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Pushing 2 Amps with one guitar

So… when you see AC/DC live… you see tons of guitar cabs, and you have to wonder… how are these people pushing all these cabs??

Well… That I don’t know… however… you can do this at home pretty easily, given that you have more than one cab.

My recent OR15 purchase was because I wanted to use 4 cabs for a specific gig, and I either had to carry my mesa boogie which is a 295… meaning 2 amps.. 95Watts. Or… I have to buy a new amp to go with my SV20h

Well.. I bought the OR15 and then I remembered I had this Y cable which splits one signal into two different 1/4 inch jacks.

Pretty basic, right?
Worked like a charm!

I can now push 4 cabs with these two amps, they also sound pretty similar.

I had one hiccup with the Orange as the cabs are 8ohms each and the OR15 has a minimum of 8ohms load… so.. Palmer sells a device that allows you to connect cabs in series or in parallel, meaning that 2 x 8ohm cabs can turn into a 4 or 16ohm load.

It’s tiny!

I attached it to the back of the Orange with zip toes tot the grill and I plugged everything in, neat and tidy.

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Monty’s Guitars Montypresso

I’m not one that buys into hype when it comes to guitar care products, after over 20 years of playing I sort of know what my instrument needs.

But a friend of mine had sent me a cup of this “Montypresso” which is to be used on rosewood fretboards, giving you a better vintage look whilst hydrating the wood.

I’m not sure if you noticed before but all rosewood necks have different colour. To not be confused with ritchlite which is what Gibson is using now for standards.

Rosewood is a beautiful wood, but like all woods, there are different levels of quality and of course companies store this wood in different ways.

It’s most obvious on some lower end guitars how light the colour of the fretboard is, but I have also seen this in some Gibsons. This is often due to poor treatment of the wood or maybe a lower level of quality.

Well… this product darkens up the board and it gives it a beautiful shade.

The picture above shows the progress of applications.

Left picture: this is how the guitar came, this is the Gretsch G5422TG

Center picture: after leaving 12 hours a first application

Right picture: 12 hours after 2nd application

This is how you apply it

The product is like the old shoe shine mixture we used to use back in the day, but… for guitars and… it doesn’t stain your hand after wiping.

You can see on the neck pictures how the shade of the wood changes after the applications, giving you better accents on the grain. It just looks awesome, not only that… it’s also as I said before.. hydrates your fretboard and protects.

I don’t use this product on my most expensive guitars… only for those ones that come with a fretboard that looks dry or cheap.

This is their website: https://www.montysguitars.com/collections/department-of-component/products/montys-montypresso-relic-wax

I’m not affiliated to them and I didn’t get this product for free from them.

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Being in a successful band

Success is whatever makes you and the people that surround you happy.

Most of us want to play in a band, most of us started playing because the band was there first, some of us are no longer in that band and we have a room full of gear and we play by ourselves.

At least that was me, I’ve been playing for 20 years, I’ve been in numerous bands that never played live much but rehearsed a lot. All these bands had something in common… lack of direction.

I’m not talking about being a band leader and calling the shots, because to be honest… you need to be a renowned musician to behave like that and still have musicians following you. I’m talking about setting expectations and following them through.

At the moment I’m playing in an AC/DC tribute band that I formed with two good friends, and now that the band is fully formed… we are 5 good friends :). However there’s still a sense of “ownership” of the band, and again this doesn’t mean calling the shots (I’ll keep repeating this).

The band was my idea so I do have a responsibility of fulfilling what I pitched that night at the pub when my two good friends accepted to join the band. I knew what I wanted: to be out there enjoying the stage.

Maintaining a band together is no easy task, but trust me… it is a lot harder when there’s no reward, and what’s a musicians best reward? Tick tock tick tock… yeah.. you know it… it’s playing to an audience! Why would you spend 1 year rehearsing without at least having one gig.

Step 1: be ready sooner rather than later. How?

You need to book rehearsals, manage the diary, make sure everyone remembers there’s a rehearsal that day, if 1 person can’t make it… meet anyway… a rehearsal without one member can be just as productive and it will force the other member to do homework, because guess what… you are not slowing down!

