Changing Things Up
Pedalboards are always changing. At least they always change for me.
I was not enjoying the tones I was getting from the Strymon Iridium. I was thinking about going back to amps as I missed the feel of playing through an amp. The Iridium was fine but not great.
The thought of hauling heads and cabs out to gigs is not very appealing. Especially at my age. What should I do? And then along came IK Multimedia’s big announcement, the Tonex Pedal.
Admittedly, I doubt that the Tonex Pedal will change the world. I ordered one of the first ones to arrive at Sweetwater. And I love the tones coming out of that box.
I am travelling right now so I can’t update my pedalboard as it is back home. I have been playing through a virtual rig on the laptop using Neural DSP’s plugins. Those plugins sound great. As do the Tonex models. I’m now running Amplitube with Tonex as my virtual rig until I get home.
To add Tonex to the pedalboard means making a few changes. I used one of the online pedalboard designers to craft the new board.
A few changes. I had added the Eventide H90 to the board which kicked the BigSky off but I miss the BigSky. As the H90 can easily cover pitch and chorus, I will kick off the Pog and the Julia and bring back the BigSky.
The Tonex will displace the Strymon Iridium. And, sadly, I have to kick off the Timmy and I need to replace the Deep Six compressor with a smaller form factor pedal. I have a few compressors in the studio and I might just throw the Keeley compressor on the board.
With the RJM Mastermind, I don’t have to worry too much about pedal order and cabling as I can readily rearrange pedal order in the Mastermind. I will have a fair amount of re-wiring to do on the board which might involve a day or two of effort.
After which I will likely spend a fair amount of time dialing in the new tones.
Until I decide to change the board again.
Carter Vintage Guitars
I was in Nashville a few weeks back and I had to make the pilgrimage to Carter Vintage Guitars. Compelled really. No choice but to go and look at what old guitars are selling for these days.
The shop is located in a somewhat run-down part of the city. I walked there from the downtown core and I was glad to be doing the walk during the day. At night? I would take a car.
The store is pretty down to earth. A small lobby opens into a larger area with a lot of used guitars and amps.
Many of the electrics were priced in the upper middle tier: say $3,000 to $5,000 USD. And lots of Gibsons and Fenders. I guess the guitarists in Nashville like to stick with the two mainstream brands.
Towards the back of the shop they had a small display of truly vintage instruments.
The price tage for the 1950 Broadcaster on the left had been marked down from $70,000 USD to $59,000 USD and the 1953 Telecaster on the right was asking $55,000 USD.
Clearly targetted towards a specific market that would likely never take the guitar out on a gig.
I wonder how many vintage guitars are just stored in closets as investments? Guitars that are never played and rarely seen.
Seems sad.
New From Strymon
A new Strymon pedal was just announced. The cloudburst seems to be a smaller version of the Big Sky although with a much simpler interface. I’ve not used one so I can’t really comment further.
However I have been looking at changing up a few things on my pedalboard.
It started with the Eventide H90. I purchased that pedal when it first came out. And it is awesome. So many wonderful sounds in there.
But I had to punt my Big Sky off the pedalboard to make room for the H90. Here is what the pedalboard looks like right now.
Most of the signal flow is being managed by the Mastermind except for the top row (compressor, Iridium, Timeline, H90).
What I would like to do is remove the POG and the Julia chorus as I can readily get those sounds from the H90. I would then route the second IO in the H90 through the Mastermind for mono effects like pitch shifting and keep the first IO for the stereo effects like delays and reverbs. I could also put the H90 chorus sounds either before or after the amp modeller, the Strymon Iridium in this case.
That would free up some space on the bottom of the pedalboard where I could add something like the cloudburst or perhaps the Jet Revelation. The Julia pedal would be replaced by one of those pedals.
The POG would come off and allow room for a two-button switch for the Mastermind or possibly another pedal.
