I've been keeping busy. Very very busy. So busy that I seemed to have halted posting on here for a bit. Several fantastic shows have happened in the last month. So many cool shows that I feel overwhelmed to write about them all. Total Blam Blams, Apostles, Ozenza, Shores, HTAFM, The Brave Youth, Moto, etc. The list goes on. You can find all of those cats in the links in this blog.
Gear time. Picked up a Morley ABY box and I'm now running a two amp setup for tonal options. Sounds megasweet. I also ordered a distortion pedal from General Guitar Gadgets that is called the BSIAB II (Brown sound in a box version 2.) This is based on the sound of a cranked Marshall amp. I got the enclosure all painted a metal flake blue. Also, I shopped around for replacement knobs and a white LED for fun. The result was a pretty decent looking pedal cosmetically, which is great. What isn't great is that after building it, there was no sound coming out of it. Let's keep in mind that I am very much new to this building pedals thing. Oops. Not sure of where the gremlin is inside the box making it screw up(and no multimeter to my name at this time), I decided to bring it into Eric's audio repair so he can dig into it and let me know what I did wrong specifically. This is a learning experience I suppose, but it is rather disheartening to spend that much time on a project and have it not function upon completion. I am eager to hear what I messed up. More importantly I am very eager to play the thing. Here's some pictures of parts of the process(Taken by my new phone to boot!):
Well, look what came in the mail...
Enclosure to be painted
Optimus primer.
Blue metal flake light layer #1.
A few more coats finished it off.
Beginning to populate the PCB.
Solder of fortune.(Note the finished enclosure with new knobbies on the right)
Once I get it up and running, I'll be rearranging the pedal board again to accommodate both the new pedal and the aforementioned ABY box.
Next up, Expunk started the process of doing a video shoot! Fun, fun, fun. We did the first "taping" a couple of weeks ago in the live music venue in Mulligans. Walt Lodes III is shooting for us and did a stellar job lighting the whole thing along with Joe(our drummer) and got some amazing footage. We'll be going back there next week to finish up shots including Phil on bass as he couldn't make it the other week. Here are a few shots from the great time we had:
Heavier Than Air Flying Machines have been working on the new album and practicing for a couple of upcoming shows. We actually wrote a new song last week which comes few and far between, so there is a possibility of a few more tunes ending up on the new album. Here's a few videos I put up on youtube of practice space clips(Turns out my phone records video in 720p. Sweetness):
The turn of the new year brings a busy time for me. Chance Jones was asked to fill an opening slot for Rusted Root at the Orbit Room tomorrow night. That should be a good show with a decent turn out I believe. New Years Eve is Chance Jones, AB! & Coconut Brown, and Cabildo at Founders. I was asked by Josh from AB! to sit in on trumpet for one of their tunes, so I'm really excited for that. New Years Day is Chance Jones playing at Mittenfest in Ypsilanti along with Ghost Heart and numerous other fantastic groups. January 4th brings the Expunk show and we're playing with the Apostles which is always a great thing. January 6th is HTAFM opening for Lenin/McCarthy at Jukes. Lenin/McCarthy is a band that Rick Johnson(the dude at the helm of the HTAFM album) plays in. Very excited for that show! I think the next one coming up will be the Ghost Heart album release at Founders with HTAFM opening for them. They have recently asked if I would see about writing a couple of trumpet parts for songs, so I'm thrilled to give it a whirl. It will be the first time I have written complete horn arrangements for another group other than one of my own.
Finally.... I got a new axe. I didn't necessarily need one, but I had to have it. It's basically the lowest budget guitar that LTD manufactures, but over time it will see a number of modifications including a Floyd Rose tremolo. $50 on craigslist. How could I NOT buy this thing?! Sidenote: upon playing on it through an amp I quickly discovered that it is a certifiable "Squealy Machine." This means that the pinch harmonics have sustain for miles. Miles, I say. Here she is:
So the other day I had mentioned that I was going to try my hand at building a guitar effects pedal. Well I did and it was a success. It was a clean boost pedal which apparently is one of the easiest ones to start out on. I also just ordered a T Rex Fuel Tank Jr. so all of the pedals are running on clean efficient power thus reducing a good amount of extraneous noise created from running a lot of pedals/cables. Here's the T Rex unit:
While waiting for the power supply to arrive, I thought it to be a good idea to do some preparatory arrangement work on the board. Here is the board before rearranging commenced:
And here is the board after I removed the cruddy power strip, wall wart adapters, replaced a not so great patch cable, and added my new boost pedal:
My Pedal Board: Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner>General Guitar Gadgets Stratoblaster Boost Pedal Kit>Boss SD-2 Dual Overdrive(Modded)>1998 Russian Sovtek Big Muff Pi(Modded to add a Boss style power jack)>Digitech Whammy Reissue>Ernie Ball Volume/Pan Pedal>Boss DD-3 Digital Delay>Hardwire RV-7 Stereo Reverb>BBE Sonic Stomp
My Guitar Setup: Acoustic 150 w/matching 6x10 cab. Epiphone Valve Junior 5W tube amp. Blackheart Killer Ant 1/2W tube amp head(Modded with Bitmo kit to add pull boost tone knob and direct line out on front). Custom made 4x12 speaker cab loaded with Celestions(can't remember the model of speaker.)
As long as I was taking pedal board shots, I thought I would document Jef's board and get a few shots of the expunk practice space affectionately dubbed "Speakertown." You'll see why it's called that in the pictures below:
Jef's Pedal Board: Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner>Boss PS-2 Digital Pitch Shifter/Delay>Boss BD-2 Blues Driver>Boss TR-2 Tremolo>Electro Harmonix Small Clone>Electro Harmonix Small Stone(Vintage)>Electro Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb>Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man>DOD FX52 Classic Fuzz>Dunlop Rotovibe
Jef's Stereo Guitar Rig: Fender Super Six Reverb and Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue.
Northwest corner of Speakertown. Those are Joe's drums on the left.
Southeast corner of Speakertown. Jef's setup on the left and Phil's bass rig on the right. Acoustic head with a 1960s Fender 2x15 cab.
Many, many more updates to come in the future. Life is good.
Lights At Sea held their album release show on Saturday of this past weekend at Mulligans. This show was easily one of the best of the entire year and then some! All bands absolutely killed it. At the end of the show, Lights At Sea had drummers from local bands Ozenza, Apostles, Shores, Ambassador, & Charles The Osprey join them onstage for a finale song of which epic does not even begin to describe. I was able to catch video of Ozenza's first song and a couple minutes of the finale with everyone on stage. I wish I could have gotten more(with better audio to boot), but the place was so packed that movement was difficult. Very difficult. Below are some pictures of Ozenza as well as the two videos:
Great show on Saturday night. The Plague Years were good... and loud. Unbelievably loud. Really enjoyed those guys as well as their do it yourself lighting setup. All the way around they were a pretty thorough outfit. Apostles set was really good as usual and besides a lot of pictures, I also took video of them playing the song Countach so I can splice it with other live footage and a few video clips to put into a video. Here are some of the pictures from the evenings Apostles set:
