In my quest for the ultimate chunky tone for the guitar, I got greedy and over did it. I bought these power tubes that were rated for a lower volume so I could pump more signal into them, and in result, drive them guys into breakup. One day, while fearlessly turning that volume knob up and loving the grunt of it all, the amp dropped its volume for a second, then came back up. Now whenever I turn up the volume with the gain all the way down, it produces a terrible noise. I await a pair of power tubes that are rated for longevity and have good tone. I will be taking it into the pros for a repair.

I put my valve boost back on the bass and during my knob fiddling, I found a great sound. Just as an overdrive works, when I dig in, breakup happens. This being a bass, the breakup scared me. It sounded just like my speaker was blown out. So much so, I ran it through the trouble shooting paces. Nope, speaker is fine. This is the sound I want. It also supports my idea that bass should be played without compression. It’s not a tool anymore, it’s an instrument. However, I may put a transparent compressor with a very high threshold to keep them crazy woofs from dominating too much.

My pedal board concept is ever changing. It started with my very first pedal, the DOD American Metal pedal. I was shocked that is was on on/off kind of thing. I adjusted, but the concept of a variable distortion never left me.
Some 37 years later, this is where that thought has brought me. I won’t walk you through the details. I’ll let you have “fun” playing follow the patch cables.

Of note. The highlighted section is the actual board where I stomp on things. The rest is utility for loopers, splitters, and such. The fuzz should be on the board and I forgot the Qtron, oops. Signal flow is correct however.

I’m afraid to count how many patch cables I’ll need.

Will this change? Of course.

When I was eight years old, I put BB’s in a coffee can so it would sound like a snare. It started then. I’ll skip all the ugly details between then and now. Whoooosh!

I have recently thrown myself into the world of snare tone. I don’t know how many times I have switched heads (ten times one night), tuned down, tuned up, changed the wires, etc. I finally landed on a real skin head. At first it rubbed me the wrong way. It had no dampening and the overtones were wild. I guess organic material will ring out in chaos. It’s cool, but too much. I also over tightened. All heads have their sweet spot, but real skin heads definitely have less room for error than mylar heads. Once I found that spot though, I can feel it caress the inside of my belly. I have no other way to explain it. I’m waiting for the real skin snare side head. I’m sure that will throw me for another loop, but that’s ok. I’m loving the journey. And then… I’ll order a set of GroverPro snare wires. They are basically guitar strings. Less buzz, not as bright. I don’t want that in your face crack that we all know as the snare. I want deep grooviness shrouded in smoke.

Now I’m in cymbal land. A few sets have stole my heart. Sabian Monarchs and T Cymbals Air series. But a full set would cost 900 to 1000 bucks. Naw. I have since mostly reverted back to my old cymbals that I used for many years. Sabian 20″ HH ride, Zildian K 14″ hi hats, Zildian K 16″ crash, and have added my Zildian K 18″ ride. The trick to liking them again was tape. Yes, I put a good amount of tape on the bottom of both rides. Also, no polish, dirt good. Calms down that shimmer and makes it moody. I’m sticking with these with the exception of the hi hats. 14″ is just too thin and pokes out. I want that deep cool chik that you don’t really hear. Those are the T Cymbals 16″ Air hats. Man are they cool. Those cost money, lots of it, so it’ll be some time.

The near final layout.

DAW (digital audio workstation). Some say it’s the whole of the computer, software and A/D conversion gear. It’s commonly just thought of as the program you mix with.

Back in the day when I was using an ancient version of Steinberg’s Cubase, I was also into Linux and OSS projects. One of those projects was called Ardour. I remember it having a nice layout and seemed to be in active development, but was nowhere near being usable.

I’m not sure where I went after Cubase, it might of been Cakewalk. It was ok. Cludgy and crashed like no other. Plus they had you locked into this forever spending cycle on upgrades. Then I found Reaper which was cheap and had quite the following. As usual, I’m not intimidated by complicated programs so I delved in and learned in short time how to make it tick. For Windows and Mac users, I recommend this above all other overpriced and bloated programs.

Having finally taking the plunge ditching my windows machine for Linux, I stumble across Ardour. Again, I delved in and learned in short time how to make it tick. Not having used Linux in years, some bad things have happened. Stability has gone down and the once touted, “it can run on a toaster” seems to have gone all dodo.

After months of fighting sound issues, I finally discovered that the current Linux combo of sound programs does not play nicely with firewire devices. In short, Linux has a nice sound manager, Pulseaudio, that can do multiple sound cards and has quite the extensive back end. However, to properly produce music in Linux, it is advised to use a software called JACK. It runs in realtime with super low latency. Pulseaudio interfaces nicely with it unless you have a firewire device, such as I.

However, having lucky stretches of time with Ardour, I found Linux based plug-ins and some of them have no Windows VST counterparts. One in particular offers extensive saturation. I’m stuck, cannot turn back now. Plus I feel very much at home with it. It gives me that warm-fuzzy like Linux does. Don’t underestimate the power of the warm-fuzzy. It’s what I live for.

It’s worth saying, Reaper runs on Linux and is mostly limited to it’s built in VST’s, which are of very high-quality. There are programs that allow Windows based VST’s to run on Linux, but I have an aversion to cross-compatibility layers. As of February of 2021, Reaper can run the native Linux plugins, LV2, but it cannot display the GUI. You are stuck with stock sliders. I like my bouncy frequency analyzers and round knobs so that is not an option.

I’m saving for a $300 audio interface made by SSL (legendary giants of the mixing industry), and then I’ll be all set for recording guitars and bass.

Ardours patch bay is much easier to understand than Reapers. Reaper has a nice folder option for the tracks, but I have found that mostly useful for organizing the tracks visually. You can apply an effect to all the tracks within that folder, but you cannot control the individual levels of effect per track. That’s why buss’s are better. For example, you may not want your kick to have as much reverb as the overheads. In the end, the organization is actually cleaner.

I cannot speak to midi as I have no use for it for the time being.

With Ardour, JACK, and my incoming audio interface, my latency will be about 10ms. And that’s without errors. Try that in Windows.

Time to shut up.

Cheap combo amps come with cheap Chinese speakers. That’ how they are cheap. I have learned that the number one tone changer and improvement one can make is to replace the speaker.

I put an Eminence Legend BP102 10 inch speaker into my Ampeg BA-110 combo. It has a resonant frequency of 35Hz which means this guy goes low, real low. At low volumes I rattle the walls. I’m going to tame that of course, but I wield the power! It responds to my mid knob much better than the stock so another win.

It’s a 200w speaker being driven by a 40watt amp so it’s quite stable but doesn’t get very loud. I don’t want speaker breakup for bass anyway. Meant for recording so all good.