Step 2: start talking about gigs

We all want to live in the 60s travelling in a volkswagen van and playing every night… but that’s not possible, if you are like me… in your late 30s, you probably have a job, mortgage, partner and maybe a kid, and if you don’t… someone in the band will.

You need to be realistic, and set achievable expectations, so maybe after 6 months of getting the band ready, try to set your self to get at least 3 gigs for the next 3 months.

Step 3: maintain the band spirit

Wait… so the next step is not getting gigs? Well… hold on. Getting gigs is freaking difficult and no one wants to do it, trust me… everyone has suggestions… But it is very hard to close a deal, so while you plan your “getting the gig” strategy, make sure to keep a motivated rehearsal plan, maybe now that you are ready… reduce the rehearsal schedule to once every two weeks, and bring beers to rehearsals, bring ideas, and keep the guys up to date with the plan

Step 4: get those gigs

Ah yes… this is the “secret sauce” how do I get gigs, facebook, email, go to the pubs, facebook groups, phone calls, be pushy but not desperate, offer a trial gig.

Alright let’s break that down: facebook and facebook groups. You got to setup a facebook page for your band, once all your relatives and friends are following you (they won’t go to your gigs) you need some real followers.

Get some studio shots, rehearsal audios, maybe a bit of video, all to attract attention and also to have content to share with the pub/bar you want to play at, but… don’t be too serious about it, remember which business you are in….”entertainment”

Get to the pubs: this actually doesn’t work that well unless you know the pub owner, I’ve shown up at places with CDs in my hand and talking about how great and cheap we are… and none of them materialised, but it was a crucial step for me… it made me realise how the pub dynamics work, any tip you can get from them it’s extremely valuable.

What worked for me was basically contacting venues/pubs through facebook messenger where it is very easy to be cheeky and share a video/picture with very little effort and of course your facebook page link

Step 5: prepare for those gigs

Ah yes… the good old 1-2-1 formation, or maybe 1-3? Or 1-1-2-1. It is critical that you don’t just show up to the venue unprepared about positioning yourself on stage. This is your chance to shine, it is your sunday match… you need to blow these people heads, so make sure you turn up with a plan and everyone knows what to do, act professional so the landlord sees that you know what you are doing. So make sure you rehearse stage presence… a lot!!

Step 5.1: design your gig, invest!

Let’s be honest, you are not impressing anyone with your guitar solos, or drum solos, and if there is a musician in the audience… he’ll be trying to pick on your mistakes. There are 3 things that the audience will remember.

How good you sounded overall (not just you… yeah you… you know what I mean), how good was the singer AND how much fun they had.

Let’s break these down again.

A) How good you sounded: of course… making less mistakes means that you’ll sound better, right? Well… yes but no. You need to learn how to recover from mistakes, everyone, EVERYONE screws up a few times per gig, most of them goes unnoticed… but… if some one does.. we need to cover up for him. Together we stand, divided we fall. If the singer misses the start of the chorus, if the drum started on the wrong beat, if the guitar player is going for a longer/shorter solo… you need to adjust the song.

Everyone needs to listen what each band member is doing and make sure you are constantly adjusting to make the band sound good. Not just yourself.

B) How good is the singer: Well… anyone can sing, right? Wrong! There is nothing more annoying than seeing a band with a bad singer, the singer is the most important member, the songs need to suit the singer and the singer needs to suit the songs, there will always be a song that you love and your solo is great on it… but if the singer is not feeling it.. then you are not playing it. The Singer is the face of your band, they present the band to the public and the public will judge the band based on his performance. So.. keep the singer happy and do the songs he likes and the one he sounds better at. Remember… the performance is not for you… it is for the audience.

C) How much fun they had: oh yeah, my favourite!! Don’t just stand there like lemons… move around, engage with the audience, buy props, lights, banners, be different, give the audience some gifts.

