music: King Johnson- Hot Fish Laundry Mat
I’ve been obsessing over my guitar tone recently. And for good reason: this spring has been explosive with music on the personal front. The band reconvened after about two months of hiatus, and after bringing fellow acoustic conspirator Duncan into the mix, we’ve solidified a lineup of sorts that will ensure that this musical project goes out with a bang. We actually have a gig lined up on the 13th of May, and perhaps one more before July. I’ve also started up with another band since January, something that tends as much towards gospel/soul as a twentysomething caucasian with two overdrive pedals can get. Both bands are coming along nicely and have spurred me to refine my rig.
(warning: geeky guitar content to follow.)
Refine is an understatement. I’ve been perseverating over my guitar tone. I’ve taken some big steps towards that holy grail of tonal perfection, which inches closer to what I think I want with every step. I’ve switched my strings from the muted, jazzy flatwound .11’s to the standard round-wound .10’s, which has afforded me a little more speed, attack, and nuance in my playing but has cost me some thickness in my lows and mids. More importantly, I dropped a good chunk of cash on a beautiful amplifier a couple months back: a refurbished and customized ‘76 Fender Vibrolux, with all point-to-point electronics cleaned up and tweaked to 60’s blackface specs, down to the faceplate and grille. The amp isn’t quite blackfaced completely, though: it still has a pull-out volume knob for high boost, and some pretty sweet AlNiCo Fender Special Design Speakers. It’s truly a unique amp, and I was very lucky to run into it on craigslist when I did. Between the vibrolux and my Gibson things are sounding pretty sweet. But your instrument is not just your guitar and amp, it’s everything you run your signal through. Upgrading the speaker cones and pickups of my rig are items I really should give some thought to, but not now. Now I am devoting full attention to obsessing over pedals.
Which pedals an electric guitarist decides to use might make the most difference in terms of customizing their instrument than the guitar or amp itself. Those little metal boxes are not generally thought of as part of someone’s instrument, but they are incredibly important. I would say that the pedals I’ve chosen to use account for half of my tone, and after a good amount of research and experimentation, I’d say that with my current setup I’m a little over 75% of the way there. The basic setup is a giant effects loop running out of and back into a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor (used mainly as a mute button for me). The loop, right now, is a Dunlop Crybaby (wah) > Electro Harmonix Q-Tron (bubble sound) > Ibanez TS-9 DX (overdrive with low-end boost for a little growl) > Ibanez TS-9 (lead distortion) > Boss BF-2 (flanger) > Boss CS-3 (compression and a little sustain). Then after the effects loop the whole thing runs into a Line 6 Delay Box (for which I’ve dialed in the Maestro Tube Echo, Electro Harmonix Memory Man, and Sweep Echo settings) before being sent out to the amp. It’s a lot to deal with.
One of the great parts to a rig like this is that there are so many places to tweak your sound just so. Each box does something different, and depending on the order in which they are placed you’ll get different results (wah > overdrive sounds different than overdrive > wah). Mixing and matching pedals has been even more fruitful than messing with knobs on each individual pedal. But all these knobs are a double-edged sword: all these options leave more possibilities for things get messy. Between the guitar, amp, and pedals, I have no less than seven volume knobs and six tone knobs. Finding and maintaining the right balance is quite a balancing act. There is also the issue of signal degradation: with all those input and output jacks, and with all those cables connecting the jacks, there is bound to be some diminished quality in the sound. If (when?) I get really, really serious about all of this, I replace my mid-grade cables with customizable solderless connectors, or the top of the line gold-plated cables.
