On electric guitar tone

By Msquared - Matt Myers - Original photograph by Matt Myers (uploader)., Public Domain, Link

The first electric guitarist says that good guitar tone requires overdriving a tube pre-amp.

The second guitarist says that the key to good guitar tone is putting EQ before and after your distortion.

The third guitarist says that the real secret to good guitar tones is saturating a tube power amp.

The fourth guitarist says that it is really the amp’s transformer that matters.

The fifth guitarist says that it is about the interaction of the pre-amp, power-amp, and transformer. And don’t forget speaker distortion.

Meanwhile, Def Leppard’s best selling album was recorded using Rockman headphone amps. (Developed by Tom Scholz of the band Boston.) Not the Rockman Power Soak with a guitar amp. The little, 1980s-era, solid-state Rockman headphone amp with a belt-clip.

By waterborough - photo shooting, Public Domain, Link

Of course, that is only one example. If you look, you can find many more professional guitarists who have been very successful with gear the purveyors of “good tone” would dismiss out-of-hand.

That’s just one of those things to remember whenever the Gear-Acquisition-Syndrome flares up.

New locking strap review

I don’t care for strap locks that require replacing the strap pins on a guitar. And I’ve never actually seen any Grolsch bottle washers. What I have been happy with are the Planet Waves Planet Lock straps.

I recently got an Ernie Ball Polylock strap. Unlike the Planet Lock, it has no moving parts. But it does feel very secure. And it doesn’t feel quite as clunky as the Planet Locks.

Most importantly, though, I have one instrument—an Ibanez Mikro bass—that the Planet Locks won’t fit on. The Polylock does!

Does it affect tone?

Stop me if I’ve said this already...

If you find yourself asking whether something affects the tone of an electric guitar...

(...which means we aren’t talking about something that obviously affects tone...)

...the answer is: Yes, but not a lot.

You may or may not be able to hear it. It’s likely that listeners (especially once you consider any media between you and your listeners) won’t.

Winter NAMM 2016

The only thing that really stood out to me this year was the Digitech Trio+, which looks awesome.

I was happy to see the Roland Blues Cube Hot, and that it had a black option. But it seems to be lacking the “dual tone” mode of the Stage and Artist models.

At first I was interested in the new Vox Starstream, until I learned that its synth sounds were only monophonic. There was a time when that was acceptable; that time is past.

I don’t know if this one was at NAMM, but I’m happy to see the Positive Grid Bias Head. I’ve really wanted to see one of the highly-tweakable computer amp simulations available in an actual amp. Instead of taking a laptop (or even an iPad) on stage, why not have an amp with the same software in appliance form?

(Granted, we’ve had software amp simulations in amps and pedals for a long time. But having the same sims on your computer and an amp/pedal is what seemed to missing to me.)

I’m not sure if its right for me, but it is a good direction.

Modes and guitar

I find the use of modes in guitar instruction generally unhelpful.

The first problem is when modes are used simply to name positions. A mode is what notes get emphasized, not where on the fretboard you are playing them. You can play Mixolydian in the position that’s called Ionian. Using the mode names for positions simply confuses things for no reason.

The second problem is that modal playing is one style. And not a style for beginners. Modes should be introduced much later than they often are and only if the student is interested in that sort of style. Just as in music theory courses. Introducing modes early simply creates confusion for no good reason.

Guitar pedals: learning and problem solving

Previously posted to Google+

I’ve always been more of a multi-effects guy than a pedal guy. But lately my pedal collection has been expanding. Then came the point at which I wanted to use my pedals with headphones. (And—in particular—solving this would also let me use them with the Jamhub.)

I could plug them into one of my multi-effects units and use its headphone jack. But none of my multi-effects units have stereo inputs, and I do have stereo pedals.

I could run them into a couple of amps and then plug the headphone outs from the amps into two channels of the Jamhub†. That seems like overkill.

It turns out, though, that the last pedal in my chain—a Digitech Jamman—has a headphone out! This works, but it didn’t sound very good.

It also turns out the Digitech Trio will add speaker emulation if you just use its mixer out. It’s only mono, but putting it after the last mono pedal seems to work. (It seems like most stereo effects don’t need speaker emulation the way some mono effects do.)

