GuitArcher

Just a collection of thoughts... Time to Reflect Listening to the Guitarcaster Podcast recently has been pretty interesting.  I find that they sit in a middle ground between 60 Cycle Hum and the Guitar Nerds; There's enough structure to not get lost in their nonsense, but not so much that it becomes rigid. Having recently finished their episode about reverb, I found myself thinking about how I approached reverb, which is to say I didn't really think about it, despite owning the Hall of Fame 2.  Turn the knobs to somewhere in the middle, select a preset, and boom, reverb. What really opened up my thinking was their discussion on hall reverb.  I already knew that this was meant to emulate a concert hall, not a hallway, but what I didn't think about was, having been in many concert halls, what the sound actually did.  Yes, the reverb was BIG, but it wasn't long.  After all, a concert hall isn't some deep dark cave where the reverberation goes on for eve...

A visit from my brother last weekend afforded us the chance to A/B some pedals from each our our collections.  Or particular interest to me was the EHX East River Drive, a Tube Screamer clone that apparently had help from Analog Man. We ran both through the Fender 68 DRRI and used an Eric Johnson Rosewood Stratocaster. Comparing it to the Fulltone Fulldrive 2 and the Noah Sark Green, the EHX was really good .  Clearer in the midrange than the Sark, with a bit more of an edge on top than the Fulldrive. If you ever wanted to hear how Screamers could sound different, compare the EXH to another clone. Pictured Somewhere - All the pedals mentioned. The second comparison we took a stab at was the JHS Angry Charlie and the Boss Power Driver. Still running into the Fender, but this time using humbucker equipped guitars, it was really shocking how close the latter could get to the former.  With the Boss, anything above 12 o'clock on the gain compressed too much, bu...

I've returned from vacation in much the same way I typically do - with more cash in my pocket than I typically carry around.  First world problems, right? It got me thinking: What could I buy with the actual cash I had on me? With $52 dollars burning a hole in my pocket, I turned to Kijiji to see what I could acquire, with the only rules being that I couldn't spend a cent more than I had, and that the location had to be convenient - near home or work, or on the way between. Below is the what I found with a quick search of everything within 40K of my the mid-point of my commute. TC Electronic Mojo Drive - $45 Do I really need another overdrive?  Probably not, especially given that I have a Joyo Ultimate Drive in the mail, but this is still interesting.  Is it a Tubescreamer clone?  Based on the PGS video , this seems to be somewhere in between a TS9 and and OCD.  Pass. Boss Metal Core - $40 I bought a Metal Zone for $30 for a laugh, and despite...

Just a quick update: Having the Z has made me want to dust of my pedal board and get back into that end of things.  Last night I took some time to clean off the board a reassemble it with the pedals that have largely sat in my cabinet, unloved and unused. First off, I recognize the power bar and the Danelectro 9V adaptor are hardly the "pro-choice" setup, and yes - I'll eventually get around to buying a power supply from Amazon.  Understand that when I put together this board 10+ years ago, cheap power supplies were NOT a thing, so I feel like I should be getting credit for creativity. Secondly, I don't have enough small patch cables to hook everything up.  Amazon can solve this problem too. The board itself may eventually have to go.  No slats means there's only so much I can do to clean up the mess of cables, and while it's functional, seeing all sorts of super clean pedal boards has me envious.  With the right wiring I could easily double the current ...