jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I really wanna watch these but my son is having none of it!

I was going to come out and say its all about technique, but while the average affordable student guitar is hella cheap and hella decent now, those starter guitars, even fender's affinity and bullet squire strats are just not as useable as the MIJ squire I had in the early 90s (which was a popular 1st guitar when I was learning, priced about the same as a modern Chinese squire bullet strat or vintage vibe). I can still make a 2 or 3 hundred dollar student axe sound pretty damned good off the shelf at GC or sam ash if I am so inclined though. By the same token I have known some podiatrists who make their vintage and custom shop and vintage axes sound like trash because they spent more time studying corns and calluses in med school than they did learning the guitar. Then again, they are better off than me financially and can afford the fancy stuff whether they can play it or not, so who is the wiser?

anyway, the assertion that a cheap guitar is fine will offend you guys less as your collection grows and you realize some of your low end axes are just as fun to play as your fancy gibsons.

last time I was playin' loud with friends the rig looked like this:

View post on imgur.com

but bi-amping left me with only the 62 as backup, so I need one more of each of these. A 2x12 C30 and a head version of my fawn ac30hw, right?

believe it or not I did not use my Radial ABY box for this, I daisy chained the preamps from the low gain input of the pentode channel on the C30 to the voxes high gain input on the TB channel set in hot mode. No noise (this would never work with my 62, its got ground hum with every amp unless you use an isolated ABY with a ground lit)..... sometimes modern is good.

Well, our respective exes have two things in common, juvenile impulsiveness and a teenager's attachment to social media. Mine can get so engaged with the internet that her whole life will fall apart if no one is minding the shop for her. I did get an amazing son out of the deal, so it ain't that bad I guess. Little dude's sitting on my lap all day today playing learning games on the PC while I surf EB in another window. That's why I post a lot. Work boredom and/or toddler-computer time. I need to do something with the rest of my brain when engaged in mind-numbing activities like billing medicare or playing Thomas the Tank engine repair with Lu for the billionth time. I have become a really good multitasker....

back to David Bowie, I shoulda never married a woman who doesn't like David Bowie. I like Bauhaus, but do I prefer their 80s cover of Ziggy Stardust to the original? God that's insane. Most musicians would have bolted when they realized their fiancé preferred a cover to a classic original...

yes godsmack et al.... radio is pointless everywhere ever since stations corporatized and FM radio became formatted and controlled by regional program directors who don't really like music and just enjoy getting free gifts from major label radio pluggers (as if plugging albums still leads to sales, LOL)

1. south philly pork sandwich (long roll with slow roast pork, broccoli rabbe, long hots and aged, sharp provolone cheese... my favorite version is from Tony Luke's but there are a couple great steak shacks on 9th street that provide a great take on this under-the-radar philly treat)

2. a classic philly/south jersey style hoagie from any of our classic sandwich shops

3. philly cheese steak... I really like Tony Luke's in south philly best, but sometimes chinks in northeast philly with their softer roll and extra greasey beef is just as satisfying.... nothing beats Geno's at 2am though

4. gourmet 'sub' sandwiches of any variety from local chain Primo Hoagies

5. corned beef special or ruben, best in NYC but good locally from Himey's deli in the 'burbs

6. Carolina pulled pork sandwiches with all the fixin's, preferably eaten at a roadside shack in sout Carolina, but good ones can be found everywhere from southern Maryland to northern florida

7. Benito's burritos, Hollywood California.... especially their farmer's market veggie burrito!

if you're just going to bang around the house and do a little recording the bugera stuff will probably be okay once you replace the Chinese power tubes. I don't know how they sound but the V20 seems to be a 15 watt, PCB-based knockoff of the badcat hotcat30. Not my favorite vox style boutique, but nice and versatile....

for Liam who is thinking of playing shows with his new amp? Bad idea. Never invest in an unreliable amp when you are planning to gig regularly even if you really dig the sound. That is unless its like your 3rd amp.... I have nothing but reliable amps with bulletproof, hand-made turret and terminal strip construction and I still have a collection of virtual dupes so I can have backups at gigs...

