A cheap DIY clean boost pedal
I was looking for a quick and dirty clean boost pedal a few weeks ago when I found this kit from AmplifiedParts.com. The kit comes with everything you need to build the complete pedal for $24.95 plus shipping. I think the cheapest boost pedal I’ve seen is the $40 Electro-Harmonix LPB-1 (I have one, and this kit is better I think) so this makes for a real bargain.
Of course it’s DIY, so you need to be handy with a soldering iron and have some time to spare. It comes very well documented and took me about an hour to completely assemble and wire up. It’s not a very difficult project at all, perfect beginner project if you haven’t build pedals before.
I did take a slight detour from the printed instructions to add a BOSS style DC jack on the back so it wasn’t a battery only affair. You can get the jacks for less than a couple bucks and it only adds two small wires to the project.
If you are in the market for a boost pedal or just want to get started building your own pedals, I highly recommend this little kit. It’s called The Piledriver Power Power Boost Effects Pedal Kit and is available from AmplifiedParts.com. They shipped pretty fast too!
The sample below is just a quick thing I recorded so you could hear how well this little pedal drives a tube amp into clipping. I was playing an Ibanez Jem77BFP guitar through just this pedal into an Egnater Tweaker 15w half stack.
I’m in the AxeFX Club and I am SOLD!
It came in yesterday. I have had about two hours of play time on it so far. It is I N S A N E. I can’t believe how it sounds, what it can do. I’ll do my best to record something this weekend to show it off.
I’m in love…..
This is a Marshall MA Series Head
I’ve probably beaten this horse to death, but today I figured I’d give one more shot at saving kids all over the world from being convinced that a “budget” Marshall amp isn’t any good. If you’re here because you searched this amp, you probably know the reputation. It’s fizzy, doesn’t have enough gain, sounds thin, no balls, blah blah blah. You’ve probably also read that from someone who either doesn’t own the amp, spent a few minutes hearing someone else play one through a video on YouTube, or heard someone dime everything but the volume at guitar center and noodle on it.
I just don’t find any of those scenarios fair to this amp. Today I decided to put my money where my mouth was so to speak and make something for people to listen to that can judge the amp on fair ground.
The Test
First, this is not a song, if you look at the image below you will see that I literally have just over an hour invested in this. I opened up a jam drum track in Superior Drummer, set cycle record on 8-bars at a time, and made up a rhythm track as I went. I double tracked each 8-bars, and then went to the next. When that was finished I laid a bass track under all of it and then hit record for the whole length to noodle some leads. You are reading that right, 1 hour and 10 minutes from playing the first note to exporting the MP3 from Logic.
Second, the guitar tracks. I had two pedals on this amp. The first is a Maxon OD808 set up as a boost going into the amp.
The second was a BOSS Delay in the MA100h loop to give me a little delay when I recorded the lead on top.
That’s really it. I had the amp set up as pictured:
With all of that out of the way, the other details are as follows:
- Ibanez RG1527 Prestige guitar with Dimarzio Crunchlab in bridge for Rhythm sounds
- Ibanez RG1527 Prestige guitar with Dimarzio Liquifire in the neck for Lead sounds
- Carvin Legacy 4×12 Cabinet with Vintage 30s.
- Sennheiser e906 on axis just to the left of the center of the speaker
- Focusrite ISA One Preamp into Tascam DM3200 to Logic via FireWire card
A couple interesting notes about mic placement. Usually I would not have used this mic, I’d have used an SM57 because the e906 is a big bright for really high gain stuff for my tastes. I also would have put something looping through a DI box into the head and went out into the live room with some headphones and found the true “sweet” spot for the cabinet. My SM57′s were occupied on drums and a couple other guitar cabinets that I couldn’t really risk moving just now so I used the e906. As I was doing this to quickly prove a point, I placed the mic about where I figured it should go and just started recording without trying to really optimize it. I figure that’s also a plus for this test because you can really help an amp with perfect mic placement, just like you can wreck it with bad placement/phase issues.
Finally, I used absolutely NO processing on the guitar tracks in Logic. I doubled the Rhythm guitar part, assigned the left and right to a buss, and that’s it. I didn’t compress or EQ any of the guitar tracks at all. I added a touch of compression, eq and distortion to the bass track to solidify the mix and did a quick reverb and psuedo master on the master buss.
