mylittleeye's forum posts 212

Same issue, itll only pickup the harmonics generated closest to the pickup. Maybe 2 oud-singles in parallel rwrp well spaced. He probably doesn't have a drill press anyway.

;-p

Oh. That was a joke

Well, yes and no; maybe - but thanks for your patience, as always I learned something from your reply and I'm grateful for that.

Edit: now that I know what oud is I bet you could stick a piezo in the bridge if you're into that kind of sound.

I hugely regret letting myself be talked into a piezo pickup & EQ for an octave mandolin I had made in consolation after a painful breakup. It's a lovely instrument, with a medievally sounding jangle reminiscent of a lute or oud. I still slap myself over the electronics though; I didn't need it, it sounded pants and the nasty looking control panel ruins its beautiful lines - lesson learned.

I've been to too many folk festivals where the sound of piezo'd singer songwriters pinging through the PA never fails to drive me away to the beer tent!

Hey, why not just wind your own oudbucker and ROCK!

(;-p

That's just what I mean to do. Just upgraded my iron from the cheap old junk heirloom that's served the family since the 80's; I'd struggle to solder even 1/4" jacks. The new solder station is night and day better with its magnifying glass and support armatures. Why did I suffer so long! 🤦

The project would be a learning exercise to deepen my very shallow electronics knowledge. I've always been inspired by the words of my former father-in-law "all you need is the right tools and a good book" (Pre Youtube). He was a retired aircraft engineer who wouldn't employ anyone for anything - built half his house, fitted his own kitchen... The LPB-1 (Linear Power Boost) was what I had in mind first but the Range Master sounds perhaps more useful. I'm happy with battery power for ease, and single knob designs for their practical simplicity as much as the minimalist appeal. I also like the punk aesthetic of raw metal casings and Dymo plastic labels!

... There's hardly any time I wouldn't prefer an od1, sd1 or mxr badass od which is just an sd1 with the green rhino treatment. If there's a need for SRV tone I keep the monkey around. I was really surprised that I couldn't tell the centaur apart from the monkey in that video although it was on phone speakers. I would do my own shootout but I wouldn't pay bill finnigan the asking price for a new unit in the 90s and if I had ponied up my barista tips for one and it actually got made I woulda sold it by now and bought a new car. Or part of a new car.

They all sounded pretty much the same bluetoothed through my sound system but the whole episode was really an exercise in showing that those pedals could all be dialled in to sound like a Bad Monkey, rather than the other way around - like a sonic Venn diagram with the Monkey in the middle where everything overlaps. It's a good lesson Josh has slapped us with. All those sheep chasing rainbows and paying $200 on eBerb will likely be mighty disappointed when they discover its not what it's crocked up to be.

One thing I have learned since is Brian Wampler combined his two favourite overdrives into a mutant SD-1/Monkey chimera; his Triumph overdrive. OMG! 😱It's a hybrid of a pedal I covet with the EQ features of the one I own and 'love' already. I'll edit my wishlist and then make myself move on - I really don't need one, I Don't need one, I do NOT need one... I really should stop following that bloody JHS show.

Zoom's ZNR (Zoom Noise Reduction) is one of several built in effects that I consider justify the cost of those little Multistomps on their own. I've read nothing but high praise for it in my researches and even seen it compared favourably with the ISP Decimator and MXR noise gate by folks who've owned both.

So long as one is able face 'crossing the Rubicon' of putting a buffered/digital device on one's board, then other lauded effects include: Spring63, widely praised on the Surf101 forum for being comparable to Boss's brown FRV-1 '63 Fender Reverb - we all know how particular surf guitarists can be about their spring reverbs!; SlowAttack is supposedly better than the Boss SG-1 Slow-Gear; Zoom's sequence filter outclasses the Z.Vex Seek-Wah that it's based on; It can also stand in as a less noisy/tone sucky tuner than a Boss TU-2. There are others - this is all anecdotal of course.

🚬 I fancy the idea of making some of the pedals I covet from DIY clone kits and assembling a board of just iconic one knob pedal clones: - Acapulco OD, MXR Micro chorus, Phase 90; that sort of thing 🌬️

I'm definitely getting into a 'less is more' state of mind these days - cognitive decline an' all that.

Let's reverse the order of our Followings and Gear Pictures so that recent additions appear first instead of last.

