jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I gotta tell ya, I have done the pedal quest on and off for years and its a pain in the neck with very little gratification overall.... if the DS1 works for you then stick with that and stop... get a chorus or flange, maybe a phaser.... if you like delay find a delay unit you dig.... wire it up and quit so you can focus on playing.... whenever I go on the pedal quest I wind up taking stuff off and switching stuff out at rehearsals until there is very little left come gig night... I don't think that's just me, lots of other guys have the same experience... the massive pedalboard players are thinner on the ground than you would think

I've played blackstar's 40 watter a bit and its a jack of all trades, master of none.... if the HT1 is like that its a good entry into the world of tube amps.... 1 watt of tube power is a lot in a bedroom

Well seeing as I don't own a passport and haven't for ago 8 years or so, I probably won#t be doing anytime soon haha. Also in the UK its typically cheaper to go to france by train or boat and then drive to your destination in France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg or Western Germany than it is to get a plane for most of the year these days. Only time I'd worry about a plane is the USA or Southern and Eastern Europe which I do want to do one day anyway. I think I need space for 10-15 pedals as a good guess as I want to run some larger pedals, like the Germanium 4 muff, Polychorus, Deluxe muff, Phase 90 a wah etc as well as the usual boss sized pedals. I guess another good question is whats a good affordable power supply :P

for that many disparate brand pedals it a voodoo lab or nothing... but your collection is LOADED with redundancy and subtle nuance that the audience won't be able to hear.... I always worry about flying, I am an east coast musician but have had cause to fly to LA with a guitar and some pedals on occasion

I suggest streamlining to reduce the size you will need so you can afford the nicest board and case possible. If you look at premier guitar rig rundowns you will find that ALL of the guys who have been around a long time either in famous bands or as sidemen to the stars have really simple effects setups and routing even if they use 3 or more amps. I have found they are wise to do so. Its best to cover a few essential sounds and minimize what can go wrong on stage be it malfunctions or human error when tap dancing ludicrous amounts of effects. Check out the 3 guitarists from Roger Waters' recent tour of "the wall", they have only what's essential... and we're talking about Pink Floyd material, some of the most effects driven music for many years. But YMMV

your number 1 question is whether you will be taking it on a plane and if so if it will be small enough to be carry on

you could also fire up your soldering iron and hand build a high quality 5F1 champ kit for right around your budget....

gotta be careful doing a stained burst and hand rubbed clearcoat, dude

the best affordable pedalboard with an ATA approved flightcase is definitely the pedaltrain... I had a small one, it was sturdy, light enough to carry on public transportation, and pre drilled for a voodoo pedal power mounted underneath (though I didn't use that feature since I was just running a tuner, a fuzz with a vintage carbon/zinc battery and an ABY that required high voltage)

a lot of the cheap Chinese 5 watt tube amps are all jobbed out to the same factories by competing companies anyway, just pick the one that is a good deal

I'm not actually familiar with the lil nite train. I don't like the 15 watter as much as an ac15 or tiny terror but i do like the 50 watt vox lunchbox.

Pretty much all single ended el84 amps sound the same once they are fully distorted. Its a good sound. The better quality the amp and speakers the more i like it. Even a lot of champ type amps are pretty close to their el84 cousins.

Subjectable, but after four years in office, the majority opinion is that President Barrack Obama is not a very good president and that he is ruining this country. I'd fill you in, but I'd rather research the subject first so that I don't give out any lies.

I don't know that the majority opinion of my fellow americans (dig the Nixon reference?) means a whole lot.... as a young adult I watched in shock and horror as the majority chose Bush Jr a second time to lead our country into fiscal ruin... even historically you will find that other than FDR most of our most effective presidents, like Lincoln, barely squeaked into office while the real bastards had a clear majority

I doubt Socratese would put the same faith in the opinion of the majority that you do. Then again the majority of Athenian voters decided to execute him for encouraging young people to question the status quo.

Okay, I'm done, I don't usually do politics on the web and everyone else should follow my lead including the OP. This is a guitar site.

You can always roll treble off bot you can never add it back in if its not there in the 1st place. I reel like a lot of people get so obsessed with having a smooth guitar sound that they wind up getting loat in the mix.

