Ramblings of a mad musician

In the past few weeks or so, i have thrown myself head first into the world of “Do it yourself”.

I can hear people thinking, “Brendan!  DIY??? BWAHAHAH!!”

Yes thats right, im not the outdoors “Fully Loaded Man” type of person and really, who cares.

Never the less, its lead me down the track of re-learning all the stuff i learned in school and at home with numerous electronics kits and what not.

What ive been looking for is the right box to “enhance” my Marshall tone and found that in Australia, enhancing your tone is totally and utterly abhorrent’ly overpriced.

At first I thought, “Hmm, these pedals are rather expensive.”  Then i looked at the price of the Australian Dollar vs the US dollar and was gobsmacked.  At the time there was about 8 cents difference in value yet prices of parts and equipment in Australia are almost TRIPLE the cost they are in the USA.

I mean, REALLY, i can buy a unit from the USA, have it shipped here in less than 4 days (considering it takes 2 WEEKS to get book from a shop in Sydney) for almost a 1/4 the price of buying it here in Australia.

Thanks to our wonderful distributors and resellers, which i must say are in a tight spot.  Yes they need to make money too but there is ZERO need to try and extract a full dole cheque out of some unemployed musician trying to make a success of him or herself just for a simple effects unit that has less components in it as a TV REMOTE!! Which also explains why you can talk down the price of equipment at a music shop too, but you still need to have the money to begin with <end rant!>

I digress

I set about searching for more pedals and different designers etc and stumbeled across http://www.diyguitarist.com/

I saw all the pedals and variants he has built and it got me thinking, “This looks like something to investigate”. I moved my search in to schematics for effect pedals and found that there really wasnt much too them.  Ive never opened a pedal and had a look at the PCB before so it never crossed my mind to investigate and try this out myself.

After all the reading I did on Pauls website,  it lead me to the word of DIY, DO IT YOURSELF.  So i set about searching for more information on DIY effect units on Google and was swamped!  The wealth of information is staggering for the diy guitarist out there and there is SO much to learn.

I continued to search for some more information, videos and documents on DIY guitar effects and  found this video on youtube (a first of many DIY vids) belonging to Brian Wampler of Wampler Pedals http://www.wamplerpedals.com

I saw this video and BANG! i was hooked.  In the past three weeks ive had my head buried in books, schematics and even maths!  It has consumed alot of my time but has been a great experience of learning.

I bought a copy of Brians e-book on how to build effects and found what i needed to get started on building and designing my circuits, starting off with Brians Clean Booster circuit.

I tried this circuit out today with the Marshall and the Sunn T412 at rehearsals and OH MY! What a boost, albeit without any buffering or any other effects in the way or long cables.  The “thump” this thing gave to the sound was impressive to say the least for a basic prototype.

I made some changes to the original design in the ebook using the suggested LM386 IC plus added a high pass filter above 19kHz and a low pass at around 105hz.  This removes alot of rubbish not needed and trying to tighten up the tone to get what i want out of it.

Its quite basic at the moment but im sure it will get better as i go with the development of the unit, never the less, all this electronics stuff does not stop me from sussing out other pedals more for tonal ideas.

Stay tuned for the developments as i progress trying to make my tonal presence more alive sounding than dead digital

Wampler pedals have a couple of really good boutique pedals that are quite interesting:

EGO Compressor

PlexiDrive

Pinnacle Reissue

These are all great sounding overdrive pedals although along with your atypical Australian pricing.

Stay tuned for the next part of my quest for a “more than satisfactory” tone.

Well continuing my quest for the sound that i want, the research continues.

The Marshall is sounding hot as ever, except for the annoying hum, which turns out it may well be either a leakage on one of the circuit boards between the valve stage and the ouput or bias drift from the valves, or many other issues, who knows until John has a look at it.  But apparently this is has been noticed as being a problem with the Marshall DSL’s and TSL’s of late.

So the amp is off to the shop for some minor repairs……. Boooh!

