jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

What school do you go to?

Again, pickle don't do that sound. I remember borrowing a mk1 and i've used a mk2 a bit. Nice work on getting a board shot but there's josh homme secrecy going on here. Oh well.

I feel tired and jaded... and way more sober than I wanna, be, but hell, its too much trouble to get good and drunk and you can't stay drunk so why have a 2nd beer or bother with champagne? My new years resolution is to stop giving a shit and just make more music in 2016. The first part sounds easy... what about your resolutions? Wait, why did I ask if I'm not suppose to give a shit... then again its still 2015 in Philadelphia for 3 more hours.

OMG that shit is SOOOOO norlin, got the awful harmonica bridge and everything, wow.... awesomely 70s, you have to cut a disco track with her, have to!

Love the sound on this album, very well made.

Anyways, Michael Shuman is their bassist. I'm willing to bet that he's using the Way Huge Swollen Pickle. He uses a lot of T.C. Electronic stuff as well, but that's one overdrive and a distortion. "Keep Your Eyes Peeled" has a more fuzzy bass tone.

its got some sort of pitch modulation, maybe into a pickle, maybe from an octaving effect...

I was trying to ask you if you were in college, which I did.

Go beer, happy new year...

yup, keep practicing... maybe next time

I totally don't have vocals on the guitar demo yet. Failed in that goal completely. Stalled in the 2nd verse.... you could help finish the lyrics though. That's major contribution. here's what I got so far:

Are you tired of

fighting for the sun,

that you never knew you missed,

until your trials had begun?

When you take a breath,

do you take the time,

to remember all

the incidents and evidence of why

you got all the blame

for this circus of deceit,

though you want to be the ring master

the bear's still got to eat.

Already getting late to choose.

You stuck the needle in-

to the camel's eye

and you took this beast for-granted

as you stacked the straws up high.

Now these metaphors

(and here's where I get sketchy)

make my well run dry....

stuck!!!!!!

do you guys think this awesome bass sound is a ring mod into a driven amp or is it an octave fuzz set for a very mellow drive texture?

Do you write decent lyrics? I find it to be a struggle to even get to a rough draft... I am stuck right now. ugh.

never say (or play) more than you need to, if that.... if words and experience fail then don't review, no biggie... I still haven't reviewed this little Korg monosynth I bought because all I did was dicker with it for an hour when I first got it. Not enough hands on time to really review it yet. I think my son tweaked more knobs on her than I did, LOL

iiiiiinteresting! I am doing a scrappy guitar and voice demo right now and I'll take it from there... thank god for time off where I don't have to be a dad... I could sue less of it, but doing without would kill my creativity, toddlers and songwriting are weird combination

by the way, you look exactly how I expected you to in that TON user pic

EDIT: fudging together a 2nd verse worth of scratch lyrics.... I'll post her here and see what kidna response I get before doing TON. There are so many disparate people on EB and we all kinda know eachother so it might be entertaining to rope some folks into doing this even if we use TON as the medium to swap tracks....

he's referrinf to Golden Age Sandman who was revived in "Sandman Mystery Theater" when I was a teenager

all you need to change is a radio tower built closer to your location, but it could also be a preamp tube ;-)

did you change the pres?

Would anyone be interested in working on a song with me through dropbox? I finished something I am really feeling good about today. Wrote it on guitar and piano, but it won't be intereting if I just do a straight up pop/rock thing with it. It would benefit from other ideas and maybe a real singer who can help with lyrics.... not sure if I want live drums yet. Anyone down to work with me over the web? I would love to get a veritable horde of EB guys working on this and make it a whole EB project....

"i use this to make beats, yo!"

thanks dude! SOOOOOO INFORMATIVE hahaha, there's like a hardcore clique of people who really like EB and get what its all about and most of the accurate spottings and solid reviews come from that crunchy nugget of serious community and then people drift through being tools, cluttering the site with misinformation and 1 sentence 'reviews'.... if one more guy confuses a Gibson ES330 with a 60s 335 I am going to scream. The 330 is an Epi Casino. P90s and the neck joint is in a completely different place because it doesn't have a center block. If you don't know vintage guitars don't post, guys.

I DLed the U-he verb but haven't tried it yet.