In the long run, it’d probably be good to put a Sansamp in the Trio’s place, but I was happy to be able to find a short-term solution with what I already have.

†Or some other way of combining the two mono signals into a stereo signal. The Jamhub is probably the easiest way to do it that I have on-hand.

Why I didn’t back LightLead

I considered but didn’t back the LightLead Kickstarter.

Price is not an issue. I’ve had so many instrument cables fail that I’d pay $55 for a 15″ cable if I know it is reliable. And a LightLead has advantages over a traditional cable. While I may not have experience with LightLead to know that it would be reliable, it would be something I’d be willing to take a chance on.

The biggest issue for me is batteries. I’m an amateur musician. (Well...except for that one paying gig.) As much as I might try, I don’t get a chance to play every day. When I do get a chance, I don’t want to deal with figuring out what batteries might have failed. I avoid active pick-ups. I avoid effects that can only run off batteries. I don’t want batteries in my cable. If there were some sort of “phantom power” option, then I might have considered LightLead.

(What I’m imagining as a better way to power it is a small box between the amp and the LightLead that has a power input. While this would mean running some copper alongside the fiber in the LightLead, I assume copper for power has less issues than copper for an instrument-level audio signal. The box could still isolate the circuit that powers the instrument end of the LightLead.)

Dear Fender...about the amp section of your site

I couldn’t find a way to submit website feedback on the Fender site, so I’m posting it here.

On 29 May 2015, I got a marketing e-mail from Fender entitled: The Ideal Amp For Your Sound. Here’s a brief outline of the contents:

• The ultimate amp for creativity
  Mustang™ I (V.2)
  ...easy to record, edit, store and share your music.
• Affordable onstage versatility
  Champion™ 40
  ...an ideal choice as your first stage amp.
• Beautiful acoustic amplification
  Acoustasonic™ 90
  ...perfect for the acoustic guitarist...
• The standard for gigging guitarists
  Blues Junior™ III
  ...ideal for the go-anywhere guitarist who needs to hit the stage or studio at a moment’s notice.
• Clear, deep and powerful
  ’68 Custom Twin Reverb®

This is great! (And the full e-mail was even better without being too wordy.) It’s a real shame that—as a marketing e-mail—so few of your potential customers will receive this. And even for most of them, it will likely end up in their spam folder.

This is exactly what I should—but never have—found when I go to your web site and click on amplifiers. The site is great for someone who already knows your products. It does nothing, however, to help the customer who is trying to figure out what Fender amp is right for them.

I usually spend a while digging around trying to figure out why I might want one of your amps over another...but I end up frustrated and none the wiser for my time investment.

Make this e-mail the starting point for the guitar amp section of your site.† I’m sure you could make it even better. (If nothing else, the Twin Reverb® section doesn’t say what sort of guitarist it is good for like the other sections do.) Then back up each of those selections with another page that explains what other Fender amps that kind of guitarist might also consider and why.

(†Don’t lose the navigation that allows those who know what they want to go directly to it, of course. That’s a strength that you want to keep.)

Winter NAMM 2015

Products that looked interesting to me while watching the Winter NAMM 2015 coverage...

Digitech Trio: The Trio puts the old Band in a Box software into a pedal along with chord detection. So, instead of programming the chords and rhythm by hand, you just play the chords and rhythm, then the BiaB bassist and drummer join in.

Note that the BiaB software is fairly sophisticated. It will play fills. It will play busier parts at slower tempos and sparer parts at faster tempos. It could also do keyboard parts, so maybe we’ll get a Quartet pedal in the future if the Trio sells well.

So far, I only saw one demo where they talked about what the optional external footswitches do, and the choices seemed questionable. I hope that will be configurable.

It seems like there would be some potential for a pedal like this that was also a looper. Or maybe they could make it support the same sync feature as the Digitech loopers.

The Eric Johnson Tone Capsule: I’d already been impressed by what I’d been hearing about the new Blues Cube amp. It turns out that they have a socket on it that you can plug a “tone capsule” into. This one is designed to tweak the amp to make it deliver something closer to EJ’s tones.