That way our Equipboard profiles will be more dynamic and interesting. We would a gain a bit more control of what people see top of those lists because by removing an entry and resubmitting it again it would ideally reappear at the top of the first page instead of at the bottom of last.

I find it quite frustrating that when we look at another member's profile we're presented first with the dozen or so Pictures and Followings that they added when they first joined the site. For any later additions we're forced to scroll through to their later pages; the longer one is an active member the more pages an interested viewer has to negotiate in order to see what the person has contributed most recently.

At the moment, If I have a picture I'd like to have at the top of the list I would have to delete all my previous submissions and arrange my pictures from scratch. This is counter intuitive and doesn't make any sense to me at all!

As well as re-organising photographs so that they appear first I'd like it if, with people/artists I follow who are particularly significant to me, I could have the option of unfollowing and then refollowing them so that they too would appear at the top of my following list.

A more sophisticated option would be to be able to drag and drop entries into order but I'd be content to have some means to control what appears first. Sorting those pages to show most recent entries first seems to me the simplest solution.

Doe this make sense? What say you?

I̶'̶m̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶ ̶a̶s̶h̶a̶m̶e̶d̶

Ah, not really - but most stuff I've accumulated is just baggage now. I mostly use just a cheap parlour acoustic with a soundhole pickup, a cheap multi-effect pedal and a pignose amp. The pignose is so lofi that I reckon it renders any supposed limitations of digital multi-effect modeling moot. I'll plug my Mustang into a Vox Pathfinder amp for special occasions and maybe connect up some 'proper' pedals if I'm feeling energetic.

Now that it's fallen under the JHS Show spotlight, if you have an old unloved Digitech Bad Monkey kicking about in a drawer somewhere, now might be a good time to put it on Ebay! Me, I've been holding onto mine with the idea that someday I'll upgrade to a 'proper' tube screamer but since I've never really been a TS kind of guy anyway I think maybe I can just be content to carry on making do with what I've got. I've heard say that Digitech pedals may soon rise from the dead once more. It'd be interesting to see whether they revisit this old classic.

https://youtu.be/pFOD6s0IRoM

"Why you working so hard?" - Billy tells the story!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyEPAZT3kzk

I feel very privileged to have seen BB king perform twice in 1987. I was so blown away the first time I saw him that I came back to see him again!

I've given up trying to find a recording that captures even a shadow of his presence on stage. I'll share this clip anyway to stay vaguely on the topic of strings.

https://youtu.be/lKf-mU6QrJs

I see that you're into Death Metal so maybe the heavy bottom strings would be a better match if you're commonly using drop tunings - It'll help keep tension as well as emphasis and sustain on the lower strings. If I were in a position that I kept a dedicated drop tuned guitar I'd put 10-52's on that and keep standard tuned guitars with 10-46's.

My string choice depends on what guitar I'm playing, which in turn depends on which genre of music I tend to use it for. So for example my main 'general purpose' guitar gets mainly used for blues. For this reason I put lighter strings on it for easy bending. However, its short-scale neck makes 9s a little too bendy for my taste. Early on I would find myself alternating between 9's and 10s before discovering 9.5s were a thing.

My other electric is a Mustang/Jaguar hybrid. It too has a short-scale neck but the Jaguar Tune-o-matic bridge/trem system it uses was designed when heavier and higher tension flatwound strings were all that were commonly available. Today's Light gauge strings provide less than optimal tension for this particular mechanism so opting for 11s serves the guitar better. I consider this one my Surf guitar and enjoy its firmer feel for playing in a completely different style. My surf guitar is played with a pick and tends towards trem-arm use rather than finger bends, whereas my blues guitar is played fingerstyle with much more string bending.

I see folks on forums declaring their chosen string gauge like it's their football team but of course, our potential 'best' choice can depend on so many factors: the guitar; it's scale; our tuning preference; the string composition; the music style and our playing style as well as our limitations as we develop (or age!).

As the OP says "...I honestly don't really know what sort of pedals I'm looking for, so just want some ideas on a few to try next time I'm at the music shop... I've never used delays or reverbs really if I'm being honest"

I checked out Liam's equipboard before offering a cheap and cheerful solution that would essentially emulate his entire wishlist for $100 with lots more modulations to explore besides. I won't pretend that decade old consumer tech can stand toe to toe with current pro-grade gear but I think there's enough in those zooms to cover ''So long, Scarecrow'' sounds at home or in a pub gig environment.

