Some boutique stompbox builders pursue endless refinements of classic pedal designs, developing ever-more-suave iterations of the Tube Screamer and Ross Compressor.
And some just want to blow shit up.
Guess which category Portland, Oregon’s Devi Ever falls into? Hint: Her extensive line of guitar and bass pedals includes such anarchy boxes as the Little Shit, the Ruiner, the Heroin Lifestyle, and the Truly Beautiful Disaster.
Here’s what I’m talking about: Check out Devi’s video demo for her Shoe Gazer fuzz…
…or this one of Wilco’s mighty Nels Cline giving Devi’s Soda Meiser a workout:
You don't have to spend $6.706 to sound like a punk.
You don’t have to spend $6,706 to sound like a punk. And don’t ask what the six cents are for!
My pal Linda B. is a killer rock and roll drummer who also plays a pretty mean guitar. She’s decided to form an all-female Sex Pistols cover band, with her assuming the duties of guitarist Steve Jones.
An avid rock historian, Linda did her research, which quickly led her to Gibson’s limited edition Steve Jones signature model Les Paul Custom, a slavishly accurate replica of Steve’s iconic axe.
(The original, which had previously belonged to New York Doll Sylvain Sylvain, was not used on the Sex Pistols’ early singles or the Never Mind the Bollocks album, but was his main stage instrument.)
Just one problem: the $6,706 price tag.
So Linda bought a used white Epiphone Les Paul Custom for $299, ordered the same pickups that are in the original and the signature model (a Gibson 498T “Hot Alnico” humbucker in the bridge position, and a 496R “Hot Ceramic” humbucker at the neck), and found some sketchy online vendor who sells replicas of the original’s pinup-girl stickers, plus an even sketchier vendor who sells fake Gibson logos. We popped in the pickups, slapped on the stickers, and made a darn good replica for a bit over $500.
When you make DIY stompboxes powered by 9-volt batteries, your biggest fear is a solder burn (or dropping your drill on your iPad, but that’s another story). DIY amps are different: AC voltage can kill you, so a klutz like me approaches amp builds with caution.
Which brings me to one of the great things about Tube Depot’s Tweed Champ Vacuum Tube Amp Kit: the fantastic assembly manual. Other great things include the price ($499, roughly half the price of a non-kit Champ clone of comparable quality). The design (which follows the original circuit, but substitutes an intelligently designed circuit board layout for the original turret board). And most of all, the tone.
I’ve got lots more to say about the kit, the fun I had building it, the lore of the 5-watt ’58 Champ, and the pros and cons of Class A amps (the Champ is the only Fender classic that merits the classification). But first, have a listen!
I've got a Tweed Champ kit, and I'm not afraid to use it. Or at least not VERY afraid.
I’ve got a Tweed Champ kit, and I’m not afraid to use it. Or at least not VERY afraid.
Why do they make amps so damn loud?
It’s not just a cranky question from a guitarist who’s drawing depressingly close to the “Get off my lawn!” years. I ask sincerely: Why?
Big amps make total sense — but only if a) it’s 1969, b) you’re playing venues with Jurassic sound reinforcement, and c) you’re a guitarist in danger of being drowned out by Keith Moon or John Bonham.
Okay, end of harangue — I’ll have time for that when I’m chasing kids off my lawn (after I move to the suburbs and GET a lawn). But as I get psyched up to build this review model of Tube Depot’s Tweed Champ kit in the coming days, I figured I’d ask what folks are using these days to get cool amp tones in their bedrooms and basements. Not dedicated practice amps, necessarily, but great-sounding stuff that happens to be ultra-low-wattage? Name your petite-amp poison!
Anyway, I’m stoked about this kit. I’ve already completed a few amp clones from Ceriatone. They were fun to build and sounded great. But I can tell right off the bat that this Tube Depot kit has at least one major advantage over its Malaysian cousins: This one comes with a fabulous 40-page instruction manual. (Most clone vendors simply link you to a schematic.) Having created a few step-by-step instruction manuals myself, I can testify how much painstaking work these entail. Hats off to Tube Depot’s Rob Hull for doing it right!
Details and build report to follow. But now, let’s talk tiny-amp tone!
Prewired replacement electronics provide access to many popular wiring mods, minus the soldering.
Prewired replacement electronics provide access to many popular wiring mods, minus the soldering.
Larry Santellan of Santellan Sounds, maker of the Elec-Trix tone modules, sent me some samples to check out. These pre-wired circuits offer quick access to some of the “greatest hits” of alternate wiring, with an emphasis on Strats and Teles. He has pop-in modules for 5-way Teles, Vari-Tones, passive overdrives, vintage/modern switching, and more.
I haven’t had the time to try everything Larry sent, but for a few months I’ve had his 4-Way Fat Tone Monster Deluxe Wiring Kit in my Tele-like G&L ASAT. It lets me dial in the three standard sounds, plus that humongous series-pickups BLAT! A push/pull pot bypasses the tone control. (I never hear meaningful differences between bypassed tone controls and wide-open ones, but this setup lets me toggle between a bright, wide-open tone a muted one.)
Installation was relatively easy, and the parts and workmanship are top-notch. If you’re interested in alternate pickup wiring options, but don’t have the skill, patience, or time to solder it yourself, well, check out the Elec-Trix catalog.
Solder-free configuration via clever ribbon connectors.
Is it just me, or do many guitarists these days find themselves alternating between separate analog and digital setups?
