jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

10 points to Bruce for joining Maiden but -5 points for originally being in Saxon. If we're talking the legit metal I grew up with, I have to go with Halford. But they all owe Mercury and Plant... even Dio does.

wait, when the pedals are disengaged everything works? If not, did you test all the cables? does the compressor work with the Joyo out of the chain? better detail

are they even related? the free the tone is based heavily on an older TC rack unit that's a favorite of us recording engieners and also the edge from U2... the walrus? I'm not sure what its supposed to do. I was at my friend's studio yesterday mixing this band's album and one of the guys who works there left a bunch of his gear including a Strymon Cpaistan, Walrus ARP-87 and a Panda Particle.... love the Particle, the Walrus does nothing for me.

On to the Capistan. My buddy has a Chorus Echo like I used to use back when we were ina band together (he's keeping his serviced better, every time I go there its working LOL) and I had my FLashback X4 with me. For tape sounds its really hard to tell the difference between the strymon and the TC... and the actual Roland tape unit only jumps out at you because its noisey and the simualtions aren't. A well dialed patch on either the Capistan or X4 is a lvoely thing and while the Strymon might sound a hair mroe real, once its in a mix or band setting you can't tell the difference. YMMV...

The X4 still owns them all for versatility with the toneprint software, its like a super-DL4. But you better be patient to get everything out of it you can. The strymon is more plug and play and soudns ebtter without a lot of fiddling. the one place the TC falls down to me is in full on digital ode. No matter what i do in the toneprint software it never quite soudns like a 2290 to me in any of its digital modes... not a deal beeaker for me ebcause I have a Korg unit for old school digital delays. The X4 also has hidden modulation tricks that go beyond using a pitch vibrato delay on a short time to create chorus and flange effects.

I still have yet to try a Flight Time and I'm suspicious of demos, but it sounds right to me based on the youtube demos. Assuming those demos to be honest, it does a great 2290 sound and has front panel control of the fitlering and modualtion parameters that appears to have even mroe range then the old TC unit. It'll probably do a decent digital SPX90 type chorus and flange effect when set right too. But ALL it does is vintage digital delay. If you ened your delay to model analog devices then look elsewhere, this pedal is just a studio digital delay in a pedal. You at wish to try out a carbon copy deluxe n this price range... the DOD rubberneck is getting rave reviews too, but I haven't tried one out yet. As a huge fan of what Jorge did on the original carbon copy I can tell ya, the deluxe doubles the delay time, is digitally controlled for tap, has fully adjustable modulation, a bright mode AND it sounds GREAT. I have old delays, the carbon copy deluxe soudsn better than a lot of them and is way more useful on stage.

amp... get it from the amp

some of that old school soul and funk tone is also flat wounds, depends on the player

I'd love a norlin es-369 and les paul professional but even though most people didn't rate them and also say norlin were worst (especially late) they are getting prety expensive now :( so that ain't gonna happen... May Need to be an Ibanez recording copy (which strangely looks like a professional and not a recording duh)

70s and early 80s MIJ gutars are the bomb... Ibanez is probably the brand with the biggest range in quality of their gibson copies ging from total junk to better-than-gibson, but the used market reflects this and even the garbage can have pretty high asking prices. Check out Greco and Burny. There are still some deals to be ahd frm those brands. But do your research.

Norlins are a mixed bag... a problem with a lot of 70s gibson models that didn't see severe quality downgrades is that some guitars carried the alte 60s thin nut well into the 70s under norlin andthat's a deal rbeaker for a lot of people... I don't care that much personally but if you have wide fingers then it might make the guitar less of a player for you.. I'm not going to pretend I think Norlin era gibbies are worth what the current asking prices tend to be... so many have those crazy, low/wide frets or horrible accordion bridges. Ironically I think Norlin had some great sounding buckers. The T-Tops of that era sound fantastic and I believe the Shaw buckers and Dirty Fingers came out under Norlin.

on the 369, great headstock design, not super iconic but hugely functional (its been reused on the midtown, which is a highly underrated modern guitar)... HOWEVER, you willw ant to dump the fine tuning tailpiece. I'm telling you, they aren't that helpful, they cause more tuning issues then they solve due to an extra point of slippage AND they're a tone suck compared to a quality bar. All the moving parts suck up string vibrational energy and transmit less into the body. This of course goes for the Ibanez artists (I think those are the ones Carlton and Scofield would use?) only with Ibanez of that era who knows what the post spacing will be to replace the tailpiece... gibsons generally just drop in a Gibson part.

