguing to stand in front of. So money's an issue as I am not MADE of it. I am in a battle with the speaker cab - the tone I am seeking versus power-handling versus efficiency (I don't want high efficiency speakers, the amp is PLENTY loud, but low efficiency ones with good power handling sound mushy) versus my income!

every time I fuck around with a new amp format its a giant speaker quest to find THAT sound

I am debating just buying a pair of Eminnce V128s and calling it close enough, at 120 watts apiece they should handle the amp fine, they are relatively cheap and they sit somewhere ein tone between a 70 watt Fane and a 70 watt V30. How bad could they be?

there's always 1 more fucking gadget or case to buy. ugh

Thanks for allthe input. The radial aby is the size of the flashback. I also fogot the Nux true bypass midi a/b unit. Thats the size if a boss gigadelay more or less. The fuzz and chorus are boss pedal sized more or less. Nova is pretty big. About boss gigadelay size. Its a lot of realestate for all the funtionality i have even though its very few effects really. Some are big but i get at least 2 textures from each big one. I could pedalboard everything and have the controller separate... But looking at the monsters and men puc scares me. Its so much stuff...

Ugh. I blew another speaker yesterday and am straining 2 more 50 watters. I need more power handling for the beast... I mean the traynor. She is so punchy and dynamic the transients have eaten everything but the fane so far even with some attenuation...

alright, here's one more trick:

no one is going to tell you this, but another classic trick pioneered by Depeche Mode and used in everything from synth pop to trance is GATED REVERB like on AC/DCs "back in black" LP. What makes this work well in EDM is your ability to sync the reverb's pre-delay to about an 8th or 16th note and then gate out the decay so it adds to the pulse of the song as well as adding ambience. Its less overt than rhythmic multi-tap delay... if you are doing this "in the box" a good way to go is to set up an FX send, place an effects you want before the verb on the send (I recommend a vocoder tuned to compliment the key of your song), then you want either reverb, or if you're reverb doesn't sync its predelay to the tempo of the song (and you don't want to do some basic algebra to figure out how many ms to use) just throw a delay plugin outfront set to 100% wet), set your verb to 100% and tune it however you want but don't give it a super long decay unless its a downtempo tune., then you need a gate. Start out with the gate wide open and once you like the sound of all your rhythmic tracks hitting that reverb, start fucking with the gate until it really adds to the rhythm of the tune. You can use the fader to adjust the level of the whole FX send inthe final mix without fucking with the rhythmic verb effect itself... you will also want to throw an EQ at the end to be able to shape what you've created so it fits into your bandwidth neatly, thickening the song without masking anything.

you may wish to set up a second effects send with the same chain sans gate for more sustained sounds to keep the sense of ambiance consistent

they call those downers and risers? Huh. I usually do that with the roland MKS or a plugin that does PWM and subtractive using envelopes or a ramp/saw LFO for pitch and filter cutoff/resonance. When I still had the electrix filter factory I liked to run into that bad boy and manually sweep a bandpass from about 100hz up to around 4khz (estimated) while reducing the resonance (Q) from max to minimum... sometimes it can be fun to run that into a distortion plugin and automate the gain up as it 'rises' or 'downs' to add harmonic content. In the mix I am quite fond of panning the track out 50% and running a detuned ping pong slap delay at about 2ms to thicken it... it can also be cool to throw a softsynth that's all white or pink noise in the center when you do that with a similar filter sweep but no pitch change and then slap a mono flanger on that, disable the LFO and automate the manual control and regen....

shit, I am giving away all my old tricks! you didn't read this, you didn't read this!

Nor did either Ricky Wilson play on the smash hit "Love Shack." What of it?

I think it can seem like there's a lot of tone in the hands when you put 2 guitarists with a gulf in fine hand technique on the same guitar/amp. I like to look at it as 'tone' and use it to spur people to practice how they approach the notes with both hands, but lets face, no matter what your technique level you are going to sound different through a Hiwatt half stack and a Twin Reverb. Both loud, high headroom amps with a similar design intent.... but they are never gonna sound THE SAME.