I’m posting some pics of my current pedalboards (bearing in mind that, for reasons I’ll get into in a sec, my pedalboards only tend to stay “current” for a few days at a time). Both were assembled using store-bought housings, though I’ll talk a bit about total DIY boards as well.
First, the mostly analog setup (the exception, of course, is the digital Boomerang III looper).
Joe Gore’s mostly analog pedalboard.
The case is a newly purchased SKB Stage Five, a full-featured unit in a relatively rugged molded plastic case. These retail for a whopping $540, but you can find them heavily discounted. (I forget the exact price I paid for mine, but it was under $300.) It’s loaded with cool features, like dual effect loops, a built-in buffered preamp, and support for 9- through 24-volt DC power, plus 9V AC for those digital pedals like Line 6 modelers and many loopers. There are even trim pots on a few power jacks to simulate dying batteries. I’m less impressed by some of the fittings (like the cheapo plastic jacks), though I suppose they keep the weight down. And make no mistake: This thing is heavy!
Verdict: Too early to tell, since I haven’t subjected it to road abuse, but I trust it enough to at least give it a go. I think I’d be a bit disappointed had I paid full pop, but it strikes me as a fair deal if you can find it at a 40+% discount.
Somewhat embarrassingly, I never got around to changing one of my own pickups until I was knocking on senility’s door recently. I owe part of the inspiration to that fabulous DIY Fest known as the Maker Fair, where each year hundreds of little kids learn to solder craft projects at long picnic tables. Or maybe it was the awesome soldering tutorial by 11-year old W0JAK. Well, after a buttload of pickup installs inspired by this blog, I guess I qualify as some sort of solder “expert,” because Seymour Duncan asked me to make a video designed to walk n00bs through the pickup install process for the first time. It was a lot of fun to prepare, and I learned some important things, like the fact that it’s hard to solder, talk, and operate a camera at the same time. Check it out:
I’ve said it so many times, I feel like the parrot of pickups, but here goes again: These days the weakest links on inexpensive Asian and Mexican guitars are invariably the pickups. Upgrading them often yields a princely axe at a pauperly price.
A perfect example is the Ibanez Art Star archtop I just upgraded for my friend Dusty. These aren’t especially sought-after models — they seem to sell used here in the States for for between $400 and $500.
The guitar looked cool and played well, but the pickups were murky and undistinguished. I replaced them with a pair of Duncan ’59s, and man — a merely decent guitar suddenly became very good.
Dusty’s not really a jazz player — more a cool indie-rock-pop guy — so I figured he’d like the option of a brighter, single-coil sound. I requested the ’59 model with four-connector cable (plus chrome covers to maintain the retro look), and used push/pull pots from StewMac for humbucker/single-coil switching. That was also my rationale for choosing “vintage-style” wiring, which keeps the tone relatively bright, even when rolling back the tone pots. Dusty also wanted to keep the guitar’s flatwound string as a departure from his usual roundwounds, which was all the more reason to keep the tone as bright as possible.
Just one disclaimer before you view the demo: Dusty is left-handed, and I am not. I foolishly bravely recorded the performance playing the guitar upside-down without restringing. So you’re going to have to imagine how it would sound played confidently and comfortably! (It was an interesting experience, to say the least, one I wrote about it here.)
UPDATE:I’ve added a page listing all the “How To” posts on this site. Just click the cleverly titled How-To Posts Are Here! box at upper-right of each page.
There’s got to be a better way!
Several readers asked for more specific tech advice on how to wire up battery-powered effects inside a guitar or bass, so I created a step-by-step tutorial, which you can download here.
Some historical background: Since the ’60s, many guitar companies have toyed with the notion of installing battery-operated effects inside guitars.
And “toyed” is probably the perfect verb for it. Onboard effects have earned a reputation as cheesy, low-budget products. In many cases this reputation is justified. (And sometimes it’s not — the Electra guitars of the ’80s were never particularly popular, but their simple onboard distortion circuit has generated hundreds of “boutique” clones, not to mention our own Bad-Ass Distortion project).
And why would you want to put an effect inside a guitar or bass? You can use a stompbox with any electric instrument, but an onboard effect is married to one axe till solder-do-they-part.
Would this be anything less than awesome? I think not.
Would this be anything less than awesome? I think not.
As I gloated last week, Jane Wiedlin gave me her Hello Kitty Stratocaster — the most bitchin’ $99 guitar ever conceived! I finally had a chance to destroy/customize it yesterday, in what will no doubt be the first of many desecrations/enhancements.
I’d ordered one of those Synyster Gates Duncan Invaders with the pretty white pole pieces for the guitar, but just couldn’t wait to experiment, so I browsed through the ol’ pickup collection, and found a nice Duncan Phat Cat I’d used in a Les Paul experiment some months ago.
I don’t generally recommend choosing pickups because of their names, but come on! Kitty + Cat? How could I resist?
Turns out it was a lucky choice. I hadn’t planned to install a pickup that was actually lower in output than the stock humbucker, but it lets me get nicer clean sounds, and coughs up more than enough crunch when goosed with distortion. Speaking of which: the other custom feature is a built-in-distortion circuit activated via push-pull pot (I took lots of pics of the process for a DIY built-in-effects tutorial I’ll be posting very soon.)
View the carnage in this little video. Thanks, Jane Weidlin! Sorry, Stevie Nicks!
