Boss RT-20 Review

I've been searching for a good Leslie rotary speaker emulator for a couple of years now. I couldn't ever find what I wanted though in pedal form. I toyed around with a few ideas and a few different pedals, but was never satisfied. I didn't need a perfect emulation, just a "close enough" one.

I bought, modified, then sold a Danelectro Rocky Road pedal to give it the Leslie vibe. Not what I was after, especially with the crappy case. Still I have to admit it was kinda fun to play that thing after the mods. I think this was the one I did. Not even close enough, but a fun little pedal and cheap to boot! Like I said: Sold it.

So then I knew this was not going to be something I could easily get away with. I went to the local Guitar Center (sigh) and tried out the Boss RT-20. Ughh, hated it.

I then went for a search on the interwebs and arrived at a Line6 RotoMachine module for a Tone Core pedal. Okay, first off, those first-run Tone Core pedals are ridiculously heavy! I had to cover the entire back w/ Velcro to assure it wouldn't come off the board, and still it pulled away. Second, the pedal "docks" are finicky in more than one way: They don't always work on the first click after power on (witnessed many times.) Third, they MUST have a dedicated, isolated DC input, or your whole board will inherit nasty noise. Batteries are eaten up quickly too. Still, I wanted that sound.

I LOVED a couple of the sounds I could get out of it, but when I practiced live with it there was just no way. It has a couple of major drawbacks. First, the Gain also controls the Level. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why does Line6, after all these years in the biz, STILL carelessly design stuff this way? Really. Second, there was a severe problem with the Bass & Horn mix: Turn too far one way, you lose all the volume and have to readjust the Gain. And Vice Versa. ARRRRGGGGhhh! Incredibly way too interactive. No happy medium. Third it was far too sensitive to different guitar inputs. If I set it up perfectly for a Tele, then it would be overbearing when I plugged in the Les Paul.

...Off to ebay it went...

Now fast forward a couple years and we go back to the RT-20. Here's one of those times when YouTube comes in very handy. :) I listened to a couple of clips and figured if I could find one at a decent price it would be worth a go.

It doesn't sound anything like I remember at Guitar Center. Now, the reason I hated it so much at GC was that it was in one of those awful displays, and pumping through something like a Roland Street Cube or some nonsense like that. Play a pedal through 30 other pedals with buffers into a practice amp, and you'll see what I mean. ...Or just visit Guitar Center for the full effect. It takes away any and all character of a pedal. Poor, poor pedals...

I plugged in my new (used) RT-20 on MY pedalboard with MY amp (having placed the pedal in a true bypass loop, of course) and was quickly satisfied. Bonus was that mode IV on the pedal is a Univibe. Woot! Didn't know or care about that, but it's a nice extra.

Anyway, this thing plays nice with all my other pedals and guitars. Switching guitars is not a problem.

I dial the included overdrive off completely, as my other Dist/OD pedals work VERY well with it. (Far better sounding than the built in OD.) And I'm still in love with it after a couple of months. Plus current draw is only 85mA or so. Not bad.

One huge thing is that I love to constantly ramp the speed up and down. Where this thing wins is that the horn & bass ramp at different speeds: Horn more quickly than bass. This is what emulates the sound so well, even in mono.

I'm very happy with Mode I. I don't like II or III, so I can't really comment on them. I also have rarely found myself readjusting any of the dials, whereas the RotoMachine was a constant fight.

I also found myself using the "brake" which is a great feature. I thought it was gimmicky at first, but "starting" up a swell from zero sounds so rich... I love it!

I haven't tried it in stereo yet, and I wonder if this would work well with bass. I would think so, since you can also use it w/ keyboards.

Anyway, give this thing a shake if you're looking for that rotary sound. I think it's the best option in the price range. Have fun!

Magic Jack Review

I reserve the right to remove this post at any time, as it's just a stupid blog post anyway. :)

So I ordered Magic Jack to see for myself just how much money I could save by getting rid of my home phone line. I upgraded my DSL to 3 Mbps to ensure I'd have better call quality. (Supposedly this wasn't necessary, but I wanted an excuse to upgrade my bandwidth a little as the 1.5 Mpbs was kind of lacking.)