Your suggestions offer depth at a premium, mine offers breadth on a budget - we're all good here! :-)

A bit of pedal history that passed me by - what a tragic loss at just 37! That's some dreamy reverb though!

I wouldn't want or recommend a G5 - It's a different animal

The Multistomps are 1/5th the size, 2/5ths the price and have 172 available effects (52 more than the G5) Whether I'm travelling with my guitar or slouched on the couch, a Pignose, a pedal sized MS-50g and 8 AA batteries are all I need.

It does offer an emulated Strymon BlueSky Shimmer mode reverb and I've read that its Corona Tri-Chorus effect sounds pretty close to the mark.

The reddit community I mentioned before has figured out MIDI functionality

The main thing the humble Multistomps have going for them is that they are such sonic swiss army knives. For a mere $100 they punch well above their weight - granted they might be considered relatively lofi by 'professional' standards of today but the two strymons you mention together cost 10x the price.

With that said, there are several standard effects in its suite that are widely regarded as better than the originals. For instance Zoom's sequence filter has the flavor of a Z.Vex Seek-Wah (~£300) but with more features than the original! Likewise the Zoom's Swell effect, similar to a Boss Slow-Gear SG-1 (~£500 Ebay) is widely regarded as better than the original. And hasn't Boss just brought out it's new $169 SL-2 pedal, a "compact sized version" of its old SL-20 slicer? Well, the compact sized zoom was emulating it first for effectively 1% of the cost (172/$100)

It's a pedal to upgrade from, sure, but it's a keeper too, to stand in for any other effect type one doesn't already own. I'll not hesitate to recommend it to anyone as a first pedal, lounge rig or gig bag backup.

Here's an avowed SHOEGAZER supporting it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzISDrPVs_M

And here's 60 Cycle Hum suitably impressed.

https://youtu.be/sNgoUtx0CHA?t=176

The YT comments are worth checking out

" I honestly don't really know what sort of pedals I'm looking for, so just want some ideas on a few to try next time I'm at the music shop."

If you're starting from scratch then I second the Zoom MS-70 CDR recommendation. It's a great first pedal for starting out. It has all manner of chorus, delay and reverbs based on many well known 'standard' effects. There's also a huge community of enthusiasts building patches for it to emulate effects you'd pay hundreds for. Granted it may not be as refined as pro-grade gear but it's a great way to get a feel for what's possible and to fill in for effect pedals you don't yet have. It's a testament that the multistomps have been around for over a decade now. I still don't think there is a standalone multieffect unit that's so compact and yet offers so much 💥/ 💵

I've assembled a table of the Zoom Multistomp effect equivalents here.

"a 100% analog polyphonic synthesizer with an unique twist. To use only vacuum tube era technology from the 1930s.

Over 300 neon gas diodes create the sound you hear. Pretty awesome for technology from 100 years ago."

https://musicians.today/@[email protected]/109730557276813747

Since twitter has fallen from grace, can we have a Mastodon link box now please?

https://musicians.today/@Pol

SHOEGAZER has used the CDR and MS-50g extensively - a good YT channel to watch

https://youtu.be/wzISDrPVs_M

Which end of gain street do you live? I love my Pathfinder 15r for its clean to edge of breakup sounds. If I were more into distortion I suspect I'd probably Rrrrrock! with the Marshall.

Here's the CDR up against the Line 6 particle reverb it seeks to emulate. it gets serious kudos in the comments, supposedly from the original line 6 designer who created the effect. There's also a Strymon Blue Sky emulation and reverse delay and reverb effects too. so I reckon a Multistomp will have you covered!

https://youtu.be/6UFXiXJJCzk?t=24

Cool! I'll be interested to know how you get along.

What will you be outputting through? My MS-50g usually goes straight into the front of a Vox Pathfinder or Pignose; I see little point creating some mongrel tone through an additional amp sim so I just use an overdrive effect to modify my amps natural sound. Usually it's the Dynamic Drive or Sweet Drive I use (BD-2 or SweetHoneyOD emulations). I usually dwell around edge of breakup tones and the distortion I get seems nice and dynamic. I've seen the amp sims and distortions occasionally getting a bit of bad press. I have the impression that it's high gain fans who find the Zoom distortions wanting and I wonder if there might be an element of user error there too; leaving amp and cab sims in the chain where they're just not needed - less is more!

