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Black Griffon posted:
That's beautiful.
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Mar 15, 2014 20:36
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The bridge looks great, brass saddles? Nice upgrade!
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Mar 17, 2014 02:31
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I picked up a cheap acoustic because the neighbors below me go to sleep very early and i'm trying not to piss them off. I didn't really want an Ibanez brand acoustic, but this was the best sounding and playing mahogany guitar for $250. It has a bone nut and saddle, grovers, exp strings, solid top.  I also swapped the amber knobs off my sheraton and got ones that match better. 
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Mar 17, 2014 08:05
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Black Griffon posted:
Very good choice for a "first real" guitar since it has a fixed bridge and not the floating madness that mustangs have which never stays in tune for longer than 20 minutes. Real beauty!
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Mar 17, 2014 11:36
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field balm posted:The bridge looks great, brass saddles? Nice upgrade! Vintage stamped steel saddles, from what I can find out, buy they're great. Quality is noticeably better than the Behringer saddles. adary posted:Very good choice for a "first real" guitar since it has a fixed bridge and not the floating madness that mustangs have which never stays in tune for longer than 20 minutes. I blocked the tremolo bridge on my old Behringer strat, but it's wonderful how well tuned this thing is. A friend of my described the intonation as "so accurate it's scary".
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Mar 17, 2014 14:57
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Finally had this shipped out to me from back east after 4 years. Unfortunately the headstock got cracked during shipping but a local shop fixed her up good as new. Been out of practice for way too long, hopefully I can start doing it justice.
Quite A Tool fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Mar 17, 2014 |
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Mar 17, 2014 20:20
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Ya might wanna [timg] that.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:21
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Phone post, my bad. Should be fixed?
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Mar 17, 2014 22:41
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All good now, and it looks pretty nice, I'm not really a fan of Purple guitars; though I will say that I am a bigger fan of non-bound Les Pauls.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:58
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Got a ride. It's loud.
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Mar 18, 2014 01:33
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Started playing again seriously, needed some guitars, so I bought some. 2004 Jackson SLSMG Soloist, nice roadrunner case and snazzy suede strap. Pawn shop score at 300 bucks for the whole shebang. Even talked the dude into giving me 100 bucks off a 75 watt Line 6 Spider-2 amp if I bought it with the guitar. The case itself would have been 120 at the same pawn shop. He must have figured it for one of the cheap X-series Jacksons that Fender is flooding the market with these days.  Simon & Patrick Songsmith (Made in  by godin). It's black. Neighbours get mad when I play it because I always sing The Rodeo Song when I drink.
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Mar 18, 2014 17:59
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poo poo dude that SLSMG is a serious score. Those guitars are heavy good
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Mar 18, 2014 18:14
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muike posted:poo poo dude that SLSMG is a serious score. Those guitars are heavy good  Hell yeah. I went in looking for an cheap squier strat or such to noodle around on, and found this hiding in the corner. I kept expecting find something seriously wrong with it, or that it's fake/worthless/whathaveyou.. But nope, didn't even need any setting up - just tuned it and it instantly became my favorite guitar.
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Mar 18, 2014 19:11
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I've got a ton of stuff lately through various channels but the one I'm most excited about and feel like posting is deffo the Diamond Pedals Compressor. I've wanted to try one of these for years, and finally decided gently caress it I'm going for it. Comes extra well recommended, seems like everybody who tries one of these things loves it, so what the hell   Since I'm in the U.S. I get the original VACTROL as opposed to the RoHS compliant version. That's a silly thing to be so concerned about anyway, people aren't going to throw their damned pedals away, but batteries get an exemption and  blah blah blah cool rear end compressor on the way 
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Mar 19, 2014 18:37
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 Got my Agile AL2000 yesterday. Already dropped in a set of GFS pickups.  Finished my first SHO clone. I'm gonna be selling these bad boys for cheap soon. Zvex overcharges so much for such a simple pedal. e: Got a Tele last month for my birthday as well (original electric guitar broke). The pair: 
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Mar 20, 2014 16:14