Too much awareness of the massive tone contribution of your gear keeps you from progessing as an electric guitarist. There are a lot more guys out there with shit technique than good technique (and I don't mean blistering speed or general precision). Looking abck I am glad I started ona great vintage fender amp and got a tubescreamer early on, I didn't get really into experimenting until I ahd been playing for more than 5 years. I was really happy with how my shit sounded out the gate so I focused on me sounding as good as possible (because I seriously needed to shed). Then I started chasing OTHER good tones apart from the one I started with. but I coudla gone the other way if I had started on a 90s crate.

http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/23482-tone-tips-hands-vs-gear

discuss?

as the title says, pedalboard or rack drawer? as some of you know I MIDIed up this spring, None of the gear I wound up liking is rackmount, tis all pedals, but I don't touch the controls or footswitches on ANY of it apart from the TC Polytune and occasionally the midboost on my ABY pedal (which is ALWAYS in Y mode, 50 watt amp is always on and the Matchless and AC30HW share the HW combo cab on a head switcher controlled by, you guessed it, the MIDI footboard)

So should I put the pedals on an enormous pedalboard behind the the MIDI controller in case I want to tweak some non-reset delays or distortion on the fly or should I just accept that I went with presets for a reason and throw it all in a rack drawer under a furman conditioner? Or should I build some massive pedalboard so I can get at the controls if I want to?

Mind you I have 2 MIDI expression pedals that can be assigned to any knob on my main drive and my delay.

Effects in the setup are:

Superfuzz (non MIDI, on truebypass looper, just for nasty solos)

DOD CE2 chorus copy (non MIDI, on true bypass looper, only used in 1 preset)

Radial ABY with mid-boost (always Y, occasionally use mid-boost with a tele)

TC Nova Drive (MIDI, has 3 presets I use so far and expressions can control, gain, boost, tone etc)

TC flashback X4 (MIDI, not great with presets, you can only do 2 of them and 1 has to be bypass, can't change modes within a preset via MIDI, but all parameters in a preset are controllable via expression pedals and the global tap tempo)

thoughts? it will be an unwieldly pedalboard or it will be 2 small ones... I will need to do something with the MIDI footboard and tuner for sure, but I could just flight-case them if I rack everything else.... hmmm

pedal-fiends, I need advice

the dark matter seems like it might be the same basic circuit as the distortion section of the NDR1 Nova Drive only with a switch to scoop the mids more for chuggachugga-metal brootality. In that case it is a really well tweaked rat circuit. Since there is already a mid emphasis to the Rat, so on the nova drive its nigh impossible tog et a metal scoop from the pedal alone with the treble and bass controls. It sounds pretty flat thru my gear with the bass gunned up close to max and the treble well above noon. With both controls maxed the scooped sound is pretty subtle and you would need more tweaking at the amp to get all metal about it.

The Nova Drive runs at 12 volts and both sections are pretty dynamic until you crank the gain up, does the Dark Matter run at higher voltage than 9v or contain a charge pump?

TC's derivative drive and distortion circuits are pretty great tweaks on tried and true designs. What I really like about them is that, unlike a lot of booteek versions that are finicky with amps or are laden with switches to voice them, TC seems to voice their dirt to be pretty equally at home on ANY type of tube amp, and my voxes and traynor could not be further apart from the 1st gain stage biasing and voicing to the output tube and power supplies. The exact same Nova setting I created to push my traynor sounds fantastic thru the ac30hw without tweaking. In fact, it doesn't sound like the same setting. The vox and celestion character recolors the whole OD texture in every way. I wouldn't say it sounds just like the amp breaking up on its own with the vox with the traynor settings, but it sounds good as hell, no preset tweakin' needed.

TC can really do analog dirt pedals.

Wow... Thank you. This was definitely helpful :) All the best, Ross

next time you're in philly you can buy me a martini, cheers Ross

other, cheaper thoughts:

the Mexican-made Fender standard strat is cheap and a great mod platform tat typical has very good bones (though the necks tend to be on the slender side for my liking), but one of those mods should be the trem block as the stock one is utter crap... stay away from late 90s mexi standards as they tend to be poplar and I don't think poplar sounds so hot as a strat... Fender went back to Alder on the Mexi standards around 2001 I think.