I dunno, the 90s was the ebginning of the big quality roll-off in mass-produced amps and it was the beignning of the boutique boom where now we have this huge construction/component quality chasm (even if prices don't always reflect that, ahem, orange and the company masquerading as hiwatt)

its a shame, but I keep trying to think f underrated tonebeasts on a budget and all the stuff I used to swear by has blown up in reputation and value! Sunn, Ampeg, Selmer, Sound City, silverface champs and princetons (they actually did a silver reissue PR, dude! used to be able tog et them for peanuts back when I used princetons). most Traynor models... even Supro, Harmony, Dano and the store brands they made have all blown up thanks to their assoiation with famous player sold and new. Hell, even the humble Laney AOR heads are getting pricey and well known in the hard rock world! Thanks to the itnernet there justa ren't many amps elft udner a rock for intrepid guitarists to discover... and with all vitnage stuff going up, its ahrd tow ant to experiment with some no-name when anything old commanding $500+ usually. Back when these amps were a quarter of that buy in it was cool to get oddball old amps and hope they worked right and souned cool... worst case scenario was $100 loss and you could just budget ahrder for a couple weeks to make good the shortfall. Now? I pity young kids coming in. We live ina golden age of gear. There's more new stuff then ever before thata ctually soudns good and is built with care... all the old stuff is revered and wel maintained... but the buy in is huge on a lot of the goodies new and old alike.

all the tube traynors are good amps, the odler ones are the best... stay away from the el84 designs sicne they're not unlike your WEM in general and the fixed bias EL84 ones might be too much like the clean channel of your Crate... but 6V6 ones and EL34 ones deliver some rgeat fender and amrshall tones and the PA, as I said, is like an Orange/Matamp or more of bass amp kinda design but with 4 discrete channels... the good bass mates are like tweed harvards or 6v6 powered low watt plexis... the good bass masters are tweed bassman heads, very JTM45ish and they evolve along similar lines to marshall's plexis but with less shrill top and more low, like the bass amps (although ironically the mk2 voicemaster PA makes a much better bass amp for clean and loud bass reproduction)

tryanors are harder to get in the UK, they were Canadian like garnet and like garnet they mostly saw distribution in north america

https://reverb.com/item/4361550-isp-technologies-beta-preamp-bass-effects-pedal

that's ISP's bass one, but there's anotehr company doing Beta Leads, forget who... this si the new thing I guess. So amny controls on all this stuff. I'm a studio engineer by trade and when i'm performing msuic i don't wanna think about anything like that, just turn up and go... but I guess for sme people mroe is more!

I'm going to reveal my specific bargain amp here. Its a specific traynor form a specific couple eyars that's quite rare but is CHEAP. No more than $300. The traynor YVM-1 Voicemaster PA head. Needs to be a mk1 circuit. The mk2 is a better bass amp and eveyrthing after that is solid state, so the date codes need to be '69 or earlier tog et the rock guitar beast (although you can probably mod the mk2 circuit to rock like fuck). Its a bargain for a hand-wired 50 watt head with a unique sound that's still PURE classic rock. The giant old Hammond transformers are probably worth 200 bucks each on the sued parts market and I only paid about 200USD for mine so do the math. Youc ould also throw this amp off the top of a building and then go gig with it, its that sturdy. From clean to dirty it leans to vintage orange based on tis very matamp-ish topology (it gives up the OD goods pretty early for a non-master amp but its one of those great old amps that keeps getting louder for a while even when fully distorted). This amp is a great rocker and its way cheaper then most other traynors because people don't know about it yet (or they heard the later versions that don't sound as good for guitar)... downside? Only 2 years of production with this circuit and many of these have been bought up and gutted for parts (apart from the transformers it also is loaded with the valuable mustard caps you found in old marshalls and voxes) or modified into different circuits by guys like Fuchs who likes to turn this amp into a Dumble.

yeah, looks itneresting... there's a trend with that right now, complex 70s solid state preamps as pedals... there's a Sunn Beta Lead pedal that a lot of people keep sniping about for isntance.

its a shame Moog didn't do more guitar stuff... just the 3rd series maestro effects, lab amps and moogerfoogers :-(

another bargain solid statey I forgot, the marshall lead 12 and 20 practice amps... they both sound pretty good for what they are, especially the 12! marhsall forgot how to make a solid state amp right after that though :-( they had it down in the early 80s

loving the circuit diagram on the back panel! never noticed that before. So Moog!

