jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I'd love to see that once you've inked.

gettin' there. it a big 3 point perspective piece so the square/ruler work and detail is brutal

Cool! This reminds me of something that would be in a punk zine or the walls of WZBC.

Also, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h2zgB93KANE

you got it!

its a shimmy shimmy reference, not the only one... and yes, these are shorts for a new Philly zine

Love it!

Is this a tie-in with Mr. Oizo's new movie?

no, we came up with Sid (the bug) last year. He's more of a stick insect or mantis of variable size....

I didn't think there was any serious possibility of a link, just an amusing coincidence. Mantids are rad.

I'm doing a 2 page spread today where he's bursting out of a tiny little car window and he becomes like 10 stories tall and islooming over the city...

MTV is categorized as a "comedy" network on my Sling subscription right now, I kid you not... so maybe it's a moot point either way. Times have changed.

its definitely a joke these days

Love it!

Is this a tie-in with Mr. Oizo's new movie?

no, we came up with Sid (the bug) last year. He's more of a stick insect or mantis of variable size....

https://imgur.com/a/xRmwSTH

Dude! This is great! The panel layouts, especially. If the Rock'em Sock'em panel is the newest, then IMHO you're trending in the right direction with the inking. Getting cleaner/clearer as you go.

you knew they were rock em sockems without any following dialogue?! that's a relief... yeah, its super recent

click it for multiple pages and step by step shots

https://imgur.com/a/e6SsB1m

I'm still fooling around with my ink style.

I love the high-tech/low-tech combo. I've finally lived long enough to see the birth of data-driven zine comics.

THANKS! I'm really proud to have been the originator of the QR idea... we were told to come up with an interactive internet tie in by the zine publisher (who I' trying to draft to be the colorist for our covers because he's a sick marker artist) and I hit on that, I designed all the stuff for the site based on Mike's doodles, Mike wrote a script that introduces the idea in story form with room for the QR in the last panel and then our friend Cam coded everything and it went live in June and is part of our copyright app.

I've got "80s & 90s Comic Book Nerd" written all over me, don't I?

in comic sans...

ha!

I have you beat though, I'm the artist for an indie comic now, got roped in by my friend. Nothing is nerdier than a t-square and non-photo blue art boards.

Wicked. Link me to it when you publish & godspeed on hitting your deadlines.

right now we're doing 1 to 3 page shorts in a local philly independent anthology zine that's about to go to press.... its one of those things you pick up free at the coffee shop, hipster bar, comic store, record store or (insert pre-covid young people hangout)... issue 1 is a ways off, the strategy is to gauge demand for full issues, there's actually a QR built into the first short where you can scan it and get your fortune told by the main character who appears as an animated GIF on your phone with a randomly generated message... when the QR site starts getting some traffic we're going to think about the risk of a print run. We could always do it on the cheap online, but man, I love old school comics that are 20-24 pages, maybe on lousy newsprint with lots of printing dots, that i can hold in my hand, so I'm really pushing for that as well as online availability.

at the moment I cna crank out a fully inked page in 1-3 days but I can't sit down to draw every day, so deadlines are still frightening, at least for a monthly.

So far, I haven't purchased anything from my Wishlist via an Equipboard link. I don't have any impulse purchases in my wishlist, they are things where I'm going to check every site and try to find the best price.

eg. I can probably get a mint-condition Push 2 off craigslist for $500 (I'm in Los Angeles, the getting is good), and anything I buy used off Reverb, I'm probably going to ask the seller a few questions first, so I'm not sure if the link to EB would still apply by the time I'm done asking questions and making offers.

this! I'm a reverb haggler on vintage/used items.... and I ay not even be looking for a particular item when I go into negotiations, I may just see it on my feed and go "hmmm, I wonder if I can get that for less then asking because it might be worth owning at bargain basement prices! On a day to day basis I'm trying NOT to look for gear... I have lots. I went through my vintage polysynth thing recently, yeah but that was a bunch of private deals.... and then there were the console wars, still ongoing as I modify the whole studio's wiring. Damn 32 channel desk is making me cable poor. I guess I should be htting those cables through EB, but a good number of them are custom looms/snakes I'm getting from these dudes in Alabama because the great price/performance ratio.... sweetwater will bleed you dry on insert and db25 snakes.

I've got "80s & 90s Comic Book Nerd" written all over me, don't I?

in comic sans... I have you beat though, I'm the artist for an indie comic now, got roped in by my friend. Nothing is nerdier than a t-square and non-photo blue art boards.