The fact that it glows and looks like a tube is awesome.

So far, it doesn’t look like there’s anyway to get the BC’s original tones without unplugging the tone capsule. It would be nice if you could have the original tones and the tweaked tones all on tap.

IK Multimedia iRig PowerBridge: This is a great idea. A single solution to charging an iOS device while having an audio or MIDI interface connected.

The downside is that the Mini-DIN connector they’re using probably means it is only compatible with IK’s on interfaces. You’d really like it to have a Lightning connector like Apple’s HDMI adapter. I’m guessing Apple makes that option impractical for them. The next best choice would be USB. But that might still make it more expensive and more complicated.

You can argue that it is in IK’s interest to make it only work with their own interfaces. I disagree, but...shrug

Z.Vex Pedal Thief: Allows you to swap an effects loop between a mic and a guitar. I’m thinking this will be handy to use with loopers that don’t have multiple inputs.

Big Ear N.Y.C. More More More: Three boosts in one box.

Mooer Wahter: What’s cool about the Wahter is that it is a compact wah pedal with fold-out sections to make it more compact while travelling. I hadn’t seen that before.

Boss ES-8: I have to wonder why Boss didn’t already have a switching system for pedals like this in their line. I also wonder if it really is a “game changer” compared to similar systems that were already available. But it does look very nice.

It is a bit disappointing that it doesn’t appear to have a lot of support for stereo pedals. Loop 7 has a mono send and a stereo return, and loop 8 has stereo sends and stereo returns.

I think these are all the (single size) Boss pedals that have stereo in: DD-7, RV-5, TE-2, RC-1, and the RC-3. Although you probably don’t want both an RC-1 and an RC-3 in the same rig, you might want all of them and all the others. The TE-2 strikes me as a very special purpose pedal, so I think you’d want a DD-7 along with it. Lots of people like to have at least two DDs set to different delay times. With the ES-8, you’d have to put all of these in loop 8 or put them after the ES-8 outputs. Either option means you aren’t getting the biggest benefit of the ES-8.

Looking at pedals with mono in and stereo out: DM-2W, DD-3, BF-3, CE-5, CH-1, MO-2, PS-6, OC-3. You have much fewer options using these with the ES-8. Only one of these can go into loop 7 in stereo mode.

Still, for most guitarists that probably isn’t as big an issue as I’m making out of it. Mono is plenty for most guitarists.

Fender Limited Edition Sandblasted Telecaster: Looks pretty nice. I’m a sucker for Teles and anything blue. But what looks even nicer is...

Fender Special Edition David Lozeau Art Stratocaster, Dragon Art: Blue and a dragon.

Reverend Descent Baritones: Reverend has some cool guitars, and baritones always catch my eye.

Antares ATG-1 Floor Processor: This was originally announced and “coming soon” in...what...2012? I still plan to buy one as soon as they’re available. I stopped holding my breath years ago.

Rocksmith 2014

Rocksmith (2014...I never tried the original). Using a real guitar (or bass) means that it becomes less about playing a game and more about actually playing guitar (or bass). Of all the computerized guitar teachers or “Guitar Hero with a real guitar” things I’ve tried, this one seems to work the best. It is work to learn the songs, but it doesn’t feel like you’re fighting against the software to do so. And like a good teacher, instead of asking you what difficulty you want, as soon as you’re starting to feel comfortable, it pushes you just a little more.

I haven’t taken lessons in some twenty-odd years, but this software makes me feel like I am. In the best way.

BlueBoard

A couple of things you might want to know if you are considering the IK Multimedia BlueBoard. This information comes from IK’s video about the BlueBoard, answers they provided in the comments to that video, and playing with the app.

The BlueBoard is primarily in either program change or control change mode. So, you can not use the foot-switches to switch presets while also using an expression pedal to control volume, wah, etc.

There is a mode that can do program changes via the bank switching feature while otherwise being in control change mode. Bank switching, by the way, is done by holding down the A or B foot-switches.

Also, you can not use two BlueBoards with one iOS device. So dedicating one to program change and one to control change is not an option.

