Guitar Effects Online Guide

Correct signal chain for your guitar effects

2010-08-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

Well, many people keep trying and figure how to choose the first signal chain arrangements to their guitar effects. Guitar Boomer suggest the below list (by top to bottom) for you to tryouts.

1. Dynamic Range – Compression
2. EQ – Wah Pedal, Equalizer
3. Drive – Overdrive, Distortion, Fuzz
4. Modulation – Phaser, Flanger, Chorus
5. Time-Based – Reverb, Delay

Be sure to balance the volume across the signal chain (ensure the same volume when an effect is on or bypassed). Lastly, don't forget the most important effects; your guitar volume, pickup selector, and the type of guitar pick you use. Since these are the very beginning of the signal chain they have the largest impact on your tone.

The first thing needed is to establish a base line in which to begin our quest. One of the most important aspects of getting great guitar tone is building the proper signal chain whether the signal flows through stompboxes, rack gear or a combination the principles are basically the same. Different sound frequencies have different impacts on the overall guitar sound coming from the amplifier. By manipulating these frequencies one can make drastic changes in the overall guitar sound. Applying these principles to every step within the signal chain can have a huge effect on the overall guitar tone.

Why insert an EQ before pre-amp distortion?
In the case of the Rockman gear the main function is to "de-Bostonize" the sound. The Boston sound relies heavily on mid-range frequencies and by cutting the 500Hz band the Rockman Sustainor becomes much more than a Boston tone replication device. Also depending on the other frequencies boosted or cut the sound can be changed from a crunchy distortion to a smooth singing distortion.

How does that affect me the non-Rockman user?
The same theory applies, by affecting the sound frequencies that are boosted or cut the distortion characteristics can be drastically changed.

http://www.grailtone.com/
http://www.guitarboomer.com

DigiTech RP1000 Integrated Effect Switching System

2010-02-16T05:53:00.000-08:00

James Brown may have been the hardest-working man in show business, but when it comes to effect processors it seems no one works harder than the engineers at DigiTech. Since 1984, DigiTech has introduced dozens of innovative new products, including the first affordable intelligent pitch shifter, the hugely influential Whammy Pedal and its incredibly cool line of Artist Series pedals. DigiTech debuted its RP Series line of floor-based processors in 1991 with the RP1 digital guitar preamp/effects processor. Since then the company has continually upgraded, improved and expanded the line. The RP1000 Integrated Effect Switching System is DigiTech’s newest top-of-the-line addition, and while it may not actually be the one-thousandth model in the RP line, it does represent a significant leap in technology for the entire series. LIST PRICE: $699.95 MANUFACTURER: DigiTech, digitech.com PRO Comprehensive amp and effect model selection; easy to use; built like a tank CON Effect order cannot be changed; recessed control cavity pools liquids By Chris Gill Originally published in Guitar World, Holiday 2009

Multi Effect Stompbox Behringer FX600

2009-12-19T11:25:00.000-08:00

This time around I'm gonna deviate from my usual rants on toys, football or any geeky discussions/topics. Instead, I will give a mini review of my latest 'toy' which I have acquired a few days ago from a seller up north in Malaysia. This seller it seems, according to many, is an authorised distributor of this particular brand of 'toy'. The toy I'm talking about here is a guitar pedal/effect/stompbox. Apart from my usual obsession with collector toys, comics and football, the guitar is another passion of mine and acquiring these pedals to enrich my guitar sound has been quite a thrill as well!

Well, for the benefit of the masses, the most famous guitar pedals according to many, would definitely be from BOSS since many well-known guitarist/musicians uses the brand relentlessly throughout the years. As the years progress, many 'copy' brands have cropped up to constantly rival the products manufactured by BOSS, but nevertheless without compromising on the quality if the guitar pedals itselves. But wait, just what is a guitar pedal? And what does it do? I know this is the most basic question there is about these well-known musical devices but again for the benefit of those not knowing yet, these wonderful effects are used to manipulate the sound of the guitar to be....errr, modified. I find that wiki's explanation on guitar pedal is by far the most 'people-friendly' in terms of simple explanation to the layman lot.

Anyway, on to the review. There are many other brands that are deemed to rival BOSS in terms of product offerings. These brands range from Dunlop, Digitech, Line 6, Electro Harmonix, Danelectro, VOX, Voodoo, Ibanez, Lazer, Gator, Behringer....there are simply too many to list here. Traditionally most musicians would most probably go for the already established brand i.e. BOSS, but until recently many of these so-called copycats have excelled in bringing their offerings up to the par of the ones produced by the famous brand. I am not saying this simply because I've bought a non-BOSS guitar pedal! By all means, I already have 2 pedals from BOSS and I thought that it is only fitting that I give other brands a chance to showcase their capabilities as well.

The Behringer multi-effect pedal aka FX600 is truly a wonderful creation of technology. I'm not gonna dwell into the technical stuffs, those you can read here or here. To cut things short, here are my short/simple/non-technical but straight to the core reviews of the various (six of 'em to be exact!) effects that come in this little package:

Pitch shifter - This effect will somehow 'de-tune' your guitar sound. With the effect on, the amplifier will produce a 'double-guitar' sound while you play. Cool effect to say the least but only works well during solos I reckon. Tad bit confusing if you play normal strumming chords and especially when you try to sing along with it.

Tremolo - The tremolo bar/whammy bar sound is recreated here. In my opinion, it works well to give you that 'reverb-y' sound as well. Simply effective if you want that 'warbly/waterry' effect from your sound.

Delay - It gives you a.....errr, delayed sound (duh!). While some reviewers gave a 'not-so-positive' reviews on this pedal, but most will agree that the delay function is the bright point of the pedal! Sounds sweet enough to make me forget that I've actually paid a fraction to get this pedal/effect if compared to the real deal. Real top notch yet simple control gives users complete control over the time and rate of their desired delay effect.

Phaser - Hmmm, wish i could say more regarding this particular effect, but it simply does not cut it for me. I was expecting a solid phaser sound (refer Led Zep's 'Kashmir Song' for references) but instead all I've got was a messed warbled-up sound undistinguishable from the flanger sound. I could just be me, but that's what I think I've heard...hehe.

Flanger - Gives an acceptable flangery/waterry/double-signalled guitar sound. Acceptable....but I already have a separate flanger pedal which has managed to give me a better sound than this one, so I can afford to overlook this flaw.

Chorus - Same review as the flanger above. Again, since I already have a separate super chorus pedal, i can afford to skip this altogether.

To sum it all up.....

Pros - Lightweight, cheap, affordable and represents a 'real' value-for-money investment.

Cons - A few of the effects simply doesn't come up to par with the predecessor aka the 'real deal'. I was a bit disappointed that the delay function does not come with the '4th knob indefinite hold function' like the one available on the BOSS DD-3 pedal.

Well, despite of all things being said and reviewed and albeit many negative/unpopular views on the FX600, I truly feel that it represents an excellent value-for-money purchase for me. A 6-in-1 effect pedal for a price of roughly USD 35, who can argue about it being overpriced or expensive? To the FX600, welcome to my family of guitar pedals! :D

http://rebelwithcauses.blogspot.com

Boss DS-1 Distortion Pedal

2009-10-05T07:05:00.001-07:00

The Electric Guitar - How We Got From Andres Segovia To Kurt Cobain - Part 6

2009-05-15T03:16:00.000-07:00

As for blues, the electric guitar revitalized the genre, as its versatility gave musicians fresh ways to express emotion. Beginning in the 1940s, a new, urban-edged style of blues, born in Chicago, was built entirely on amplified sound. Bluesmen like Muddy Waters and the Texan great T-Bone Walker (who has been called the Father of Electric Blues) also took up the amplified guitar and, along with Charlie Christian, inspired a new generation of performers, led by the likes of B. B. King.

During the 1950s blues-based music that had strayed too far from its roots became known as “rhythm and blues,” a term that was as nebulous then as it remains today. Eventually, of course, in the words of Muddy Waters, “The blues had a baby, and they named the baby rock and roll.” Early rockers clung to the notion that the baby was destined to take after its father, so they idolized and often imitated the great bluesmen. The blues remained an obsession for most rockers into the 1970s, and when the talent scout Danny Fields first heard the Ramones at CBGB’s in 1974, he was ecstatic at finally finding music that was “all rock and no blues”— chiefly because, like most punk bands, the Ramones were nowhere near good enough to play blues convincingly.

The most powerful demonstration of the electric guitar’s role as a sociopolitical symbol came at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Bob Dylan, a tireless innovator in folk and blues idioms and a protest singer of solidly liberal values, plugged in an electric guitar amid boos and catcalls from the audience. On one level, it was a betrayal; the young genius who could have led a new generation of fans to the timeless joys of American folk music was instead (as the folkies saw it) pandering to the tastes of teenyboppers. More than that, however, Dylan’s act of plugging in symbolized the merger of the political left with the counterculture. The divergent paths Dylan’s music was taking were not what alienated fans; it was the electric guitar. Dylan could get as experimental as he wanted, and everything would have been fine as long as he didn’t plug in.

What gives the electric guitar such potency? For all the basic and straightforward nature of much rock music, the electric guitar’s most important quality may be its versatility. Once guitarists got accustomed to changing the sound by using tone and volume knobs and the tremolo bar, they began to look further. In the early 1960s artificial reverberation created the distinctive “surf-style” instrumental sound of the Ventures and, in Britain, the Shadows. Producers learned that feedback and interference could be their friends, developing circuits and devices that allowed fuzz, delay, wah-wah, compression, and a host of other embellishments to be invoked on demand.

The most influential master of manipulated sound in the 1960s was Jimi Hendrix, whose influence remains strong after nearly four decades. With techniques such as maneuvering the guitar’s tremolo arm and playing close to the amplifier, not to mention setting the guitar on fire, Hendrix achieved spectacular effects: “Sometimes I jump on the guitar. Sometimes I grind the strings against the frets. The more it grinds, the more it whines. Sometimes I rub up against the amplifier. Sometimes I play the guitar with my teeth, or with my elbow. I can’t remember all the things I do.”

Through the 1970s and 1980s rock guitarists continued experimenting. One genre emphasized raucous power chords, flashy solos, and overall loud volume. It came to be known as “heavy metal.” Eddie Van Halen, of the band Van Halen, experimented with stunts like dive-bombing, using the tremolo arm to drive the guitar’s lowest note even lower. Hendrix had done this, but he usually forced the guitar out of tune as a result. However, by the mid-1980s the inventor Floyd Rose had improved solid-body guitar tremolo systems, making it possible to dive-bomb repeatedly.

Guitarists increasingly regarded their instruments as identifying signatures and had makers customize them. Eddie Van Halen decorated his with colored sticky tape, while Prince had guitars of all shapes and sizes created for his stage performances. The country musician Junior Brown took the customization of his guitar a step further. To solve the problem of switching back and forth between a Spanish-style electric and a lap-steel electric, Brown put the two together to form a hybrid “guit-steel.”

In keeping with its status as a symbol of America, the electric guitar is the most democratic of instruments. It is extremely accessible in terms of both cost and learning curves. A beginner can manage a few chords after a lesson or two, and sometimes that’s all you need. And while electric-guitar players are still overwhelmingly male, women are increasingly making their mark. Once the very act of playing an electric guitar seemed inherently aggressive and masculine, but since the 1970s female guitarists like Bonnie Raitt and Joan Jett have become prominent. Raitt got her start playing blues, and her musical style continues to evolve, combining elements of blues, pop, and rock. Jett and her band the Blackhearts made a splash in the 1980s with their harder edge. Jett’s influence on the music scene earned her a place on Rolling Stone’s top 100 list, one of only two women included (the other was Joni Mitchell).

The electric guitar is a prime example of the law of unintended consequences. At first it just wanted to be heard, but it ended up taking over popular music and revolutionizing society along the way. Amplified musical technology is now at the forefront, and since most of the music we hear is electrified and synthesized, performing “unplugged” has become the exception rather than the rule. Today, more than seven decades after bursting onto the scene, the electric guitar is played and enjoyed worldwide and has achieved iconic status as a symbol of American culture.

MONICA M. SMITH is a historian and exhibit specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

The Electric Guitar - How We Got From Andres Segovia To Kurt Cobain - Part 5

2009-05-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

After its introduction, the Gibson Les Paul went through a variety of modifications that culminated in 1958 in the still beloved Standard, with its sunburst finish and newly perfected double-coil, or humbucking, pickups. The humbucking pickup transmits less background interference, or hum, from electrical equipment, which can be a particularly annoying problem during recording sessions. It also cuts out some high frequencies, yielding a “warmer” sound that may be desirable or undesirable, depending on the music and the performer.

Fender responded to the success of the Goldtop by introducing the Stratocaster in 1954. This model may be the most influential electric guitar ever produced. It is easily identified by its double cutaway design and three pickups; previous guitars had two at most. (Since the strings vibrate differently at different points along their length, each pickup has its own character, and they can be combined in various ways, in or out of phase, to create numerous effects.) It also features Leo Fender’s patented tremolo system, a combination vibrato unit, bridge, and tailpiece.

In the hands of Buddy Holly and others, the Fender Stratocaster became an American icon, like the Harley-Davidson motorcycle. This is only fair, for most innovations of any importance involving the electric guitar have taken place in America (which may explain, at least in part, why rock ’n’ roll was invented and flourished here). One celebration of the Strat’s role in American vernacular culture can be found in Jonathan Richman’s 1989 song “Fender Stratocaster”: “Like the Dunkin’ Donuts in Mattapan / Like the Thrifty Drugs in Santa An‘… Fender Stratocaster, well there’s something about that sound.” A few years later Die Goldenen Zitronen (The Golden Lemons), a German punk band, paid homage to Richman’s composition with a song of their own, also called “Fender Stratocaster.” Such cross-cultural borrowing, which is virtually as old as rock itself, shows how the electric guitar has permeated the international music scene, making it one of America’s most successful cultural exports.

