Waiting for the Ocean is a song I wrote a while back, during GW Bush’s first term. I heard him speak about global warming, and how it was unproven, even though the facts – actual measurements – were already pretty clear by then. I was disappointed that he blew off the whole issue, and knew it would be like a lot of important issues that are avoided or ignored for one reason or another. My mind wandered as it usually does, and I came to wonder how does one person deal with the climate change issue, assuming the worst of the worst possible predictions come to be? If the water is going to rise, the obvious answer is to mover to higher ground. Hence the song.
Posted January 16th, 2012. Add a comment
A while back Danelectro starting selling pedals for under $20 each. I sprung for a distortion and and overdrive pedal that were $15 each. They are cheap plastic, and the parts on the inside are so tiny that…I don’t know. They’re just tiny. The thing is – these pedals sound very good! Remarkably good considering the price. If you see them, snag one or two. I’ve gigged with them a couple of times. I don’t like them as much as my Fulldrive or GT-2, but for $15 each…
The PowerScreamer is another TS-808 based pedal that falls into the “Overdrive” category. I use this pedal regularly, swapping it with my Fulltone Fulldrive from time to time, and sometimes using them in tandem. It has a unique switching system that (I believe) swaps which diodes are used to create the overdrive. That gives it quite a bit of range. It can distort more than the Fulldrive, but it’s not really a distortion pedal. Very solid. I plan on holding on to this one for a while.
Once again, I found a Fender Standard (MIM) Strat for a good price and snapped it up. As with the first MIM Strat I got, this guitar has a super comfortable neck and plays really well. The frets are medium sized, as opposed to the jumbo frets on my main home made strat. The pickups aren’t bad at all. They definitely have that Strat snap to them, but they are less full sounding and weaker than the Kinmans that I have in the neck and middle position of my main guitar. That makes sense though.
As of right now I use this guitar for recording, and it’s my back up for gigging. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to hold on to this one or not.
Somebody locally was selling this guitar for a good price. It was very used. A veteran of the weekend warrior scene. This guitar sounded great and played great. Easily as good as my American strat. The neck is identical in size and feel. I ended up parting this guitar out (even though I hate that) because the frets were so worn. A fret job would have cost about the same as I paid for the guitar, so I didn’t think it was worth it. I probably would have done it if it were a combination I liked better, but the body had dulled to a less than attractive metallic red color.
I got the Powerhouse Strat used because it looked cool. One of my favorite colors – Candy Apple Red. This guitar wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. It was like new when I got it. Fret ends were very sharp, the sounds were ok. The Powerhouse electronics use a battery and allow you to go from standard single coil sounds to thicker, more humbucker-like sounds. I was going to gut the electronics and put in something I liked better, but I decided it just wasn’t worth it and sold it again.
Distortion is the most difficult effect for me. I think it’s because I’ve grown to not like the sound of distortion all that much – or at least most distortion. I don’t like buzz, and I don’t like mud, and I don’t like distortion where the bottom end is loose and almost indistinct. So I’ve gone through a number of distortion units at this point, and I can’t say I’m completely satisfied.
I had read good things about Robert Keeley and the mods he does on the Boss DS-1, turning it into the “Seeing Eye”. I had been looking for a “third” sound for my Blue Angel – something to give me a good high gain boost for the “over the top” EVH/Ritchie Sambora/whoever else type of leads. Something that makes the amp scream and lets the harmonics and squeals ring out. Well, sorry to say this guy didn’t do it for me.
I found that with the Strat there was a very fine point where I got a pretty good sound with it, but if the knobs are the least bit off I either got not enough drive, or total buzz. This pedal was more useful for rythm sounds, but I was already happy with my sound in that department. In order to get the harmonics to jump out for leads, I needed the tone knob turned fairly high, but then I lost all bottom end – not good. It was different with the Les Paul, but it tended to drive into buzz land much quicker, so that wasn’t great either.
I ended up selling this pedal and the Mr. Ed. In the end neither of those worked as well as the Tech 21 GT-2 for me.
I bought the Boss GT-3 Multi-effect unit to replace my DigiTech rackmount that finally died. I had to do research because effects had come a long way since I had last looked into them. I went for this box over the Korg AX1000 (I think that was it) and the equivalent DigiTech unit at the time for a couple of reasons. I found the Korg harder to use right out of the box. I have no patience for fiddling with these sorts of things. The Korg was also more expensive as I recall, and I wasn’t entirely committed to this multieffect idea. The DigiTech sounded good to my ear and was similar to use, but I just had a DigiTech unit die (even if it was ancient), and had never owned a Boss product, even though they’ve long been the best selling units. Besides the GT-3 was a pretty good deal at the time, probably because the GT-5 had just been put out.
So, I went with Boss. This is a frustrating gadget in some ways because it has so much potential, but there are some areas where it just doesn’t come through for me. It does do what I need it to, which is to add effects to the guitar sound. That’s really all I bought it for, and I have gotten much more than that.
