As many of my readers are probably aware, I write mostly about guitar and radio stuff -- sometimes veering into other things -- Holidays, weather, etc.
The past few months, especially since the coronavirus shutdowns and slowdowns, I've had a lot of time to play guitar, and tons of time to practice. Most of it has been working on my slide guitar proficiency, which has improved a lot since the beginning of the year. Daily practice for two hours or so a day really helps.
I also have been trying new things in my guitar's signal chain, to make it more consistent in any situation.
To explain this, I need to take us back to late last year, when I had the opportunity to participate in a local music project.
Although I had my small Marshall Valvestate amp in the car, they instead pointed me to a 20 watt model that was tilted back towards the wall where I couldn't really access the controls. The amp wasn't very loud. My performance was probably not up to snuff, because I simply could not hear myself.
THREE THINGS TO INSIST UPON WHEN PLAYING WITH OTHERS
I learned three basic things from that experience: first off -- never, ever play with others if you can not hear yourself. Get up and walk out if you can't fix the situation otherwise! Because if you can't really hear yourself, you're just wasting your time.
Another thing I learned was to always insist on using your own equipment. Unless it's absolutely necessary, or super inconvenient -- or unless you really know the equipment used -- never play through someone else's amp or signal chain when playing with other musicians, especially if you're playing with them for the first time. If you aren't allowed to sound like yourself, then you are probably wasting your time.
The third thing I learned was that it's a good idea to make sure your guitar's audio chain is already sounding as close to perfect as possible before it goes through ANY amp. Anywhere.
This includes not just your guitar, but any boxes in your signal chain. A lot of guys depend on their favorite amplifier's sound. Although this is fine if you're established in a group, there are other situations where you don't have that luxury. This means you have to make sure that the signal coming out of the end of your guitar cable already sounds like you want it to, regardless of the amplifier you are using. If you're a rock player, as I am, that means you have the right distortion or dirt box.
So, after the debacle I described above, I set about finding the right stompboxes to ensure my guitar's sound will sound good, and sound like ME, through ANY amp, through any clean or dirty channel. I already had stompboxes -- a Boss DS-1, a Marshall Guv'nor Plus, a Boss DD-3 delay and a couple chorus boxes, but aside from the delay and chorus I'd never bothered with dirt boxes at home. I just depended on either my Marshall Valvestate, or the gain channel in my Fender practice amp.
The experience with the other guys showed me that I needed to change the way I viewed my signal chain. If I wanted to play with other people, I needed to take a closer look at it. The experience also gave me a new appreciation for having the right dirt box as part of your sound.
So, over the past several months I've added to my dirt box collection. I got a Boss SD-1, in early Spring, because it's an reasonably priced overdrive, and because schematically it was reasonably close to the gain channel on my favorite amp, a solid state Fender Tweed Bronco (made in the 1990's). I also bought a Boss Blues Driver BD-2, and a Joyo British Sound character pedal.
The SD-1 itself was a good idea. It had just enough compression to bring out the nuances of slide playing. The tone was also good. A little midrangy, but still useful. The Blues Driver is an excellent pedal, with distinct dynamics, and it works great with the SD-1. It's like having two gain channels in front of your amp's clean channel. The Joyo (around $35) sounds very Marshall-like, and makes the amp sound louder than it really is. At first, I got it as a backup for my Guv'nor, but it has different characteristics. It's a louder sounding dirt box, for one of them.
So, over the months I've put together a pretty good chain. It sounds good through the clean channels of both of my amps. I had never bothered with clean channels before, actually. Being a blues and hard rock player, I had no use for clean channels. But now I see their merit -- if you can get a good dirt tone through an amp's clean channel, you are pretty much set, anywhere.
CLEAN CHANNELS = USELESS to CLEAN CHANNELS = USEFUL
Which leads to the point of this blog post: both of my favorite distortion units -- my Fender Bronco, and my Marshall Guv'nor Plus, are no longer made.