I’m not quite satisfied with my rig. Sometimes I don’t think I will ever be, and half the fun is going to be continually building and experimenting with different combinations. While everything I have will stay put, I can’t help but wonder if replacing my standard crybaby with the 535Q, or if it is worth swapping out the q-tron for the q-tron +, which offers a softer, vowel-like response. The flanger is old and horribly beaten up and makes some pretty freaky sounds, which can be cool sometimes, but maybe I’d be better off with something a little more reliable and even-keeled, like the MXR Phaser. Perhaps throwing in an EQ at the end of the effects loop will give me a more full tone. And recently I’ve been enamoured with the leslie speaker effect, which points things towards the Uni-Vibe, but damned if I don’t have a stereo rig. It wouldn’t make much sense in mono to have a Uni-Vibe, which is essentially a phaser that pans between a left and right channel, but there are some less expensive options. I also have a Boss Octave Pedal kicking around, but it’s less than awesome as it cuts out and distorts when you play chords through it. Makes me drool after some of the high-end Electro-Harmonix Synths…
I spent a good three afternoons at Mr. Music trying out different pedals in different combinations. Didn’t buy anything, although I think they are pretty sick of me now. These pedals and all the options they offer have my head spinning. Maybe I should take a lesson from Angus Young and worry more about what my fingers are doing instead of my feet. After listening to all the options and pedals I begin to lose perspective. After talking to a particulary helpful guy at Mr. Music for over an hour on Wednesday, I handed back an armful of pedals with an apologetic and resigned look on my face, and thought to myself, that’s it. I’m going acoustic.
music: Townhall- Live From the Point, d.1
This morning I woke up and made myself a sandwich of doom for breakfast. It was so good that I made myself another one 5 minutes later.
music: Sound Travels on 89.9 WERU, Maine (webcast)
Last year’s April Vacation took the Monkey Wrench Gang (me, TMO, 1ey, and Montana) to the South of Utah. This year, with incredibly open-ended travels on the horizon, I decided to stick it out in Boston and make some effort to investigate the universe locally. Original plans for the opening of break were to take off to the White Mountains to enjoy the first 70 degree days of the year, but due to events related to Jesus and bunnies that lay eggs this weekend I was left stranded. I went through the usual list of outdoorsy co-conspirators but nothing panned out.
I recalled late on Thursday night a shot in the dark that 1ey and I attempted a couple years back that turned out to be genius: a post on craigslist for some wayward souls to blindly join up in an expedition. Last time we found Matt, renegade writer and Harvard Senior, and the three of us headed up to Montreal and Quebec city for a long weekend. Criagslist has found me music gear, housing, and bandmates; why not some people who want to go camping this weekend? It was worth a shot, and worth 5 minutes before hitting the sack. The call went out:
weekend backpacking trip to NH
Reply to: davidtaus@anize.org
Date: 2006-04-13, 11:31PM EDTso i was planning on doing an overnight hiking trip to NH but my friends bailed on me. I’m still really pumped about getting some time in on trail this weekend but not pumped enough to go at it solo. been there and done that, but it’s much more fun (and safer) with other people. anybody out there up for a weekend of hiking?
(hiking here means > 25 lb backpack, elevation gains and losses, probably 5+ miles per day in the whites, sleeping in a tent, water purification, carry out your waste, all that stuff. not quite a stroll through the city park.)
me: 27/m, teacher for boston public who has friday off, would much rather spend a night out-of-doors this weekend than in his apartment. i have a car, tent, stove, maps, and knowhow. you hopefully have a a proper pack, sleeping bag, raingear, warm layers, a good attitude, and are not an axe murderer. because i don’t like camping with axe murderers.
drop an email if interested.
