I hadn't seen this then but i'm not a moron. FOor one i had messed with truss rods before just a long time ago. And I didn't go turning that truss rod willy nilly. I know you can break your neck and i really can't afford to lose any guitar. And I research shit before i do it if i'm not 100% sure. I did daily quarter turns for 3 days. Clearly it had to be done either way as there was pretty much no spacing between the string and frets when i pressed the first and last. I messed with the bridge now, i got it closer to being in tune the whole length of the neck but not quite. i'm hoping at this point the weather change will bring it back to normal.

that's cool, reading back i sounded like an asshole. didn't mean it.
it's just all very delicate and you need to know exactly what you're doing and why you're doing it. at least in my experience - you won't get a great setup on a guitar by just experimenting.
print out some measurements, work with those.

i'm probably going to be getting a fender tube amp of sorts, really soon

any tube-amp related advice over here? i know it's a bit more of a delicate operation & whatnot, but this one doesn't even have a standby switch or anything so... i don't want to just be blowin tubes & valves form day 1! only owned solid state up to this one (though at present i am still very much happy with my orange)

Of sorts...

This one...

http://www.musoscorner.com.au/client_images/1491971.jpg

fender ramparte, 9w, cool & hot inputs

was really just askin about general tube amp care/maintenance since i've never owned one before, always solid state, and it doesn't have a standby switch
but i guess that would only really assist things, since it must have something built in that would handle it simultaneously
though if it's anything like the tube preamp i have it's pretty much just a turn on, wait a few minutes, let cool down after usage then turn off sort of thing

http://i928.photobucket.com/albums/a...pso4qrdpzb.jpg

Rebuilt my board, swapped some pedals, etc.

A while back, I picked up the Hardwire RV-7 reverb because it was the cheapest I could find with a reverse reverb function.

However, I realized that with the reverse reverb, only the wet signal comes out, and there's no dry signal. So, that means there is a delay from the time I strike a not to the time it sounds. Which is annoying as fuck for coordination, thinking "I have to play this not XXms before I actually wanna here it."

What's a cheap reverb with reverse reverb that isn't stupid like that?

Metal zone into the muff?

I sometimes run a blues driver after mine

Oh I rarely use those two together, it's one or the other (or the overdrive pedal preceding them)

http://enricodomines.com/wp-content/...ects-Pedal.jpg

The other guitarist in two of my bands has a Line 6 Verbzilla. When he got it I totally made fun of him for having a Line 6 pedal... until I heard it. It's actually sounds great and I believe it does what you are looking for, and it's only $150 new.

i'm surprised - you can get a great pink floyd/gilmour sound using the two. surely you know of this combo? at best it adds a nice amount of bite back into the muddy muff sound.

the easiest way is to crank the muff and use the other distortion pedal (i like the blues driver) as an EQ/Tone/Volume control. or you can crank the distortion pedal and have the muff adding the appropriate amount of fuzz. endless possibilities in order

I'll look into that. Thanks!

I've been eyeing Noisemaker Effects' pedals for a while now. They are the most inexpensive boutique brand I've ever seen, and they have some nice fuzzes. The problem is deciding which one.

Their pedals tend not to have tone knobs, so it seems like each one specializes in a tone, and then gives you volume and gain controls.

It's difficult for me to decide which one I want, because even though I can clearly hear that they are different, my ear isn't really trained well enough to really assess the timbre and deliberate what I really like and why. It's just sort of like, "Oh, this is cool. Wait, this is cool, too." Plus with the demos, it's hard to ignore the influence of the music being played on my perception on the sound and to just focus on tone. I wish there were a shootout video or something.

I'm thinking that the Crush and the Cold War seem fairly similar to a Muff, so I may as well get one of their more unique pedals. So I'm kind of leaning toward the Donner Party, which sounds pretty nasty, the Zero (which seems to give the user more tone control with all the knobs), and the Kill. The Freakshow is also really interesting, but the fact that it only has a level knob kind of makes it seem limited. Still, that one sound that it does is a pretty sick sound. Also, the Noise Invader and Arcade are cool.

What are your guy's recs?

http://www.noisemakereffects.com/pedals.html
http://www.cheaperpedals.com/collect...effects?page=1
https://soundcloud.com/noisemaker-effects/
(Just posting more than one link because it doesn't seem that their official site has all of them)

For what it's worth, I ended up pulling the trigger on the Freakshow, the Donner Party, and the Loudmouth. I'm already planning my next purchase to be the Super Arcade, which I may get sometime after I round off my pedal board with things that aren't fuzzes.