Now, before you guitar nuts start laughing, read further first. :-)
There is something to be said for an amp or dirt box that puts out great sound. Marshall and Fender amps aren't consistent great sellers because they sound bad. You could say the same thing for some stomp boxes -- like the famous Ibanez Tube Screamer, or the ubiquitous Boss Overdrive and Distortion boxes. They sell all the time because they sound good.
So -- why do some of these manufacturers discontinue a good thing?
My standard guitar signal chain: a Boss DD-3 for just a bit of atmosphere, a Marshall-like dirt box in the middle for color and crunch, and my Boss SD-1 for a final push into whichever amp's clean channel I'm using. Often I'll substitute the Boss BD-2 Blues Driver in the middle position -- it has a bit less sharp high-midrange than the Joyo British Sound, but still provides a Marshall or Vox like crunch. The JOYO British Sound box is a new purchase: it has a Marshall-like roar, and individual notes have a distinct bite. The lower middle control, 'Voice', adjusts the way the midrange reacts with the distortion -- in fact, all three lower controls interact with each other. The pedal is a little bright for my tastes -- I still prefer the older Marshall Guv'nor Plus -- the Joyo probably sounds more like older Marshalls -- think Malcolm Young of AC/DC on the first US album "High Voltage", and you get the idea. As for any extra brightness, I just turn down the treble on the amp or guitar. It may not be so with other guitarists, who do not prefer a darker sound.
GOODBYE FENDER BRONCO, and GOODBYE SPEAKER JACKS
When discussing this tendency of a great item being curiously discontinued, the tweed Fender Bronco is a case in point. The amp puts out 20 watts. Its distortion channel appears modelled after the famous original Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal, with similar layout in circuitry and the same op amps used (TL072's). It's a great sounding amp -- once you plug it into a speaker box.
See, the amp, although it's a practice amp -- has an EXTERNAL SPEAKER JACK.
None of the current Fender or Marshall practice amps have them.
Why? They have all this useless shit -- digital modelling, which -- although it has its uses -- really doesn't make up for a great, regular distortion channel. And now most of them have Bluetooth. Really? It's a guitar amp, not a smartphone or MP3 player!
And even if they want to include those features -- which some people apparently want -- why do none of them have an External Speaker Jack?
When I bought my Fender Bronco in the late 1990's, I was just looking for a small amp that would sound decent, so I wouldn't burn out the tubes on my 50 Watt Marshall just practicing or song writing. When I went into Guitar Center to check out amps I noticed this tweed thing -- solid state, so no tubes would burn out -- and it seemed to sound OK through its speaker. The gain channel had plenty of crunch, which meant I could use my favorite single-coil guitar through it.
Then I noticed it had an external speaker jack.
I took the amp into Guitar Center's amp room and plugged the little Fender into a Marshall 4 X 12 box. I was astounded by the sound I was now getting! It sounded like a cross between a Vox and a Marshall, with a rich, full, and gnarly rock tone, not too different from what you hear on hard rock CD's.
I was instantly sold.
To my surprise, a few years later Fender not only discontinued the tweed, solid state Bronco, they never replaced it with another amp that had an external speaker jack. And that is crazy, as a speaker jack can't cost THAT much to install on an amplifier at the factory.
GUV'NOR PLUS -- From $80 to $400
Another discontinued device that mystifies me is the Marshall Guv'nor Plus.
I got mine in 2000 or 2001. I was looking for a box that would give my single coils an extra boost, but also sound Marshall-like. I was pleasantly surprised. I think I got the thing for around 70-80 dollars US.
It makes any amp sound like a Marshall JCM800 or 900. It has that much gain. It also has a ton of versatility -- the tone controls are robust, and a battery lasts a long time. On top of that, the 2000's series of Marshall pedals -- the Guv'nor Plus, the Bluesbreaker, the Jackhammer, etc. -- all are built like tanks, with solid steel enclosures that are so tough a Mack Truck could probably run over them and they would still probably work.
A lot of guys online complain about a bleed capacitor inside the box, which cuts the highs down. I actually like the fact it's there -- it gives the Guv'nor Plus a darker sound. Marshall amps were fairly dark sounding amps when they started getting popular in the late 1960's. I think this is why they darkened the sound of the Guv'nor -- it was to match the 'dark' sound of an early Marshall amp through an even-more dark sounding Marshall speaker box.