Anyways, Jetpacks was fun because that was a band I really like. Anyways, they finished with Sore Thumb, which was fantastic. Love that silent space when Adam starts singing, everyone was really into the song and it was quite magical :D

aren't you in college?

why do you refer to digital videos of big 'ol amps through 12" drivers recorded, processed, dithered down, streamed through a tiny little cable, coverted back to video and audio in the elasta ccurate way passable and then played back through little 8" drivers with a tweeter or smaller?

have I mentioned I don't trust gear demos?

but seriously, do you hear that fizz in the top even on the clean channel? that's what the 50 watter did. I am sure its more pronounced through a microphone (I only noticed it with the gain channel on the 50 watter), but ugh. That kinda bothers me. The 5 watter doesn't have that. Its neither crunch nor growl. Maybe that's what EL34s do single ended? I don't encounter single ended 34s much, always 6V6es and 84s. I guess if you drove the power amp even harder that fizzy top would turn into something crunchy and authoritative.... but then later in the video he goes abtshit with the gain and its outta control exploding amp bad.... its probably just the video. I ahte gear videos. But beware the laney harsh to end. Its chimey clean and then hard and harsh distorted, but ceases to cut the mix in a band if you smooth out the tone controls too much.

On the other hand? I was listening to TAD yesterday. TAD did not give a fuck about guitar tone. It rocked. I mean they named an album "God's Balls"

I didn't take it as a jab. Just saying, know mostly guitarists who read and also play another, more orchestral instrument (or two). So I never got that joke...

"My mom told me, and Mark I think you the same thing, I'm not a loser. So the whole Seattle loser thing I never really got because clearly I'm not a loser."

-Steve Turner

I've used my buddy's Lionheart L5 and its like a marshall 800 front end slaved to an ac4 poweramp, sounds pretty good, though at full 800 gain levels she wallops the power amp pretty damn hard. A bit over the top unless you are doing bedroom levels at night, but the 20 watter should have the headroom to use all that extra preamp gain effectively. Never one to play quietly but also not being a crazy gainiac I preferred her with drive mode disabled just pushing the whole amp a little into a natural singing distortion when I dug in, like I now use my ac4. Very similar amps, slightly different voicing and architecture in gain mode and in regular mode still pretty different but capable of very similar tones but using different settings. Great build quality and really flattered by the stock G12H (one of my favorite speakers ever). The L20 is two EL34 tubes in parallel single ended, true class A if I recall. Should sound pretty mean at all points of the volume dial, but you will never get significant poweramp distortion without pushing stage volumes. However, it should gently glide into some saturation at reasonable home levels with the high gain mode engaged. The gain mode definitely sounds better when you are working the tubes a bit in this type of amp even if the power amp is not producing any significant distortion of its own. I also tried a Laney 50 watt lionheart with 5 EL34 tubes in parallel single ended and thought it was harsh in gain mode and too loud for most people if pushed into natural distortion via clean mode (though it was totally glorious), so try one and see if the gain mode is too harsh on the 20 watter. And you are talking to a guy who LOVES bright amps with plenty of upper-midrange kerrang, but there is a point where enough is enough. I thought the L50 crossed the threshold of where it would cut the mix and got into ear fatigue turf, but when I cut treble and/or mids it lost some magic. You need to hit a store, give her a erious workout, and see what you think (then report back because I have been curious about the 20 watt lionheart having tried the 5 and the 50 already).

I will say that before you even mentioned the Lionhearts I was remembering my buddy's 5 watter and was thinking I should get one to party with my ac4 when I need a little more power and could bring a little marshalliness in from another small amp rather than just gauge up to an ac30.... usually I am iffy on Laney, but their handwireds are generally up to snuff. The use of true class A is awesome. No one else does it at these kidna power levels (hell, even a small parallel single-ended is rare, I can only think of like 3 ever, the Gibsonette from the 50s, the Captain and Major crunch amps by Scumbag that borrow from the Gibsonette and the THD Bivalve which is quite a gimmicky version with the mix-and-match tubes feature... it took balls for laney to run FIVE EL34s so inefficiently for the sake of cool tone when two in fixed-bias, push pull will produce 50 watts easily and be less prone to noise just because that's what's great about class AB amps... they coulda done cathode bias class A with 4 matched EL34s and got at least 60 watts and a close-enough sounds, but the phase inverter and such would change the power amp response to something more like a loud-ass vox or tweed deluxe).

TMI, right? sorry....

cool... actually, there was the PSP piano verb given away free as an experiment... love that one, not sure if its still around

How did the guitar teacher know he had nothing left to teach his best student?

The student told him his girlfriend left him.

I was wrong, thought of another one. What do you call a metal guitarist who sells his high gain amps to fund a vintage Marshall?

CURED

one more, one more.... what do you call a guitarist who has more guitars than he needs?

the deceased

How do you know the difference between your average guitarist and a dying cat. Eventually the cat dies and stops making screeching noises.

