jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

ok, I'll wing you over some stuff from this... you may want to turn it up a bit, its not mastered and the elvels are down at -14lufs so it'll be the right volume for spotify as is and thenw e can goose it up for other formats from here.

EDIT: I just google drived you to our backup folder for current 16bit 44.1k masters... if your guy can do better than this with literal garage band recordings I'd like to hear that

if you wanna hear some finished cuts from the album I'm finishing right now elt me know. I can fwd mp3s or link you to higher res versions via the google drive folder for the client. I'll need your email. Dunno if I have it already...

Thanks. I'm always trying to make acoustic and music electronic ideas understandable to people who don't have a strong interest in the science. Usually I just bore the shit out of them.

By the way, I have gotten back in the recording biz part time and have been mixing records for some Philly acts... if you would like me to mix your next album, send me rough mixes and we can negotiate a flat fee. I am not charging hourly since this isn't my main gig and I tend to multitask.

its a bass, by letting more treble through your amp will 'hear' less lows. You can only push so much bandwidth through a given amount of headroom without sacrificing something and with both controls wide open you will have to compensate in the tone stack to re-establish a familiar balance of bass and treble. Imagine you are pushing an equal volume of oil and water through a small pipe, whichever has more pressure will inevitably come through the pipe in a larger quantity. YMMV based on the tonestack of your amp and your speaker cab's low end. Once you have a brighter volume pot value you can't really take that treble away at the volume control but a 500k tone control turned down a bit will become 250k. The resistance value goes down as you turn it down but the tone capacitor is more or less bypassed at 10 so there's just a tiny bit of additional loading with tone at 10 (some people hear it, others don't... it jumps out at me, but tis subtle and very dependent on how you wire the tone cap and pot, there are different methods that yield different coloration), but the minute you roll it down it creates a full on low pass filter and 250k volume control tones will be in there although the slope of the low pass filter probably won't be a dead match for the direct pickup loading of a wide open 250k volume pot into a wide open tone control. You can play with the cap value to change the cutoff point of the filter until you get a spot that sounds right to you. I highly recommend alligator clips if you're going to fuck around with the classic formula. If you want a classic, stock sound look up stock 60s Pbass wiring and just use those values. If you wanna experiment go ahead. As long as the pot values are going up and the cap values go down you will have some leeway to approximate stock sounds with the tone control if the new brighter sound doesn't suit all the music you want to play with your bass. Keep in mind most of the sounds you are used to hearing on records are stock wiring schemes. Whether a modification is an improvement or not objectively, your ears are trained to hear thigns a certain way... which is why we all hate 250k and 300k pots ina Gibson. We're used to hearing the pre-80s 500k wiring on classic albums ;-) Maybe a little darker isn't worse, some folks like that, but most of us are expecting one thing from an SG or LP and we're thrown when we just can't find the top end.

as I said, fender is 250k and .047uf... although they experimented with some higher values in the 70s

that's eating all of your actual treble and some of your upper midrange zing... 250kohms is too much impedance load on a humbucker because of how much higher the resistance of 2 series coils is than even 2 coils in parallel like the in between strat positions. The difference with the same pickups might be subtle through some amps but its unmistakably there. its night and day through some of my gear. You can also play with your tone cap values. I thinks tock Gibson should be .022uf and fender is .047uf... if you go to .01uf on the neck pickup you can get the Clapton woman tone with tone at 0 instead of having to fiddle for in between settings. If that's your bag. I did it on one of my guitars a while ago and I legitimately like it into a fuzz.

make sure to change the pots to true 500k whn you change pickups. CTS are the classic, but if you want less fight from your knobs when you make pinky adjustments try Bourns. If you're really worried about vintage accurate audio taper you can look at RS guitar works and spend a fortune.

I'm not picky about bass pickups. I like the stock fender mexico p-basses just fine. If I'm going to change up from the split p-bass pickup sound I like a totally different bass like a musicman stingray or a Gibson eb-0

Incidentally, the current Gibson 490,498, and 700 etc buckers are all relatives of the t-top. The 400 numbered ones are alnico 5 and the lower numbers are lower winds and tend to be closer in sound to a T-top from the 70s where the numbers >498 use ceramic magnets with the hot winding for a really hot output while better preserving treble with the bright ferrite bar magnet and tonally could be said to split the difference between a T-top and the notorious Gibson Dirty Fingers. What you have is in that ceramic, overwound zone and is definitely as closely related to a Duncan JB as a T-top. So if you want a more of the same only better consider a JB.

