newdilemma.com

For every step our band takes, it takes one back, with the hopes of taking huge steps forward. Enough to give even the most seasoned vertigo. Let’s check out the situation:

*There is no singer for the band. He has left, or has been released (whichever term works). I personally seen it coming a mile away but in the hopes that my intuition was incorrect I remained silent. Now we must find a singer. I like singing, and though a certain member of the band is unwavering in his stance that we need a vocalist apart from ourselves, I do hope the opportunity to back or accompany the new vocalist presents itself, that would be fun.

*We are no longer a cover band. The guys I play with are top notch musicians. Awesome in every aspect of their expertise. I do not lie and have never lied when I say that I am the worst musician in the band. (I bring something different to the table: mainly color,lol!) We believe we can make our own great music and have decided that it is exactly what we will do. Though it doesn’t hurt that we have like thirty covers we can pull in an emergency.

So there you go. I don’t know if we took a step back or forward, but like it is commonly said, it is what it is. I’ll let you guys know how it all goes.

Here is an update of my pedal board. Remember I wasn’t adding anything, well, I guess I lied. I added a Moog Moogerfooger Ring Modulator and an MXR Dyna Comp Compressor. Let the tap dancing begin!

Even a good pie needs filler in between the chunks of goodness it is made from, and this blog is much like the pie, so as a filler, I will begin a new installment I will call “Songs I Like”. I will tell you a song I like every so often and what I can about the artist, or why it appeals to me, or whatever comes to my mind.

So this week, the song that is getting crazy airplay in my head is, The Widow by The Mars Volta. Something about it just strikes a chord with me. As a cool side note, The Mars Volta guitarist/band director Omar Rodriguez-Lopez has some things in common with me, check this out:
1) We’re both Puerto Rican.
2) We both wear glasses.
3) We share a last name. (Rodriguez)
4) We’re both left handed.
5) We’re both bad ass guitarist.

Ok, ok, maybe that last one was made up, he’s the only bad ass guitarist between the two of us, lol.

The video is a may be a bit weird for some, it is some weird metaphoric reference to black tar heroin I believe. The song is great in my opinion though. Enjoy.

Ah, guitar players, a fickle bunch. Everything has to be just perfect, until we decide it is not perfect. Lately, the rage just seems to be “true bypass this” and “true bypass” that. What does it all mean?

Guitarist usually use a effect in between their amp and their guitar. Now if I hooked my guitar directly to the amp, that would give me the guitar’s truest tone, your guitar cable being the only factor in altering the sound. (not taking into consideration your amp’s natural tone or your guitar’s) So back to the effects, if I place an effect pedal in between the guitar and the amp, the circuitry of the pedal may have a serious effect on the tone when not in use (When in use it’s supposed to affect the tone.) So, many manufactures have started using “true bypass” switches so that when the effect is switched off, it totally bypasses the circuits inside the pedals, therefore maintaining tonal integrity.

My Vox V847 Wah was not true bypass, so I decided to something about it. I hopped on Ebay and located a a Carling DPDT footswitch (true bypass) and ordered it. It arrived and soon it was installation time.

Here is what you need to begin:

From right to left:
A Phillips Head screwdriver
A Snickers Candybar (guitarist need help being satisfied,lol)
The Vox V847 Wah Pedal
The New DPDT footswitch
A 9/16 wrench (to loosen the footswitch)
Electrical Solder
A soldering iron
and just a bit of extra wire

First I took off the bottom of the wah pedal with the screwdriver, I eventually even removed the circuit board, it’s not like it’s difficult.

I then removed the original footswitch, just by placing the hot tip of the soldering iron against the post you can pull the wires off without snipping them.

In this picture, you can see the most notable difference being the DPDT switch has 6 post and the original SPDT switch has only 3 post.

Now all the wires are soldered in per the instructions (see below), I would have taken pictures of me actually soldering but it is hard enough to hold the wire, solder, and soldering iron without trying to add a camera into the mix.

Now I just cleaned up the wires a little, reinstalled the circuit board and the bottom was ready to go on.

