ilovefuzz.com

Scalable Pet arrived over the weekend, but i literally haven’t had a chance to plug it in yet. Phantom Octave is on the way. i’m excited by the prospect of a whole new section of Tom stuff which could do a LOT of things.

I recently bought a Source Audio Collider and have a Rainger Chop Fuzzz on the way.

Hey DK, how's that Scaleable Pet?

i haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, but it’s on the list for tomorrow. my Phantom Arcade is supposed to be here Friday or Saturday, so i imagine i’ll do a write-up on them once i’ve had a chance to figure them partially out.

got to spend some get-acquainted time with it and so far i like it a lot. it needs a louder amp for the effect to be really apparent; the Princeton is on 5. the two similar-if-not-identical channels allow for a lot of different configurations: quiet light boost channel vs. fuzzier sound, both channels fuzzy which gets toward but not all the way towards the Distortion+ cranked, and a plethora of other combinations it’ll take me weeks to fully understand. note: turning down the highs makes the distortion more impactful. seems it’d be particularly good for people like Noel Gallagher who use multiples of the same pedal with different settings. i’ll report back after more tests. i need to play denser-sounding guitars; so far it’s been the green guitars, the Strat and the Esquire, neither of which is exactly big-sounding. just thinking about the number of possible combinations makes my mind boggle.

i should also say that the clean boost is particularly musical. it reminds me of the Mellowtone Hi 5 which is my favorite and will never sell unless my girlfriend is sick and needs the money. the more i mess with it, the more interesting sounds and potential use cases i come up with. i’m serious when i say it’ll take weeks to get to the bottom of; i’ll probably try a loop where i use the SP into other processors and the loopers to experiment with settings as well as how, as the assumed front end of a board, it works with other fx, gain and modulation in particular. but when i’ve been playing through it for a while and turn it off the guitar seems somewhat lifeless by itself, which it really isn’t all. it’s the Strat with the Custom Shop 69 pickups and is way happening.

i’d love to know more about how it fits into the world if circuit topologies, but it seems like that’d be asking Tom to give the store away and i certainly wouldn’t do that.

tomorrow i’ll try to get my fork into the Phantom Arcade redux. the instructions are pretty hard for me to conceptualize, not because they’re confusing but because it does so much stuff. the logical end point here is a dual review for the Fuzzhugger pages.

Today I got a set of second hand Bareknuckle Bootcamp True Grits HB pickups. It was the final piece to complete this crazy little guitar.

It's an Ibanez Mikro, that I've bought a while ago for 50usd?!? ... I've repainted it in that crazy rusty Mad Max finish (the original black finish was chipping off by itself alone, hence I decided to strip and repaint the body). Other mods are Grover tuners (also second hand) and a set of Gotoh brass saddles (I first almost wanted to change the full bridge, but the base plate was fine and I didn't want to re-drill mounting holes).
I originally got this one to be used as a lap steel (with a Goldo Slide Nut found on Thomann), but lately I decided to re-purpose it as a travel guitar. But it became something more... I tuned it in one-of-a-kind Drop B opening tuning: B-F#-B-D-A-B, but sometimes I drop the F# to G and the B goes up to D#... and then it's tritonus galore
Turn out, it's super fun guitar to play and experiment with. String gauge is 13-56, and it's suits well the low tuning and short scale. It's a bit on the floppy side, but in a good way!

And since I'm lefthanded, it's strung up-side-down... Jimi Hendrix baby

nice finish!

alexsga wrote: ↑Tue Sep 16, 2025 4:27 pmnice finish!

Thanks! It was a bit a hit and miss and then try again, playing with the colors I found in my cellar!

alexsga wrote: ↑Tue Sep 16, 2025 4:27 pmnice finish!

2nded

I recently picked up a Yamaha Reface YC keyboard.

I've had an Evolution MIDI keyboard for years, but this is the first keyboard I've had (other than ones I've borrowed).

I'm more of a hunt-and-peck approximator who either just "wings it" by ear or has to methodically sit down and figure out what notes are in the guitar chords for songs I've written and then transpose that onto the keys and hope that it isn't redundant for the guitar chords or melody or bass guitar (real risks).

Anyhow. Here's the first thing I've recorded with the Reface YC.
[bandcamp]https://caesarshift.bandcamp.com/track/hard-to-tell[/bandcamp]

https://caesarshift.bandcamp.com/track/hard-to-tell