EDIT: You may want to contact my friend Ken at http://www.angeltone.com/ and ask him about a custom set. If you describe what you want exactly he'll make it for you. He generally will let you send them back if they're not right and he'll re wind them or change magnets free of charge. Last time I had him make me a full custom set it was exactly what I wanted right out of the gate but I really knew what sound I wanted and had ideas about the magnets, wire, and baseplate material etc to get me where I was going. I'm pretty knowledgeable about pickup construction and how it influences tone, but I really think that if you can describe YOUR sound to Ken he'll find it for you using just his experience building. If you just want straight replica pickups he does that too and replica T-tops from him might come in a bit cheaper than old ones which are starting to cost hundreds per pickup.

PAF style pickups are so variable because PAFs are... acurate ones are on the bright side and don't come alive until they're pretty distorted where the ahrmonics pop out of the midrange like a ghost note. But they're loose sounding. To hear the difference between these pickupsin an SG compare Cream to early ACDC. Same basic amps, marshall superleads and both guys are wielding SGs, but clapton ahs a very early SG (although some of it is a 335, also with alte PAFs) and Angus used a stock late 60s SG with T-tops. It's subtle but its there. If you try PAF style ickups innan SG aim for alnico 4 or 5 magnets since alnico 2 was more prevalent in the early, pre-SG PAFs.

I think a used T-top will cost you about the same as a really good PAF copy by Throbak or Stephens Design these days. To give you an idea I usually get mine at guitar shows and trade effects for them... usually vintage effects.

I like late 60s or early 70s stock gibson humbuckers, the so-called T-tops, in my SGs... they're low wind but very agressive. Strong midrange focus but articulate even under heavy distortion. Very 70s rock sound. They're getting pricey. An alnico 5 PAF style like a duncan '59 is a good option too. Same basic output but a differnt, looser feel due to the longer magnet of the PAF design versus the t-tops that have short bars.

that's my thoughts on bottom boosters, but YMMV sicne it cna eb very guitar and amp dependent... you play a hot rod, right? big bottom there and mroe midrange then blackface fenders... still, light lwoer mids overall. Maybe it would be cool if you were playing with your bass way down. You could go to a store and try it through a hot rod ;-)

sort of... the boost also seems to be compressing/clipping itself a little whereas graphic EQ pedals are designed to be relatively clean and dynamic... its the opposite effect of a rangemaster, a compressed, dirty boost with a low shelf... this is like a compressed dirty boost with a high shelf or lower mid bell... idea's as old as the hills! personally my experience with thigns like this is that a lower mids and bass sound good on your own but are a terrible thing to boost in a band context. Even on a recording the first thing I do is high pass the guitars somewhere between 80 and 120 c/s, the enxt thing I consider is dipping the low mids for mush between 250 and 500 c/s. Most recording/FOH engineers will do one or both of these thigns to clear up the mix for the bass and the drums. YMMV though. If you think it's really cool you can find lots of cheaper options in the low boost style... or try a sola sound overdriver/powerbooster type circuit, a dirty compressed boost/fuzz with a great treble and bass tone stack so you can dial it in like a very gentle EQ before the amp.

maybe a separate "sarch forum" on the forum homepage only?

titles sounds more than useful!

worth it financially? of course not... almost any mod devalues a guitar. If you might ever sell it do not modify it, even if its an improvement like putting in high end electronics. When replacing stuff on a guitar you might sell the rule is to save the old junk and put it back to stock when you sell it. You can sue your fancy aprts on another guitar later and you will be able to say the guitar is in near mint condition when selling. A refinish always devalues a guitar, even a new one... even a cheapie. Its just frowned on.

yes, warmoth necks are great...