IMO boutique pedals are only for boutique players.

i didn't hear anything in those samples that couldn't be achieved with a combination of big muff (any) with a tube screamer or blues driver.

"Boutique player"? What's that mean?

I can see how a lot of the milder fuzzes (like the Crush) would be achievable with a Big Muff (though the Noisemaker ones sounded less muddy to me), but I've never gotten the sort of crazy breakup I was hearing in the Donner Party and Super Arcade demos out of the Tone Wicker Big Muff I had (not that that's a criticism of it; it was and will probably still be my favorite pedal). I guess I've never tried driving it with an overdrive, as I've never used one, though. So perhaps you're right (in which case, thanks a lot for giving me post-purchase remorse, buddy).

Too bad I don't still have my Muff to compare them with. I just thought I'd experiment with other fuzzes, because there is a small chance I may get my old Muff back (long story), so I didn't want to buy a duplicate. But if it turns out I won't, I'll definitely re-purchase one down the line. I like all the Noisemaker ones for what they are, but they seem to be on the more treble-ish side, whereas the Muff goes down to the apocalyptic firepits of doom.

They sound pretty good, I'd definitely pick one up. Big Muffs don't get that cool oscillation to them.

Also be sure to get a variable power source for whatever fuzz you get, to simulate a dying battery; you will get cooler results you wouldn't otherwise get with a constant power source.

Also I finally picked up a Fuzz Factory and I love it to death.

Hmm. I've never heard about the "variable power source" thing. Sounds cool. I'll look into that!

Some of these pedals have a "starve" knob that does the dying battery thing (similar to the "stab" on the Fuzz Factory, I think). But the variable power source sounds like it'd be really cool to try with my Muff or something when I get it.

Congrats on the Fuzz Factory. From the demos I've heard, those things are really versatile and great. The sort of thing I'd buy if I weren't so cheap. I love how you can get sorta retro classic clean-gated fuzz and octavey oscillating glitchy sustaining fuzz in the same box. Thing is crazy.

I've been looking at some of Devi Ever's pedals, too. Probably not in my price range, but it's still fun to browse. One interesting one was the LP, that I assume uses variable power to get that "skipping record" sound.

Yep exactly, the Stab seems to control the power-in, so the Fuzz Factory pretty much has a built-in variable power supply.

Our guitarist had Devi's Disaster Fuzz, and it was very cool; it is worth mentioning that he did in fact get a variable power supply for it because it wasn't doing exactly what he wanted. So there you go.

He recently dropped it from his board for a Dwarfcraft Great Destroyer though, I'm not sure why. Both sounded great though. It probably just didn't gel well with the new Awkward Bodies songs, not sure.

The guitarist in a different band I'm in has a cool boutique fuzz that sounds fantastic. I don't remember what it is though, I'll check it out tonight at practice.

Does anybody know what effects Iha used in his MCIS Pumpkins solos? Like in "Zero" and "Fuck You"? I'm thinking it's a Digitech Whammy in octave up mode or something, but just want to be sure.

I used to not be interested in getting a Whammy pedal, because I'm not big on pitch shifting. However, the cool shit that can be done with octave shifts is making me rethink that.

It was, with more signal processing as well.

I see. Now I suppose I need one of those, too. G.A.S. has been bad these days.

I tend to find pitch-shifting kind of cheesy and too artificial sounding in general, but I do like octave effects. So I guess if I get a Whammy, I probably won't use the other sorts of harmonies too often. Seems like a lot of money to spend on something I'll only have a limited use for.

How does the Whammy compare to pedals like the EHX Pitchfork or Boss Pitch Shifters/Harmonizers?

Speaking of G.A.S., I'm also hankering for a phaser. From the videos I've listened to, I like the MXR Phase 90 the best, because it seems to be the most transparent, whereas the Modtone Atomic colors the sound a bit and sort of washes out the tone. The Small Stone isn't bad, but it sounds like it sweeps through the lower frequencies more, whereas the 90 sounds a bit broader.

However, I'm kind of wondering if I'll end up wanting more than one knob, to control the rate and depth independently, which is why I haven't completely ruled out the Modtone yet. Do you guys like having more control over the parameters, or does one knob do enough for all your phasing needs?

On top of that, that Line 6 Verbzilla you linked me to sounds great. It turns out that it doesn't do reverse reverb, but it does other awesome things that are more ambient and ethereal than a typical reverb. And I'm also eyeing the DigiVerb, because that pedal does do reverse reverb, and still keeps your dry signal, unlike the Hardwire.