70s and early 80s Ibanez roadstars are really very good guitars in the strat tradition though the electronics and hardware are sketchy at best. But as a mod platform they are worth considering.

Certain 70s and 80s Tokai and Greco strat copies can still be had at reasonable prices on ebay. They are universaly good bones though typically all the parts are in metric and kinda suck on the affordable models. You may also encounter a nut width that is 1mm slimmer than recent fender on older models, this will kinda fuck with a bridge change and may feel weird to you.... truth is vintage fender was not consistent with nut width, nor was Gibson. But these days 42 to 43mm is pretty standard I think so people goon out about 41mm

EDIT:

fernandez strats, badassed, still cheap. 70s, 80s or 90s all good as long as they are MIJ

If they say they were made for the Audio Brothers then they are the speakers from the 90s UK Hiwatt reissue amps and cabs. By all accounts the Audio Brothers speakers are modified Medusa 150s, an 80s high power/efficiency Fane that's a love it or ahte it thing. They were popular enough that Fane reissued the medusa for a while, but now fane discontinued those in favor of the ascensions thata re supposed to be like 75 watt, high efficiency hiwatt speakers from the 70s. Who knows? Don't overpay for an Audio Brothers Fane. They are only worth about 30GBP each in good condition. I have played an Audio Brothers reissue 4x12 and the speakers sounded good to me at reasonable volumes, though a bit dark for me.

look forward to seeing the pics. I am not a Fane expert but I am getting better at identifying the different models by their frame style, cones, domes and model codes. Generally 6 digit model codes starting with '122' are 50 waters, '121' is 20to 30 watts handling and '125' are 75+watts until the classic series came out. In the classics it seems '122' was the rare 30 watter, '125' was the 50 watt I am trying out and I have yet to see the 75, 80 and 100 waters to find out what code they had. I am not sure what codes were stamped on the frames of actual 80s Medusas and the reissues just say something like M150 on the frame or just the date of manufacture as do the 90s Audio Brothers cast-frame speakers.

Fane is way more confusing than vintage Celestion and Jensen. I am having a lot more trouble learning what all the models are. From what I can tell, in the 70s the 1st 3 digits of the model code are diameter and wattage and the last 3 seem to have something to do with magnet size, maybe gauss/flux density, maybe frame style or maybe what amp manufacturer they were built for. For instance I know 122581 Fanes from the mid 70s are 50 watt speakers that were OEM in 200 watt Park 4x12s as an upgrade option from the moe common Celestion G12H30s that only gave the cab 120 watts handling. But Park's parent company Marshall never put this speaker in Marshall branded cabs for some reason even though a JMP, metalface superlead could definitely use the extra handling if you are only using 1 cab.

There are codes that likely relate to orange too as well as vox/sound city (in the 70s both amps were made by arbiter), laney, carlsboro and a few other lesser known companies who made high power amps for the UK market.

If you just want to fuck with it then go partscaster. I would get a fender classic series neck (for the lgo and because they are NICE) and maybe an MJT body and customize 1 piece at a time from there.... I was gathering parts for my frankentele off and on for a year

@Ross_Haber

Ross,

there is no easy answer to your question because every DAW is easier for certain ways of working and harder for others. You need to ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish and how you want to go about it before you can find the easiest route.

playing 2 instruments the big question is what hardware do you already have and how do you use it? Do you have any microphones other than the budget condenser?I see you have a basic focusrite interface so you have mic pres, DI and midi for hardware. Do you own a piano? Acoustic or digital? Have a hardware synthesizer or keyboard with PCM sounds beyond basic piano or just the Novation Launchkey? Electric and/or acoustic guitar? If an electric, what kind of amp do you have or do you use a modeler like a POD?