Bazinga! Thank, you and have a good night. Don't forget to tip your bartender, folks.

What's the difference between a rhythm guitarist and a horse? The horse can follow simple instructions.

oh! what do you call a crappy guitar player with a ton of custom shop guitars?

DOCTOR!

What do you call a guitarist with fat, stumpy fingers?

WORTHLESS

I think that's the norm these days, but my kind of guitarists tend to stick together. My serious band was a clean divide. Me and the singer could read well, the bassist could read a little when we started and got it down as we went just because he's that kind of guy, the drummer and the rhythm guy we added at the end could not read. It could be frustrating because the singer could sight read better than me, but the bassist who could barely read and the drummer who couldn't read a note had a much better grip on theory and just better ears all around. There was always a lot of futzing around trying to explain shit in different ways to everybody. And then there was that 'rhythm' guy, aww jeeze. He's the reason you don't pick band members based solely on their affability. Sometimes I just wanted someone to club me over the head with a les paul and dump me in the river to die already!

welp, that's why folks buy boutique effects, for their true bypass with silent switching or an audiophile buffer... it costs, although these days even DOD/digitech makes a silent-switching true bypass line, but they didn't spring for a burr brown opamp in their buffer I am sure, the cost difference between that and common shit seems minimal when you buy one for a homebrew, but multiplied over millions of production pedals it will effect your profit margin if you don't pass a substantial markup on to your distributors... a good opamp would be more transparent and noise free

you are turning a buffer ON not OFF.... the noise is because its not a very well designed buffer

you mean an ES345? that has a chickenhead knob in addition to the usual 335 controls that sits on a rotary switch/inductor doohickey called a varitone.... its an inductor filter sort of like inductor EQs, but less refined... love the varitone

if your friend has a 345 I hate him by the way, I have been looking for a good mono one off and on for years, but they've never been made in large quantities and I am both picky and cheap.... BB's Lucilles are mainly mono 345s w/o F-holes and the man swears by the varitone, or swore by, being dead... dead men play no blues

that would be funnier for me if I knew more than 3 guitarists/bassists who don't read music

its picky 'bout plugins, yessiree... look up a more fully featured freeware, I am not sure if reaper is still free, but it was at one time and its not bad....there's waveosaur too, not sure how it multitracks, but its not picky about plugin effects

you got the 325 lust from the guy from Kings of Leon, right? please tell me you got it for less than a current Gibson dot reissue. Until he started playing one they were a cheapie with no vntage value, a purely Norlin model. Cool, but not worth much scratch and not collectible. used to see 'em under a grand all the time. I hope you paid no more than $1500

Favorite gear... oh wow, I bought my ac4hw this summer and I am really in love with this little monster... I didn't try a lot of new stuff in 2015 (it seemed like more of a pedal guy's year and I am an amp guy) but I got some stuff that was new to me and I think the ac4HW is my favorite. The one new-ish toy I tried and was wowed by was Bogner's ecstasy blue drive pedal. I can't see myself buying one any time soon because I can't justify the purchase of a device I know I will use sparingly, but next time I need pedal overdrive because I'm gigging regularly at small clubs I might consider it. There wasn't much in the realm of new products in '15 that really blew my mind....

Favorite artist? I rediscovered the Smith's around Thanksgiving this year. I had forgotten them and now I remember why I liked them as a kid. In addition, I gave Modest Mouse another listen and warmed up to them a lot. I finally bothered to listen to the last QOTSA album yesterday and really enjoyed it as both a return to form (harmonically) and a move towards a more nuanced, adult sound that resonated with me as an oldster. Josh has come a long way since Kyuss (still love that band and am sad JH refused to do a quick reunion tour with them, but I get it, you can never go back unless there's nothing ahead of you). I haven't heard a lot of new music that gets my rocks off that was actually released this year though. Sad. I am really glad QOTSA is still going because there isn't a lot of heavy music left that is worthy of the name. Heavy does NOT mean more distortion or lower bass tones, though that can help to set the mood. I feel like the only bands left that still understand HEAVY are Queens and Mastodon. But whatever, gainiacs, keep on keepin' on, you all keep the pedal and preamp tube manufacturers in business.

