I was working on a project where I needed to have a stadium type, group chant. A bunch of the guys at Yessian (where I work) recorded themselves doing the chant. It sounded great, but to get it just a little bigger sounding…like it came from more people chanting, I like to do two things.

One thing is to send a group of tracks over to a bus that has Waves’ “Doubler” on it. This makes the source sound a little wider and fuller without being too sloppy. The next thing I like to do is send another group of vocals over to a bus that has Logic’s Pitch Shifter on it. I might have 2 buses with Pitch Shifters on it. One bus will have the plugin set to -2 semitones down, while the other one has 1 to 2+ semitones up. I’ll have the “mix” slider at around 40-60% and then instantly I get about 40 more people in the room.

I’m working on Dan Yessian’s new song and today is dedicated to vocal edits.

This is a screenshot of a duplicate of the lead vocal. I have it aggressively high-passed, compressed to death, de-essed to death, +5dB of 20k “air,” and then L1’d pretty hard. Then all of that goes to a 1/4 note delay and a verb. 

I chop up all of the beginnings of the phrases and leave only lyrics I want to highlight. So only the highlighted words get a delay on it and a little bit more emphasis when it’s heard duplicated. This makes the real lead vocal stand out more and not get muddied up with delay on all of the words.

I put a 30 watt, lightly doped, Weber Blue Dog speaker into my Vic 20112 over the weekend and totally transformed the amp for the better. 

The Jensen P12Q speaker is the most popular and vintage accurate speaker for the 5E3 circuit, and I think that’s an iconic sound too…but I was looking for something different. I wanted a more efficient speaker with a little more presence, and a tighter, less flabbier low end. For some, I guess the flabby low end of a pushed Jensen is part of the charm of the 5E3, but that kind of sound isn’t realistically useable for the things I do. The blue dog delivered everything sonically I was hoping for this amp while making it sound bigger, louder and having more clean headroom. 

So along with a 5V4 rectifier tube and the Blue Dog, the Vic is sounding incredible! It almost reminds me of a Marshall JTM45 or something. There’s just the right amount of sag for my tastes…not too much and not too little…round lows and a more focused crunch than a stock 5E3. Humbuckers on the stock Vic weren’t sounding too hot to me, but now they kill with this thing.

So in summary: I no longer have the pillowy, extra sag from a 5Y3 rectifier and the gritty, speaker breakup from a P12Q type, but I’m not missing that at all. What I do still have is the class-A response, the incredible touch dynamics and purity of the 5E3 circuit, while having a much more useable set of tones coming out of this pine box.

Today while the girls were napping, I was able to do some heavy duty (for me) amp spring cleaning.

First, I got a new speaker for the Vic. The stock speaker for it was either slightly blown, or very, very inefficient for the amp. It was way too farty and crackling. Although the amp was rocking like a 5E3 should in the room, it just wasn’t recording well…so I even thought about selling it until I tried a new speaker for it…but more on that later.

I couldn’t get in contact with the local dentist that was biasing my amps, and the closest, amp tech with a decent turnaround is in Hollywood…so I decided to just finally learn how to bias amps myself. I’ve been too lazy and afraid to learn how to do it before, but once you starting gathering up more and more amps, it makes less and less sense to pay a tech 40-70 bucks to do it for you…nevermind the week and a half your amp will be away from you in his shop.

I’ve been noticing my Hiwatt was not sounding like I thought it should. It didn’t have as much clean headroom as I wanted. I tried 5751s and 12AT7s in V1 and still, there was a crunch I was getting that didn’t sound optimal.

It was running on the same tubes it had when I traded the Lil Dawg for it a couple of months ago. It had some vintage Tesla EL34s in it which are some dope ass tubes, so I didn’t want to mess with it, but still something was telling me that this amp could sound better.

So last week, I bought a fairly cheap “Bias Tool” from SRS on eBay. It’s a bias probe that measures your idle current and allows for you to set your bias, granted you know your amp’s plate voltage. For now, I am too scared to measure plate voltage as I don’t want to accidentally shock myself to death, but through some googling, I estimated that my Hiwatt’s PV should be at around 475-500v. So the bias should be at about 35-44mA. I had a feeling that this amp was not as close to there as it should be.

