Guitars and Life

It was my birthday earlier in the month.  So with the various vouchers and cash I got I've acquired a couple of bits of new kit. 1. Harmoniser pedal. I thought I'd try one out and didn't want to spend a lot on something that has limited use to be honest.  I watched some reviews of the cheaper mini pedals that have been coming on the market recently.  Influenced by Mooer who came up with the format.  The idea is just genius.  They figure most people who are serious have a pedal board already and that has a 9v power supply on it.  Therefore why to all pedals continue to have to have space for the 9v battery and that dictates a lot about how small a pedal can be - a format long championed by market leaders like Boss. So take that out, minituraise as much as possible and suddenly pedals can be really small actually.  Small enough that you could have 3 or 4 easily on a little board with a power supply and be able to put it in the pocket of your gig ba...

I've updated my pedal board. Here is what it was like when I first finished it last year. However since then Mrs F bought me an Electro Harmonix Nano Big Muff Π.  Also I dug out an old Marshall Guvnor pedal I've had for ages.  I used to use it with a Carslbro Rebel amp I had that frankly had the less than best overdriven sound.  Having moved from that through a Boss rack processor, Line6 Pod and then back to an amp in the guise of my Hughes and Kettner Statesman Dual 6L6 I'd sort of got into the mode of only using amp distortion.   But I found the Guvnor and plugged it in - wicked sound!  I then looked on eBay and these Mark 1's are going for stupid money so it seemed too good to not push into use in some way.  The Big Muff was me trying to get back to teenage sounds when I used an old Little Muff.  Also something about David Glimour... loads of reverb and a Big Muff... you get the idea. So I pulled off some of the pedals in plan to add th...

A couple of videos from the Rochester Music Cafe recently... Firstly an oldie of my own - I used to Know Her... almost my signature tune if I could ever he in a position to have one ... LOL Then a Lady Antebellum number that I'd neither heard of the song or the band before we started to practice this a week before the gig... nice song though... Notice - first live outing of the infamous pedal board!

Ok so here it is the completed board!! "Hang on!" you say... "that's smaller"... yes yes, I had to admit that it was too bloody big.  So I cut a bit off the back shelf to allow the vol and wah to go back and viola a more compact solution.  I ended up with the chorus on the front row as it is one of my most used effects. First outing for live use this Sunday hopefully. I used the Planet Waves pedal board kit to make up some of the cables - it works out about £9 a cable which isn't cheap but you can make the cables to custom lengths easily which is great.  Very easy to use, cut the cable with the cutter provided, undo the little screw on the jack, carefully push the cable home using a little back and forth movement, do the screw up and ... finished cable.   I removed the rubber feet off the wah and vol pedals to help fit them on the board better.  I've kept them safe in case of needing them again in the future. Other thing I used was ...

I found a spare afternoon, got out the jigsaw, drill and screwdriver and tackled the pedal board project I mentioned the other week. I had a sheet of 6mm MDF board that I'd bought as part of a model railway project with my son some years back.  It'd been sat in the garage for a long time - you might note some odd staining on it due to what it has been sat behind.  The wood was some off cuts from a shed roof repair job a year or so ago.  So far so good.  No additional cost!  Haha!  So here we start - my test diagram - life size on some old wall paper. Next cut out the mdf board... the two pieces will become clear in a moment...  Here I've cut out two bits of wood that'll form the sides and just drilled the holes.   Next glue and screw the wood end pieces and a couple of supports too... Then put the top of the back section as I wanted the pedals at the back to be lifted above the ones at the front, esp as ...

For many years now I've been talking (mostly to myself... oh that's another post...) about building a pedal board.  I have a bunch of pedals on the floor next to my Hughes and Kettner amp.  When ever I'm off playing I normally just take those I really really need.  But that is a pain and unpluging, setting up, breaking down, resetting up at home etc. is a pain...  and they "wander" over the floor, under the hifi unit etc. So finally I'm in the process of sorting out a pedal board.  Might take a while as I have a list of household chores to do as long as my arm but anyway I'm up and running. First steps...   I drew out a plan on some old scrap wall paper to get the size I need and check layout etc.  I then thought I really need to finally get the compressor I've wanted.  So I left a space on plan - went onto the computer and one of those "weekly deal" emails from a company I'd previously bought for had landed in my inbox, I opened it h...