Fender and Gibson weren’t the only companies making solid-body electric guitars, but they were the pioneers, and their instruments are among the most sought after on the vintage market. Major competitors included Rickenbacker and Gretsch, although the latter is better known for its hollow-body electrics, which came to be appreciated for their tonal qualities after engineers learned to control the feedback problems. In 1964 Rickenbacker introduced its 360-12 model, the first commercially significant 12-string electric guitar, which was popularized by George Harrison in the Beatles’ 1964 movie A Hard Day’s Night. When Jim (later Roger) McGuinn saw the movie, he went right out and bought himself a 12-string Rickenbacker, which would soon give McGuinn’s group, the Byrds, its instantly recognizable jangling sound.

Because the sonic character of a solid-body electric does not depend on its shape, makers could experiment with a wide range of imaginative designs. The Stratocaster, modernistic and space-age yet still recognizably guitar-shaped, remains a classic of 1950s design. The Gibson Flying V was the firm’s first boldly shaped electric guitar. It was introduced in 1958 as part of a modernistic line of guitars, along with the angular, asymmetrical Explorer. These designs proved too extreme for the market and were soon discontinued. In the late 1960s, however, musicians like Albert King and Jimi Hendrix (who was recently named the greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone) helped revive the Flying Vs popularity, encouraging guitar makers to develop other adventurous shapes.

While the electric guitar was feeding rock ’n’ roll’s explosive growth, what about the genre of music that had started it all? In jazz the guitar lost its role as a rhythm instrument with the demise of the big bands in the 1950s. As a solo instrument, the electric guitar is still struggling to free itself from its associations with fusion (jazz for rock fans) and smooth jazz (jazz for office workers). Those genres do have their adherents, of course. And with such virtuosos as George Benson and Pat Metheny, jazz guitar is still alive and doing about as well as anything else in jazz. Yet if there had been no electric guitar, jazz today would sound pretty much the same, whereas rock ’n’ roll would not exist at all.

MONICA M. SMITH is a historian and exhibit specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

The Electric Guitar - How We Got From Andres Segovia To Kurt Cobain - Part 4

2009-05-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

Some experts argue that the Rickenbacker Electro Spanish, introduced in 1935, was the first Spanish-style solid-body electric guitar, even though it did not actually have a solid body. Parts of it were hollow, but solely in the interest of reducing weight. In design and performance, it functioned as a solidbody guitar, virtually eliminating the acoustic feedback that plagued early hollow-body electrics. It was made of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic, which, because of its weight, resonates less readily than wood. The Electro Spanish had stainless-steel cavity covers to hide the hollow parts of the guitar, a detachable neck, and horseshoe pickups. Because Bakelite is very heavy, it was smaller than other guitars of the period, and it must have been awkward to play.

However, since the Rickenbacker Electro Spanish was not intentionally conceived of as a solid-body guitar, the credit for inventing the solid-body goes to others, including Les Paul. In 1941 he made a solid-body guitar that he dubbed “The Log” by attaching a Gibson guitar neck to a four-by-four-inch pine board about a foot and a half long and fitting it with strings and two homemade pickups. Later he cut up and glued the body of a traditional acoustic guitar to the board to make it look slightly more conventional.

Then around 1947 Paul Bigsby, a Los Angeles machinist, teamed up with the country singer and guitarist Merle Travis to design a solid-body electric guitar that more closely resembled the ones we know today. Bigsby also developed a tremolo arm, sometimes known as a vibrato arm or whammy bar, that altered the pitch of notes by changing the tension on the strings when it was moved up and down.

But it was Leo Fender who first successfully mass-produced and sold a solid-body Spanish-style electric guitar. His simply constructed Fender Broadcaster of 1950 (renamed Telecaster in 1952 as the result of a trademark dispute), with its bolt-on neck, was initially derided by competitors as too simple and lacking in craftsmanship. Gibson’s president, Ted McCarty, dismissed it as a “plank guitar.” Yet everything about its patented, practical design was optimal for production in large quantities. The Broadcaster/Telecaster was immediately successful, spurring other guitar companies to follow Fender’s lead.

Some dispute remains about whether the Broadcaster’s design was adapted (or stolen, depending on one’s viewpoint) from the Bigsby/Travis guitar. We do know that Leo Fender was already familiar with the concept of solid-body construction, since he had made lap-steel guitars out of solid planks of wood in the 1930s and 1940s. In any event, Fender was the one who made the solid-body electric guitar cheap enough for the masses; people called him the Henry Ford of the Electric Guitar.

Fender revolutionized the music world again with his 1951 electric Precision Bass. Although there had already been electric standup basses, the “P Bass” was the first commercially successful model to be played like a guitar. (Paul Tutmarc, of Seattle, had built electric guitars, including basses, starting in the mid-1930s and sold them through his company, Audiovox Manufacturing, but they were never widely used.) The Fender Precision had frets like a guitar, making it easier for players to hit an exact note, hence the name Precision. Monk Montgomery, the bassist with Lionel Hampton’s band, is credited with making the instrument a musical sensation, and even today P Bass is often used generically for any electric bass guitar.

Not only was the Precision cheaper to buy and easier to learn than a standup bass, but by being much more portable, it helped the bass guitar develop into part of the standard lineup of a rock band. Some historians suggest that entire genres of music, such as reggae and funk, could not exist without the electric bass.

In 1952 Gibson became Fender’s first major competitor in the solid-body market. The Gibson Les Paul was created in direct response to the success of Fender’s Broadcaster/Telecaster model. It was primarily designed by Gibson’s Ted McCarty, but it was endorsed by Les Paul, who had been a popular guitarist since the mid-1930s. Paul’s design input to the Gibson apparently included the original trapeze-style combination bridge-tailpiece, which allowed him to damp the strings with his hand, and the gold finish, which inspired the instrument’s nickname, the Goldtop. The gold color was intended in part to disguise from competitors that the guitar had a maple cap on a solid mahogany body. According to a company history, the idea of using two kinds of wood was to “balance the bright attack of maple with the warmth and richness of mahogany.”
http://www.americanheritage.com/
MONICA M. SMITH is a historian and exhibit specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

The Electric Guitar - How We Got From Andres Segovia To Kurt Cobain - Part 3

2009-05-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Most early commercial electric guitars were Hawaiian, or steel, versions. The Hawaiian lap guitar, introduced to the mainland around 1900, differs from the standard Spanish-style guitar in that it is played horizontally, on a stand or in the player’s lap, and has a sliding steel bar that can be moved along the frets for a glissando effect. The ease of learning and playing the Hawaiian guitar made it popular with users and teachers. Its alluring effect of sliding between notes particularly endeared it to Hawaiian, country, and blues musicians. The Hawaiian guitar was especially prominent in American music in the 1920s and 1930s.

Beauchamp filed his first patent application for the Frying Pan in 1932, shortly before it went into commercial production. A second, greatly revised application was submitted in 1934, but it ran into problems. Although the Frying Pan was already on the market, two successive patent examiners questioned whether the instrument was “operative.” To prove that it was, Rickenbacker sent several guitarists, including the well-known Hawaiian musician Sol Hoopii, to perform for the examiners at the Patent Office in Washington, D.C. The patent was finally granted in 1937. By that time other inventors had developed and marketed electric guitars of their own.

The Gibson ES-150 (E for Electric and S for Spanish), introduced in 1936, was the first Spanish-style electric guitar to achieve commercial success, with most of its sales going to professional musicians. Its pickup was much more elegantlooking than Rickenbacker’s bulky horseshoe version. Instead of wrapping around the strings, this bar pickup had two long magnets mounted below the guitar’s face, leaving only a small coil-wrapped metal rod visible beneath the strings.

By the end of the 1930s electronic amplification was firmly established as the best way to make a guitar louder, despite some misgivings among traditionalists. Detractors complained that it did not produce a pure, “authentic” tone, and in a sense they were right: Bypassing the resonance created by the hollow body meant altering the instrument’s traditional timbre. But musicians were championing the electric’s louder sound, which enabled the guitar to compete with other instruments in ensemble performances. Instead of trying to duplicate the warmth and lushness of an acoustic guitar, musicians and engineers tinkered with their equipment and ended up creating an entirely new kind of sound.

The jazz musician Charlie Christian is generally credited with introducing the electric guitar solo. In 1939 he joined Benny Goodman’s band and began stepping to the front of the band and performing long, complicated passages that imitated the style of horn playing. He explained, “Guitar players have long needed a champion, someone to explain to the world that a guitarist is something more than a robot pluckin’ on a gadget to keep the rhythm going.” Christian’s role in popularizing the electric guitar among musicians and the public, and his association with the Gibson ES-150, led to its pickup’s being nicknamed the “Charlie Christian pickup.”

Yet along with its benefits, the new technology brought problems. Reverberation of the sound through the instrument’s hollow body, which was responsible for the guitar’s lovely timbre when played acoustically, caused distortion, overtones, and feedback when combined with electromagnetic pickups. But as the electric guitar developed its own sonic qualities and style of play, musicians and manufacturers realized that it should be designed from scratch with amplification in mind. This led a few innovators to think about replacing the hollow body with a solid one.

MONICA M. SMITH is a historian and exhibit specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

The Electric Guitar - How We Got From Andres Segovia To Kurt Cobain - Part 2

2009-05-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

Guitar makers and players began experimenting with electrical pickups. On today’s electric guitars, a typical pickup consists of a permanent bar magnet that is wrapped tightly with a coil of wire. The ends of the coil are connected to an amplifier. When a metal string vibrates next to the pickup, the bar magnet’s field induces an electric current in the string. The current varies rapidly as the string vibrates back and forth. This varying current, in turn, creates a varying magnetic field of its own, which induces a current in the wire coil. That current, called a signal, is boosted by the amplifier and then used to create sound waves by making a speaker cone vibrate. Instead of a single large magnet, a pickup may contain a series of magnets, sometimes one for each string, but they will usually all be wrapped with the same coil.
The first guitar pickups were much less refined. A Gibson engineer named Lloyd Loar, a musician himself, developed a functional coil-wound pickup as early as 1923, but Gibson was not yet interested in producing electric instruments, so it never introduced Loar’s invention onto the market. Even if it had, the technology needed to amplify the signal and reproduce it through loudspeakers was still a few years away from being commercial.
Loar’s pickup was not electromagnetic in the modern sense. Instead, it used the instrument’s physical vibrations, as transmitted through the bridge, to vibrate a diaphragm stretched over the pickup and create an electrical signal. The first commercially advertised electric guitar, offered by the Stromberg-Voisinet company of Chicago in 1929, used a similar pickup connected to the soundboard. Both systems had trouble creating a strong enough signal. In 1933 Loar began marketing electric guitars, mandolins, and keyboards under the Vivi-Tone label, but he found few buyers.
The guitarist Les Paul also started experimenting with electrical amplification in 1929. Still in his early teens, he jammed a phonograph pickup into his acoustic guitar, slid a telephone mouthpiece under the strings, and wired them to his parents’ radio, which he used as an amplifier. The experiment was not immediately successful. Among other things, a conventional guitar’s sound is meant to resonate through its body and be heard from the outside, so amplifying the vibrations directly under the strings gets the acoustics all wrong. Still, it inspired Paul to embark on a lifelong dual career of performing and engineering. He went on to pioneer multitrack recording and sound-on-sound techniques and develop many devices and methods to expand the electric guitar’s capabilities and revolutionize the recording industry.
Trying to name a single inventor as the first to build a modern electric guitar would be fruitless, but the credit for making the technology commercially viable goes to the Rickenbacker International Corporation (originally the Ro-Pat-In Corporation and then the Electro String Instrument Corporation). The company was founded by George Beauchamp (pronounced “Beechurn”) and Adolph Rickenbacker, a distant cousin of the World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Adolph’s name was originally rendered Swiss-style as Rickenbacher, and this spelling was used on the company’s earliest guitars.
In late 1931 Beauchamp built an electromagnetic pickup by placing a pair of horseshoe magnets end-to-end to create an oval, which wrapped around the strings. The coil was placed inside the oval as well, underneath the strings. Since it did not depend on physical contart with the vihtatins? pintar bodv. this pickup had a much cleaner sound and a stronger signal than earlier models. The horseshoe pickup was introduced on the market in a hollow cast-aluminum lap-steel guitar nicknamed the Frying Pan because the playing area consisted of a small round disk. The Frying Pan (officially called the Electro Hawaiian) was the first commercially successful electric guitar.
http://www.americanheritage.com/
MONICA M. SMITH is a historian and exhibit specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

Reviews from Musiciansfriend.com - Tech 21 SansAmp Tri-A.C. Distortion Pedal

2009-05-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

Musiciansfriend.com has gave some good comment about Tech 21 SansAmp Tri-A.C. Distortion Pedal, manufactured from New York

"I've been playing 18 years and have never heard a distortion pedal like this one. Totally cool Sansamp. Marshall sound great, Boogie good, Tweed sound good. I use this chained with my other effects sounds great. Just hookup straigth to PA don't need amp. Built like a tank. "

"This pedal has three very useble analog models on it, as opposed to all those digital modelers with sixteen sounds that I don't want. The tweed setting gets a great dirty jangle and tight bright snap, although it's hard to get a good fat strat clean without cranking the level. The british and california sounds live up to their names. Setting the mid on brit at just over halfway gives a thickness you can't get on cheaper digital pedals. The presets and recommended settings in the manual are very usable. It's excellent for the front end of a solid-state amp or for direct recording. "

"What I got was both & more, this is one fantastic Preamp for the price I would have paid more for something that sounds this good. the OD tube like distortion & sustain are right on, just take your time & play with the controls and in due time you will find the sound you're looking for. I now have the bluesy & od for rhythm and a nice tube sound dist/sustain lead to please the mind. "
"It is so simple to use and sounds incredible! It even feeds back like a tube amp! (Singing solos sound so sweet!) The tweed sound resonates nicely even on a stock fender strat. The brit sound actually goes a bit insane when you play with the EQ - and I mean that in a good way! The calif sound is pure and responsive modern metal madness! My final kickers are using monster's studio pro 1000 cables and feeding it directly into a tc electronics g major unit... even playing thru a powered behringer mixer, you forget that you're not playing thru a tube amp! Wish they had done this years ago! "

"This is an incredible pedal. I had previously bought an inespensive Boss and DOD distortion and overdrive pedals to give an extra bite to my Fender Ultimate Chorus Combo, but they didn't add much to the amps own sound. This pedal changes everything! I've never used a tube amp before, and was mainly looking to add a Marshall sound to my amp, but even the difference using the Fender setting on this pedal was incredible. Never using a tube amp, I have nothing to compare it too, but it mad my solid state Fender sound amazing. The Marshall and Mesa setting were just as impressive, although personally I don't like the major low end of the Mesa itself. "

"i have used so many effects pedal(both analog and digital ones).Boss GT-3 Digital Effects processor,Zoom505,Marshall BluesBreaker2,Boss Turbo Distortion,Boss Metal,Electro Harmonics Big Muff Pi USA Zone,Tech21 Comptortion and the ones that i cannot remember now...But in every one i didnt fell comfortable, the sound was not professional.Now i have found my sound and every one admires this guitar sound. SansAmp know this job. Thank You Andrew Barta ,you solve my problem... "

More from http://www.musiciansfriend.com/

The Electric Guitar - How We Got From Andres Segovia To Kurt Cobain - Part 1

2009-05-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

Some things were invinted for obvious reasons With others, the motivation is less clear. Consider, for example, the electric guitar. When guitarists first crudely electrified their instruments in the 1920s, what were they trying to do? Why change something that had been successful for hundreds of years? Could they have envisioned that the instrument that inspired some of Vivaldi’s and Boccherini’s most beautiful compositions would one day be used by Motörhead and blink-182?