I took the amp chassis out of its head shell and placed it on its side. Then I unplugged everything and took the tubes out. At this stage of the process I was sweating bullets because I just knew I was gonna touch one of those big filter caps and blow myself across the room. I just bit the bullet though and kept one hand in my pocket the whole time to reduce my chances of dying.

Then I put in the Bias Tool’s plugs into the amp and then plugged the tubes back into it and got a reading…the amp’s bias was way too hot. Plus, the tubes were poorly mismatched. One tube was running at 40mA while the other one was close to 50mA! The new Genalex KT77s I got from TC Tubes were matched tight though. I popped them in and they were damn near identical to each other. The vintage Teslas went in the trash and I adjusted the bias pot to get the tubes running at 35mA which I think is a good, average place to be if your amp’s plate voltage is anywhere from 475-500v. 

As scared as I was to bias, all of this went down without a hitch and after cleaning everything up and screwing everything back in, I fired up the amp and it’s sounding like it’s got its fullness back. It’s really sweet sounding, and the dynamic range sounds a lot better. I didn’t have a chance to crank it super loud, but even at moderate volume it was sounding sweet and crystalline like a Hiwatt should.

Here’s the pedalboard circa April, 2012.  I’m kind of tired of messing with it and I don’t think I’m gonna make any changes for a little while.

The Wren and Cuff “Box of War” came in over the weekend and it’s a crazy amazing. The BOW is a circuit clone of the 7th incarnation of the Electro-Harmonix “Big Muff,” or more specifically, the early 90s, Russian Sovtek version which was nicknamed the “Civil War.”

The Civil War Big Muff was in production from 1991-1994 and its most notable user is probably David Gilmour who used it extensively in the early 90s.

Sound-wise, it’s classic Muff: smooth, clear and very vocal like. I finally know what the guitar expression “throaty” means because this pedal sounds like a tenor pushing air out of his lungs. The fuzz is very square wave-y to me, where as Fuzz Faces and my Lovepedal Karl are more saw wave sounding. It’s almost like a synthesizer buzz, but in a really cool way.

Notable differences between the Civil War and other variations of the Big Muff is that it has a lot more low end girth and it’s not as scooped in the mids as it’s younger and older brothers and sisters.

Power chords give you that instant Smashing Pumpkins vibe, and lead lines are thick and syrupy with a whole lot of sustain. The tone knob can get you the tiniest, transistor radio sounds, to the fattest buzzsaw you ever heard!

This is such a great fuzz box and I recommend it to anyone looking for that Pink Floyd “Pulse,” Smashing Pumpkins “Siamese Dream” tone. It can even get you in to more modern territory with the Black Keys and White Stripes.

When I think about great customer service in the musical instrument industry, I usually picture a small boutique company. Last week though, Fender blew me away and showed me how awesome a giant corporation could be.

My WW10 Strat’s high E string tuner was slipping a bit. I suspect this was due to the grinding of the gears on rust from the relicing process. I wrote an email to Fender customer service describing the problem I was having and was hoping to get one, un-rusted tuner from them as a replacement. 

Cary from the Custom Shop sent me a whole set of “Closet Classic” processed tuners. The Closet Classic treatment creates a vintage patina without rusting the metal. I was given a whole set so that they would match, and Cary actually checked each tuner to make sure they were working perfect and they are.

So now this Strat tunes and holds its tune better than it ever did. Props to Fender for that!

So here’s the mid April pedal board situation. i moved the Wampler Clean Buffer one place down behind the Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive. Someone on the Gear Page mentioned trying the buffer in the middle of the chain and I thought ‘brilliant!’ That’s one place I haven’t tried it yet. 2 buffers was overkill and unnatural sounding. One buffer in the front seems in theory that it would be short on juice after 11 pedals succeeding it. So right before the wah seems like a good place to put it. Although I don’t hear a difference, my OCD is less aggravated. 

Then in other breaking news, the Fetto has been replaced with the Bearfoot Dyna Red Distortion which I have totally bonded with in the past few days. 

