jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I know they're not grungy but I was talking about nirvana

for bleach or in utero you want a silverface twin reverb, a small clone and a ds1 or ds2... I think that Kurt used Jack Endino's late 60s/early 70s twin on that record and he used his late 70s/early 80s twin forin utero... for nevermind you want a blackface bassman and/or an ac30, same pedals, he just used the amps that were in the tracking room at Sound City where they recorded it and that's what was there... for live its the same pedals with a mesa studio preamp from the 80s in clean mode with the midrange knob cranked to 10 and a huge solid state poweramp through a generic 90s marshall 4x12 with stock speakers, same pedals.... a music man will get you close to the SF twin thing on the cheap, also the traynor amps from the 70s with reverb are like twin reverbs in a head and can be had cheaply since they are not so desireable compared to the bassmaster amps of that era that have more of a marshall plexi tone... in modern amps you can sometimes get those 90s 'the twin' amps that have the distortion channel pretty cheap and the normal channel can pull off some okay twin cleans. The real key to Kurt s a fender guitar with a bridge humbucker like a dimarzio distortion or a Duncan JB installed going into a clean, fender voiced amp with a 3 band EQ blackface input stage, the midrange turned way up, bass all the way down and the treble set to suit the room.

You got anything on the thermals

no idea who they are, I am an oldster

I NEVER want any lead vocal in a rock band, its distracting, particularly if your singer is very consistent with phrasing

consistent with phrasing... explain please?

if your vocalist changes his/her cadence sometimes (adds extra words, riffs around a note a bit, etc) you will probably want some of them in the monitor so you can adjust your playing to make space for the change in the vocal or even to change your part around on the fly to enhance what they are doing... towards the end of my longest running band's touring life I needed to hear the singer because we would riff off of eachother sometimes in a few songs, but for most of the set she was just reproducing the album parts dead on... y solution was to keep her out of my monitor and share her floor wedge whenever we were going to improve a bit as she had a little of everything plus a lot of her in her floor wedge

Also live in Texas that's too bad, not a lot of great, cheap gear there as I recall.... there's great gear, but its pricey

for a foo sound? jeez, your budget is too small, save your beans... they used to use expensive mesas live and vintage or handwired RI ac30s live and in the studio.... recent foo has some hot-rodded marshall courtesy of a Friedman brown eye and even some peavey 6505 amps too (which are kinda in the mesa recto camp), but still vintage and HW series voxes featured heavily on the records... for greenday stuff billy joe pretty much used to exclusively use his modded marshall superleads. They have crazy gain mods done to them. A JCM800 willg et you close... I think the dude used some vintage fenders on insomniac too.... more recently he's been breaking out some silvertone twin twelve heads thru marshall cabs.... you could probably cover everything you need to do with a powerful clean amp in the fender cap and a couple am-in-a-box pedals by catalinbread... PS, none of those bands are very grungey

I saw EB posted this on Facebook. Totally geeking out on it. It's John Frusciante's (for those who don't know, former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist and all-around guitar legend) in-ear feed. I'm listening to it now, it's so interesting that night after night, show after show, he is laser focused on the sounds he is producing - guitar and backup vox.

that's super interesting... I am a floor wedge guy myself and I like tons of kick, snare and bass guitar and maybe a little of myself if I am running low stage volume or I am on a huge stage.... I like to be swimming in a sea of rhythm section no matter where I am standing... I do like a low of my vocal if I am singing though and I want it to have way more reverb than it gets in FOH because I can't pitch well if its too dry... I NEVER want any lead vocal in a rock band, its distracting, particularly if your singer is very consistent with phrasing

I will get back to you in detail about mix bus compression and limiting for good home 'masters' in Fruity after my son goes down for his nap....

Problem is, the volume knob on the pedal is on the right pointing at noon.

That's the same amount of sound coming out except with more sustain.

noon is not unity in every circuit dude....

need volume and clean tone for pixies/nirvana thing?try a 90s sovtek mig or maybe a 100 watt 70s univox (they are not really 100 watts, more like 80).... or the dreaded musicman hybrid amps from the 70s, leo fender designed, Joan Jett gigs one with a dirt box, very punk rock...

most all tube amps with real power are way outta your price range... I was a teen in the 90s with tad, the melvins, pixies and, YES, nirvana... reference some albums and I'll see what I can recommend to fit your budget and needs... where do you live? if you are anywhere near DC or Baltimore then hit up Atomic Music in Beltsville MD... be polite and ask a lot of intelligent questions and they will hook you up...

I'm hoping Jimbo chimes in with a highly educational post but since he kind of already explained it a little here, it may not help folks like yours truly.

a buffer is a unity gain voltage amplifier that can handle a high impedance input and bring out a low impedance signal that will have minimal loss across long cable runs.... its essentially the same circuitry as a clean boost but its designed so it won't exceed the peak t peak voltage being put out by your guitar pickup. Any good clean boost can act as a buffer/line-driver if you carefully trim down the output to be about the same as when the pedal is disengaged. No boost or buffer is completely transparent and the cheaper the components, the more color they impart to your tone (like the buffer in most boss OD pedals in bypass) which is what caused the push for true mechanical bypass in boutique boxes. Ask more pointed questions and I will give more specific answers, for the home player with short cable runs a buffer is not important.