I just meant on stage in front of an amplifier... I use my earthquaker verbs all the time for mixing.

welcome... things ahve been quiet here, but it'll likely pick up again

its a YMMV type thing whether taking chunks out of the explorer will affect the tone in a way you notice or not but there's more to it then that, changing bridge types on any guitar will change the sound... just changing saddle material can have a large impact! one thign about floyd type tremelos is that its not so much the removal of wood that brightens the tone of a floyd retrofitted guitar but the way the strings are mounted into all that steel and the way they lock to that metal nut versus sitting ina peice of bone or plastic. There's a whole aftermarket for brass and titanium floyd replacement parts because they bring back some of the tone of the original guitar due to their specific density etc. You will likely find that amssive evertune changes the sound of your guitar but it will likely be a comiantion of factors. Depending on the type of music you play and the gear you use this may or may not be a major issue. If you play a lot of modern metal for isntance you cna probably compensate enough to get an appropriate tone abck... if you play mellower stuff and use old tweed, marshall or vox amps it'll probably be hard tog et your exact tone abck, those amps are going to reveal the differences and the quesiton is whether you're okay with it. But tis not just carving away that wood, its also the bridge amterials and size. The stirngs will resonate in that rbidge differently and the bridge will itneract with teh body differently and every little thing is a factor. If you must have a hyper modern bridge, by all emans go for it... if your guitar holds tune for a few sogns a night and intoantes well, why bother with all that trouble?

whatever someone's doing, odds are mxr or boss were there first in a small format pedal...

I can't figure out portable... I don't tote tape delays around anymore and I'm not slavishly devoted to a wll of amps. Its hard to find soemthing that'll clean up that isn't heavy. Ad I like to be loud, its fun.... as a former soundman I know you cna worka round a loud amp... new guys are just lazy as fuck. I had a tweed deluxe phase (the old 15 watt supros were during that period too) but man, light as those amps are, if you wanna ehar yourself over a drummer in a small club you ain't getting a clean sound you cna hear unless you take 2 of them... and then I might as well drag an ac30. I guess tis easier to halve the weight between 2 amps, but meh... I also used to use princetons in the 90s, but its just not my bag anymore. I don't do the blackface thing these days. Got rid of ym last one like 5 years ago. I don't really wnt an amp with a lot of controls. A plexi would be too many if you idn't just turn msot of them to 10 for optimal tone LOL

as for hotrods, the taper of the volume (gain?) pot sucks... you can trade it out for a different taper and that can help but not every version is easy to work on... another thing to consider is the preamp is very much a tweed preamp with one channel. If you throw a 12AY7 in there it'll lower the gaina dn change the whole swing of that knob, how it hits the next stage... you'e also a bit closer to how leo designed that style preamp rather thandoing the higher gain amrshall thing with it... the 12ay7 trick is really unobtrusive. You can try a 12AT7 too but they have a different impedence relationship with the following stage so it'll drastically alter the response of the amp as well as lowering the gain... can eb cool though. A 12AU7 is probably too clean and linear though.

get an mxr custom abdass OD, its an SD1 with a bass control and 2 midrange bump voicings.... its got better parts then a current production one, more like the 80s one I have, altough I'm not sure you can hea rmuch ofa difference between a new one and an old one when the bnd is cooking. This little gold mxr version is a real winner in the tubescreamer family.... actually the grandaddy of them all is a boss, the OD1. Its the epdal that ivnented the TS style sot clipping with diodes in the feedback loop. Ibanez copied the later OD1s and just switched up a few component values, took out a germanium diode to make clipping symmetrical and added a basic high cut control and called it tone and thatw as the TS808. Just a modified OD1. The SD1 is also a modified OD1, kidna boss's take on Ibanez's mods with flatter mids and assymetrical clipping... the whole TS thing si really a Boss thing but Ibanez doesn't like to admit that Maxon knocked the circuit off of Boss back when they were doing Ibanez's pedal designs. But that's what went down.