I know people rave about the CVs and having played an early classic vibe 50s tele I was impressed at how much guitar it was for the money and I regularly recommend them for beginners who are into music that's tele appropriate and who have big enough hands to handle a full scale fender. I've not touched the offset CV ones though. That's a finnicky design that eneds good ahrdware, far elss forgiving then the tele's bulletproof, dead simple design. In jazzmasters, the best squier on the market is the J Mascis. I haven't tried the otehr squier JMs, I don't need to because the signature model is as good as a mexican fender and there's now ay there's anything better available for this money. Excellent guitar. I would say its almost good enough to be a stage guitar stock. A good value in actual fender is the blacktop jazzmaster. its pretty hated and can be had on the cheap used. Non-traditional pickups though. Bucker at the neck and a really hot P90 style pickup at the bridge instead of the more wide-range, low output JM pickup. But it has the shape LOL and its made quite well. I'm not a good judge of jags as I have trouble playing short scale.

are they still cheap? I'm really partial to those Lab amps for jazz if I need more clean headroom then i can get from the normal channel of an ac30 (yes, I play jazz through an ac30 and yes they excell at it as logn as you don't need to be REALLY loud... my 1962 is one of the jazziest sounding amps ever because its a bass model so the lows extend quite a few hz lwoer than a normal model and the highs cna't get quite as shrill)...

my only complaint with the Lab amps is that Moog packed so many clever features in that theyt ake a while to set up, but man, great sounding amp, well voiced. Try a polytone some time too if you haven't (not sure how many you see in England, they're a USA jazz/session guitarist thing). they're still the same pricing they always were (CHEAP) I think and they're a great traditional solid state amp with a big, warm clean tone and very well thought out features. Up until the class D revolution I woulda said that the Lab amps, fender-lookin' Yamaha G series amps, roland jazz choruses and polytones were the onyl solid state guitar amps worth a damn. And all but the roland are bang for buck. I guess I should include that peavey stereo chorus dealie because it can out jazz chorus a jazz chorus, is more versatile overall etc but I left it off because its ludicrously heavy like up there with a marshall 50 watt 2x12 combo (at least the good 80s version I'm thinking of) and its so versatile with so many voicing features that it takes too long to dial in and is full of BAD sounds and just a handful of good ones.

So yeah, Lab amps, good call. If you want to play clean or you need a warm pedal platform and don't plan to use any effects that rely on pushing tubes to sound right then the lab amps are phenomenal... also, you can impersonate 70s BB king with one. I've never seen a Lab amp straight up broken either. iv'e seen them in need of service, but the amps are still working and sounding pretty decent... a few parts and they would be back to life and ready to gig. I'm not sure how difficult they are to work on though... PCB can be a bitch if its cramped inside. A lot of old Moog gear is well designed and serviceable but maybe not a ton of fun to work on and not for the inexperienced at all.