Hey what's up people!! My name is Eddie and I'm from LA, i went to my first rave this year and i fell in love with the sounds!! Now I'm here trying to create my own home studio: I want to be able to create this sound. Any help would be great and I bought Logic Pro .. so any recommendations for MIDI keyboards and Speakers would be great!! Any help/ suggestions would be great.. Thank you !!

they still have raves out there? I thought the scene was dying back when I was a kid 20 years ago, no kidding... I think your questions have been well covered in other threads, on this forum, go back through and read up then ask more specific questions.

Well, I got some Auralex foam on the walls now. Looking like an actual musician's lair.

Vox is pretty great, but they do not "rule" haha ;)

um, how are those cables coming? I ended up doing my main pedalboard with cables I had already, tweaking them and the connectors a bit. Too many gigs were upcoming and I just couldn't wait. Which is totally fine. Secondary pedal board still needs some TLC though so ... ETA?

I got all the jacks in and just got another spool of good cable from my buddy in a big spare pickup/cab trade last month so no shortage of supplies now. , so I can get them out before the holiday. I have been tied up with my son quite a bit since we talked about them. You didn't want me to do your pedalboard cables anyway, those should be cut to precise sizes and I would need he board for that. I thought I was just making x-mas gift cables. And vox does rule.

This goes out to Mario Fernandez about the van Halen sound. I'm in no way a pro on this but I have recently purchased a vox ig stompbox and you can sit there and adjust between jazz through have metal while adjusting your gain and also to a sharper or flat sound. But in short this box will give you that vh type of sound or others that you maybe looking for. I got it because I was mostly looking for Boston's kinda sound and I can get somewhat of that sound just with that rather than having to go buy all those other needless pedals or stompboxes. Once I have the amp setup I'm looking for then the sounds will all fall right in. If your wondering what that might be well several choices fender,Marshall,mesa,and black star since blackstar is now made by Marshall. I tried them all out and they all have great sound. I would even say vox as well try that vox ig stompbox you won't be disappointed.

I'm sure its great for home, in a stage or studio setting a guy with dedicated gear will swallow your tiny little situation

That's either a synthesizer keyboard or a synth board. Think Something like the Roland GR-55. Actually tracking that tone would be incredibly difficult if you're taking into account the type of synth, I have no idea. I've never used a synth.

It appears that the guy with the semihollowbody is creating that tone, so I would guess roland guitar synth of some sort set to a dual oscillator, square wave PWM patch... an EHX microsynth will NOT make that noise.... its more of a whacky octave box with synth ADSR and filter features, not a real synth

tl;dr: I vote yes, demo videos count because it's a legit artist/item association.

I disagree because of guys like Pete Thorn who will demo ANYTHING on youtube if you pay him to, but their other videos make it quite clear what gear they use as working pros. Guy like that get loaned promotional units, make the demo, then return them unless its something they really like (and then you see them use it on stage or in the studio) and they start endorsing said product wholeheartedly. I love Pete Thorn's video demos (and respect his ability to get at least 1 useable sound from any old junk on the market), they are informative and solid as hell usually, but I would not say he USES much of that gear. He's just taking it through its paces for other potential consumers at the behest of the manufacturer. If he has his pick of gear though he does not reach for most of the stuff he has demoed, he doesn't even own it. I can't call that a fair equipboard sighting.

not to me, otherwise Pete Thorn's page would be miles long

Wow, you really hate these kind of outrageously priced hi-fi stuff. I know they're probably just ripping off anyone who buys them by... probably $50-54,000, but why do you care so much if some over-rich, overly-snobby ''hi-fi'' wannabes waste their money on it?

because overpriced luxury items are inherently bad for the economy.... that $55k would be more helpful to the average person if it were spent differently.... how many jobs do you think a set of sennheiser 55k electrostatic headphones creates.... plus I am offended by smoke and mirrors masquerading as science... I am less bothered by subjective luxury items like good cigars and fine wine, that's a 'your mileage may vary situation' versus something where even measurable electronic differences are probably not audible to even the best set of human ears, the whole hifi culture bugs me to no end

Thanks a lot! The DM3 is such a great pedal, so many uses too. Think it was used in the intro to "Rope" by the Foo Fighters too.

sounds like it with that really refined midrange-much delay... a lot of people ahte that quality of the DM3, its refined so carefully with all this compander and filtering circuitry to make it more polite, but its a cool and unique sound amongst BBD delays... everyone in ahile I regret unloading mine, whereas in more traditionally voiced delays I most regret selling my wide-boxed, high voltage Ibanez AD80 over the comparable DM2... if you've ever played an AD9 imagine that only BETTER for the AD80.... its just so valuable that as a guy who seldome uses delay I couldn't justify keeping it.... I think that was my reasoning for selling pretty much ALL of the delay pedals and rack units I've ever owned. I wish I had this one Roland CHorus Echo that sounded utterly fabulous from chorus to tape echo surprisingly tasteful spring reverb.... alas

congrats Fastfingers... I've owned an original DM2 and DM3, honeslty I preferred the DM3. It didn't get into the analog, self-oscilating madness that the 2 could, but it had a really refined sound to the delay timbres that sat behind my guitar really well as well as having much lower self-noise. Both were most useful for slap back and short rhythmic echoes with minimal feedback. The Waza craft in the shootout posted above tikles my fancy more than the original DM2 so enjoy!

my dad, I thought you were giving me a time... I'll look it up.... you youngsters and your newfangled bands I barely know about....