I have the H90, the Timeline and the Iridium connected via a MIDI hub which is driven by the MIDI commands from the MasterMind. Both the Jet and the cloudburst support MIDI and I have additional capacity to plug them into my MIDI hub which lives underneath the pedalboard.
Current pedalboard requires multiple offline editors to set up tones: RJM Mastermind, Strymon Nixie, Eventide H90. I guess that is just the nature of the beast these days.
Still debating between the cloudburst and the Jet Revelation.
Here is a video comparing the Jet to the Big Sky. Looks like I could get most of the reverb tones I might need from the Strymon like Shimmer, Cloud and Bloom and the Jet seems to get a lot of good reviews online.
Travelling With An Electric Guitar
Back in the day, way back in the day now, touring with my guitar rig was relatively straight forward. I had a flight case and I either hauled an amp in the truck or used backline gear at the venue. Pedalboards were not much of a thing when I was touring. I had 3 or 4 pedals with me: an MXR Phaser, an MXR Flanger, an MXR Distortion+ and a Cry Baby wah pedal. We used to tune up during sound checks.
I know, I know. So primitive.
Now retired, I like to spend the winters south where the weather is not so harsh as it is in Canada. This year I travelled to the southwest driving roughly 3,500 miles over the past three weeks. Frequent stops in major cities from the east coast all the way over to the west coast.
Before the trip I pondered how I should bring an electric guitar with me. Or should I even try? I was debating on renting gear once we arrived at our destination. After considerable deliberation this is how I decided to travel with my electric guitar.
If you have checked out my guitar gear you will see that I have a few electrics in the collection. Some new, some old. Most are very expensive instruments and I was reluctant to bring any of the top tier guitars with me. I settled on my Sire Larry Carlton T7. It is a Tele style guitar that plays really well.
Here is a picture of that guitar in the condo we have rented in Nevada:
I carried the guitar in one of my Mono gig bags.
I was bringing my MacBook Pro with me and thought it would be a good idea to see if an amp sim would be good enough to use for practice during my three-month journey away from home.
I auditioned dozens of different amp sims and settled on the Neural DSP Tone King. What an amazing sound! I found myself wishing that my physical rig sounded as good as this virtual one.
To get the sound in and out of the guitar sim, I needed a compact audio interface. I have several interfaces in the studio, all mounted in racks. Definitely not portable. But I found the Universal Audio Volt 1 to be the ticket for the trip. Small, inexpensive, and bus-powered. Sounds good and connects easily to the MacBook Pro with a USB-C cable and no obnoxious software drivers. The Neural DSP Tone King does require an iLok but since I am doing some audio work during my time south, I needed to bring my iLok for my Pro Tools rig so that wasn’t an issue. I did find that I needed a high-speed USB-C cable for the Volt 1. The cheaper USB-C cables introduced audio glitches.
Aside from having to bring the guitar into the hotel room at every stop, the rest of the gear fit easily into a backpack. I brought along my AKG K702 headphones for the Pro Tools work I am doing down here as I do not have any external monitors with me.
The rig — guitar, Volt 1, Neural DSP, headphones — sounds amazing and it is inspiring to play through it. Best of all it is lightweight and it allows me to keep my chops current.
Noble Street Opens Studio G
Noble Street Studios, my favourite recording studio in Toronto, just opened their newest room, Studio G.
The studio manager had walked me through the room while it was still under construction and, to my delight, asked me to shoot the room for their marketing work. I had already done all of the photography for the other rooms at Noble Street and it was wonderful to go into this new room and capture all of the amazing equipment. I plan to be doing some mix work in Studio G in 2023.
This console was originally installed in a private studio in California, then it was installed in Pete Townshend’s (The Who) home studio. Neither studio saw much use so it is still in great shape, quite possibly the cleanest and most advanced SSL G+ in existence.
Here is the floorplan of Studio G:
The room is set up for stereo and Atmos and has a design that brings you into the music. The outboard gear is incredible.
Here are a few photos of the new room.
History of the Roland JC-120 Amp
“I’d rather chew glass than play through a solid state amp.” This from a hardcore guitarist who was clearly committed to his tube amplifier.