I also got my "latest and greatest" PC up and running (fresh XPSP3 OS install) and tweaked out to top performance.

Also I've been in Telecom for the past dozen years or so, and am well versed in any troubleshooting that may have arisen when the time came to install it.

So let's start with the install, then the performance, results, and overall impressions. Then I'll list my pros & cons.

The install was simple. You plug it in, a splash screen comes up (that you cannot minimize.) It takes a couple files, including .exe's, and dumps them onto your c:\temp directory on the PC. (Note I said "your." It's profile specific. I'll write about that later.) It puts a shortcut for the Magic Jack loader on your desktop and you can launch it whenever you want. You enter your registration info, and in about 2 minutes you're up and running. Really, it was that easy. The rest is semantics... E911 registration only took a couple more minutes. (A little 911 "light" goes green on the display when you're registered to your address.)

Now come the fun parts. I logged in another profile (my wife's,) and the shortcut wasn't/couldn't be displayed. Not ideal, as the interface would be nice to see for whomever is logged in. Honestly though, I think the interface (display) is only needed for initial install. Plus, it likes to pop up annoyingly (to me at least) when an incoming call arrives. Reminds me of the several call centers over the years that I've done installations on ;)

To get around this, and ensure it starts up when the PC starts without my intervention, I made a scheduled task to always run it on startup. The added benefit of doing it this way was that the interface screen no longer appears nor pops up when calls come in. Now that that's done, I can live with it more comfortably.

Test calls were a piece of cake. They sounded far, far better than my standard analog telco calls, which really suprised me. I expected at least a little jitter due to choppy sampling or bandwidth issues, but for the past couple of weeks, it's sounded perfect. Now once in a while, when my cordless phone goes off-hook (that means the green button people) it won't receive dial tone, but I've never had to cycle that more than once.

So once you get it set up the way YOU want it, you can't beat it for the price. Really.

Pros:
-Great call quality (actually suprisingly good)
-Free Long Distance & e911 registration.
-Free voicemail & Call NUMBER id (not true caller ID, but close)
-Free call forwarding.
-Can take it anywhere you want and call for free!
-It's $20 a year!
-NO MORE RIDICULOUS TAXES on your ATT/Telco bill!

Cons:
-Can't really do much w/ voicemail options (changing the default 4 rings to 3 or 6 or 6 would be nice) ***This negates your existing VoiceMail machine if it can't pick up before 4 rings***
-Can only be run when PC (and Cable Modem/DSL router) is on. (Buy a UPS people! It's 2010!)
-Cannot port number from old existing number, but this is supposed to be available in August 2010 for a fee!
-Caller ID won't display alpha characters, only the number. This is because Magic Jack has no way to interface with your local Central Office, which is were CID programmming is done for your land line. Keep that in mind. May be a dealbreaker.

I'm also on the fence about the way voicemail is run. You have to call it, like you would with your cell, to retrieve messages. It also sends a notifier to your email. In other words, there is no indicator you have messages unless you check your mail or call it. To be honest, that's in a way quite forward thinking, as everything is moving in that direction anyway. VM machines will die off soon with the advent of smarter mobile phones with people's constant online presence. Why engineer in features that are losing popularity and function anyway?

So it's got some obstacles you may want to consider, but it's primary function ultimatel goal does work as advertised. I think I'll stick with it for good once I get my existing number ported to it. I can live w/ the Caller ID and voicemail items for now. I mostly use my cell now anyway. :)

More Zoom 508 Delay Fun

Sorry it's been a few weeks. Busy lately. And yes I promise I'll post pics of my pedalboard. I've been re-doing (read: acquiring) some pedals on it so I wanted to get the right pics up. I'll get to that in another post. Boss RT-20 review coming soon!