In the meantime, the search continues for the sound i want.  Upon some research, i may well have found what im looking for but will need to try it out and not many people sell it (after trawling their dealer list)

Xotic AC Booster

This may be the ticket.  Ive heard alot of demo’s of this and it appears to be what i may want.  It sounds pretty damned good too.  On further research, it happens to be one of the three types of overdrive that Paul Gilbert uses.  Now i love Pauls sound and his use of the amp overdrive + his various drives.

He uses one for his shredding, one for his rockier, slower and more melodic melodies and rhythms plus another one for lesser rhythmical tones.

From the reviews ive read and heard it appears to have great response to volume control as well.  I like being able to explore lower gain “chunk” tones for my band The Cilikis Progressio Project and be able to provide a wide range of dynamics in the solos and more rockier tracks rather than having a common and sorely overdone “move out of the way, the leading edge of my sound will chop your head off” tone.

Well that sound is bit over the top for what i want (the chop ya head off metal sound) but this may be path i might need to go down to try and cement a sound thats a huge, phat rocky sound yet can be played without sounding “too” metal.

Ahh the elusive goal of the guitarist in the search for perfect tone continues……

I have been playing guitar of almost 19 years now and one thing ive come to appreciate is other guitar players.

One of them in particular is my favourite player, Mr Paul Gilbert.  Former guitarist of 80′s band RacerX and Mr Big (with Billy Sheehan etc..)

Paul is notible for his work as being more or less (well to me atleast), the “Shredders’ shredder”

Each time he plays, each note is clear and concise.  Very clean style of shredding unlike many many others who will remain nameless as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the shredding community around the planet (yes you know who you are!)

As a guitarist myself, one thing that stands out the most from Pauls playing that has made ALOT of in-roads to my own playing is his sensible use of overdrive and picking style etc…  Very clean cut and distinctive.  I hold my guitar plectrums exactly the same way.

Take this clip for example:

His description of the excercise where he uses a low input from the guitar thus giving a semi overdriven feel.  Each note he plays is clear as a bell. Even at full a overdriven sound, its *STILL* clear as!

Using this idea in my own playing has paid off over the years.  Being able to provide a listener with shredding but actually giving them something else to think about other than just “oh yay, another player shredding on the fretboard and boring people to hell with the same crap everybody ELSE can do”

Sweep picking has become rife in the guitar players arsenal as well. Paul admits to not being the best at it and its something he doesnt do as much if ever.  His approach to arpeggios is something that other guitarists especially the constant sweepers out there.  Yes sweeping is really cool and fun to do but for **** SAKE! TRY SOMETHING ELSE! Here! Try the Paul Gilbert method of arpeggiating. Not only does it sound cooler, it looks cooler as well. (For the non shredder, not only is shredding on the guitar fun for the player its great to watch as well)

Shredding is not hard to do no matter what some players say, but one thing that IS hard to do is getting players to learn take a step back and see the full picture of the music and the focus of what is trying to be portrayed by the music.

Im not being critical of other players, per se, as there are many other players out there with different techniques and styles of sound and picking etc, that do sound clear as well.  Take Vinne Moore for example or Gary Moore.

Vinne Moore (now plays for UFO) has a great style to listen too.  Gary Moore, although some may dispute his shredding credentials, is still a great player and a great demonstration of feel and control.

Guitarists can stand there all day playing their phrygian scale over a metallica’ish E5/F5 progression till the cows come home, BUT if your solo has no feel or substance to it, you will just fit into the, “ive seen others do that” category.

Im not telling people to slow down or not, just that if you want to stand out from the crowd, be original  and try adding some feel into your solos and other melodies.

There is nothing wrong with a well placed peice of silience and some added “cool” to your solos.

Guitarists I recommend listening too and taking note of from a soloing point of view”

Paul Gilbert, Vinnie Moore, Vernon Reid, Alex Skolnick, Marty Friedman, Joe Satriani, Steve Morse, Gary Moore, Eric Johnson

Some to listen to and enjoy but try not to replicate like everyone else tries to:

Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Herman Li, but  to name just a few.
They are awesome players but puhlease! Just listen to many many more people instead of trying to replicate them “exactly”!! use a bit of outside of the box thinking!

Just to end this off

I think Paul explains this VERY well.

Rhythm is everything.