jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I had a Gibson Nighthawk

That's a really cult model like the marauder. Not many people bond with the nighthawk.

I'll start: Aardvark direct pro Q10, this was ostensibly a solid 1u, PCIe based interface with a killer word clock for the time sold at a great price. USB and Firewire interfaces were in their infancy and going PCI offered much lower latency, which was cool, although the Q10 offered direct monitoring through the mixer app. Its main drawback was that there were no gain controls, so you had to keep the mixer app open in order to adjust gain or switch from mic to line. I used to just set her to line level, setup my monitor mix and use outboard mic pres, so for under a grand per unit (they could be daisy chained up to 24 analog and 8 spdif inputs) it was quite a value. What made it a turkey was a lack of driver support, and even with a mac you needed the drivers to get the mixer app! You couldn't do anything without that, and they were always an OS or 2 behind until one day the company just folded up and restarted under the name Antelope Audio! If you didn't want to stay on an early 2000s mac OS version or win XP your interface was bricked despite it still being a decent converter and clock well into the next decade. Aardvark sold tons of these but there was almost no support even before they closed up shop. TOTAL TURKEY

It's not my turn to host, so I have a lot of free time to $h!tpost this year!

thanks! this record really exemplifies my approach to rock guitar tone: less front-end distortion + more volume = guitar muscle... the power tubes and speakers should compress and saturate like a female yeti flexing her biceps on Mt Everest while the earth gets sucked into a black hole... there's not stomp boxes apart from Mike using my vox wah, which I later traded him for a small stone, I was straight in, not even a tuner pedal, just 2 heads bridged

I wish I had the restof the session, we did like 8 cuts but when I was cleaning out Mike's garage after he got sick this was all I found, the 3 song press kit demo... which was more than I had, the end of this band was drug and alcohol fueled chaos

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO MY FELLOW AMERICANS! not sure what we have to be thankful about but HAPPY HAPPY TURKEY JOY JOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No real revisions, just rebranding. I know we have some limited editions on here that are mere paint jobs, but I think these options could be added just like we added paint colors to guitars recently.

same pedal then

it is the same pedal. same case shape, same knobs, same innards, same color, same price, same everything except for the name and the horse graphic which they had to update because of a trademark infringement lawsuit from klon.

Huh,maybe I'll merge them all...

No real revisions, just rebranding. I know we have some limited editions on here that are mere paint jobs, but I think these options could be added just like we added paint colors to guitars recently.

same pedal then

are they the same circuit? not just generally the same centaur topology, but the same? can someone take all 3 apart and see if all the signal path components are the same??? If not, how significant are the circuit revisions? A name change is insignificant. If the circuits have been modified that may or may not be significant..,. depends what has changed.

Love it! 🎸🎸 Nostalgia eh? "It ain't what it used to be"

Track one is giving me a Cold Sweat (vibe)

Mike would be thrilled to be compared to thin lizzy.

Hey, I saw your boy in a clip from Colbert. He's going big time! Pretty soon he'll be able to afford a vacation hobbit hole in the Gondor burbs!

There's no such thing as "Good guitar tone" in my eyes.

What about to your ears?

... You know you can search him here, right?

Here

Speaking of reverse, or rather inverse...

Do headless guitars count as tragic?

I don't hate them all - Those Steinberger guitars have got their own thing going.

YES! Steinberger made an amazing instrument for dive bomb vibrato stunts but all I see is the end of bill & ted! UGH! Unless a time-travelling George Carlin gave you a headless guitar? Then NO!

hard "no"

you have to have an excellent adventure or bogus journey to earn even a seinberger

Now that you mention it, there's a real hollywood western quality to g&l headstock that fits into Leo's aesthetic. It's still ugly though.

Edit: Leo lived near Paul bigsby and copied the tele headstock from this more ornate version on bigspy's 1 off solid bodies like the famous Merl Travis guitar. Those bigsby guitars combine hollywood western woodwork with bigsby's background in motorcycle repair.

