jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I'm stillt weaking mine... jst did soem mroe this morning... ti's a ebast right now.... very easy mods using mainly what's already there tog et hiwatty

I don't mean at all that I wanna create music using samples and hope for they pop up. Could not agree more when you say that who design his song has an true advantage towards who just sample. I think a little bit rad when you argue that using hardware you get an better skillset that a DAW user, since fundamentaly you will be always manipulating a sound that already existis. You develop as an artist using both ways.

nah, you're wrong, you learn zero about recording actual voltages using all virtual isntruments. You have perfect virtual gain staging and no impedance stuff to deal with like when you're plugging a synth in direct... and that's the easy part, even if you're going to be wholly electronic, what about putting syntehsizers into amplifiers, placing microphones on teh speakers and in teh room to get ambiance, getting those gains right, printing them with a bit of peak limiting to improve your signal to noise... hell I foten take soft synths and reamp them (this is an imepdance mathcing chore) and record the speaker and rooma nd mix that back in with the dry ITB signal

no, you are not learning the same skillset I'm talking about being entirely ITB... if that's all you wanna do, have at it, but you said you felt limited. The next step is to elarn some craft. There's a good hundred years of recording techniques to know and they cna be applied to anything... developing as an artist? that's mainly a product of composing... the sound design, the mixing.... that's a craft. The more you know about all angles of sound engineering the better you'll get.

You're one of those people who asks questions hoping to get a certain answer... if you already know what you want to do then stop asking me and do it... or do as much as you can afford or what-not.

personally if Iw anted to do something latin I would bust out my congas and maracas and put up some microphones, put a click in my can, make some loops...

anyway, I recommended the 202 and volca because their cheap and will teach you some stuff about sampling and programing subtractive synths and step sequencers while providing serviceable sounds for your music. There are other budget monosynths to learn on, but the volca step sequencer is a good learning tool apart from the synth engine so its like a 2 for one... if you're just going to run it off the piano roll via MIDI then any cheap monosynth will do. Lots of good ones out there these days.

I just threw that review up to shows you how much you can squeeze out of 1 piece of gear if you really know how to program and record it... I mean, even the drums sounds were made on the Peak, ok? If you can create your own sounds and record them competently you're doing really well. If you like arranging and manipulating other people's samples then have at it. You asked a question I gave you my answer... get a portable battery powered sampler with a microphone, get a decent recording interface, a cheap microphone and a cheap monosynth with a sequencer add that into what you're already doing. Okay, super done with this question... someone else chime in...

Pricing seems a bit high on these but you can't get anything of this quality for elss than a grand usually. I would try to make an offer for $400 before shipping.

https://reverb.com/item/15072972-traynor-yvm-1-voice-master-tube-amplifier-1968

https://reverb.com/item/16548927-vintage-traynor-voice-master-yvm-1-tube-amplifier

these are regat amps with a couple simple tweaks... if you cna wield a soldering iron I'll walk you through it. Someone should get these. They have great transformers and are loaded with high quality mustard caps. Sound is orangey/hiwatty, aprticularly good after you do my master volume mod to make it more practical for rock guitar rather than its intended design as a PA/Bass head. These are the only traynors with 4 outputs and selectable impedance between 4/8/16 ohms. The second one is odler and might be a slightly more guitar friendly version of the circuit, ut all versions are excellent low-cost mod platforms that ooze vintage british tone. Very raunchy, Live at Leeads grunt from these monsters. Built like a tank too... again, someone in need a of a 50 watt british style amp should buy one, you won't see another one for a while.

ask another question so I can answer it and then hijack the thread again!

yeah, there's hiwatts and HIWATTS... but any amp wil do well with a colorsound powerboost, it really is a great circuit... I still have a clone aorund and I used to own a real one which i sold for big bucks when iw a sgetting divorced a few years ago. If I new she was going to die I wouldn't have lawyered up and I would still have it.