In fact, the driving force behind the invention of the electric guitar was simply the search for a louder sound, a desire that had existed long before the development of electronic amplifiers and speakers in the 1920s. As musical performances moved to increasingly large public spaces over the course of the nineteenth century, the sizes of ensembles grew correspondingly, and musicians needed more volume. For this and other reasons, Americans had been making innovations in guitar design since before the Civil War.

Christian Frederick Martin, Sr., founder of the C. F. Martin Company, was probably the most influential American guitar maker in the nineteenth century. He was born in Germany in 1796 and immigrated to the United States in 1833. During the 1850s Martin developed X-bracing, the use of crossed wooden strips in the guitar’s top for structural reinforcement. He also developed other design features, such as a body shape that was smaller above the sound hole than below.

In the late 1890s Orville Gibson, founder of the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Company, designed a guitar with an arched (or curved) top, as is found on a violin. It was both stronger and louder than the earlier flat-top design. (The top of a guitar is the side with the strings.) It helped, but guitars were often still hard to hear.

The quest for volume intensified during the 1920s with the advent of big-band music and commercial radio and the rise of the recording industry. By the end of the decade the big-band era was in full swing, but the guitar was stuck in the rhythm section and couldn’t be heard in crowded, noisy clubs, bars, and dancehalls. Since recordings were made directly to phonograph disks, using either an acoustical recording horn or a single electric microphone for the whole band, there was no way to boost the guitar’s sound in the studio either.

Around 1925 the banjo and guitar maker John Dopyera came up with a nonelectric remedy. Borrowing an idea from the banjo, he designed a metal-body guitar with metal resonating cones built into the top. Unlike earlier acoustic guitars, this one’s sound was created by the vibrations of the resonator cones, not those of the body itself. Resonator guitars produced a loud, brash tone that was popular with some Hawaiian and blues guitarists but was unsuitable for many other types of music.

Another solution was to use steel strings instead of gut. The guitar had to be altered structurally to withstand the increased tension of the heavier strings, and in many cases this meant ever-larger bodies with more internal bracing and stronger necks. The C. F. Martin Company became known in the 1930s for its Dreadnought, a large steel-string flat-top acoustic guitar that was widely imitated by other makers, including Gibson.

These mechanical fixes helped, but only up to a point. So guitarists began to look at the possibilities offered by the new field of electronic amplification, which had been made possible by recent advances in vacuum tubes. Simply putting a microphone in front of the guitar would work in a solo setting or a small group, and this method is still common among folk singers. But in a big band, the microphone would amplify the rest of the band nearly as much as the guitar. What guitar players needed was a way to separate the guitar’s sound and boost it in isolation.
http://www.americanheritage.com/
MONICA M. SMITH is a historian and exhibit specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

Guitar Effect reviews - Fender Blender Custom Octave Fuzz Effect

2009-05-09T18:42:00.000-07:00

Quality:
Its pretty much all made of medal... The unit's case, buttons, input jacks, etc. I'm sure you could drop it on the floor without much problems, although I dont want to try with my vintage version.

Sound:
I'm currently using a vintage model thats about 30 years old... I'm not sure of the differences of the original and new versions though. It can reproduce Jimi Hendrix's fuzz pretty well with the volume, sustain, tone, and blend all set at 5 o' clock... Almost seems like the pedal's engineer's were aiming for that. You can dial up the blend a little further and get an evil sounding fuzz, although you wont get much clarity on chords with these settings. The blend dials in either more of the pedals effect (at 10) and more of the natural guitar sound (at 1). The tone dials in more treble (at 10) and more low end (at 1). The sustain just configures how long the fuzz effect lasts on a note played. I also own an Arbiter Fuzz Face, and this pedal is better in that it has much more sustain and drive, where you have to run the Arbiter on overdrive to get much sound, you run this pedal on clean. Only reason I didn't give it a ten is because theres probably something better out there.

VOX Joe Satriani Satchurator Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal

2009-05-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

The VOX Satchurator Distortion Pedal is truly a breakthrough in guitar tone. This VOX distortion pedal was made to the exact requirements designed by Joe Satriani. The pedal flawlessly re-creates Satriani's sound, and has features never before seen in a distortion pedal. With the VOX Satchurator distortion pedal, you will be able to achieve very high levels of gain while operating quieter than any modern day Distortion Pedal.

VOX Satchurator Features:

- Provides awesome analog distortion designed to the specifications of Joe Satriani
- Gain control
- Tone Control
- Volume Control
- Has two foot switches for added boosts
- Low noise operation

Boss Metal Zone MT-2 Demo

2009-05-07T20:03:00.000-07:00

Jason Spencer of Worldmusicsupply.com Boss Metal Zone MT-2 demonstrate the sound of this playing guitar using this pedal.. Check it out !

So You Want To Buy Distortion Pedal ?

2009-05-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

A Distortion Pedal is a very important part of your setup because it often times creates the foundation of your sound. Choosing the right one is a decision that should not be taken lightly, and in this post I am going to point out a few of the major aspects of varying Distortion Pedals that should be taken into consideration.

1. Determine the type of Distortion Sound you are looking for

The first thing to decide upon is what type of distortion sound you would like to achieve. For example, if you plan on playing the Blues, you’d want to avoid a high gain, heavy metal pedal because it would not compliment the style well at all.

If you are new to whole concept of Distortion Pedal stylings, a great way to figure out what kind would suit you best is to listen to some of your favorite bands and pay close attention to their guitar sounds.

Distortion Pedals are broken down into 3 main flavors; Overdrive, Distortion and Fuzz.

* Overdrive - An Overdrive pedal’s main purpose is to make it sound like you are playing through a quality, vintage tube amp. These pedals are a great fit for class rock tunes, and add a sense of warmth to your playing. This type of Distortion is not ideal for heavy rock, or metal playing though. Here is a review for the Boss SD-1 Overdrive pedal that contains additional information and a video demonstration.
* Distortion - These pedals make up the bulk of available distortion effects pedals, and can help you achieve blues, hard rock or heavy metal tones. This category, unlike Overdrive, is hard to define because there are so many different types of sounds that these pedals can create. They can range from a low gain, soft distortion to a high gain, screamer like the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone. Your best bet is to check around on YouTube.com and watch some demo videos to get an idea of what type of distortion you are going for.
* Fuzz - I decided to make Fuzz its own category because I think the sounds the pedals who fit this description make are so unique. Jimi Hendrix made the Fuzz tone legendary with the use of his Fuzz Face Distortion Pedal, and his influence is still being heard today. Fuzz tone is best described as a gritty, high gain distortion with a heavy low end.

3. Decide on a Quality Brand & Price Range

Once you have decided what kind of Distortion Pedal you are looking for, the fun part begins. Now you get to research and experiment with the possible selections that will become a part of your playing.

* Brand - I definitly reccomend not cutting corners and going with a cheap brand. You want to get the best distortion pedal possible for your money while not sacrificing quality. If you are unsure what the best brands are, read reviews and watch videos and you’ll soon figure it out. I personally really like BOSS and Electro-Harmonix Pedals.
* Price - Once you’ve selected the brand of pedal you would like purchase, check out the models they make that are in your price range and meet your sound requirements. Read reviews, watch videos and participate in forums to know exactly what to look for if you are feeling lost.

3. Purchase Your Distortion Pedal

There are a ton of great places to find great deals on distortion pedals, and below I’ve listed some of the best.

* Purchasing through Rock Distortion Pedals.com. Our store pages are teamed up with Ebay to provide you with some of the best deals on the Internet. We have a huge selection, and are always updating our pages with the latest sales.
* Musician’s Friend - Quality source for Pro Musicians Gear. Click on the link below to take advantage of a limited time coupon code for Musician’s Friend being offered through this site.

4. Start Rocking

Hopefully these tips will help you find an awesome distortion pedal.

http://www.rockdistortionpedals.com/

Boss MT-2 Metal Zone Reviews

2009-05-06T17:27:00.000-07:00

I have been using the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone Effects Pedal in my setup for a few years, and I have to say, this thing rocks! It offers precision tone controls that allow you to dial in the perfect amount of room shaking, sustain filled distortion. The Boss MT-2 Metal Zone comes equipped with a 3-Band EQ also which allows you to set your High and Low shelving, as well as tweak the mid band parametric sounds. The pedal also allows you to control the overall volume level, and distortion level.

This pedal can achieve a variety of different distortion sounds because of the EQ Tone controls on the pedals front. All of the sounds though are HEAVY. This pedal is designed for Hard Rock and Metal in mind. It allows you to really nail blazing solos, tackle intense hammering and also pinch harmonics.

Overall Quality: The Boss MT-2 Metal Zone pedal creates high quality sounds, and is built to last. It is made of sturdy steel which will hold up nearly forever, and can really take a beating and keep working. The effect and EQ controls are also a great feature on this pedal. They work flawlessly, respond immediately and allow you to really dial in your sound.

Sound: This pedal is Heavy, with a capital H. It can make a mid quality amp sound like a Marshall Stack. The sound quality is excellent, and the possibilities of sounds are endless with the MT-2 precision controls. It is perfect for Thrash Metal but, can also create a good fuzz tone or a heavy muffled distortion ton.
http://www.rockdistortionpedals.com/

Buying guide for Used and Vintage guitar

2009-05-06T02:24:00.000-07:00

Many people ask us to explain the difference between a used guitar, vintage guitar and an antique guitar. Here’s a brief discussion of our perspective on the difference between Used Guitars, Vintage Guitars and Antique Guitars and why when you're looking for a used guitar, you should seriously consider a collectable vintage guitar. First let’s define “used guitar”, “vintage guitar” and "antique guitar".

A used guitar can be simply defined as any guitar that’s not new. This definition covers a wide range of guitars and including virtually all guitars that are not currently on the shelves of retailers and a few new old stock guitars in storage. In recent years we have seen an increase in the number of models and price ranges available increasing the number of used guitars available for sale.

Vintage guitars are certainly a used guitar however Vintage guitars are a select group of used guitars differentiated from other used guitars by generally being built between the end of WWII and prior to the 1980’s. Vintage guitars include both hollow body and solid body guitars and often contain rare woods such as Brazilian Rosewood (rare by today’s guitar standards) and slab board (single piece) bodies. They were constructed mostly by hand rather than automated milling and routing equipment used today. Vintage guitars represent a small portion of the total number of used guitars and therefore are relatively rare when compared to the total number of used guitars. Many of today's popular musicians play and collect vintage electric and acoustic guitars. Popular vintage brands include Fender, Gibson, Martin, Epiphone and Rickenbacker.

Antique guitars as we define them are still used guitars but this group of guitars is generally older than vintage guitars and were built prior to WWII. Because of their age, materials used and hollow body construction techniques many are considerably more fragile than Vintage guitars. These include everything from one of a kind 15th to 18th century guitars built by master craftsmen to a handful of pre WWI electric guitars. Most antique guitars are rarely played. Antique guitars include many lesser brands as well as well known brands such as Gibson and Martin guitars. For the remainder of this discussion we will focus on Used Guitars and Vintage Guitars.

So why should you care about buying a vintage guitar vs. a used guitar ? When considering a used guitar here’s a few reasons to consider a used vintage guitar.

1) Better Tone - Because vintage guitars have different construction techniques and materials they tend to have a different tone than newer guitars. We can’t imagine listing to a Beatles, Cream or Jimi Hendrix tune on a “modern guitar”. Every player has their own preferences however we believe vintage guitars have superior tone to most of today's modern guitars.

2) They Hold Their Value – Vintage guitars can be found in a wide range of prices however all vintage guitars generally hold their value. In fact, in recent years many vintage guitars have appreciated significantly often out performing many stocks. The value of the run of the mill used guitar usually depreciates rather than appreciates.

What factors influence vintage guitar value? There are a variety of factors however the main factors are originality, condition and desirability. The more original the guitar is, the higher the guitar value. Issues such as changed pickups, tuners and pick guards all have a negative impact on the value. Condition is also important. Cracks, repairs, routing, screw holes and particularly refinishing all decrease the guitar’s value. Desirability is also a factor. The more people that want a particular model the higher the value. It’s also important to note that just because a guitar is rare doesn't mean it’s valuable. In order for a guitar to be valuable it must be desired by collectors and players otherwise it will not have the value you might expect for a rare vintage guitar.

At this point you hopefully you have decided to buy a used "vintage" guitar. If so, you might also be asking yourself what should I buy ? That’s a difficult question. It depends on what kind of music you play, the tone you like, how much you are going to play the guitar (it doesn't make sense to get a mint guitar and play the heck out of it) and a variety of other factors. You should talk to a reputable vintage guitar dealer who will take the time to understand what your likes and needs are so they can recommend a good used vintage guitar.

What about Reissues ? Many companies have re-issued popular vintage guitars. These reissues are high quality reproductions of popular and rare vintage guitars. They generally sound like a vintage guitar and have been well received in the market. While we would prefer a vintage guitar and vintage guitars are likely to have the best chance of appreciation but we also like reissue guitars, particularly when you are looking for a particular vintage guitar that may be out of your price range.