I almost said 'reverse saloon door'.

Cool that you got to know him.

He became an acquaintance, when I was younger I felt like we were friends, but it's not like he called me up to chat. If he was in town I would see the show and hang out. Don't want to overstate it. I'm just the sort of guy who will walk up to anybody and try to strike up a conversation. It's a philly thing.

This is great. ...there is an action movie playing in my head listening to track 1.

Is that movie "They Live!" with Rowdy Roddy Piper?

Leo Fender loved country and western music and was heavily tied to the Bakersfield country seen. I have that from Dick Dale... who is obviously not country, but was the only rock musician Leo involved in r&d, at least according to Dale. He used to tell some tales after a show. I miss that guy. But you can hear fender amps and country music defining eachother from the 50s all the way into the musicman era as it all gets cleaner and twangier until things went more rock in the 80s. Now that you mention it, there's a real hollywood western quality to g&l headstock that fits into Leo's aesthetic. It's still ugly though.

Edit: Leo lived near Paul bigsby and copied the tele headstock from this more ornate version on bigspy's 1 off solid bodies like the famous Merl Travis guitar. Those bigsby guitars combine hollywood western woodwork with bigsby's background in motorcycle repair.

welcome

G&L: Great guitars... from the nut down.

I could never own one because of that headstock.

circa 2003 or 2004

Mike -guitar right (gibson 335s -> wah -> modded 70s silverface twin + my 1962 ac30b)

Jim (me) - guitar left (fender strat -> hot rodded marshall plexi+ 1963 fender showman -> marshall cabs aplenty)

Chris "the Irish Jackhammer" - bass ( P-bass -> Acoustic 360 + ampeg V4b or SVT? -> acoustic folded horn 18" and ampeg 8x10)

Dan the jerk - drums

recorded in an 18th century carriage house in Trenton NJ through my old teac desk to an alesis adat24HD hard disc system, all the reverb is just that cavernous space leaking into room mics, it was SO LOUD, we wore shooting headphones... mixed real fast at Indre in south philly where me and Irish Chris worked at the time back when I couldn't mix on an ssl 4000 to save my life but the raw energy and SPL still speaks to me, hope it speaks to y'all too, 110% motor rock from the stone age. No vocals cuz you wouldn't be able to hear 'em anyway.

Also, the internet says you've known about this channel for at least 2 years. ;)

I'm going to be honest, I put their videos on my watch later prolly 2 years ago and forgot about them. I'm in catch up mode lately. Business has been bad but the upshot is getting to work on my own music and watching hours of YouTube stuff I never got around to.

we got a lotta egos here, ya know? :D

I pride myself on my anti-ego, just info, no BS... just kidding

Love these guys, always a chill and pleasing couple of minutes.

The intentional coziness gets a bit too inauthentically precious sometimes (e.g. fresh-brewed latte in the 303 vid), but I appreciate that they generally have really great taste (e.g. they included Roy of the Ravers in the thumbnail and in the outro music).

I just stumbled on them, they're great! I already figured out a lot of this stuff but sometimes they surprise me. I think they're a couple because it's definitely a lady playing the keys parts. Which might explain the goofy domestic coziness.

In their own Equipboards, users want the item pictured to look just like the one they own: matching color, matching fretboard, matching year/vintage details. Who wouldn't?

I agree that it matters, and initially we're going to fix it by being able to add the details/metadata to the item you save to your Equipboard. For example, I own a Fender Telecaster Custom. However, mine's black, from 1978, with a maple neck. We'll give the ability to tag those things. Then if you want to show off your very own one, we encourage uploading a gear photo.

