The Guitar Thread

[Gemmill 44901]

 

The lads at Line 6 must have digital versions of the magic diodes too cos I can't tell the difference here either. I'll stick with this version on my Stomp. 

[Blastronaut 1333]

Ah the name change might suggest they've just slapped in 4148's, which most folk who build pedals will tell you are near indentical (as clipping diodes) to the "magic" 589's. You'd need superhuman hearing to notice any difference. Any audible change between the units could be explained away by the tolerance of the capacitors. 

 

If anyone's interested I could go further into it and draw up graphs and stuff but I'm sleep deprived and on the sauce so it would probably just turn into another tirade about analogman's shithousery. He's played a blinder here though.

 

 

 

 

[Gemmill 44901]

 aye he gets paid for every unit sold and there'll be loads on his waiting list buying the MXR as a while you wait option. Evil genius.

 

[Blastronaut 1333]

Aye. Fair play to him. Potentially fulfilling a lot of those orders and creating even more hype about the originals without even having to actually make any more himself.

 

I just can't forgive him for having the audacity to charge an extra $25 if you want a different colour LED. 

[Tom 14011]

We're all being conned aren't we  

[sammynb 3357]

45 minutes ago, Tom said:

We're all being conned aren't we  

 

Motto to live by there Tom.

[Andrew 4770]

9 hours ago, Gemmill said:

 

Have you looked at Ormsby guitars? Should be easy to get your hands on where you are too. 

 

I have aye, there is also a bloke in auckland selling a Skeversen raptor which is definitely working for me

 

 

Undecided at the moment whether to go for something like those or go back to trusty ESP and get one of the 1000 series guitars.

[Blastronaut 1333]

1 hour ago, Tom said:

We're all being conned aren't we  

 

Conned is a strong word like. But artificial scarcity from the off that creates a 5 year waiting list, then fobbing off most of the responsibility to a company that can mass-produce something that was supposedly impossible without long-discontinued and hard to find parts is, eh..... leading folk down the garden path at the least.

 

Theres fuck all special about that diode at all and Analogman knows that. It's just a run of the mill modern silicon switching diode. To be fair though I doubt he's planned this from the off, mxr have just given him an outball.

 

For clipping diodes in pedals the only thing that really matters is the forward voltage and curve of the knee.  This obsolete 856 diode is damn near identical to the widely available 914/4148 in that respect. The most ironic thing is that the KoT has made the 856 so desirable that there's now a market for fakes that look the same but have a wildly different knee and fV from both the original 856 or the obvious widely available 4148 replacement.

 

 

 

[Tom 14011]

Epiphone releasing an Iommi signature....for £800

 

You'd probably be able to pick up a Gibson SG Standard for that amount money on the secondhand market.

[Gemmill 44901]

It's mental. They've just released a Noel Gallagher signature Riviera which they're selling for the same price, I think. It looks great tbf but they're layering on the mark-up. 

 

I've been looking at the Les Paul Special in TV Yellow with P90s... It's on the list. 

 

Latest here is I'm getting a Helix LT and selling my Stomp and HX Effects to (mostly) pay for it. Line 6 will no doubt immediately release something new and I'll be left like Betamax Boy but that's fine.

 

[Blastronaut 1333]

6 hours ago, Gemmill said:

Line 6 will no doubt immediately release something new and I'll be left like Betamax Boy but that's fine.

 

 

Betamax Boy could've been a halfway decent stage name that would've changed the course of your life (for better or worse) if you'd got into gabber in the 90s.

 

[Andrew 4770]

8 hours ago, Gemmill said:

It's mental. They've just released a Noel Gallagher signature Riviera which they're selling for the same price, I think. It looks great tbf but they're layering on the mark-up. 

 

I've been looking at the Les Paul Special in TV Yellow with P90s... It's on the list. 

 

Latest here is I'm getting a Helix LT and selling my Stomp and HX Effects to (mostly) pay for it. Line 6 will no doubt immediately release something new and I'll be left like Betamax Boy but that's fine.

 

 

Do they not amount to about the same thing? I had an LT which was ace so I'm certainly not knocking it, just wondering why.

[Gemmill 44901]

2 hours ago, Andrew said:

 

Do they not amount to about the same thing? I had an LT which was ace so I'm certainly not knocking it, just wondering why.

 

They do (sort of) but (and this is serious first world problems shit) programming them as separate units and having to piss about with midi to get them to talk to one another is just dead frustrating and puts me off using it....which is not really what you want. It's easy, but it's just a barrier to just firing it up and messing on. 

 

Also it's dead weird but if I run the HXFX into the front of the Stomp there's a load of hiss and noise which I can't explain (even if I put the HXFX into full bypass) - I've made sure that the inputs/outputs are set to the same on both units and googled for all possible issues but I can't get it to go away. 

 

If I put the HXFX into one of the effects loops of the Stomp (so using the exact same input/output on the HXFX and putting that block at the start of the Stomp's chainp), the noise goes away. But now I've used up one of the Stomp's blocks just to make these things talk to one another. 

 

So aye I got in a huff with it all and binned them off. LT arrives on Friday, at which point I'll put those two and a couple of other things (Ernie Ball volume pedal, EHX Freeze, and Vertex Steel String) up for sale, and that should more than pay for the LT. 

 

Looking on Reverb, and the Stomp goes second hand for around £375. I only paid £419 for it new, so that's mental. HXFX should go for around £300.

