jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

yes, the album came out 2 days ago on his birthday... he managed to crank out a new record, contribute to a stage show and fight off cancer until after he turned 69 (I wonder if he had a chuckle at the lewdness during his birthday party.... I'll bet that was surreal, David Bowie celebrating an album release and the most homoerotic of all birthdays while secretly dying)

true to form, Bowie really stage managed his demise well

I know people are doing that and it still annoys me.... its annoying we have a ton of duplicate instruments and its annoying that people are trying to impose their own solution that ruins pro pages that otherwise would be great standalone pages when people are googling that artist.... I think you guys are going to have to resolve all this jackassery with some coding that gets everything unified.... this will entail just making decisions that make sense to YOU the proprietors from an internet-wide perspective without consulting the regulars.

Or leave well-enough alone.... its only a gear site.

I'm not surprised. You're kinda young to get it. Bowie was still a huge deal in music when I was growing up and he really revitalized himself in my teens as well. At the ripe old age of 20 you would only have been alive for 3 significant Bowie releases. And in all honesty the Heathen era was not that impressive. It was some really dense, plodding stuff. Plenty of merit to it, but I had to get older to connect with all of it and I was in my 20s at the time. He didn't do anything overtly exciting during your lifetime. While the press of time didn't decrease Bowie's influence, it certainly blunted the originality and shock value of his stuff for people raised in the post-reznor-manson world. I mean that musically as well as theatrically. When I was a kid there was still very little that could contend with Bowie for sheer alien creativity. He does seem tame now in every way, but that doesn't stop me from admiring him and missing him. As boring and predictable as pop/rock music has been since 1999 its been nice to know Bowie is around just following his muse, giving you something unexpected and unlike anything that's currently on the radio even if he was low key and under the radar at the end. I for one think that Bowie's passing will leave a huge vacuum in music and related arts that no one out there in the present mainstream of pop culture has the artistic diversity to fill.

I hope Iggy, Eno and Brian Ferry can manage to live a little longer (though Ferry and the Ig have become nostalgia acts these days).... with Lou and Bowie dead there's not many of the 70s cutting edge musicians left. Its hard to overstate the significance of their contribution to rock music and really popular arts/entertainment in general. Bowie was really at the cutting edge, maintaining the spotlight while pushing boundaries everywhere he could for an unbelievably long time by the standards of the fickle world of pop.

good luck... I didn't mean it as a challenge. We don't hand out merit badges for playing on big, fat strands of barbed wire. But we all go through a heavy gauge phase where we try to see how manly we can be.

I am really down about this. Bowie was my #1 musical hero for as long as I can remember.

top notch? no shit

all of them are exactly the same from the audience, no joke... I have owned piles of different muff variants.... once the band is blazing there's not a substantial difference. Go small and cheap. Only Gilmour makes them all sound different, but he knows some magic mojo that makes them all do things tonally the one YOU buy can never do for you no matter what you spend. He's a mutant. Don't sweat the small stuff. Its a huge sledgehammer of distortion/fuzz. Its going to obliterate your dynamics and add tons of weird harmonic overtones. That is all you need to know.

drugs... bulk drugs

I think its an early Gibson-made epi century. They went to P90s and the large headstock in the early 60s after running out of the proprietary epi "New York" pickups. in 61/62 it would been a small headstock with the epiphone pickup that looks a bit like later mini hums, but by 63? big peghead and a P90, then by 65 I think she got those mini hums that are small PAFs in the epi covers with Gibson style mounting instead of the weird epi mounting.

Soldano invented modern high gain in the late 80s.... pretty much ALL modern high gain channel switchers copy his ideas rather than Mesa's. Even the Mesa Triple Rec and all of its 90s cousins from Mesa copies the SLO100 preamp with a bunch of extra modes and controls in the Mesa tradition, but the topology is pure soldano....

The soldano sound is like a tweed twin on crack. The hotrods lean a little more towards 80s marshall and the SLO100 is on the Hifi side like SUnn and Hiwatt. Some of his other designs are more fender and he also has a 2 channel amp that's supposed to be like a 70s twin and a 70s marshall in one head/combo. I have yet to try one of those. In short, Soldano amps are killer, but they are expensive and hard to come by. They can also sound a little 80s depending on the model and your application, but the 80-ness is a wonderful thing sometimes.

