Blastronaut

If you can solder you're probably only talking about £2 in parts to add a power switch to your pedal board. Totally unnecessary now since you've got Alexa on the case but might be useful if your WiFi goes down or something. Just two DC jack sockets with a switch between.

Ah okay I get you. For what it's worth I'd imagine kraken isn't heating those tubes up to anywhere near the same level a tube amp would, they'll likely be cold-plated if just they're running off anything up to 18V DC . But yeah, even with that in mind it's totally fair to want a way to turn it off to save the life span of those valves. Edit: ignore that cold-plating talk, I was talking shite and based it on misguided assumptions. Probably really wise to cut power to that when it's not in use. Those weird tubes will get fucking hot on even 12V if they've got enough current.

I'm pretty fucking sure Hendrix and Rory Gallagher got on just fine without smart plugs for their amps. Ah I jest. Actually not a bad idea, but I'm too fucking lazy to turn off my rig at the main socket so wouldn't make a huge difference. I quite like my smart-home devices but for the most part it's just for childish novelty value ("play my entrance music" etc.). Even the actual really quality of life improvements end up just me being childish ("Alexa, it's like a fucking lizard house in here/it's fucking freezing", "let there be light" "Alexa, get this cunt off my fucking telly" etc.)

Probably good advice though tbf. I'm mostly fine with timing when there's a metronome or someone else setting the beat and all I have to do is worry about what my hands are doing. It all just falls apart for me when I have to think about my technique or anything that's going on. Basically I can only play when my thoughts are occupied by "I quite like this Speyside malt, what's it called again?" and all I have to worry about is the possibility of it getting spilled. Everything else that goes wrong is the drummers fault.

It's just some cheap off-brand Chinese Ditto clone I got for like £30. The problem is me rather than pedal. One of my closest friends is a drummer and it works fine when I let him set the in and out. If I'm playing a really slow tempo or really concentrating I can usually get it bang on at least half the time, I just a drunk clumsy prick that can't get my hands and feet to work in sync. Can't work a wah for shit either. I think my feet work on the on beat and my hand on the off beat (or vice versa) which is either a curse of the whole dominant hand/dominant eye mismatch or just a convenient excuse for being a lazy bastard and not practicing. Nah I got that, just saw that description of them and thought "ah fuck. Is that me?". A bit like the time a mate of mine finally realised Neil Oliver was a bellend and I reacted by immediately going to get a haircut.

It's mad how his stock nosedived with that Barca move. There was point about a year before that my (massive Man I supporter) stepda reluctantly drunkenly confessed he thought he was the best player in the Premier League. Maybe there is some weight to the back-injury that Liverpool fans thought was a smokescreen to push through the transfer. Total shadow of his former self. Wouldn't have said he was ever close to the best player in the PL but he was class in his pomp, then just disappeared off a cliff.

Oi! I feel attacked. In my case its not really a choice though and more just being a bit slow to adapt and a proper tight bastard when it comes to buying guitar gear. If I absolutely have to buy something I'll usually look for something that I can either fix myself when it inevitably breaks or is cheap enough to replace without completely fucking the family budget. I wasn't always this way like. I can't fucking stand Dan and Mick but will admit to occasionally watching their videos just to see what rebranded pedal from 50 years ago they're shilling. The Tonebender episode with Josh Scott was actually really good though, but I'm fairly convinced they have some sort of contract with Macaris that would also explain how much they hyped up the Dope Priest (the D.A.M / Emanating Fist pedal guy now builds for Macaris). I really need to practice more with my looper, can't use it for shit unless I'm playing really fucking slow. Always just miss the click by a fraction so the loop is always off, end up just using it to record like a few minutes of something and then work out a second part over it without having to get out the laptop and load up cubase.

Thats me in a nutshell tbh. What's interesting is that I think out "metal" tastes are polar opposites. Edit: I only say that to counter the notion that "metal" is some sort of musical dead-end. Not a dig at your tastes at all.

