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Recent Triumphs
Thursday, 5 September 2013 15:32(Warning- instrument tech geekery ahead. I know it's not as glamorous as computer tech, but it's what I got for geeking)
I've had a couple of recent triumphs in my "Quest for Good Sound" in my playing.
One of them is big big and the other is a LONG time coming. Both are actually overdue, but the long time one is really long time.
Anyway, I've finally got Dulcinea up and running again. She's my '66 Rickenbacker 12 string. She needed a complete wiring overhaul to replace the patchwork of repairs was becoming too ugly and flaky and confusing to keep patching. And that's finally done, but when I put strings back on her one of them kept popping out of the nut* at the top of the neck. So I needed to install a little string guide on the headstock to keep that from happening, which turned into much more of a production than it needed to be, where I had to take the part I bought and modify with help from Mr Power Drill. Fortunately it was nice cheap little part and the mods weren't too difficult. The big fuss was finding my damn tools and bits. Ordinarily I'd have consulted Mr Dremel Tool, but as mentioned, certain bits and parts are AWOL. But she's fixed and she's back in play. Yes, look for her to be at my upcoming 9/24 New Deal Cafe date.
The long long time coming triumph was something I still can't frickin' believe I never thought of until now. So here's that story:
Once upon a time, long long ago, I bought an effect pedal called a Boss RV-2. It's a reverb effect, optimised to give some really nice big, wet, boomy, echoey, room and hall type ambience to what is played through it. To this day, that kind of echo remains my favourite effect to add to electric guitar and that pedal is the finest, sweetest, most reliable producers of that effect I've ever owned, short of built in coil style reverbs in an amplifier. I've used it live in many situations. So if you've heard me live, playing an electric guitar, there's a decent chance you've heard me do so through this pedal. If you've ever seen me play with Wild Oats or especially The Sacred Chao, you've heard this reverb pedal. I've even used it on recordings, that you also may have heard. And the real coup was that I bought it for only $30 in a pawn shop. New, back then, it cost 3-4 times that, and even used, it easily could cost 2-3 times what I paid for it, which I did, in one of the rare times I've ever been able to pull off a "poker face". It was labelled as a "distortion pedal" and priced quite appropriately if that's what it had actually been. They (pawnshop) even let me try it out first to make sure it worked, and threw in the power supply for free. I won. Totally won for that one day. I LOVE this pedal and, as I said, I've used it everywhere...
...
...except when busking. And that has been a source of long time vexation for me.
It was the power supply. The dang thing used a power supply instead of a 9v battery, the standard for every Boss/Roland effect pedal EVER FRICKIN' MADE! You can't really blame them. That kind of digital signal processing is very hungry, power wise. It would have eaten the batteries of it's day, like so many Pringles chips. So I sighed, every time I played electric guitar on King Street, that I wished I could put a decent reverb on it. I HAD a decent reverb, but no, it needed a plug. I tried other pedals I had and none of them had that magic. Seven Hells and a Damnation, the box (The standard issue Boss effects box box) even HAD a compartment where a damn batter would GO, if it had one. Imagine my consternation when I even saw somene out on King St one day using a Boss Reverb just like mine, but it was an RV-3 (and mine's an RV-2) and the RV-3 had a 9V battery adapter.
I could *get* a really sweet echo out of my guitar on King St, but in order to do that, I had to turn it up REALLY LOUD, which, is what gets the constabulary to show up and inform you "Too loud! No more amp today."
And last Saturday when I went out as I sometimes get to do now, and return for a day of busking in Old Town, I brought Dulcinea, because she sounds so good and I missed her so. But I wanted that reverb. My indoor rig has reverb built in, but my outdoor busking amp does not. Damn I wished for that reverb with every other note I played. I wished for it so much that there I was, mere days later,in Atomic Music, checking out used RV-3s with the intention of trading in my RV-2 and paying the difference. But I didn't, because I'd forgotten to bring it, and now I'm glad, 'cause yesterday MORNING I figured out what to do: Just drill a hole in the case where the battey *would* go, and put a 9V battery clip in there, and just solder the leads onto the plug for the power supply. Tada!
I could slap myself. I was fully capable of doing this back when I bought the damn thing, and here I am only NOW thinking of this simple, ingenious, bypass/kludge?
Well, I did it. And it's done. And it works. And it was a $2 kludge instead of a $40+ upgrade. And with modern lithium batteries available, I may even get a decent amount of running time out of it.