[Blastronaut 1333]

20 hours ago, Gemmill said:

 

...........also it's dead weird but if I run the HXFX into the front of the Stomp there's a load of hiss and noise which I can't explain (even if I put the HXFX into full bypass) - I've made sure that the inputs/outputs are set to the same on both units and googled for all possible issues but I can't get it to go away. 

 

If I put the HXFX into one of the effects loops of the Stomp (so using the exact same input/output on the HXFX and putting that block at the start of the Stomp's chainp), the noise goes away. But now I've used up one of the Stomp's blocks just to make these things talk to one another. .............

 

 

 

am I right in thinking that the HXfx has options for both buffered and true bypass modes? It could be that the Stomps front end just doesn't like the buffer.

 

I'm not hugely familiar with either pedal but that's an interesting conundrum. 

[Tom 14011]

I honestly have no clue about any of that stuff. Im an analogue man  

 

Although as the digital stuff catches up/inevitably overtakes physical pedals it's probably worth getting in to.

[Andrew 4770]

 

Convince me not to @Blastronaut because if you don't I will absolutely be buying at least one of these

\

[Gemmill 44901]

With these pedals and with the Victory preamp pedals that they released previously, what are you meant to plug into? Cos if you're going into your amp's preamp, aren't you then just ending up with two preamps, and colouring whatever the pedal is meant to be doing? 

[Andrew 4770]

57 minutes ago, Gemmill said:

With these pedals and with the Victory preamp pedals that they released previously, what are you meant to plug into? Cos if you're going into your amp's preamp, aren't you then just ending up with two preamps, and colouring whatever the pedal is meant to be doing? 

 

The new Pedals would go in the front.

 

The preamp one can act as a pedal infront of the amp and have a switch that drastically changes the eq to make that work.

 

But theyre best in the effects loop, in bypass mode, so when its off you have your amps preamp and when its on your amps preamp gets no signal and the victory is your preamp and runs to your amps power amp. I have one of these ones and its excellent.

[toonotl 2980]

On 27/09/2022 at 23:12, Tom said:

Epiphone releasing an Iommi signature....for £800

 

You'd probably be able to pick up a Gibson SG Standard for that amount money on the secondhand market.

 

I got an Epiphone SG about 20 years ago. The action was way high and it buzzed like a bastard.

 

Had an Epiphone LP as well back then and it was good enough. Although I did replace the pick-ups with Gibson humbuckers because the epiphone ones were cheap triples that sounded like crap.

 

I've played a proper Gibson SG too and it sounds way better than any Epiphone I've ever touched. Like not even close. An Iommi special edition would be nice but yeah Epiphone just doesnt come close to the real thing! Such a pretty guitar too.

[Monkeys Fist 42459]

1 hour ago, toonotl said:

 

I got an Epiphone SG about 20 years ago. The action was way high and it buzzed like a bastard.

 

Had an Epiphone LP as well back then and it was good enough. Although I did replace the pick-ups with Gibson humbuckers because the epiphone ones were cheap triples that sounded like crap.

 

I've played a proper Gibson SG too and it sounds way better than any Epiphone I've ever touched. Like not even close. An Iommi special edition would be nice but yeah Epiphone just doesnt come close to the real thing! Such a pretty guitar too.

Fist Jnr…

 

[Blastronaut 1333]

14 hours ago, Andrew said:

 

Convince me not to @Blastronaut because if you don't I will absolutely be buying at least one of these

\

 

Oh cool, these look great. If the price is right I might even look into getting on myself. Weird seeing ThorpyFx pedals in regular looking enclosures though. 

 

That's all I've got for now. I'll probably have more to say when I shake this hangover 

 

Edit:

Holy fuck they're expensive. I'd hope at that price they had subminiature valves but looking over their website I'd doubt it. Also a little surprised to see they run on 9V  (I'm guessing they have a chargepump in there to internally double the voltage) which probably means there's no tubes in there and they've went the old-school way and just used silicon transistors in a arrangement like the Fetzer Valve circuit. 

 

I'm a bit skeptical now. No doubt they'll sound good, wouldn't expect Victory or Thorpy to put their name to junk, but I can't see how they'll be anything more than just a solid-state approximation of the amps they're being marketed as.  Also would be liked to have seen the Anderson's guys show them being pushed by a boost or a Tubescreamer to see if they respond more like a tube pre-amp amp or just another distortion pedal (maybe they did, I didn't watch the whole thing). 

 

I'd give it a month and these will be traced and cloned all over the place.

 

Edited September 30, 2022 by Blastronaut

[Andrew 4770]

12 hours ago, toonotl said:

 

I got an Epiphone SG about 20 years ago. The action was way high and it buzzed like a bastard.

 

Had an Epiphone LP as well back then and it was good enough. Although I did replace the pick-ups with Gibson humbuckers because the epiphone ones were cheap triples that sounded like crap.

 

I've played a proper Gibson SG too and it sounds way better than any Epiphone I've ever touched. Like not even close. An Iommi special edition would be nice but yeah Epiphone just doesnt come close to the real thing! Such a pretty guitar too.

 

Your experience is out of date tbh mate.

 

Epi, Squier etc make great stuff these days tbh. 

[Blastronaut 1333]

2 hours ago, Andrew said:

 

Your experience is out of date tbh mate.

 

Epi, Squier etc make great stuff these days tbh. 

 

Not to mention Gibson have dropped the ball with their quality control in recent years.

 

That said, I'd still probably trade ALL of my gear for a Zoot Suit SG.

[Andrew 4770]

The absolute misery of being a lefty

 

complete pisstake

 

 

 

[RobinRobin 11282]

At least left hand screwdrivers are relatively cheap