although for how cheap Bugeras are he could buy 2 of them I guess. I keep thinking about putting my HC30 clone in a combo and then building another chassis for the headbox and then getting a handwired ac30 head so I have my 2 favorite combos and head backups that can sit on top of them at shows in case one of the combos goes down. These days the HC30 and AC30HW are backups for eachother, but they are different.... and I am afraid to gig with my vintage AC30 anymore and she's retired tos tudio use. She isn't actually a dead backup to my other two 30s either....

the bands you referenced, wow, kids music... do adults listen to that stuff in Texas?

you can't get a cheese steak outside of the Delaware Valley, but subway will make you a sandwhich with some beef and cheese, sure... you definitely want the pound of beef.... while Pat's and Geno's skimp on the beef, all of the other quality steak places in Philly slather on the chopped meat and whiz.... we also have a sandwich ehre that's roast pork, hot pepers, broccoli rabbe and sharp, aged provolone that will blow your mind, but no one outside of philly knows about it. The cheesesteak is so famous that the pork sandwich is still a local secret....

I actually had never dated another nutter before meeting my ex-wife. Seriously. But as a young man, the sane young women would tire of my Peter Pan life attitude if I didn't tire of them first. I also did not mean to imply my ex-wife is dumb or uncultured. We split up for 5 years while I was on the road (and sick of her bullshit, when the shoe's on the other foot you realize what a tool you were in your early 20s!). We got back together and I discovered I really enjoyed her company a lot of the time when we were both sober. Its just that Iw as always sober and she was intermittently sober, even after I made the mistake of going through with the wedding...

straighten the neck and file the nut already

know what's funny? is I have always been more a poppy kidna player and singer songwriter type, I went to art school and am pretty intellectual, but when I was younger I was way more likely to get in a bar brawl while loaded on cheap bourbon and Xanax then most bands with the aggressive, hells-angels-meet-Kerry-king image... I calmed down a lot in my mid-20s though. But you get my point... you just never know if Gordon Lightfoot will kick your ass between hour long sets of hippy BS, but you can be sure the band fulla biker-jacketed poseurs will back right down if you confront them at the bar after they make a snotty comment...

Skinny looks good on the right lady, but if you're super-model tall its creepy... then again hourglass figure can easily get out of hand on a short woman who likes chocolate and sitting around unemployed.... not that I married anyone like that.

Nothing like a Geno's steak at 2am after a show.... or a Tony Luke's steak with long hots ANY TIME!

EDIT: I tend to go for thinner women just because I am very thin and fairly tall. I've been the same waist size since about '96. My ex-wife outweighs me even though she's nearly a foot shorter than I am although that wasn't the cse when we met. She was heroin chic then, but she used heroin, so it was legit! I shouldn't be glorifying that though, too many kids on the site. Don't do drugs with strippers you meet at outrageous house parties (she was at said party as a civilian, I didn't find out about her work history until I was already enamored with her and that just added to the excitement.... for a while), guys. It doesn't give you extra rock n roll credibility. Really, it doesn't. Plus, when you settle down and commit with them they don't really get clean. And they will totally cheat for drugs when they relapse.... and when they don't they empty your bank account, steal your car, and go to Camden to cop. Its a drag. Just say no to drugs and fast women, kids.

I thought that's who you meant. I only recently became aware of this spoiled child star's history, but I ran into her band awhile ago on local radio ehre in Philly. They got in heavy rotation with local guys (and gal) Hailstorm because both bands were on the road together. Someone posted this dirl's gear to EB recently and I was like "who is this leggy blonde? The world needs more shapely female guitarists!" so I looked her up on my phone and was like.... oh, THAT band. Ugh. Then I also noticed she was on CW teen soap opera before deciding to pretend to be badass.

Also, knowing she was in Jim Carrey's butchering of my favorite vintage x-mas cartoon just pisses me off more... Why Taylor Momsen, why are you stealing my Christmas tree

she should really lose the Panda-eyes, she looks like my ex-wife dressed that way. If you're not 17 everyone standing next to you feels foolish when you do the goth makeup....

you know Bjork is actually mentally challenged, right? I am not defending her lyrics as art, just pointing out that she is handicapped.

