Guitar Nerds Anonymous

My descending order:

My tone bender clone - alright, but not great. Seemed to work very well with an amp putting out some serious volume, but was a bit nothing generally. Retired. Output wasn;t that great either so it was max or volume drop.

Big Muff - my longest serving fuzz. Thick, good fuzz. I didn't run it with a large amount of sustain, just volume up a fair bit, tone on middle and sustain on 3, maybe. Retired.

Those settings were to get a particular Narita Munehiro type sound, which works for me nicely.

Aya Tokyo BM70 - one ups the standard big muff, being a rams head muff clone and seeming to just Do It Better. permanent on board

Shin-Ei/Univox Superfuzz - the new one, octave fuzz. Loads of output and as heavy as it gets really. I'm most impressed.

I tend to run quite a bassy overdriven amp anyhow. Run the Aya and the Superfuzz side by side with my Dopefx overdrive and it does the lot.

Interestingly, the wah goes mental when running through the octave fuzz - clearly the two are doing something together to give it a particular sound. That odd wah sound that early Electric Wizard got? Its that. In fact, the superfuzz does the Supercoven sound to a tee.

This might be better off in the producers thread as all guitar and bass playing is fairly rudimentary, straight into the desk stuff (no fuzz content, soz) but whatever. It's a track I've been working on for a while and thought I'd use unemployment to amuse myself creating a video:
https://youtu.be/jCWPqzoS_7E

Shinei SuperFuzz and 80s Coloursound Supa and Jumbo ToneBenders are my top fuzzes... Never been a Big Muff fan, I really need to try a Fuzz Face tho' I did have another Roger Mayer fuzz pedal at one stage and it wasn't great... That said, I did record an ear melting tune with it many years ago that still sounds terrific today...

I'll look for it...

Fuzzface. Yep, needing fro give one of those a try at some point.

Here's that track, this must be nearly 20 years old now... I'm playing a '58 Les Paul Jr into a Roger Mayer Voodoo Fuzz (?) into @rickster's old Solton head/2 x 10" cab... Tony was using his '72 Tele Thinline into a Fuzzder going into an early 70s Twin Reverb... That's me solo playing the intro and the last very Jeff Beck//Link Wray fuzz break... Fuzz fury... Produced my Mark Lusardi of PiL fame but Tony added more effects at home which ruins it a bit for me...

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• 01 The Many Moods Of Charles Bronson.m4a

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Niiiiice.

I have a fuzz factory. Love what it can do. Wish it had a tone control tho.

No battery. No Knobs. Want.

http://www.bigfootengineering.com/octave.html

Pedalboards.

It has been pointed out that my choice of using a small pedalboard to deliberately force a decision on the amount of pedals I can use at any one time and make me decide exactly what stays and what goes is "different"

Anyone else do this? I find it stops redundancy by not giving space to something that never gets used.

I think it's very smart, my massive pedalboard* is a preposterous carbuncle...

* twelve pedals, mostly fuzz...

How small?

It was very freeing when I rehearsed and gigged with just a fuzz and tuner on the floor.

Totally. Unless your sound is entirely predicated on manipulating dozens of freaky pedals i find it hard to believe that you can't do with 7 pedals 97% of what you might to with 27. Diminishing returns innit.

Personally I need tuner, reverb, echo, boost, tremolo, overdrive and fuzz. And maybe more fuzz. Maybe octave fuzz. Oh and Lately I've had a filthy forbidden desire to add chorus for some reason. Don't judge me.

With an appropriate amp i could do away with the need for reverb and trem on the board.

I've always thought that a compressor was what I needed given that most of the time I play clean. I've never found one that I got on with though. Something about losing the initial attack making everything feel too soft and vague. Like playing wearing gloves.

Volume>Wah>Phase>OD>Fuzz>Octave Fuzz>Echo. Neatly stacked in two rows and includes the power supply and my tuner running off the volume.

If I wanna add something, I've gotta take something out. No islands.

Amps got reverb built in, but I don't use a lot anyway.

> Test bed - a place where you put pedals in order to easily test them, before deciding whether to keep them as part of your core sound or pass them on. I have loads of pedals like this - I don't dislike them so much I am going to sell immediately, but neither do they mean a lot to me. Nice to have two or three at a time there on your board so you can check 'em out again on a whim to help you find a use or decide for sure you don't want them.

This is where I like the determined choice - its either replacing something fully or its getting swapped out. No space for hangers on, so they gotta be worth keeping.

Just remembered about Omar Rodriguez-Lopez insane pedalboard he used to have. Off to look for pics.

Yeah I think that looks pretty normal for gigging.
When I did use a board it was: Machine (whatever the fuck that effect is)>Fuzz>Tuner>OD/Boost>Distortion>Delay. Occasionally with a Whammy after the fuzz.

I have a load of subtly different distortion/fuzz/od pedals hanging around which I use for recording though. Can break the occasional stalemate or inspire something new.

Anyone flogging a cheap steel string acoustic? Dropped my archtop and don't have the cash to repair. :(

Ouch. Can lend you the Guild. As long as you need.

I don’t get on with that thing anyway.

Thanks bro, I may take you up on that (AFTER I re-secure my guitar stands to the damn wall).

Ha. Ouch. I'm halfway through decorating the lounge/studio. It's two rooms knocked into one, the front half is the "grown-up lounge" and the back half separated by room divider is the "studio". This week's jobs include putting up guitar hangers. I got cheapo Stagg ones and it's only a stud wall so i'm little apprehensive. Got plenty of metal plasterboard fixings which should be man enough though. Haven't used hangers since I lived at home but want to get them up to free up space and keep things out of reach of the toddler. Although so far she's not proved much of a danger to them.

She's getting a good education though. She's only two but she can identify Bo Diddley from his picture (framed print in the hallway) "Eee's got a... square guitar!"

Yeah you're very welcome to borrow the Guild dude. I spent a good couple of hours with it last night ruining my fingers by playing cliched Robert Johnson style blues tricks and trying to improve my bending accuracy and vibrato. Not sure why I decided to practice the latter on an acoustic with .13 gauge strings but there you go. The end of my l/h ring finger is verrrry sore today.

Hangers hung. Could have squeezed another one in if i'd budged everything to the left a bit, but didn't want guitars hanging right in front of where the monitors will go. Will have to put a couple more hangers up on the opposite wall for the basses and banjo etc.

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i've always wondered if hanging guitars like that causes truss rod provlems.

Sounds like the kind of question that might cause a yuge argument on a guitar forum. Not sure i can be arsed to look it up. the acoustics are both playing nicely but The Tele needs a bit of love and attention. It's had the same strings on it for at least 5 years. I might try flatwounds...

It's had the same strings on it for at least 5 years.

Was about to say "Good grief!" then remembered that my Tele hadn't been played for over twenty years til I got her fixed up last year... 🙄