Gasalcoholics anonymous? whoever said this was a help group?

[dubkitty]

i used to love performing, just going out there with an acoustic guitar. i'd pick someone in the back of the room and just drill them. but in the last two or three decades i've shied away from performing because i don't want to feel consumed like a product, which is how i felt when i was involved in live performance generally and fronting bands in particular. being the focus of that kind of attention became totally unnerving to me. certainly mental health issues have been involved, but to me it's like the line from "This Is Yesterday" by Manic Street Preachers:

"the only way to gain approval is by exploiting the very thing that cheapens me."



i suppose quoting Richie Edwards makes the line about mental health issues a tad bit redundant LOL.

[dubkitty]

thus, i stick to work that doesn't entail baring my scars.

[MaxMaps]

Kinda broke pedge but not really.

A lot of things went out:

Fender Jazz Bass, Boss NS2, Dirge Melt, Bogner Ubershall, and my Blackmass 1312 Rat pedal - I also returned the Westone Dynasty bass I had sitting forever after I got it fixed and re-done by my dude @ Parrot Dice Guitar. So I am just down to my two guitars which I am currently playing the crap out of.

What came in or is comming in:
Freidman JEL-20, Wayhuge Green Rino, Solar Chug and a Peavy mystery guitar cabinet - The 4x12 was 20.00 so I had to snag it on principle, the Chug and Rino are more in line with what I am feeling which is good old high gain riffing. I am not super impressed with either but it scratches the itch good enough for me to focus on the bigger items.

The JEL20 was something I really though hard about, because its a buyers market there are so many great offers for tube heads / multi floor modelers. Maybe its just because I am a middle aged boomer but more screens and aps are something I still don't want. This will be my most expensive amplifier to date and I am thrilled to get it.

[Dowi]

Kinda broke pedge but not really.

A lot of things went out:

Fender Jazz Bass, Boss NS2, Dirge Melt, Bogner Ubershall, and my Blackmass 1312 Rat pedal - I also returned the Westone Dynasty bass I had sitting forever after I got it fixed and re-done by my dude @ Parrot Dice Guitar. So I am just down to my two guitars which I am currently playing the crap out of.

What came in or is comming in:
Freidman JEL-20, Wayhuge Green Rino, Solar Chug and a Peavy mystery guitar cabinet - The 4x12 was 20.00 so I had to snag it on principle, the Chug and Rino are more in line with what I am feeling which is good old high gain riffing. I am not super impressed with either but it scratches the itch good enough for me to focus on the bigger items.

The JEL20 was something I really though hard about, because its a buyers market there are so many great offers for tube heads / multi floor modelers. Maybe its just because I am a middle aged boomer but more screens and aps are something I still don't want. This will be my most expensive amplifier to date and I am thrilled to get it.

I was super underwhelmed by the Chug when I tried it. Not that I really had big expectations, but it felt like having only one sound no matter how the knobs were dialed in. The changes were reeeeeeally minimal.
Super curious on your impressions when you get the Friedman, from the demos it seems really good.

[MaxMaps]

Kinda broke pedge but not really.

A lot of things went out:

Fender Jazz Bass, Boss NS2, Dirge Melt, Bogner Ubershall, and my Blackmass 1312 Rat pedal - I also returned the Westone Dynasty bass I had sitting forever after I got it fixed and re-done by my dude @ Parrot Dice Guitar. So I am just down to my two guitars which I am currently playing the crap out of.

What came in or is comming in:
Freidman JEL-20, Wayhuge Green Rino, Solar Chug and a Peavy mystery guitar cabinet - The 4x12 was 20.00 so I had to snag it on principle, the Chug and Rino are more in line with what I am feeling which is good old high gain riffing. I am not super impressed with either but it scratches the itch good enough for me to focus on the bigger items.

The JEL20 was something I really though hard about, because its a buyers market there are so many great offers for tube heads / multi floor modelers. Maybe its just because I am a middle aged boomer but more screens and aps are something I still don't want. This will be my most expensive amplifier to date and I am thrilled to get it.