seems to work

as a former pro recording engineer who still occasionally does sessions for whole bands and still mixes a good number of tracks for other artists I have to say that a DAW, for all its features, is just a tool... its like a tape machine and an automated console. You can do a lot of creative stuff with that, but what comes oout of that tool set, while it may be influenced by your skill at editing, processing and routing the audio around to make a pelasant mix, is ltierally only as good as the audio that goes into it. The skill set here on a tech level is creating and capturing sounds. Without that you're fighting an uphill battle. Everyone uses these smaple packs to throw together generic stuff. They aren't developing any sound design or engineering chops. If tomorrow everyone stopped making sample packs and the presets for softsynths disappeared the number of electronic musicians would go down by half or more. I lvoe electronic music but I learned it the old fashioned way with hardware because DAWs back then were either protools rigs I couldn't afford or just sequencers. I lvoe modern software and usually don't miss tape recorders and dat machines, they were a hassle. Some soft synths cna do shit hardware can't. But I think youwill develop msot as an artist if you're nt leaning on your DAW features to manipulate soudns amde by other people. That guydid the hard work and improved his skills et while you made a neat sound collage and didn't expand yours. The goal of every musician should be tog et better every day and I'm suggesting you invest in the ability to do your own recording and sound design. Focus on ebtter compositions and better arrangements and mix as well as you can with teh tools you already have until you master them. You'll hitperiods of boredom wher you plateau and then you'll find some new and creative way to squeeze more cool dieas from a limited setup. hen that's compeltely exhausted then its time to upgrade your tools. I wouldn't bother with sample packs until last. A lot of famous guys do use that stuff, but the ebst of them learned paid their dues DIY and developed a sound of their own as engineer/composer/mixers so they're really doing soemthing cool with these 3rd party sounds.

So again, what ableton version are you using now and what's the next step up? Are you below Intro and need to ungrade to that for mroe features? And can you record outside audio of your own or sample from the environment (you cna use an iPhone or android for this with the crappy internal mic in a pinch, although hooking up a podcast mic is a better idea)???

What have you been doing up until now, man? You're probably asking the wrong questions. Or maybe I don't udnerstand your goals because making usic might hold a different place in my life versus yours?

again...

if I were you I would make sure I have a apssable itnerface like a focusrite solo, I would get a passable microphone, I would buy a used SP202 Dr Sample and a used korg volca bass and start learning some mechanics while I focused on my composing and arranging my own soudns to suit my musical ideas.

Sorry for rambling, I think I shoudla ignored this one ebcause I just don't get the question that well. I would always feel ebtter about soemthing I made from scratch even if its not that good yet ebcause I'll have learned soemthing along the way and eventually something i do will be of incredibly high quality as well as originality and that's a really satisfyng feeling for you and any end lsiteners. You will have way more eureka moments when you're doing everything ground up. The way you get great at something is to do it every day and being an artist, engineer, mixer.... you wanna call it record producer? Its a big interrelated skill set. Skipping the first stages is limiting the field for you to learn as well as limiting your creative avenues. I would rather be limited when I'm at the end of the processing putting a mix up then at the beginning when I'm forging the sound of the track.

EDIT:

https://equipboard.com/posts/novation-peak-review

read the review I wrote for EB last year of the peak (link above), forget about the synth itself and check out how I conducted the review. I sued my sound design and engineering skills to thoroughly explore everything I could think to do with a synth with that feature set. That's like 2 whole songs with 1 piece of gear and a DAW to record and mix. Can you get that much out of 1 piece of gear? Fuck samples, get your hands dirty and make some music.

check BYOC first, they're the premier clone kit company... but General Guitar Gadgets does more interesting stuff as well as clones. I think they do a kit for a colored boost known as the AMZ Minibooster, or they used to. Everyone should try this boost. It sounds amazing, although it doesn't have tone controls so its not the thing you're looking for. In boosts with treble and bass controls I really think the original is best, the colorsound powerbooster (aka overdriver). I think you can get a kit for that. its a handful of silicon transistors that go from boost to fuzz basically. If you add an output control it can work as a fuzz at less than ear splitting levels but tis magic stock. I never bothered to build one but I've repaired them and its not a particularly complicated circuit. A good first boost would be a stock microamp or LPB1 though. Both are fantastic stock without any other controls and they're hard to screw up due to the simplicity. Honestly, the more shit like that you put in your signal chain the more you compromise your tone. You think you're helping yourself out but if you had a core tone you were proud of you wouldn't want to have so many options. I don't even like amps with tone controls anymore. Treble and bass at most, man. Midrange is a nuisance. Even treble and bass controls cause unwanted notch filtering and phase shift around the notch that ic an do without, but I like my sound a lot after all these years. I'm used to the tone off my fingers and I'm realcomfortable with that finally... took a long time to be there. Maybe my hands started sounding better or maybe I just had to get less uptight? I have all these different amps but I like how if I plug right in they all sound kinda similar if its me playing. When I put a lot of stuff in the way and start fidgeting the controls around chasing soemthing I lose that.