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booshi posted:Finished my first SHO clone. I'm gonna be selling these bad boys for cheap soon. Zvex overcharges so much for such a simple pedal. To be maximally fair, you are buying the idea of the Zvex hand-painted model, and the accompanying lifetime warranty, when you pay ~$220 or however much it is for one. If it croaks 15 years after purchasing it, you get a new one. Vexters are like $170 and have a 2 year transferable warranty. That's not as good, but, still, not awful. I just recently got (by way of a friend, as a gift) a Zvex Channel 2, which is a SHO with a master volume (or, the second channel of the Super Duper 2-in-1); it would cost $100 and comes with a one year warranty. The Vexter and Channel 2 skirt credulity a bit, but from the manufacturing side of things, the hand-painted models' pricing isn't really that outrageous even taking into account its very low parts cost. A lifetime warranty is expensive and he's made good on that many, many times. Y'all may remember I used to work for Wampler Pedals; they do a 5-year transferable warranty and make every effort to ensure that anybody with the slightest issue, even if it's kind of their fault, is taken care of. They're also proactive in helping to prevent certain kinds of issues, including moving from the classic protection diode (which is best thought of as a sort of fuse that blows and stops things from working, hopefully quickly enough to prevent polarity-related damage to other components in the pedal) to a MOSFET-based polarity protection that nondestructively serves to keep the pedal working even when given incorrect polarity. AC will still fry the poo poo out of virtually every component and give a pedal a sickly-sweet smell that means "hosed," but still - account for the fact that things are only partially priced based on what they cost in parts. They're also priced based on how much effort the manufacturer goes through to make them (for example, order 20 J201 JFET transistors and check them against each other - see how many of them fall in the 4.5V range that EVERY J201 used in a Wampler Pedals product runs; or, buy 100 PT2399 chips and check them to see how close to the nominal behavior description they aren't; now remember that in case of failure or issue, these products have to be replaced immediately with the exact same thing). And that's not even getting into expected and real dealer and distributor margins, opportunity costs relating to R&D, transitioning between manufacturing methodologies when that becomes necessary or helpful, paying yourself and anyone working for you a living wage and benefits if applicable, or any of the other bazillion considerations that are absolutely included when pricing a product at any larger scale than "I have a soldering iron and I can put parts together on perfboard or small batches of PCBs." It's really easy to poo poo on ZVex because you can build a SHO for yourself for about $30 if you go with really good parts including a cool enclosure, but once you start building them for other people you might want to keep in mind that there's a little more to a pedal than just the pedal. And that it's easy to ignore things that you shouldn't ignore when mudslinging at a given manufacturer for overcharging for their products based on component cost. Agreed fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Mar 20, 2014 |
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Mar 20, 2014 16:57
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Ugh, I am going to start carrying a notebook just for Agreed posts.
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Mar 20, 2014 17:27
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Smash it Smash hit posted:Ugh, I am going to start carrying a notebook just for Agreed posts. Please don't, it's bad enough as it is, do you really want a whole notebook full of that poo poo?  Heeey this is a thread wherein pictures are posted... MXR CS La Machine: it's a Foxx Tone Machine with some mods, I love this pedal so much  Dunlop EP101 Echoplex Preamp - It does similar stuff to an EP-3 pre (it is not identical to an EP-3 pre), without the volume drop. It'll even overdrive slightly at extremes. Oh, it also sounds awesome as poo poo before delays, that's what made me decide to buy it. Dunlop calls it a "Tone Conditioner." I hope it hasn't been tested on animals, god drat the cosmetics industry!  Speak of the Zvex! This is a stock photo of the Channel 2, that SHO-with-a-volume-knob my buddy sent me. Thanks, friend, my SHO clone croaked and the fly-by-night operation that made it wasn't around to offer support! Okay, that's a little unfair since I've got everything I could possibly need to make these myself too but I didn't want to dick with it and this was just up for grabs with so much as a "if you don't mind?" so with a big ol' thank-you-kindly I got myself a Zvex pedal. In a 1590A enclosure. God drat we live in strange days. 
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Mar 20, 2014 17:43
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Smash it Smash hit posted:Ugh, I am going to start carrying a notebook just for Agreed posts. Agreed posted:Please don't, it's bad enough as it is, do you really want a whole notebook full of that poo poo?  The discussion about my preamp design and the custom fuzz pedals are separated, but you know some good poo poo dude. Take the compliment graciously. 
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Mar 20, 2014 19:23
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iostream.h posted:No joke, I mentioned it before, but I no poo poo keep the majority of your tech discussion in a text doc for reference. As someone who doesn't watch this thread a lot but is interested in good info I'd appreciate a pastebin of this
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Mar 20, 2014 20:25
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Hey Agreed could you maybe write a little bit about some mixing headphone recommendations. I've used the most-inexpensive Alessandro Grado things but am ready to upgrade significantly. Yeah yeah don't mix with headphones whatever, I use multiple sources but need some good headphones for some of the stuff. I was looking at all the other Grado offerings but I'm not sure if comfort is going to be an issue such that if I spend $500 on some cans, well I'm going to be right pissed that they hurt the top of my head or whatever.