I have an unusual HiFi speaker with an instrument jack at the back. It doesn't distort at all so I'll typically add one of the Multistomp amp sims to the chain when I plug into that. For this speaker I find better results come from ensuring the amp sim's built in cabinet simulation is switched off (it's on by default) since we have a physical speaker and cab present already. There's little point in adding cab sim chicanery unless plugging into a PA mixer or DI to DAW.

Here's a shimmer patch from the Reddit Multistomp community - There's a ton more where that came from. I've particularly enjoyed some of the LoFi and glitchy tape delay patches I found there. - Have fun!

https://www.reddit.com/r/zoommultistomp/comments/9oeeb4/shimmer_patch/

Sounds like the CDR would be up your street; out the box it focuses on Chorus, Delay & Reverb (CDR) but keep in mind that software is available that lets you pick and mix the effects between the CDR and MS-50g. The MS-50g is marginally cheaper if you don't need stereo inputs and you can swap out any amps and distortions you don't need for modulation effects from the CDR.

I don't think anyone can go wrong with a Zoom Multistomp as a first pedal. There is so much versatility for their size and price and even though some effect emulations might miss the mark there are plenty more that are perfectly presentable and a good few that are worth the price of the pedal on its own. One or two effects are arguably better even than the pedal they are copied from!.

Although I do have stand alone pedals, for convenience I tend just to use my MS-50g as it has all my favourite settings saved. It's the perfect portable pedal board in a box for travelling with my pignose amp;

There's also a thriving community of patch builders on Reddit creating patches of various musicians rigs, and other hard to achieve effects.

I've assembled a spreadsheet listing most of the built in effects next to some real world alternatives, with a column of individual ratings for each effect based on reports from forums as well as my own impressions.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lRoIwHeoNjIUWMY7Tuwto8gQDuwIqi_4OJiL7cuoydo

I only have one synth - I indulged in an OP-1

I'm a folk/blues musician foremost but I also like to dabble in keyboard, synthesis and sampling to break out of my rut.

Music serves me as a means to escape computer screens so this tiny all-in-one DAW-less DrumMachine/Synth/4track helps achieve that. I've got no professional aspirations - Self-soothing, unpolished, LoFi, punk folk is where I'm at.

All my gear is small and portable - I like to travel light!

Can you kick it? ...Yes you can!

( Anasounds Element )

https://youtu.be/KdgvfGQL-Q0?t=134

Stick with it... https://youtu.be/vJV6yRk1vKM

I was astonished to learn, during my RAF days that Nimrod maritime defense aircraft still used vacuum tube technology even in the late 90's. Two reasons were cited: - 1. The kit worked fine so there was no reason to upgrade. 2. Tubes are much more robust in the face of EMP Electo-Magnetic Pulse.

Earnest preppers would do well to keep this in mind when choosing between digital, solid state, or tube amps. One will be in a much better position to Rock On following a nuclear detonation with tube amps in one's inventory.

Yeah, where'd it go? Even if it it didn't work quite like what it oughta it strikes me as a fun tool/experiment to explore , even if it does come with caveats.

The marvel of it's time...

https://youtu.be/sxxVDXIiz9Q

I regard them all as part of the marketing merry-go-round. As a purely recreational guitarist I don't feel any pressure to innovate my own sound since my idols all made their noise using 'classic' drives, distortions and modulations. As far as I can tell most modern overdrives just seem to regurgitate the same ol' circuits, on a budget or offer tweaked specs and/or alternative control options. I was interested to see Kelley and Josephine of the Breeders' Premier Guitar Rig Rundown - they play pretty much the exact same gear as they did in their 90's heyday. That does motivate me to master what I own already, rather than chasing 🌈 after 'better' gear.

As a strictly amateur player, the Zoom Multistomp MS-50g has my tone and modulation explorations pretty much covered for the forseeable. With its 172 available effects I'm able to assemble a huge spectrum of tones from clean to filthy - it's super versatile! The Multistomps have a well established community of tone builders sharing their own takes on iconic guitar tones as well as more out there stuff; some fine LoFi effect patches for example.

Some of my own patches cover: - White Rabbit, She Sells Sanctuary, Hound Dog Taylor, RL Burnside, Chuck Berry, The Cramps, ZZTop, Mudhoney...