Those are just some of the pedals I'm constantly browsing online. I really need to stop. Maybe I should just block any gear site and focus on actually practicing my instrument for the next little while.

OK well first off, the "unnatural sound" of the Whammy is a part of it's charm, something I really liked about it. Check out the song "Waited a Light Year" by Tripping Daisy, there's this simple lead melody played on a shifted-up Whammy. And it's slightly-out-of-pitch-ness really gives it a unique character. Also listen to the end of the solo on "Just" by Radiohead... Johnny is using a Whammy to hit the higher unnatural notes, and the final note is digitally squelching, like it can't quite make it--I love that! Gives the song an extra edge and paranoia.

But with that said, there are several generations of Whammy. Those parts mentioned above were played with either a first or second generation Whammy that did have pitch imperfections. By now, we are on a 5th generation whammy (I just sold my 2nd gen for a 5th) and it is WAY more precise, and doesn't have that out of tune quality as much. So if you are looking for more precision, then the newer models are quite good. That is why I upgraded, because when you though on a really weird delay then the notes really go out of whack, and sounds bad; I needed something more precise.

Also this pedal is useful for playing harmony lines. You can switch to like the "/\5th \/7th" setting and it'll add the high 5th and a lower 7th to your melody, immediately creating a three-part guitar harmony! All at the ease of a foot switch! One of my bands recently played with a sort of early 00s revival emo band and their guitarist was doing this the whole time, it was cool. It's not really what I am interested in, but it's what you can do with the Whammy. I swear I hear it all over Francis The Mute.

In contrast the EHX MicroPog and the delux POG more dials in whatever weird pitch undertones you want and you let it fly (think of Johnny's main riff in "My Iron Lung", it soudns like either a POG or something similar). It's more versatile and WAY MORE ACCURATE but it doesn't have the footwsitch and bending capability as the Whammy. So I would say the are just simply different beasts altogether, which is why I have both! When is more active, the other is more a stand-alone stomp box.

The Boss Pitchshifter is very cool, and I think is less precise than either a whammy or a POG, but it is somewhere in between the spectrum of the two as an active bender and harmonizer, and a box to create standalone pitch undertones. It's like the middle ground.

Good question! Yeah, the Phase 90 is great! But just recently I wanted to do something a bit different (a jet airplane phase) and it couldn't do it. It's REALLY good at doing what it does, but you can't really get anything different out of it.

Ha! Very true... Remember that an effect is useless unless you 1) know how to use the effect and 2) have the musical know-how to back it up.

You left out creativity

I suppose that was implied.

You'd be surprised

Hmm. Well I suppose I might warm up to the other functions if I do get. I mean, there are recordings I enjoy that use it (like some of the ones you mentioned).

I see. I guess for my purposes, it's between the Whammy and the Boss now, as the expression pedal is a must. Thanks for the info!

BTW, could using the octave-down effects on the lower strings damage a guitar amp the same way that plugging a bass into a guitar amp might?

I see.

Definitely. I've been trying to stick to something like a practice schedule, as I feel like my playing has been stagnant for a while, but I never know the best way to go about learning stuff. I've been doing some speed drills, but I don't know if I should practice a single drill until I get up to a good speed before I move on to the next, or if focusing on only one for a week will only make me faster at that particular drill, and not faster in general. Also trying to learn the fretboard better so that I don't get stuck in boxes doing the same old licks when improvising.

It's been a while since I've actually played any songs. I've mostly been doing exercises. I think I'm at the point where playing other people's songs is a bit boring to me, but I don't have the skill to write a lot of my own that are satisfying to me.

I just impulse-ordered a Boss Tera Echo. I keep on organizing my list of what my priority pedals, only to get something not even on it.

I've lost interest in stomp boxes and effect pedals in recent years... but when I would (or do on occasion) use them, I liked my..

-big muff (I forget the version, but it came in the wooden box, made by Electro Harmonix, etc... just do not know if it was the japan, us, or what version)
-the 1st style of the jekyll & hyde OD/distortion pedals. by visual sound
holy grail reverb (i actually like this one a lot) by electro harmonix
ibanez ts-9 (the 99$ model..) which i like as well.

run through a fender hotrod deluxe. i have a bunch of gear but my pedals and amp have a lot of wear. My guitar(s) of choice are dc-3 danelectro and a 1995 les paul special (doublecut- good wood era still). i like both a ton- the dano being very light with more tone, the LP with a lot of crunch and different but still, a very very nice tone.

i have a few tascams for recording purposes and some decent microphones too.

I got my Tera Echo a few days ago. I love the thing.

