Tube Amp Book ISBN 978-0-87930-767-7

It’s called the Tube Amp Book,  for someone with an interest in amplifiers, their workings and their history it’s a great read. It’s the size of an A4 folder and contains pretty much every amp builder from Fender through Mesa, to Budda. It even has a great section on the legend that is Dumble.

The book shows Dumble

For the more advanced in the electronic and amplifier world there is also a lot of detailed schematics for pretty much every amp I can think of, a few escape, Two Rock, Dumble, etc the more top secret builds. It’s not the easiest book in the world to get hold of, but it’s worth it. I’ll be using it as a reference on going and with a little luck as a basis to make some changes to amps.

Recording

I’m meeting up with a bass player and drummer this week for our first get together practice for a new band. We’ll jam out some covers to get to known each others playing a little better, but also work on some new songs. This inspired me to get on with some song writing and finishing off some works in progress.

Recording with Protools

In days gone by you’d have to play bits to other people and try to describe what you wanted, however using my home setup I can record some rough tracks to get the idea across, even better I can give it to them before we turn up to pllay so they can not only get an idea of the song, learn it and work out their parts and contributions better. I finished off two songs tonight and started a porition of one. They are all rough recording and not very polished however it’s enough to the idea across. Once I have the right people and the parts arranged I’ll record them properly (I’m terrible with digital drums so a good live drummer is key.) I’ll hopefully have a positive post on this next week saying “all’s well, we’re recording next week”.

BA003

BA003 Work In Progress

Work on BA003 is progressing nicley, I’ve got the bare componets ready for the next stage. I’ve got a dark alder body routed for 2 TV jones pickups (I made a little nic by the bridge pickup) and a hard tail strat bridge. The neck is birdseye maple with a Brazilian rosewood board. I’ve made a mistake in drilling the tuner holes too small, but that’s easy corrected. I’ve put together a wiring diagram based on the Fender custom shop’s S1 switching concept. I’ll try to start on finishing the bodywork this week and get a solid paint job on it. The TV Jones’s are stil a few weeks away so it should all tie in nice. I also need to hunt for the parts for the electronics. I also want to try to get some different saddles made for the bridge, but I’ve not found anyone who can do this yet and it’s way outside my skillset.

More updates to come

I’ve had contact this week from a Bass player and a female singer, as well as follow ups from a guy doing his own recordings. Not much to say on them as it’s very early doors, but hopefully a meet up with them next week will be productive.

I had a Les Paul moment this year and actually swapped my double neck and Sambora strats for a Gibson VOS series Les Paul Jnr in TV yellow. If I was going to dip a toe back into the Gibson water it wasn’t going to be for another Les Paul standard, despite how good they are. I always liked the Les Paul Jnr’s and loved the TV yellow colour but never managed to get them to work for me due to the type of music I was playing at the time. So this time it’s time to try something new.

Gibson Les Paul Jnr

I’m loving it, it’s got a fat neck and really works well with melody driven lines, the P90 brings out that classic 60′s/70′s sound. So far I’ve not written anything on it, but that’s down to a lack of sitting down with it, rather than not being able to use it.

I’ve also dipped back into pedals, I picked up a reasonably hard to find Frantone Cream Puff pedal. This gives a really really rich fuzz / light driven sound, a sound that in my teenage years I would have laughed at however now I like. I don’t think it’s a sound that you could write an album for, but for a riff, solo or song it works well. If I use this with my Fender Blues Deville amp and a Strat I get the exact sound John Mayer uses on the Crossroads track on Battle Studies. As I say, a core sound it’s too much, but I’ve used it for a solo on a song idea and love it.

I'm man enough to play a pink pedal

I also picked up an Ibanez 70′s Flanger, it’s battered to high hell and it sounds fantastic but in the off position it’s a complete tone sucker so has to be used with a looper, it’s battery connection is knackered due to it’s age so it’s quite badly behaved and I can’t find an adaptor to fit with with my Diago Power chain. That said it’s ace, I do love vintage pedals. Not really used it yet though in song writing or live (due to it being so hammered).

Work in progress is the Bogner Alchemist head This is essentially a clean fender with a vintage marshall dirty amp in a modern day packaging. It’s got a good reverb and delay effect in built. I’m trying to get a dealer to get one of these in stock so I can actually sit down and play it.