For mainly electronic music I really like Fruity Loops. I have been with them since the late 90s when it was just a sample-based beat box and I had to export my loops to acid and create additional loops with my hardware or sync my hardware via MIDI to Fruity and record fruity's audio to a pair of tape machine or ADAT tracks along with the synth sequences I programed, then overdub any guitar or vocals on the tape machine. No joke.

Despite Fruity being more 'song oriented' now it is still not the easiest way to record long patches of audio and is much better for capturing live performances a few bars at a time. If you want to play a guitar take through the whole song you can, but its a pain compared to a DAW like Cubase, Logic, etc because of the implementation and the fact that editing has to be done via the Edison plugin. When I am doing electronic music with some live performance and MIDI channels controlling hardware synths that are going back into my recording interface a few bars at a time then I am all about it. If you're working this way then its the easiest and most intuitive software out there in my eyes. You have an option to work in beatbox format a bar at a time OR to use the piano roll and the mixer is like a very flexible SSL console routing-wise. Fruity comes with lots of good soft synths if you have a fully featured version and it can host pretty much ANYTHING you want to download.

If you are going to be making tunes with like a long, 3 minute guitar track and some softsynths and drum patterns and you use a Mac then I would say you should lookinto Logic OR if you are on PC try Cubase SX with Fruity Loops or Reason slaved via Rewire just for the old school drum machine interfaces they provide. Programming cool drum patterns is really easy in FL and Rebirth.

Stay away from ProTools if you are trying to do a lot of MIDI with hardware synths or Virtual Synths with your keyboard controller.

In short, you will need to figure out how you want to create your music and then pick a DAW that excels at your way of working and if your workflow changes then you may want to switch. They are ALL different in some ways and similar in others.... but generally the all-arounders are tricky to learn, but super-powerful ocne you are an expert while the pieces of software geared at a certain style are easy until you want to change the way you work and/or the type of music you create with them.

Other times, it can lead up to that wall of sound. In those instances, a thick, powerful distortion is an absolute necessity.

I actually made a pretty good reply, well reasoned and based in years of music arrangement experience but I thought better of it and deleted it. Follow your muse, or follow explosions in the sky, who are following slowdive's muse

I like the 50s myself, I've heard the bigger ones and they are good too but different. The more wattage they take the more they are voiced like an evm12L it seems... I still haven't heard any of the 75 and 80 waters from any era that I am aware of. Some Hiwatt heads swear by 50s, others 75s, and other crescendos (which are their own thing).

Mine is an 80s classic series that's medium efficiency, but the 70s 50 waters come in a higher efficiency as well as the greenback level efficiency like mine and are supposedly the best, though some guys like the stronger magnet and other guys the weak magnet. The word is that higher efficiency fanes have more bass and are punchier.

I think the one I have souns a lot like the earlier 50 waters I've heard in 70s hiwatt cabs, but its tough to be sure since I tried those hiwatt cabs with DR103 and 504 heads which are different than what I have. Brighter, cleaner, more gain stages but less gain at V1, just different. So its tough to say. I might mod my traynor to be even more of a CP103/L100 early hiwatt than it is, add the extra gain stage and maybe the cathode follower, move the master and screw with 1 or 2 of the 4 channels, but it sounds pretty good as is so I am hedging.

The classic 12/50 has as much thump as I could comfortably manage with my gear. It has really creamy and full midrange and a subdued top end. Its the direct antithesis of a vintage 30. When you get it driving it seems to growl more than crunch.

can you post pics of the fanes you are looking at so I can help you ID them? fane has made a million models, even more than celestion and its confusing. Certain ones may not suit your playing style. The 100 waters could be Axiom Alnicos which were designed for Vox in the 80s as a smoother celestion blue with huge wattage handling. They are said to sound great but I have never seen one in person. The 50 waters could be ANYTHING w/o seeing them. They could be classic 12/100s or maybe the rare 80s Medusa 100 (30s and 150s are more common).

My take on the fanes can be summed up in 1 word though: THICK

also, this is an epi valve jr by an incorrect name, needs to be deleted

http://equipboard.com/items/epiphone-5watt-head