you have a lot of repconceived notons about how guitars fit into a recording versus live... for your style of music you might wanna look up Joe Baressi... he's in some pensado's palce videos and does other youtube stuff. he's a good starting point for loud/heavy guitar people to elarn about getting that modern gainiac thing to work on records... the first thing I always do when i'm working for someone with a huge gainy sound is that i get the gain down as low as it'll go on their stage gear without turning into a different sound altogether, where its still their sound with all the chugging, grinding whatever, just not so washy and we'll do some band recordings and I'll elt 'em hear them and if they really want tos tart turning the gain abck up, tis their record, but usually they sound way heavier and more muscular then they expected to (unelss they're emtal acts, i don't usually wanna touch that genre these days, tis gotten so niche) and if I did a pass with their original tone I'll let them A/B that shit in context and really hear how once thigns are a little comrpessed and int he mix all that extra gain made their guitar osund smaller, not bigger forcing us to turn it up louder and sap the ower of the drumming to get it to sund as loud as it really was, right? So from tehre I itrnoduce people to soem of my stuff. Master volume players and epdal guys can see what its like to just turn up an old ampa nd ahve at it and then see what they think of that, getting a ton of dynamic distortion from the pwoer tubes and not the repamp so much with all that tinny, buzzy bee distortion that sunds big from where the gutiarist is playing ons tage but usually sounds small ona recording (or even through a PA live, trust me)...w e ight still eb pretty damned distorted in the end, but you get the idea.... tis not just a droning wall.... and if the band is going to have a dronign wall sound I'll encourage them to play sparse aprts to give space for those square waves to decay so tis not just like a droning synth pad.... you think of like siamese dream as being the big album that rhought in teh droning wall of fuzz, but those guitars are way mroe dynamic then you think ocne you start lsitening to them carefully! same goes for like weexer etc.... and you look at a green day? that first album is just like an acdc sound pushed up a little... I would say stay away from extreme mesa settings gain wise unelss you're going to play REALLY controlled like the guys from say, Helmet... or at elast as much muting control and billy joe. Everything's gotta be controlled from the right ahnd or the amp with distortion because the mroe cotnrol i have to exert at the desk the worse it'll sound if its high gain

okay, rambling, gotta hit it, think that all over, look up joe baressi... also look up eric valentine! he's using pretty fancy gear but with tried and true methods and his videos just kill it for ideas about capturing distorted guitar well.

you're rhythm tracks have more gain than a death metal sound, they're compeltely blown out

they're not mixed well... but maybe its also that a real boogie doesn't actually sound that good, so maybe apple's simualtion is just like a pale imitation of soemthing that's kidna stupid to begin with.... eople will ahte more for this, but there are ahrdly any mesa models I like in their whole hsitory and I've tried almost all of them! there will eb a handful of soudsn I like in tehre if I dig, but nothing stellar and with all the options on their 90s designs and the more recent stuff I'm so voerwhelmed I lsoe itnerest and plug into soemthing else ebfore I find soemthing I like. in the 90s I would sit and fiddle with them at the stores for hours though and be like "why doesn't this do a clean sound like my old fender and how come the dirt doesn't sound much better then a tubescreamer?" People will flame me, but that's where I'm at, so flame on!

no shit, I thought they would sound better... no offense, just saying, the plugin amp stuff, evne the bare bones free stuff, is getting a lot mroe convincing... but I was like "whoa, what's that can of bees? hmmm, nice vocal!"

soa re those the 2 amps on your recordings?

is that one of thsoe boss amps that's trying to compete with quilter?

I doubt she produces 200 watts all the way up, think more like 120 or so ... they just ahd to goose their stereo amp's figures because the father of loud needed to make sure everyone knew his company's solid state chorus amp was louder then a roland LOL... and its not like the JC120 produces a proper 60 watts a side asyou and I duenrstand wattage from a guitarist perspective. Also, the drivers in teh valvestate cabs are really inefficient low end speakers so he's not dissapating that wattage effectively unless he's using another cab or put some better drivers in there. 500 watts is more then enough power for you! that would be enough solid state power to keep up with 2 cranked non-master marshall superleads in a 4 peice band assuming you had as many speakers or more as both guitarists put together you would be solid

there;s now ay its 200 watts,,, wait, is it their stereo chorus amp?

200 watts? what the hell? a marshall major? or is it some solid state thing? marshall really overrates their solid state amps whereas they underrate their tube amps. take a look at how loud he's setting it.... you may not need 500 watts if he's not running it loud. But, if he ahs 2x12s you need to move more air than 2x12s will if you want to projec tinto teh audience when there's no PA reinforcement. the goal is to spread your sound out to everyone and wattage alone is not going to ensure that.

personally I don't go by reddit because its hearsay, I go by what I've seen, that said, the last broken GK I dealt with was a good 5 years ago (dead power supply on a 1 or 2 year old amp)... I've used a lot of ashdown bass amps and owned a MAG 300. They are loud as fuck watt for watt. I have enver had one rbeak or even seen a broken one.