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Mar 20, 2014 21:55
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I'm not Agreed, but I'm a HUGE fan of the AKG Q701 line for music listening AND for mixing. They're (semi?) open back, so they DO leak sound like a motherfucker (but if you're used to Grado that's not a big thing) and the most common complaint is that they're so coldly, utterly clinically sterile, which I really dig for mixing because they really isolate each and every track and instrument without color or compromise. They require a good source and amp and the nice thing about THAT is that they scale nicely as you upgrade your gear. If I were limited to one set of cans, those would be it. My other set is the Shure SRH840. Closed back, a little more coloration in the lows and highs, but not very pronounced and not something that I'd had issues with (bearing in mind that I don't mix primarily in headphones). I also occasionally use my Grado SR352is. They're DEFINITELY colored but since they sound so drat good they're awesome to check out a final to see how things sound. Of course there's a bunch more, the ATH-M50, Apple iBuds, Koss PortaPros and just stuff that's accumulated over the years. Frequency response charts for the AKG and Shures:  
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Mar 20, 2014 22:24
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Agreed posted:To be maximally fair, you are buying the idea of the Zvex hand-painted model, and the accompanying lifetime warranty, when you pay ~$220 or however much it is for one. If it croaks 15 years after purchasing it, you get a new one. True, but if I was going to spend money on something hand-painted I'd much rather do it with something that I look at more than a pedal. And yes, they can back their pedals with warranties while that's something I'd have to personally do, but the markup is still really, really steep. If I can make one for ~$13 with good parts, their prices for parts are lower. I understand everything else that goes into a business as well as manufacturing (I used to work in the auto parts manufacturing business before I decided I didn't want to be "groomed" for my dad's position as president) but if you just want the tonal qualities of a pedal without the paint job or warranty, a clone works well. Also, lifetime warranties are only good if a company stays around. If ZVex closed up shop tomorrow warranties would be useless.
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Mar 20, 2014 23:24
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Not sure if this is the right place, but I figure some of you know stuff about electronics here. My POG was acting up at practice the other day, so I was messing around with it and actually broke off a patch cable in the input jack. I opened it up and, thinking I was clever, discovered if I bent back the little tongs on the input that I could get the tip of the jack out. Now I can't get them to bend back, and the input is useless. Is there any way to fix this, short of replacing the input?
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Mar 20, 2014 23:32
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I just use MDR-V6's for everything 
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Mar 21, 2014 00:07
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FancyMike posted:Got a ride. It's loud. Aww poo poo, you lucky jerkbag. Those RUDEs are a ton of fun, way outta my price range though.
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Mar 21, 2014 00:07
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booshi posted:
Which pickups did you get, and how much of an improvement was there? I'm still debating wether or not to upgrade my Epiphone's humbuckers.
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Mar 21, 2014 02:23
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scuz posted:Aww poo poo, you lucky jerkbag. Those RUDEs are a ton of fun, way outta my price range though. I decided to treat myself for some reason. Low volume practice is pretty much out the window with this though, it doesn't really respond at all to the hot rods. Also I have a set of Rude hats that I got real cheap that this works well with. If it makes you feel any better the crash on the kit right now is a borrowed ZBT that I can barely stand to hit, even just for practice.
