Gear thread

  • So I've been playing with and recording with my new amp. I've got two great options for recording amps now, in my opinion.

    I've got the 68 custom Princeton reverb and now this gremlin Tone King.


    I'm really digging the tone king.

    I had been playing with it using the p90 Yamaha Revstar, and the other day I recorded something with my telecaster. The telecaster really shines through this amp. Really really good!


    But one of the songs I was working on has open g, A minor and d. And some of those cords were going out of tune. I set The intonation but it was already pretty much dead on.


    So when you have strings going out of tune at the first few threats it's usually because of the nut. And I was going to order some nut files but then I realized I think I put 10 gauge strings on it when I bought it. So I put nine gauge strings on it which is what they come with. Now it's perfectly in tune.


    That's something that I never used to think about as a guitar player. How much affect the nut has

    So I've ordered a fender reverb tremolo pedal, because this amp doesn't have anything at all. And even though I don't really like to record with effects, just adding a slight almost in perceivable touch of reverb gives it some space in a recording.


    The Princeton reverb really kicks ass on its tremolo and reverb circuit. I mean that's just so gorgeous


    I'm really excited to be able to have some time coming up to record some new songs.

    The band is gearing up to start on new songs for January.


    Travis has been working on the song order for our digital and LP album release. It really came down to him because he's the one who cares most about it. And he's got a break now from touring.


    So what we're going to do, we think.... Is release all 14 songs on the vinyl LP. That would be just under 23 minutes per side and it works out that it will not cause any quality issues. Our vinyl guy says that it should be okay but he wants to hear them again first.


    So the plan is to release the 14th song digital album on the first Friday of this January. And then follow that up with the vinyl LP that we can actually put for sale on our website and get some of this money back we've been spending on these releases. It's not like we spend a ton of money but it would be nice to get some of it back.


    So far this year I think we got $36 from streaming. Lol. I don't know how many streams that is. On Spotify I think it's about 13,000.


    Streaming really doesn't pay jack shit. It pays about .003 cents per stream.


    I think we're going to do a run of 500 albums. And to break even we wouldn't have to sell too many of them. And then we could actually probably make a little bit of money if we sell them eventually. I think we can sell them.

  • My pedal board. So sloppy! Lol.

    Never was much of a pedal person. But these seem to work really well together in front of this gremlin amp.


    The one on the far right is a tuner. Haven't decided the order of these yet but I think this is the order. Tuner into the compressor/overdrive, into another overdrive, into the delay and then into the reverb/tremolo at the end.


    The overdrives are set very, very subtly. For just a little bit of a boost to fatten the sound a little bit. I'll post some audio soon.


    I've been sick for the past 2 days again. Sucks. Not deathly ill or anything, but enough to where I can't really function. Not wanting to do anything.


    So I planned on recording a new song with this setup today but I just didn't have the energy. But I did get my telecaster out and I went through and did another setup on it to hone it in.


    I think I'd mentioned before that I put nine gauge strings back (from 10s) on it which is originally what came with, so the nut slot was slotted for those. Now I don't have any intonation issues. I set the neck relief, followed by the string height and then intonation. It's is pretty dead on and plays nice.


    Tomorrow is an early day at work. We're having our Christmas lunch and then closing early. So maybe I'll record something when I get home. Still feeling like shit though. Just tired as fuck. Slight sore throat and nausea. Whatever's been going around.


    Anyway here are my pedals. I do have several more pedals but not a ton more. I think these will be the ones that I'll be using for recording.


    I did order another power supply that has 300 milliamps and 500 milliamps instead of just this thing that has only one 300 one 500. A couple of the pedals require 300 milliamps. I don't know why they don't just make these things all 500 milliamps straight across.


  • Is the Flint worth the dollars?

    That's a new pedal that I just got and I haven't tried it yet. But I did a lot of research and listened to the shootouts with other reverb units.


    I was going to go with the fender tre-verb... But to me this one sounded a whole lot better from what I was hearing.


    I've also been checking out videos of a few Nashville session players. Looking at what they've got on their boards and listening to their sounds and stuff. A lot of people have these.


    And then I read a bunch of forums including Reddit. And this one seems to win hands down in almost everybody's opinion I've read.


    The fender is really good though. It's just not quite as good in my mind. Not as lush.


    I'll post some stuff when I'm feeling a little better.


    It's really interesting to watch some of these Nashville guys. Especially this guy known as Uncle Larry. First of all, how good these guys are but second of all ... their tone. They know how to get good tone. And it's just really a learning experience.

  • Phatzo , regarding the Flint and the reasons I went for that one even though it's expensive...


    The tones. I noticed that some other reverb/trems have this metallic, kind of ringing sound. The Flint sounds really smooth and has depth. Others sounded thin and had some strange mid tones going on.


    I don't think it has a bad sound in it. Everything sounded good. I did like the Fender, but this one sounded better.


    And I'm not usually going to be putting a ton of reverb or effects on the miked recording - I want to have some ambience and space, but leave it able to be used in a mix. I noticed some pedals suck the tone right out of the amp too. The Gremlin has a great tone and I can tell when something is shaving a little off of it.


    I'd been using the amp with basically a slight slap back delay, plus a couple of gain stage on the drive pedals and it sounds great . but I wanted a reverb and trem, like my Princeton amp has.


    I think I'll be able to record some stuff this weekend and I'll post some samples

  • What I'm going to do is put my tuner first, then the compression / overdrive, another overdrive, the delay and then the reverb tremolo.


    I also have a volume pedal and if I were to use that I'm going to check it and see if it has a separate output that's out of the chain that I could put my tuner on instead. But the tuner I have is a buffer tuner so it shouldn't affect the tone at all. But that's going to be my input into the app. Just as simple as possible.


    The amp sounds really really good on its own. Like you can't even dial in a bad tone with it. So I'm being careful not to screw up the tone is already gone. What I like about the staging of the overdrive pedals is that I'm just putting a little bit of gain .... Like just enough to give it a little bit of a fatter tone on my telecaster. And it just really fills out the sound


    But I guess if you really have an effects loop and all that business, you'd might want the reverb and trem to be in the effects loop.


    I also have the Helix which allows integration with pedals. And before I spent all this money on this reverb pedal, I was thinking I should just use the Helix built-in reverbs. But I didn't want to have some complicated setup. And plus I think that this pedal reverb is so good that I would just leave it simple like it is with pedals. Like four pedals or whatever it is I've got . At least for this amp.