I would put the power amp at the top personally, but it may just be paranoia... its a good sized rack... for instance I can't imagine needing the decimator but I'm not a gainiac... that said in studio terms its very small, don't have any non-table tops under 40u for ventilation and line matching and ground isolation units and lots of power conditioning ... I tried 25u but its too tight and went big, though its not practical for road use.... I would want a roadie to lug your setup and a guitar tech to look it over every night, it heavy and has a lot of failure points that can prevent any playing, not just laying with your full arenal

good choice on the T8, I have 2 myself (studio and guitar rigs), rock solid piece of kit

hey, I've never melted a digital processor, but I know folks who have.... in my studio I actually keep most of the digital stuff in a separate rck from the analog gear, particularly away from the pultecs and varimus which kick some heat

Up top? Aren't power amps heavy in terms of weight to the point where they're better off in the bottom of the rack?

theoretically but for tube, and digital? I would go with it, any decent rack will be fine... or spare a rack space or 2.... there's definitely heat off the top

I would put the fryette up top anyway, the fans don't pull all the heat off and it rises... and I at one time owned a VHT (back when steve owned them)... you want a space.... its really a nice poweramp but nothing on an integrated amplifier with a loadbox or DI on the speaker out for FX

are you leaving extra spaces around the tube gear so non fanned heat disapation doesn't cook your digital gear?

Given how the Eclipse was a total disappointment to me in terms of reliability, I don't know if I'd want to even consider anything else out of the Eventide lineup at this stage of the game, really. But yeah, right now the SPX90 is in my radar to secure after I secure a Fryette power amp.

I usually have at least 2 spx90s around (a I and a II or more), the 900 is also sweet, I prefer the 90 for its retro flavor but the 900 is a contender, much cleaner sound, less bitty...

I'll take that into consideration, thank you. :)

don't thank me, thank capitalism! I gotta make a buck to justify this ridiculous pile of gear LOL... I am in fact an experienced studio system engineer, I got out for awhile but got sucked back in due to demand from friends to mix their records recently

personally I think the distrokid thing is a piece of the puzzle not the solution for most bands.... vinyl is back in a big way and the quality from modern virgin vinyl is outstanding... but hey.... its all about developing a web and local venue presence really, I've been here and done it, its a chore.... if you get stuck mixing or just wish you could hear the stuff go through a nice console and outboard let me know, I have reasonable flat rates and will mix the hell out of your record with lots of love in my 32 track studio.... high end conversion into an all analog mix path

If the PCM81 isn't an option, then maybe a Yamaha SPX 90?

I LOVE the spx90 but it has a antique, crunchy sound to its detunes.... I love them though... the king of detunes is really the eventide ultraharmonizer line but damn are they costly, can't afford one myself

For me, I'm hoping that my band can go DIY in terms of releasing our own records. This means tracking everything from the comfort of our own home and learning how to mix/master my band's records myself. It's a tough craft to learn, but it's worth it. :)

buy great mics and take your time placing them, get the tape measure and protractor.... for the other parts? good luck with 1 and just call a professional mastering engineer for 2 if you intend to do physical sales as there's more to it then you think. I recommend Jeff Lipton at Peerless Mastering or if you want a short run of vinyl you could do a whole deal with Phil Niccolo at Studio 4.

If you look at my somewhat incomplete gear lidt under studio equipment you'll see I a host of reverbs and multi fx I wholeheartedly approve of for sound and durabiity.

Yeah, basically the Samson line mixer is what I'd consider to be the "easy way out" for using pedals with line level units.

easy? heh, level, impedance and ground are my life anymore LOL... I forget what easy is... and I remember why I never had an elaborate studio and just had clients book commercial time until covid. I'm installing a bigger mixing desk this month at home and its such a nightmare.

I'm thinking of giving a Lexicon PCM81 a chance, but honestly, I'm not confident that the used market will be friendly to me considering my really bad luck.

I don't like the 81, as a mix engineer at any rate.... just flat out dislike it.... sounds no better than a cheap mx series lexi (which I recommend, like the mx200, 400?fine)... though the conversion rate is lower the older ones and particularly the 60 are much more musical units.... I also HIGHLY recommend the klark teknik dn780, which is my favorite mono to stereo old school verb. Its fantastic and it just gets out of the way in parallel as all wet whether its on a mix or in a rig

I'd say that out of all products that Samson has put out, they actually did the SM10 right - it's by far the ONLY low-priced line mixer that can actually work on par, if not surpass, the feature sets that other line mixers can provide. I've seen more people start using Samson SM10's in their rig as well, mainly due to the fact that it's one of the few, if not the only, line mixer that's actually Strymon pedals-friendly.