I rather liked the mules I tried, but I only tried them briefly and they were in a really nice guitar...

truth be told I am really happy with the much maligned 70s Gibson 't-top' humbuckers.... I find them to be punchy and clear from clean to mean... the current Gibson 490R is not a bad humbucker either

70s and 80s maxon made pickups like the PU2, Ibanez super70 and Greco Dry Z sound shockingly good for a Japanese copy.... they're PAFish in design and materials with different grades of alnico and such.... some of them are even still affordable

I have been quite taken with Duncan's 59/Custom Hybrid lately and have them in 2 of my guitars at the bridge right now... they are a weird mutt of classic Gibson, 80s hot rod and almost p90ish tones with the great upper midrange harmonic zing of an overwound single coil.... but they are on the hot side for me at about 12kohms DCR

I highly recommend the TV jones stuff too, especially the Powertron/ His attempt to make Filtertron size pickup with some PAF tone resulted in a humbucker with a lot of the 60s guild HB1 flavor. My 1st 'grown up' guitar was a 1 pickup guild starfire thinline singlecut and the neck humbucker was just phenomenal. The powertrons remind me of that tone and that's a huge compliment

I don't really know how he acquires half the Gibsons he has, he just gets given them :S But alwell, I'd love to own a Gibson one day haha, I think Gibsons are overrated though for what they are. Good guitars yes but these new Burstbucker pros sound shite! The StewMac Golden Age pick ups sound a billion times better and cost £40 a pick up!

some people, like me, just have guitars stick to them, I dunno

you'll get a gibby.... one day you will have the cash or run into a deal and it will be a good one.... usually Gibson IS overrated, but when you get a good one, wow.... good gibsons are not about how much you spend or what model you get, they are about a magic combination of neck and body that is random chance coupled with a neck profile that feels good in your hand (and that's very individualized and can take time since Gibson still hand carves the finer details of each neck even on cheaper ones)

I hate the burstbucker pro bridge.... neck's okay.... the burstbucker 2 and 3 are a bit better, but there are better PAF clones for less money and way better ones if you really wanna spend.... or you can go a different route entirely, the thing that makes certain vintage PAFs interesting to your ear, the mismatched coils, can be applied with other humbucker components and ideas to make some unheard of, unique pickups....

from what I understand the british public school system has MORE arts and humanities than American public school.... I plan to send my son to private school. Does your daughter paint with a brush yet? My son can't get into crayons but he paints with a paintbrush with me already. I was really surprised when he started doing it. I mean, he still fingerpaints at the same time with his left hand, but I am trying to figure out if maybe he's a budding Picasso or something. I mean, I went to art school for college, why not? Is that your fiancée in your user pic?

I succumb to laziness and busy-ness with guitar builds. I musta spent a year building my tele and my strat is still not strung up even though I finished the wiring recently. Some of it is also caused by the fact that as much as I enjoy building shit I would usually rather be playing. I have plenty of inspiring guitars I can pick up and that demotivates me from doing all but the most basic work on a guitar that is taken apart.... plus I always prioritize quality time with my son. The guitars aren't going anywhere!

So, I noticed some delays and reverbs will continue to affect the sound before dying out, while others immediately cut as soon as the pedal is shut off.

What exactly causes this?

true bypass.... if a pedal has a hard mechanical bypassthe effects is routed to ground when you turn it off, the effect is still producing repeats but only direct signal is being routed to your amp.... buffered pedals can decay all day, its called spill over or trails

Your kid show any interest in music and guitar? My daughter has done as far as two year olds go, also trying to play my guitars. Gets a pick off the side and starts just plucking open strings gently haha. When I'm playing she'll get her ukele and start trying to play along. Veryy cool haha. Thanks for your indepth reply by the way

Yeah, we do tons of music too. Lucian likes to play my keyboards most of all and really enjoys his adult set of bongos and tambourine when dad plays guitar for him. Any time he sees someone with any ac30 on tv he comments that they have daddy's amp. Vox was also the 1st word he learned to spell. Hes more into my guitars as objects of awe. He claimed my red 335 for himself though. He likes pointing at it and saying "that Lucian's 'tar (which is toddler for guitar apparently)" It awesome that your daughter will play a kids ukulele. My son will not play kiddie isntruments. He seems to know they're not legit.