Sorry I haven't got a vid for this one, because I'm posting this on a school computer, but how does The Strokes' guitarist (I'm thinking something Valensi?) get that weird synth tone on "12:51"

you not only didn't post a video but you didn't even reference a song name, pal

I wonder what it costs them to make these...

I would think a lot.... all the magic elves locked inside that marble box must be expensive to trap

oh, they're electrostatic drivers, nevermind, they do need all those tubes to drive them.... how wasteful, we're in the middle of an energy crisis..... for the money sennheiser is charging they should include a small fusion reactor to generate the electricity that would be wasted plugging such an inefficient pair of cans and amp off a wall outlet! you can get pretty good sound quality out of some high end AKG cans powered by a mosfet run at 24 volts or lower with negligible current draw. I would really like to build a highly efficient hifi headphone amp and hold blind listening tests against these sennheisers for rich dildos and if they can't tell the difference then they should write me a check for $55k.... I once replaced this rich hifi nerd's expensive speaker cables with coat hangar and he couldn't tell the difference in a blind taste test.... I offered to sell him my cut up coat hangars for half what he paid for his sucker-cables but he didn't bite. He was pretty pissed off and embarrassed!

truth be told, there are situations where even measurable electrical differences in audio systems are literally inaudible to the human ear, and then there's all the hoodoo hifi types preach or the people who swear a sozo cap performs differently than a similarly constructed, rated and proportioned Mallory 150 in coupling applications.... 2 words, my ass! I have really great ears and will spot lots of little changes to my rig, but fucked if I can guess what brand of polyester film cap you haveafter stage 1 in your amp. Sorry, I am not planning to drink any koolaid I didn't mix myself....

Ah shit, my headphones budget is only $12,000.

wait wait, you mean 12k for the cans, what about for the itty bitty amp to drive them? you wouldn't spring $43k more for the amp? I mean it has overkill tube circuitry and its encased in marble! We all want rock solid audio response, right? Well this amp is literally made of solid rock, dude.

http://i.imgur.com/WCHmUC2.jpg

do I spy 8 vacuum tubes dedicated to that marble headphone amp? that seems like serious overkill, I cannot imagine needing more than a dual triode to nicely power a pair of cans... we're talking about the simplest amplifier technology because you don't even need much power as tube amps go, the less crap in your amplifier the cleaner and more hifi it is... this looks like a case of insane German engineering gone off the deep end.... if its 8 dual triodes then I am really worried.... maybe its 4 pairs of matched small signal pentodes, maybe EF86es? I hope its a limited run of like 10 units that they will market to asshole, eurotrash DJs with more income than tech sense

As far as the fender start goes well I have a 70,s copy of one that's actually a hand carved guitar and it always sounded great playing right handed but I guess I can give it a try restringing it as a lefty guitar and see just how it sounds after adding new fender pickups on it not to sure if I can play lefty but there's only one way to find out right, naturally I'm a lefty anyway but learned to play eighty so it will feel ackward at first.

nah, just put a parts strat together righty with a lefty headstock and lefty pickups (though you wn't get the reverse angled bridge pickup) or buy a passable and affordable sued lefty like an MIM standard or a beat in classic 60s and replace the nut with a righty one.... I am ambidexturous, but I don't write as well lefty (can't sign a check in any way my bank would recognize as me) nor can I play the guitar worth a damn lefty though I have tried... you need the reversed headstock, reverse polepiece stagger on your pickups, the upside down trem will help you to whammy like the man did rather than like all of us righties though it is less essential... for pickups you want low output late 60s type, DCR of 6K or maybe lower, CBS fender pickups had a lot less winds of wire on them as the parent company revised everything to cut costs... A5 magnets with the heavy staggering and no 50s bevel.... you may want to try 500k or 1meg pots over stock 250ks too since in the late 60s into the 70s fender (for reasons I cannot fathom) was experimenting with larger values to make their guitars brighter and brighter... no one knows all the specs of Hendrix's varying guitars but we know he played mainly off the shelf CBS strats with the slab rosewood board and maybe even some veneer rosewood boards later on and the pickups should be like what I just described.... you may have to fuck with the pots yourself to figure out what sounds like the Hendrix tone in your head... honestly once you have the guitar and some appropriate amps squared away you can really cheap out on effects and save some money. As long as you cover those basics of fuzzface(s), octave and univibe (which is really a phaser in chorus mode the way JH used it despite tis claims to the contrary). If I recall, I think love pedal makes a tiny little univox simulator that doesn't work the same with all the whacky photoresistors but gets in the ball park and its small and cheap. The JH branded dunlopoctavio will get you where you are going as long as you have the right amp and the right fuzz faces. Stay away from dunlops fuzzfaces, they are crap and don't sound right. I mentioned MXR's BC108 fuzz for axis tones (and also DSOTM era Pink Floyd!) but in affordable germanium fuzzfaces look up MJM. I'll bet theirs sounds pretty good on the cheap. I had one of the tonebender mk3 clones and it really held its own against a vintage burns buzzaround (same circuit) and was very inexpensive for being loaded up with NOS transistors. Or you can build some fuzz faces, that's what I like to do, Its fun and you can tune the simple circuit by ear until you get the fuzzface tone you are imagining.... remember to really work your volume knob because Hendrix NEVER seemed to turn his fuzzface off, he just varied his dirt and frequency response at the guitar beause he was the man. I also forgot to mention the wah pedal. I tried dunlop's JH branded crybaby years ago with my fuzz face and plexi and it sounded okay to me. Better than my 1st gen vox reissue wah for Hendrix sounds to be sure.And also for Axis type thru zero flanging thatw as done with tape machines in studio check out the FoxxRoxx flanger or if you are not anti-modeling there's that strymon deco pedal.... I've also heard rumors that on electric lady land and axis JH was sometimes using an EHX muff fuzz (not a big muff, this is like 2 LPB1s slammed into eachother to create a wall of grindy transistor rage). Also, you will want to play incredibly loud. Whenever I would bust out a strat, fuzzface and wah pedal to do a hendrixe impression I would have a 100 watt superlead or 85 watt dual showman turned up into a light overdrive before I even engaged the fuzz.... I am talking volume that liquefies organs in small children and cute little bunny rabbits. You can attenuate a few dBs with a hot plate, but beyond that you will lose the tone if you are not driving your speakers hard.