But yeah, in your case, since you're working with keyboards that work at true line level, I can definitely understand why you'd prefer to go with line mixers from other brands.

I actually have pedals in line places but they're line matched because I already had plenty of stuff to do the job, but if i didn't I get why the samson might appeal.... I eman all pedals should output a sufficiently low impedance, its more the level, a +4dbv 0.775v reference shouldn't run into problems but some set up for consumer -10v would and I would think in the cheaper stuff that's common. The ashly stuff ain't cheap, but its the ebst option short of the bulky mackie I was using for a little. And that's still a junk mixer compared to my studio consoles

Ugh, I feel so frustrated...I don't know what else to do anymore. I feel like my options have become so limited due to a series of bad purchases I've had in the past.

that's a terrible feeling.... I have a stack of low functioning studio gear I bought with the intention of repairing and have found some of it is hard to get parts for now and I'm feeling similarly.... which is a first for me! Its a real drag.

personally I'm not too enamored with anything samson... but having not used their line mixer I'll not comment. I use ashly and previously used rane line mixers for my live keyboards and wish they had bigger power rails but they have the same 2 aux setup as I recall, I have a dual parallel stereo FX thing going on my live stereo keyboard mix so they must be basically the same format... the ashly is the best 1u line mixer out there in my book (still woefully under designed though) but may not like the signal levels you're sending, hence what i said about gain staging and impedance matching. As a recording engineer its not weird for me to be running racked iso/level matching transformers

I really wanted to watch this Chris Claremont X-men doc a few years ago, it never became available for free and was only briefly available to buy digitally via my cable provider only to become free last week on YouTube..

Ha! I had the same doc in my watchlist for like 2 years. I finally broke down and paid a few bucks to rent it, if memory serves. One way or another, I saw it.

I knew you were going to say that.

I mean, doing a bradshaw type rig is a great idea in theory but its an expensive build especially with redundancy and there's also a lot of gain staging and impedance matching to keep aware of, all of it can be handled but it drives the cost up. In the end if you don't have paying dates booked I would really question how hard you want to go at it. As your band builds the rig can grow. There's a lot of expense getting your band out there and if you tied a fortune up in gear it can be a real drag. You already have a lot of great stuff for the type of rack setup you wanna use, at this point it might be all about a great line mixer with big power rails to deliver thpose signals in the best way possible to the power amp. You're only as good (sounding) as your weakest links and in this scenario you're going into studio turf. As a recording engineer I'll tell you there are mixers and mixers.

EDIT: as far as backup gear, again I can tell you when i was a paid musician I gigged with really reliable old hand wired amplifiers that were tuned up... and for awhile I didn't take a backup, didn't start until I could afford it.... but I never gigged without backup FX if they were integral (with the exception of the mutron stuff which is bulletproof)... I defintiely owned multiple TC units, still own multiple SPX90s.... still own racks of lexicons etc. In reality I never had ANYTHING go down on stage in over a decade of heavy touring and could have travelled lighter.... the really funny thing is I had a habit of not stomping my stomp boxes (pretty much modulation or the odd fuzz or amp switcher) and forgetting to change FX unit patches when iw as having a lot of fun and no one, no one, ever cared... for reference I had hot plates on the heads and used the lineouts to drive the FX processors and had good power amps driving extra cabs when my rig was at its most bloated. But yeah, I would forget to do stuff with it. Sometimes it would just be set to detune to widen my sound in stereo all night LOL

you can line match your pedals with a couple passive DIs and the right cables.... I had a bad experience with an eclipse and returned it but the rest of the eventide line is always aces. I don't know what's up with that one.

Yeah, that's fair. I mean, for some people like me, we need stuff that actually works and gets the job done with quality in sound and reliability.

you probably really wanted to reread what you typed right there, I mean, it reads as intentionally insulting but I'm assuming its not meant to be

seriously though, it occurs to me that you never said what your scenario is here (or I missed it), are you touring doing like 500+ seat theaters? are you in an original band? a tribute? are you a sideman to an established solo artist? If you're not travelling around making your living playing you might just want to roll the dice on no backups. I love having a couple of everything, but I as a guitarist I no longer want to lug multiple amplifiers to a show I'm not even getting paid well (or at all) to play. I don't want a complicated setup now that I don't have a tech and a roadie and don't consider my profession to be 'musician.'