I'm great with just gear photos, I'm still behind on them but I love showing off my real life gear :-)

YES!

https://i.postimg.cc/Qtc5KW2v/Screenshot-2025-11-14-at-6-31-47-PM.png

not sure how this always is, but this was fascinating to me today:

https://youtu.be/schVpZb_4Jc?si=UlARqIJESXuyyaJD

also fun:

https://youtu.be/kf2-WLK3gPA?si=Z85bKeh2OJQabpqQ

ongoing issue, many threads on this as well as read notifications showing up as unread... both will be addressed as the new equipboard rollout progresses, its a transitional era, please be patient

BOOYAH!

The best guitar is the one you feel the most comfortable playing. You can improve electronics if they're lacking. Being comfortable though? Irreplaceable. Your most effortless performance will have effortless tone... everything electronic is just a potential bottleneck to be overcome. In my experience less is more. The shortest path from strings to speaker is best unless your sound us more about special fx than playing and that's a thing too, but otherwise? Be comfortable and if you like your pickups etc don't bog your signal down. More of your personality will reach the speaker.

In amps I think simple is best. The more features you want the more you need to spend in order to get quality implementation. A simple circuit that's well voiced using high quality components always kicks butt, which is why the vintage amp market is so inflated. Modeling stuff improves every year though and I no longer sneer at it. Don't discount a direct solution these days.

EDIT: personally I usually play an SG standard into something with dirt, either fuzz or OD or whatnot (usually turned off) into an ep3 that drives my cranked 62 ac30 or this amp I built on the bones of a 60s traynor PA I named the "jimwatt"and I use my volume control a lot these days... I add other stuff as necessary when recording, but keep it relatively simple. My other rig lately is a tele into an early 60s Ampeg Mercury 1x12 combo, straight in. It's filled the role of the tweeds and supros I've had and I think I prefer it. I've been through a lot of small combos, mostly winners for 1 or 2 styles but this one is the most versatile if you don't want spring reverb... It can really do whatever, from tweed deluxe to zep1 and even into cranked low wattage marshall tones. Just don't try metal. The tweed super/pro are also great amps... same amp with different transformers and speakers. If you play gibsons try a super, if you play telecaster try and pro.... for a strat check out the tweed 5e3 bandmaster or just go blonde or blackface :-)

sleeper vintage gems I recommend:

Ampeg: jet, reverb-o-rocket, mercury, early gemini1s, b25/b25b (difference is grounding, b25b is saferwith modern outlets). Drawback to the b25 is the rare 7199 pentode/triode driver/phase inverter tube but it can be converted to a 6 an8 with a simple pin-out swap if I recall.

leatherette, 2 tone and tweed gibson amps: GA20, GA30, GA77, GA14 titan, GA6 lancer, GA?? ranger (some mods to the pentode channel will up the ante)

Airline amps: 9023A (supro 1624T), 9320A (supro thunderbolt)

Danelectro amps: Dan-O DM25, Silvertone 1483 (not just for bass, kills the 1484 jack white digs)

Garnet amps, all of em

Laney: AOR heads are all pretty cool, GH50L, GH100L (jcm800s on crack, new models arent built as well, go 80s or 90s)

Musicman, anything 70s... most are solid state preamps with tube power amps. Leo Fender's ultimate clean designs. Indestructible. Good enough for Joan Jet.

Naylor: dual 60, not exactly vintage but pretty cool and not well known. Joe Naylor went on to found reverend giitars.

Oahu: if it's got a palm tree on the grill cloth it secretly wants to rock. Turn to 10 for best results.

Peavey: VTM120 (a jcm800 clone)

Selmer: treble n bass heads, mk3 is the best deal, mk1 and 2 have better tone for most folks, all are fine and 3s can be modded into 2s if you care

Plush: anything, they're all fender and marshall clones in Kustom clothing

Sunn: 200S, Sorado, Sonara, Sorado, Scepter... basically the same heads with small voicing tweaks or different on-board fx, they're built on a 60s dynaco hifi kit with a fender inspired preamp instead of consumer line in. The transformers are TOP NOTCH. Same drawback as b25 on most models.