This has really made a difference for us. Lights, smoke machines, confetti cannon. The look on people’s faces when you fire that confetti cannon… it’s priceless, suddenly you’ve become the center of attention even for those that don’t like your music… who cares.. confetti! Let’s dance. Simple as that, if this was an equation… fun = confetti and confetti = fun.

Step 6: be consistent and step up your game everytime

Have something new every time you return to a venue, not necessarily songs… but props, lights. Be consistent on you performance quality and step up your game on how you engage and entertain your audience. For example… last time we returned to a venue… we filled up the place with balloons! And we don’t have roadies.. it was just us inflating balloons (over 100).

So that’s it…. basically… follow your heart and lead the way. Not everyone in the band will have the same passion for the songs, but everyone in the band is up for having fun, and that’s your responsibility.

Am I (the author of this post) credited to give advise on this? I think so… I’ve moved to a new country and managed to setup a band that ir is regularly gigging and does not need constant rehearsing, so the fun to homework ratio is very high.

Follow my band here: Meanstreak UK

Last but not least… none of this would’ve been possible without the encouragement of Chris, so… Chris if you are reading this… THANK YOU!

 

 

 

 

 

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Taming a big boy’s Marshall Amp

Marshall 8080
Marshall vs100
Marshall JCM 900 combo
Marshall JCM 900 head 5881 tube version
Marshall JCM 900 EL34 version
Marshall JTM 30
Marshall JCM 2000 TSL601
Marshall Class 5
Marshall 8040
Marshall VS102R
Marshall JMP 2200
Marshall JCM 800
Marshall ministack
Marshall 1987x
Marshall 5005 (lead 12 no reverb)
Marshall 5005 (bass)
Marshall JTM45
Marshall DSL15H
Marshall 2201

Those are all the Marshall amps (heads and combos) I’ve owned over the past 20 years, I’ve sold some of them and I must have around 8 or 9 at my home studio now, I’m only listing them so you have an idea of what my Amp Journey has been.

Once you enter the tube/valve world you don’t look back (sometimes you do :p) but this tube/valve world is complex, confusing, expensive, loud and heavy!!

Let’s talk about the Loud characteristic most of these amps posses, you can buy a 5 watt tube amp and it’ll still blow your pants off, there’s a number of reasons this happens, the speaker efficiency also plays a huge part of this, but let’s stick to the amp.

The guitar signal moves through the inside of the amp getting powered up and ready to come out of the speaker ready for you to enjoy, on this journey the signal acquires distortion, volume and EQ, now… valve amps have a “power section” which is where the famous power tubes come into play, this is where things get out of control on tube amps (mostly vintage jmp styles with no master volume) because this stage not only gets you the volume but it also gives you more distortion and a specific tone that you might be after.

Some Marshalls will have a Master Volume, and this controls the amount of voltage that gets routed to the power tubes, it also allows you to play with distortion at “bedroom levels”, but the most exciting Marshalls to play (plexi style) often don’t have a master volume…. what does this mean? Well… it means that you don’t have a gain control, so all the distortion comes from the volume, which means… you need a ridiculous amount of volume to get the distortion we all look for, this is THE distortion.. Page, Hendrix, AC/DC, etc. This is what we all want to hear from a Marshall.

So… why am I writing this? Because I’ve found ways to obtain this sound without going deaf, and believe me when I say…. these amps are loud! I wasn’t around in the 70s so I’m not sure how loud these bands would play in pubs, but it would’ve been deafening loud.

What you need is an attenuator, to attenuate the signal that the amp spits out before it hits the speakers, now… this is critical to remember. The Master Volume controls the voltage to the Power Tubes but the attenuator, lets the amplifier be and it attenuates the audio signal that goes to the speaker after it leaves the amp, so the amp tone is genuine… everything you want it to be. And why do we want this? Because power tubes are a component of the sound too so we need to let them be a part of the tone. The attenuator is a genius invention and gives us the ability to run these genuine marshall tones at bedroom levels

There are a lot of attenuator brands out there but I’m going to talk about the one I have but also give some pointers of what to look out for.