Overall, this is pretty disappointing. Since my Griffin StudioConnect has MIDI, I’m going to be looking into conventional MIDI foot-controllers. Still, the BlueBoard would be useful even with its limitations.

The full rig

Here is nigh all the guitar gear I’ve collected assembled into a single rig.

It is sort of a wet-dry-wet setup. The Princeton amp in the middle gets the guitar signal without any effects. (Though that amp does have compression, overdrive, and reverb built-in.) The stereo outputs of the RP350 and VG-8 are mixed together (by the VG8), goes into the JamMan, and then into the left and right amps. A Morley ABY controls whether the Princeton, the RP350, or both get a signal. (A switch on the Roland-ready Strat controls whether the Princeton/RP350 path, the VG8, or both are active.)

Here’s how it’s wired up.

Layering three different sounds seem to work surprisingly well. If the trio ever gets some gigs, this could let me fill up a lot of sonic-landscape when we want to. But it may have to suffice with just pleasing me.

The biggest challenge is that the VG-8 is hard to program and doesn’t have any dedicated “user” banks that you can use without overwriting factory settings. It is also the piece that would be the most expensive to upgrade.

iRig Pro

I ranted about the iRig HD, but I think the iRig Pro looks like a winner.

Analog versus digital

From the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange: Why does digital equipment have more latency than analogue?

As an electric guitarist who likes digital gear and who is watching things move seemingly inexorably in the digital direction, the inherent latency of digital signal processing is something that’s been on my mind. So, I was pretty interested in this response.

The thing that I hate about analog is the careful balancing of signal levels throughout the signal chain. That always drive me nuts because my OCD kicks in when it comes to these things. I hate that I can’t know that all the trim pots are set exactly the same way all the time. I hate even more that setting them exactly the same isn’t what you want. They need to be set for the environment they’re in. And even if it is the same place at a different time, that’s a different environment.

Once you’ve digitized the signal, though, you can call up the exact stored settings and highly reproducible results in any environment. You only have to deal with the analog issues at the ADC and DAC ends.

For me, the upshot of this is that I’m good with analog for simple signal chains, but complex signal chains benefit from going digital.

Digital single-effect pedals—like BOSS’s new MDP line—are perhaps the worst case scenario. You go through ADC/DAC for each pedal. It’d be cool if the pedals could detect that they were connected to another MDP pedal and use a digital signal between them.

Swingy vibrato arm fixed!

The vibrato arm on my Roland-ready Fender Stratocaster used to just swing around and hang straight down, which makes it hard to use. I like it closer so I can grab it more easily when I need it.

Some research online uncovered several possible solutions, but here’s the one that worked.

This little spring goes down into the hole before you screw the vibrato arm into it. I was skeptical that this would really do the job. Plus, I was worried that it might not work with my guitar since it is MIM (made in Mexico) instead of an American model, which seemed to be the case for some people. It seems to work just fine, though.

The annoying part is that it is likely to get lost whenever the vibrato arm is removed. Thankfully, it came with eleven spares, but it’d be nice if it was held in place somehow. There are some suggestions online about how to do that as well, but I haven’t tried any of them yet.

Well, now ten spares. I dropped one into my Westone Spectrum ST, and it just fell straight through.

Notion for iPad vs. Progression for iPad

Notion vs Progression

I’ve just bought ‘standard’ Notion for iPad and was wondering what the differences were between Notion and Notion Progression? I was interested in also getting Progression but from what I can tell it seems that Notion has all the features of Progression anyway?

That message was posted to Notion’s own forums on 27 Nov 2012. Today is 13 February 2013. (Yes, I write these posts earlier than they appear.) The message has zero replies.

It’s hard to understand why Notion didn’t anticipate this question and have an answer on their web site the day Progression for iPad was announced. It’s even harder to understand why they would let the question go unanswered for 2½ months.

Reading Premier Guitar electronically

Premier Guitar is both great and awful. Reading articles on their web site is painful. Their iPad app is also painful. It’s gotten better over time, but it is still one of the many awful Newsstand apps.

(For an example of a great Newsstand app, check out Marco Arment’s The Magazine. Perhaps it isn’t a model for how every Newsstand app should work, but it does show that Newsstand apps don’t have to be as bad as most of what we’ve seen so far.)

