Pedal Board Project Complete!

Well, after poking at it here and there, I finally got my guitar effects pedal board finished. The last thing to complete was cutting, drilling and screwing in the trim pieces followed by the corner brace pieces. I'll have to total up the receipts, but I'm pretty sure it was easily under $100 for all of the raw materials. Also, I must mention that my buddy Darrell Mansfield helped immensely with installing and fastening the carpet on the riser piece toward the back of the board. He is a righteous carpet installer and tore right into it helping me out a lot on that part as well as with bolting the handles in. Still have to pick up my volume pedal from the repair shop over at Eric's Audio Repair, rearrange the pedal order, rewire and I'll be all set... until I get more pedals, that is. Here's some pictures taken periodically throughout the process(I managed to upload the pictures from end to beginning. Whatever, too lazy to do it again):

Heavier Than Air Flying Machines... New Album Time?

As I have mentioned before, HTAFM have been writing songs here and there for a new album. We will be re-recording all of the previous nine tracks from the first album as well as another new nine. Last week Friday, Steve Snare from Trophy gave us a hand in recording demos of five new songs we have written. He mixed them over the weekend and everything seems to be falling into place. Sounds fantastic for basement demos, matter of fact. This Saturday is the Charles The Osprey album release show with Chance Jones and Ozenza and we plan on discussing a lot of details on the upcoming recording sessions with Kremo (Ozenza guitarist and White Lodge recording extraordinaire). HTAFM practice is this Thursday again and we'll be working on yet another newbie I imagine as well as getting a group shot taken for the Prospecto music festival's website coming up in September. We are hoping to have the album done by then. As of right now there is no title for the album.

Chance Jones had a show at Mulligans Friday night and that was really fun. There were a couple of hiccups in the set, but we had fun and I always like playing shows there. Also, my lovely lady Jessie had her sister Trish in town visiting and she got to see Chance Jones for the first time, which was great.

Also, as a sidenote to the Charles album release show this Saturday, there is going to be an unbelievably spectacular collaborative surprise at the end of the show. Those who make it all the way until the end are going to get a tasty treat well worth the wait. What can you do while you wait until then? Enjoy a kick ass night of music, that's what. Life is good.

Shows, Various Bands and General Sweetness.

Just found out that Heavier Than Air Flying Machines will be playing the Prospecto Music Festival in September! Chance Jones is playing it already and I'm excited to find out that HTAFM found our way onto one of the nights' bills. On that note, HTAFM has been writing songs(after a couple of months without practice as usual) and tonight we will be putting down demo tracks of the new ones that were not on our previous release. We still have 3 songs and a cover I believe to complete before we can think of going into the studio to record, but progress is progress. The new songs are shaping up to be pretty gnarly, so I'm stoked for that.

Expunk will have a show at Mulligans again soon which I think is July 22nd. The peninsular axe has been sounding great with everything I'm running on my board as well as the amp I'm using. I'm very happy with my current sound and look forward to adding to it's various sonic nuances. Pedalboard is kickin' ass right now too. Love the extra space to fit future pedals. Looking to get a more eclectic mix of brands and sounds. My eye is currently drawn toward this mean tremolo pedal made by the folks at Catalinbread. It's called the Semaphore and it effing rocks every youtube demo of it. (Check out the hot action right here: http://www.catalinbread.com/SemaphoreTremolo.html )

Chance Jones has a show tonight at Mulligans and that will be a load o' fun as usual there.

Go awn n' get it! Life is good.

Projects and Recent Aquisitions

What a great couple of days. I got a lot of work done on the pedalboard I've been working on. Just need to put on the metal trim pieces around the edges and then the metal corner pieces. I already placed all but one of my pedals on it and wired it up as it is totally functional now, just needs the finishing touches. I'll post up pictures from beginning to end once it's totally done. Tuesday night found myself and my ol' pal Pure Country picking up an organ that was listed for free on craigslist. What a find! This thing is a technics electronic organ with more buttons, features and do dads than I know what to do with on top of midi in/out, headphone jack, mic input, aux input and various other perks. It's in amazing condition and is fully functional. I took a couple of crappy camera phone pictures of it in the dimly lit rehearsal space which don't do it justice, but I'm posting them anyway. One of the pictures would be ol' Chance Jones himself hammering on the ivory a bit. Once again, what a steal! On Wednesday, my friend Adam and myself paid a visit to a west side pawn shop to shred on some axes. I ended up buying a cheapy cheapy "First Act" Walmarty guitar. I'll be working on gutting it, replacing electronics, pickups, tone/volume pots, and maybe the neck as well. Got it for $60, so who cares, right? Thing actually looks pretty cool. Life is good.

