Pedal boards

Hi!

A new day with a new post :-). This time it's about pedal boards. I've been planning, working and testing for quite a while now with a new pedal board that I have built myself. I will tell you about that another day so let's start with the old board. This is it:

Digitech Whammy 4, Morley Bad Horsie 2 Wah, Morley PVO volume.

Electroharmonix POG 2, G-Lab GSC-2.

I don't know how much you know about guitar gear so I'll try to explain a little more in depth in my blog posts. Please don't hesitate to ask questions!

So, what is a pedal board? And why should you use one? In the beginning of one's guitar career the number of pedals used is not that many, if any. The first type of effect you buy is most likely some sort of distortion or overdrive pedal or a multi effect of some kind. At this stage the world is easy and the setup might look something like this:

That means that every time you set your guitar rig up or take it apart you simply place the pedal on the floor, connects one guitar cord from guitar to pedal input and another one from pedal output to amp input then you are done. Piece of cake :-). But if you are interested in creating different types of sounds and exactly getting the sound you want, it might soon start to look like this on the floor:

This will be much more cumbersome and slow to set up and take apart. A lot of cables that has to be connected together in the same order without the nobs on the pedals moving around and therefore changing the sound. It's also a good idea to start thinking about powering the pedals with some sort of power adapter instead of with batteries. The solution to all of this chaos is of cause the pedal board:

There exists many variations, but here is a common construction. The pedal board is some sort of hard board that is covered with velcro. The pedals are also covered with velcro on the underside. All the pedals are then layed out on the board and connected with as short connecting cables as possible. The order of the pedals is crucial for the sound you want and you have to decide during the mounting of the board. The pedals are then pressed to the board and slightly twisted so that the velcro on the pedal gets it's hooks into the velcro on the board. The power supply for the pedals is also normally fastened on the pedal board and connected to all the pedals. When the board is fully assembled you can turn it upside down, carry it around etc and the pedals will remain in their places. The board is then normally transported in a suitable case.

So the pedal board is, in principal, one big custom made multi effects pedal. Even though you now have a lot of sounds at your feet, it's still easy and quick to set up and take apart your guitar rig. You only need to connect one cord from the guitar to the input of the first pedal on the board, and one from the output of the last pedal to the amp. Now you also need to connect the power adapter to socket as well. Just one more cable!

And as usual you can complicate stuff even more, but I will not get into that now. Now it's time to sleep.

Rock on!!

Tremolo Stabilizer

 again!

Today I tried out the new guitar during rehearsals with the band! It worked just fine. It sounded awesome and felt great to play. The only problem with it is that I'm still quite unused with the fact that I'm having two volume controls to fiddle with. On all of my other guitars I have only one volume control. I actually just recently rewired my Gibson Explorer 7-string from two to one volume control so that it would be like all my others and that was a real improvement. But now I'm back with the same problem again. You might think that it should not be hard to learn how to handle two, but I always turn the wrong one when I'm playing on the neck pickup. The volume handling is more of a reflex for me and that reflex does not take into consideration which pickup I am using at the moment. I do not use different static volumes on neck and bridge pickups and switch between them as you might do, so I really do not have a use for two volume controls. I feel that the quickest way to comfort with the guitar might be to rewire it.

Another thing about the volume control on the BC Rich is that it is the type that is stiff to turn mechanically. I'm not used to that either, but I think I might grow to like that a lot since it keeps the controls steady. I tend to smash my fingers into the controls sometimes and on my other guitars the controls then wonders away. I've noticed that when I am playing I automatically, without thinking, every now and then check that all the controls are on max (when they should be). So stiff controls are better, but I have to learn the timing needed to do fast adjustments of the volume in the middle of the playing.It feels slow now...

Before taking my new guitar to practice I had to install a tremolo stabilizer. As I mentioned before I started to use the Hipshot Tremsetter in the 90's and cannot play Floyd Rose without one. So why play Floyd Rose you might say. Well I have always liked dives and nice whammy tricks and when correctly installed, and with a tremsetter, a Floyd Rose system is the best! No doubt about it. It almost never goes out of tune and survives the roughest handling. Of cause you have to know how to set it up and you cannot change string gauge and tuning every now and then, but who does?

I use the tremsetter to make the whammy stiffer to maneuver. Not locking the strings from going higher than pitch but making it stiffer to move the strings lower than pitch. Here is the thing:

You remove one of the springs in the Floyd Rose mechanism and install it there like this:

You adjust the stiffness of the whammy to your liking with the biggest of the springs in the tremsetter. I do this just enough so that a whole step bend on fret 14 on the third string barely noticeable lowers the pitch on the first string. By adjusting it that way it will be just like having a fixed bridge when doing bends, unibends and double stops, but if you use a little more muscle it is still a floating bridge. The only thing I don't like about this is that the stiffness of the whammy might make the whammy bar wiggle. It's all dependent on how ridged the bar is attached to the bridge. I can live with this, but I'm also looking out for the best solution to attach the bar. 