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Mar 21, 2014 15:19
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So, my latest cheap but cheerful project is almost wrapped up. I really don't care for heavily reliced bodies, but I have a problem passing up a great deal. I decided to do a tele project. The original plan revolved around a SD 59 neck pickup I had without a guitar to put it in, so I decided to do a Keith Richards-ish Mikawber style tele. When I did my strat project a couple of months ago, I went after an MJT body. They're made in the USA and he auctions finished bodies off starting at 99 cents with no reserve. A lot of them go for north of $300 but if you get on one thats ending at an off time and not many people try for it, you can score them cheap. You just have to keep at it. So, I got the tele body for this project for well under $200. I was sort of bummed at first because I had drunk ebayed it and the finish was too beat up for my liking. I am fine if it looks old, but if any paint is worn off, I want to be the one who did the wearing by actually playing it. Yet when this body arrived I was pretty psyched. Really substantial piece of wood and it was nice to be able to just lay it down on a bare workbench without caring about padding underneath. So, I grabbed a used Duncan broadcaster pickup for the bridge position and some nice pots. I also treated myself to a switchcraft jack that I'll never have to screw-tight again. I splurged on a new warmoth vintage modern neck finished in nitro, but it was one of their pre-made necks so it wasn't a horrible deal. Graphite nut too. After I had it all built up and was about to wire it, I started watching esquire vids on youtube. The body has a very beat up working-class look to it and I sort of liked the straightforward idea of one pickup. There is also something called an eldred mod where you have a third position on the switch where the tone circuit is out and just one .0033 cap is in play. It sounds like you have a wah on but cocked in one position. I loved how it sounded on videos. So, esquire it is. Out came the humbucker that was my whole excuse for the build, and I grabbed a 5 screw no-pickup pickguard from warmoth. Wired it up eldred style and I am officially in love. I decided to embrace the relicing that was done to the body and got a new 6 barrel saddle bridge, and immediately let it sit in vinegar fumes for a couple hours. It got a nice bit of green on it. It has so much bite. It took some dialing in on my od pedals but every position is usable. At times it really sounds like a p-90 pickup. I can't say enough good thinks about that duncan broadcaster pickup. The sustain is really incredible and the noise if low, all things considered. It sounds insane going into a fuzz. 3 way switch is reg tele bridge in the far back pos, bypassed wide open tone in the middle and Eldred mod sound in the neck pos. So all in all, out the door for less than $600. The only thing left is to design a custom waterslide decal for the headstock.    
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Mar 22, 2014 16:17
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You, uh, got one too many strings there. (not being especially serious) Sounds like a killer guitar. Did you already sell it? There were some wiring options Premier Guitar did recently about broadcasters you might like.
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Mar 24, 2014 02:00
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Warcabbit posted:You, uh, got one too many strings there. In the original plan I was actually going to remove an entire saddle to force myself to learn the Keef open tunings. Not how it wound up in the end though. This one is definitely not getting sold. I didn't touch anything else all weekend. When I say less than $600 out the door I was just referring to what it cost me. I have been doing project guitars lately with the intent on keeping them, much to my wife's chagrin. I have agreed to at least sell an existing guitar for each one I build up. I saw the premiere guitar wiring articles and I believe I grabbed the Eldred schematic I used from them. They have this 9 sounds esquire with a 3 way toggle that is really interesting. At one point I went real basic and just wired the pickup straight to the output jack. I kept it like that for a couple days until I talked myself out of it, but I essentially have that sound in my middle position, just with a volume pot.
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Mar 24, 2014 02:18
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FancyMike posted:I decided to treat myself for some reason. Low volume practice is pretty much out the window with this though, it doesn't really respond at all to the hot rods. Also I have a set of Rude hats that I got real cheap that this works well with. Drummer for another band I'm in is stuck with a ZBT ride and neither he nor I can stand to hit it, we just use another crash cymbal for ride parts.
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Mar 25, 2014 00:16
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Oh god drat it I forgot about the Diamond Bass Comp, which is actually super useful for guitar too since the tilt-style EQ has a switchable center from the standard 900Hz to 250Hz and by default operates at 18V - luckily having no issues getting it sorted out to trade in, it just totally slipped my mind that "oh yeah they released an updated and improved version of it for a few bucks more, should probably get that." It also slipped the dude at Diamond's mind who was talking to me about the comp, so at least I'm not the only one who got on one track there, but still, glad I'm shopping at a very customer-oriented store and the exchange process will be painless. So damned stupid, that movable freq center is waaay useful for much much more than just bass guitar, and it coming with an 18V adapter is pretty handy since otherwise I'd be running it at 9V even though it really shines with more headroom to operate at. Thing's basically a channel strip for musical instruments, if they made the tilt EQ implementation have a fully movable center as opposed to switchable between 900hz and 250hz on the Bass version of the comp it'd probably make a lot of half-rack comps look kinda lovely. The standard version already sounds amazing, but being able to emphasize some low mids while cutting bass is really really handy for a guitar with single coils (or, turn it around, the opposite is great for bass and the higher headroom makes their higher output voltage easier to use - any of the Diamond comps are limited, iirc, by the AD op-amps used, which are +/-24V I believe, but 18V is plenty of swing to cover the full range). drat it, self, remember all the products that exist when making a loving purchase, now you look like a total boner. Great work.  Edit: P.S. if I recall the nature of the tilt EQ, you have to actually adjust the coupling caps in order to move the frequency center, so it's nothing so simple as just tossing a pot in there and calling it a day, that's more dream-EQ territory. If only, if only. I'm just glad that PGS is being cool about my gently caress-up. Feel super dumb here. I suck at buying birthday presents for myself because I forget that Diamond is a cool company and built on the success of their comp by making a better version of the exact same comp 