The actual paper magazine? Sure, it’s fine, but a paper magazine clutters up my house. A magazine on my iPad gets read.

But I have found something that works: Their RSS feed, the Reeder app, and Reeder’s Readability button.

The one thing that’s missing is their gorgeous photos. Not the photos from articles; I still get to see those. There is a really nice section of stand-alone photos in the print and app versions of the magazine. But I’ll take readability over the photos.

Winter NAMM 2013

I can’t go to NAMM, but I enjoy following the coverage. It took a while to put together, but here are some things that stood out to me this year.

Boss DA-2, MO-2, and TE-2 New and interesting effects in the “polyphonic without a hexaphonic pick-up” category. Not very tweakable, but sometimes that’s a good thing. Affordable compared to many of the other polyphonic effect options.

EHX HOG2 On the polyphonic effects front, EHX updated their HOG.

Marshall Slash SL-5 There’s nigh zero need for a guitar amp more than 5 Watts. Well, it might be useful to have more clean headroom, but is anybody buying a high-Wattage Marshall-style amp looking for clean headroom? (I get more than enough clean headroom from my 15 Watt amps.) 5 Watts amps are loud. This one even switches down to 1 Watt because 5 Watts is loud. If you need more volume, you’re better off micing the amp and running it through a PA.

Low-Watt amps, however, almost always get treated as a “practice” amp. They’re given tiny speakers, no footswitch, and no effects loop. Well, this one gets a 12" speaker, a footswitch, and reverb. (No effects loop, but that is the kind of feature that’s overlooked in bigger amps too. And, hey, it’s progress.) There have certainly been amps like this before, but here’s one from one of the big boys, and it’s nice to see.

IK Multimedia iRig HD Rant time: This doesn’t seem to be any different from the Apogee Jam. It’s a good thing for IK to have in their line-up, but it really bugs me when they act like it is something new. Not even the Jam, which they’ve copied, was the first dock-connector guitar interface. When IK says they’ve been working a long time on this, that isn’t a good thing. They are playing catch-up, and I think they need to be honest about that. Don’t tout your catch-up product as if it were innovation. (And if there is anything innovative here, why aren’t you touting that?)

This is why I’ll search for a competing product before buying something from IK.

Worse, though, are all the people reporting on this that just follow the press release or pitch instead of providing context.

IK Multimedia BlueBoard I may be about to do what I just complained about. ^_^

One of the challenges with iOS music making today is only having a single docking port. I have an Apogee Jam and an iRig MIDI. I could use the iRig MIDI to hook-up a MIDI footswitch to control AmpKit, but I can’t do that while the Jam is connected. (Likewise with an iRig MIDI, AmpliTube, and an iRig HD; if you’re a dedicated IK customer.) There are some dock accessories on the market that have both guitar input and MIDI in/out, but they bring their own trade-offs.

The BlueBoard connects via Bluetooth, so it leaves the dock port open for a guitar interface. Besides four footswitches, it also has connections for two expression pedals.

The downside is that more music apps have MIDI support than Bluetooth support. At least for now.

I have seen another Bluetooth footswitch that can be used for this, but it didn’t have the expression pedal connections. (It was designed for use with presentations rather than music apps.)

Roland G-5A Rant: Another guitar with a hexaphonic pick-up but no 13-pin output. Such a little thing could increase the value of this guitar so much and upsell more Roland products.

In other news, Line 6 introduced another Variax that isn’t compatible with any 13-pin gear.

Roland GR-D and GR-S More ranting: These little boxes provide a small subset of VG-99 features in a small and more affordable form factor. Which sounds like a very good thing. The problem? They don’t work with any other GK/VG products. They don’t work with the G-5A. They don’t work with the GR-55. They don’t work with the VG-99 or any of its predecessors.

They don’t even work with each other. The closest you could get to that is to use the US-20 footswitch to split the 13-pin connection from your guitar to both boxes. Then you could send the out from one box into the mix input of the other. But that gives you the two effects in parallel instead of being able to run the same signals first through one effect and then through the other.