Where do I start ? One of the first things you should do before buying is educate yourself. Talk to dealers, talk to other players and take advantage of the great books that are our there. Vintage Guitar Magazine is also a great resource. Click here to see a few recommended vintage guitar books on our web site.

Most importantly, take your time doing research and have fun buying, collecting and playing vintage guitars !
http://www.rocknrollvintage.com/index.htm

Boss BD-2 Blues Driver Demo

2009-05-04T03:54:00.000-07:00

A very good Boss BD-2 Blues Driver Live Demonstration !

Boss DS-1 Distortion Pedal Demo

2009-05-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

A very good demonstration about infamous Boss DS-1 Distortion Pedal Demo !

Compression

2009-05-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

Look at any professional guitarist's assortment of foot pedals -- you'll find pedals for Overdrive, Fuzz, Flangers, Chorus, Distortion, to name a few. One you'll almost always find ... and one you might not expect ... is a compression pedal. Why? What does a compression pedal do?

In it's simplest form, a compression "squeezes" a guitar's tone. The analog tone from a guitar consists of a great many frequencies -- a compression pedal addresses and squeezes the range to even out the tone. This makes the resulting tone more consistent and level.

Compression pedals even off the loud parts and beef up the quiet parts -- this not only levels out the tone, but also yields greater sustain.

Of course, this does come at a cost -- by squeezing the tone, you diminish the dynamic range. However, the payoff is a fatter tone and a more consistent level.

So why are there so many compression pedals if this all they do? Well, for the same reason there's a variety of other effects pedals -- they sound different from brand to brand!

The electronic components inside the pedal, the different gain and tweeking settings available, the particular "style" of desired tone (bright sparkly country? Or phat Southern rock?) the treatment of different frequencies -- all lend to the taste of the resulting tone. Like anything else, you've really got to sit down and try a multitude of compression pedals to find the right one for your playing.

Compression effects work well on electric guitars -- but can also help acoustic and bass players as well by providing a more consistent tone. While you may not use a compression pedal as your only effect, it's very common for it to be the first pedal in the chain.

Joey Robichaux

Guitar Effects Explained

2009-04-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

Guitar effects are an extremely important part of any electric guitarists’ life. Yet, most beginners have very little knowledge about effects. Effects are electronic devices that alter or moderate the sound, tone or pitch of an electric guitar. Effects are used in many popular genres of guitar music like rock, heavy metal, blues etc. They are housed in guitar pedals, amplifiers, simulation software and rack mount processors or preamplifiers. There are different types of effects. Here is a brief look at them.

Distortion related effects

Distortion is an effect that is commonly used in rock and heavy metal guitar music. A distortion pedal which is used to create this effect clips the signal and distorts its waveform leading to a distortion in the sound. There are many different types of distortion effects. Each one of them has their own distinct characteristics and features.

• Overdrive distortion: This is one of the most well known distortion effects. Most pedals that provide the distortion effect attempt to create a high grain sound. Some advanced distortion amplifiers like the Marshall, have went past the normal point of tonal break up and created a sound called as saturated grain also called total distortion in some cases. Some of the common distortion pedals are Marshall Guv’Nor, Pro Co Rat, Digi Tech Hot Tech.
• Fuzz: Fuzz pedals were originally created to recreate the classic sound of the 60’s overdrive tube amp combined with torn speaker cones. The original fuzz pedals have now been replaced by extreme designs that have effects like octave, gating etc. Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face is one of the most commonly used Fuzz effect pedals.
• Hi Gain: This effect originated from the high gain amplification used in electric guitars. In ordinary elec guitar terms, high gain is a sound that is produced by overdriven amp tubes or a distortion pedal. The sound produced is extremely thick. The modern hi gain pedals produce a sound that is unmatched and cannot be produced using any other device. The Boss ML2 metal core is a very common hi gain effect pedal.

Filtering related effects

• Equalizer: An equalizer is used to adjust the frequency response in a variety of frequency bands. A graphic equalizer which is a common feature in most music player software provides a slider interface for different frequency regions. In guitars, a rotary control is available in place of these sliders and they change the level of the frequency band.
• Phase shifter: Have you ever heard a sound during a guitar concert that is similar to the sound of a flying jet? That’s what a phase shifter can do for you. The effect is commonly known as phase.
• Wah Pedal: Just like the name, this foot operated pedal can create a sound that is similar to a man saying wah. The sound was most commonly heard in psychedelic rock from the 1960’s and funk music from the 1970’s.

Volume related effects

• Volume Pedal: This is nothing but a foot operated potentiometer that can be tilted forward or backward. A musician can easily adjust the volume of his instrument during performance. The pedal is also used to create a fading effect.
• Tremolo: This is a repetitive variation in gain for the complete duration of a single note. This is based on a very common effect that was built into guitar amps.
• Compressor: This is very much like an auto volume controller. The output level decreases as the incoming signal increases and vice a versa.

These are the most basic but commonly used guitar effects. There are many more advanced ones that you can use during concerts or gigs.

Jeff Carson

Guitar Effects With Your Computer

2009-04-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

Once you have learnt some chord progressions and riffs and you are beginning to sound like a guitar player it will be time to start getting yourself your own individual sound. These days guitar players can add effects to their playing in many ways. It used to be necessary to connect to an amplifier but now their are guitar plug ins and software to give you all kinds of effects. You can apply distortion, sustain, wah-wah, chorus, flanger, reverb, delay effects and listen to the results in your headphones without disturbing your family or neighbors. All you need is a sound card.

The effects software that many guitarists think is the top of the range is Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3. It is expensive but good. It provides guitar and bass effects by modeling many popular amplifiers, cabinets, microphones, and effect pedals. It has twelve guitar and bass amps, and a matched cabinet module gives you real classic sounds. The Guitar Rig software has faithfully modelled stomp boxes, distortion and volume pedals, eighteen guitar and six bass cabinets, four rotary speakers and nine microphones - all based on popular vintage gear. A great feature of this effects software is the drag and drop interface for mixing your sound. Just choose an amplifier from classic Fender, Marshall, and Mesa Boogie amps, select the size of your cabinet and play around with the forty-four effects.

The Line 6 Pocket Pod Guitar Multi Effects Processor has over three hundred onboard/portable tones and over 3000 presets. Battery-powered and about the size of a tuner, Pocket POD is a portable guitar effects solution. You can use it for effects in front of your amp, or just plug in headphones and practice.

Guitar FX 3 is a cool software that has not been updated for years but it is good and it is free. Just do not expect it to work if you are using Vista and you should make sure you have plenty of RAM. To get started you just plug your guitar into the microphone or line in. It offers a big range of presets plus you can the tabbed menus to create custom tones which can be saved as presets. You can apply distortion, wah-wah, noise gate, compressor, flanger, reverb, chorus, delay and some of other filters.

Another free effects program is Audacity. Audacity is a free, user-friendly audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. With Audacity you can record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files, cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together. You can record from a microphone, line input, or other sources and create multi-track recordings. You can change the pitch of your music without altering the tempo, or vice-versa plus Audacity lets you remove static, hiss, hum, or other background noises. The guitarist can alter frequencies with Equalization, FFT Filter, and Bass Boost effects. Other built-in effects include echo, phaser, wah-wah and reverse.

Just so you are not left looking for the guitar effects software using redundant URLs I have left it to you to search using the product names. Some of the software that you need to pay for is available on a trial basis or you might find it for less money on ebay.

Ricky Sharples

Effects Pedal Intro's

2009-04-27T02:18:00.000-07:00

A guitar effects pedal board is really an awesome piece of gear to add to your setup. It allows you to chain all of your effects pedals together so they can be easily transported, properly organized and always powered up. Before I had purchased mine, I was always in a battle to get my pedal chain set up when I played gigs, and had practices. It was a hassle, and I knew a pedal board was the perfect solution to my problem.

Effects Pedals are attached to the pedal board via a Velcro backing. This allows for quick addition/removal of pedals if servicing needs to happen, and it holds them firmly in place while playing. Pedals boards also come with a case that allows for easy transportation. The cases allow you to pick up your pedals and go, no wires to mess with, or tons of AC adapters to unplug. This brings me to my next point, and what I think is the best feature of an effects pedal board; They power your pedals so no extra batters or adapters are needed.

Effects Pedals usually have a built in power source that can power a various amount of 9 volt and 12 volt pedals. The pedals are connected to the power source via wire connections which keeps things organized and clutter free. This feature has practically payed for pedal board itself with the amount of money I have been saving on batteries. I was one of those guitarists who ALWAYS forgot to unplug the cables from his effect pedals after playing, which resulted in the battery being drained completely in a few hours.

Effects Pedal Ordering Tip: One thing I have noticed is that the order of the pedals in your effects chain does make a difference. Make sure that if you have a Tuner pedal you place it first in your chain. This will ensure that the pedal is getting the strongest signal for the most accurate tuning results.

If you’ve never considered using an effects pedal board before, now is the time to re-think your decision. They will make transporting and setting up your pedals a breeze, allowing you to get set up and rocking in no time at all. They can be found in a range of different prices, and model options, so you’ll be sure to find the perfect addition to your effects pedal setup.

http://rockdistortionpedals.com/

Placing Your Pedals Orderly

2009-04-24T09:11:00.000-07:00

When you begin using multiple effects pedals in a series like, distortion pedals, chorus effects and phase effects, it is important to follow a few simple guidelines when determining what order these pedals should be placed in. Improperly ordering your effects chain or pedal board can result in poor tones and unwanted noise.

Remember, these pedals are actually altering the signal of your guitar, so when placed in a chain, an effects pedal could be processing a signal that has already been altered many times. This is what makes the order of them so vital to your sound.

1st Positions - Chromatic Tuner / EQ

I always recommend placing a chromatic tuner (if you have one) , first in your chain. This ensures that the pedal is getting the strongest signal possible, which will make accurate tuning much easier.
Now is a good time to also add your EQ pedal to your chain. This allows you to shape your sound before it starts to have effects applied.

2nd Position - Distortion/Overdrive/Fuzz

It is important to have your distortion pedals as the leaders of your chain because they are what your guitar tone is based on.

Placing these pedals first in your chain ensures that you are only distorting your true guitar sound.

When you start playing with multiple effects, this keeps the integrity of the more complex effects pedals like chorus and flange in tact. These pedals carefully alter your guitar’s signal, and distorting them could taken away from their tone.

3rd Position - Wah Pedal

There are some guitar players who prefer having their Wah Pedal in front of their distortion pedals (Jimi Hendrix), but I have found that I get the best results by placing it after them in the chain.

A Wah Pedal is basically an EQ that sweeps the high ends, and low ends of your sound, which will cause the signal going to the distortion pedal to be altered if it is placed before it.

Placing your Wah pedal after your distortion pedals will provide a nice linear sweep because you’ll have one steady signal coming into it.

4th Position - Delay

At this point in your effects pedal chain we have shaped the tone of your guitar, and added the foundations of distortion.

Placing a Delay pedal in this position will result in only the signal coming into it to be repeated, thus preserving the sound of the modulation effects that will come after it.

You do not want to add delay to effects like flange, and chorus. If you were to place these before your Delay pedal, the effects they create would also be delayed. You want these to be consistent while the core sound of your guitar is being delayed.

Position 4 - Modulation

Modulation effects consist of flange, chorus, phase, envelope filters, etc. All of these add color, and depth to your sound.

As we noted earlier, it is important to keep these signals as true as possible on their way to your amplifier. Running a flanger effect before a distortion, or overdrive pedal would distort the flanger’s sound, and would harm the subtlety of the effect.

Position 5 - Volume Pedal

This position should be reserved for any pedal that is going to take away from the sound of your guitar, primarily a volume pedal.

You want to place your volume pedal in this position so that you can accurately decrease the effect volume for ALL your pedals.

If you were to place it in the middle of your chain, you would only lower the effect volume for all of the pedals that come before it.

This is also an acceptable position for a Tremolo pedal.

Position 6 - Reverb

Reverb is an effect that usually occurs naturally. For this reason, you want to place this effect after all of your modulations, distortions and EQs have been applied so that the Reverb can shape your sound as realistically as possible.

So that is all there is to it. Those are the basics to effects pedal ordering and I hope they can help you organize your chain or pedal board so you can get the best sounds possible.

I do want to note though that the great thing about creating music is experimentation, and that there is no “set in stone” way to order your pedals.

The ordering I have provided for you is what I use, and it is what creates the best tones out of all the combinations I have tried.

http://rockdistortionpedals.com

Top 5 Distortion Pedals for Under 100 Dollars

2009-04-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

A good quality distortion pedal is a necessity for any serious guitar player, but finding a stellar distortion pedal in your price range can sometimes be difficult. This is why I’ve done the research for you and compiled a list of the top 5 selling distortion pedals for under 100 bucks. These are all great effects pedals that I have had the privilege to play over the years, and they all produce a great sound.

1. Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer Effects Pedal ($99.99)

This Ibanez distortion pedal is a reissue of the early Vintage Tube Screamers that carried a larger price tag, but has many of the same components and classic tones that made the original such a popular choice among guitarists.It produces great tones, and is perfect for playing classic rock.

Features like
1.Classic Overdrive Tone
2.Responsice Control Knob (Tone,Volume,Drive)

2. Electro-Harmonix XO Metal Muff ($89.25)

This pedal delivers awesome heavy metal distortion. It is perfect for anyone looking for a pedal that can deliver really high gain distortion sounds as well as warm over driven distortion tones. This pedal by Electro-Harmonix is able to achieve this wide range of sounds because of its customizable EQ settings and tone controls.

1.Heavy Distortion Tones
2.Responsive Controls
3.Top Boost switch that will elevate the high gain and make your solos scream

3. DigiTech XMM Metal Master ($89.95)

This pedal can produce a near limitless variety of distortion tones thanks to its morphing ability. It creates heavy metal distortion tones and has high quality responsive EQ controls. The DigiTech Metal Master is an ideal fit for the stage, or the studio.

1.Heavy Metal Distortion Tones
2.Morph between pedal sounds similar to BOSS, DOD and Rectifier distortion pedals
3.Level control, EQ controls and Morph control
4.High quality sound
5.Additional clean output signal jack

4.Boss BD-2 Blues Driver Pedal ($89.00)

This pedal produces some awesome Blues tones and it gives your guitar the classic sound of a vintage tube amp on overdrive. If you want to play Blues, this pedal is a must.