* this is in or around somerville
thanks-
david
* no — it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
There was a smattering of responses, mostly “I can’t go this weekend, but let’s go some time” or “I don’t have the gear for it but it sounds interesting!” Too little, too late, it seems. But among the apologies and rain checks, I find an email from John Muir in my inbox. Which is a big deal, because 1) it’s freakin’ John Muir! and 2) I though he was dead. Anyhow, here’s what ol’ Johnny had to say:
TO: davidtaus@anize.org
DATE: 4/14/2006, 11:57 AM
FROM: jmuir@trailhead.netDear David —
A few minutes ago I chanced up your message. At that moment every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring winds, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. I, too, hunger for a return to the wilds. I yearn to cast off the shackles of the city and take to the hills and glens. The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
If you’ll allow, let us climb together into the mountains and get their good tidings. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. I am sorry to learn that your friends “bailed” on you. I recall a hike in California where, to my dismay, my compatriots bailed the murky waters from the prior day’s coffee pot onto my snoring face. The grounds stayed interwoven in the fibers of my beard just as the song of the kestrel on a frosty morning is woven into my very being. I could still taste coffee when I began our descent into Yosemite. It was good and I smile now to think of it.
Shall we discuss provisioning? I have several pounds of salt pork and pemmican, stout rope, malt beer and a trusty axe—though I am not an axe murderer ;-) I hope it is not your intent to make this a hunting expedition! I consider that foul pursuit to be the very business of murder and will protest most vehemently and spit on you.
I am please to hear that you are “pumped about getting some…on trail this weekend”. I would be sad to see you go solo. I can promise that even though we may fag out after a long day toting our gear, I will still be “up for it” the next day. May I inquire as to your response to this parable? If you woke up in a tent and had mayonaise on your hindquarters would you tell anyone? I pray your answer is a resounding “NO!” and then we shall go camping.
May the road rise to meet you, fellow wanderer! And may we rise to this occassion as brothers in arms and hearts.
Sincerely,
J.
Genius. Craigslist comes through again.
John, if you’re out there, tell your boys down at the Sierra Club offices that the check’s in the mail. Also, if you could, put in a word with the good folks running the Mt. Whitney Trail Lottery for me come mid-July?
I opted for a hike around the Fells yesterday instead. It was really an attempt to break in my new hiking boots and test out a pair of trekking poles I picked up. I figured that on a 7 mile day hike over more or less flat terrain that I could get away without duct tape or moleskin. Stupid stupid. Today i’m nursing blisters the size of silver dollars. A pain in the heel for me, but probably a commonplace second thought for the likes of John Muir. Maybe I’ll ask him about blisters next time he writes.
music: King Sunny Ade- Juju Music
These are days of change, these spring days. The weather is turning. We now have a blessed extra hour of light at the end of the day instead of at the start. The school year is sliding into its homestretch. I can once again see a horizon and am completely dumbstruck as to how vast it is, how many possibilities there really are. Ultimate frisbee is starting up again. Music is plentiful and in full swing on three fronts: two electric and one acoustic. And despite all this, I don’t have much that needs to be said. These spring days are filled with routine and logistics, and bring a certain stasis to things.
I was sidelined for a good week and a half this past month with the second (and hopefully final) installment of periodontal work. It was better this time around-I think the dentist cut me up a little nicer than last time. Lesson learned: always go in for surgery in the morning when those with the knife are still fresh and alert. Doctors are people too. But a period of relative inactivity and reduced caloric intake left me fairly miserable for a short spell. It reminded me precisely how little exersice I’ve gotten this winter, how bad my cabin fever was getting, and how ready I was for the warmer months and all the adventures they are to contain.
We expect exercise to be a negative feedback system: the more we exert ourselves, the less energy we have and the less we want to exert ourselves. Exercise is, instead, a positive feedback system: exercise begets exercise. The tricky part is that not exercising is also a positive feedback system and it takes a good deal of willpower to break out of the dental-surgery-invalid state of complete apathy. But now that spring is here and my mouth has more or less healed, it is much easier to take steps towards getting my heart rate up and breaking a sweat. Now begins weekly ultimate games, biking to work in earnest, weekend trips to New Hampshire. Even stasis requires an upkeep, but it is slowly becoming untapped. The gears are once again turning. The blood is once again flowing, and I’m feeling much better about things. These spring days carry with them infinite possibility, but right now exercise is all I can do to work myself out of the tiresome winter paths I have worn.