  • Don’t buy an L-pad attenuator. These can be found for like 30 bucks on ebay, they do work but they also catch fire quite easily if you overload them. Trust me.. I built one and once I tried to use it with a 100W amp and smoke started coming out even though it was for 100W. If you do use an L-pad attenuator get at least double the rating of the amp
  • Don’t buy attenuators that only work with one speaker load combination, THD hotplates, Palmer and some others offer attenuators at decent prices (£250) but they are designed for 4, 8 or 16 ohms, so you’ll need a new piece of equipment if you ever change your speaker combination.

I bought the Two Notes Reload, why? Because I found it at a good price and it has an ohm load selector along with other things, it’s a great piece of gear, it also has cab simulation and some other fancy stuff that I’ll never use.

 

 

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Guitar volume pots are important!

This next experience is related to a few gibson SGs and humbucker pickups.

Do you know what’s inside your guitar? It’s safe to say that we all know more than before… you can find anything on the internet about your guitar specs and whether they are good components or not.

Pots are often ignored, we look at wood, pickups, tuners and of course guitar brand, however pots are critical, think about them as the wheels of a car, you can have the best and biggest engine ever… but if your wheels are worn out or cheap quality then your car will just spin out of control.

CTS. I’m sure you’ve all heard of this brand, it’s probably on 90% of guitars out there, and they are the best of the best, however… they can be even better… there’s a company called RS Guitarworks that worked with CTS to develop a more authentic vintage taper and a more realistic value of the pots, humbuckers almost always are installed with 500k pots, however… they are not always 500k, they can be 450, 510, 460, etc. And even though the number is not really important… there’s a reason why they need to be 500k, and this is how the pickup was designed to work, with a 500k pot, because that’s just how it sounds like the developer wanted.

I was tired of having different tapers on the guitars I use live, the taper defines how steep the volume increase/decrease is when you turn the pot. This can be ok for your home guitars because they can all have a different character and you might actually like this, but for live performances you want to be able to switch guitars and at least for me… hoping for a similar performance when using the volume, I manage how much distortion the guitar gets by using the volume on it.

So I bought 4 RS Guitarworks superpots for my main SGs, after 2 hours of dealing with my not great soldering skills I was able to test the first guitar, I was blown away and I don’t say this lightly, I don’t often go around changing things in my guitars. The guitar sound just became more clear and more alive, the old pot probably with a below than 500k reading was holding the pickup down.

The volume taper was amazing, the sound of the pickup was amazing instantly, I was now able to get a crunchier sound by setting the volume to around 5 and then getting an angrier sound when I turned it up to 10.

By the way… I’m not associated with them in any way.

I play in an AC/DC tribute band called Meanstreak, and being able to use the volume on the guitar to control distortion is key and absolutely necessary, to cut a long story short… I can’t recommend them highly enough, they are a bit more expensive than regular CTS but they are totally worth it! Give your guitar a treat and get one of these to try out.

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Playing with tone

Don’t be a knob snob, that is my advice and second advice is… follow suggestions to prove them wrong or right.

I don’t have much patience when it comes to trying things out, usually I just try to plug in and play, I have little time to play during the week and I sort of think that I waste time when I find myself fiddling with gear for hours.

However I’ve decided to start locking some time in and try to record a few things (I also don’t like recording) just to see if I could come at peace with this tedious and boring task. To my surprise… I still found it tedious and boring… but… it helped me re-discover my amp controls and equalization, I know this sounds obvious and most of the amps have had those 3 basic eq controls since the beginning of time, but I’m sure that most of you keep everything in the middle… (noon).

We all know what they do… but we often play with treble or bass controls and leave the mids in the middle right? I learnt what the mids does when I started playing heavy metal… I had one of those valvestate marshalls that had the “contour” control which scoops the mids, scooping the mids means taking out mids, remember that U shaped eq on your dad’s hi-fi system? Well it’s the same thing.