I was super underwhelmed by the Chug when I tried it. Not that I really had big expectations, but it felt like having only one sound no matter how the knobs were dialed in. The changes were reeeeeeally minimal.
Super curious on your impressions when you get the Friedman, from the demos it seems really good.

I am the same as well - the Chug is almost a copy of Ola England's old Randall signature head, I bought this from a YouTube gear review player named Kyle Bull ( really nice dude) and even he had the same feelings about the pedal. Once I started to push it with the Green Rhino it really brought the mids that I was craving for.

JEL-20 is not a new head just a shrunk down version of the 100 watt beast that was previously released so I never even knew it existed until I saw the most recent reviews. I will defiantly give you feed back

[dubkitty]

this is really weird...i did a big post about my progress on the looping board and saw it on this page, but it's not here now. weird. however, i saved it as a text file so efficiency wins the day. bwaa haa haa.

almost everything to finish the looping board is here. i think i figured out how to cram everything plus the power supply on the deck, but it's going to require some obnoxious cable routing. i got the Gator power supply because it has enough 9V outputs and the 12V out i need for the limiter, but it's much bigger than i expected from the specs and unbelievably heavy, something like 7 pounds. i almost dropped it when i got it out of the packing materials. it better have a bad motherfucker of a transformer in there. fair play though, the metal case is probably more bulletproof than a Cybertruck. if i ever take all 3 boards out to play somewhere i'm going to need a fucking forklift to get them to the car. the one thing i really like about the PS is that it has an on/off switch so it won't just sit there eating up watts when the board is plugged in but idle. now i'm just waiting for the spud on Reverb to send me the Dunlop mini volume pedal so i can cobble everything together and finally get back to work.

loopers almost_sized.jpg (97.65 KiB) Viewed 1995 times

the one end of the PS has to face out because that's where the AC cord plugs in. i suppose i could turn it sideways which would make power cabling easy, but i'd rather not have to squeeze the AC cord in every time i set up especially because the port is closer to the side with the DC outs which has to face in or sideways. i'll at least try it, though, because it appears that would leave more space free in the middle, make cabling simpler, and look better. there should be enough room for the PS to be all the way on the board once the 1440's power plug is in. the 1440 needs 3/4" on either side for cables which requires some squeezing. three 1440s would take up a bit less room with the enclosures, but the space needed for cables would be more than i'd save and i've had the 2 Dittos for years and thought it would be kind of dumb to switch when the Dittos are sufficient for regular loops. i still don't love the Ditto switches, but i can learn to live with it once i learn the lag time between stepping on the switch and actually punching in. there's always a certain amount of latency delay, but i got used to that kind of variability back when i used to patch SBD live recordings with AUDs using the pause control on cassette machines back in the Pleistocene Era. after that, DJing was easy peasy. the 1440 is intended for storing prepared loops i can mess with a la Fripp/Eno's "Discreet Music."

this is going to be even more Tetris-y than my big board because the signal path will criss-cross the board multiple times...the path starts with the active splitter on upper right, goes to the other end of the board to connect to the volume/pan pedals, then to the loopers, the A/B loopers go back to the pan pedal, then the A/B pedal outs and 1440 output go back across the board to the active summing box with Saturn on it, and then across the board again to the limiter and out. i hate doing this sort of layout because it offends my Germanic need for logic and order, but if it works it works so fuck my aesthetic. having to move the volume pedals next to each other on the left actually is more ergonomic than the original layout because it'll be easier to fade between the A/B loopers and the 1440, and it's better to use my left foot because my right foot is for the volume pedal on the big board and the EP for the Attack Delay. i'm really horny for stacking loops so i hope the damn volume pedal gets here soon...my life is getting very complicated and i really need a way to create space for myself.

i'm embarrassed by the sloppy layout--y'all know how rectilinear i am about this stuff--but i'm not going to the trouble of aligning everything until i can put things in one place and leave them there.