1.Produces class over-driven tube amp sound perfect for Blues guitar
2.Controls for Gain, Tone and Level

5. Electro-Harmonix Classics USA Big Muff ($76.50)

This effects pedal is a reissued model of the legendary Electro-Harmonix USA Big Muff Pi Distortion/Sustainer Pedal made popular in the 70’s. It’s claim to fame is the harmonic like distortion, and near limitless sustain it can produce. It creates an awesome fuzz tone, and is used by Jack White of the White Stripes.

Awesome Fuzz tone
Great sustain
High quality sound

Well that’s it. Those are the top 5 Distortion Pedals for the guitar that you can get for under 100 bucks. These are all high quality effects pedals, and each create their own unique tones that will take your playing to the next level.

http://www.rockdistortionpedals.com/

BOSS DS-1 Distortion Pedal Review

2009-04-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

The Boss DS-1 is a great overall Distortion Pedal that offers some great tones, at an affordable price. This pedal usually ranges from $40-50, and sounds like it is worth a lot more.

The DS-1 is a pretty standard Distortion Pedal, and can be used in a variety of playing styles. It really excels when used to play rock tunes and punk songs though. If you’re looking for a heavy metal distortion, this pedal would not be my first choice. For that I would recommend the Boss MT-2.

Like all Boss pedals, the DS-1 is built to last. It has a sturdy steel casing, and will withstand a lifetime of use.

The pedal has controls for Tone, Level and Distortion so you’ll be able to dial in that perfect sound.

http://rockdistortionpedals.com

Guitar Amp Combo - Hughes and Kettner Statesman DUAL 6L6

2009-04-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

Sporting 12AX7 preamp tubes and dual 6L6 power amp tubes, the Hughes Kettner Statesman Dual 6L6 combo features two sweet-sounding discrete channels.

The Hughes Kettner Statesman Dual 6L6's clean channel delivers the soulful shimmering tone of an open tube combo. Its Twang switch lives up to its name by adding a healthy helping of punchy high-mids that put the spank in funk and do the country twang thang so well; even contemporary ballads benefit from the upper mids boost. Dial in a dab more gain, and dive into a world of dynamic crunch tones and hair-trigger response to every subtlety of your touch.

The Drive channel of the Statesman Dual 6L6 offers more than merely more gain. It delivers the secret ingredient that is so critical to a classic rock sound - the powerful punch of a half-stack. The Gain knob takes you on a magical mystery tour from a throaty mid-‘60s bark to a typical ‘70s rock bite. The Boost button is a time machine, taking you and the amp’s overdrive tone a few years down the road!

The Hughes Kettner Statesman Dual 6L6 sports a genuine Accutronics spring reverb; the Reverb Balance knob controls each channel’s amount. A modern effects loop lets you add external effect devices to the sonic equation. And the included footswitch lets you tap your toes to conveniently activate the two channels, Boost, the FX loop, and Reverb.

An Eminence speaker developed especially for the Hughes Kettner Statesman Dual 6L6 amp brings together the grooviest tried-and-true design features of US and UK speakers. It is the key to the Hughes Kettner Statesman Dual 6L6's jaw-dropping tonal versatility.

Hughes Kettner Statesman Dual 6L6 main features include:

Channels: Clean + Twang, Overdrive + Boost
Power: 60 Watts
Poweramp: 2x 6L6
Preamp: 2x 12AX7
Effects: Accutronics Spring Reverb
Effects Loop: Serial/Parralel selectable
Footswitch/Stageboard: 1x FS-3N included, 2nd FS-2 as an option
Switching Functions: Channels, Boost, Second Master; with 2nd FS-2: Reverb, FX-Loop
Special Features: Second Master, Twang and Boost Mode, adjustable Reverb Balance
Equalizer: 3-band EQ per channel
Speaker Outputs: 1x 4 Ohms, 1x 8 Ohms/2x 16 Ohms , 1x16 Ohms
Speakers: 2x 12'' Eminence Rockdriver Cream
Suggested Speaker Cabinet: STM 212
Protective Cover included
Dimensions: 685 x 559 x 266 mm
Weight: 27 kg/59,4 lbs

What is guitar effects ?

2009-04-22T01:41:00.000-07:00

Guitar effects are electronic devices that modify the tone, pitch, or sound of an electric guitar. Effects can be housed in effects pedals, guitar amplifiers, guitar amplifier simulation software, and rackmount preamplifiers or processors. Electronic effects and signal processing form an important part of the electric guitar tone used in many genres, such as rock, pop, blues, and metal.

Guitar effects are also used with other instruments in rock, pop, blues, and metal, such as electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Electric bass players use bass effects, which are designed to work with low-frequency tones of the bass.

Guitar effects are also used with other instruments in rock, pop, blues, and metal, such as electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Electric bass players use bass effects, which are designed to work with low-frequency tones of the bass.

www.wikipedia.org

Behringer BSM Effects for Guitar and Bass

2009-04-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

Since the beginning of time Boss were known for their Guitar and Bass effect pedals. Every wannabe guitarist had used some form of their pedals and in most cases Overdrive or Distortion pedals. A lot has changed since their reign though and Behringer with their new range of RSM Stomp Boxes are set to "stomp" all over Boss in both price and sound. The Behringer effect pedals are cheap, dirt cheap in fact for what they are and quite astonishing probably to the people that used to be comfortable letting go of 60-100 quid for a Boss pedal. Each behringer pedal is about 12-30 quid which is nothing for what you get in terms of sound quality.

The Build Quality of the Behringer RSM pedals is not as sturdy, solid and robust as the Boss pedals. Where as the Boss pedals are made from solid metal and can literally be dropped off a skyscraper and still work, the Behringer pedals have a plastic casing and the first time I tried to put a battery in I kind of worried I would break the thing. Staying with this for the moment, the battery compartment is not as easy to get into either and a screwdriver is needed making quick changing of batteries on stage not so easy. Plus, what happens if you forgot your screwdriver? Who knows. So, to a point you get what you pay for, however in this instance it isn't as simple as that because if you look after your stuff the severely budget price tag is likely to make a budding guitarist just go out and buy a Behringer Pedal board and then subsequently fill it with Behringer RSM Stomp Boxes. I mean you can do all that for less than 200 quid, which by my calculations would get you 3 Boss pedals (sorry Boss).

WTF is RSM?
RSM is a new digital pedal format designed by Behringer. Each of the pedals are 24-bit. RSM stands for Real Sound Modeling and all the pedals utilize advanced DSP algorithms developed by Behringer's team of acoustic, hardware and software engineers.

The RSM 24-bit hardware, firmware and software system allows Behringer to model many acoustic spaces, instruments and electronic modifications. Under the hood of the Behringer RSM processors you will find a lot of substantial FX for DJ's, keyboardists and guitar amp effects loops alike.

Overview
Unlike most critics, I welcome a bargain and being very familiar with Behringer I knew what to expect from their pedals - quality at a cheap price. Luckily for me I was sent the whole RSM rnage of pedals for review and I slowly and surely cabled them altogether in my Behringer Pedal board and went through the pedals one by one. There were some of the usual suspects (delay, reverb, phaser, flange etc) and some more fun ones to play with too (pitch shifter, dynamic wah and bass synthesizer [which is FUN!]). What I did quickly notice and I don't know if this is due to market share but there were no overdrives or distortion pedals at all and I wonder whether this is just because Behringer understand that when it comes to that sub genre of guitar pedals that they do it just right. Not sure, but it was a slight shame none-the-less. It is worth noting however that Behringer do offer some distortion pedals in their non-RSM range.

In Use
When you plug the pedals in and start using them in sessions with all sorts of instrumentalists you start to appreciate the quality of the sound that they output. Each of the pedals have lots of controls that allow you to easily firm and fix the sound as you wish allowing you to find the perfect sound for your session. The pedals all sound equally as good as pedals that cost a lot more leaving me personally worried for these other manufacturers. My personal favourite of them all was the Bass Synthesizer. This pedal, coupled with the right bass player allowed for all sorts of fun and wet synth bass sounds using a real bass guitar. Other highlights for me included the Echo Machine, Space Chorus, Ultra Acoustic Modeller and the Rotary Machine which all performed amazingly under the studio pressures.

My major general criticism was that in some of the pedals there was so much functionality and tweakability crammed into the pedals that if you had big hands you would probably be finding it hard to set. Although the knobs are sturdy than other pedal manufacturers, I found that this made them slightly harder to setup and fine tune as you required although at the same time it wasn't a major issue. Also because these pedals are housed in plastic casing I do see that this might make some problems with lastability for the true touring musician however if you buy yourself a nice pedal board and look after your gear you should be fine. What's cool too and to calm the nerves of people dubious about Behringer's cheap prices is that they offer to replace any faulty pedals with no qualms giving you 100% piece of mind when investing in their product.

In a turbulent economic climate, the Behringer RSM pedals offer a cheap, flexible and versatile pedal set that sonically sound as great as the more expensive counterparts for a fraction of the outlay. Sounds good to me! Leaves me with a little more money to get some beers to enjoy while I play with my name pedals.

Where to Buy
Behringer +49 2154 9206 6441.

http://www.altsounds.com/

BOSS guitar effects processor GT-10 on the way

2009-03-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

The digital effects floorboard is a product BOSS which created by Japanese that innovated 20 years ago, represented an obvious ideal for the electronics-dependent guitarist and also a very tidy enough which can be powered by a single A/C adapter, and anything that guitarist ever needed distortions, choruses, flangers and delays.

Trying to convince a devotee of stompboxes—whether mass-produced gems like those offered by BOSS or hand-soldered, all-analog boutique pedals—to changed their hard-earned rig with even the best digital rack- or floor-mounted processor is a lost cause; it’d be like telling a guitarist to play just one ax. Stompboxes have the organic, tactile usability and analog effects boast a room-slicing presence and vintage warmth—there’s no denying that. But there’s also other reason why every well-rounded arsenal can’t harbor something like BOSS’ latest, greatest multi-effects floorboard, the GT-10; for recording, for tones that aren’t buying more pedals to dial in, for rehearsals and gigs where a digital amp model will suffice for the real thing, a sheer sonic inspiration. It’s a remarkable machine.

It’s a terrific-sounding unit, exploiting the COSM modeling technology that won over even the most cynical guitar geeks when BOSS used it in two pedals that deftly replicated classic Fender amps. The GT-10 ($500 online) includes excellent simulations of the most revered channels of numerous historical preamps (no, the tones won’t stand up in a blindfold test against your prized Twin or JCM, but come on), and there’s more: The board has two independent effects channels that can be combined with an expression pedal or switched either by foot or according to how hard you pick. Want a pristine, responsive Roland Jazz Chorus clean signal as well as a Marshall crunch for your Mahavishnu-style leads? You got it.

There are 200 preset tones available, and they’re dedicated to specific styles, eras, groups and even songs, with clever names that let you know what BOSS is going for even if legal boundaries prevent anything more explicit. (For example, the Elegant Gypsy-era Al Di Meola preset is dubbed simply, “Spanish Hwy”; the Eric Johnson-inspired endlessly sustaining rock tone is called “Dover’s Cliffs.”) This is a genre-spanning gadget, so it includes loads of rock-inspired tones (“Creamcrunch,” “Aero Dream”) along with those for funk, country, blues and jazz. The tones and effects sound remarkably like what’s heard in BOSS’ individual pedals—if you were to pick a single company to outfit a Furman pedalboard, BOSS’ catch-all line would be it—and the expression pedal can host simulations of a number of go-to wah-wah makes.

Jazz sounds are fewer, but the ones that are present are quality: “Thumb Octave” is your Wes-style sound, “S.C.O. Fusion” a dead-ringer for John Scofield at his most jazz-rock. Others include the archtop-invoking “Jazz Clean” and the versatile modern smooth tone “Super Fusion.”

If you can’t find precisely what you want in the presets, building original sounds is an idiot-proof process with the GT-10. With amusing (if somewhat corny) graphic displays, its EZ Tone wizard allows players to build and save new patches in a streamlined process using the edges of the dial control and the parameter controls. Simply enter what type of pickups your guitar has, what your signal is going through (combo amp, stack, mixing console/headphones, etc.), then choose your genre from an extensive list (“Jazz” is an option, thank God). Once you’ve established your musical idiom, home in on a more specific tone within that genre (examples for “Jazz” include “Warm Clean,” “Cool Clean” and “Mild Drive”), and finally adjust the fine and not-so-fine details: rhythm vs. lead tones, the amount of effects you want on your signal. Given the seemingly infinite number of tonal options available, the process is astonishingly simple. In a Bill Frisell mood one afternoon, I crafted a convincing impression of his delicate reverb-and-delay-heavy sound using the “Surf” category in just minutes.

The electronics are protected by attractive heavy-duty metal housing that recalls the toughness of a BOSS stompbox, and layout boasts an effective directness. There’s a brightly illuminated display screen, a large dial for running through presets, parameter controls, buttons for certain effects, four patch pedals, two multi-purpose control pedals, the expression pedal, connections for MIDI and USB, a tuner/bypass button, an output-level dial, a channel select, an effects loop and more. Where older floorboard models of this sort suffered from severe drops in volume and quality between tones, the GT-10 provides extensive equalization and compression capabilities.

Two tone-bank pedals next to the main dial double as a 38-second phrase looper with unlimited potential for overlapping, and that location points up the only real bummer about this machine. With my size-13 sneaker, I kept inadvertently hitting the control pedals; the looper setup also meant I didn’t have anything to rest my heel on, so my foot had to hover above the pedals, making steadily grooving, in-time loops a bit harder to achieve.

Still, that’s a small quibble for such a neat, efficient tool. It’s especially effective if your playing hits a wall and picking becomes a chore. An hour of tweaking and dialing on the GT-10 will reaffirm how much fun the electric guitar can be.

www.jazztimes.com

Guitar Effects Notes

2009-03-06T09:19:00.000-08:00

Guitar effects come in a wide variety, however, most effects are simply variations on four basic themes: Distortion, Dynamics, Reverb/Delay, and Pitch Modulation.