You're not seriously trading a custom shop Tele for another Tele shaped thing with less hardware and half a paintjob?

It's ages since I watched any of his videos but aye there's something a bit off about his whole manner. Gemmill's experience makes me think he's probably more interested in shilling his products and services than actually trying to educate anyone and share his knowledge, which would be fine if he wasn't selling educational courses. I'd be fucking raging if I was in Gemmill's boat. That almost akin to an apprentice mechanic getting told to strip and rebuild his own cars engine on his first day. I was thinking less about NZ but genuinely baffled at how many lefties are on this thread.

Jesus that's a pretty damning report. I know my way around a basic setup for the most part but re-frets and neck resets are two jobs I'd definitely leave for pro's. Mental they'd "teach" someone serious work like that on a fairly expensive guitar (hope to fuck it wasn't a maple neck). Surely you practice on bit of scrap wood or an old beater neck for a while before tackling a nice axe. Would've thought a maintenance course would have consisted of just action, intonation, relief, pickup height etc and making sure you did it all in the right order to avoid giving yourself more work. Sounds like they dropped you in the deep end and didn't give a fuck if you sank or swam, knowing you'd be gone in a few days. @Andrew If it were me I'd go for the V but I do quite like the look of that white thing with the black binding, whatever it is.

I'll most definitely watch that. I get that you're in NZ (or that neck of the woods at least) but Crimson are the first UK based company that springs to mind offering "build your own guitar" courses. Can't say I've warmed to the guy tbh (forget his name, the founder with the tattooed head) but he seems like he knows and loves his craft and has a fuck ton of insight to pass on. He could be sound as fuck for all I know but I get massive Gatekeeper vibes from the few Crimson Guitar videos I've watched. Building acoustic guitars is next level though from a hand-crafting stance. Shaping and carving solid body guitars is fucking hard enough. Trying to bend thin sheets and still keep it in shape and stable under string tension must be a whole different ball game.

Well noticed @Andrew. Also the marketing doesn't mention what scale length the neck is. Could be smaller than those Paul Gilbert Mikro things. (Gonna assume if I could be arsed digging deeper I'd find it was either Gibson or Fender scale though). I'm with Andrew though, if you want it and have a spare £2.5k, fucking have at it. My only real concern would be finding a tech to sort it out when something inevitably breaks a few years down the line. The majority of good techs I know are really old school and would absolutely shit the bed if you brought them that. Seriously though, if it were me and for some reason I was looking for a midi controller I could use while playing guitar I'd be looking at expression pedals or big tactile buttons I could hit with my feet. There was a guy in a local band here hacked some old organ pedals as a controller for a Korg synth if I mind right, that would be my way to go.

Whatever floats your boat man! I'd imagine you'd need to be running loads of midi stuff to get much use out of it, and at that point you'd be aswel just automating all the midi commands. But I guess I can see how this would give more scope for, eh... spontaneity.

Honestly not my scene at all @Tom. Wouldn't fancy being a guitar tech and having that brought to me. Funny though, I was just talking about Matt Bellamy last night.

You're dreaming if you think we'll be back to normal next year. Some 400,000 positive tests in the few days over Christmas and thats with PCR test results being delayed and loads of folk being unable to get lateral flow tests. Significantly fewer deaths is the only success story, still far too many people stubbornly refusing to wear masks and too many people still getting ill as a result.

Anyone here got any experience with or opinions on the Hudson Broadcast? (Genuine question, I'm promise this isn't a bait and switch where I later reveal it's actually another Tubescreamer)

I see Matty Longstaff has just been recalled from his loan spell at Aberdeen. Not really the most promising of signs entering January.

Hey this pretty much sums up my last 18 months! Glad to hear you're okay though. Make mines a Guinness. Had my booster a few days ago, stress levels have been through the roof since but Ive got a sneaking suspicion that's got fuck all to do with side effects and everything to do with the fact Amazon stopped guaranteeing next day delivery yesterday.