I want to help but I don't undestand the question? are you feeling boxed in by the lack oflike MIDI, audio manipualtion and mixing functionality in abelton's basic newbie version? Or are you frustrated because you use a lot of samples and you're out of content to inspire you? IF tis the altter go buy an SP202 or seomthing simialr like a Tascam or zoom stereo recorder with the mics built in and walka round all day smapling every cool nosie you hear, banging on random objects with a drum stick etc... isntant proprietary sample library. There's nothing more soul sucking and uncreative than rooting through someone else's sounds and presets to find one that expresses your personality. I have always found it easier to do everything from scratch. Maybe this is a sign from the music gods to personalize your sounds and rethink your workflow?

and for real, build a boost pedal.... elarning electronics is a good diea for an electric guitarist... I was just inside my vintage traynor ehad alla fternoon trying a new master volume type and tweaking the gain up where the channels mix... I keep pushing it to be like a hiwatt or vintage orange on steroids. If I ahdn't built a boost as a kid I woulda never been able to do this.

so is Darcy a male name in New Zealand or are you deisgnated female? ebcause there aren't lieke ANY women who regular post to these tpye of emssagebaords and it would be a good thing to ehar you're not a dude.

like Pride and Prejudice Darcy or Smashing Pumpkins Darcy?

middle name And?

aww man, you spoiled my joke

oh no, can't delete that one, sorry

I said I don't pay for boost... you do whatever you want, ya kiwi

and which one am I talking to, anyway? Mark or Eric?

you obviously want the boutique one so buy it... here's the thing with these small fancy brands that are so popular now. If you're touring its always better to buy stuff you can replace at any music store in almost any town in case something you can't live without gets broken, lost or stolen last minute. More stores are carrying these small company fncy pants pedals these days but even the big box stores in the USA like Sam Ash and GC focus on different brands and certainly they don't stock every pedal whereas you can walk into any store any place and be pretty sure of finding most of the MXR line and be 99.9% positive that in a pinch you can get an ordinary microamp with 1 knob rather than 3 that'll probably get close enough. Even if they still made the plainsman it might be tough to find at 7pm on Saturday night in St Louis. If you're not planning on getting in a van or bus and gigging all over the place for months on end then get the one that sounds better or that you think will sound better... if you have dreams of the open road? go for availability. For 100 bucks each buy both and sell one when you decide what your preference is! Or pull a Jim and plan on selling one but keep it anyway because $100 is less than you spend at the bar on Fridays.

or yeah, just try building a boost with tone controls... there's a million idiot-proofed boost kits and you'll learn a life skill putting one together. You'll overpay for the parts but in the future you'll be able to build something you want if eneded and you'll be able to fix your pedals yourself thanks to elarning about how a little hi z amplifier works

no kidding, then you answered your own question. To be honest I wouldn't pay more than $100 for any boost. There's nothing in them. If you include the box its maybe $20 in parts and 15 minutes labor populating and soldering the PCB and attaching jacks/switch if they're on flying leads... if its all board mounted then maybe 10 for an eperienced pro. If you can use surface mount parts and a sodler bath then tis like a pedal per minute and another minute for mounting in the box and a quick QC check by a human.

it probably won't sound as coola s you're thinking... some clipping soudns better than others. Soemthing like an aux input wiill probably not saturate slowly, its wide bandwidth for input rom an iphone or cd player so it'll be extreme onset of hard transistor distortion laoded with odd ahrmonics that'll turn your peaks to static

YMMV

you can TRY anything (as long as you don't mess with output impedance on a tube amp, that's a recipe for a blown transformer most of the time)... but engineers design things the way they do for pretty good reasons and there's never going to be a universal analog input. Line inputs aren't designed to receive raw signal froma transducer the way that mic preamps and guitar preamps are. Apple wasn't thinking about having a nice hot signal to keep a good signal to noise ratio when recording when they designed the output on the iPhone. The reason there's a pro line level that's different than consumer hifi level is that when recording to tape we really needed better signal to noise then we're worried about when listening in the living room.

the EP sounds really good for being unfaithful to the echoplex pre on a number of levels. Those xotic guys made soemthing new and awesome in its own right.

it'll have a switch on the abck that toggles between -10db and +3db... common on 80s stuff, prosumer grade... you cna try a pro line elvel, maybe it'l work without cliping the aux input.