good rule of thumb, for small venues for a good clean bass tone you will want at least double the wattage of the lead guitarist assuming that guitar amp is running close to tis wattage rating (as in, wide open or close to it). If he's more at half-mast double the wattage willd definteily do it, maybe less. You also want to move more voerall air then the guitarist if you're not sure every gig will supply PA reinforcement for the bass. So a 4x10 against a 1 or 2 speaker guitar rig is good... a 1x15 or 18 is good against 1x12s but maybe won't cut it against 2 speaker rigs. Against half stacks you will wnat a super efficient 4x10 at the elast and even then some PA reinforcement will help you project to compete with those 4x12 sound cannons. Usually against 2 hgalf stacks in a weak PA situation I think a good balance is best achieved by a SVT cab or a 2x15 or maybe combiantion of a 2x10 and 1x18 stacked up.

go look at the power supply board photo on the Gallien and Kruger website (there's a picture) and tell me you would 1 know how to fix it and 2 be able to fit your soldering iron in there! This shit is cramped! Its like a alptop int ehre, not an amp LOL I have a sneaking suspicion lke msot people who aheven't doen a lot fo teach work you don't have a firm idea how difficult it is.... and ocne you have to pay someone its probably cheaper to buy a new amp. Find out if the warranty is transferrable though. if it is, you're golden. if she takes a dump, mail her to GK and let them handle it. Its worth teching a '62 ac30 or a '68 plexi. Even if you pay someone to do the work just a handful of parts from that amp are worth more than you'll spend on bench time. Many old tube amps are also very easy to service having been thought out from that angle (there are exceptions like 50s and 60s supros and cheapies like that, but mainly? easy stuff). PCB is generally harder for humans to work on because tis designed to be worked on by machines. You are not going tow ork on a consumer grade PCB that's more cluttered then a Boss pedal as an amateur electronics guy without burning soemthign else ont ehbboard out. The soldering isn't even done the same way at the factory as you will be doing it, look it up. Anyway, there's a diminishing returns thing here. you don't buy an amp like a modern, entry level GK and then maintain it. Its the disposable smart phone of the amp world. not that tis bad, just that its impractical to service and that something better is always comng along from the same manufacturer.... well, somethign newer anyway.

and as for sound, all the GKs I've played are really variable.... they're never going to do an SVT or something like that but they do solid, clear sounds from rock to funk once you learn to dial them in. A bit of everything pretty well... in soldis tate Ierpsonally prefer Ashdown and Markbass, but that's me. What was the asking price for this thing again?

one of the secrets of building up an amazing gear arsenal is being wise with the little funds you have.... that means not investing ins tuff that is more likely to cost you money then to make you money tog et closer to having the gear you really wanna get... there's interim gear, there's the tone quest, but getting sidetracked from the ultimate goal of having sweet ass shit is a pitfall and you can be sidetracked by costly repairs on budget gear or by purchasing stuff that keeps on working but depreciates in resale year after year... you can get it fucked up and the gear colleciton will not feed and grow itself with minimal financial input. Step 1 is DO NOT buy gear just to buy a new piece of gear. Its like ebign a car guy who ahs an old Honda that gets him to work but wants a vintage GTO. You see a good price on a Toyota that's a lot like your Honda. Do you need another car with abd resale to get you to work? The Honda is still running. Shouldn't you bank that loot and keep saving for that first GTO? Maybe when you get the GTO later you don't like it so much and you sell it and sue the funds to buy a vintage Mustang or a couple of Pontiacs, so what? That's the quest, figuring out whats for you and getting it. The Hondas just take you to work, don't overinvest in them, do whatever's cheapest to get to work be it fixing that car or trading it in, but break even as well as you can and keep questing.

this is my Thursday morning gear wisdom

no one will want to fix it, its a pain... if the warranty is up you'e done, if not, seend it abck and they'll reinstall a fresh PCB and toss the old one and send it abck.... my esperience with GK amps was they last 1 to 4 years, no telling when they go. its almost always the power supply baord that fries. That's just my experience with the more recent GK stuff. it sounds really good while it works and tis super versatile, but its not terribly durable. That said, I have no experience with the amp in question. The older GK stuff though? bulletproof. They go back to the 80s and its not uncommon to see their 80s and early 90s gear still running without ever being serviced.

