Not bass-related

ficelles

ficelles

Unicorn Ninja
Reaction score
3,995
Points
93
Location
An English peninsula
bonin in the boneyard said:
A lot of bass players repurpose old 5W Epiphone Jrs for that very purpose. I've only gone as low as 15W, which surprisingly was too loud to overdrive in my apt.
Click to expand...

The little Supro is a lot louder than you'd expect 1W to be, although quoted power rating is generally at much lower distortion
level than with the amp cranked. I can be in the same room with it on full bore, just.
 
knuckledust3r

knuckledust3r

Royal Corn
Reaction score
11,433
Points
113
I've been following this guy for a few years now, including buying some video lessons from him a while back. This series "Where Does The Tone Come From In An Electric Guitar" has been endlessly fascinating - quite literally piece by piece, he's either isolated or removed components of his guitars and amps and run the resultant unit through a couple of visualizers. Key takeaways were that, with the same strings and pickups, you can literally stretch some strings between a workbench and a counter and still get 99% of the tone of a solid guitar...and that nearly every change you make in an amplifier cabinet will impact the tone more than anything you can do to the guitar. To put it into a gross oversimplification, only the magnets matter.

This video throws it all out the window by echoing something that I learned on Reddit of all places: Any and all guitar tone you're chasing has been recorded. When I was searching for a distinct country tone, I discovered that it came from plugging a Telecaster directly into the board and adding effects in post - in other words, literally nothing I could ever do would get me that tone. The tone I was chasing exists only in a studio. What Jim puts forth is similar, and he actually demos a bit of mic placement throughout the room and the impact on the "tone" of the video...but, Youtube compresses the shit out of sound, so even when he's showing his visualizers and waveforms, there's no guarantee that any subtlety will be translated through Youtube.

Now, when I'm saying all this, I also used some studio monitors (that I picked up when I worked at the guitar shop all those years ago) in a couple of actual blind tests in Youtube to pick up an amp...Even translated through Youtube, the bloom of a tube amp comes through the recording. But, for me, the practicality of this video series (and what makes it so fascinating to me in the relentless pursuit of tone) is being shown that, basically, tone doesn't exist. Any upgrade or variation can be overcome 99% of the way by adjusting something.
 
NSYMCE

NSYMCE

Corn Star
Premium Corn
Reaction score
7,407
Points
113
Location
Pacific Northwet
Thinking about picking this thing up for my weekly Friday night jams:

1688131811718.jpeg


We often have three or more bass players show up, and play at least several trad bluegrass tunes every week, and lots of other Americana styles where it would probably fit in well. I can play guitar as well as most of the jammers (usually 2-5 guitarists), but I don't own an acoustic guitar and the lead player already owns a dobro but only plays it maybe a third of the time. This "dojo" seems weird and funky enough to keep me engaged, and is something I could take to festival/campfire jams without having to deal with a battery powered amp rig. Real banjos are quite expensive and heavy, pretty annoying played solo for practice, and not really well suited to my jazzbo sensibilities, so I think I just may take a flyer on this thing.
 
NSYMCE

NSYMCE

Corn Star
Premium Corn
Reaction score
7,407
Points
113
Location
Pacific Northwet
bonin in the boneyard said:
Looks cool! Have you tried playing it yet?
Click to expand...
I'm gonna try it sometime over the holiday weekend, once my amp sells; the owner lives just a few miles up the hill. Want to run the idea by the jam host (mando player) and the lead guitar player tonight and make sure they're both onboard, which I expect they will be. I'm sure the lead player would want to use it at the jams sometimes too, and I could snarf his sweet old Gibson acoustic on those tunes. The $64K question is how it sounds with a slide, and none of the online demos I've found so far cover that at all. It sounds killer on the demos for comping old school swing though, both jazz and country styles. And the more I can push the jam in those directions, the better!
 
NSYMCE

NSYMCE

Corn Star
Premium Corn
Reaction score
7,407
Points
113
Location
Pacific Northwet
bonin in the boneyard said:
We're thinking about getting my daughter her own clarinet. She really enjoyed doing band but had to return the instrument at the end of the school year.
Click to expand...
Oh man, wish I had been interested in any form of playing back when I was in school. Starting in a legit big band at age 65 was pretty danged challenging.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top