I had to pretty much rewrite this this because for a sec I forgot you were talking about the aux input and was thinking about instrument inputs and I posted a paragraph on microphones versus pickups, but here's the layman's skinny on consumer level line-in circuitry versus microphone preamps.

there are even more issues at play in this scenario than the ease of unsoldering and resoldering jacks... you have balanced versus unbalanced lines, stereo use of TRS versus mono TRS connections, impedance mismatching, preamplification factors... a microphone wants to see 600 to 7k ohms the consumer equipment an aux input is designed to handle will need a load at a max of 600ohms for the -10 consumer line level that is about 2 volts peak to peak to hit the rpeamplification stage with flat response so you're killing mic output and top end right there using it as a mic input.... your microphone needs a higher impedance because while the output impedance is very low (unlike a guitar pickup that needs a good 1meg for fidelity due to low level AND high impedance) the peak to peak voltage is probably under a volt (assuming its a dynamic mic). COnensers are even designed with a preamp built in but are matched to preamps load ranges that also work for dynamics and ribbons because there's some uniformity between these various preamplifier types these days. We have steady agreement on what type of circuit should be used for pickups, microphones, studio line levels and consumer line levels and they are all quite different just like those 4 sources are quite different. I could go on. You're fighting a lot of issues here. That aux input isn't designed to handle a microphone but it probably could handle a mixer output, especially if its a mixer with a consumer -10 mode. It'll present that with appropriate clean gain and impedance and the mixer can give your mics the extra gain and higher impedance they need. A mixer with only a pro +3db output level willt end to distort that -10 input even with the output way down. But the impedance should be pretty solid and despite some clipping everything should be operating with appropriate bandwidth.

I might add that there aren't a lot of bad MXR products. They had some questionable ideas in the 80s before they shut down but none of them were bad pedals, they just had some warts. MXR is an excellent company, seldom bettered by the sall 'boutique' builders in my experience. For a meat and potatoes effect like a boost with tone controls I don't think you can go wrong with the deluxe MicroAmp

On my GK, and also a Fender Bassman 10

those jacks are likely PCB mount so pretty hard sicne the connections from the circuit to the jack are traces on the boards and not flying leads if the jacks are baord mounted. I still wouldn't recommend running long leads from a jack to the input or output of the amp even if it's PCB because any sketchy lead dress with long leads could cause excessive nosie or even oscillations. Amp layout is nothing to be trifled with.

it has very few reviews because only a boob pays Walrus prices for a boost... even one with tone controls is such a simple circuit that it requires no R&D and very few parts to put out. The mian thing that separates boosts is the gain amplification semiconductor. You cna do soem voicing stuff around that but the soul of the boost is that transistor or IC. What really differentiates a LPB1, microamp, katana, and SHO? THe amplification is achieved via a BJT, IC, Jfet and Mosfet respectively... the supporting circuitry will be different for those different semiconductors of course and they all react differently to a 9 volt single power rail. Input caps, treble and abss controls,that's all we;ll and good but the soul of a boost is that amplification device and the supporting circuitry. They all sound different...

on what?

I ahd to reinstall a lot ofs tuff recently due to an OS problem on my mixing machine and the only plugin I ued regularly that ic an't recoveris the Cakewalk CA2A levelling amplifier. I kinda prefered it to the other LA2A's. Now Cakewalk's a different company and Ic an't seem to restore it. Can anyone do me a solid and get me a copy from the old days when they gave it away?

Professor shit. LOL! Where do you find this shit?

