beenthere

Any idea what pedal is to the left of the Brown Rabbit in the pic with the Blister Agent? It kind of looks like it might be an Effector 13/Devi Ever pedal, but I can't tell for sure.

I checked the Vox showroom website, and they have a AC-4 and AC-10 listed, but no AC-5. As far as I know, Vox hasn't made any lower-wattage tube-based amps in quite a while.

Good point, oceanman, there are quite a few 5W Class A amps out there (Swart, etc.), and I know Wilco has used Swart amps in the past (maybe for recording, at the very least for backstage pre-show warm-ups). I was just bemoaning the fact that Vox didn't make one currently.

Good point. I've always been a little surprised that Vox (at least recently, they may have made them in the past) has never made an all-tube lower wattage recording amp based on the AC15/AC30 models. A little ~5 watt all-tube Vox would be pretty awesome.

I got an Earthquaker Hummingbird recently, really good for choppy tremolo sounds. I don't use the fastest settings, but they can give you some cool ring-mod type sounds. I did notice that it seems to work better, for lack of a better word, with single note playing rather than chords, but I'm still playing around with settings.

With regard to Golden Smoghead's question about $100 or cheaper noisemakers, have you tried a Electro-Harmonix Holy Stain? They're kind of neat, although a bit restrictive as far as what effects you can use together (you can't use tremolo with, say, reverb, but you can with any of their gain settings).

I think another pedal (in the St. Louis pic) is a BJF Honey Bee Overdrive (the gold one with three knobs). I didn't see the Boss DS-1 in that pic, though, although it seems like the Wilco guys rotate pedals in and out of their rigs pretty frequently.

I do think it's kind of cool that, in a pedalboard with its fair share of boutique pedals, Pat find a place for a $40 Boss distortion.

Looking through the St. Louis pics, I can make out what I think is a Death by Audio Interstellar Overdrive (the single knob version) and a Crowther Hot Cake, in addition to the Dililog.

If memory serves me correctly, approximately 4 watts of solid state should equal 1 watt of tube. By that reasoning, you would need a 60 W solid state amp. May as well bump it up to 100 watts in that case. The SWR California Blonde is ~200 W (Jeff Tweedy used one for a while on stage), and SWR's Strawberry Blonde runs 90W. Fishman makes an acoustic amp that goes up to 130 W (the Loudbox Performer, I think). You could go with a Roland JC120, that is supposed to offer lots of clean headroom.

I'm assuming that the Core 1 is a solid state amp? Yeah, solid state amps of a certain wattage, for reasons I couldn't explain, are less loud than tube amps of the same wattage. There's also a difference between Class A amps (like the Vox) and Class A/B amps (like the Fender) in that Class A amps at a certain wattage are louder than Class A/B amps of the same wattage. I guess the best way to describe it would be:

Class A>>Class A/B>>Soild State

Have you thought about just micing the Core amp? Or, if you're looking for a super-clean folk amp, maybe get a higher wattage Fender amp. Those things tend to have a lot of clean headroom.

I know there's a product called the Third Hand, where you can directly connect an expression pedal to the knob of your choice. Here's a link.

http://www.musictoyz.com/guitar/pedals/tip.php

I think the primary difference between the two mostly comes down to how much real estate you want your volume pedal to take up. I don't think that the Junior is that much smaller, but then again I always thought that the regular size VP was a bit on the large side to begin with.

I think that the active vs. passive has to do with the electronics in the guitar...generally, most pickups in electric guitars are passive, so I assume a passive volume control would be the way to go.

Madison, WI.

Okay, so I got the chance to try out a Reverend Roundhouse HB, and I was pretty impressed. I think they mentioned it on their website, but the Roundhouse is lighter than a traditional Les Paul. It's also more of a flattop than a carved top (at least that was my impresson). In any case, the guitar felt and played really well. The Bass Contour knob is handy, I can see where it'd be pretty versatile. It sounded really good on every setting I tried, heck, it even sounded pretty good unplugged, which is always a good test, I think. They didn't have a Swede in stock, so I couldn't ry that one out, but needless to say I was impressed enough by the Roundhouse to seriously consider it. I may hold off a little bit to see if I can find a store in town with a Swede so I can try it out.

