Happy New Year! Gears are starting to turn.
Sometimes, Music wishes to be heard so desperately, it puts these two in the same room.
These Guys? Back At It?!
Tuning Up the Hot Rods, vol. 2
Next up is my trusty Vox Standard 25 (or what used to be Standard). This is the first really good guitar I owned, purchassed from a friend in High School. It started life as a stock Vox Standard 25 which could best be described as “if a Strat and a PRS had a child that traveled in time back to the mid-80s”. It was my main guitar through the end of the 80s and into the early 90s. Not sure if it’s just long term familiarity but it is one of the easiest and most comfortable necks I have played.
It was also the first guitar I played around with modding. It’s been through several personality changes and the current set-up is:
- all the usual (straplocks, locking Neutrik output jack, graphite string trees)
- custom cut pickguard
- single coil Dimarzio in bridge position
- Gibson Bill Laurence humbucker in bridge position
- Roland GK midi pickup
- momentary stutter button
The Dimarzio single coil was the original on the stock version, the humbucker came from a mid-80s Les Paul I did some work on for a friend (and the pickups that were replaced were given to me as payment). The wiring is a mix between custom and accidental: the first (volume) pot was replaced withthe momentary button, the third pot is a tone control exclusively for the single coil (this makes going back and forth between the e-bow and regular playing super-easy). The middle pot was supposed to be a master volume but somehow just rolls off some of the overall high frequencies. I’m not sure where I messed up but it’s been interesting playing around with this configuration. One of these days I might correct it, but for now…
Tuning Up the Hot Rods, vol. 1
One of the upsides of
The Stick Rig…
…might need a little tweaking.
[Sigh]
Not a big surprise.
Pedalboard
The current guitar board sit rep:
Every sound I will need or have been known for, for any situation or setting.
GTR -> EHX Freeze -> Digitech Ricochet -> switcher*-> Line6 M9 (for basic delays and modulation) -> Veretex Boost (with expression pedal – not pictured – for volume control) -> Boss DD-8 (for glitching and miscellaneous weirdness) -> TC Electronics Wiretap (for recording parts of interest) -> Pigtronix Infinity 2 (looper) -> dry out to amp 1 (usually Marshall 8020) / loop out to volume pedal 2 – not pictured – -> Akai Headrush -> amp 2, monitors or direct boxes for FOH
* switcher settings: 1. Clean direct, 2. TC Hypergravity compressor -> Veretex Steel String drive -> Walrus Audio Slo reverb, 3. Catalinbread SFT overdrive, 4. Catalinbread Galileo overdrive, 5. Paul Trobetta Tornita (Kitchen Sink) fuzz
… and the orange box is a countdown timer/clock
Waking Windows
Did a quick set at The Last Stop as part of the Waking Windows Winooski festival.
I Was Here is HERE!
Stone Document’s THIRD album is finally here. Another departure, adventure and rung on their evolutionary ladder. Doc and I are pretty confident you haven’t heard anything quite like this.
RU Presale
We are getting close.
Short Circuits
Dusted off the Stick to do an evening of improvisation with some friends.
Dave and Mark and a “Tiny” Couch
DG and I found ourselves sitting with a couple guitars on an average-sized couch in Coffrin Lounge at Middlebury College. We were there to play three songs for the inaugural episode of The Tiny Couch Sessions (on it’s way to you soonish?).