Grüße aus Frankfurt!

Written by

messe

Howdy from Frankfurt! I’m here for the week covering Musikmesse for Premier Guitar magazine. Messe is like NAMM, only somewhat larger and way louder. With beer and sausage. And probably lots of accordions, because you can’t have beer, sausage, or music trade shows without accordions.

You can check the many daily pics and notes posted at PG‘s Facebook page. We have a strict “new gear only” policy. No NAMM retreads — only items being introduced here in Frankfurt. Should be interesting!

:pacman: :pill: :beer: (pretend the pill is a sausage)

Comments

37 responses to “Grüße aus Frankfurt!”

March 12, 2014

Oinkus

Hope you have a great time and get to see some cool new stuff !! We want to see more accordions ! Stay safe and have fun.

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March 12, 2014

bear

Any new accordions of note for playing metal?

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March 13, 2014

joe

Thanks, guys! I’m having a blast. And seeing some amazing things here at Musikmesse! https://tonefiend.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_0811.jpg

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1. March 14, 2014
  
  Oinkus
  
  Of course I was in the marching band in high school ! That is some nice , high dollar stuff wheee ! Oooh ! Double French Horns !!! Things I can’t afford to have crud. Good food makes us happy Joe , glad you are having a good time !!! :finger:
  
  Reply
March 13, 2014

wrangle

I’m a little jealous that you have the opportunity to eat a REAL german breakfast… contrary to what a lot of people might think, sauerkraut goes very well with sausage and eggs.

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1. March 13, 2014
  
  joe
  
  Oh man — you’ll be glad to hear I have been eating local — not just German food, but Hessian specialties in particular. Handkäse is yummy. :pacman:
  
  Reply
  1. March 14, 2014
    
    wrangle
    
    “Die Musik kommt später”
    
    Reply
    1. March 14, 2014
      
      joe
      
      Ich spreche kein Deutsche. Wo ist der bar?
      
      Reply
      1. March 14, 2014
        
        wrangle
        
        Well, apparently, Handkäse is often served with chopped raw onions on top, which is called “Handkäse mit Musik” (literally: hand cheese with music). “Die Musik kommt später” is a response to a tourist or stranger who asks where the music is (“the music comes later”).
        
        :beer:
March 14, 2014

mwseniff

Big accordions please!

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1. March 15, 2014
  
  joe
  
  How about … sexy accordions? https://tonefiend.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2014-03-15-at-5.24.15-PM.png
  
  Reply
  1. March 16, 2014
    
    mwseniff
    
    You know something you almost never see? Topless female accordion players!!
    
    Reply
    1. March 16, 2014
      
      Double D
      
      You’ve never seen my friend Ana Bon Bon perform her burlesque set, then…
      
      Reply
      1. March 16, 2014
        
        joe
        
        O Canada. 🙂
March 15, 2014

Oinkus

The Tubemiester 18 now with a 12 inch speaker ! Dangit , 4 years later they put what I thought it should originally have had grrrrr. Great stuff Joe , even if I had to be on one of those f—book pages to read it. Looks like you are having a great time!

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1. March 15, 2014
  
  joe
  
  Funny. The dude from H&K told me they came out with the new model specifically because U.S. players don’t dig 10s.
  
  Reply
  1. March 16, 2014
    
    Oinkus
    
    Don’t get me wrong , it is a great little amp. It just has one output so adding a cab removes the Theile-Small enclosed 10″ speaker from the mix. I thought about getting a splitter to add a 1×12 to it though? Would make it uh bigger and more open ?
    
    Reply
March 15, 2014

Joe Gore

Ever wonder what Musikmesse is like? It looks and sounds like this:

https://tonefiend.com/wp-content/uploads/Messe_shred_small.m4v

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March 15, 2014

joe

Ever wonder what Musikmesse is like? It looks and sounds like this:

https://tonefiend.com/wp-content/uploads/Messe_shred_small.m4v

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March 16, 2014

marianne nelissen

joe we really like to thank you for visiting us at the messe 2014 and the reactions you gave on the our V6 tubeart amp ! and thumbs up for tonefiend.com hope to meet you again at winternamm or frankfurter beer and sausage musikmesse

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1. March 16, 2014
  
  joe
  
  The pleasure was mine, Marianne! The V6 (an extraordinary, ultra-high-end amp handmade in the Netherlands) was one of the best I’ve ever heard. And you were so cool as well. See you next time! 🙂
  
  Reply
March 16, 2014

Sebastián Enríquez

Hey Joe, I saw this article in PG and reminded about you. Is about a wiring scheme called “Greasebucket” which is a PTB style but with some mods. I know PTB is one of your fave mods but this one seems pretty interesting.