Single and Multi-effects Processors
Guitar effects now come in a variety of configurations, initially, they were single effects built into pedals, called stomp boxes, which grew into multi-effects processors built into both floor pedals, rackmount, and tabletop units. Many of these units also include drum machines and headphone jacks for practice purposes.

Distortion Effects
The category of distortion has three subdivisions initially based on the sound of an overdriven tube amplifier. These include distortion, overdrive, and fuzz.

Dynamic Effects
In studio effects processing, this category includes compressors and noise gates, but for guitars, we will extend it to include gain and presence boosters, volume pedals, and tremolo and vibrato effects, which include rotating speaker effects as well. Compressors and gates are available as separate effects but are almost always built into multi-effects processors.

Reverb/Delay Effects
As the title says, this category covers special effects, including reverbs, delays, and echo effects. While these effects are built into guitar amps and come as separate rackmount units, they are also available in stomp boxes and are common in multi-effects processor. In the early days, delays used analog tape loops to produce echo effects. Now, these effects are produced digitally and with modeling techniques. An offshoot of tape-echo effects are boxes that can sample multiple layers loops and play them back in real time.

Pitch modulation Effects
This category is comprised of units that affect pitch such as flangers, phase shifters, chorus, wah pedals, pitch shifters, and has grown to include envelope and resonance filters, ring modulators, talk modulators, and has even grown into full blown synthesizers controlled by MIDI guitars.

Modeling Effects
Modeling in and of itself is not a effect but a modern way of reproducing vintage guitar effects, acoustic instruments, amplifiers, cabinets, and and even the sounds of our guitar heroes including ones they used on specific songs. Modeling primarily finds its greatest use in the studio, particularly the home project studio where a number of amp and cabinet sounds become possible in the absence of a live room, studio mics, and a wide selection of expensive vintage and modern amps and cabinets.

Stomp Box vs. Rackmount, Single or Multi-Effects
Since there are so many high quality multi-effects units available, and ranging in price up to several thousand dollars, the question arises as to whether inexpensive single-effect stomp boxes, which can be a bit noisy, are even necessary anymore. The truth is that if you look in the racks of top guitarists who can afford whatever they like, you will find combinations of stomp boxes and high-end processors. There are certain stomp pedals in varying combinations that impart a characteristic tone. This is where personal taste comes into play. You could buy the same setup as your favorite guitarist, but that might prevent you from finding your sound. There are also multi-effects processors that combine modeling and both vintage and modern effects in one convenient floor pedal that can give you the precise sounds of your guitar heroes as well as numerous options to craft your unique sound.
http://www.sweetwater.com/

Effect introduction

2009-03-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

DISTORTION
Just like the name, distortion add your guitar sound more distorted and ‘right’ sound to play rock music. For a start, think it like a different between clean sound of guitar without any pedal and a sound of three chord riff played with a longer sound or ‘echo’. A good examples is any punk rock songs that we used to hear until today.

DELAY
An extension of distortion sound, particularly for any guitarist who want to learn a good solos skills.You can used this to adjust the longer vibratos or echo sound of your riff and solo like Guns N Roses – ‘November Rain’. A good settings can produced other effect style like flanger and chorus as well.

WAH PEDALS
Most commonly heard in many of Jimi Hendrix songs.Sounds like someone is chewing up something or may sound like some monster chewing your distortion effect with on and off sounds.Listen to solo part of Metallica – ‘Enter Sandman’.

CHORUS
This is the first of our time-based effects. When a slightly detuned and delayed "clone" of a guitar signal is played back with the original, it produces a subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) doubling effect, which produces a thicker, lusher tone. The original effect was produced by the Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, though later effects would add multiple detunings and delays to produce a rich, glossy animation. Andy Summers of The Police was quick to use the chorus effect, and it has only gotten more popular over the years.

FLANGER
The earliest "flanger" effects were created playing back the same sound on multiple tape decks, while the engineer used a finger on the tape reel's edge (or flange) to speed up or slow down the duplicate signal. This produced a wild jet-like sweep of the material's harmonic structure. Eventually, the effect was duplicated using advanced digital delays set to extremely short delay times and inverting the signal's phase.

Ref: http://www.sweetwater.com/

Keeley's First Original Design Fuzz/Overdrive!

2009-03-06T08:21:00.000-08:00

This might be what you've been looking for in an overdrive/fuzz box! The blend between the two is simply wonderful! The Fuzz Head is designed to work like Fuzz Face pedals that many players use as a LEAD BOOST. A Fuzz Face can be muddy, lacking note definition, too bassy, and lacking sustain. An overdrive sometimes doesn't give enough or is too smooth. In contrast, our design is transparent, has a better frequency response, and gives you that cutting edge for lead breaks.

Guitareffectspedal.com has announced a new overdrive box available on sale from Keeley.The Fuzz Head, which was designed to work like Fuzz Face pedals which many player use it like a Lead Boosst.

According to them,Fuzz Face seems to be muddy in sounds and may less in giving a good output in guitar note definition and can be too bassy.Just like overdrive which sometimes doesn't give proper amount of sound which is too "smooth", this design may give a better frequency reaction which will give more lead breaks.

The heart of pedal is know to be a NPN Germanium Transistor with an additonal gain stage.One thing which is great about this overdriving tube amps is a Darlington Pair binded with high gain silicon transistors can produce a high a tonnes of volume ouputs.It also has aother features like nice high current and low impedance thanks to a buffered output.Users can expected a very clean true signal when the pedal is off with true bypass features in this pedal and also a large blue LED, a very known trademark from Killer Keely.

The toggle switch is made of silicon/germanium which is like a gain/style switch.User can hear a different from other pedals here which is a modern twist on a vintage sound as of the insertion of two diodes (SI mode) which made of sillicon and germanium in parallel,giving more sustain and more overdrive mode because of the increasing gain and compression.

FOr a guitarist who looking for a very transparent and dynamic pedals,the germanium design and the overdrives with easy switching for a variety tones,textures and natural fuzz,this pedal is a very good bargain and a must try for everyone.

Check out http://www.guitareffectspedals.com/keeley.html

WNAMM09: Analog Overdrive And Distortion Pedal

2009-02-04T04:01:00.000-08:00

TC Electronic has announced the latest addition to the Nova pedal family: Nova Drive, TC Electronic's new all-analog, programmable overdrive-and distortion pedal, featuring the innovative drive circuit from the acclaimed Nova System. Here's the details from their press release...

Nova Drive takes the drive circuit from Nova System, and pairs it with a level of programmability and control never before seen in a stand-alone analog drive pedal. Featuring individual overdrive and distortion circuits that can be used separately or stacked together for virtually unlimited tonal flexibility, Nova Drive provides all the distorted and overdriven sounds guitarists could ever need. Nova Drive features with 24 programmable presets to create, store and recall favourite settings. Nova Drive integrates easily into any set-up, from simple pedal boards to high-end professional rigs.

The overdrive section of Nova Drive features an all-analog circuit that is digitally controlled. Its sounds range from bluesy sting and smooth tube-like breakup to a heavy crunch. The overdrive section features a dedicated 'mix' knob that allows mixing in original sound as desired, preserving the original character of the existing tone. The overdrive section of Nova Drive features the classic Level, Tone and Overdrive controls as well as a mix control that allows blending the dry sound with the overdriven for added clarity, note definition and punch.

Nova Drive's distortion section also features an all-analog circuit with digital control, and yields an even wider range of usable tones from an extremely transparent and subtle drive through classic rock crunch to untamed fuzz. Nova Drive's distortion section has a 2-band equalization section with bass- and treble controls, which allows for precise shaping of distorted sounds. Nova Drive's distortion character is best typified as raw, but like the overdrive section, it was specifically designed to preserve all character of a guitarist's own sound.

Nova Drive features three drive stages: Overdrive, Distortion and Overdrive+Distortion parallel, in any desired order. Nova Drive also features a true bypass, eliminating unwanted noise when turned of. Nova Drive's offers great flexibility through its three routing options when combining the Overdrive and Distortion. Most guitar players have spent countless hours finding the perfect order for their drive pedals – because overdrive into distortion, or distortion into overdrive results in dramatically different effects. Nova Drive gives guitarists total freedom by offering both options as well as a third 'parallel mode' that can best be compared to running two tonally different, great sounding amps at the same time. Changing routing can be done with press of a button and Nova Drive allows for different routings to be saved as a preset. Nova Drive features 19 programmable presets and gives guitarists several options of how to control the pedal. In 'Normal'-mode the overdrive and distortion switches work like regular stomp boxes. "Toggle" - mode switches either of the engines on/off for fast switching between overdrive and distortion sounds. Finally, 'Bank' – mode enables set up of 9 banks of two presets. This is ideal for users who prefer the sound of for either the overdrive or the distortion and makes it possible to switch between two different overdrive settings using the two switches.

Nova Drive features extensive options for easy integration into existing setups with external controllers. Adding the optional G-Switch pedal gives the user direct access to three presets as well as the individual drives. Furthermore Nova Drive is the only analog drive pedal that can be fully controlled via MIDI. Integration of Nova Drive into a MIDI-based guitar-setup yields complete control of all parameters – from preset change and effect on/off to real-time control of drive, level and tone parameters using an expression pedal.

Owners of TC Electronic's flagship multi effect and -switching system will find Nova Drive the perfect companion to an already impressive system. Nova Drive integrates seamlessly into their current rigs with unparalleled ease of use thanks to its plug-and-play compatibility with G-System. G-System will automatically recognize a connected Nova Drive and provide access to all Nova Drive parameters from G-System along with the rest of the built-in effects including real-time control of parameters using an expression pedal. Current G-System presets will be able to include Nova Drive if desired, a testament of the effort the TC Electronic engineers put into making the Nova Drive + G-System combination a match made in heaven.

"We simply wanted to do the ultimate Overdrive/Distortion pedal," says Tore Mogensen, Business Manager for Guitar at TC Electronic. "We wanted to combine the great sounds from an analog drive circuit with the extensive control options the digital domain offers and I really think we knocked this one out of the park, both feature- and sound wise. I cannot wait for guitarists to get their hands on it"

Tone Freak Rodentia™

2009-01-13T01:44:00.000-08:00

Tone Freak Rodentia™:
The Rodentia™ circuit design comes from a combination of two classic distortion circuits and various mods inspired by Jack Orman, Brian Wampler, and Andy Carrell.

The Rodentia™ is a heavy distortion effect that has plenty of gain in reserve. As with other Tone Freak Effects™ pedals, the Rodentia™ has added flexibility by enabling the user to change the character of the pedal via 3-position mini-toggle switch.

Features:
Controls: Level, Tone, Gain
3 clipping configurations
True bypass switching
Neutrik jacks
Teflon coated, silver stranded wire
Mil-spec PCB
Metal film resistors
AVX capacitors
100% hand assembled

US Orders Over $99 Ship FREE!

Tips for Using Guitar Effects Pedals: Free Online Music Lessons : Compressor Effects for the Electric Guitar: Free Online Music Lessons

2009-01-13T01:28:00.000-08:00

GarageBand ’09: What you need to know

2009-01-13T01:10:00.000-08:00

There’s more to this update than just learning to play music from experts
Those who witnessed Phil Schiller’s keynote presentation at Macworld Expo Tuesday got a taste of what’s new in GarageBand, iLife ’09’s music-, podcast-, and now instructional audio application.

GarageBand ’09 won’t be out until later in January, along with the rest of the iLife ’09 suite. But we’ve done some digging to find out more about the new version of iLife’s music component—some of which comes from the keynote, and some of which may be new to you.

Learn to play

The focus of Tuesday’s presentation was the music instruction aspect of the new, still-in-beta version of GarageBand. As demonstrated by Mr. Schiller, GarageBand includes guitar and keyboard lessons, and these lessons are offered in two components—Basic Lessons and Artist Lessons. As the name implies, the first offers instruction on the basics of playing that instrument—learning where particular notes are, forming chords, and playing rhythms, for example. The latter are music lessons that include an artist who teaches you how to play both the simple and advanced version of a song they’ve made famous (Sting showing you what chords to use with "Roxanne," for example).

There’s more to these lessons than what Schiller demonstrated before his keynote audience. For example, you have the option to view information in a variety of ways. In a guitar lesson, you can view not only the instructor and fretboard, but also view chords, tabs, and lyrics, for example. If you’re a left-handed guitar player, you can see the fretboard in that orientation. In a keyboard lesson you can see notation—bass clef alone, treble clef alone, or both clefs on the grand staff. The videos can also take advantage of multiple views. You might, for instant, wish to focus on what a guitar player’s left hand is doing.

You also have the opportunity to mix what you hear. For example, you can listen to only the instrument without the instructor’s voice. Additionally, in an Artist Lesson, you can mute the band or mix the volume levels of the individual instruments.

Changes abound

Lessons aren’t all that’s new to GarageBand ’09. To begin with, the interface has been reworked so it’s less cluttered. The Loop Browser no longer appears at the bottom of the GarageBand window; instead, it's incorporated in the pane to the right that you can expose or hide. The effects area is now more graphically rich and the overall color scheme is along the lines of Apple’s Aperture and Logic—gray rather than the old black text on a white background.

You also have more template options when starting a new project. In the past, for example, when you launched a new Podcast project, the GarageBand window filled with appropriate empty tracks—Podcast, Male and Female Voice, and Jingles. GarageBand ’09 extends those templates to include Piano, Loops, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Keyboard Collection, Voice, Songwriting, and Podcast. Choose one of these project types and GarageBand’s window is populated with appropriate tracks.

Guitar hero

GarageBand ’09 also emphasizes the program’s ability to model guitar amplifiers and effects. Although you could select different amplifier models in previous versions of GarageBand, the means for doing so wasn’t nearly as intuitive as it is in GarageBand ’09. With an interface element reminiscent of Magic GarageBand, you choose from among five amp models—amps similar to the tones you’d get from amps made by Fender, Marshall, and Vox. After you’ve selected an amp you can adjust its parameters—volume, tone, and on-board effects such as spring reverb—with controls that look like the knobs found on the original amp.