I think bitchslap has a vox tonebender, a univox superfuzz and a colorsound overdriver... Or maybe a fuzzface somewhere too

My soundcloud link is on my profile. There's a bunch of old fuzzes on the song 'bitchslap'

Not that I know of, its late roman imperial Latin. Like Lucius Cornelius Sulla. I didn't want to name him Lucius because people will think of morgan freeman in batman. I didn't go with the french spelling because americans are idiots who cannot pronounce Lucien. So it became Lucian. Plus its a nod to Lucian Freud, your countries finest painter besides Hockney.

You're 17 and you don't have a part time job? I grew up fairly poor. If i wanted something that cost more than 100 bucks as a teenager i had to raise the money myself. I didn't even have any videogames until i got a summer job in jr high! I started building my gear collection this way before I was old enough to drive.

Thomas is HUGE with American toddlers. My son got into it as soon as he started talking and walking last Christmas. We just road Thomas and Percy at the E. Stroudsburg Railroad's day out with Thomas event a few weeks ago. I have never seen Lucian so happy. Its actually a lot of fun building his wooden railway with him. He has every engine memorized and he learned his numbers (up to 22, luke is engine 22) and some of his colors from Thomas and friends.

He learned a lot of colors from my guitar collection too. For awhile when he woukd name all the colors the list included sunburst. Way funny. Pretty much his whole universe is trains and guitars despite the fact that I am always trying to interest him in other things. Hes finally taking a little interest in dinosaurs though.

Between 'daddy' and my family he is getting loaded down with thomas toys this year. Hopefully he won't tire of the whole thing.

I thought I wanted a little girl, but now that I have a mini-me I cannot imagine what I was thinking!

do you think the Greendale train conductor toy in this video looks more like Johnny Marr or Ringo Starr?

https://youtu.be/mYmaYllyh0g

four digits will say it all: 1 9 7.... AND 9! disc 2

its got more hits on it, but I think disc 2 gets massive points just for 'where boys fear to tread' and 'bodies'

There are a tonne of guides on the internet

I love how you Limeys spell 'tonne'

I was summoned by Narcist in the 2nd post

I think I have owned and played through a wider variety of voxes and marshalls than any other 2 guys on this forum put together

you might as well ask what's a better album, MCIS disc 1 versus disc 2

Probably not that much cheaper than an AC15 that's not handwired.

the non handwired ac4 is WAY cheaper than the ac15custom classic and it comes in a head so you can get a Baltic birch plywood cab instead of the crappy MDF cabs vox has been selling on their low end amps for the last 5 years or so

I think I paid 600USD for my handwired ac4 on the used market.... I have seen them sell for as low as $500 recently if they are beat up or missing the footswitch.... good luck finding a handwired vox of any other type under $800, or even a custom classic!

if its an 80s solid state marshall amp its not worth 300 euros.... the best sounding marshall solid state amps regularly trade for about 150 in US dollars so anything over 200 euros is extortion

there are TONS of those Marshall solid state combos around and while they sound okay, they are literally worthless.... no valuable parts at all inside... so the amp is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it when you are done playing it yourself and there was a time just a few years ago when they only went for $50

check THIS out:

http://ceriatone.com/productSubPages/Muchle$$DC30/Muchle$$DZ30_Complete.htm

love mine

http://equipboard.com/items/ceriatone-dizzy-30

or for the money you have you can probably score a used ac15hw of some sort as long as you are okay with 1x12 with a greenback or the heritage head from 10 years ago

take a look at my review of the ac30 here for more info on good years for vox amps and a guide to top boost clones on a budget:

http://equipboard.com/items/vox-ac30-guitar-combo-amp

Thanks for the reply. I've read somewhere the chinese one (2007 reissue) are better than the korean ones because a lot of things were updated (tuners; bridge; jack output etc). What about the new ones you can buy on danelectro.com ? Are these the same as the 2007 reissue ? How can I make the difference between a korean, chinese and/or newer one? Thanks a lot

a Korean one says "made in Korea" and the Chinese one says "Made (or Crafted) in China"

I generally stay away from Chinese products of any kind for political reasons and also because their version of steel is mostly carbon... their screws strip easily, their bridges bend.... you get the idea

the Korean Dano reissues I have played were solid little guitars for the money though they shared some of the faults of the vintage models and the pickups are junk

you have a frontman solid state? get an amp-in-a-box overdrive, not a tubescreamer and leave it on all the time with the gain set really low to 'tube up' your sound.... then put a more traditional distortion like a Rat out front of it for when you need heavy duty crunch.... don't bother getting a footswitch for the onboard distortion on your frontman, its basically just an MXR distortion+ that clips your signal with diodes to ground downstream of the tone controls on your amp

go to a store and try out the following ODs with a frontman:

ZVex distortron

EHX OD glove

Pigtronix Fat Drive

Catalinbread's DLS, WIIO, CB30, Galileo, RAH, SFT, Formula #5 and Formaula 5F6

I'm considering it, retail is $170, so maybe I can get it off him with $120?

that sounds fair for a middle of the road used squier

So that is why you got all that experience with tons of gear!

yup, about 15 years of recording experience on both sides of the glass before there were many resources for how to set your marshalls for classic tones! after that I had amassed a lot of knowledge and things also got easier with the internet gear explosion.... before then I had to purchase and fiddle around inscessantly

and also because I am a nitpicky lunatic when it comes to electric guitars and synths

I prefer 2 speakers on stage per amp, but there is nothing wrong with the 1x12 ac15 format, its hella loud, especially with an actual celestion blue or H30 at 100dB sensitivity (maybe too loud for most people).... weber's blue dog is slightly less efficient but is a little less bright, personal I prefer all the treble from the current RI celestion blue, its never harsh and sounds closer to an old blue in very good condition than the weber.... the weber sounds like an old blue that was stored in a humid basement, not bad, just different.... but I digress

I am not impressed by the build quality of the current Chinese vox ac15 and 30, the older ones are a little better and have better cabinet wood to boot... all of the current voxes other than the handwired stuff is a little too bright and stiff sounding compared with a vintage JMI, but not in a bad-assed way like a matchless DC30, ore of a shrill and sterile way, but its still a solid little cathode biased rock machine.... maybe a weber blue dog would help to tame the hyped treble (vox went crazy with the treble and power filtering to make the custom classics sound like middle period Beatles recordings that actually were done with ac50s, ac100s and UL series hybrid amps all of which are completely different circuits with a different feel and sound)

frankly if I needed an affordable 15 watt cathode biased el84 amp I would go a different route than the current ac15... but if they started offering it as a 2x12 now? might be worth it if you are into the 2x12 sound like I am.... otherwise I recommend getting another brand of 18 watt cathode biased amp as a head and cab setup

what's your budget?

also, there are a vox-a-likes that outchime even vintage voxes... the legit vox sound is VERY balanced with a healthy dose of upper midrange and surprisingly strong bass, the normal channel takes pedals wonderfully, the top boost channel takes pedals well as long as you avoid extreme tone control settings, but that's part of the fun of the top boost channel.... also, your first ac style amp will make you wonder why you bother with effects because it sounds so good on its own

also, I love blackface fender deluxes/deluxe reverbs and princetons/Princeton reverbs, but they are a different animal entirely than a vox.... a tweed deluxe has more in common with the vox design though the voicing is very different... blackface fenders really take pedals well, better than any other vintage amp design

so anyway, what's your total budget?

also, my son is 2 (and he won't go to sleep tonight so hes sitting on my lap while I am typing, so sorry if this was a rambling response with lots of typos), maybe we should arrange a marriage and pool our gear?

thanks for the praise on the lyrics, it is really hard to write poppy songs that don't fall into a handful of tropes... that goes for the music too, when you get too creative with melody or the chords/parts you can be in danger of straying into other genres,,, if you play it safe and string together a pile of familiar hooks you wind up writing someone else's song

I always used to think to myself when trying to find what gear someone used why someone doesn't make a site for it. Then a few weeks ago I discovered the site and was like hell yea this is badass. It's a awesome site and glad I can find someones gear effortlessly

I wish something like this had existed when I was cutting my 1st recordings, struggling to figure out how to get classic sounds.... when I was green it was a lot of financial investment and groping around to get sounds

I'd just like to revive this thread to say I now have this.

Borrowed from a friend, It's supposed to react better to pedals then the Roland G-303.

looks fun... maybe you can just buy it off your friend

anyway, there are tons of affordable little all tube designs out there in the champ or ac4 mold, just look around on reverb and flEaBAY or local shops with a good turnover in used gear(you may find an affordable vintage gem if you are lucky), you will find something no problem