You guys never even talk to me about like anything but guitar amps, guitar pickups and synths.... the things I know about mixing records, man. Although I think the internet is loaded with interviews with top hit makers who know all the tricks I know, but back when I was learning them you had to learn them by experiment or by assisting someone who knew. Like, these days any free VST compressor worth its salt has a blend knob, but when I learned NYC compression it was this closely guarded secret and the 3 aux bus NY comp trick was really secret until Andy Wallace revealed it in Tape Op like 15 years ago.

okay, the channel volumes are itneractive without jumpering from the low input of the channel you're plugged into to the high input of the channel you aren't using like on a plexi or bassman, but when you don't use the jumper they interactive differently, less of a blend then a cancellation thing... the tweed deluxe trick is to plug into the bright channel and turn up right to the edge of breakup and then turn up the volume on the normal channel up until you like the clean tone. It'll gain you down a smidge in the mids and give some lows. Then if you want some more top end luster and top end crunch when you dig in you turn the tone knob past 5 until its what you want. The tone knob acts like an extra set of bright caps above 50% whereas its a treble rolloff like a guitar tone pot below 50%. Its pretty neutral halfway up with minimal insertion loss. But the midrange trick is the way all 3 knobs itneract. Youc an reverse it and go into the noral channel and change the voice with the bright channel's volume knob too, but I think msot people agree the mojo is doing it the way i just told you to try.

The other deluxe trick is to use the normal channel, dime it and then pin the tone knob... that's the larry carlton 'agents of the law' sound.

Another trick is to use the tweed deluxe at the same tiem as a fender Princeton. Set at the same level the deluxe will provide the grunt and the Princeton will provide note definition. If tis a reverb model you can crank the verb on the PR for a wide, wet/dry sound.

I used to play deluxes in the studio a lot. Had a 5C3 and some Gibson versions. I actually prefer the Gibson lancer and titan.They're more rockn roll and they don't fart out.

but yeah, any 2 channel deluxe type amp that's got the dual triode shared between the 2 channels into V2a as a resistive mixer will do the interactive volume pot trick. They all copied the same circuit suggestion and have that same flaw in the design that's actually pretty cool. Even the pro and bassman type amps do it a little, but tis different... more ghosting. On a bassman or a plexi you should always experiment with ghosting in the other channel before you jumper as its a different thing.

you know about the non-jumper channel blend trick to get a more mid scooped cleanish tone?

just the neck pickup... it aleviates the neck boominess if you wanna do neck clean volume rolled back and bridge full volume for dirt... also nice in the middle position with the neck vol at 5ish.... I don't do it on my SGs because I want a round, gibson jazz tone available from any gibby and its nice to have the clapton woman tone with a fuzz and the filtertron is too spanky for that. But I've tried it and its a good thing for guys who just do modern rock.

a fitlertron is a really cool choice for the enck position of an SG... TV jones even makes a great mount for gibsons as well as a fitlertron in a PAF sized case

you could use metal firebird rings to mount minis in a full size bucker route a la neil young's old black

is that a tweed or a blackface?

I rmember seeing them at the free philly show when iw as a senior in highschool... ema nd my friends got there and were rpetty close. I forgot how coool metallica used to be until you just psoted this. WOW

I think choosing complimentry amps is more important. In my sole 2 guitar band sicne high shcool Iw as using the showman clean, plexi dirty rig and the otehr guy came in with a JCM2000... no matter what guitar I used against his LP standard we tended to blend together. WHen we were doubling it was awesome but when we weren't it was a problem... it was pretty much up to the FOH guy to separate us. At smaller shitty venues it got irritating so I went over to a matchless for cleana dn dirty and the amrshallw as just elads and solos but always around 7 or 8 with a tonebender or fuzz face instead of direct in turned up to 10, so it really becamse a whole different sound then Jon's JCM2000 and alter JCM900. THe Matchless is like an ac30 but a little amrshally too so it really sounded good doubling and for riffs that didn't need to be superlead loud it separated well ebcause the single note overdrive charater on a vox is much different then a master volume marshall...

anyway, I'm saying ins eriousness now the guy should play the guitar he's msot comfortable on because he will then play his ebst every night and that will make the band better... but he should make sure he selects his amp carefully.

you guys need to be clearer abotu what you're trying to do if you want a really good answer... analog or digital? how many tracks? all-in-one or separate recorder and mixer? What's the goal?

a power trio... fire the other guy and steal his guitars!

looking forward to it... I need a fresh record to work on.

good, we'llwork something out... I'll listen for free of course. To mix I want any editing done and then i prefer stems so I'm not locked into this guy's DAW... he should know what to do for me.

and my gear IQ will be set to infinity, space time continuum be damned?