Its a rabbit hole though, all of this.... I just usually try to sound like me, because even through someone else's highly personalized rig I wind up sounding more like me thanks to 25 year worth of hand technique development that cannot be obscured unless I make a conscious effort to fret, vibrato, pick and strum like another player too, which is not that easy to pull off

oh hey, I was wondering if we could have more gear porn slots than 3? like 5 or 6.... I have a lot of sexy gear....

I second this, My pedalboard has reached v2.0

I have great pics of one version of my vox/matchless bi-amp rig after a jam in my living room looking all big and mean

oh hey, I was wondering if we could have more gear porn slots than 3? like 5 or 6.... I have a lot of sexy gear....

Please, mobile app!

this!

There are several sounds I'm trying to find, the first is from the band Boston I know they use alot of different things but what about foot pedal wise, because I hear boss pedals are not worth it so what would be a good brand. Also im looking to get the sound of Hendrix with purple haze. I've heard he used a few pedals can anyone point me in right area for those?

Scholz designed all his own effects and marketed them as half-rack units under the Rockman brandname back when I was a kid. Dunlop bought the company from him I think, but you can no longer get any of the Rockman products new since Boston has been out of style for a VERY long time. More is the pity You can still find all his little effects units on reverb and ebay. There is a guy from Long Island who is obsessed with collecting them and he sells his spares on the web. Some are very valuable and some are not. The stereo analog chorus is really to die for, I have been thinking of buying one... the next closest chorus to the scholz one for warmth is an 80s Ibanez or current Maxon CS9, which has the requesite roundness and sweet midrange but not as much fine-tuning potential from the controls and no stereo options. A boss CE2 is too trebley and the input impedance is wrong and won't react with your guitar the same if its first in the chain. The EHX small clone is also all wrong, though that is a fantastic mono chorus if you can score an original. The other notable Scholz effects are his sustainer preamps used to drive his Marshall Superleads.... I don't know a lot about those units other than that they are a big part of the Boston lead sound. There's varying versions with more or less features, yada yada. Look it up for yourself.... also I am told his compressor is really nice too, and its built in gate is the basis of the popular MXR smart gate pedal.

The other key ingredient to the Boston tone is 100 watt, 4 input, non-master volume marshalls with EL34s and not KT66s (any era will do including the 80s PCB ones that look like JCM800s or the various and much maligned PCB versions of the plexi reissue though I highly recommend you steer clear of the version with an effects loop) run on a power soak. Again, Rockman manufactured the soak that Scholz invented, but a word to the wise the Rockman soak is notorious for blowing up output transfromers. Weber makes a similar design with its 'dump' series though there are much better reactive-load attenuators on the market now like the THD hot plate and weber's Mass series.... that said, I think the Boston sound is about using a primitive attenuator. That type of attenuator really softens the harsh superlead treble at high presence settings allowing you to pin all the controls up for ideal 70s crunchiness. You will lose a lot of dynamics too, but again that is part of that Boston 'wall of rhythm guitar' sound. A weber Dump is a pretty safe resistor-based attenuator, get a 200 watt model for a 100 watt superlead.... do not be tempted to go with a 50 watter, they sound different. I actually prefer the 50s, but the Boston album sound is a pair of arena-filling big boys attenuated for recording being fed by a warm, BBD-based stereo chorus. Go mining around the web, there are books worth of material written on Scholz's unique sound.

