Nice to hear Geoff.

Dev, I am playing NYC saturday night. If you're around hit me up. If not I am again in April and it will be at a better establishment

My band is recording a couple tracks in a few months, I can't wait to get into a studio - never recorded properly before! I'm definitely over stressing about getting my recorded toan perfect, just want it to sound awesome. I know in my head I should just keep it simple and go straight into the amp, but there's something niggling me that's making me experiment with pedals. Just been messing with the Rat and it sounds cool, instant Goatsnake tone. Then I just had the bright idea of setting my amp cleaner and stacking the TS into the Rat. It's going to get silly

Should probably just ditch it all and get a Helix tbh.

For recording, going with less gain than you think you want is almost always the better way to get a good sound, IMO.

If it doesn't track right straight in, then consider adding in something to boost. But then, only boost lightly.

It is easy to get carried away and wind up with a recording that is a lot fuzzier and muddier than you thought you were laying down.

I personally find that what comes through the mic is often a fair bit dirtier sounding than what it sounds like standing/playing in the room.

I think it might be mainly because i don't usually set up with my ear a foot away from the speakers just for playing normally.

In recording, try to respond to what you actually are hearing on the other end, not what you think you should be hearing. It can be tricky. Especially once you start blowing your ears out with high volumes. You may not realize you used too much sauce on the guitar sound until a week later sometimes.

Stacking the TS and Rat sounded... kinda shitty anyway so I'll not bother with that after all. I've heard that advice of less gain for recording before so I'll try to get away with using less but still retain some heavies. I'm hoping I can play in the control room or get some kind of monitoring so I can hear how it sounds through the mic rather than the room.

Excited either way though, we're sounding pretty good now with our new singer. Look forward to sharing it with you all when it happens. I'm just glad I finally got a band going after years of being sat on my home recording material.

Concurr'd on the less gain thing. Also, cong-rats, Mr. Tom, on the band and the offspring. Belatedly, of course.

Over the weekend I was gifted a mid-'70s Musicman 115-65 1x15 combo that's been in my ladyfriend's father's attic for ages. It's in perfect shape. JBL speaker (K130? It's currently in my band room/studio, so I can't check), loaded with Sylvania 6CA7s and an Amperex 12ax7 in the PI slot. SS preamp, what with being an old Musicman and all. It's already wound up on a record. Along with some bizarre '70s Maestro analog guitar synth (it was actually designed for woodwind and brass players, has a mic input and whatnot, but it'll work with a guitar...) that I haven't had time to futz about with yet. Also retubed my li'l Vox AC4C1-12 with a Mullard RI 12ax7, JJ long plate ECC803, and Mullard RI EL84. It sounds much smoover now. Still needs the stock speaker replaced, of course, but I do still have a Celestion Blue in need of a recone sitting in a styrofoam cooler in my basement.

Old Shure Unidyne IIIs may actually sound better than current 57s. I have two Unidyne IIIs now, so I'll have to A/B them. But seriously, one of those into one of the Warm preamps and a dash of 1176 for flavor on the way in seems to be a solid piece of tonesmanship.

Otherwise, I've been busy pretending to be an actual adult (and occasionally corrupting America's youth; I taught 7th grade social studies today...), not posting on forums, and acquiring even more damn gear. Like a 16 channel AD/DA converter and a second patchbay, because I filled the first patchbay... On the plus side, if I ever have time to mix any records, they'll sound pretty freakin' good.

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That is completely fucking awesome Tom.

Umm... What Chris said.

Thanks gents now I just have to decide whether I want a JTM45, 1987x or a silver jubilee first if they did a 2204 reissue it would be that but they only do the 100w which is too much.

of sweet mother of fuck.

wow. That is super fucking cool.

Motherfuck I would do ANY job at Marshall. That rules dude.

Insanely fucking radical, Tom.

Concurred- I've always preferred 50 watters. It may only be another notch on the volume knob, in practical terms, but it's enough to matter, especially for live work. If you have a hard-hitting drummer (and/or comparatively inefficient speakers) getting into the sweet spot for dirty toans is totally do-able. The JTM45 comes up in conversation a lot at band practice these days. We ran into a JTM combo a couple weeks ago at a guitar store and didn't play it for some stupid-ass reason. Always been curious about the Jubilee, too.



Well, now I know who's cleaning the loo for £0.50 an hour. You have to provide your own toothbrush, of course.

For serialz I'd do it. Where I work they make expensive things and it's my job to break expensive things often enough, and often enough expensive things aren't accounted for and could easily find their way to my house and no one would be the wiser.

I imagine it's the same way on the Marshall manufacturing floor and RD workshop.

Snaxo you owe it to yourself to try that JTM45. Imo they have one of the nicest clean sounds going (I've never really got fender cleans) and the breakup is something to behold. Take pedals like a champ as well apparently. I will probably end up with a mini jubilee though. I love what I've heard of the pushed rhythm clip channel.

Huh... Wait.. maybe get to jams on lunch. Wat? Fuck. Most awesumest job evar

JTM45 cleans are pretty close to fender cleans anyhow, being that the JTM is basically the same beast as the tweed bassman. Those are the finest fender cleans. The blackface ones have their place, but the nastier ones are bast.

I am getting myself way deep in having too many projects going at the same time.

Way too deep for someone who has as little working space as i do.

And who has to schedule around being (more or less) gainfully employed. :red

Most recently, i kind of impulsively decided to redo most of my speaker cabinets to make them all better. Building the Princeton Reverb kind of really lit some lightbulbs for me about what small, but correctly dimensioned cabinets can sound like. It is way small, but still capable of a very nice and balanced/even frequency range.

In the old days before i knew anything i was way too willing to adjust cabinet measurements to suit what i had available for materials or other non audio-engineering considerations. I now know that this is a very wrong way to do it, as speaker cab dimensions are actually a very scientifically dictated matter. I.e.: no chris from 2007, you cannot just add four inches of depth to a 2x12 to make it have more low end; it will only make the end result sound weirdly squawky and boomy and choked... Anyhow, as a result of my previous ignorant transgressions in this field, i have a couple pretty odd-sounding and bad-recording cabs here, that i just kind of never use. So i decided to chop them up and turn them into more "known good" dimensions so they can cease to only be wasting precious space here.

I also decided that it is time that i start using up some of the parts that i have amassed over the years for intended amp builds. Got a couple tweed type chassis on sale a bunch of years ago. Got a pretty serious single ended OT way back when i picked up the OT for my voxy homebrew.

So in addition to the multiple in progress guitars and the kind of involved cabinet destruction/rebuilding, i have decided that i will also have to build some kind of 5f6/jtm hybrid, and i think an el34 angry-ass champ of some flavor, pretty much ASAP.

Also, i am going to go back into the AC20 build and mess with its tonal shaping bits to see if i might prefer some different flavors in there.

Pretty much everyone's kitchen looks like this most of the time, right?

Honestly, it's not too far off...

Also: extra points for Grigori Rasputin there.

And you can't see how fucked up my table and counters are either. Shit is about 95% non-food project encroachment at the moment.

Found the books in the basement, about as far away from any bookshelf as is possible in this house. Trying to recall why i had them down there, coming up blank.

Was an okay solid dryish historynerd book, read it ages ago. That is where i learned that in the time of Rasputin's youf, there was a law on the books in his area that basically stated that a person could straight up get away with murdering someone, but only if they could prove 100% that they had been drunk when they did it.

EDIT: The book underneath it is solid and snax-style too, The Last Tsar, biography type jobber of Nicholas II.