For real though, the secret superlead setup of the 70s and 80s is an OD1 or SD1 (or for a more metal tone try an old DS1... ebst of both worlds? Boss's overdrive/distortion withthe blend knob ;-) with a little gain and a cranked output hitting a non-master marshall. that's like the LA strip sound... up until guys like Jose started hot rodding those amps that was thing to do. I think pretty much only van halen did thigns differently but you oculd discuss the brown sound all day and enver figure out what that guy did...

the supro reissues have bad reliability. I've literally seen brand new ones on big box store sales floors thata re out of order and its not the tubes. They're all ehavily bastardized too. I've had some supros and supro amde amps, the enw sones aren't really right. They did thigns to squeeze more gaina dn the thing with a supro is its low output but you play ti at 10 or not at all. That's the whyole deal. No one plays a supro at 3, its lame there, get a fender! The upro thing is like a grittier, midrangier tweed deluxe that sounds wimpy unless its turned all the way up. And the alter designs like the statesman and stuff are really not so hot. Once they were adding reverb and goosing extra wattage the tone kinda suffered, although they have a weird budget-amp charm when you dime out the reverb I guess.

I'm of the oppinion that anything with 'blues' in the product name is lame. That's like so-called emtal pedals.... come one guys. People like those fender blues amps though, so what do I know. Try a bassbreaker if you want a modern, affordable fender with a tweed cathode follower tonestack. They sound rpetty good.

SD1 and a amrshallstack... the SD1 is 95% the same pedal, slightly different tone shaping circuitry and assymetrical clipping diodes, but soemthign about it plays even ebtter then a TS9 with brit amps

I guess someone else acquired it from gibson?

I'm really getting back into using a fuzzface as an overdrive with the volume dialed back on my guitar most of the time to get those jangley and crunchy tones. You get a real early clapton sort of thing going with a british amp, and SG and a fuzzface. Its a bit noisy, but it has a sound.

welcome

isn't cakewalk over?

tube amps kill, although for metal a tube pre and soldis tate poweramp is fine sicne msot metal sicne the mid 80s has been about preamp gain and punchy, clean power amp, so maybea rack with tube prea and SS pwoer is ebtter than msot affordable all tube ehads if your powerampis something fast but warm like an H&H or Matrix....

in itnegrated solid state amps for metal you cna't go far wrong with the odler randall SS heads. Dime used 'em. The 90s Marshall Valvestate line is a perrenial favorite among ultra heavy guys. They claim to have a tubepreamp but I think msot of the models don't actually have a tube anywhere in tehre. I forget now. I also encourage everyone to try quilter amps andprepare to be blown away by the best solid state guitar amps for distorted tones I've ever ehard. Might nto have enough gain for some metal styles, although I find that unless metalheads are doing really extreme styles they probably THINK they need more gain then they do. Kerry King of all people is just boosting a stock JCM800 with a pedal... anyway. I'm saying old? Randall, Marshall Valvestate... new? Quilter. Those amps can do anything. Those Orange SS amps sound rpetty decent but in a folgers challenge the Quilter sounds better every time... and all the mdoels are more versatile with less knobs needed.

its a mixing DESK and a tape DECK, ok? although you generally don't refer to a small format, in-line portable mixer as a desk, its installation consoles that we typically call desks.

maybe just get an old portastudio and somequality cassettes? passable all in 1 solution. You might want some outboard for dynamics control and ambience too. Most reel to reels that are affordable and in perfect working order will be 8 tracks. They also require periodic maintenance you will need to elarn to do. Reels get expensive, hardly anyone makes tape anymore... although cassettes are getting thin on the ground too come to think of it. Whether going cassette or open reel you will likely be looking at Tascam on a budget, they school fostex in both categories. Yamaha made some good cassette machines though and Akai made some fine open reel decks over the years and they both tend to fly a little under the radar. In budget mixers that have 'studio' sound quality you can't go wrong with soundcraft. I like the older soundcraft stuff, but the more recent ghost and spirit stuff is quite good versus equivalent mackie stuff. The Amek TAC stuff is also very good and pretty fully featured, but a bit pricier. A mixer alone may not cover you if you itnend to do a hardware-only setup. You may (probably WILL)need a rack of compressors and the odd expander/gate. In decent VCA stuff on a budget there's the alesis 3630 and 32 (go 32 unless the older 30 is substantially chepaer, the 30 needs modification to sound good and this odification disables the gate) and the FMR RNC. A good budget chanel strip for soemthing hyper critical like vocals would be the presonus eureka. For a limiting amplifier ona budget look at the FMR RNLA. In reverb and delay processors you'll want a few. A budget TC rack unit will give you delays and their nice plates. The Lexicon Alex is an excellent budget unit that has their classic hall and room sounds. Yamaha's SPX90 still soudns good, although they've been getting pricey due to the Kevin Shields connection. I mean, what's your budget? If you don't know what expansion is and just need noise gates then pick up the 8 channel presonus gate. Whata re you trying to accomplish here? You can have a room full of great nice gear and if you don't know how it works you probably won't be able tog et a mix! in fact I make a tidy little side-income because guys with stuff that's often well recorded enough to mix itself have this amazing ability to make their gear and/or plugins make their recordings sound worse then they did raw!