Traynor: YGM4 studiomate (like a marshall 20w Treble N Bass head but in 4x8 combo), YRM1 reverbmaster (good stock, moddable to a fender twin in a head), YVM1 voicemaster PA head (ok stock, dark and growly, easily modded to rip)... the old hammond transformers on these kill it

Univox: all their tube heads are pretty tasty. Inferior components to a lot of their competition but still good. Excellent build quality, easy to service and modify.

Vox: V15, V125 (the Heart sound... loud loud LOUD)

Yamaha T100, T50C soldano designed tube amps... G100, G50 are solid state clean machines great for pedal guys and fans of 80s new wave and post punk tones, cleaner than a jazz chorus and cheaper too

Youve got your head wrapped around it. In the cheap seats of the pro recording world we have this term "cable poor." You go cable poor when you get a great deal on something like a console, deck or expanded interface but fail to budget for the cabling, which in pro gear might need to be custom... even if you're handy you still need yards of quality cable and the correct connectors for everything that will be interfaced... in vintage stuff you could be sourcing Elcos and Edacs in addition to XLR, TRS and db25s. Even if someone gave me a nice old console free I would hesitate to take it unless I had storage space for it because I might not have the cash flow to interface it right away and I dont want to go in debt for cabling. How hard will it be to a amortize the cost with the interest running?

The thing about costing out a recording space that you missed though is maintenance. If you can diy you still need parts on hand. Once a piece is out of warranty the maintenance costs shoot up beyond shipping to and from the manufacturer... if you like old stuff, and I do, repairs are up to you. I've got a pile of projects dtackedon top of my space echo... I put them off due to time at first but now that I have time I don't want to invest in the repairs (I'm short some oddball part for every piece in the repair stack, there's these tiny shaft syfam pots that I just hate, hard to source and pricey despite being a standard value and taper).

5 sounds fair, when I merge dupes I do more than 5 in 24 hours. I'll have to clear some time so I can be on FUEGO!!!

Ooer ! - I get what you mean... "bothered"

This Silvertone bass headstock is even more troubling.

that IS the dolphin headstock... at least that's what we called it in the 90s

Yeah, the Burns Scroll Headstocks are icky for me. In fact the whole Burns guitar aesthetic has a kind of Fairground and Teddy Boy vibe that leaves me just a little bit queasy.

Yeah, they've always been a turnoff... also the dano/silvertone 'dolphin' headstock always bothered me.

Okay, I have to say this again, gain stages are not inherently distorted. Gain and distortion are not interchangeable. Gain is short for gain in voltage, a catch all engineering term for a type of amplification that doesn't produce power or convert low voltage to high current. It just means an increase of input voltage. The stage can be designed as a voltahe to voltage amplifier or an IV converter, IV stands for current to voltage. You don't see that in tube amps but you do in pedals.

The 'gain stage' you're thinking of in you jcm800, a slo100, dual rec, basically anything but a mesa mark series? Adds little to no gain in voltage. The "gain" knob on your amp is a voltage divider to ground in front of the distortion producing element. The nickname for that distortion producing triode is the "cold clipper". Its typically half a 12ax7 with very low bias voltage on the cathode (cold bias) and no cathode bypass capacitor causing very little amplification before asymmetrical clipping due the improperly charged cathode and huge Miller capacitance creating internal negative feedback inside the tube. The "gain" surrounds this triode... the distortion lives there. The tube is purposely improperly set up to create lots of distortion instead of gain. Before this innovation most tube amp distortion was produced by the power section. As all the clean gain on tap was sent to the power amp the phase inverter and power tubes would go into overdrive because the preamp stages provided more gain than needed on paper, but the extra gain in voltage was typically designed in to provide a full clean sound at low volume settings and the assumption was that no one would run their amp full tilt... heh heh. Kinda funny.