Yup... we have the dubious honor of being the hometown of John Oates, Gamble & Huff (philly international), Todd Rundgren, Jaco Pastorius and the birthplace of Joan Jett... not to mention being the original taping location for American Bandstand (the rhythm guitarist in one of my bands was the son of a popular Bandstand dancer from the 50s who had a small-scale singing career after his stint on bandstand in the Frankie Valli mould)... we also had the original location of Sigma Sound Studios where I applied for a job as a very young man but didn't get hired because they were secretly going out of business. That ties into Bowie's demise since Sigma is where he did most of "Young Americans" with the mighty Carlos Alomar on guitar as well as a young Luther Vandross singing on his first professional sessions.

I guess I should reply even though Tyohars has spoken to me extensively in 'guitar and bass'' already. I'm from Philadelphia, born and raised with some detours in other states. I am glad to be home in Philly again and don't plan to leave. We're kind've a trashy, rotten city.... but unlike everywhere else in the USA we don't pretend to be anything else. My 2 year old son was born in Maryland right outside Washington DC before I got sick of it there and came home, but in his heart he's from the island of Sodor.

So welcome Tyo. Don't worry about your English, there are a lot of people who speak English as their 1st language who are more difficult to understand than you are.

Welcome! English music is the best music :-D

humph

I'm one of the Equipboard admins. Originally from Italy, but currently living in Austin, Texas where Equipboard is based!

you're actually Italian, as in you were born in Italy? Go fucking figure.

its a Gibson so its almost certainly his black L1, the other 2 guitars he was known to own were a guild an a 70s yamaha

My experience with the SWR stuff has been really negative due to poor reliability. Apart from one I owned, the bassist in my last serious band briefly had an SM series that blew up and I've seen a lot of their stuff go down on bands during their sets.... though Hartke's solid state bass gear does not sound as good or deliver as well on its wattage propaganda, its reliable as hell (I know the LH1000 well, they used to be really popular in the local puk scene, its loud, but it ain't no 1000 watts of power into even 2 ohms, sorry hartke). But again, I ain't ever seen a Hartke go down.... same goes for the ashdown bass heads. Rock solid night after night and plenty loud for anywhere us mere mortals are likely to play even against the heaviest hitting drummers.

If you really want a lot of power though, consider bi-amping with an SVT thru its matching 8x10 slaved to an Acoustic 360 with the giant folded horn cab. I played in a band where we set the bassist up that way and it was pummeling. Had a great mix of hear it and feel it bass, lots of grind in the low mids and required a team of assholes to cart into gigs. I am kidding, of course. Yes we did that, no it was not worth the back strain, especially playing clubs that were up a flight of steps in Philly. We did loosen a lot of bowels though and my rig certainly destroyed half the city's ability to hear high frequencies or distinguish words when holding a quiet conversation in a restaurant. Me? I wore Hearos for that one. When you crank up a dual showman and a plexi every night you need them. It can be fun just to feel your band's performance pounding your chest rather than actually hear it, though I feel a bit old for those sort of antics anymore.

is that the blonde whose band is out on tour with Hailstorm?

you're a gainiac... haha

you didn't reference them against any higher end stuff just to get a fair comparison? I would go jet city over buera if you are going to get a far east amp. Even if Uri Behringer improved his QC for the amp line he is still a total bastard and we should all carefully avoid funding his empire. All tube amps are so similar that knocking off a lot of brand name products is not so bad, but some of the stuff he does stealing Mackie designs and downgrading all the components to make them more affordable while employing virtual slave labor to increase his profit margin is just unethical. Jet City is designed by Soldano based heavily on his USA made models and then licensed out to a reputable manufacturer in China. I am sure the workers are not treated well, but Mike is a stand-up guy from the Pacific Northwest who has always had nothing but respectable business practices as far back as I remember.... and he also brought a lot of new ideas to amplification that everyone has imitated without paying him a royalty because he didn't even bother trying to patent them. He just openly shared his thoughts with the world. If anyone deserves your money its Soldano's entry level brand. Also, Mike assures everyone that he's strict on QC for the JC stuff and I've never seen a broken one... ever. Its the only cheapie that a name player uses (Joe Perry). I personally tried a JC20H 2 years ago and was quite taken with it but missed a clean channel on an amp like that so the 22H sounds like a good way to go. I told you the custom classic was nothing to write home about. The affordable voxes don't have the right voicing, they sound the way vox thinks people expect an ac30 to sound, not the way the old ones do. And let me guess, the laney was too harsh in the treble frequencies?