Even the cheapest Soldanos are killer. I particularly like the hotrod 50+ and keep thinking about buying one.... if all PCB amps were built to the standard of Soldano I would have nothing against PCB. Soldano does it right.

the bogner stuff works really well at this, and each one has 2 gain structures/voicings as well as a boost fnction that changes gain and output via a footswitch so you could use it as a lead boost, gain boost or both... however, none of the bogner pedals allow you to change gain/voicing on a footswitch

yours has a duo-sonic fixed bridge

Eh, I am puttering around the site on my phone periodically, but I have plans with Lucian all week.... we went to a model train convention yesterday and visited his Ohma Mary. This afternoon we're going to visit his cousins. When I was not at work and my ex was having her time with Lucian it was very easy to get lost in the forum and working on music projects, but as I said last week, that was a temporary thing. I will probably be less available now. I tentatively have set aside th weekend of the 23rd and 24th to work on music though.

remember, Bill Gibbons plays on like 7s and has huge tone... and he has such a light touch that he could play a jazzmaster or jag with those strings without popping them out of the saddles...

but 12s will kill your fingers SRV style and make you get otherwise unnescasarry surgeries after 5 years

most bassists serve the song best if they play standing up so it won't help them know their role better to sit down, but metaphorically? you got it

you're thinking of "the fender bridges of fulterton California"

12s are not for the faint hearted.

now would you know if you like p90s if you haven't used them, LOL... you crazy kids!

I have used the 59s which are the same as SD seths with alnico 5 bars instead of alnico 2. They are solid. I am not a huge fan of the JB for myself, but other people make them sound great. My favorite combo right now for a vintage neck and hot bridge is a 59/cutom hybrid with a pearly gates neck or a burstbucker pro or a 1, I haven't tried my 59 neck with the custom hybrid, but I imagine it'll have similarly good results. The BBpro shares magnet type with the 59 and mismatched coils with the pearly.... all are low output even for a neck. I have tried the classic JB and Jazz combo and its not for me. Other people make it sound good though.

I also did a magnet swap between a custom hybrid and pearly for my washburn. Really great results with a low wind A5 pickup at the neck and hot A2 pickup at bridge in that guitar. The A2 bar in the 59/custom hybrid makes it even more P90/single-coily... the p-rail is a similar idea electrically but the physical implementation abandons all Gibson tradition in favor of a pickup that can really act as 2 independent and different pickups. I just question if it'll deliver on its promise of P90, bucker and rail tones all in 1 PAF slot. Sounds like a gimmick.

I could never see myself in a metal band either, heh.

I am at a point now where I pretty much just want my polytune, maybe a boost or flange if absolutely necessary and an amp with only a volume. I'll take 3 or 4 guitars though....

dude, 14 to1? is fine! if you can't tune perfectly in 5 seconds with a set of rotomatics then you have issues. Tuners any more precise than 16 to 1 are so sensitive that it takes way too much torque to make big adjustments quickly when you get really sharp or flat. If you need to move a 1/4 step real fest on stage? 21:1 is going to take forever. You will lose the audience while you do it. Stuff like that is for guys with techs or 1 watt bedroom players. I was just in a studio wednesday, even thats all about fast, man. Be fast and easy to work with. Don't be fucking with your fancy pants tuners, huge effects board or knob laden amp unless you are paying for the studio time!

I'm just saying, don't knock yourself out spending when you could keep saving and saving. Its not like you are playing professionally. You're a Dad with a day job. I don't go buying thousands worth f NOS tubes anymore either. Haven't bothered since I was a pro. It just so happens I still have a gear and parts stash like you wouldn't believe. On the downside I will probably be working my day job until I die unless my gear really appreciates in value and I am willing to sell it to fund that retirement.

I haven't tried P-rails but I am going to say that P90s under a humbucker cover never sound right. The coil's the wrong dimensions and the poles don't line up under the right harmonics. The layout of the P90 part of the P-rail looks like the poles are close to the right place, so that would help in P90 mode I guess.... bobbin's still all wrong. Honestly, a good, low output humbucker built to seth Lover's oriinal specs will have a good amount of P90 character and no hum. late 60s and early 70s Gibson buckers sound pretty damn p90ish with a slightly smoother top end. Thy definitely have the clarity and cut the humbucker sized 90s lack. Until I got into the weak humbuckers I was all about P90s even though they are noisey, but I changed my tune after joining club SG... now I find myself chasing the elusive and inconsistent PAF tones and some hotrod PAF sounds, but I used to be all about P90 and the old bucker udner 8kohms DCR are very much in that ballpark. Clear, punchy, but with a really good top end tat drives an amp.

you"re a bassist

yeah, I mostly use the wishlist as a reminder list of stuff to try and maybe buy.... but I could use a separate category for dream gear I cannot afford

yeah, I don't know how much I helped anyone by saying the tune is nominally in C minor. I have a tendency to just let songs meander wherever the mood goes. I don't even worry about what chords I am playing (or implying in the case of riffy sort of ideas) until I have to write a lead sheet....