What does this does to my tone? Well… it adds “tightness” it changes the way distortion sounds, it’s an awesome thing to play with, suddenly everything sort of sounds better, the problem is that if you scoop them too much your sound will not cut through the mix, but a little bit of it can get you to that sweet spot you’ve been waiting for.

Even though I knew about mids (of course… I’m not a rookie… right? :p) when I finished my recording tests I found that the guitar was too much in my face… like a gritty sound, I tried mic placement (another art) which it changed the sound but I still wasn’t happy, so I went to the Eq section and started moving things around until I remembered that U shape!!, so now even though I mainly play AC/DC I still scoop the mids a bit… if listen to “Shoot to Thrill” you’ll see that mids are heavily scooped.

Long story short…. spend time playing with the knobs, try recording and playing with the eq on the computer/ipad, you’ll be surprised how closer you’ll get to the sound you are after and then you can try yo mimic those settings in your amp. Remember that all the records or live concerts you hear have a myriad of experts sorting out every detail of the sound until it’s perfect. Remember that old story “guitar straight to amp”? Well… it is true… but remember there’s a team between the amp and the sound you finally hear.

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Recording guitars at home

I’ve read so many forums about recording at home… there is loads of info out there.. but as always… I can’t find someone normal with a normal budget who is not a purist and is just trying to get some decent tone out of his gear.

I’ve decided to just buy a few mics and an cheap interface to get me started.

Interface: Alesis IO2

Mics: SM57, SM58 and SEX1R Ribbon.

The interface was recommended by my guitar teacher who said “I’ve used this for years and has never failed me” and he records a lot… so I just bought it without hesitation.

The microphones… well.. the SM57 is just a must have according to everyone out there… the SM58 is more for vocals and I just wanted one, but the unusual one here is the Ribbon mic. Don’t know about you but when I recorded in the past I always found the guitar to be too dry… too much “in your face” creating an unnatural Tone… I believe that sound should have enough space to develop itself before it reaches a “reverb” ish state.

The Ribbon mic does this.. it picks up signal in an 8 shape giving you loads of space for the sound to develop, and the SM57 gives you that “in your face” sharp guitar tone, the combination of those two gives you an awesome result, a very natural tone without any effort, I downloaded Audacity which is a free recording environment without too many tricks but it gets the job done and did I mention… it’s free!

The interface is as simple as it gets and it’s very sturdy, I also use it to listen to music from my computer, it’s got 2 inputs and a separate gain control for both, it’s got phantom power, stereo/mono and master volume, very simple.

“Recording” is a very “scary”/”tedious” process… every time we see that red light suddenly our fingers get nervous and they don’t want to play as they always do… very frustrating, however.. having the interface at home means you can get used to this feeling.. of being recorded.. you can also do as many takes as you want or just leave it recording for hours without spending money on a studio. the other very useful aspect of Audacity + Audio Interface is that you can play along recordings/songs with great quality through your headphones… getting the true tone of your microphones wherever you are sat in your room, it also allows you to experiment with mic placement.

Conclusion… buy stuff and try… there is just too much information out there and too many good salesmen trying to get you to buy the expensive stuff.. talk to normal people.. approach your teacher or someone at the rehearsal place and ask them what they use, you’ll be surprised by the results!

I love what I achieved with all the little gadgets.. I bought everything 2nd hand except for the ribbon mic.. spending  a total of USD $370 (interface + microphones + cables) which is very cheap compared to what a lot of people spend on this first approach.

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Instant Angus

This is the reputation the SD Storm earned, a pedal that you plug in and Angus Young sound comes out of the speakers… so, is it true?

Yes!, definitely the pedal gives you that extra bite that Angus achieves with his tone, this is not a distortion pedal, in my opinion it’s a combination of an aggressive booster and a compressor, allowing you to have sustain and overdrive without loosing clarity on your tone.

The pedal is simple… 3 knobs, Power, Storm and Snap, which I think they mean Input, Output and Compression, I could be wrong though but to my ear this seems to be the effect they cause on the tone.

The achieved tone from the pedal is very affected by the Amp setup (duh) but really… you can’t just set your amp to clean and plug and play like a distortion pedal, because it’s not a distortion pedal… so it needs the right level of gain and volume from the amp.