I’d say that makes for a pretty fair test to show what the MA100h head sounds like. If you would like to disagree or claim it sounds like garbage, feel more than welcome to in the comments. The reality is in a real world I would EQ the guitars to tailor the mix, high and low cut them to get them to sit in the right places, possibly compress them at tad, etc. The sound I am betting I’ll get comments about for “fizzy” or “bright” is the same 6khz+ that I would have low pass filtered out of my Mesa Mark V or Peavey 6506+. Given that none of this was done, and that I’ve heard some horrendous recordings with $3,000 heads, I’d say this isn’t a bad little head for the money.
What is a Wet-Dry-Wet Rig?
Quite simply, a wet-dry-wet rig is when you use three speaker cabinets in a stereo plus center configuration for Left Side Effects Only, Center No Effects, Right Side Effects Only setup.
I got a lot of interesting feedback when I posted this photo of my guitar rig awhile back. It looks a little crazy, but it all makes perfect sense in an over the top, Spinal Tap, kind of way.
Here’s the basic run down of what it includes, how the signal routes and how it works…
Tone
I love the double tracked guitar sound. You can’t quite easily do that yourself with two guitars, but you can do something somewhat similar by blending the sound of two amps. I chose to keep it Mesa Boogie because I am a little OCD, but it’s also because the smooth Mark thick sound blends amazingly well with the course grit of a Rectifier. My main tone comes from a Mesa Boogie Mark V through a Mesa Boogie Rectifier 4×12 straight cabinet. My effected tone comes from a Mesa Boogie Rectifier Recording Preamp.
Power
The Mesa Boogie Mark V has it’s own power section, but the Rectifier Recording Preamp obviously does not. I chose the Rectifier Recording Preamp instead of a Dual or Triple Rectifier because I wanted my effects to be in stereo and didn’t want to effectively buy two amps. By using the Rectifier Recording Preamp into a Mesa Boogie SimulClass Stereo 2:Fifty, I get the great tones from a Rectifier into two cabinets with warm tube power.
Effects
Any nerdy progressive rock guitarist is only mortal without effects. The photo above actually is a very slim version of what I am using at any given time. I had just set this rig up and was testing without any of my usual pedals. I have around 40 stomp box pedals that rotate in and out so traditionally you will find my huge orange pedal board in front of this rig, but since it’s not pictured we’ll just skip that for now and talk about the wet side of the rig. I chose to use a T.C. Electronic G-Major 2. The way the rig is designed, the 4×12 never has modulation or delay type effects, those are reserved for the two 2×12 cabinets.
Control
A rig like this can be a monster to control so you have to find a way to manage it all. I chose the Voodoo GCX and Ground Control. It’s a nightmare to cable up, but the way it’s wired right now I have some interesting options. The first thing I do is use the buffered outputs to split my guitar signal in two. One copy of the signal goes into the Mark V, the other into the Rectifier Recording Preamp. I am using the first loop to determine the preamp path for the wet side of the rig. I can select to either send the slave output of the Mark V into the G-Major two, or I can choose to send the Rectifier Recording Pre into the G-Major two.
The next several set of loops control channel and option switching on the two Mesa Amps. I also pass the MIDI from the GCX to the G-Major 2. When that’s all put together in a patch, I can click one preset button and it will select one or more amps, the appropriate channel, a preset from the G-Major 2 and any solo, FX loop, etc. settings on the amps. I can manually set all of the options on the rig, then store the GCX setting and G-Major 2 setting to a preset and then I can recall it with a single foot tap.
Other
I of course use a rack mount power strip to provide all of the juice and have a Korg rack mount tuner that’s running from the tuner out of my volume pedal. My pedal board, not pictured, is powered by a Voodoo Pedal Power 2. One last bit of detail about the rig: everything is connected via balanced cables where balanced connections can be made. All rack units are are bolted in using a plastic shoulder washer on each side to decouple them from the rack rails. Each rack unit is touching the rack units above, but conductively separated by a small strip of electrical tape on the top and bottom of every other unit. When building the rig, the Rectifier Recording Preamp and Mesa Power amp have ground lifts, so as I added each unit I checked for ground loops and set the devices appropriately.
Summary
That’s the basics. It’s actually very easy to operate once it’s all configured and the kinks were ironed out. It’s one of those set ups that can pretty much dial up any type of sound I could ever need. It also looks pretty bad ass! :)
I sure am loving the Tascam DM3200
It’s been about two months since I sold the Mackie Onyx 24.4 Analog Mixer and got the Tascam DM3200 Digital Mixer. My original plan was to use the DM3200 as a front end for my recording system that was to be based on the Apogee Ensemble.