If you´re interested, here it is:
https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/12311-mod-garage-the-fender-greasebucket-tone-circuit

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1. March 17, 2014
  
  joe
  
  Oh man — thanks, Sebastián! I hadn’t seen that. I’m definitely going to try this out!
  
  I finally got to meet the author of that article, Dirk Wacker, at Messe. Cool guy! Love his column in PG.
  
  Reply
  1. March 17, 2014
    
    Sebastián Enríquez
    
    Let us hear a demo when you have made the mod, maybe I’ll also try this in my be-loved Strat.
    
    Reply
  2. March 18, 2014
    
    Oinkus
    
    Have that mod on my Tele I like it a lot. Just seems to have more definition throughout the entire range of travel for the tone knob. Clear and crisp, some love it , some don’t.
    
    Reply
    1. March 18, 2014
      
      joe
      
      Oh man — how come everyone knows about it except me? 😉
      
      Reply
      1. March 19, 2014
        
        Oinkus
        
        Because a ton of people hate it quite passionately Joe. It’s one of those things that you just love or hate apparently. Will try and put up pics and a couple clips for you somewhere, but it is by far the most used and abused tone knob on all of my guitars.
2. March 17, 2014
  
  Shizmab Abaye
  
  I sketched this out as a schematic to try to figure out how it really works. When your tone pot is up full, it’s likely to sound a bit brighter than your regular guitar as the 0.1 uF cap is shorted out and the 4.7k/0.022 uF in series with the tone pot mean it’s loading your pickup less than it usually would.
  
  When the tone pot is all the way down, the effective cap value is those two caps in series, which is going to be a smaller value than either one by itself.
  
  The 4.7k resistor, as the author states, is similar to not turning your tone control all the way down. This will suppress that “woman tone” bump that you normally get when turning your tone all the way down. This might be what (whoever said it) meant by “doesn’t boost the bass”. I don’t actually see any evidence of this being a band pass filter, but what do I know? :cuckoo:
  
  If you added an SPST switch to bypass the 4.7k/0.022 uF, you could recover your woman tone at your whim.
  
  As with many tone circuits where capacitors are connected directly to the pickup, the characteristics of the circuit depend a lot on the pickup itself.
  
  Reply
  1. March 17, 2014
    
    Sebastián Enríquez
    
    The thing that called my attention was this: “The additional cap on the wiper of the Greasebucket circuit complicates things a bit, because together with the pickups, it forms an RLC circuit (…) But the Greasebucket has its own special sound, and I can only encourage everyone to try it. You’ll be surprised at its flexibility and tone.”
    
    Never knew about a circuit that uses the pickups as part of the scheme rather than the beginning of it.
    
    Surely, it’s worth a try.
    
    Reply
3. March 19, 2014
  
  Shizmab Abaye
  
  As usual, after more thought I need to revise my answer. If you used a switch to bypass the 4.7k and the 0.022 uF, then your tone cap would become the 0.1 uF which is pretty huge. This would put you into Brandon’s “Overkill” territory.
  
  If you simply bypassed the 4.7k, then your tone cap, when all the way down, would be 0.022 uF in series with 0.1 uF which is, er… 0.018 uF. That’s sorta small for a tone cap so the resonant frequency with your pickups is going to be higher than if you used a (typical?) 0.047 uF.
  
  I used this little calculator: https://www.kusashi.com/series-capacitors.php
  
  So I gets this idea.
  
  Combine the Greasebucket circuit with an SPDT center off toggle switch. The common of the SPDT would go to ground.
  
  1) Center (switch off), you have Greasebucket.
  