I wonder what it's like to be (in this one small way) as powerful as I've only imagined I'd be?
I've had a couple of recent triumphs in my "Quest for Good Sound" in my playing.
One of them is big big and the other is a LONG time coming. Both are actually overdue, but the long time one is really long time.
Anyway, I've finally got Dulcinea up and running again. She's my '66 Rickenbacker 12 string. She needed a complete wiring overhaul to replace the patchwork of repairs was becoming too ugly and flaky and confusing to keep patching. And that's finally done, but when I put strings back on her one of them kept popping out of the nut* at the top of the neck. So I needed to install a little string guide on the headstock to keep that from happening, which turned into much more of a production than it needed to be, where I had to take the part I bought and modify with help from Mr Power Drill. Fortunately it was nice cheap little part and the mods weren't too difficult. The big fuss was finding my damn tools and bits. Ordinarily I'd have consulted Mr Dremel Tool, but as mentioned, certain bits and parts are AWOL. But she's fixed and she's back in play. Yes, look for her to be at my upcoming 9/24 New Deal Cafe date.
The long long time coming triumph was something I still can't frickin' believe I never thought of until now. So here's that story:
Once upon a time, long long ago, I bought an effect pedal called a Boss RV-2. It's a reverb effect, optimised to give some really nice big, wet, boomy, echoey, room and hall type ambience to what is played through it. To this day, that kind of echo remains my favourite effect to add to electric guitar and that pedal is the finest, sweetest, most reliable producers of that effect I've ever owned, short of built in coil style reverbs in an amplifier. I've used it live in many situations. So if you've heard me live, playing an electric guitar, there's a decent chance you've heard me do so through this pedal. If you've ever seen me play with Wild Oats or especially The Sacred Chao, you've heard this reverb pedal. I've even used it on recordings, that you also may have heard. And the real coup was that I bought it for only $30 in a pawn shop. New, back then, it cost 3-4 times that, and even used, it easily could cost 2-3 times what I paid for it, which I did, in one of the rare times I've ever been able to pull off a "poker face". It was labelled as a "distortion pedal" and priced quite appropriately if that's what it had actually been. They (pawnshop) even let me try it out first to make sure it worked, and threw in the power supply for free. I won. Totally won for that one day. I LOVE this pedal and, as I said, I've used it everywhere...
...
...except when busking. And that has been a source of long time vexation for me.
It was the power supply. The dang thing used a power supply instead of a 9v battery, the standard for every Boss/Roland effect pedal EVER FRICKIN' MADE! You can't really blame them. That kind of digital signal processing is very hungry, power wise. It would have eaten the batteries of it's day, like so many Pringles chips. So I sighed, every time I played electric guitar on King Street, that I wished I could put a decent reverb on it. I HAD a decent reverb, but no, it needed a plug. I tried other pedals I had and none of them had that magic. Seven Hells and a Damnation, the box (The standard issue Boss effects box box) even HAD a compartment where a damn batter would GO, if it had one. Imagine my consternation when I even saw somene out on King St one day using a Boss Reverb just like mine, but it was an RV-3 (and mine's an RV-2) and the RV-3 had a 9V battery adapter.
I could *get* a really sweet echo out of my guitar on King St, but in order to do that, I had to turn it up REALLY LOUD, which, is what gets the constabulary to show up and inform you "Too loud! No more amp today."
And last Saturday when I went out as I sometimes get to do now, and return for a day of busking in Old Town, I brought Dulcinea, because she sounds so good and I missed her so. But I wanted that reverb. My indoor rig has reverb built in, but my outdoor busking amp does not. Damn I wished for that reverb with every other note I played. I wished for it so much that there I was, mere days later,in Atomic Music, checking out used RV-3s with the intention of trading in my RV-2 and paying the difference. But I didn't, because I'd forgotten to bring it, and now I'm glad, 'cause yesterday MORNING I figured out what to do: Just drill a hole in the case where the battey *would* go, and put a 9V battery clip in there, and just solder the leads onto the plug for the power supply. Tada!
I could slap myself. I was fully capable of doing this back when I bought the damn thing, and here I am only NOW thinking of this simple, ingenious, bypass/kludge?
Well, I did it. And it's done. And it works. And it was a $2 kludge instead of a $40+ upgrade. And with modern lithium batteries available, I may even get a decent amount of running time out of it.
I wonder what it's like to be (in this one small way) as powerful as I've only imagined I'd be?