Building the Pedalboard and Miscellaneous Stuff

Had a great time at the Local First street fair this past Saturday. Everyone out in the crowd that I talked to said the sound was fantastic. I'm always a fan of playing shows outdoors on a nice day. Had a brutal day at work and then drove directly there to load in, so I think that had something to do with me playing possibly the worst set I can remember technically. I think I was still quite distracted. Other than that, everything and everyone were fantastic that fine evening.

Moving on, the pedal board project has begun. Over the weekend I began purchasing the supplies as follows:
-Sheet of plywood
-Black indoor/outdoor carpet that functions fully as velcro
-Can of spray glue
-Heavy duty metal door handles
-Wood screws

I still need to get some metal trim and metal corner pieces which should round out the raw materials necessary to complete this project. My current pedalboard is a little too small for the pedals I eventually want to get/already have, so this will be a nice change so as not to have to be concerned with spacial issues other than in the sonic realm. Tonight begins the work of cutting the board to size and so on. I'll post work-in-progress pictures as always as I tend to do nerdy documentation like that.

Onto another related topic which would be pedal and amplifier repair. If you have a tube amp, effect pedals, etc. you need to bring them to Eric's Audio Repair for any repair work. This guy is extremely friendly, knowledgable, quick and cheap. He runs his shop out of J & H Automotive garage on the corner of Lake Dr & Diamond. He came highly recommended from Mike Saunders(Farfisa commander in Chance Jones) and I can't sing his praises enough. He fixed up my guitar and Justin's(Guitar commander in Chance Jones) wah pedal quickly and at a great price. I brought down some more stuff of mine and Jeremy's(Bass guitar commander of Chance Jones) today for him to fix. Right now he is working on a vintage Electro Harmonix Small Stone, Russian Big Muff Pi, Epiphone Valve Jr amp, Ernie Ball Volume/Pan Pedal, and a Dunlop Rotovibe. Keep this guy busy. He's local and great. Life is good.

Outdoor/indoor shows and the guitar

Chance Jones is playing Grand Rapids' Festival of the Arts today at 5:30 on the outer fringe stage by the Federal Building. I always love playing outdoor shows. That being said, the Local First street party is coming up next Saturday which will be a great time as well. Tomorrow brings the expunk show at Jukes which will be a lot of fun for sure. We'll be playing with a band called 'mynewmotto' as well as Moss Folk. I've been honing my guitar effects pedal board over the years(budget-controlled, of course) and it's starting to get somewhere. Obviously there are many many many effects boxes that I would love to get, but my current setup lets me do quite a bit of sound tampering as is. Within the next couple of weeks I will begin work on building my own custom pedal board that will make for much more space(more pedals). I figured I would include a picture I snapped of my recently reorganized board for gearnerd's sake. That would be the image below. On top of that, I'm sanding down my Fender Stratocaster that I've had for 16 years now so I can change the color, pickguard, pickups, etc. Eventually I need to be getting an amp head to go with the 4 x 12 cabinet that I am also refinishing. For now I'm using an Acoustic solid state head with a matching 6 x 10 cabinet. I wasn't too sure about how the solid state would do, but it actually sounds pretty great! The Peninsular axe shall make it's public debut at Jukes for the expunk show as the aforementioned strat is in a state of disrepair. That guitar itself is sounding pretty awesome as well. Life is good.



In the gear nerd spirit, here's a run down of the effects/signal path order of my current setup:
Guitar to Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner--->Dunlop Univibe UV-1 Rotary Speaker Simulator--->Digitech Whammy Reissue Pitchshifter/Harmonizer--->Russian Big Muff Pi Black Box Fuzz Pedal--->Boss SD-2 Dual Overdrive--->Boss DD-3 Digital Delay--->Digitech Hardwire RV-7 Stereo Reverb out to the amplifier.