It seems Roland is targeting guitarists that might want to add a little VG into their existing systems. But who wants to buy dead-end gear? Something like this would be an opportunity to turn more guitarists into VG customers but instead it leaves them stranded. Not to mention that even these boxes require the commitment of getting a guitar with a 13-pin output or adding a GK pickup to a guitar.

Roland V-Combo VR-09 To say something nice about Roland†, the VR-09 makes me wish I was a keyboard player. Although the BK-3 is probably a better keyboard for me.

†Although Roland owns Boss, so I did say some nice things about them.

Fishman TriplePlay Wait, wasn’t this from last year’s NAMM? Yes. They are saying they might actually ship in this year. There may be an opportunity for Fishman to exploit the mistakes Roland has been making in this arena. Unfortunately, though, it looks like the TriplePlay does the pitch-to-MIDI conversions on-board and only transmits MIDI. Which is probably wise, but it means it can’t do the VG-style things.

Fargen JL-15 These didn’t look that interesting to me, but the John Lennon artwork on the grill cloth looks nice.

Last minute note This year’s NAMM correspondent for Six String Bliss, Erik, did I great job of talking to some companies that others missed. One stand-out moment was in an interview with Philippe of Caroline Guitar Company. Erik says that their Kilobyte is one of the most unique pedals he’s heard at NAMM. Philippe explains that it was inspired by the SIB Mr Echo. Philippe then say, “I am not afraid to admit to my influences.”

Guitar practice with the iPad

So, I have some songs arranged using Guitar Pro on my Mac. I drop them in a shared Dropbox folder to share them with my bandmates. I can then use the Dropbox app on my iPad to load them into the Guitar Pro iPad app.

The Guitar Pro app is great for learning and practicing. Besides showing notation, it’ll play the song plus the parts for other instruments. In my case, all the songs have guitar, bass, and drums. I can mute individual instruments. So I can have it play the guitar part—alone or with the other instruments—when learning the song. Then I can turn the guitar part off and just play with the bass and drum tracks while practicing. It can also adjust the tempo, so I can slow things down until I get the parts under my fingers.

The trouble with Guitar Pro, though, is that if you have a guitar amp/effects app—like AmpKit, AmpliTube, GarageBand, JamUp, &c.†—running in the background, Guitar Pro kills it when it starts playing.

Another app—TabToolkit, which was around before the Guitar Pro app—doesn’t suffer this problem. It can read Guitar Pro files too. TabToolkit doesn’t sound as good as the Guitar Pro app, though. At least, to my ears.

To practice with the Guitar Pro app, I instead have to use my Vox amPlug, Digitech RP-350 multi-effects pedal, or one of my Crate GTD15R amps. All of these have an “aux in”. Just connect the iPad headphone jack to that. Not as convenient and portable as just guitar, Apogee Jam, and iPad; but it works.

The same situation exists with iReal b and Chordbot. These are “band in a box” style apps where you enter a chord progression and it generates accompaniment for you. The iReal b app will kill a guitar effects app running in the background, but Chordbot won’t.

†In all of these apps, there’s a “run in background” option that you have to turn on for them to stay running when you switch to another app.

The benefits of standard tuning

One of the reasons that I bought my Roland VG-8EX is that I broke a string.

I was trying to tune one of my guitars in major thirds. The standard tuning for guitar consists of perfect fourths except for the interval between the second and third strings, which is a major third. It would be nice if the tuning were uniform. Also, standard tuning requires shifting position to get to certain notes even on the middle strings. Tuning to straight major thirds addresses both those issues.

The Roland “virtual guitar” systems allow you to “virtually” retune each string, so you can experiment with wacky tunings without having to worry about strings breaking, being too loose, or non-uniform tension across the neck. So, I have been able to play around with major third tuning without breaking any more strings or being worried about abusing my guitars.

Major third tuning is cool. Strangely, though, it has also given me a new appreciation for standard tuning. Those challenges that standard tuning presents are also opportunities for creative solutions. (e.g. Instead of shifting to get to a note, bend to it.) Or sometimes simply pushing yourself to do something that isn’t easy. And that can spur musical creativity too.