Also got my Noisemaker pedals last night. I love their tones, but they are noisy as fuck, and the volume increase makes it hard to play them in my apartment. They hiss a lot and pop when you engage them. I don't know if I just need a noise gate or if I will end up needing to mod them.

Anybody try the Nano Big Muff? Is it exactly the same as the regular Big Muff Pi?

It says it has the same circuits, but some reviews I see say that it sounds a bit smaller, whereas others say it's the exact same thing in a different box.

If it's exactly the same, I'd definitely go for it to save space.

That probably goes for all modern Muffs, right? Or is it the Nano specifically?

Yeah, I hear that they don't cut through the mix well. I don't have a band, so I suppose that isn't a huge problem for me. Maybe it'd be just as bad for recording, though, I dunno. I also hear some people deal with that by driving it with an overdrive in the right way.

Avoid ALL EHX Nanos. Their voltage is wacky and inconvenient and you are simply better off shelling out an extra $50 for the "full" or standard models. If space is an issue, then replace it with a pedal you don't use live and/or build a bigger board. Nanos are shit.

As for your other question, I can't speak for Nanos specifically, but in general there is a wide variance in sound between all Big Muffs. I remember back 15 years ago three of us all had different model Big muffs--the silver NYC, the black Russian and the green Slovitek--and we AB'd them all and they were all different! This is not uncommon, as for some reason (I bet someone else more knowledgeable can elaborate the reason, like spguitar) the same circuitry would still not yield the same sound and every Big Muff was slightly different sounding.

Matter of fact, just last week I went in and ABd my 9-year-old Lil Big Muff with a few other ones and lo and behold they were different, even to this day with newer models!

This is a good guide:
http://www.kitrae.net/music/music_big_muff.html

imo They cut through the mix fine. I guess it depends on what your mix is

Thanks for the responses, fellas

I have some time off, so I'll probably try to get back into the habit of actually practicing. When I do pick up my guitar, I mostly engage in aimless noodling and running through sections of songs I already know.

It's kind of daunting trying to figure out what to start practicing when I pick up my guitar. Do you guys have a practice schedule?

I've tried making one in the past, but I think I put too much shit on it, so it became too long and unrealistic. I can't practice every single area of guitar playing all the time, but at the same time, I can't myopically focus on one until I am satisfied with my skill level, and then move on to another, because you have to keep at everything indefinitely. You don't, like, "graduate" from scales and then move on to chords or something.

There are a lot of goals I have, but breaking them down is kind of hard. Like, I want to just have a better musical vocabulary in general so that I have more to draw on when writing songs, instead of just defaulting to the same power/cowboy chords and pentatonic scales I'm comfortable with (I noodle so much in the minor pentatonic that I hate the sound of it now). I'm trying to drill into my head extended chords, major modes, and exotic scales, but they aren't sticking well. I also want to hone my chops so that I can play faster (maybe even shred), do that fingerpicky sorta thing (not sure what you call it... you know, songs like "Rotten Apples," that are very arpegiatted and I suck at), be able to incorporate artificial harmonics fluidly into playing, etc. Also, transcribing songs by ear (I rely on internet tabs way too much to take myself seriously as a guitar player).

Thinking about all this stuff intimidates me so much that I end up just doing my aimless noodle shit and never improving.

you have to have a clear direction of where you want to go.
i find that the most important thing is to develope your musical 'brain', not your fingers.

i've been playing for around 14 years (man i feel old as shit typing this) and now i'm at a place that i can honestly say i don't get intimidated by amazingly technical guitar players anymore. i mean of course i get jealous when i see somebody playing something very technical that happens to be really cool or musical, but these two ends don't often meet.

the reason i'm saying this is, do you want to be a better guitarist to be able to impress people at guitar stores, or do you want to develop your playing to become a better musician?
even though you'd probably pick the latter, learning exotic scales, being obsessed with technique, and wanting to play faster - are pretty much the former.

just to be clear, this is not to shit on technical and theoretical proficiency. it's just that, imo, the real question is, do you want to be a great guitar player, or do you want to develop your skills as a tool for songwriting and musicianship.

a musician i greatly admire always says that 'you should only strive to be as technically good as you need to be to facilitate the ideas in your head'. now that doesn't mean you should slack on your playing and not give a shit about how good you are - but rather, that you need to focus on the right things.

my tips would be:
1. play a lot, until you're able to anticipate what the phrase you're GOING to play is going to sound like. shorten the distance between what you want to hear, and playing it. improvise over songs. play along to songs.

2. always be in tune, and work hard on being precise with your timing. these two things alone will make your playing sound a thousand times better, and are absurdly underrated. play along to a metronome. learn to identify when you're behind or after the beat.