Affordable Two Rock ?

Then there is the holy grail…..the Two Rock custom reverb amp, this is the beast, the best clean sound I’ve ever heard, bar none. It’s price tag is something that’s quite restrictive to mortals. This year could be the year I find enough non-allocated cash.

Good news on the pedal front, the Way Huge Aqua Puss analog delay pedal, the one that stopped production many many years ago and can change hands for as much as £500+ due to their quality and rarity, are being re-released for what appears to be a pretty reasonable price tag of approx £140. They are expected to be re-released in early Feb 2010, in which case in February, if you check this very site you’ should hopefully see a post saying “I’ve got my Aqua Puss pedal”

The search for tone and sounds continues…..not bad for a guy who only every used a driven sound and no pedals.

As I sat down tonight re-listening to songs that where written last year and working on songs for this year I listened to one, a more slow blues based track and the positive side of this is upon listening back, I’m not going to change this at all, I’m happy with it and I think it’s the first track that’s made it to the proper demo recording process.

So far I’ve only made firm decisions on two songs, one partial re-write, and one firm tick in the box, time to go back to listening.

This time there is an added twist, on some of the tracks I did for other people that where almost finished any tracks that have had a reasonable level of elastic audio used on them are being disabled and greyed out saying they are “read only” what the duce ??? I have no idea why this is happening and I’m still trying to figure out it.

I run pro-tools on a Mac, with official digideisgn gear, fully patched applications and %101 compatability yet this is the second time it’s happened.

For the industry standard tool (and lets be real, it is good !) it sure struggles to remember where it’s audio data is.

Back to trying to fix it.

The first interesting purchase are 3 new guitar effects pedals.

Boss CE2 1982

My first is the Boss CE2. This is a chorus effects pedal, mass production – nothing special at al. The fact is this is a good pedal even now, however this one is special. This is one of the orignial made pedals from Japan. The Japanese pedals have much high quality components than the current production models, this makes it a little more expensive than the current production models but well worth it. Yes it’s a little battered but the look of it doesn’t really matter, it’s a great bit of kit. I’ve not been a chorus fan for a long time, but as I’ve been playing with sounds for a while now I’ve manged to find a few bits of music I’m writing. I don’t think I’ll ever be a real chorus fan but I am enjoying playing with a few more modern sounds than the classic clean sounds I’ve been using (I’m also enjoying a few of the driven sounds).

Metatone Howie

I’ve also taken ownership of a Metatone “Howie” pedal. This pedal is fantastic, it is a Dumble amp simulator. I’f you don’t know what a Dumble amp is, it’s a very hard to get hold of guitar amplifier made by a famous amp builder called Dr Alexander “Howard” Dumble (hence the name of the pedal is “Howie”. Alexander Dumble puts very strict rules in place about people owning his amps and there are supposed to be only 300 amplifiers made. For mortals like me, this is a great alternative. It simulates the clean sound and light break up of a Dumble amp while also providing a second foot switch which activates the second channel of the virtual Dumble amp making the overdrive channel active.  This pedal provides a great approxmiation of the Dumble sound and really blends in well with my amps natural sound. Very pleased with it. I’ve also noticed this pedal is also quite hard to find, so I think I’ll be keeping hold of it. It’s not made it onto my pedal board yet for live use.

I’m also going to spend a little more time on learning a little more about the studio software I use to make certain recording tasks a little less time consuming and furstrating. I have found that I’ve learnt a lot by working with/studing the software in parallel but maybe a little focus time on not playing and actually learning and understanding will help.

This all sounds like a big excuse of why I’m writing little and poor quality at the moment, but it’s the truth and as this is supposed to document the truth, no point hiding.

On a side note my up coming gig that I was looking forward to got canceled, really doesn’t help.

ProTools 101 Study Time

I’m hopeful that publicly noting this down will drive me to find the people I want to play with, while also giving me a kick in the arse to finish the work in progress and not allow myself to get distracted from the writing process just because of a lack of imediate gratification.

I’m also going to try to listen to some of my old vinyl at home in the evening see how this kick starts things. The 9-5 really drags out the writing and recording process. Keep with me though, I’m glad I decided to do this blog to see where I started and how I got to the finished item (assuming I do get there.)