When I was first touring, the state of the art of a sound system was not like it is today. Those systems were more of a sound reinforcement system, that is to say, they tried to get the vocals on top of the backline. And the backline generally had to have enough power to punch through all the stage noise.
I bought a Roland JC-120 way back then. Likely 1975 I think. Whenever it was first introduced. Sold it some years later.
Big brute. Two 12-inch speakers. 120 Watts of solid state power.
It was loud. And clean. No such thing as edge-of-breakup tone on this amp.
The band I played in back then was pretty successful but alas existed before the Internet. Which means it was pretty invisible today. I can’t find any shots of the rig I used back then. It would have looked something like this:
I do remember that I only had a few pedals on that tour. An MXR Distortion+, an MXR Flanger, a Cry Baby wah. I think we tuned to the piano as we also toured with a horn section. I guess I was primarily focused on playing clean with this amp.
Sweetwater posted a story on the history of the JC-120 which you can find over here.
The unique character of the amp, aside from its clean tone, was the built in chorus. Roland used the chorus circuit from that amp to launch the first chorus pedal and the first BOSS pedal ever made, the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble. That was in 1976. Here is what that chorus pedal looked like:
If you have $1,500 or so to spend, you can find these pedals used on Reverb. A vintage Roland JC-120 can be found for much less money. Not as portable though.
Too Many Plugins
How many plugins do I own?
Too many.
How many plugins do I use?
Just a few.
But lately it has gone way out of control. Like a guitar player buying yet another overdrive pedal, I have fallen into the shiney new toy syndrome. SSL had been running an essentials bundle sale: a channel strip and a bus compressor. Only $49! Sold.
So I went to find the channel strip plugin to give it a spin.
What? How many EQ plugins do I own? Too many to list. I eventually did find it of course. But then I went looking for the bus compressor.
My, my. This has gone way out of control. When I need an EQ, most of the time I reach for my FabFilter Pro Q3. This one:
It has everything I need. And yet, every once in a while, I reach for a different plugin. Why? I don’t really know. Maybe it is a plugin that adds some colour, or is voiced a certain way. Whatever. Too many choices means I go for the tried and true.
Compression? Well, that is a bit of a different story. There I could justify having a few different types of compressors: VCA, FET, optical, tube and pulse width modulation. Or maybe just use this one:
At this point in my life it is not worth the effort to comb through all of the plugins and toss the ones I never use. Avid does not make plugin management easy. Aside from some basic classification settings (flat, category, manufacturer) it takes work to dive into some arcane folders hidden deep within the machine and to pull out the plugins you don’t want and throw them into an unused folder just in case.
A bit like the 30 plus terabytes of data I have stored on my NAS. Easier to leave it there than to go and organize it.
Now, where was that SSL bus compressor?
Reunited
What one thing has travelled with you for most of your life? For me it is a guitar.
I don’t remember all of the details around when I first brought the guitar home. Steve Kirman, of Steve’s Music in Montreal, sold me the guitar. I was young. It was my first big purchase and my first good acoustic guitar.
When I retired, downsized and began travelling in 2018, I left that guitar with my oldest son. Our travels were interrupted by the pandemic and we are no longer travelling as much. Now that we have a new place in Canada, my guitar could come back home.
I named the guitar “Elizabeth”. Not sure why. It just seemed to be a thing back then, naming guitars.
I checked the serial number to date the guitar and here is what I found:
With the serial number 97313, the guitar was built in 1974 — 48 years ago. I was 16 years old as I purchased it just before my 17th birthday. It is one of the very few possessions that has been with me throughout my life.
It has a few bumps and dings. One year I had left it in the trunk of my car. There was so much heat that the glue holding the bridge gave way. A bit of an expensive repair back then.
The Guild D40 is still in production. As I appear to be for the moment.
I took it out of the case and strummed a few chords. Still sounds great after all those years. And it brought back so many memories. Welcome home old friend.
