And it just got better, I'm gonna go jam for a bit and report back with pics.

And in all its glory:

That is sextastic.

How are you liking the Cathedral? That and the Polytune are the only things on there I've spent time with.

I assume the brown thing beneath the Polytune is a chris_d fuzz?

The Cathedral is amazeballs. Pretty much any flavor of verb on tab with a quick turn on the knob. The brown box is actually the timmy chris made me. I pretty much never turn it off. It's essentially working as a preamp/signal boost.

The Time Machine is causing a pretty huge volume drop though, so it may be getting replaced soon.

The Angry Sparrow (the white box on the bottom right) is a nice dirt box from a place here in Raleigh called Flickinger Tone Boxes (http://www.flicktonebox.com/) and I am running it as my more-trebly distortion that I can slam my Jupiter fuzz with which is set to a bassy-bigmug type fuzz.

The tiny pedal on the bottom right is the T.C. Ditto, which is a dead simple looper that let's you overdub up to five minutes of loops.

Noted on the Time Machine; I'll keep that in mind if I play one.

The Cathedral is indeed excellent; I miss mine. It did make it on to a couple of records though, which I suppose counts for something. The ability to store presets was a big plus in my book, though the lack of MIDI I felt was a downside in such a capable piece. It's dead simple to use, too.

Are those on a Pedaltrain board? What's powering 'em, if I may ask?

Visual Sound One Spot with the 8-multi-plug, which is next on the list to replace as A.) It's kinda messy and B.) It may be the culprit of the Time Machine's volume drop, which I don't remember being an issue before. I guess I could figure out how many mA each pedal needs and see if I am pushing the One Spot to much, but I'd just as soon get the new MXR DC Power Brick and zip-tie it under the board.

And yes it's a Pedal Train Jr., which required some creativity to squeeze all those on there.

Entirely possible you're under-powering the thing. I forget what the Cathedral requires, but it's possible the digital things just aren't getting enough juice. The dirt pedals may be enjoying it, but things that are thinking in 1s and 0s may not be, so much.

You've been on a quotable roll lately. I laughed, and then I sneezed.

But yes, do start drinking it, and report back as to the results.

The included power adapter only supplies 200 mA, so it can't require too much.

That said, I may snag one of these in the future to use as a transparent boost/buffer to pump up my signal a bit and handle any issues with signal loss in my chain (cause most of my stuff is true bypass and it's not a small amount of pedals): http://www.flicktonebox.com/petal_pusher.html

Plus it's small enough that I might actually be able to squeeze it onto the board somewhere.

That looks like a fun bunch of noisemakers, Devski.

only time i'll use dynamics on a guitar is if somebody asks me to. typically, i hate the way they sound (i have 57's, a d112, a pr40, a beyer m300 (which i actually DO like on guitars) and a 609) and think they usually sound unnaturally congested unless you've got a GREAT preamp. i don't. i have used sm7's to okay effect.. but i still usually reach for a ribbon or an LDC. i've actually been close micing with an m179 with the pad on a lot recently for my own stuff 'cause i was curious and hadn't really given that a try, 'cause i usually put them on drums. nice to have the pad to jam the thing on the grille.

sounds like you have some work coming up! that's a good place to be

Chris D, we share the same birfdae, and we apparently share the same tendencies (lol hoarde).

I'm hours away sinking my claws into a broken pre-'76 Ampeg VT-40 at the moment. Hoping the seller follows through.

--- DAMN. some vulture snapped it up before i could.

LOLOLOL GOT A LINE ON A V4

You're gonna shoot yer eye out.

Last night at an art show/club thinger I met the bassist from Black Breath, though that didn't become clear until quite a ways into the conversation. Ended up talking about the Beach Boys and Ween and bunch of shit. Anyways, I guess I am going to be recording his traditional Christmas tunes band on Wednesday. Horns and organs and shit.

Sometimes, my life is so fucking stupidly weird and awesome.

Lolololololol.


So I can't resize it from my phone so I will when I get home

To Cam: horns and organs and shit (oh my!)? Niceynice. That is interesting + awesome. Also, t00ns?

To Mr. Bleeding: Are you planning on using it for guitar or bass?

Yeah, it is definitely going to make for a nice challenge. Ain't never recorded anything like that in my life, so I should have a lot of fun with it. I am not exactly sure how he is expecting it to sound, so if it is not too awesome I think I oughta be fine. However, that said, I think I should be able to get things to sound really nice. I suppose the room they rehearse in will be the biggest deciding factor. Either way, I am def planning on messing with a lot of room mic'ing stuff. They've no drummer and apparently are down to just three dudes at this point so I will have plenty of options.

So it's just a keyboardist/organist, at least one flavor of wind thing (sax? trumpet? 'bone? tuba? ) and...?

I'd be asking what sort of organ he's using and what flavor of amplification. And if there's a Leslie cab involved, how you want to mic it up.

Given your penchant for naturalistic sounds, I suspect you're a little better prepared, conceptually at least, than the typical rock guy coming in totally blind to that sort of instrumentation. I'd try and avoid shoving a mic into the bell of whatever aerophones are kicking about; these fuckers project something fierce and especially with the bigger ones a good part of the sound is the thing itself in the room; this includes the body of the instrument vibrating. (Steve Albini had some interesting commentary on this once somewhere, to the effect of a tuba being the most difficult single instrument he's encountered to capture properly.)

Really well-recorded horns can be pretty astounding on record on a good system. I love the tenor sax on Charles Mingus' Better Git It In Your Soul- thing sounds like it's right there in the room; you can hear the reed vibrating. That record is over 50 years old and there's nothing lo-fi about it.

So I tried the pedalboard out with the band today.

Holy fuckerballs the Angry Sparrow sounds fantastic in the mix. Little reference, the other guitarist uses a strat with a detonator in the bridge, into a TS9 and a Head Rush into an Orange Rockerverb 100 into what I think is one of those shitty Fender FM 4x12s. He's fucking bright to say the least, and fucking loud. And noisy, but not in a fun way.

So I use my VM Tele into my the board above (Timmy -> Jupiter Fuzz -> Angry Sparrow -> Ditto -> Time Machine -> Cathedral) into my TRRI. I try to stay with lush and chunky tones to compliment the brightness of my other guitarist.

The Angry Sparrow is fucking fantastic. For the electrical-wise folk "No Op-Amp chips, all NPN and MOSFET transistors ...". It's a fuzz, but with only one clipping stage. It doesn't get crazy high gain like the Jupiter, but I am using it as more of a distortion than a fuzz. It's a simple Vol, Tone, Gain circuit, and the tone knob acts like the tone knob on a guitar (passive low-pass control). I keep it pushed with the Tone at about 3 o'clock and Gain around the same. It is amazeballs through the Twin. Then, I set the Jupiter to it's woofy-big-muff setting with the Tone at around 11 o'clock and the Fuzz around 9 o'clock actually. The Jupiter has a shit ton of gain on tap, and the low Fuzz setting does two things: gives me a fantastic bassy big-muff sound and lets me slam it into the Angry Sparrow for a ridiculous fuzzy lead tone. It's pretty useless for anything besides single note lead playing, chords just mud out, but it's amazing for that amp-about-to-explode sound.

I have the Time Machine working properly now, and it plays nicely with the Cathedral, especially on a deep Room setting. I also always have a touch of reverb running on the twin and have actually managed to coax a decent trem out of it. All together, not a bad setup. My guitars are the weak point for sure but that is next on the list for upgrades. Though, I am getting a shiny new guitar here sometime soon. Another cheapy that I may mod, but I might just post all the cheapies for sale and buy a not cheapy. Or get a better job where I actually make money.