From what I can tell, most guys loved their Guv'nor Pluses. Some, who didn't like the bleed capacitor, merely had them removed to get the extra highs. The boxes were big sellers. There still is a demand for them now.
But Marshall, to my amazement, discontinued them some time around 2008 or 2009.
You can't even find a Guv'nor Plus online, used for less than $400!
Why aren't they making them now?
PRODUCT = GOOD? PRODUCT OFTEN = DISCONTINUED.
It's one of those things that always puzzles me. A product works well, is probably easy to make, the factory already is tooled up for production, and they cancel the product after a few years and either replace it with other models that don't have the same positive features (Fender) or don't replace it at all (Marshall).
Over the years I've seen picks discontinued (Fender Delrin Red .50mm picks -- they were great picks), cables have been discontinued and replaced with other ones that are twice the price and don't work any better, and good luck trying to find green guitar straps!
Then you have the guitars that come and go. In 1996 I almost bought a Gibson Topaz Les Paul. For those of you who don't know what a Topaz is, it was part of Gibson's "Gem" series, where they gave the Les Paul different colored finishes, and installed the guitars with single coil P-90's, some of the best sounding pickups out there.
The Topaz was the red sunburst version. It played and sounded great. It was on sale, at a no-longer existent music store in Southcenter (a massive complex south of Seattle) for around $900, which was a good price for any Les Paul at the time. I passed on it, not being able to justify spending that much on a guitar. A couple months later I got my red, Lotus L-520 Les Paul copy at another no-longer existent music store on First Avenue in Seattle. The L-520 probably was a much better buy, as it sounds just as good as the Topaz did, and it has served me well over the years since 1996.
Anyway, shortly after that year, the Topaz, and all of the Gibson 'Gem' models were discontinued. Good luck finding one, even used, now.
I suppose in the minds of the manufacturers it is a matter of keeping up demand with newer and more 'exciting' products. But it still is irritating when a great product becomes discontinued, and then the value of the used versions skyrocket, as happened with the Guv'nor Plus.
This thing also happens with radios. One of my most useful DX and emergency radios, my Sony ICF-38, I bought at Fry's Electronics about eight years ago for $35. Now you can only find them used for around $200 or more. The prices for them now are INSANE.
A perfectly good product, discontinued.
I guess it's the way of the world, and I suppose one last lesson to be gained from all of this is if you come across a product that you really use or rely on -- make sure you get a backup, or make sure you take excellent care of the one you've got.
Overall, it's been a rainy, crappy Fall and Winter here in the Seattle region. I suppose that's better than freezing weather all the time, but the constant rain and grey is a real downer.
After finishing typing this blog post, I'm going to take the last few electric Jack O' Lanterns down (yes, I left a few of them up), and put out some Christmas lights and ornaments on my Hawthorn tree out front -- not too far from where I buried my cat just after Thanksgiving.
I don't really feel like putting up lights, though. Christmas hasn't been much of a celebratory Holiday to me in several years. But the colored lights are nice. In shitty weather you take all the bright and cheeriness you can get. :-)
I have no Christmas plans, really. The family cancelled theirs due to corona. Sometimes, even though I'm not Catholic, I have gone to Midnight Mass to be somewhere with other people on Christmas Eve, but some Catholic churches shut down before midnight now, and that was before coronavirus. Now, because of corona, they're shut down, period.
Aside from that, I continue with my usual... Work has slackened because of corona slowdowns, so I have been doing things around the house, fiction writing, and practicing on guitar. MW DX hasn't been on the front burner, as conditions have been fair to middling for the most part.
I did hear KNZZ Grand Junction, Colorado a few days back when I was finishing another blog post. KNZZ is a rare catch, and it's always nice to hear a station from Colorado that isn't KOA 850. I have nothing against KOA, but it's usually heard year-round here in Seattle -- all you have to do is turn your AM radio into KHHO Tacoma's null and 'poof!' Colorado!
Until next time, I hope my readers are all doing well.
Peace,
C.C. 12-17-2020
No comments:
Post a Comment