Oh yeah, you will want a decent late 60s/70s style les paul, not an epiphone. If you don't wanna go Gibson try getting a vintage Tokai or Greco copy. I think Scholz has a dimarzio at the bridge and a P90 at the neck.... you could find a discontinued Gibson LP BFG and get a lot of the features of Scholz's guitar... his is an early RI or an earl deluxe so it should have a mahogany neck and not maple, and a pancake body with all mahogany and the maple cap instead of the later mahogany/maple/mahogany oreo.... I don't think his neck would have a volute though I don't find the volute effects tone.... here he is infront of all his Rockman effects holding his mutant LP: http://images.gibson.com/Lifestyle/English/aaFeaturesImages2009/tom-scholz.jpg

for Hendrix? you can cop ALL his preamp tones with a roger mayer Octavia, a good univibe clone and 2 fuzz faces, 1 for each era.... early Hendrix is a germanium red box one, you will want a good boutique clone like an analogman sunface.... the later tones are from a BC108 silicon transistor blue-cased FF and for that the mxr classic 108 fuzz will do just fine.... the univibe is tougher as I do not know who currently produces a decent one. The best clone I've heard is the sweet sound mojo vibe, but I don't think you can buy one new anymore.... I think now they make the ultravibe? I am sure its great but I have never used it to say if it has THAT sound you are seeking.... the other ingredients to Hendrix's sound are amps and speakers.... dude used an early superlead with KT66 output tubes, an early Dave Reeves built Sound City 100 watter that is just like the CP103 heads Hiwatt made for Pete Townshend and for studio tones Hendrix often used Fender blackface amps, specifically the super reverb and dual showman if I recall (my showman slaved with my plexi could do some serious JH sounds with a fuzz face out front) and also a Supro Thunderbolt combo, but I don't know what songs any of these were used on other than to say that Watchtower's tones are easiest to reproduce with a dual showman over a marshall. If I were you I would score myself a zvex distortron and a catalinbread WIIO to simulate the stereo amp setup of the classic era.... for alter Hendrix stuff with silicon fuzz face you can just use all EL34 powered marshall superleads or simulate it with a catalinbread DLS... now the speaker component is all about oversized 4x12 cabs loaded with bass cone G12H30 speakers. I don't know what kidna amp(s) you are running, but if you go the pedal route for amp tones then hchange your speaker(s) to the appropriate H30 type.... I recommend the WGS reaper30 55hz as a low-cost, sweet sounding current production H30. It gets really close to the 70s 30 waters I sued to have in one of my Marshall cabs.

now, to get ideal sounds from an analog octave pedal, remember to switch to your neck pickup and roll the tone down a bit for optimal nastiness

also, get a Fender classic 60s lefty strat if you are a righty and string it upside down. The different pickup and whammy bar orientation and the reversed string lengths above the nut really change the sound of the strat and the way you will play it in a way that is an effect in and of itself. I find I sound way more like Hendrix with a flipped guitar than I do running similar effects and amps. Its more in the hands then anything else.

That sounds about it. And yeah, on the guitarists EquipBoard profile he does have some cool eventide stuff. His name is Zach Ables if you want to go see if you were right or not. Thanks

nah, I am pretty damn sure I am right, you don't play guitar and make record for 25 years to be wrong, but thanks....

I've been really into the band The Neighbourhood lately, and I was wondering how the guitarist to OUR left gets that cool sound at around 3:30. Thanks!

if its the sound I think you are referencing I would probably do that with some fuzz, a cocked wah into some kinda ethereal long tail verb into more drive or distortion with a real upper mid bias in the settings.... neat sound

though I will bet money its a tweaked preset on a fancy eventide pedal lol

I've been playing the shit outta my SG again, shes such a rock beast.... who else is in the SG club with me.... shout out your SG lovin' and tell me what model you have and what mods you've done!

mine's an '04 standard (I think) with decent 500K pots installed and an uncovered early 70s Gibson T-Top patent sticker humbucker at the bridge and it rocks like Angus...

I've got a TS9 (made in Japan) and it's priceless to me because it combines with so many pedals, even with other distortions. In fact I constantly use it with a MXR III and results in a warm and creamy sound, but not so dirty like a muff. I like to use it with drive knob at 1 or 2, wich gives an almost clean tone but with the caracteristic warmth of ts9, perfect to make open chords and whack your guitar (specially if you have a strat or similar :) )

I ahd an original issue TS9 forever, used to keep that and an original SD1 handy all the time in the alte 90s and early oughts, then I got bored with the whole thing, gave my 9 to myfriend and former bassist for his birthday when he was digging in the whole TS thing (I think I gave him 2 TS5s and a BB preamp too), I sued to run my TS9 more overtly but really liked to use the SD1 and more recently the MXR custom badass OD (dumbest name ever) for that slightly dirty boost with the tone close to wide open. I dunno, the TS9 in that application adds this grind that I can only describe as rusty nail scraping vs the SD1 which is more open sounding even though tis still pretty mid boosty. I know its only a few components difference, but those few components gives the 2 pedals very different strong and weak applications.... although tis such an apple to apples comparison I doubt anyone in an audience will hear the difference between any diode clipping OD even when the circuits are even more different than the TS9 and SD1... hell sometimes I wonder if the audience would care if I ditched my ac30s for a JC120 and used the awful built in distortion LOL

the biggest and most audible change you can make to your rig is speakers, period.... people don't understand this and they focus on effects and crap, but a change in speaker style, wattage, efficiency, cone design and magnet is a huge deal as is a change of enclosure.... all that stuff adds up to change your whole sound in dramatic ways that even some meathead megadeath fan hanging out at the bar trying to ignore your 'pussy ass rock band' could hear frm all the way across the room

and welcome to EB

The Vox, or the rangemaster?