I've done it on a non-true-byapss vintage one I had... my SPDT switch died and I had 3PDTs so I true bypassed it and had to raise the output of the effected signal. I forget exactly what i did, but if you google search I think you'll find various versions of the mod on freestompboxes.org. It changes the sound of the phase tone a bit though, makes it edgier as well as louder. The stock vitnage ones sound great as phasers but suck volume on or off and are a total tone suck in bypass. Very muh a studio tool. This is true of all EHX modualtion and delay circuits from the 70s really.

this turned out to be really fun trying to remember everything I've ever owned

its not like you're making a record, you just need to be heard

a vocal is a vocal, especially live... compressing will even out the levels and the attack and decay of different performance techniques... address the microphone appropriately too... scream or sing louder and from your chest, back up. Even if you don't, comrpession will help minimize any irregualrities

what? cookie monster vocals? And Screamo? that's all about you, not the gear... the PA will handle it. Set it up the same. I think those bozos cup the microphone too, so you're kinda driving the bottom end at the microphone through increased proximity effect because your hand is tightening the pickup pattern but the PA is just nice and clean from preamp to speaker. Harcore and Nu Metal definitely is all about making a virtue of bad microphone technique... and also talking like a possessed muppet sometimes. Modern equipment doesn't cave in just because you sing ina silly voice or scream into it.

it's really entertaining me this morning... not doing ANY legit work

overload the preamp, turn it until it distorts... if you want a more sepecific distortion sound you cantry a bullet harp mic into a guitar amp and/or stomp box... there was this band in philly a few years ago who did eveyrthing with a shure bullet into a Rat, cool sound. You gotta decide how dirty you want them... distorted or with a halo of saturation, because a compressor will help with that sort of saturated sound whereas a distortion pedal will give you that boxy NIN sound to varying degrees and overloading the preamp in the mixer will give you a blown out, harsh fuzz sound that's all or nothing.

Alright, it's finally live! The "Had" list (I know, super imaginative name) can be found right above your Want list.

If you have any gear currently saved that you want to move to the Had list, you can go to the item's page, click the Save link again, and just select the "I used to have it" option. If you've written a review, it will carry over to the Had list.

Enjoy and let me know if you have any feedback.

whoa

31 band graphic EQ, I like the dBX ones, you can usually find the mono ones for $100 or less used in any guitar center or sam ash... they'll be all over ebay too... if you wanna pan the guy's guitar to his side of the stage then get a stereo one, everyone makes a stereo unit, stay away from behringer's, shoddy faders... look at dBX, ART etc

if you don't want to do it the old fashioned way there's the digital feedback destroyers... this is the one good product behrigner makes! the FBQ1000 is good and I'm told the cheaper Shark units work just as well. Personally I prefer doing it by ear the old school graphic EQ way though, mainly because I'm old and that's what we had wen I learned live sound. YMMV