3. determine what skills you lack in, and find songs that address those problems. work on them until you get them right.

4. write songs.

Holy shit THIS

One thing I would add is pick an album you really like that's just a bit beyond what you think your current skill level will allow you to play, and then learn the whole thing. Everything I've learned on guitar came directly from learning songs via careful listening, tabs, and watching videos of the artist. I have never once sat and memorized a scale just for the hell of it; that's way too boring for me. I need context to get excited, and it sounds like you might also.

Yeah, I'm also typically not interested in technical skill for the sake of it. Like, Yngwie Malmsteem and Steve Vai and all those guys, they may be good, but I find them boring as hell.

So, I'm not aiming that high in terms of technical skill, but I still wanna have some chops in order to broaden the range of things I'm able to play and create. Like, I find shredded solos in death or thrash metal kind of boring, but I'd love to be able to use shredding to link more melodic solo phrases in order to spice up solos. And I wanna learn interesting scales to create solos that sound different from the typical minor pentatonic stuff that's in a lot of rock music.

I want to increase my skill level increase my songwriting ability, I guess. I feel like everything I write sounds kinda old hat. Like, generic chord progressions mostly using open chords or power chords, minor pentatonic leads, etc. I feel like I have no idea how to go about melody, and I usually write progressions without knowing how to go about writing the leads or the vocal line.

At the same time, I feel like part of the reason I want to use some less common scales and extended chords is because I'm not a good enough songwriter to make something unique out of the standard stuff, so I wanna write a song using a Byzantine scale or something because that's an instant ticket to making something sound different. Sometimes I think about how the vast majority of music I like uses the same major scale and triads and pentatonic scale, and how rock music doesn't tend to stray very far from the rudiments of classical theory and blues, and yet the music still sounds unique and interesting to me. If I were a better songwriter, I could probably also do something unique and interesting with the standard toolkit, but I am usually so bored with anything I come up with that I can't even bring myself to finish writing any songs.

Even though I only have to be as good as necessary to express my ideas, I will never know exactly what skills I'll need to play whatever I will want to play, so I feel like just being a well-rounded player in general is a good idea. Plus, I might even get ideas from the things I learn.

Yeah, this is something I really want to do. I just kinda noodle around, and what comes out comes out. I can't hold an idea in my head and just crank it out, or do anything intentional and purposeful. It's more like, "hey, the song is in this key, so I'll just wank around in that key by playing random phrases using notes from the scale." Because I tend to get stuck in box positions because I have trouble linking them so that I can utilize the entire fretboard, it's always the same tired bluesy licks that sound like I'm doing some variations on going up and down a scale.

I should probably do more of this. I haven't written much for the past few years, because I feel like I'm not good enough to bother writing, and that I should increase my musical knowledge first so that I write better songs. But writing songs is probably the best practice for writing songs. I just have a hard time doing things I know are shit because it's demotivating and frustrating.

Yeah, I think I need to learn the discipline to learn songs all the way through. I'll pick a song I like and want to learn, will learn bits and pieces of them, and will get bored from working on the same song, and then will file it away with the intention of coming back to it later, but will never just finish the job. There are very few songs I have in my "repertoire," so if I were sitting around a campfire holding a guitar, I would probably have nothing to play.

I recently told myself I'd suck it up and learn just one easy song. Started learning "Into the Void," and I have everything memorized but the solo. And I keep telling myself I'll finish that part, too, but I'm so bored by the song that I just can't get myself to do it.

I have hit a total block when it comes to songwriting. I have between 50-100 "ideas" that I have recorded, like little parts of songs, chord progressions. I struggle with the same thing you are describing; my tastes are mostly fairly simple rock and folk music, and when I listen to music that is good to me, I never sit there and think damn this is the same four chords as a thousand other songs and it's a typical pop melody and it's in 4/4 time, how boring." But when I write, these things hound me. It all feels very stale to me. Sometimes I hit something in particular and I "know" it is good, but it rarely happens with whole songs, usually just little pieces. Even when I do manage to do something I believe is compelling on guitar, it's even harder for me to match it with a good vocal melody, which is weird because I'm a better singer... but my melodies sound very very unoriginal and generic.

Do you sing? I would never be able to learn songs through and not get amazingly bored if I couldn't sing to them. That's like the part that connects me to the guitar I feel like. Also, in a campfire type setting or whenever you play for others, I have found that people will react more positively to you if you sing even if you are bad. It feels nice getting praised for doing something as simple as singing and playing a song, and this has always been a big motivator for me.