[dubkitty]

Maybe its just because I am a middle aged boomer

you can't be both "middle-aged" and a "Boomer." i'm barely a Boomer being born in 1956, and i'm 66 which is a long way from middle age.

[cosmicevan]

what's the use case with the loopers? Walk me through what you are doing. I've found great solace in 2 loopers with an order switcher between them so I can build and destroy loops to create something. Curious how you create with the setup? Looks fun...

[dubkitty]

the concept started out in a primitive form in the late 00s using a Headrush E2 and the loop function on the TC Flashback, using the A/B volume/pan pedal and passive splitting/summing boxes. i build up a loop piece on one box, switch the input to the other box with the pan pedal, and crossfade the two loops rather like a rave DJ sans beat-matching so i can do continuous performance for 60 minutes or more at a time going from one sound module/loop to another. first loop, fade to second loop, erase first loop and create 3d loop, fade to 3d loop. repeat as necessary. historically most of the loops have been improvised, but in the first iteration i did have some prepared material--either structures or actual heads written out on staff paper--and putative setlists but when my life went to hell in 2010 all that stuff was lost in the course of surviving that disaster.

with this setup the 1440 is intended to be used specifically to play back and then dub on prepared loops which you can load from a computer using the EHX loop manager software, but will probably be used as a regular ol' looper as well. the model is to have the equivalent of the great honkin' long tape loop Fripp and Eno used in their 1974 live performances and its successor that Fripp used on his 1979 tour of US record stores which i attended just outside Chicago. that was a huge influence on broadening my concepts and suggesting a path forward as what Smilin' Bob used to call "small mobile intelligent units" that don't rely on traditional paradigms of how "bands" and "musicians" are supposed to function under the umbrella of industry dominance. really, it was the birth of this whole concept. it just took decades for the technology to accomplish it without undue expense and/or effort to be created and perfected. i'm also looking forward to using the 1440 function that allows you to have the current loop decay when stopped for up to a minute's duty cycle.

the major thing this setup lacks is the ability to fade individual loops out without leaning over and using the Loop Level knobs. this is hard on my back, and i may start using the looping board on a coffee table so it's easier though working the volume pedals with my hands would be weird. but i don't want the bigger, more complicated board that individual pedal fadeouts for all 3 loopers would entail, and god only knows i don't want to have to do the signal cable runs. as it already is the looping board is insanely heavy due to the tactical-grade power supply.

so the whole setup is that the front-end board, which is optional, does Attack Delay stuff and has various lo-fi devices to, as i like to say, gently relic the sound before it goes into the main board. the front-end board is where the magic lives. the main board, well, is the one-stop shop for sounds i like. then everything funnels into the loopers and turns into improvised compositions.

the whole point is what people used to call "radical self-sufficiency." once i get a bass amp and crossover so i can bi-amp i'll be able to effectively be my own band, soundman, and PA and do loops anywhere i can schlep the gear and do so totally independently. i'm the band, the crew, and the actual concept. the only person who can fuck me up is me. and i really like that. finding and working with musically compatible folks has always been a struggle because i like a specific subset of much weirder shit than most people, even the weird ones, and the small subset that could actually work and play in the styles i wanted were often also weird in ways that made them impossible to deal with. my dream in the 70s was to do the Todd Rundgren thing of having a home 16-track and playing everything myself. now i don't need anyone else, or anything else that won't fit in the back seat of a Toyota other than dependable AC power.

[Warpsmasher]

Got to praise the EHX drum synths. I was deep into modular when they came out, and I just sort of blew them off as trendy and inferior...so wrong. They are really smart little boxes and with high gain they sound absolutely massive. My Fullbore Metal pedal has found a new home right after the Crash Pad. The Super Space Drum into the Pitchfactor also makes for all kinds of cool scifi noises.

Got this little mixer geek mini theremin thing, its aight for 45 bucks, has more voices than the Alesis AirSynth anyway, (which is apparently unobtainium now). Another simple synth that the Pitchfactor can make sound like a high end beast.