Onto the Zoom... I can't believe I tried selling this pedal recently. I won't do that again. I was thinking I needed to get rid of it to get a Boss DD-20 back on my board. I changed my mind after I "found" a setting on the Zoom that made the universe align for me. This setting would be the Stereo setting. Not that I use stereo on my board, but the stereo apparently is more of an analog emulator. Actually I'm thinking the stereo is split w/ the digital delay on the right, and the "rolled off" sound panning left, which rolls off Soooooo nicely when I dial the tone control down. I could be wrong here and maybe that's what both channels sound like. ...Anyway, I like it.

It now sounds more like that Deluxe Memory Man sound, minus the noise and modulation. Only with this, I have up to 4 seconds to play with, not 330ms! And tap tempo! Woot!

To be honest, I liked the DMM sound on the DL4 but HATED that pedal (size, volume drop, etc) and that's what this sounds like. I love playing a big fat droning chord, then switching seamlessly to the next patch and playing over it. It sounds so amazingly analog, minus the noise. I just couldn't believe it. It really made me feel better after I just sold that Ibanez CD10 Compact Delay.

I get some funny looks for having that pedal, but it's everything I need except for a looper (it's only 4 seconds.) I really wish they still made it. Plus having that built in tuner is handy at times. There's no knobs on it, so one may hesitate to be "push-programming" like crazy, but I never have to do it in a gig and it's easy to edit anyway. I just hope it keeps on lasting me forever.

Music Appreciation Friday!

Actually this should be "depreciation." Stumbled across these human types a few years ago. To this day, I still don't know if I'm allowed to laugh or cry at this. It's THAT bad.


If you REALLY want to punish yourself, watch the interview

You'll be impressed with such words as "Manitials" and see how they came up with their awesome name.

"We love you Eqypt!"

"Stick it in our your earyeaha!"

"We wanted to form an original band, that's like nothing else, like bands (of the) 70's and 80's."

Pedal Saga Part 3: The new case

Before I begin: Sorry I haven't posted pics yet. I will soon. Hopefully by EOW. :)

Okay so onto part 3. I've covered how well George L's took care of me, how well PedalTrain took care of me, and now I'll share how well LyT Pedalboards took care of me.

Now that I've got this brand spanking new PT-Pro nylon bag with my replaced board, I've decided I don't like it. There's nothing wrong with it, but I can't really stack it or have anything on top of it. Standing it up sideways isn't really ideal either. It's fine, but I was ready to move to a sturdier solution.

If you so desire to purchase just a hard case for the board, PedalTrain will redirect you to a nice guy by the name of Ryan Nixon at www.guitareffectspedals.com

I had a hard time finding the link, so it here it is.

Now, that's a good price. Even for a cheapskate like me, an ATA flight case at that price w/ free shipping is insanely good. I almost bought it.

What held me back was the size. In case you haven't noticed, the PT-Pro board is already large: 32x16x3.5 inches. The case was 39x19x9 inches. 7 inches longer and 3 inches wider is usually a good thing (that's what she said,) but not for me in this instance.

The PT ATA case is also a whopping 32 pounds! Add to that a buttload of pedals (including the metric-ton Planet Waves pedal tuner,) some cabling, and throw in my guitar & power cabling to boot, oh and the Supa Charger on the underbelly. Now I've got a manly-heavy board. I'd wager fully loaded that would be about 70-75 pounds.

Now, I'm a big guy and I used to throw lumber as a carpenter for days on end, but I still don't wanna be worn out dragging a pedalboard heavier than my amp up 2 flights of stairs for each practice. So on a search I went! (Cue goofy pied-piper music in the land of Non as I journey through the internetz...)

I arrived at Lyt Pedalboards and chose this guy The LyTCase 32 model.

But not without some research first of course. I'll make a long story short, but they worked hard to ensure my PT-Pro would fit if I bought it. It did. Maybe 3/16" to spare in both directions. Just the right amount of headroom. Just a perfect, non-oversized, just right, fit. The PT-Pro sits inside the "lid" (or the shallow part.) I just leave it there when I unpack for practice. I'm experimenting with some egg crate foam inside to keep it from "tipping" inside the case. (It doesn't move much.) Once I settle on what I like, I'll hot glue the foam to the inside and it will be all done.