Agreed fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 05:52
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So earlier in this thread I had posted about my adventures in pickup winding. I've been really lovely about updates, but I've made a lot of progress that I'd like to share, so here goes: The pickup I posted earlier was way overwound (a little over 10k winds) and not at all functional, even after charging the magnets. I'm not sure what exactly caused it to not work, but I do know that it didn't work in any fashion so I took the time to remove all the copper wire from the pickup and re-wind. This time I ended up right at 7.5k winds, and everything worked fine. I'm charging these pickups with a small pair of N50 neos. My cheapo analog RadioShack multimeter reads about 8.5kΩ, which seems high, I'm sure the actual value is lower, but digital multimeters are expensive, man. The entire time I've been winding these, I could only ever think about how much of a pain in the rear end testing would be. I'd have to do entire string changes, and the soldering, drat I hate soldering. So after thinking a while I thought I should just devise a pickguard specifically for testing pickups. It didn't work out exactly the way I'd hoped, because the output jack is taller than the route, but it did make setup much easier. Check it:   Anyhoo, enough chit chat, let's here a quickly recorded sample so I can go to sleep: The demos below are quick and dirty recordings of a chord progression I came up with a long time ago and have never found proper use for. The first sound you hear is the stock neck pickup on the Squier Affinity Strat I bought to test these things (which I love). The second part is the way my pickup sounds playing the same chords. Here is the quick and dirty demo done with a Gallien-Kruger amp in Amplitube 3:  Here is the direct sound:  I kind of want to start a thread on this, but I'm not sure if it's really necessary or if it would break any rules or whatever. But if there's interest, let me know. We could do something like "vote on which materials the next pickup uses (gauge wire/magnet attributes/pickup type)". Literally Elvis fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 06:54
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Yarbald posted:Not sure if this is the right place, but I figure some of you know stuff about electronics here. My POG was acting up at practice the other day, so I was messing around with it and actually broke off a patch cable in the input jack. I opened it up and, thinking I was clever, discovered if I bent back the little tongs on the input that I could get the tip of the jack out. Now I can't get them to bend back, and the input is useless. Is there any way to fix this, short of replacing the input? Gonna have to get a new jack. Sorry. If you have no experience soldering on PCB take it to a professional. Lifted pads or burnt traces are no fun to jump. A decent tech should be able to sort it for $20-30 and an hour at most.
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Mar 25, 2014 08:10
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I posted a tease pic in the Synth thread but here are my new Roland TR8 and TB3, integrated into my Ableton setup. They (and some banks of loops in Ableton) run into separate channels of my DJ mixer and there's some send-return fuckery going on in Live for some simple effects alongside the KP3; the goal is to have a flexible live-jamming setup with a DJ, or my roommate and his guitar looper. I haven't tried the latter yet, but jamming on top of DJ sets is pretty fun. And yes, I will get around to posting some live jams. As soon as I get good at it and program some of my own patterns.
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Mar 25, 2014 11:08
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So many control surfaces surely you could spare just one to a pauper who can only seem to get a shitload of pedals at will right? I have two feet what am I going to do here
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Mar 25, 2014 11:33
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Put them on your desk.
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Mar 25, 2014 16:41
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:Put them on your desk. Yeah back when I was in a noise group I got sick of constantly bending over so I went over to Goodwill and grabbed a cheap, higher table and put my pedals on that. It was basically a higher TV dinner table, and it worked great. Then again that was the most complex setup I've ever run (tons of odd effects, some circuit bent, and an a/b/y box for also using modded electronics/sampling in my chain as well. I even had a tape recorder for a while since we used to go digging through thrift shops for old answering machines with tapes to sample. ... I kind of miss those crazy days.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:09
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Actually that's what I do, with the exception of my comp (always on, don't dick with the settings) and my wah (... for obvious reasons, heh). I've got enough space to run about six or seven pedals on my recording desktop at one time, which is plenty. Swapping them in and out is not trivial and can be painful but actually using them is so much easier this way than if I had them on the floor, it'd be risking re-injury and undoing any good the spine surgery did every time I bent over to twist the knobs if they were on the floor. I was just loving around because I really like that Live setup and would love to have some similarly cool control surfaces, it's an area where I frankly just don't have it all filled in like I'd like. I hope it's blatantly obvious that I don't actually expect a dude to give me a super cool control service just because. I'm a cripple, not a moron.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:27
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