it really depends on the amp.... if tis fixed bias then you can really control the onset of power tube distortion with bias....

there's so much to this beyond the popular internet mythology

y'know what? you have 2 kids and no car so I recommend you buy what you can afford!

okay, maybe not tomorrow, but shortly

groove tubes are an overpriced testing service, though their EL34m is a really good sounding tube made exclusively for them in china, but they have piss poor longevity.... their USA made 6L6GE is killer and lasts forever, but is SO expensive compared to a JJ 6L6 its not worth it

in 12ax7s I like new sensor's tung dol reissue.... very gainy, rich sounding tube, but they have a high failure rate so go through a dealer with excellent testing... otherwise JJ pres are solidly made and sound good enough if you are on a udget. A lot depends on the circuit and how well trained your ear becomes. I seldom care about tube brand for live purposes, just recording. The whole thing can be diminishing returns, especially if you are a pedals and master volume modern player. So much of the difference between old and new pres is FEEL. If you don't play the amp then it won't matter a ton. The old stuff tends to sound a bit better if you listen critically and lasts a really long time. Otherwise its a question of optimizing the response of the whole amp to respond to your playing the way your personalized guitars do so the whole thing becomes a single instrument geared to the way you play. I am way down that rabbit hole having never been a huge effects head and having a very old-school approach to actually playing guitar. It suits me, but it won't suit everyone.

That said, while 3 of my amps have nice vintage pres throughout right now, one has the stock Chinese tubes and no one thinks it sounds bad and it feels fine to me.

my overall answer is that the most reliable current production pres are JJs across the board. They are a little dark sounding compared to old stuff and even most current production tubes but this also means they don't harsh out at extreme treble settings and will smooth out pedals like a DS1. If you are going to use effects heavily through a modern amp design with a master volume and lots of features, leave all your guitar controls full up, and generate any non-pedal drive from the preamp? JJ is probably a great way to go unless you are looking for lots of treble and more distortion on tap from the gain control. You gotta consider how you play your amp and if reliability or response is more important, or if you want to go nuts on a quest for both. Its expensive these days, most of my old tubes were pulled from old gear abck when people weren't as hip to all this stuff. I got into it because it suited me, then the market caught up wth my tastes. YMMV though

should I confine myself to current production tubes? because the best 12at7 for V1 is a 60s Mullard ecc82... at least to my ear.... they're around, not too pricey... around $25 US... I hate most current production 12at7 tubes, they are not up to snuff

pretty much all current production noval dual triodes are interchangeable... as long as they start with 12 and end with 7 so the pin-out is wired the same internally... so au7, at7, ay7, ax7, the same pin out and functionality, different gain level and output impedance... also, different linearity of frequency response under the same operating voltages.... I am a big fan of the 12at7 tube, it has 20% lower gain than a 12ax7, but ha lower output impedance so even with less gain it can drive the next stage or a power amp pretty hard and passes a has higher bandwidth than an ax7 in the same circuit

I got really busy Tuesday and Wednesday and now Lucian's home and I am devoting all my time to him for the next 2 weeks then its back to work, so I will be very intermittent with forum posting for the foreseeable future

to a certain extent.... there were certainly more kids playing shows and hanging at commercial recording studios when I was a kid due to a lack of quality, affordable home recording options.... I cut my teeth on cassette 4 track and even my 1st electronic work had to be mixed analog onto an early digital recorder or an old tascam 1/2" reel to reel. It was a different time. It was challenging to make your own records, that's for sure.

I think its always been garages and basements around the world. That's where everyone is figuring it all out... mom's basement.

I am so glad someone else listened to his albums!

I was thinking 78bpm for a finished track, maybe 80? I did the original demo guitar line without a click just to see what it came out at.

I'll take Of Monsters and Men. Guilty pleasure. So little substance... and yet? poppy in a real appealing way. The songs aren't boring at least.

I know, right?

by the way, if I ever start another punk band its going to be called Irn Bru

I am loathe to admit it, but Wilkinson makes really solid parts for the cost. Their tele saddles, strat bridges and even tuning keys are pretty nice. I would go Wilkinson over schaller in every department but tuners, but I am quite partial to schallers m1 tuners and minis too just because they were on my 1st grown-up guitar stock....

I have owned many schaller products and while their m1 tuners are very nice, their bridges are not so special. I would not buy one unless there were no other options. For a little more money the mastery is just a better design that is a drop in replacement on jags and jazzies. You would be nuts to get anything else.

flatwounds will sound closer to upright bass strings, just sayin'