I didn't know he was missing....

Also, isn't "manufactured artist" a bit of an oxymoron? My favorite manufacturing artist is definitely Andy Warhol. He cranked out an awesome amount of soupcans, didn't he?

since I wasn't the 1st necro poster on this thread...

Probably this robot lady, because she's being manufactured during the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHA39gnjZd0

HA! I would be so afraid if an army of Bjork-bots came to my house to sing my son to sleep. I always assumed the robot in "all is full of love" was a one off. If they manufactured a bunch I am worried :(

I wish I could play like Joe Pass. Or Chet Atkins maybe...

some of it is accounting for the difference in volume/sustain/tone pot tapers between the large, off-board pots in the big ones and the smaller PCB-mount pots in the little ones. EHX doesn't spend for great pots either way, but the big pots will be different than the small ones at the same settings... also, there may be some tiny variations in sound from smaller, surface mount components like caps and resistors even though they are the same value. Not all of them will be the same materials though in mini sizing and some argue that this changes their behavior in audio circuits even though science says this is impossible. Also, the little surface mount parts aren't QCed to the same tolerances as bigger parts by all manufacturers. There may be more variation between the caps and resistors ACTUAL values in the minis. For instance, I have a bag of good poly caps that are all within +/-1% tolerance of their labeled rating, but the same value in smaller ceramic disc caps has +/-5% variation. Sometimes that 5% either way is no big deal, other times its a huge thing.

oh, okay, sure... I am all about disseminating info about the guitar, gear and music in general. I had the benefit of a lot of formal music education as a kid, but when it came to guitar I only had classical lessons from my dad (and not many of them) coupled with a decade of school jazz band experience (which is a very narrow spectrum when it comes to hand techniques). I had to apply my general knowledge and just experiment to learn a lot of techniques like circular picking and stuff.

There were no gear videos so as a teen I had jobs and I bought and sold tons of stuff looking for my sound. It was really difficult and if there had been forums like this I woulda got where I was going a lot faster. Hell! I didn't know palm muting was called palm muting until I had mastered the technique through trial and error. I only had classical and jazz training so a lot of rock and blues ideas had to be deciphered listening to records. SO if you have a technique question, feel free to ask. I don't usually break out all the tricks I know on my own music, but I literally know how to do all the electric guitar stuff from travis picking to tapping...

on the other hand I am kind of a dinosaur with gear and tone, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. Even in the 90s I had a really old school approach. Additionally, my electronics and recording/FOH background colors a lot of my ideas about amplification. I just can't stand degrading my signal before hitting the amp to achieve effects I can get just with guitar and amp settings. I am really conscious of bandwidth as it effects frequency response and dynamics. My way is not the only way, but its tried and true and always produces great sounds if you have the guitars and amps (and technique) to pull it off.

back to your original question, try resting your palm gently on the bridge and playing only with the side of your thumb and the soft pad in the middle, no nail, to get that rockabilly muted bass feel. For 'slappier' phrases you will want to let up on the mute a bit and give your bass a bit of a whack with your thumb (BUT NOT A TRUE SLAP LIKE IN FUNK, YOU WANT MOSTLY FUNDAMENTAL, NOT A TON OF HARMONICS... its more about getting the string wobbling hard on the attack and then maybe muting after the 1st 8th note of its sustain using a light touch with your thumb or by pressing your palm against the saddles tighter). For more heavily muted notes press your palm harder against the saddles and pluck gently with the softest part of your thumb. I would generally use my thumb on the bottom 2 strings in this scenario while walking any higher notes on D and G with my index and middle fingers so that the higher stuff 'steps out' a bit as the high notes in this sort of bass playing are typically fills at the end of a bar. There are lots of ways to go about it though. See whats comfortable for you and trust your ear to tell you when your hands have hit the sweet spot. In any roots oriented rock music like Jack White's recent stuff there's a little delta blues and bluegrassiness thrown into the techniques that brings up the turn-of-the-century Americana level even though this music may be played on electric instruments. Check out Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson in The Band to hear bluegrass ideas and techniques used to great effect in electric rock music to create a feeling of nostalgia without going acoustic every song. The thing with these techniques is that experienced guys have them in their palette of sounds they can produce without resorting to effects and deploy them appropriately to suit a particular song in a certain style without thinking. You just kinda get an idea what the vibe is and break out the right approach to the notes to get it done.... I just put a whole ton of though and description into stuff that if I were on a session I would just DO without discussing it or thinking about the musicology.