Instead of choosing effects from a pop-up menu you select “stomp boxes”—small gadgets guitar and bass players use to add effects such as reverb, chorus, and delay to their sound. To add a stomp box, just select one from a collection in the pane and drag it into one of the five positions reserved for these boxes. When you click on a stomp box you can then configure its settings. To replace a stomp box, just drag a new one on top of one already occupying a slot.

The Magic continues
Finally, GarageBand ’09 bears an enhanced version of Magic GarageBand, the feature that lets you play along with a virtual band. In this version of GarageBand not only can you jam with the band as you could in the past, but you can now also record your performance. In addition you can mix the levels of the various instruments that appear in the band.

More to come
As noted above, GarageBand ’09 and its iLife compatriots will be released at the end of January. We’ll have more details about the updated version once it arrives.

Christoper Breen is a Macworld senior editor and musician
by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com

Image Line Software at NAMM 2009

2008-12-23T07:33:00.000-08:00

Image Line Software, a leading developer of innovative music production software, will present its updated product portfolio at booth 7007 during the forthcoming winter NAMM show in Anaheim, California from January 15 to 18, 2009. Visitors and press are invited to visit the booth and collect a complimentary copy of the Image Line Showcase DVD, complete with detailed product descriptions & trial versions and a free copy of Edison - WAV Editor/recorder.

Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium (PRWEB) December 22, 2008 -- Image Line, a leading developer of innovative music production software, will present its updated product portfolio at booth 7007 during the forthcoming winter NAMM show in Anaheim, California from January 15 to 18, 2009. Visitors and press are invited to visit the booth and collect a complimentary copy of the Image Line Showcase DVD, complete with detailed product descriptions & trial versions and a free copy of Edison - WAV Editor/recorder. Image Line will also be highlighting the flagship music production suite FL Studio 8; the latest version of Deckadance DJ mixing software; Hardcore, a new guitar pedal effects emulation, and Ogun, a specialised metallic plugin synthesizer. Image Line will also be demonstrating Edison, an advanced wave editor/recorder as both a standalone and VST plugin version, and the latest sample collection, the Sounds of India.

"As a Belgian company, with our biggest market in the US, it is crucial for us to be present at this leading tradeshow. The NAMM tradeshow attracts professionals from the whole music industry and it is an ideal event for making new contacts, conducting business deals, and to learn about new products and technologies" says Frank Van Biesen, CFO of Image Line Software.

FL Studio 8
In 2008, Image Line celebrated the tenth anniversary of the widely acclaimed Digital Audio Workstation, FL Studio. Many users of the program have appreciated more than a decade of free updates to the program. In the latest version, FL Studio 8, users have welcomed more than 100 new developments including an improved user interface, updated sound engine, revised mixer, addition of 'event' pattern clips to the playlist, new multi-link MIDI learn system and a suite of new and updated plugins. The XXL and Producer Editions come with FL SynthMaker, an FL Studio native version of the popular plugin development application, SynthMaker. Users can now create their own virtual instruments, effects and MIDI dashboards, use them in FL Studio and share them with other SynthMaker users without writing basic code.

Deckadance 1.4
Several months ago, Image Line Software released the Mac version of Deckadance. Now, the latest version (1.4) delivers many new features including a new sound engine with improved time-stretching/compression technology, new BPM setup panel and beatgrid system, new spectral waveform color feature, new pitch range selection, new equalization filters design with improved kill behavior and new autogain engine. Scratch and spinback native support have also been added to the following controlers: Hercules (MKII, MP3 Console, Rmx), Numark Total Control and Behringer BCD2000/BCD3000. Deckadance has matured into a stable cross-platform and, most importantly, has support for a wide range of controller types allowing DJ's to use their existing controller & vinyl hardware.

Edison
The wave editor/recorder comes in standalone, VST and FL Studio native versions. Edison loads into any mixer track (VST effects slot) and records or plays audio from that position. Users will be excited to learn that it is possible to load as many instances of Edison as their host can contain. Parallel or chained instances of Edison are all possible. The visually stunning and easy to use interface has more than enough features to satisfy even the most demanding musicians and sound engineers.

Gross Beat
Gross Beat is a time manipulation effect designed for repetition and scratching effects. Gross beat is perfect for real-time or rendered gating, glitch, repeat, scratching and stutter performances. Gross Beat stores audio in a 2-bar rolling buffer under the control of 36 user definable time and volume envelopes, giving you unlimited creative control.

Hardcore
Hardcore is a software simulation of the 10 most popular guitar effects pedals. Available for both PC and Mac users, Hardcore gives virtual access to Distortion, Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Reverb, Delay, Noise Gate, Equalizer, Compressor and Modulator 'stomp-box' style effects, each with a unique sonic character.

Ogun
Named after the god of iron (according to the Haitian Vodou and Yoruba mythology), Ogun is a powerful synthesizer for creating realistic metallic sounds. Ogun's distinctive synthesis engine can generate more than 32,000 harmonics, modulated by 'harmonic mapping' functions that hand tonal control over the vast number of harmonics directly to the user.

Sounds of India
Sounds of India, the latest sample collection from Image Line Software, contains over 835 samples weighing in at 1.5 Gb and includes 36 instrument and 2 vocal categories. The collection covers the foundations of the classic Indian sound - Tabla, Sitar, Shenai, Harmonium and Bamboo Flute, but what makes it really unique is the collection of South Indian instruments as Veena, Ganjira, Maddalam, and rare Indian folk instruments (Edakka, Udukku, Darbuka, etc.) The diverse Indian spirit is further enhanced with the inclusion of sounds from many different temple bells and ethnic percussion instruments.

More information about these products can be found at Image Line Software Web Site.

About Image Line Software:
Established in 1994, Image Line Software provides high quality music applications to the computer-based music community and is well known for its leading digital audio workstation FL Studio (formerly FruityLoops), high quality synthesizers including Sytrus, PoiZone,Toxic Biohazard, Morphine and Ogun, a mix of innovative Effect plugins like Maximus and Hardcore and range of sample libraries used in their multi-sampler plugins DirectWave and Soundfont Player. In May 2007 Image Line Software released its acclaimed DJ mixing software application Deckadance. In addition to its audio software, Image Line Software develops and distributes the web site building application, EZGenerator.

For more information, please contact:
Maya Boycheva, PR Manager
Image Line Software
E-mail: pr(at)image-line.com

Overloud Ships TH1 — 4th Generation Custom Guitar Effects Suite

2008-12-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

December 3, 2008

Overloud (distributed in North America by ILIO) has announced that TH1, its Custom Guitar Effects Suite, is now being shipped to distributors and dealers worldwide. TH1 offers a new twist on the guitar player's stage and recording system by implementing both revolutionary features and a user interface that appeals to every level of player and producer, regardless of experience and technical know-how. Overloud's tube and analog emulation technology has been in development for more than ten years and has been brought to market in its fourth incarnation in TH1, resulting in what Overloud believes to be the warmest, most lush and truthful guitar tones ever created with a modeling plug-in.

Exclusive features such as SLR amplifier morphing, free life-like microphone positioning around cabinets, ReSPire cabinet technology, and BREVERB-based reverbs, are combined with a radically different and transparent user interface, a vast selection of mics, cabinets, and amps, dozens of stomp-boxes, pedals and rack effects, easy and powerful memory management, and unprecedented real-time control capabilities. Together, these features forge a totally new, yet familiar, experience both for the guitarist and the 21st century producer.

A 14-day playable demo is available for download on the company's website.

Features

Sound:
4th generation tube and analog emulation engine
SLR morphing technology, morphs between amps for an infinite sound canvas
3D positioning of microphones in front of cabinets
Cabinets feature ReSPiRe technology
BREVERB-based reverb effects
Global sound-influencing controls
Easy and intelligent stereo handlingtrue stereo in to out capabilities

Ease Of Use:
Easy to understand and modify signal path
In-line high quality Tuner
Compact view "Live" mode
Advanced memory management
12 Factory Banks featuring 93 Sounds and 462 Variations

Control:
Easy to configure MIDI Program and Bank Change control
Smart Controls open up new ways of controlling and tweaking sounds
MIDI CC control of Smart Controls

Additional Features:
Very low CPU usage
Plug-in or Standalone mode
Each amplifier introduces 4 samples latency, Zero latency for all other modules
8 Amplifiers with 15 total Channels and 21 operating Modes
21 Cabinets
18 Microphones: choice of Dynamic, Ribbon, and Condenser types
Two microphones for each Cabinet
Studio Ambience reverb optionally added proportionally to the distance of the microphone from the speakers
50 stomp boxes, pedals and rack effects
Parameter-based BPM sync switch
Local and Global Tap buttons; Host or Internal Tempo Sync.

Pricing and Availability
TH1 is available now in RTAS, AU, VST and Stand-alone formats for Mac OS X and RTAS, VST and Stand-alone formats for Windows and lists for $349 in the USA and Canada.

For more information, visit their web site at www.overloud.com.

Zoom G9.2tt Guitar Effects Console

2008-12-23T07:17:00.000-08:00

It is amazing to me how quickly the world of multi-effects has evolved. I remember not too long ago (circa 2001) evaluating some of the current attempts at digital amp and effects modeling and thinking that they were OK for practice but the sound quality does not compare to separate stomp boxes.

In the past few years, however, multi-effects and amp modeling technologies have moved beyond what I would call "studio toys" into fully capable rigs. At the end of the day, it's hard to argue with the convenience of having tons of great amps and effects pre-programmed and instantly available in such a small package.

The level of competition in this area has been intense, which is great in that with each evolutionary cycle we keep seeing better sound quality and more features shoe-horned into these boxes. Depending on your style and needs there are some amazing options that come in all shapes and sizes.

Often overlooked in this market is Zoom. A Japanese company, they have been a mainstay in the guitar effects game since 1983 - with one of the earliest forays into computer based multi-effects being the Zoom 505 in 1996.

Zoom is distributed by Samson Technologies in the U.S., and I was fortunate to review their flagship product, the G9.2tt. The G9.2tt is a cutting edge multi-effects and amp simulator with some really cool features not to be found on other devices, such as the innovative Z-pedal and dual tube pre-amps. If you have missed the G9.2tt until now, you should read on to find out all the details!

Features at a Glance:• 32-bit ZFX-3 processor• 96kHz sampling rate/ 24-bit AD/DA converters• World's fastest patch change speed: 7ms• Supports 200 patches, 100 factory and 100 user• 106 effects/ 10 modules• Two 12AX7 tubes for natural overdrive/compression and drive/volume• Dual Expression pedals• 3D Z-Pedal allows for multi-dimensional parameter control• USB interface for connecting directly to a computer• MIDI Support• Steinberg Cubase LE software bundled• Remote Patch Editor/Librarian available online
Setup
Depending on your application, the G9.2tt could take 30 seconds to set up or an hour. At its simplest, you just take this baby out of the box, plug in your guitar, and plug the mono-out to your amp or the L/R stereo-outs to your PA. Click the OUTPUT GAIN switch (-10 dBm or +4 dBm) to the correct setting for your amplification method (e.g., recording or amp). Great sound in 30 seconds flat.
If you want use the G9.2tt as audio interface to your DAW or use the G9 Librarian, then you’ll have to do a bit more legwork. First, go to the Zoom G9.2tt download site ( http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/download/software/g92tt.php ) and grab three files: the ASIO Driver, the G9.2tt Editor Librarian, and the additional patch set. Second, install the ASIO Driver and the Librarian. Third, if you do not already have a preferred DAW program installed (e.g., Tracktion, Ableton Live, Cubase, etc.) then you’ll want to install the copy of Cubase LE4 included with the G9.2tt. Keep the patch set on hold for later use with the librarian.
As an audio interface, I found the G9.2tt to work surprisingly well. I simply installed the ASIO driver and booted up my DAW. Even though I’m not a Cubase user, I installed the the LE4 version provided to complete the experience. A well written installation guide specific to the G9.2tt is included in the package to walk you through the steps. After a few minutes of testing, I found LE4 to be fairly robust, with excellent support for VSTs. I also was able to use the G9.2tt with both Mackie Tracktion 3 and Sonoma Wireworks Riffworks through ASIO with zero trouble.

With the G9 acting as the soundcard, there was practically zero latency (5.5ms), as well. Thankfully, the ASIO drivers are solid, and I detected no pops or dropouts. This setup works great if you are only recording guitars through the G9.2tt. If you are recording from multiple sources simultaneously, such as guitar and vocals – then you’ll likely run the G9.2tt through the stereo outs into the inputs on whatever interface you are using. (Note that if you do not use the montoring capabilities of the G9.2tt you will be subject to the latency within your recording setup.)

Now the hard part and the only thing I found overly cumbersome on the G9.2tt. First answer this question. Do you want to?

a) Back up your patches to your computer
b) Use the G9 Editor/Librarian to edit patches
c) Upload a patch set to the G9

If you answered “Yes” to any of those three queries, then you’ll need a secondary piece of hardware. While the G9 operates as a soundcard via USB, the G9.2tt sends and receives patch information via MIDI. Therefore, you’ll need a MIDI interface connected to your computer. For my testing, I used a MOTU Micro Lite USB Interface ($129), but there are other less expensive options such as the M-Audio MIDISport ($40). If and when Zoom decides to release an update to their firmware (currently v1.08), I would ask that they consider the adding the ability to send patch data via USB.

The visual patch editor is intuitive and functional, but don’t expect a lot of eye candy. It’s also not real-time, so you’ll have to upload your patches to the unit before you can hear them. In my testing, creating a new patch consisted of creating the bones on the editor, downloading the patch set to the G9, tweaking the sound to my liking using the interface on the G9, and then saving and re-uploading back to the computer. Because of this, you’ll want to give the manual a good read. Thankfully, Zoom also includes several “cheat sheets” in addition to the manual to facilitate patch creation and editing.

In similar fashion, the Librarian is also more functional than pretty. It is a utilitarian database program that allows you to load patch sets, create libraries, and edit names/comments, and backup your patch sets on computer. The librarian does allow you to keep all of your patches in subcategories that you create, which is a handy feature for organization. For instance, you could set-up subcategories by style (e.g., blues, metal, jazz), by gig (e.g., worship, top-40, weddings), or by setting (studio, stage, recording). From here, you can create patch sets (of up to 100 user patches) that can be uploaded to the G9.2tt. Although setting up your patch sets takes a significant upfront investment of time, it is a great tool if you have gigs with regular set lists or you play a variety of styles and venues where you need to quickly change out your required sounds.