So these boards are the PERFECT option for me. Not ATA rated for sure, but solid. Especially when you lock it all down, the case squares up nicely and does not wiggle at all. I have never liked butterfly latches because it's too easy to bend those hooks if you don't line it up perfectly first, but oh well. I'll have to be careful. Oh, and they are supposedly rolling out an ATA case soon.

One last thing about LyT: They were kind enough, even after all that measuring for me, to offer me a scratch & dent case for about $20 off. Of course I bought that one (told you I was a cheapskate) and for the life of me can't see any damage on the case.

I've already started putting stickers on the case. I promise pics will be coming soon.

Remember "Guitar Shop?"

Does anyone remember this periodical? It had a short life, and was only bi-monthly at that, but boy did I love it. It was a magazine dedicated solely to gear. But not gearhead-nerdy stuff. Just good high level guitar gear reviews that hit the high points and scattered in the most necessary of specs to help you along your way. A great idea for a mag (I bought it faithfully at the news stands in the mid 90's) but it just didn't seem to catch on.

There was no music lessons or tablature, which I don't care for nowadays anyway. They had the latest gear at the time, which is a fun walk down memory lane for me. As noted in my nostalgic review of GFTPM, very few ads had websites. (Phone numbers, addresses and faxes were the preferred method of contact.)

Anyhoo, the crux of the mag was what was beyond the guitar: The shop, if you will. We all knew Gilmour or Page played modified guitars, but what of the amps, effects, etc? Most of us were in the dark about those things up until the 80's, but even then we had mostly just reports of reports of rumours of what gear Knopfler, Townshend, Angus Young or Clapton used. This mag put some street-cred into their articles, as they often went straight to these guys themselves, or the next best thing (or sometimes even better!) the guitar techs.

One gem of the mag was Lisa Sharken: a regular contributor and self-professed Les Paul addict. She is/was a great writer who was very honest and talked about things a guitarist should consider when they're struggling with their tone. Anyone see or know what she's up to? She might be writing for Guitar World for all I know, as Guitar Shop was a Cherry Lane publication that was absorbed into Guitar World's domain.

So if you find some back issues somewhere of Guitar Shop, grab them. Great stuff in there, and it seems to be every bit as relevant now as it was 15 years ago.

Pedal Saga Part 2: The PedalTrain Board

Moving along with my pedalboard story, the PedalTrain PT-Pro is my board of choice. Mainly because I found it at the Musicians Friend outlet (may it rest in peace... wait a minute what am I saying? I miss that place. Jerks.) for a great price. :)

It was in good shape, with the nylon bag, but had a couple of hairline fractures across 2 of the front welds. No biggie, it wasn't going to break anytime soon. I bought it for a reduced price and went on my way.

Fast forward a couple of years now. I was packing up for band practice, loading cables into the front side pouch. Went to zip it up, and the zipper kept on going. It was like a knife blade was suddenly built into the zipper. That whole front pouch just fell off and I was sighing. When I got to practice that night, I removed the board from the wounded bag and saw those cracked welds had cracked all the way through now, and the board was begging to break.

I contacted PedalTrain the next day and asked if they could repair it, what the price would be, if I could exchange it pro-rata'd, etc. I was not prepared for this response: "Sorry for all the issues with your board and bag.... ...Please email me your shipping address and we (will) ship you a replacement on the whole Pedaltrain, bag included. There will also be a call tag in the box for you send back the defective unit free of charge."

No questions asked, no deposit on the new one, not even return shipping charges! To top it off, I asked if I could purchase a mounting kit for my BBE Supa Charger to put beneath the board. (I'd tried velcroing it to the bottom. Fail.) They replied immediately that the boards come standard with mounting kits for VoodooLabs Power Supplies, which also acommodate Supa Chargers. Foshizzle??? WOOT!