After i put it all together, I put it back on the pedal board and played with it for about a half hour, and while it may sound a “hair” crisper, I think some people really go off the deep end over true bypass. I am sure it may come in handy, but it is not the end all be all off tone. Hendrix, early Clapton, Sabbath, Maiden, and all those bands that played back in the day didn’t even know what true bypass was, and the still rocked the hell out. In the end, I guess the only opinion that matters is your own.

**For those interested in the true bypass mod instructions, here are the instructions linked back to Fulltone’s website, don’t ask me why Fulltone has a mod for a Vox product on it’s site.

1) Unsolder wires to SPDT (stock switch), remove it, and Install new DPDT.

2) Cut Brown wire at “X” Mark where it meets PCB Quick Disconnect.

3) Re-route that Brown wire to DPDT Terminal #4 do not solder

4) Jumper a short wire from DPDT terminal #4 to DPDT terminal 3 and solder both.

5) Attach wire from Output Jack “Tip” to DPDT Terminal #5 and solder.

6) Run the Green wire (from PCB disconnect) to DPDT Terminal #2 and solder.

7) Attach wire from Wah Pot Terminal #3 to DPDT Terminal #6 and solder.

8) Attach a (ground) wire from wah pot terminal #1 to DPDT Terminal #1 and solder.

Congratulations….you’re done!

Well this is as good as it gets…financially. This will be my pedalboard for playing live and whatever else comes my way. Just wanted to share it with you. This is whats on it from right to left. (That is the way my mind views it.)

1. Korg Pitchblack Tuner
2. Vox V847 Wah
3. Proco Rat2 (Distortion)
4. EHX Russian Big Muff Pi (Distortion/Fuzz)
5. MXR 6 Band EQ
6. Digitech Multi Chorus
7. EHX #1 Echo (echo/delay)
8. Boss BF-2 Flanger
9. EHX Holy Grail Reverb
10. MXR SmartGate (noisegate)
11. The footswitch for my amp.
12. Morley Optical Volume Pedal

All sitting on a Pedaltrain PT-Pro Pedalboard. That’s it. I can’t afford anymore. Seriously. For real. I mean it. Undoubtedly.

Oh, check out this new guitar I picked up, lol…

It’s not really new, it’s new to me. It’s an old Samick Artist Series Gold Top Les Paul Copy. (LP-450 I think) It really is a quality piece and in my humble opinion can go toe to toe with any Epiphone Les Paul Copy. Anyway, stay tuned, no where to go but up from here!

It has been long said that American Stratocasters dominate Mexican Stratocasters largely in part through wiring. I have slowly been working on getting all the pieces together to bring her up to par with ANY stratocaster, be it American, Mexican, or Japanese.

I present to you:

What you see is a set of Lace Sensor Hot Gold Pickups, Toneshaper SSS-1 Control Knobs and Switch, and a Graphtech Supercharger Kit for Strats (kit C actually), oh and some strings since I have to tear everything apart to do the changes.

Here is how it looked before:

I love my Fender saddles, but let see if the Graphtech saddles work nicer, I’ll do a write on them in a few weeks and give my worthless opinion.

Well the strings are off and the pickguard is off, there are the Mexican Pickups I am replacing and the pots and wiring:

Here is the Toneshaper system in place. It slips right into standard Fender pickguards, nothing to do but tighten it up:

Next, to wire up the Lace Hot Golds, I try to keep it neat and the Toneshaper is cool because you don’t have to solder any wires, just slip them into their retainers:

Now you see all these little dip switches, they let you configure the wiring, Vintage Wiring, Modern Wiring, Volume mod, Blender Effect, choosing capacitor values and so much more. The instructions pretty much tell you where to set them for each value you want to change:

Now that all that was done, it was time to take off the Fender saddles, I really enjoyed that because it is impossible to clean under the saddles and several years of filth had accumulated underneath them:

Here is how the Graphtech saddles turned out, I like how it looks but only becuase my guitar is black, any other color guitar and I would hate it:

You can barely tell the difference now, except for the obvious pickup change, but the graphite Graphtech nut and string tree doesn’t jump out and grab your eyes and well thats good:

I hope you enjoyed this pictorial, I will have to do a lot of tweaking here and there for a few days to get the intonation and action right and other little things. All in all it took about 3 hours to complete, but only because I was taking it nice and slow to make sure I did everything right. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go play it, because with so many new parts it’s lost a bit of Mojo and I have to build it back up!