I propose an expiration date for the "Duplicate Items" submissions. I noticed some of them have been sitting there for years.

Sometimes I'll find something to submit then I'll find that it's been submitted years ago and there's no way to bump it up. I propose a 2 month maximum in the queue, then any submission that goes over gets automatically deleted. Having submissions expire is also a good way of uncluttering the Duplicate Items page.

Option B would be a bump button, but limit its use (per account) to once a week or something like that.

I would agree if we had a consensus on what constitutes a dupe. Lets square that away and then implement this suggestion. Are different finishes dupes? Let's get a poll up!

but I assure you any american insurance company will not honor that list without photos of serial numbers and even then maybe not these days... business insurance might but homeowners or renters will not

Soundgarden tones are amp driven. Early SG is peavey jcm800 based amps and then they went mesa by superunknown... high preamp gain, sometimes layered with a marshall plexi, crazy tunings though, that really contributes a lot... for Kim's chorus just get a ibanez cs9, get a wahwah... it's the amps, not what's on the floor... and its nothing special going on other than a real leslie for blackhole sun, a lot of the sound of that record is down to Michael Bienhorn though. Look him up on YouTube. The edgy guitar midrange is down to the mic preamps, old germanium neve preamp/eq modules. The bass uses various cabs and a dbx disco subsynth to fill the room with throb. It's all about creative recording methods... radiohead? More pedals. Get a Marshall shredmaster to start. Thats the Greenwood fuzz tone. I think he used to use a cheap fender solid state amp from the 80s AND a tube amp. I forget. But also very creative recording methods... the 90s were a lot of fun.

Eventually someone was going to sell a cheap digital host pedal with the option to buy what are essentially plugins for it, right? No biggie!

I'm not all for it, I have to try it, but a single pedal that switches 2 disparate FX is useful to me. But I'm probably odd. I hate complex signal chains (less wire, more fire)... but the proof is in the tone-pudding and I'm not going off a youtube video. So much of my subjective experience is feel, my #1 amp (ok all my amps, but particularly my 62 ac30) has insane touch response and I won't use anything out front that hurts that intimate, quasi-erotic experience. If I want a smearing of fx peanut butter and jelly I'll play synth.

But all streaming compression considered, good job Kevin!

I don't use a lot of pedals. I could see myself using the swapping function to go between CE2 for 'clean' and OD1, SD1 or DS1... or even the feedbacker, one of my guilty pleasures. Assuming the modelling played well with my typical core live rig I would be into this because I would be able to stick a snark on my headstock for a show and justhave this 1 gadget with and additional little footswitch on the floor to add a little warble to cleans or extra dirt and level for a solo. Everything I've tried in this vein has been a compromise with my gear though. Something about the ep3/ac30 setup is pretty unforgiving to modelled fx. It's like everything thins out vs using analog. That said, I might give this thing a try some time just because of all the hate it gets.

that is NOT an off the shelf model as far as I can tell... it looks like a danelectro longhorn baritone neck with a fender logo and it has lipstick pickups like a dan-o

Ha! I trust my Sweetwater representative has my back. I think he'd cut me off after the third bass and call me for a wellness check before shipping anything. "Hey buddy! Are you doing ok?... and are you sure you don't want to add our plek service to any of those PJs you just ordered?..."

I trusted my original rep that much but now 5 salespeople in, I'm not so sure!

I'd rather do without the hassle, clutter and expense of a "prestige" tube amp.

Clutter?

My sofa setup is pretty much the same as Norah's here - Mustang + Pathfinder and so if it's good enough for her...

I'm not so sure that's pathfinder behind Norah. I'd have to give it a good listen on speakers.

we're working on a talkshow hosted by a 2nd city, low-rent supervillian now. And a documentary about a fictional 70s/80s dance music genre from philadelphia's worst drug neighborhood where the record label was just a front for a drug kingpin.

devo-vision!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSa3U41qcP0ZD36gdmmbS-g