Now there’s a hole where for a very, very short time…a Wren and Cuff Caprid was going to go…long story…but now that spot is reserved for a Box of War. Thanks to Dan Zank again for the recommendation. 

I’ve been reading about Ernie Ball’s Cobalt Slinkys for a little while and could never find them in stock anywhere. The other day, I went to Sam Ash to get a wide capo and saw the Cobalts stocked up there; so I picked up a set. Cobalt strings are reported to have more output, more clarity, and longer life; so I was very interested to see if they were going to live up to its descriptions. 

Two nights ago, I put the Cobalts on my WW10 Strat which is kind of like my benchmark. I know how that Strat sounds inside out so I think I can make out small changes to it more than my other guitars. After I strung up and gave them a good stretching, I put it away and didn’t get to playing the guitar till the next day for a Tru TV project.

The sound is really, really impressive. They’re loud and very clear as promised. There’s a very pleasing, subtle increase in sustain. They also have a very balanced tonal response. Like a lot of Strats, mine has that kind of bell scoop going on, with the Cobalts, it’s now more even in the mids. The Cobalts are immediate and punchy and string-to-string separation has never been better. It’s really even sounding and reminds me of the difference I got from when I changed from steel to titanium blocks. Another bonus is that there is much less string squeak, and there’s a softening of the 2-3k spike that I really could get used to. When I say even and balanced, I don’t meen flat and sterile. Rather, strings that used to be a little weaker now have more girth, and strings that had more upper-mid bite are tamed down just a bit. Nice!

Here are the cons though: the strings are expensive at 10 bucks a set. That puts them up there with coated Elixir strings which last can stray fresh sounding for months. Also, the strings feel gritty. They have a metallic dust on it that rubs off and looks like graphite on your fingertips. This grit and dust also makes it feel rougher on your frets and bending doesn’t feel as smooth. Speaking of bending, the wound strings seem to roll when bending instead of just moving from side to side. This is kind of a downer for me, but I can’t honestly say it makes my playing better or worse.

So for now, the pros and cons on the Cobalt kind of wash each other out and they’re not worth changing the whole rig and re-intonating guitars for, but I think they’re definitely worth a try.

I replaced the Fetto with a Bearfoot Dyna Red Distortion that I found on eBay. I’m really liking the smooth compression on this box. It’s got kind of a JCM900 thing going on with it to my ears…very pre-amp gainy which I think is a cool thing if your amp is being pushed hard. At lower volumes, it can be a little thin in the low mids, but when you crank your amp a little, the sound fills up a lot.

So far, it sounds equally good with single coils and humbuckers, and all of the amps I’ve tried it with have taken to it well. It really pairs well with the Morgan and the Super Reverb though. It’s a keeper for now…

When it comes to amps, I’ve always favored combos to heads and cabs. One downside to using them though is that you can get tube rattle. Tube rattle occurs when the vibrations from the cabinet physically shake the tubes which can basically shorten their lifespan and make some tubes microphonic.

Amps that have those silver tube retainers suffer less from tube rattle, but your power tubes and rectifier tubes are still unprotected from the shakes, especially if you play with a good amount of low end.

One thing that helps a lot are tube dampers. They are silicon rings that slide over your tubes and act as shock absorbers. You can get them in various sizes for your pres, powers and rectifiers, and the really work.

They come out to something like a buck a piece, so they’re not expensive. 10 bucks got me 4 dampers for the 6V6s in my Morgan and 4 dampers for the 6V6s in my Vic. The Vic was actually fine but better to be safe than sorry. The Morgan SW22RC has an oversized cab, a 50 watt Celestion Gold and has so much bass response, that with low notes I was rattling some filaments. The dampers quiet them up so much now it’s a non issue.

In summary, tube dampers are cheap, reduce noise and extend tube life.

I got a UPS from Amazon.com today. This is my first UPS and I don’t know much about them. I just looked for one that was quiet and got good reviews. This one from Cyber Power has 9 outlets, 1000va, 600 watts, and has battery power for a little over an hour. It was about 100 bucks which isn’t cheap, but I probably won’t have to worry about power outages killing my hard drive again.