Live acts? I went to literally 1 show this year. No shit. And it was a local band, my good friend was sitting in on bass for a few shows, but I also know the singer. They were tight but they had songwriting, arrangement and schlockiness problems. My man Bryan held it together though. Kept the drummer in line and laid down a solid groove that kept me from throwing up. I got hit on by this middle-aged chick who was high as a kite, gotta love bar shows in fishtown, man. She was actually pretty cute, but being deranged on speed or psychadelics or whatever? Not a turn on, babe. I am gettin' too old for this shit. I give the singer an E for EFFORT. He gives it 110% on vocals, but his rhythm guitar playing needs help. Well delivered, but lacking in groove, nuance, technique.... guess that's why he has a DS1 though, hardly matters when you get makin' with the Boss distortion in the choruses. If you can't figure it out on your own take a few lessons, dudes. Covering it all up with a wall of diode clipping is not appropriate in every tune and was definitely wrong for this material. SOOOO my favorite live act is nobody, I guess. There was nothing I even wanted to see. I didn't even bother to see Paul McCartney when he was in town and I could've.

if I could read minds, Boom? I would be using that skill on people with more to offer me than self-esteem.... or maybe I would be using it to convince storm troopers to release me...

and 2000+ years ago it was Greece and coastal Turkey

Boom, you forgot Seattle (thanks, phone dude)

lets just all admit it, this is a stupid question

I've actually talked gear with Dick Dale personally many times and that list is right more or less. I need to mess with the strat to be more specific. He's had a few, all old if I recall. He also used a couple fender amps including a blonde non-dual showman before he went to dual showmans (Leo basically made the dual-showman to please Dale, no joke). I owned an early Dual Showman like Dick's 2 that was the same Fender Electrical Instruments badged early model without the word "DUAL" on the faceplate like you see in '64.... that's kidna what started me chatting with him. I went to see him at the northstar 12 years ago and I noticed his dual showmans didn't say "DUAL" so I asked him about it after the set and we wound up sitting at the bar together for an hour talking Fender. Though mostly he talked and I listened. Before I got married I sued to hang with DD every time he was in town. Nice guy. Crazy, but nice. If you ever go to see Dick be sure to approach him before he leaves, he's a really friendly person. He gave me a great piece of advice one time, he said the only reason to have tone controls on guitar amps is so that when you use 2 of them you can adjust them to compliment eachother, otherwise if the amps is designed well and right for you, you might as well let it all rip at 10. His eyes looked a little crazy and dangerous as he explained this, but he's right in a way....

Chet's board is not far from done.... its missing one obvious amplifier, but I'll take care of that ;-) Johnny Cash is pretty much done, he's a man of few chords. Might be shy an acoustic model or 2.... I am not sure its worth adding microphones or anything to a guy this old. He just used what was at the gig or whatever the engineer at the studio put out in front of him or his guitar. It was a simpler time and the gear was so consistently nice that anything you got was killer.

Chuck pre-dates effects, doesn't use 'em.... he's mainly a twin reverb man (if you've ever seen "hail hail rock 'n roll" you can see him with his twin elling Keef the fuck off when Keef tries to get him to adjust his settings LOL). But he's used all sorts of stuff. Just like how he used to hire local pick=up bands to cut touring costs, he also just toured with his guitar for a great deal of his career and used any amplifier the venues would provide. Chuck Berry is like the one guy who doesn't need an equipboard, the man can sound like Chuck Berry with any Gibson guitar through any amp.

Buddy Holly I know cold, but I will need documentary evidence. I know exactly what Fender and Magnatone amps he favored, no joke, but hell if I can remember what amp book it was all mentioned in.

I'm not sure I care enough about Knopfler or the bozos from Skynyrd. I have trouble taking the guys resposnible for free bird very seriously. Knopfler is a great player though, I just never stopped to think about his sound because when I think badass strat tone I just don't think Dire Straits.

I just read a really cool Josh Homme quote that seemed worth sharing 'cuz I kinda did this in a way. I ahd a 1 channel Fender with just volume, treble and bass for a while (well, there was verb and trem I never used unless I was recording or playing in a big band) and got seduced into Marshalls with all those extra knobs and inputs and stuff and was actually having a bit of trouble figuring out some of them, just wasn't getting THAT sound, especially out of that 1st Superlead. And I started scoring some even simpler amps with just volume and tone or even just volume alone and I started playing into the amp and really changing my right hand technique some, so when I went back to the big amps I stopped twiddling the knobs and jumping channels looking for my sound and just set her to sound flat and clear around 2 or 3 and then brought the level on up until I felt like I could sound like me. I had gotten my 1st ac30 at this time too and I started rocking the normal channel ALL THE TIME. Or I would just jack both top boost knobs down but gun that channels volume way up. So without further adieu, here's the quote I promised:

"The real beauty of guitar playing is the act of finding things out for yourself. The best gear advice I can offer is to play through an amp with one volume knob and one tone knob and see if you can make that sound good. You'll learn more from doing that than from knowing the details of my rig." -Josh Homme