@Kevin Carr's Gloves quick instructional video to get you started: Back on @Andrew's Precision Drive, I can't find anything on the gate circuit, seems to be on a separate board, stacked on top of the overdrive but yeah if you take away that and the aforementioned rotary control it's 99% identical to a TS808. There's two lower value resistors in the first clipping stage, that will you a hell of a lot more gain available on that "drive" knob than a stock TS808. Then there's two value changes in the tone section so the tone control might function a little bit differently, but to me that change looks like penny pinching rather than a design choice (stock TS808 has a sort of obscure 20k W-taper potentiometer. Probably saved a few quid in costs finding a way to use a more standard linear taper). That's all I've got for now.

Precision Drive seems to be yet another TS808 with a few more changes and a rotary switch. The rotary switch changes the value of the capacitor next to the pink bit on the schematic to change the cut off that high pass filter. * If you've ever heard Tubescreamers referred to as having a "mid-hump", it's that ~720hz frequency they're talking about. Worth bearing in mind the capacitors used will probably have a 10% tolerance so it will rarely ever be exactly 720Hz, could really be anywhere between 650Hz and 800Hz. Knowing that and considering how many other capacitors are in the circuit doing similar jobs could go some way to explaining why it sounds different. I'm not sure exactly what value capacitors are on the rotary switch on the Precision Drive but it's easy to guess. They changed the resistor to 1k so a 220nf capacitor would give you close to the stock TS frequency (723Hz). Would imagine the options are somewhere in this ballpark: 470nf = 339Hz 330nf = 482Hz 220nf = 723Hz 100nf = 1591Hz 82nf = 1940Hz 68nf = 2340Hz I'll need to have another look later for the other changes, doubt they'll be drastic but I did see it mentioned it might have some kind of noise gate tacked on.

Here's yer typical TS808 schematic. I've highlighted the changes in the NUX Steel Stringer: Apologies in advance for this, fully aware I'm about to reveal myself as an absolute wanker if it wasn't already widely accepted. Green bit: input buffer. A buffer just maintains unity gain of the signal, won't change tonal characteristics whether it's a Jfet, opamp or bjt. I'd imagine newer Tubescreamers use a BJT, the older ones would likely would've been jfets. For whatever reason the NUX seems to use a Jfet. Pink bit sets the high pass filter in distortion stage, Tubescreamers would have a 4.7k resistor here which would give harmonics above 720Hz the full gain of the pedal and anything below that would be affected progressively less. The NUX swaps this for a 3.9k, which just ups that threshold slightly to 868Hz. Yellow bits are just there to bias the circuit. Nominal change from the 510k resistor in the Tubescreamer to 470k. To cut a really long story short, biasing a circuit like this is usually just setting a mid-way point between 9volts and Ground (0v). The one near the output will probably have a small knock-on effect on the pedals output impedance, so it could potentially affect how it behaves with any pedals later in the chain, but I'd be sceptical. Looks like a TS808 to me, just a ballhair of low-end making it through unaffected.

Just for clarity im currently going by the word of a guy called Robert at PedalPCB who traces pedal circuits for a living (no affiliation) and tore one down along side another pedal it was rumoured to be a clone of:

I'm not meaning to shit on it, at all for what it's worth. This is just the pedal scene in a nutshell, and £40 for decent TS clone is a no brainer. I'll check over the schematic later to check if it's a TS808 or TS9 and roughly what tonal changes those two resistor values might yield, if any.

Two resistors are slightly different values and the input buffer is a jfet rather than a bjt. On paper it shouldn't sound any different at all, save for the usual difference you'd find due to tolerance going from one Tubescreamer TS9 to another. I'll see if I can find something from a more credible source, but it's even allegedly built on the same PCB NUX use for their OD-3, which is also a Tubescreamer.