Thanks man, appreciate your way to telling others

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. If so I apologize if I sounded condescending, I just have no way of knowing what your experience level is so I gave as much info as I could on coordinating a palm mute with right hand technique to produce the best variety of dynamic textures.... I did not mean to be a dick.

60s fender outboard? with the dwell control and all that? there are lots f long pan spring reverbs out there capable of a fender sound.... even some of the effects from Roland's space echo family have a solid state spring reverb built in that can get pretty surfy. Its not like Fender invented spring reverb, man. They were actually late to the party. Actually, Hammond organ did...

man, there is hardly anything stock about Jimmy Page's #1 Zep LP.... hardly any of the parts are original nor have they been since the mid 70s. A lot of the classic Zep bridge PAF sounds are really a 70s T-Top for instance. The original bridge PAF died and in an age where there were only like 3 rewinders out there Page sent it back to Gibson and they just sent him a brand new Gibson Humbucker and chucked the original PAF. Go figure. Then he decided he wanted more output than the original PAF had so he ahd Duncan rewind the T-Top into the 1st "whole lotta humbucker".... his #1 is pretty much just original body wood and possibly the original neck pickup....

Clapton's "blackie" strat? 3 different strats of different eras mutted together!

I played 11s for a while in my 20s.... they are a lot like 10s, LOL

I also eally favored 11 gauge flatwounds won my gretsch when I had it.... I used to sub a regular ernie plain G in though, I hate the 50s wound G

Okay, get ready for the blasphemy.... a new classic 60s strat, MIM? doesn't sound THAT different from a real 60s strat. And fender's custom shop makes fabulous copies of vintage spec isntruments. They cost too much, but they sound and feel dead on. I wouldn't blanket all the strats together though. The specs changed every couple years in the vintage era and since the 80s they have released a gazillion variations.... the whole thing is irritating. My strat for instance started life as a stock jimmy Vaughan strat, but its never been on a recording in completely stock form. If I ahd a pro page you would really need to document the many mods done to my strat in roder to help people understand where all ym sounds came from.... most pros are in the same situation. Even pinpointing a year for a model doesn't mean their vintage guitar is bone stock. This all sounds nuttier and nuttier the more I talk about it.... argh!

here we go again

I am seldom being completely serious. This is a musical instruments site. As much as my inner-teen loves everything this site glorifies its a little silly too and I can't help but have a laugh at myself every time I make a reply. I think a lot of people miss half the humor and when I get overt about it they take me wrong and get offended... oh well.

Its hard not to poke fun at yourself when you're saying thigns Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap would say about his guitar collection.... LOL

mainly... be gentle... also try letting up a bit with your left hand touch behind the frets... if you're thinking about it then you are doing it wrong.... its all feelin it out... I honestly learned all these tricks so long ago I can't remember what exercises I did to master them

a player's touch is very personal -- muting, pick/finger attack, fretting, vibrato and sliding are all unique to each guitarist.... in my experience you have to develop your own personality in order to figure out how to mimic someone else's

He hasn't toured in awhile. I think I went to his last tour about 12 years ago. He may have done on since then. Not sure. The show I saw was outstanding. His band was a composite of all his best, living sidemen. He did tunes from his whole career. Quite a concert.

I was just kidding around.

well you wouldn't have 50 for every year.... Fender didn't originally offer more than a few colors, even custom orders had a pretty limited palette... I blame modern marketing for all these problems. There are just too many sub-models from the big 2.

that Jack White sound? Its just right hand technique. You can get that sound for free if you practice.

you're in the position of the American healthcare system... you are so far down a confusing and inconsistent path that any small corrections have unforeseen consequences. A major overhaul may be best in the longrun, but its a major undertaking that threatens to really mess things up while its being implemented.

you'll need more money than that to buy a successful social democracy in Scandinavia.... maybe that sum will buy you Belgium or Greece though, they're always bankrupt