It arrived in a couple of days, with a new, more reinforced bag, the mounting kit, and plenty of new velcro. Man, these guys sure do want good referrals! I'm so glad to see them stand behind their products! I'm impressed. I mounted the Supa Charger (ridiculously easy if you can operate a drill,) velcro'd the board, and was set for mounting ze' pedals! As with the George L's, I don't know if this is indicative of how PedalTrain treats every customer, but they bent over backwards for me.

I got some of those tie-wrap mounts (pack of ten for like $3.00 @ HD) and went to work wiring up the power & fresh George L's cables underneath the board. It looks very nice and neat, especially with the Supa Charger beneath the board now.

I used to think "anal-retentive" cabling on a board was overrated, but I now find it incredibly necessary and rewarding.

The next post will have some pics, and more about the case I purchased for it.

Jump!

VH's 1984 left an indelible mark on me, as you can see. God bless you, St. Sanders, for making these videos.

Pedal Saga Part 1: Oh George, you had me at "brass plugs"

Sorry it's been so long. I never meant to piss off all two of my readers.

I'm probably gonna have to divide this up into several posts. Sometimes a story is better after it's complete. Sometimes it's better as it's occuring. Sometimes is fun sometimes.

Here's the gear rundown: Lots of pedals. Some are DIY. Some are stock. Most are modified, at a minimum. PedalTrain PT-Pro board. Mostly George L's cabling. BBE Supa Charger for all the power needs.

So my story starts here: Band practice a few weeks back. I was having a weird intermittent problem where my tuner (Planet Waves Pedal Tuner PT01) would fritz out and suddenly start rebooting. (Yes, I said reboot. Deal with it.) Okay, that sucked. Bad tuner right? Yanked it out of the chain, all was well for a while.

Every so often, my signal starts to come and go all throughout my pedalboard. I never could isolate it. Great. Is it one of the looper pedals I built? A bad/loose jack on a pedal? Cabling? My power supply?

Of course the first thing I do is doubt myself and my pedal making abilities, for some stupid reason. After thinking about it for awhile, I realize there's probably more than one thing going on.

First thing I need to do is see if my tuner really is bad. Nope. It's fine. Plugged it in by itself, no problems. Works like the first day I bought it. Hmm... I've got a feeling I've not powered this guy correctly. More on that in another post.

Second thing I need to do is check my cabling. Now, lot's of guys are 100% anti-George L's. I get that. They're solderless which can mean failure for some. I tend to think it has much more to do with proper (read: improper) termination. (I'll probably do a post about that, too, down the road.) So while I don't think they're the end-all cable, they're still great and in the top 3% or so of custom cable solutions out there.

Third thing, my pouch on my PedalTrain bag just fell off, "RRRRRrrrrip," that same night on the way to practice, and I was really starting to get frustrated at my whole pedalboard setup. I was starting to feel like the sucker was becoming sentient and was about to sprout legs and run away from me. More on that in yet another post.

So let's go back to the cables. Long story short here: Many of the George L's connector were brass. I'd noticed a) they'd seemed less tight in the jacks lately and b) some of the brass was corroding green on me. Not alarming, but not really the greatest thing either. Perhaps it was the jacks, but I rebent some of them and that didn't seem to help.

So I emailed George L's and asked if they'd seen this before. They were extremely quick to reply with a nice solution: "Ahh the brass plugs. We'll trade them out for you with nickel or gold plugs. Oh and send us your t-shirt size."

WOOT! I already had a nickel kit, and they were great. Nickel it was! I mailed my brassies (25 of them!) and got nickel right angle replacements back about 4 days later. PLUS the t-shirt, a nice big sticker, and 10' of extra .155" cable. WOW, I was impressed. (I'm not saying you will get the same freebies if you have a problem with your connectors, but they were eager to please me.)

Are the brass plugs no good in general? Honestly I have no idea. And maybe the softer brass was starting to conform to the jacks and thereby becoming problematic? I don't know, and don't care to go there. I was happy with the solution.

It was time to start making my cables for my board again! I'll talk about the proper way to terminate George L's in another post.