GK doesn't seem to refer to it as a digital power amp... it has a very mdoern pwoer supply which is a digitally controlled thing that usually gets paired with Class D, but could easily be used with traditional solid state Class AB... its very light though so I suspect it could be class D. The D doesn't stand for digital, its just that class A, B and C were taken when D was invented (there's letters to describe amplification circuits going out to like 'J' I think, but manya ren't for audio amplification like class C and class D wasn't invented for audio and no one applied it to audio until very recently ebcause the power supply technologyw asn't up to snuff for audio range amplification)... I really like class D for hifi purposes, a well designed class D amp is light, loud and very accurate. For isntrument purposes it elans heavily on the preamp because its so uncolored sound wise. The preamp needs to get all the toen shaping right or you might not like your sound. it defintiely excels at bass which sounds rpetty good with minimal coloration versus guitar which kidna wants a little soemthin' somethin'

on GK, I've never delat with a DK product built in the 21st century that didnt break. Typically the power supplies go. They're cramped and a total pain to repair.... I wouldn't buy a used one unless it had a transferrable lifetime warranty. They do sound good for solid state.

that doesn't actually make any sense to me

how the hell does that work?

it is now, I put some non-vintage feet on her so the sock is bypassed

in the studio the best reverse reverb is achieved by reversing the track through a reverb at 100$ wet and printing that, then you time align it however sounds ebst to you.... you cna even do this in an all tape setup. Anything else soudsn phony. Nothing else does a satisfactory reverse reverb to my ear.

is it lass D? class D is not digital... its just a different way of doing analog.... its based on pulse width modualtion, look it up

my best friend still has my #1 VT40 from ym ampeg phase.... I gifted it over to him. Instant 70s stones machine.... and QOTSA if that's your bag. Loudest 40 watts ever. Sometimes I miss having ampegs, but I like the 70s ones and they're a maintenance nightmare and even worse for retubes! Its stilla rhd to find a decent 7199 pentode/triode phase inverter, you have to mod the amp for a 6AN8 or one fo thsoe otehr pentode/triodes. But the 7199 is so sweet, so so sweet.

He did design reason amps too And from what i read about him and amp design and tech work it's probs a home brew or highly customised.

I KNEW I knew his name from somewhere! Reason... they amde some nice cabinets too. The guy on the right just ash a superlead I think

another underrated tone beast? ampeg B25B (the non-B is kay too, basically the same except for an ungrounded power chord).... this is like a big portaflex circuit and works a treat for studio bass but is also a mean guitar amp. prices are still pretty low... not THAT low, you used to be able to buy them up at guitar shows for $100-200

sounds like an old 800, I used to have one, it has that grind plus upper mid honk accentuated by the cab... I could be wrong, but I don't think I am... tough to tell from a room recording with a camera microphone streamed via youtube though

I've been maintaining her for 15 years already. It seems like less time but I feel certain I bought her in 2002 or 2003.

the mil-spec russian 6BQ5 variant, forget the number, is a good bet for this amp... tubestore.com has been selling 80s nOS ones for ages, they seem to have an inexhaustable supply... the TAD 'STR' version of teh EL84 is simialr though soemwhat elss robust. Both of those 6BQ5 vriants have more of an RCA sound that's bordering on 6V6, and in fixed bais circuit you willt end tog et a more 'fender' response from the amp versus soemthing absed on Mullard or Telefunken EL84 specs. You would want to measure the space you have because the bottles are oversized on both of these EL84 variants.

I love the mil spec Mulalrds and Brimars from the 50s and 60s and use those and GE grey plates in most of my amps these days with the odd Russian tong sol RI or JJ thrown in.

radius and nut width are different, nut width effects string spacing and refers to just wjat it says, the end to end width at the nut... radius refers to the curvature of the fretbaord... 9.5" radius is also not vintage spec, its fender's modern standard but even into the CBS era it was aorund 7.5" which is elss desireable for people who like to ebnd a lot but have low action ebcause the strings will fret out if the action is low as they cotnact the higher aprts of the fretboard. I have fenders with both radiuses and can't say i have any preference. Nut width? i used to prefer 50s wide, but I have some thinner 60s/70s nuts now and really don't care anymore.