It’s great because doing cover tunes means that there will be sounds and effects in songs the band does that I can’t possibly know ahead of time. So, when that happens I go through the patches in the GT-3, or I build a patch myself, or I search the internet and install a new patch. So far, I’ve been able to at least come close to matching sounds on the songs we cover. That’s what this box is there for. Sure, it’s not going to absolutely nail the sound every time, and the sound quality isn’t going to be as good as the latest handmade, point-to-point wired class “A” hydro-reticulated-germanium-based-weezle-whacker out there, but that’s ok. Our customers and listeners don’t know that. They can’t hear that difference. And I would never use the weezle-whacker for anything other than that one cover song anyway, so I don’t really want to buy one.
This box has been good at the basic chrorus/delay/leslie/wah/harmonizer/etc. type effects, and I have been able to combine them into useful patches to get a simulated Talk Box (to cover Bon Jovi), a string section (to cover Drops of Jupiter), as well as reverse sounds (for Everything She Wants and Pinch Me). Every so often I take it out and just fabricate wacky sounds to see what I can come up with. It’s sort of like owning a dozen or so boxes and setting them all different ways to see what happens.
And there’s also one of the big drawbacks to me: This unit invites fiddling. You tweak and switch and try different settings and next thing you know you’ve blown an hour and haven’t played a damn thing yet! It can suck up time if you’re not careful.
Other downsides: First, I really, really don’t like the distortions and preamp models in this unit. Maybe because it’s Roland/Boss COSM system. I’ve got a Roland UA100 AudioCanvas on my PC that has a COSM amp modeler and it’s awful sounding too. It’s just not my thing. I’ve read about using different methods to use your real amps preamp in the loop of the GT-3, etc. and I’ve even tried some of those setups in my basement, all with less than satisfactory results. One of the big problems is that the OD and preamp sections seem to “take over” in that the sound of your guitar is lost for the most part. I’ve tried side by side plugging in the strat, the Les Paul and the Carvin and on many of the settings there is absolutely no difference in the sound that comes out. That’s not right! I’m sorry, nothing in this box sounds as good as plugging into a real amp. So I skip those parts of the unit unless I’m practicing through headphones – it’s fine for that.
Another thing is the seemingly wacky level settings. I build patches at home, and I’ll even try them out and tweak them more in the basement through an amp, but when at practice and again when playing out I find the relative levels between patches is often totally screwy. I try to balance the levels as much as possible, and all of a sudden one will be exceptionally loud or too quiet.
As a flexible effects box with lots of sounds it works well, and I’ll continue to use it.
Still…most of the time I’m playing it’s turned off. There’s just something about a guitar right into an amp that works best.
After having this unit for quite a while – close to 15 years at this point I think – the LCD display on the unit is shot. I can see some of it, but most of it is hidden. I’ve mostly retired the GT-3, although I bring it out if certain songs are in the set list for the night. I’ve had to move the four patches I use most into the first slot so I can cycle through them without having to read the LCD… since I can’t read it any more. It’s lived a long, useful life. Considering the banging around, the beer spilled directly on it, and the stomping it takes, I think it held up fairly well. No regrets.
Everyone should have this pedal. This is one of the swiss-army-knife boxes that does its job really well. It’s my favorite direct to tape box, and I’ve used it to give me a live high gain sound with the Blue Angel as well. Simple settings, good sounds, reasonable price. What more could you want?
You could go for the original direct box (GT1?), but I didn’t like the fact that it used dip switches, and there were too many choices for me. It had sounds I like, and it certainly has more than the GT2, but I wanted simpler operation and fewer choices. It cuts down on fiddling time, and allows me to get to playing.
After a number of gigs with both the Keeley Seeing Eye DS-1 and the GT2, the GT2 is winning for me. To my ear the Keeley has a very narrow spot that works well with the Blue Angle, and the rest doesn’t sound all that great. The GT2 has a much wider, more useful range. Live, I’m really only looking for something in the Ritchie Sambora/Eddie Van Halen/whoever else high-gain neighborhood, and this guy does that well. High gain, lots of harmonics, easy feedback if needed and it sounds good. Perfect for the 3 or 4 songs I use it for in a night.
I got this guy ages ago in my ongoing search for a decent direct to tape sound. It helped with that, but wasn’t ideal, but I’ve used it a good number of times as a preamp for playing live. I built a small two button footswitch with leds so I can turn it on and click on the boost when playing live. I liked using this unit live with the Fender HRD amp.
This box is a little temperamental for me. I’ve had a handful of nights where the thing sounds incredible, but the majority of the time it sounds just ok. I haven’t been very good about monitoring the conditions, so I don’t know what it is that makes it great sometimes. I keep playing with it, although since the Fulldrive I don’t use it for the lighter overdrive sounds, and I no longer bring it with me on jobs.
At higher gain settings it can get quite buzzy if you’re not careful with the bias control.