umm, both obviously, though I like my silicon booster and 3 range fet booster a lot more than the RM these days just because of the lowered noise floor.... the fet booster is dead silent even at full output, though the circuit is very unrangemaster... its not a substitute for a classic treble boost because of tis less extreme HP filtering and high input impedance, but its still pretty badass.... I have a stock RM clone somewhere but I never feel like using it, its really skronky in a way that's better for Sabbath than Queen, but the noise is pretty annoying to me

I think my faves are the boiling point, and the keeley oxblood. The boiling point is very versatile, but still sounds unique, and the oxblood has two very helpful switches (I believe phat/fat, and clipping) which do quite nice things. Do you know of a pedal that can get middy, overdriven eighties Clapton tones?

I haven't tried a boilingpoint, but from what I can tell its YATS/SD1 with lots of clipping and filtering options accessible from the front.... it probably uses more hifi opamps, but I rather like the good 'ol jrc dealie in the 808 and frankly I don't hear a whole lotta difference between the opamps in boutique versions anyway, the circuit is so filtered that hifi doesn't enter into its equation... believe it or not I have never tried ANY keeley pedals other than my buddy's fuzz head which I do not like. It sounds like a fuzz for guys who play big amps at bedroom level, gets totally blown out with drums and bass. Great by itself though. For those 80s Clapton JCM800 and Soldano tones maybe check out wampler's stuff, like the pinnacle or ecstacy I think? I've only tried a handful of his pedals, theya re nice, but I kinda know Nick from CB so I am a catalinbread guy when it comes to those jfet/mosfet/cmos ampy overdrivs... not that I own a single drive pedal anymore, I just traded them all off to get my feiten-style 2x12 back from the guy I traded it to last year. Keep in mind that a big part of Clapton's sound since the 80s is the active midboost on his strats.... I knew a guy who installed that on all his strats and he could sound really claptony through pretty much ANYTHING... for 80s Clapton get any marshall flavored pedal and a strat with lace sensor golds or chrome domes and a midboost installed... I'm not sure why anyone would strive for that tone over EC's bluesbreakers and cream sounds, but hey, if you want to cover the soundtrack to Lethal Weapon 1 be my guest, someone has to keep the blues licks going while Obersturmfuhrer Mel von Gibson plays Russian roulette

Also nice new profile pic! Stuff Trump, you Americans should vote in an AC30HW (It is more competent, and probably makes better decisions).

Thanks, I found that vintage pin on ebay today, stole the pic and bought the pin for my leather jacket to put next to the Swedish chef and my old band's mk1 pin (I am so glad I saved the original picks, pins and such because I don't have the mk1 t-shirt we silkscreened in the bassist's mother's laundry room, there's plenty of mk2 and later merch around, but no one in our hometown still ahs any mk1 merch but me.... ahh memories). If dick denny (designer of the original AC amps) were still alive I would write him in at every election... speaking of which I need to drag my but out to the poling place and vote soon.... ugh, its not an important election year, but much as I hate the hassle I feel like a scab when I skip the odd number years

oh hey man, I forgot to ask you if you'd tried this out?

http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/artist-news/queen/may-vault/brian-vox-630-80.jpg

still my fave overdrive, but its kinda loud and cumbersome

Mate, thanks for the really detailed answer, how much do you reckon Klons were going for when they were first released.

sure, I just edited my post with more info

if I recall they were a little under 300 USD direct order through the adds in guitar player and guitarist when I was a kid and I first started hearing older guys snipe about the Klon secret sauce.... god I wish I had bought a few back in the 90s, but every time I raised the scratch I would get cold feet.... plus they were always notoriously backordered which pissed me off... it seemed so ridiculous at a time when boutique amps were this new, unattainable thing (vintage was literally cheaper back then, in the '00s I only paid a little over a grand for my '62 ac30, sure its a bit of a players piece, but its mostly original) and I got one of my superlleads for a scant $600 at the end of the 90s (I sold that amp for so much and it wasn't even super desireable). I think I paid less than 500 for every JCM marshall I ever owned. $400 for my '63 fender electrical branded showman.... so you get the picture about the Klon pricing at the time. Insane.