I was totally in love with the sound of the Apogee One and really looking forward to upgrading my M-Audio ProFire 2626 to the preamps and converters on the Ensemble. A few months ago I did the big gear purchase and while the sound of the Ensemble was impeccable, the practical usage with the Tascam DM3200 was less than optimal. Particularly, the latest version of Apogee’s Maestro software is missing quite a few features.
Initially I tried to use the Apogee as my computer interface only to be stymied by the Maestro software’s lack of ability to save configurations on Lion. After that I purchased the Tascam IF/FW mkII thinking I could use the Apogee Ensemble in standalone mode as preamps and converters and just transport the digital converted signal to the computer via FireWire. This time I was stuck because the 2.0 Maestro software doesn’t support configuring standalone mode. Bummer!
After just over a month, I broke down and exchanged the Apogee Ensemble for a Universal Audio LA-610 mkII and a few other goodies, and decided to make the Tascam my be-all-end-all audio system.
That means that I am using the DM-3200 as my preamps (save a half dozen outboard preamps) my digital to analog conversion, and my audio interface to the computer. It also doubles as my mixer, routing system and control surface. This thing serving tons of purposes!
I am using Logic Pro 9 as my Digital Audio Workstation software and I am very impressed with how seamlessly the DM-3200 blends in to my system.
My basic configuration is as follows:
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16 available mic preamps via Tascam inputs 1-16
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4 External Preamps, Korg M50 and Digitech GSP1101 on Analog Expansion card
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All external gear patched to two patch bays
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32 in/32 out to Mac Pro via FireWire Expansion card
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5 MIDI via USB/FireWire
The end result is that I can enable any input I need from Logic Pro with no cable patching whatsoever. I can add any external gear to the signal chain on the front of my desk and I can route up to 32 channels back to the mixer from Logic to mix down completely in the Tascam if I so desire.
I don’t actually do that, but it’s nice to be able to use extra outputs in Logic for monitor mixes, re-amping or extra buss signal processing. I’ve already ran outputs through DI boxes back to guitar amps several times through a Logic output, works like a charm.
The DM-3200 also has loads of onboard effects. Unfortunately I find it a bit easier to just patch in a compressor or effect with the patch bay and have a knob I can just turn when I am trying to dial in a sound, but that’s mostly because I am still not quite comfortable with the user interface. I have to admit the experience of routing and configuring it is a bit clunky. It’s better as you get more familiar, but in the beginning I literally had to dig out the manual to figure out how to turn it off properly. By default the inputs are not routed to the outputs. Straight out of the box I had to get my hands dirty with the ugly routing schemes just to get sound from an input.
I made it through it, but I can’t say it wasn’t disconcerting. There are definitely a lot more things to keep your mind on when you are using a mixer like this such as where things are routed to, what aux and buss selections are made on channels you can’t see, etc. I had a few moments where sound was being routed to stereo and a buss that was also routed to stereo because I had no visibility of the routing without selecting the offending channel.
In addition to the mixer, I also added the meter bridge. I can say that for me it’s a necessity for this mixer. The timecode display from your DAW is nice, but the real trick is that unlike analog consoles, the meter bridge meters in the digital scale. Once I had modified Logic Pro to use linear instead of exponential metering, I was able to see my input levels on the meter bridge and feel confident that I am getting that same level to Logic. The meter bridge measures to a 0db maximum scale just like Logic. In my previous setup using an analog console, meters measured to an analog reference where there was considerable headroom over 0db that the mixer could tap into before clipping. Keeping an eye on analog meters as a way to judge digital signal is a losing proposition.
Overall the only second thought I have had about this mixer is actually wishing I had bought the DM-4800. The idea of an additional 8 faders and preamps, as well as the fat channel to operate EQ and Effects is extremely tantalizing now that I’ve gotten used to this puppy. I also wouldn’t mind having the additional two slots as I have already maxed out the capabilities of the DM-3200 by adding the IF/FW and IF/AN expansion boards.
If you are trying to keep hands on control of a computer based recording rig, need a lot of inputs and flexibility, and honestly have quite a few bucks in your budget (this thing is over $3k with the bridge) than I cannot recommend this board highly enough. The last note is it sure looks sexy as hell too :)