Yeah, I've heard the same thing about Epiphones in general. That's the big drawback to them as far as I can tell. I think the Roundhouses are fairly new to the Reverend line. I had been thinking about getting a Reverend Volcano, but I'm not sure I'm a Flying-V type of guy.

Thanks for the input and the link, I've read a bunch of reviews about both the Hagstrom and Reverend guitars, and they're mostly positive (esp. with the Reverends). Like I said, there's a guitar store in town that carries them, so hopefully after work today I can stop by and try the Roundhouse out. They sometimes carry Hagstroms, too, so maybe if I'm lucky I can kill two birds with one stone.

I'm thinking about getting a new guitar, here are the ones I've been thinking about:

(1) Epiphone Les Paul Standard

(2) Hagstrom Swede

(3) Reverend Roundhouse HB

I've had a chance to try out the Epi Les a couple of times. Haven't had a chance to try out the Hagstrom or Roundhouse (although I may be able to this weekend), but I've heard good things about both.

Any thoughts or past experience?

http://www.bassplayer.com/article/windy-ci...gman/Feb-05/128

http://www.bassplayer.com/article/wilcos-w...rowl/Feb-05/130

Well, the stereotypical order goes (if I remember correctly):

Guitar-->Compressor-->OD/Distortion/Fuzz-->Modulation effects (chorus, tremolo)-->Delay/reverb-->Amp

I'd use this as a framework, then rearrange if you need to.

I guess the best recommendation I can make would be to try your acoustic with a variety of distortion pedals and find the one that you like best. There's no shortage of distortion pedals out there. The Rat's a good one, though. Either that, or play an acoustic guitar through an overdriven amp. I think that's how the More like the Moon version of Kamera was recorded (acoustics through cranked AC30s(?)), that's also how the Breeders got their guitar sounds on Last Splash (acoustics through Marshalls).

I had one for a while. I noticed that, if you just use the pedal by itself and with a clean amp, you can get two sounds out of it-a clean boost or a fuzzy overdrive kind of sound (I think this is where the "Neil Young in a box" comment is appropriate). The gain knob on the pedal doesn't have a wide range of sounds under this scenario, it pretty much transitions from a pretty clean sound to gnarliness pretty quickly (at around the 3 o'clock mark). In conjunction with an overdriven amp (or an amp on the edge of overdrive), or another OD pedal, you have some more flexibility with the gain on the pedal, and I think there is where you can get the most out of the pedal. The treble and bass knobs are pretty responsive under both situations and are good for molding the sound of the Overdriver to your liking. If at all possible, try the Overdriver out before buying it and make sure that you can make it work with your rig, because they are kind of expensive.

If memory serves me correctly, wasn't there a stretch where Jeff played a Gibson Flying V? Does he just not play that one anymore, or is it only for a certain song these days?

Gibson makes a faded SG (in worn cherry and worn brown) which is in your price range, so if you wanted to stick with an SG-type guitar that'd be an option. Eastwood makes an SG clone that's about $300-400 as well (they call theirs the Corona, I believe).

My impression has always been that the Slow Gear basically will give you a volume swell-type effect (this may be a bit of an oversimplification, but I think it's pretty accurate). Guyatone makes a micro effect version of the Slow Gear called the Slow Volume. They're about $80 new. I think that there's a Behringer version of the Slow Gear in their latest batch of Boss knockoff pedals, and that would probably be even cheaper than the Guyatone.

First off, Octavios and octave pedals in general aren't really meant for chords, although if you play around with it you could get some cool ring modulator-type sounds. No, they're really made for single-notes, especially solos (a la Hendrix). Typically, if you play notes past the 12th fret (I think) that's where the Octavio really stands out. You'll want to play around with which pickup you use, and you'll probably want to adjust the tone knob on your guitar (I think most folks turn down the treble). I have a Octavia clone, which is kind of fun to play around with, but it's not the most practical pedal, in my opinion. Hope this helps.

If you're looking at tube-based distortion pedals, the Ibanez Tube King is another possibility. I had one for a long time (Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth used one around the same time, so therefore I had to as well), but sold it, which I now regret. The vintage EH Hot Tubes seems to get a lot of love on the Internets, but I don't know about the new version. The Hot Cake is a great pedal as well.