It's a tidy little device and while a few of its effects might be a bit hit and miss there are several that individually could be considered worth the (£$€100) price of the pedal by themselves! The 63 Spring Reverb, and Zoom Noise Reduction modules immediately come to mind, even its acoustic simulator is presentable.

https://equipboard.com/items/zoom-ms-50g-multistomp

There was a time when this sort of music was anathema to me but it's funny how learning an instrument can rearrange one's perspective and taste. I draw inspiration from just about anything now but I particularly enjoy going back to the roots of it all.

Even if Old Time ain't your thing you might enjoy this for the vintage gear spotting!

The whole documentary's a great snapshot of the times... 🪕 🎸 🥁 🎤 🎛️ 🖭

https://youtu.be/OlneqC0mVsk?t=1548

Control-Z

So I've been filling out some slots in a favourite artist's empty profile with reference to a Premier Guitar article which at first seemed pretty thorough. Subsequently in the comments it's suggested the submission could be improved so I dug deeper and in doing so I find that items referenced in the article do not match items I can see being played on YouTube. For instance the artists Gibson ES-339 has two fewer controls than usual and is in fact a Gibson ES-339 studio which is listed separately on EB, and their Princeton Reverb is a significantly different version to the one I selected (thinking it was generic/duplicated). I want to go back to refine the submission, however presently I can find no way to fix the error by actually changing the item submitted for the correct alternative.

This has happened with me a few times now and no doubt it is as frustrating to admins as it is to me; getting a submission slightly wrong and having no way to revise it myself. I resolve in future to cross check my own submissions more thoroughly but sometimes the sources are scarce or else conflicting but verifiable information can emerge subsequently. As someone who enjoys making submissions here I'd welcome the facility to act on comments and correct any errors that are spotted by folks here with a keener eye/deeper knowledge.

Freddy without question - no contest! Even though I'm no particular fan, I can't think of any performance that comes close to Queens legendary Live Aid set!

Another fine BBC radio documentary - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct1rln I don't have much to say about it other than I found it an interesting overview and a good listen whilst pottering about the house.

I don't know if folks here are interested in this sort of thing - occasionally a gem comes up that I think's worthwhile sharing but I'll stop bringing them here if it's inappropriate for the forum?

I've been enjoying the D'addario NYXL 9.5 - 44 strings on my Mustang Special. They feel good under my fingers, easy enough to bend without being as springy on the short scale as the 9's it first arrived with. To my unrefined ear they sound as good as one might expect, even after a couple of months daily play. With that said I did perceive that they generally sounded brighter and more trebly than I'm used to and I've found that the humbuckers, certainly in split coil mode, benefitted from lowering the pole pieces under the G and B strings to tame their stridency.

Since I got wise that higher ain't necessarily better I'm still tinkering with pickup height to find my personal sweet spot. This Fender's Enforcer Wide Range HB reissues are quite hot so I'm curious to explore how low I can go and how that changes the tone.

I would've been happy to stick with the 9.5s but I thought I might line up a set of NYXL Balanced Tensions just to try before I settle on a favourite. I paid £12 for one set of 10's but what arrived was a five pack! ...looks like I'll be playing balanced 10-46's for a while yet 🙄😹

Gaaahh! I'd pasted the link from my favourites! - I've corrected it now; hopefully it works outside the UK: It's a BBC Radio documentary - much of the early work was done using just tapes.

Sculptress of Sound: The Lost Works of Delia Derbyshire (1Hr)

Just thought there might be some interest here in the work of one of the BBC's pioneering Radiophonic Engineers.

In 1970's Britiain this was what we all thought the future would sound like...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rl2ky

I can't seem to add Höfner to the brand list - Is it the ö that's the issue?

I have a lot of stuff saved - much of it is for reference only however. So for example I might have a Proco Rat listed and next to it I'll have premium and budget alternatives but I'll most likely just buy the one. Amazon's wishlist feature is a bit more useful to me for this however since it allows one assign a priority - "lowest" "low" medium (blank) "high" "highest" and to add notes to remind myself why I wanted it, cite sources etc.

I'd like to see Thomann.de linked. Their huge European website is truly international €-£-$ and delivers worldwide. I'll rarely buy anything from the US on account of the really high postage fees. EU, China and Japan are much more reasonable in that respect, sometimes even free!

On a similar theme the BBC also broadcast a radio documentary on women pioneers in electronic music. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09n3s04