  2) On one side, you could short across the 0.022uF and 4.7k and get a really dark tone when the tone pot is dialed down, a la Brandon’s “Overkill” because of the 0.1 uF.
  
  3) On the other side, add another cap which would be your “normal” tone cap, then connect the far side of this cap to the tone pot terminal where the 0.022 uF is currently connected. You’d want to make this cap larger than normal as the 0.1 uF is in series with it. For example, to target a 0.047 uF value, use an 0.082 uF (which gives 0.045 uF). Use the series capacitor calculator to figure it out if you want different values.
  
  I have described the behavior at the extremes of pot movement. In between, because you have a more complex circuit in there, it’s not going to be exactly like having a simple one cap tone control. But it might be cool anyway. :beer:
  
  Reply
March 18, 2014

bear

Joe, I don’t suppose you got any demo time with the Roland GP-10. Seems like a basic all-in one alternative to your Fishman-and-MacBook rig.

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1. March 19, 2014
  
  joe
  
  I wish! Saw it, but Roland never managed to provide a demo for us. The Roland stuff always amazes me, and the new arrivals look cool. For me, though, I’ve never wanted to restrict myself to the Boss sound universe, and I’m SO invested in MainStage sound design that I couldn’t imagine doing digital work without the laptop. That’s just me though — I bet the new Roland gizmos are really good.
  
  Reply
  1. March 20, 2014
    
    bear
    
    Well, I knew you weren’t going to abandon your setup. The development, customization, putting all the various components together in the coherent rig. You would be reinventing the wheel with a new user interface, new control interface, and with a new, fixed pallet of sounds.
    
    But for me, I have no current investment in a computer guitar rig. The official demos sound great and high-tech guitar geeks seem to love the underlying tech. I don’t know if the VG stuff included is incredibly lite duty compared to the previous VG products, but if it delivers, it could be awesome. Hmm. Gonna be stalking that one.
    
    Reply
March 19, 2014

wrangle

I notice a couple of manufacturers showing integrated analog-stompbox-styled multi-effect units this year (T-Rex SoulMate, Carl Martin 6-Pack), which is an idea that really appeals to me. The big issue is, of course, the fact that you’re stuck with the selection of effects that are hard-wired into the box, and I’ve yet to see one of these things that had more than one or two effects that I actually would want in them.

Now, in the recording and electronic music worlds, there’s a couple of modular formats that allow you to combine standardized hardware modules together to make your own customized setup: the 500 series racks for pro recording and the “Eurorack” system for modular synthesizers. As far as I know, there’s never been a similar system developed for guitar effects (although it’s possible it’s been tried in the past and failed).

Maybe the old paradigm of separate boxes velcro’ed to a board and spaghetti-wired together is just what people gravitate toward because it’s relatively straightforward. Seems to me, though, that the advantages of having a power supply, switching system and a selection of different manufacturers’ effects that could be rearranged or expanded as your needs changed would be the best thing since sliced bread for a stompbox-oriented guitar player.

https://www.radialeng.com/workhorse.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doepfer_A-100

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1. March 19, 2014
  
  thomas4th
  
  Hmm, I suppose the closest thing to a modular effects setup I can think of would be the use of 19″ rackmount gear, which was all the rage for a while. I’d love to see something more like 500-series or Eurorack, though; it might also facilitate more MIDI/CV/Expression capability in pedals, which would be lovely. The trouble would be a) settling on a standardized format and b) getting enough manufacturers to take it seriously.
  
  Reply
  1. March 20, 2014
    
    wrangle
    
    I agree with you, the trick would be settling on a standard. I think it would take 3 or 4 companies partnering up and taking a risk that the system they establish would be good enough that others would jump on board.
    
    Aside from the versatile switching possibilities and overall neatness a modular stompbox system makes possible, another huge advantage is the fact that each individual effect module won’t need it’s own set of jacks and switches. A lot more effects could be fit in a smaller space, and the effects would be significantly cheaper to build, as well.
    
    Reply
2. March 19, 2014
  
  joe
  
  I didn’t get a chance to hear the Carl Martin 6 Pack. But man, the SoulMate sounded really good. Looked cool too.
  
  Reply