IMG_2555 (2)

I tested it using my 71 Gibson SG and the Eric Clapton Stratocaster. I’ll comment on both separately:

Gibson SG: I used the OD1 channel with very little distortion (3) and on volume on 7 on the Marshall TSL, with the overall master on 1 (Yes, I got neighbours), the pedal configuration was: Power:10, Storm:7,Snap:5. I loved the tone that came out of the speaker but I was missing something… and it was volume… as we all know, great guitar tone is achieved by volume so I switched to my Blackstar HT1R using the emulated output straight to my headphones, used the clean channel with gain on 6 and master on 9, and it just blew my mind, everything was there the clarity of Angus’ tone but also the heavy “distortion” he has, Angus has a very distinctive E Chord sound.. it just sounds so bassy but clear… and you get just this with the Storm, using the guitar volume on 6  and 10 for the solos.

IMG_2541 (2)

EC Stratocaster: Marshall TSL on the clean channel, with gain on 5 and master on 1.5,the pedal: Power:10, Storm:7 and Snap on 5. SRV instantly came hrough my amp, using the neck pickup I fell in love all over again with my Strat, (tuned half step down), that classic glassy sound you get on the Strat but slightly overloaded it’s a very addictive tone, and again the clarity remained there, every note and string sounded as clear as it would be coming out of the clean channel.

Overall I liked the pedal very much, it’s very hard to describe the sound, sometimes I think it is similar to what you can achieve with a distortion pedal, but it’s also far away from it, because the clarity that your tone has with the Storm can’t be achieved with a normal distortion pedal. If you are after a classic rock sound THIS is the only thing you need to add to your rig.

The price tag on this baby is $335 US dollars, it’s not cheap but you have to think that this pedal is hand built by one guy… not an assembly line in a massive factory, so this impacts directly on the cost of the product.

The presentation was very good, I got a T-shirt and a big picture of Fil and Angus, signed by Fil, there are no instructions manual, which of course are not needed, however I feel that this should’ve included some sort of ideal set up to achieve Angus’ tone, Fil has worked extremely hard to achieve this and I’m sure he has a few tips that we would all love to hear.

Head to www.solodallas.com to get the pedal.

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MXR Dyna Comp

Review of a classic… this pedal has been around for ages, more precisely it was released in the 70s and according to Wikipedia it instantly became a “Nashville Standard” I’ve only had this pedal for 6 months or so, so it’s not a classic for me but as soon as I plugged it in something snapped.

I first tried it with my Eric Clapton Stratocaster, as we all know compressors are sort of associated with chicken picking… and so are guitars with single coil pickups, the sound instantly becomes “studio” like, that was the first thought that came into me… everything just sounds tidier… compressed (of course), if you play “under the bridge” by RHCP with this pedal… you’ll think you are listening to the studio version, it’s pretty amazing.

So… first impressions were great I fell in love instantly and I said to my self “I’ll stuck this pedal to the amp with Velcro and never turn it off again”, however not everything that shine is gold, the pedal is a bit noisy, and what happens is there is a lot of noise when you are not strumming the strings and as soon as you strum.. the pedal compresses the sound causing a “volume difference” all the time which is a bit annoying but I do understand that this is the nature of a compressor, but it could have a noise gate of some sort.

I then moved on to the  SG (humbucker guitar) and tone was ok, the best thing about combining this pedal with distortion is the sustain you get out of it… however the sustained note seems to vary in volume as it sustains for longer and longer, making me think the pedal is not entirely designed for this task… however I did hear that Angus Young uses a bit of compression on his Schaffer Replica to get that extra sustain, but we’ll touch on that later since I’ve already pre-ordered a Solo Dallas Storm (mini Schaffer Replica).

I totally recommend this pedal by all means this should be in your arsenal, you can have loads of fun with it but I’m not sure if it would be the 1st pedal I would buy, I think the Ibanes TS9 or a Vox 847 Wah Wah should definitely come in first.

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