You might want to chase after some die hard, big pedalboard guys on here like my buddy Nickgrooves, I'll bet he will be more knowledgeable than me because I have always been pretty old school about getting drive textures, I remember being a kid and just turning my Princeton rever up and saying "welp, that's overdrive, killer' and then buying a cheap sekova fuzz box and later a Russian big muff and going, 'there's fuzz'.... too bad it all pisses mom and dad's neighbors so bad, but somewhere in there I ahd borrowed a orely wah with built in distortion for a funky tune in school jazzband and was getting into that hard clipped MXR distortion+ tone and then my dad got me a ts5 entry level tubescreamer so I would turn it down when I played in my bedroom and I really fell in love with that and/or an Ibanez chorus for the longest time as my only pedals. I am really kinda back into the Ibanez modulation again, LOL, then in the mid to alte 90s I ahd my only real 'pedalbaord' featuring drive, distortion, fuzz, chporus, flange, phase and wah.... way over the top, it didn't last long before I got down to nothing but a clean boost or dirty boost.... then there was my treble booster and a tape echo period, nuttin' else needed! gid I was loud back then, around 2004 I think... then the many iterations of the touring rig with a showman for clean and a superlead for dirty hot plated down 2 or 3 dB, then came the blue box and the flanger, then out went both of those and in came a couple different tonebenders.... then the matchless came in for rhythm sounds and the superlead went on a loadbox (sometimes) through rack processors and an old 70s 300 watt power amp being driven by a fuzz face whenever I played my strat, which was a lot back then as I had gotten rid of my 80s LP standard because of the excessive weight and generic tone but was getting tired of my LP special going out of tune midset....plus I played pretty much all the leads on that record on my strat through an 18 watt or 1 of 2 different superleads I think, so I wanted my lead tone and approach to match that since I ahd really changed up my rhythm tone... anyway, I think I was using the old Yami SPX90 for effects back then, I did an about face and instead of putting effects into the front end of my clean/rhythm tone I was putting effects after my dirty ass lead sound ala van halen, but without sounding like van halen at all....

if you want to sound like a big loud amp but only have a fender DRRI, the catalinbread foundation series are pretty good, particularly the DLS which is the best tuned brown sound in a box I've ever heard.... the mk2 and later really get close to my old superlead if that's your thing

I was quite partial to the zvex distortron and box of rock for a while. Pretty nice sounding circuit. I actually like the cheaper distortron better, the box of rock has that extra boost I never used and no low end tailoring, whereas with the cheap red version its 1 simple button and a switch to change the input cap spec so that it passes more or less lows to the 1st mosfet allowing you to really match the bass response of your amp's coupling caps.... this ting sounds better with a marshall or fender than a vox to me, but it works well with voxes, sure, just didn't produce 'my sound', though its apples and apples and maybe only I could hear it. Also, this particular pedal sounds great in front of cheap solid state amps in a pinch. I used to loan her to the singer of my bar band in MD to tube up the sound from her pitiful fender SS amp. If you set it really low you can simulate a nice 'rock n roll clean' tone with a smidge of grit and ten stick a dumb boss pedal out front for distortion like this singer used to (though she also wound up borrowing more of my stuff as I pretty much would just run right into an ac30 or this great little Gibson tweed deluxe type amp I had at the time and just work my volume knobs or kick on a fat clean booster... dude her gear sounded like ass, but her playing was so bad it was really polishing a turd to fix up her sound)

In the TS808/9 and SD1 camp I really like the MXR Custom Badass OD with the 100hz knob, just enough extra options to make that whole softclip circuit work well in front of ANY amp

you still can't go wrong with a fullton ocd or that EHX OD glove that's also based on the old voodoo lab OD, pretty solid all 'rounder

I have always and will always love pedals based on craig anderton's tube sound fuzz circuit, particularly the red llama

and last but not least? any Klon Centaur knockoff....I got rid of my EHX soul food in a big trade, but I would get another one or just build my own PTP klon clone.... I might play around with the abss tailoring options, maybe put the Ge diodes to the opamps bias potential instead of to ground like an OCD to get the klone even more dynamic in the clip department.... and also play around with the IC.... the stock stuff has an amp like slew rate when you start overloading the actual opamps, however its not exactly low noise or hifi.... there might be some burr brown stuff that sounds better, now that the klon circuit is out there we all know it ain't 'J Rockett" science... sorry about the pun

and then of course the stuff with actual tubes! I really dig on a good tube driver sometimes to add boost and grunt ito an amp on the edge.... and then there's the fyette EF86-based stuff that sounds pretty nice and very full/huge.... if I am going for overdrive I seem tog ravitate to adding more tubes

honorable mention to the sweet honey OD by BJFE/Mad Professor.... my buddy got one early on and swears by it and I must admit I rather like it for some stuff, but tis not a solid all-arounder

right now I purged all my ODs as I tend to just turn my amps up, but in the future I want to pick up a pigtronix fat drive to try out and maybe the new DOD gunslinger and that MXRFET driver jawn

I also get a kick out of the old colorsound overdriver/owerboost, but its almost more of a clean boost OR a fuzz/distortion with 2 band EQ and its very rough sounding in that distortion role, not for the timid

I stll like getting a good fuzz face or tonebender with 2 transistors and just dialing my guitar volume back to produce a nice crunch with a bunch of boost to whack the 1st stage.... but fuzz is not OD even if it can be used that way so I guess that's not a fair answer to your question.... except of course for the aforementioned plimsoul and of course the notorious skreddy screwdriver (I should buy one of those).

Hold on, there are few more I identified when looking at the photo again.

