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.