There exists other tremsetter solutions that I have not tried, so this time I wanted to try another tremsetter for my BC Rich. I scanned the internet and found lots of good word about this thing:

The Göldo Back Box. The reviews said that it was as good as the Hipshot Tremsetter function wise, but that it was a lot easier to install. I agree that the Tremsetter from Hipshot needs some major surgery with drills etc to install, but it's doable. But I cannot complain if the process would be easier, so I decided to go for the Back Box. The installation was rather easy, not that super easy. The worst problem was that it was not really fully possible to get the screwdriver in vertical position when tightening the screws. An improvement could very easily be done here. Never mind, here it is installed in my guitar:

So far so good. The problem was to adjust the spring. You have to have miniature fingers to be able to hold one nut while turning the other. It is not that much space in between the springs. I used a pair of pliers instead. Maybe it is meant to be used that way but I don't know because it did not have the patience to read the included installation manual in German!! Anyway it worked, I was able to adjust it. BUT I did not get it to work as i wanted :-(. I tried readjusting it several times but I always ended up in the same situation. I did not take that much tightening of the Back Box spring to keep the first string from lowering when I did the bend, but it was not able to come back to the exact position after moving the strings above pitch with the whammy. I tightened the spring in the Back Box very very much, but I still could not make it to go fully back to position after a whammy rise. I also noticed that rocking the whammy from center position and up to max pitch a couple of times made the nut unwind and leaving the spring less tightened. Not good. Anyways, I got the thing adjusted so that it worked fairly good. I did not notice anything during rehearsal  but you see the problem with a tuner.

Verdict for the Göldo Back Box: Do not use!! Use the Hipshot Tremsetter instead. Even though it's harder to install it's working much better!! I have now ordered a Hipshot Tremsetter to replace my Göldo Back Box! End of story. 

Until next time, rock on!!

A really cool pedal!!

Hi!

I got an subscription update from youtube today. It contained an incredible new video from the incredible Gearmanndude. Gearmanndude is constantly updating his youtube channel with pedal reviews and shootouts so this guy's channel is a must have on the subscription list for a real guitar gear nerd!! Check it out!

Here is the post I received today. What a cool pedal!!!

That's all for now. Rock on!

New guitar!

Hi there!

It's time for my first real post. I bought myself a used guitar a couple of weeks ago. It was actually a Christmas gift from my mother in law, but she does not know it yet :-).

It is a B.C Rich Mockingbird Pro X. The case is not standard BC-case, it is a home built/modified case made by the last owner. Looks really cool, almost like a vampire coffin :-). Nice job!! The locking feels kind of weak though so they have to be tested before I dare to wonder about with this babe!

Here are some facts about the guitar taken from the B.C Rich home page:


Mockingbird Pro X
Dark, sleek and sexy, this Mockingbird will drop jaws wherever you take it. A Shadow complexion contrasts with a gold Floyd Rose Original Series tremolo and Grover Super Rotomatic tuners. EMG 81 (bridge) and 60 (neck) pickups provide the voice while a 24 5/8 inch scale and 24 jumbo frets on any ebony fingerboard provide the touch.


CONSTRUCTION: Neck Through
BODY WOOD: Mahogany
TOP STYLE: Deep Arched
TOP WOOD: Available in Quilt, Solid and Burl
BODY BINDING: Aged Cream
HEADSTOCK STYLE: 3-to-a-Side Traditional
HEADSTOCK COLOR: Matching
HEADSTOCK BINDING: Aged Cream
TUNERS: Grover Super Rotomatics
NECK WOOD: Mahogany
NECK BINDING: Aged Cream
FRETBOARD: Ebony
INLAY: Diamond
FRETS: 24 jumbo
FACTORY STRINGS: D'Addario EXL120 (.009-.042)
SCALE: 24 5/8
BRIDGE TYPE: Floyd Rose ® Original Series Tremolo
PICKUPS: EMG 81 Bridge / 60 Neck
CONTROLS: 2 volume, 2 tone, 1 three way toggle
Click to see control diagram
HARDWARE: Gold

I was told that the guitar was tuned down to D and that the intonation had been adjusted by a music store. But the first discovery that I made, after I discovered it's beauty of cause, was that the neck had no relief at all when tuned to pitch at D!! How is that possible? Either no music store had been involved in the setup of this guitar or the personnel at the music store did not really do their job. I'm not surprised really. Ever since I  started to bother about the setup of my guitars I realized a couple of things: 

1. Few people know how to do a good guitar setup
2. It's really not that hard to do a good setup yourself
3. A good setup of a guitar is very much dependent upon the guitar player's playing style and personal preferences

For me it did not mean that much that it was not setup right because I will change things on the guitar that forces me to redo the setup anyways. The changes I plan to do are:

1. Change strings and get it back to normal tuning. I will use this guitar in the band Fire in the Basement. We play 70's hard rock and we do it in normal tuning :-)
2. Increase the action. In the 80's and 90's I liked my guitars to have as low action as possible, but nowadays I find it much better to have slightly higher action. I don't like it when the string above creeps in under my fingers when I do bends. I also imagine that it gets easier to play cleaner with higher action
3. Install a tremsetter. I started to use tremsetters in the 90's and I cannot play without them. Bending, unibending and double stops are all a big part of my playing style and I cannot get it right when the bridge gets pulled by the force of me bending the string and lowers all the other strings :-(

So now it's time to set it up! 

To be continued....

Rock on!

Hello World!

This is my first blogging attempt so please bare with me. The idea behind this blog is to talk about things I go trough in my life as a spare time guitar player. I don't really know yet what I will cover here, but I'll decide as I go along. I don't know if it will be of interest to someone, but who knows. 

Rock on!