TC makes products that break too easily. IMHO TC Electronics was at its peak back in the 1990's with the 1210 chorus and 2290 delay. Those were THE flagship units that really made TC amazing. Come 2000's and sadly, we see products like the G Major, G Major II and G-System that all malfunctioned too easily.

I'm old, so is a lot of my gear, but really I never had any issues with the G line when i decided to try something new in my rig in the early aughts.... despite it being early behringer TC stuff... and they sounded fine (yeah the dedicated studio units are better), were affordable enough to have a spare, but that was a LONG time ago when I was using that stuff live, so current production stuff from TC? who knows. It has a horror story rep now but I never had a malfunction with my G stuff and I tried a bunch of it when I was still in a band and doing gigs as a sideman. I'm not telling anyone else to go out and buy it, but it was pretty reliable when new, although I was not using it for anything too complicated. I still have an original issue polytune my wife got me like the week it came out and its still running perfectly as is my flashback x4 that I use when i need tap tempo and don't want to heft a real tape unit, so maybe I'm just lucky. As to Uli's treatment of Canadians? Maybe he's doing you a favor overall...

but I maintain my equipment, to me that's par for the course having a stable of vintage guitar and studio gear.... something as simple as cleaning jacks or designing racks with extra ventilation is pretty normal to me... its just routine common sense care whether you're dealing with your vintagle in-line desk or a brand new budget processor

I'm like a prime target for this doc, I want to see it, and I can't... and it's not 1996. Seems wrong-headed.

you would think they could do a deal with a streaming service... I would be trying to do that, especially with Delta being given ample opportunity to mutate again and shut theaters down a second time

this seems to happen a lot though with synth documentaries and such and in the end a year or two after no one gets to see it after the small premier it winds up free on youtube! this is also true of comicbook docs, I really wanted to watch this Chris Claremont X-men doc a few years ago, it never became available for free and was only briefly available to buy digitally via my cable provider only to become free last week on youtube... this just seems like a goofy, antiquated business model, like relying on record sales as your act's income. Its like the whole entertainment biz just can't roll with the punches that the 21st century continually lands it.... only the big budget, mainstream material can function the old way, and even those big studios and labels have become a lot more flexible this year. Its a tough world for uncompromising creatives and if you don't want to shoot for mass appeal you really need to think of different ways to reach your modest audience. Not that I have it figured out, but me and my circle are always trying new ideas.

I was really hoping for a link to the whole thing...

And even if you were to use a digital modeler strictly for modulation and time-based effects in the FX Loop of an amp, consider the following: 1. With a digital modeler, you're limited to the effects that you get with the unit, whether you like it or not. If you're fine with the limitation, great. If not, then you probably won't like the idea of just using a self-contained unit in the FX loop. 2. You cannot avoid AD/DA conversions with a digital modeler, no matter how you set it up. This means whatever analog dry tone you're trying to preserve will all become ruined. The same applies even IF you were to shunt effects in parallel in something like a Fractal Axe III. 3. Because FX loops work in a very, VERY hot signal floor (line level), you need to reduce the input level of your digital modeler. This could result in your guitar signal sounding a step quieter than what you'd normally expect.

With a line mixer setup I'm going with, I'm bypassing all of those issues and I can basically go wild with my choice of effects, being able to route multiple FX units in parallel via hard wire while not having to worry about signal degradation in any way.

at some point I went over to TC units because they leave your dry unprocessed when you don't want to do like a wet/dry/wet whih is a big commitment to lifting gear....

fixed

you're confirmed cancer-free?

I am confirmed 100% cancer free (tentatively), after CT scans, MRIs, and colonoscopy. AND after getting the wrong test results back initially (hence the tentatively). Talk about a tense day.

you should run around the streets screaming "cancer free" for like an hour.... really... I bet people will buy you some drinks

Well, I mean, from my personal experience, preamp tubes last longer than power amp tubes. I'd be more worried about my power amp dying on me, which is why I am planning to save up for a second Fryette by the time I acquire my first one.

you mistook me entirely, I'm not worried about the tubes, i'm worried about the sockets and PCB traces....

and again we get back to pairs, my mantra.... I'm like the Noah of gear... I mean, Pkenneth, you know I have multiples of all my desert island processors for mixing.... its like buying 1 beer to take home, there are build your own 6 places that will sell one, but who does that?