There are 50 patches in four groups (A, b & U, u). You’ll find 50 factory presets patches already loaded on the unit. When you first boot up the G9.2tt, these 50 presets are loaded in all four groups. The difference between A/U and b/u is that the former are “live” presets for use through an amplifier and the latter are “recording” presets for connections to a computer or other device. Since A & b are read only (factory settings), if you want to store new patches you create or modifications of existing ones, you’ll have to use the 100 available slots in the U & u banks.

In some ways, it is actually easier to edit patches directly from the G9.2tt interface. It is well designed and there are separate buttons for each of the major functions.

Sound Test

For the sound test, I wanted a variety of options so I used my Gibson DC Standard for a heavy humbucker action, a G&L Comanche as my single coil screamer, and an Epiphone Dot Deluxe for some Jazzy vibe. I ran the G9.2tt into my trusty Ampeg J20 tube amp via the L/MONO out, through studio headphones via the PHONES jack, and finally through a studio setup (USB to computer, G9.2tt as soundcard monitored through a set of KRK V6’s).

The first thing I tested was the tuner. If you hold down the BANK UP switch for at least 1 second, you’ll enter tuner mode. Nothing special here, it does exactly what it says it does and is quite accurate. What I did like about it was that the tuner function was easy to get into and easy to get out of, which is a necessity when you only have 30 seconds in between songs to double-check your tuning or go to Drop D. You exit the tuner by tapping the BANK UP switch a second time. The LCD screen is a bit small so you may have to bend over to see it if you are on stage, but it does have a bright backlight.

Next, I tackled the 50 preset patches. There is quite a varied group in this mix, each one with A and B channels. Note that you’ll need to tweak the EQ, Presence, Accelerator, and Energizer settings to your tastes – all easily done using the knobs provided. My favorites were:

• CleanCMB – Easy clean sound with authentic tube overtones.
• AcoJazz – Great clean, ambient tone with a sweet shimmery feel.
• Diezel – Channel B’s driving tone (dry and not too much gain) was great in Drop D.
• AC30TBX – Skip the Z pedal on this one, but channel B has got a definite VOX-esque saturation.
• W Fender – Decent simulations of Twangy Twin Reverb on Channel A and Fender Bassman on Channel B.
• SurfRock – Very clear, spanky clean tone. Z-pedal on this one controls phaser and tremolo.
• NotSubtl – Hot, super distorted, high-gain tone. The sound of modern metal, that is – like the patch name – not in the least bit subtle.
• BeckOct – I don’t know if this sounds like Jeff Beck really, but when I added some treble, I was able to grab some clear fluid lines. Skip the Z on this one too, the echo is too rangy using the Z.
• KingTone – Growly bluesy tone. Nice crunch on the lower strings, clean on the higher strings.
• SatchDST – Check out Channel B on this one for that Marshall scream.
• BrianDly – Not perfect, but I could definitely hear some Queen when channelling some Brian May.
• KurtDRV – Almost too perfect! Zoom's noise reduction actually gets in the way of this one. Back off on the noise filter to recapture some of the thick Nirvana raunchiness.

I spent a great deal of time experimenting with the myriad of selections available. Suffice it to say that there are too many options to go through in this brief space. Here’s a list of the amps models and effects from which to choose. I like the fact that although there are not a million options, these are all well selected and individually useful.

Amps:
• Fender Twin Reverb '65
• Fender Tweed Deluxe '53
• Fender BASSMAN
• VOX AC30TBX
• Marshall 1959 SuperLead 100
• Marshall 1962 Bluesbreaker
• Marshall JCM800
• Marshall JCM2000
• Roland JAZZ CHORUS
• HIWATT Custom100
• MESA/BOOGIE MarkIII
• MESA/BOOGIE Dual Rectifier
• ENGL E650 Ritchie Blackmore Signature 100
• PEAVEY 5150 STACK
• Hughes & Kettner TriAmp MK2
• Diezel Herbert
• Z Combo (ZOOM original)
• Z Stack (ZOOM original)

Distortion/Overdrive:
• BOSS DS-1
• BOSS MT-2
• BOSS OD-1
• Ibanez TS808
• KLON CENTAUR
• Marshall Guv'nor
• MXR Distortion+
• PROCO RAT
• MATCHLESS HOT BOX
• Dallas-Arbiter FUZZ FACE
• Electro-Harmonix BIG MUFF
• Extreme Distortion (ZOOM original)
• Digital Fuzz (ZOOM original)
• Z Clean (ZOOM original)
• Z OD (ZOOM original)

Other Effects:
• Compressor/Limiter
• 6 band equalizer
• Chorus
• Octave
• Pitch Shifter (including intelligent pitch shifting)
• Echo
• Delay
• Reverb
Note: Multiple options within each of these – for instance 12 types of Reverb and 7 types of Delay

For grins, I also plugged in a Greg Bennett ADSR dreadnaught acoustic I had lying nearby. This acoustic has a LR Baggs Element transducer pickup that I installed, which can get a little nasally without some EQ. To my pleasant surprise the 12AX7 tubes really warmed up the piezo acoustic sound. In fact, some of the clean preset patches (read the Patch List guide to find the clean settings) were really great! At first, I landed on AcoJazz, but then moved on the J-Chorus for more of a shimmery feel. SurfRock on the clean setting added a sweet amount of tremolo without overpowering the acoustic sound. My favorite was LukeCLN, based on Steve Lukather’s sound – clearly for electric, but it turns out to be great on acoustic as well.

One of the most fun things about this unit is the Manual mode, or as I like to call it, the “Pedal Board” Mode. Similar to the tuner, you hold down the BANK DOWN switch and it goes into manual mode. This allows you to use the 1-5 switches to turn on/off effects rather than switch between patches. For instance, instead of changing the entire patch, you can just kick-on/off selected effects such as pre-amp (distortion), chorus, delay, reverb while keeping the same overall amp, cabinet, and other tone settings. Two of the switches are fully programmble to almost any function.

Finally, this has to be mentioned separately. The noise reduction techniques that Zoom uses on this pedal are uncannily good. When the guitar is supposed to be silent it is very silent. Even on high gain settings, there is no background “hiss”. Noise is something that has bothered me about other modelers in the past. I’m glad that Zoom got it right on this unit. Funny enough, it’s almost too quiet on some settings. For some amps and effects, like the Tube Screamer, I am used to hearing a bit of hiss in the background and have learned to ignore it. All-in-all, the noise-gate alone makes the G9.2tt a worthwhile investment for recording applications.

One thing I did not try, but I’m glad it has, is the external effects loop. If you have an effect you can’t do without it is nice to know that you can extend your possibilities.

Grade: A
Pros: Solid Build, Fast Patch Switching, No Hiss – Super Quiet, Z-Pedal, Amazing Tone Through Tube Amp, Effects Loops, Aux In, Manual “Pedal Board” Mode
Cons: Requires MIDI interface to access Patch Librarian, Sometimes the Z-pedal goes out of phase, Software functional but not polished
Street Price: $399

Conclusion

The Zoom G9.2tt is definately one of the most advanced multi-effects units on the market. Because it doesn't have the market share in the U.S. that other companies enjoy, it is possible that you may have missed it. Nevertheless, as far as multi-effects units go, you will be hard pressed to find one with as many features as the G9.2tt. The most compelling are the input and output 12AX7 tube gain stages (i.e., Accelerator and Energizer), and the Z-pedal.

The only gripes I have are the requirement of a MIDI device to edit and backup patches and that the software could use a lot more spit and polish. In fact, for this, I would like to see something more akin to what Zoom recently released with the C5.1t.

If you are in the market for one of the higher-end multi-effects units, then you should give the G9.2tt a hard look. The effects quality is excellent, the ability to customize is extensive, and the noise gate technlogy is impressive to say the least.

For these reasons, I'm happy to give the Zoom G9.2tt the 2008 "Rig Ready" award from GuitarGearHeads.com!

Digitech Shipping RP350 Guitar Recording Solution

2008-03-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

DigiTech, a manufacturer of guitar and bass multi-effects processors, and a Harman International company (NYSE-HAR), is now shipping its versatile RP350 Multi-Effects Modeling Processor with Steinberg's® CubaseTM LE4 Music Production Software, creating a turnkey guitar recording solution. The inclusion of Cubase software enhances the RP350's capabilities; Via the RP350's USB connection, guitars can be recorded directly to PC or Mac, then captured and edited using Cubase LE4's 48-track DAW. As an added bonus, Cubase LE4 features VST soft-synth instruments, such as drums, for additional creative power. This combination makes it easy to arrange, record and produce music in one simple package.

The RP350 features over 118 amplifiers, cabinets, effects and stompboxes - so versatile, any tone can be captured with ease. Housed in a rugged, roadworthy die-cast metal chassis, the RP350 features a built-in expression pedal to control wahs, volume and other effect parameters. The RP350 can also be edited from PC or Mac using the included DigiTech X-Edit editing software.

* The RP350's full feature set includes:
Included Cubase LE4 Music Production Software
30 Tone and 30 Effects Libraries, with Effects Level and Master Level
140 presets (70 factory, 70 user)
43 amp & cabinet types
17 distortion stompboxes
56 effects
5 seconds delay time
USB for X-Edit Editor/Librarian and Audio Streaming/DAW Recording
60 High quality drum patterns
Independent 1⁄4" Left and Right Outputs
Amp/Mixer Switch
Independent Left and Right Balanced XLR outputs
Learn-A-LickTM Phrase Trainer
Built in chromatic tuner
Built in expression pedal
Heavy-duty Metal Chassis
LED Display
Included power supply

The DigiTech RP350 Multi-Effects Modeling Processor with included Steinberg Cubase LE4 Music Production Software is now available with an MSRP of $199.95.

http://www.guitarjamdaily.com

Heavy Electronics Releases The Radio Havana Lo-Fi Pedal

2008-03-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

February 11, 2008
http://news.harmony-central.com

Radio Havana breaks all the rules and provides a tone thats reminiscent of a small transistor radio. Tinny with washed frequencies. This discrete engineered pedal loves to find the odd frequencies and push them to the forefront. Gain knob not only delivers overdrive but increases interactivity between frequencies, sometimes allowing notes to oscillate between each-other. Radio Havana uses ceramic capacitors amongst other techniques to accentuate grit and overall signal degradation. The Voltage Starve circuit, found within all of the Heavy Electronics Series One pedals, allows the user to adjust the voltage all the way down to .1 Volts. In application with the Radio Havana the Voltage Starve circuit accentuates the core function of the pedal as a whole. Perfect for breakdowns, and really makes things interesting for bass and baritone guitars. Radio Havana, perfect for the deconstructionist in all of us.

Chorus: How it works ?

2008-02-25T02:10:00.000-08:00

The algorithm behind the chorus effect isn't a spectacular or amazing trick - it's actually fairly simple. What happens when two people play instruments in unison? Well they are not always playing in precise synchronization, so there is some delay between the sounds they produce. In addition, the pitch of the two instruments can deviate somewhat, despite careful tuning. These are the functions that your chorus effect is reproducing.

This slight delay can be easily implemented with a delay line. Creating the detuning effect may not seem very simple at first, but it can be achieved by transforming the simple delay line into a variable length delay line. The 'variable length' part just means that the delay time changes over time, though it's effect on the pitch may not be very clear at first.

To understand how the pitch is changed, picture the delay as a recording device. It is storing an exact copy of the input signal as is arrives, much like a cassette recorder, and it then outputs that a little later, at the same rate. To increase the amount delay, you want a longer segment of the signal to be stored in the delay before it is played back. To do this, you want to read out of the delay line at a slower rate than it's being written (the recording rate is unchanged, so more of the signal is being stored). Reading back at a slower rate is just like dragging your fingers on the wheel of the cassette, which we know lowers the pitch. Similarly, to reduce the delay time, we can just read back faster, analogous to speeding up a playing cassette, which increases the pitch - the 'munchkin effect.'

So now, by mixing this delayed and pitch modulated copy of the input together with the original, we have the chorus effect. A diagram for our chorus effect is given in Figure 1.

This structure may look very familiar to you - it's basically our other friend the flanger. The chorus differs in only a couple of ways. One difference is the amount of delay that is used. The delay times in a chorus are larger than in a flanger, usually somewhere between 20 ms. and 30 ms. (the flanger's delay usually ranges from 1 ms. to 10 ms.) This longer delay doesn't produce the characteristic sweeping sound of the flanger. The chorus also differs from the flanger in that there is generally no feedback used.

The only remaining point to discuss is the manner in which the delay time actually changes. In general, some periodic waveform, such as a sine wave, is used. This waveform changes slowly (say than 3 Hz and below.) and is referred to as a LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator). You can control the chorus sound by changing the waveform's frequency, its amplitude, and its shape. We make a simple change to our diagram of the chorus to denote this LFO dependence as in Figure 2.

Other variations on the chorus effect are also possible. For example, rather than using an LFO, you could use a randomly changing delay time, which might model musicians playing in unison a little better. Also, when playing in unison, there will be some loudness differences between the players, so we could also vary the amplitude of delayed signal. This amplitude parameter could then be controlled by another LFO.

http://www.harmony-central.com

Flanger

2008-02-25T02:06:00.000-08:00

As with the chorus effect, here the signal is split or cloned and a short delay is simply added to the cloned signal-then again mixed back in with your original signal. This delay has several repeats with the time of the repeats being lengthened and shortened at a steady adjustable rate. The resulting sound is usually much thicker than the chorus effect. Check out the Queen song “Keep yourself Alive” to hear it for yourself.

http://www.cleverjoe.com

Blogger Top Pick: TC Electronic Stereo Chorus Flanger

Chorus

2008-02-25T02:03:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the most widely used modulation effect, is so called because it makes your guitar sound like more than one – thicker and usually a bit “sweeter” sounding. This is done by electronically “cloning” your original guitar sound and adding delay or “modulation” (which is shortening or lengthening the delay) to your cloned signal. Then this is mixed back in with your original signal. Although it can be used as a solo sound this effect is generally used for a clean rhythm sound.

http://www.cleverjoe.com

Blogger top pick : BOSS CH-1 Super Chorus Pedal