There is also TC Electronic Ditto Looper, there is also Boss FV-50, and there is also FW-3 in the left corner. That green pedal is some sort of Suhr pedal, I sure that this is one. Ernie Ball Expression Pedal is there,

The blue pedal is definitely some kind of DOD pedal.

that's a really lame amount of pedals, way too many effects going on there, just play the thing already guy on facebook

It drives me nuts I tell ya.

the internet is a cool at-home reference liabrary as long as you can deal with the fact that there are no liabrarians and editors keeping assholes from publishing disinformation AND anyone can get their artwork out in a public forum for critical and consumer feedback, pretty cool.... inexchange for all this connectedness we have traded in surprises at the movies or even on the sofa during prime time, we have traded in most of the big record stores and independent book stores, we've sacrificed the amazing independent art supply stores and a lot of the mom and pop music stores, we don't have so many massive "teple of sound" recording studios anymore, we don't have VHS tape so a lot of tape manufacturers are gone which means hardly anyone makes 1/4", 1/2" or 2" reels so most of us are stuck with protools as tape is prohibitively expensive even though there are tons of affordable old decks out there that just need some servicing....

I could go on! I have a love/hate thing with technology. When I am playing a great old guitar and amp with o effects with my phone and PC turned off I really feel like I was better off as a kid before all this BS, then I go on youtube on my apple TV and pull up this Pixies doc I never finished watching (for free I might add) and I am all giddy with excitement that I can just watch any old shit I want when I am bumming around with a bad head cold.... I dunno. Its easy to idealize my teen years from my late 30s I guess, but Iw as a miserable gen X fucktard then and I am a lot happier now, so who is to say if the times were as cool as I remember them.

but yeah, I hate assholes too and the internet makes them virtually unavoidable... you're going tog et people's nonsense opinions blurted as fact at you or here plot spoilers or get misinformation that sounds true to you until you try to apply it, assholes really rain on a lot of the internet's promise.... before I got online in the late 90s I gotta tell ya I could really cut most assholes out of my life through avoidance.... EVEN AT SCHOOL, just cut the assholey classes unless its a test day, right? Go places where right-thinking, interesting people hang out and you are good.... with the internet though I have to voluntarily move in under a rock whenever I want to reduce the asshole invasion into my thoughts..... gah.

Just saw your reply, good to hear your comments. Another stereo idea i have is to go for a AC4 with a 12" instead of another AC10C1. Would save a few bucks and be slightly different in tone. ... and yep, that Keeley 30ms unit looks perfect.

dude, you can get an ac4hw1 for udner 700 USD used, I love mine. Its trashier than the larger voxes, but in a fun way... I've been living in 'hot mode' with an old mullard ecc82 in place of the stock 12ax7 in V1, so the gain boost isn't as extreme with the tonestack ground lifted (that's what the hot switches do on the current HW series).... old mullard pres have nive roundness in the low end as well as delivering additional chime and 'shimmer' in voxes, they're kinda gainy compared to say an RCA or GE equivalent so you wind up with a more compressed clean and a really 3d drive tone.... like the ecc82 is way gainier than any equivalent 12at7 while retaining the different characterstics of the at7 variety.... so its like the lwoer gain ax7 types fender used to use or an ay7, but it also puts out a lower impedence signal to the next stage which is cool and ahs a different sound.... anyway, its all hard to describe, but its to try different tubes in different amps and then buy up the stuff that works best so you can sound your best til you die. I keep a mullard ef86 in my HC30 and will cry when the supply of them finally dries up! even as it stands they are running me over $50 a tube, thank god the that after 5 years or so I am still on my 1st one... in your ac10 you may want to try something like an RFT or old Tesla ecc83 in V1 and maybe an amperex Holland bugle boy or GE grey plate 12ax7 in V2 powering the tonestack and cathode follower of the tope boost circuitry.... honestly from there a JJ is perfectly fine for the PI as it will help smooth the treble and it has nice moderate gain into the power section.... not to mention being hella reliable.... also, the Russian-made tung sol reissue 12ax7 has some of the gain of an old mullard with the roundness and plump lower mids of an amperex, but you need to either buy a crate and test them (they have a bad falure and noise/micrphonics rate) or buy them from someone reputable like tube depot and pay for their maximum testing services..... also, they barely fit in the tube sockets currently used by a lot of manufaturers including vox because Mike Matthews for some reason specced the bottle to be extremely oversized for a noval dual triode.... maybe its part of their sound, I dunno, but they fit great in marshalls and sound really good in them, but not in Korg made voxes and such

Massive gear identification needed!

(from left to right) 1. unknown footswitch 2. Vox AC15 (?)

yeah, that's a dead ringer for a 90s marshall manufactured ac15, a pretty decent sounding amp in my opinion, but not much of a reissue as its less like a real ac15 than even the current handwired and custom classic, but I am pretty sure its not vintage or a CC, there are some telltale cab features, y'know?

1. unknown

its rack with a power conditioner, some kinda preamp that looks kinda dyube works and then an effects processor? photo is hella grainy, man

1. unknown amp head

Zinky Mofo

1. unknown cab

looks like a stagecraft 1x12 cab, not the heirloom series cabs or maybe an avatar 2x12 w/o the logo

for the pedals, I will look at them when I am in the mood to sort out your numbering, I am pretty sure I recognize more than you identified