[Dandolin]

linky linky pretty please?

[Warpsmasher]

Just search ebay or amazon for mini theremin, it's a chinese thing being sold for all kinds of different prices depending on dealer and location.

[dubkitty]

i totally missed the EHX drum synth stuff even though i visit their site every so often to see if there's anything new and interesting. i think i've shied away from percussion in my loops because a steady beat would make them somehow more fixed in time and less "ambient" and also require more exacting punch in/outs, but maybe i should check something like that out.

[coldbrightsunlight]

the concept started out in a primitive form in the late 00s using a Headrush E2 and the loop function on the TC Flashback, using the A/B volume/pan pedal and passive splitting/summing boxes. i build up a loop piece on one box, switch the input to the other box with the pan pedal, and crossfade the two loops rather like a rave DJ sans beat-matching so i can do continuous performance for 60 minutes or more at a time going from one sound module/loop to another. first loop, fade to second loop, erase first loop and create 3d loop, fade to 3d loop. repeat as necessary. historically most of the loops have been improvised, but in the first iteration i did have some prepared material--either structures or actual heads written out on staff paper--and putative setlists but when my life went to hell in 2010 all that stuff was lost in the course of surviving that disaster.

with this setup the 1440 is intended to be used specifically to play back and then dub on prepared loops which you can load from a computer using the EHX loop manager software, but will probably be used as a regular ol' looper as well. the model is to have the equivalent of the great honkin' long tape loop Fripp and Eno used in their 1974 live performances and its successor that Fripp used on his 1979 tour of US record stores which i attended just outside Chicago. that was a huge influence on broadening my concepts and suggesting a path forward as what Smilin' Bob used to call "small mobile intelligent units" that don't rely on traditional paradigms of how "bands" and "musicians" are supposed to function under the umbrella of industry dominance. really, it was the birth of this whole concept. it just took decades for the technology to accomplish it without undue expense and/or effort to be created and perfected. i'm also looking forward to using the 1440 function that allows you to have the current loop decay when stopped for up to a minute's duty cycle.

the major thing this setup lacks is the ability to fade individual loops out without leaning over and using the Loop Level knobs. this is hard on my back, and i may start using the looping board on a coffee table so it's easier though working the volume pedals with my hands would be weird. but i don't want the bigger, more complicated board that individual pedal fadeouts for all 3 loopers would entail, and god only knows i don't want to have to do the signal cable runs. as it already is the looping board is insanely heavy due to the tactical-grade power supply.

so the whole setup is that the front-end board, which is optional, does Attack Delay stuff and has various lo-fi devices to, as i like to say, gently relic the sound before it goes into the main board. the front-end board is where the magic lives. the main board, well, is the one-stop shop for sounds i like. then everything funnels into the loopers and turns into improvised compositions.

the whole point is what people used to call "radical self-sufficiency." once i get a bass amp and crossover so i can bi-amp i'll be able to effectively be my own band, soundman, and PA and do loops anywhere i can schlep the gear and do so totally independently. i'm the band, the crew, and the actual concept. the only person who can fuck me up is me. and i really like that. finding and working with musically compatible folks has always been a struggle because i like a specific subset of much weirder shit than most people, even the weird ones, and the small subset that could actually work and play in the styles i wanted were often also weird in ways that made them impossible to deal with. my dream in the 70s was to do the Todd Rundgren thing of having a home 16-track and playing everything myself. now i don't need anyone else, or anything else that won't fit in the back seat of a Toyota other than dependable AC power.

Sounds interesting! It's a more intense setup than I think I could wrap my head around but bet it sounds massive and must be fun to play with

[dubkitty]

to clarify a bit, i usually spend between six and ten minutes building up a single loop with a large number of overdubs. here's an example, my favorite loop piece from when i was actively doing this in 2012-14.

https://soundcloud.com/dubkitteh-1/pictures-of-you