to get the most form the vocals use a gate feeding a VCA compressor, try an alesis 3630 or 3631... the gate on the 3630 is a tone suck and is in the wrong place, but the compressor is quite nice, basically a dBX160 clone. These compressors are cheap and the gate will work well enough for the minimum investment you'll make on the used market. I always keep at least 1 around... my best friend has like 4 of them sitting on the beer fridge in his studio LOL. That's how cheap and available they are. The Behringer composer is a solid all in one dual comrepssor gate for cheap. Its main draw back for live use is that it uses an opto style detector circuit in a feedback rather than feed-forward arrangement so the minimum attack and release times are little sluggish and the thing really excels at recording-style RMS compression, but it has a nice feel and the gate is pretty good. It'll get the job done Another good cheapie is the FMR audio RNC, another dBX 160 based VCA compressor. It has no gate and isn't dual/stereo, but its just great. Best nosie specs and bandwidth of all the budget compressors. As I said, I like the presonus gates for live use. Very cheap, very easy to set for vocals. They come in stereo or 8 channel models, you will not need 8 channels unless you're putting drums into the PA. Your goal is to gate out the drum bleed out of the vocal microphone when there's no singing and then compress the vocal so its good and loud all the time, try a 6:1 ratio with fast attack and decay so there's always a good 3dB of reduction on the meters when there's singing... you'll have a good loud signal then, turn everything up until the vocals feedback and then notch out the feedback frequency on the master with your graphic EQ, then see if you can get the whole mix even louder. Then you can turn down from there if you're drowning out the drums, but make sure you are able tog et everything incredibly loud, that way you're using the wattage efficiently.

I was looking at something like a Fender Passport, but I guess I'll stay clear.

there's nothing wrong with that for rehearsals and acoustic gigs... like in rehearsal you really just need to get the vocals going with the speakers setup as wedges. I've sued them in rehearsal rooms to good effect, you don't need to reach the abck of the room, just elt everyone hear the singing... the passpot type stuff is also great for coffee hosue stuff where its 1 vocal mic at reasonable levels and iezo pickups in the guitars. When you're trying to blast some vocals at an audience and maybe have a floor wedge and even reinforce guitar? Its a feedback nightmare.

And luckily, I actually have a friend who's a dope sound guy, and we're paying him in really bad weed and gigging experience

that's the way to go, beer, weed, same difference...

okay, one more paragraph of advice:

older, heavy-ass power amps can be had for peanuts. Somone gave me my PA amp eyars ago and I've never seen an ASR selling for more than $200 even though it's a good, loud stereo amplifier. I actually had 2 at one point, but traded one in with a pile of other 'useful junk' (store owner's words) when I was trying to score my #1 SG back when I lived in DC. Another good option is the carvin ultralight, those are pretty cheap and damned loud. And small, 1RU! For a mixer just geta little behringer eurorack. Shouldn't cost much. Not super durable, but it'll put in solid service until you can afford soemthing better. Make sure tog et enough channels with microphone preamps because some of the smaller ones only have like 2 and the rest of the channels are line only, so if you need more than 1 vocal and a guitar microphone that's too small. Speakers will cost the most, but if you have any money left over invest ina graphic EQ or digital feedback destroyer to notch out feedback frequencies from the speakers and a cheap rack multi-effects so you can put a little echo and/or reverb on vocals. If there's still money left after that buy a decent little noise gate, presonus makes a good unit for a good price and then an alesis 3631 stereo compressor. Even a 2 channel behringer mixer will have an effects send for verb and as a signer you'll pitch better if you're not relying on the room's acoustics for ambiance. Look at unloved units from good brands, the TC g-sharp has the same algorithms as the bigger G processors and despite being marketed for guitar it works great on a PA . You might want a rack to load all that junk into, like the pwoer amp, EQ and procesors, but its a alst priority. If you go beyond mixer, PA and speakers the first priority is a graphic EQ to put across the asmter outs to kill feedback, ebcause you'll probably have feedback issues as you get up to band level in an untreated room.

the all in one PA's like the fender passport are okay, but they give you these built in graphic EQs that are so wideband that they're worthless, so expect to invest in a feedback solution even if you get an integrated mixer/power amp... most importantly, try tot each a non-musician friend to run the PA for you so you don't have to go back and forth between putting up microphones and playing. At your age there's probably a dude hanging around with decent ears who will do the job in exchange for beer... some of the best live sound men got their start this way and were never musicians.

there's good and bad to all this gear... currently I have to unload my whole walkin closet just to get to my fender cases so I can take a couple teles to record this weekend. There's just so much junk in there... half of its cases to thigns and racks

disregard that guy, he's a spammer... anyway, yes, this has happened before. By the way, what browser and version are you using? Sometimes this stuff is really browser specific, its weird.