The new pedal board

Hi there!

I told you a little about my old pedal board before and that I have built a new one. This is how that came to. 

My old pedal board was quite nice, but there where some issues about it that bugged me. Somehow I did not get my pedals to stay in their places. At first I thought it was some problem with the material in the pedal board, but then I realized that I have used too small stripes of velcro and that dust and gravel seemed to creep in under the velcro and impaired the glue on the velcro. Another thing I was not happy about was that I somehow tended to change presets or set my rig in tuning mode, i.e. no sound, when I used my wha-wha or the whammy pedal. Either the board layout was bad or my feet was to big :-). Finally the cabling took up too much space on the board and was to stiff to handle nicely. Here is my old board:

My old board

I looked around for a new pedal board but the size of most of them where to small to fit my pedals and the boards that where big enough where way to large instead. Hmm. What to do??

I then discovered be a coincident a post on a guitar forum that some guy talked about a project to build an own pedal board from an IKEA shelf :-S. I read the post and realized that this was not a bad idea, so I planned a little and then I went ahead and bought myself an IKEA shelf called Gorm. My wife's brother was kind to purchase a shelf for me at IKEA in Karlstad in deliver it to me. Thanx!! 

Gorm from IKEA

It was enough shelf for a couple of pedal boards if I wrecked the first board. I decided to go for a pedal board in two levels. That way I would not accidentally change anything on the pedals on the ground level when maneuvering the pedals on the balcony. Here's how the design turned out!

The new board without velcro

The new board with velcro

The design now was the smallest size possible for my pedals and to be able to do the wiring, I used two Lava Cable solderless kits. It worked great, but it was a little painful for my fingers during the assembling process. I'll use more tools the next time. It was also sometimes a little bit tricky to get good contact when assembling the contacts, but after a while it got easier. This was my first time I used the Lava Cable solderless contacts and it was probably therefore I had some problems, but it was all worth it. The space on the board taken up by the cabling was incredible small. Look at the picture below and compare it with the picture on my old board above. A much nicer result on a smaller total size and with a little more gear. Misa like!!

The new board

Bye for now!

Rock on!!

TC Electronic G-Major

Hi again!

I will have to say goodbye to an old friend soon. I have had an ad out for my TC Electronic G-Major.

I have used it for several years together with my ENGL stack. In the beginning I used it for all effects. I controlled it via an old midi foot controller I had. Overall it sounds really nice and contains quite a lot of effects. But after a while a started to go further in my chase for my sound and I discovered that what I really liked when it comes to chorus effects was not what the G-Major could deliver. The G-Major is really good in delivering a nice, soft and transparent chorus sound. What I got a kick from was more of a heavier compressed over the top chorused sound.

So I went internet window shopping for a nice chorus pedal and find one that I really liked on youtube. An old DOD FX65 Stereo Chorus pedal.

 
Just what I was looking for in sound and I found a cheap old used one. I bought it and I just loved the sound. The pedal had not been used for a long time so the pots where almost stuck in their positions, but some electronic cleaning spray together with some heavy turning on the pots from zero to max cured that. The effect was placed before the amp, and therefore before my gain stage, since I thought it sounded better there. I don't use chorus on distorted sound (yet) so it had nothing to do with that, but it sounded somewhat better before then after the gain stage.

After the chorus a couple of more pedals replaced effects from the G-Major. Sometimes it was because of a special tone and sometimes because I wanted the effect before the distortion. For example, I have never really liked phasers because I have followed the general rule that says that you should have modulation effects after distortion. But I was really surprised when I first heard the sound of a slow phaser before distortion...   The  Eddie Van Halen sound!  Yeah!!!

Conclusion: GENERAL RULES SUCK!! Don't listen to other people, i.e. except me, experiment freely with everything when looking for sounds.

After a while the delay was the only effect I was using in the G-Major and then I discovered the class of the tape echo simulations in the Strymon gear. Amazing not to say the least!. So now I have replaced the delay with a Strymon Timeline.

Goodbye! And have a nice rest of your life G-Major!

Jimi-pedal!

Hi there!

Today I got delivered something I have been waiting to get my hands on for quite some time now. A Jimi Hendrix 70th Anniversary Tribute Series Univibe JHM3.

I had a univibe effect before when I had a VOX Tonelab LE. I liked the sound a lot, but since I have another setup now, with a stack and pedals, I have not been able to use the univibe for a while. I have not really looked around for one, but as I recall they are all quite expensive, rather big and they often require some strange voltage and often even AC power. But for a month ago or something I discovered this little pedal from MXR. A compact, cheap and, on youtube, really nice sounding unit.

Dunlop and MXR has released three anniversary tribute pedals to selebrate Jimi's 70th birthday. The Univibe, a Fuzz Face and an Octavio. This is a youtube video showing them all off.

The pedals are limited edition but I managed to get one of the last I guess, only 103 left :-).

I have not tried the pedal in my rig yet, but I managed to get a couple of hours with it connected to my somewhat smaller practice stack.

Verdict: I sounds awesome!! Can't wait to hook it up in my real rig.