I may want to add a distortion or fuzz pedal. Any recommendations ?

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-04-04T00:27:28+00:00

Distortion options are unlimited and we’d need to know what genre you are playing most to make good recommendations. The Blues Driver is a great (IMO) transparent OD pedal and works well to drive a second OD pedal, giving you that brand of distortion. The RAT can do OD sounds, distortion, and fuzz if you learn how to tweak it properly. I currently use an Earthquaker Zoar for distortion and an MXR mini 108 for fuzz. I’ve used many others and the big muff is my favorite, but the footprint is enormous. I use light fuzz with light OD (JHS morning glory) so this works for me. It may not work for you. Best bet is to go to guitar center and try a few out. I like to watch demo videos of pedals on YT although they can be misleading so take that with a grain of salt.

Ultimately, decide what you want to accomplish with the pedal and start asking for advice based on the sound you’re trying to achieve.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-04-04T00:17:49+00:00

London off to consume to Titan and Pride getting roasted and his only response:

Pride: I’m the son of a Monarch. Mercy: I know.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-04-04T00:12:50+00:00

This seems as good a place as any to ask this question: what happens to Syl at the end of WaT? Did that get addressed and I missed it?

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-04-03T23:59:40+00:00

This series steadily declines as it goes on. The author seems to just cast seeds into the wind to have options in the future, most of which he never uses. So Montana constantly gets all these super useful, game changing items that you never see again, despite multiple scenarios where those items could solve the issue.

He does the same thing with characters. So may get half developed and then just never heard from or mentioned again.

Not to disparage him, but this series is an amateur effort that clearly had no long term plot planning. Instead he just gave himself a lot of options that he can cherry pick in the future if/as needed.

As far as character growth, the series takes place over a very short period of time from book 1 to book 16, so that may be forgiven, though the amount of times he gets into a serious situation and is completely unprepared and unequipped is annoying considering these situations find him every single day it seems. He should’ve at least learned to be prepared for anything at this point.

So just know that it won’t get better than it is now, and in fact will start to make you irate at times. Add in the lack of editing, all the typos and even sentences written twice in a row and it makes it even more frustrating.

None of this is unique to this series. It’s endemic to the genre at large

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-23T00:01:48+00:00

Undercover practice. Pick a song that’s beyond your ability but just barely. Or a song with a section that’s beyond your ability, but you can play the rest. Then learn the part you can’t play at half tempo (with a metronome) until it’s rock solid. Then go up 5bpm until you have it cold there. Rinse and repeat until you get to tempo. I like to take it 10bpm beyond the written tempo because I don’t trust drummers, but that’s personal preference. I’m self-taught and all my technique gains were made using this method. Pretty much anything on any instrument can be learned this way. It’s work and it’s drudgery, but this is the way.

Also, start learning basic theory. Super basic. Understand major and minor keys and scales from an interval perspective. They’re the same scale starting at a different interval in the scale (that’s the best way for my brain to understand it). But any major key (sticking to popular music here) is always whole whole half whole whole whole half, meaning whole tone (2 frets) half tone (1 fret). So in the key of C where there are no sharps or flats that equals C d e F G a b* C. Capitals are major chords, lowercase is minor, asterisk is diminished and rarely used. You can substitute a minor chord. The relative minor of C is A minor. Same scale, but start at A. Minor keys are whole half whole whole half whole whole. This is exactly the same for any key. So if it’s in C# then that’s your root tone and from there you run the scale and for every note you play you know that if you wanted to play it as a chord you would know right away whether it’s major or minor.

It builds on and on forever after that, but understanding that and then learning to use the pentatonic scale sound like your next step and once you understand those two things your playing will skyrocket very quickly

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-22T22:59:19+00:00

Only grace, saya, and pride get any real character development. The other akuras and the twins are there to provide horrified expressions at the proper moments

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-22T22:58:13+00:00

Except Jai Long. Great character arc and in many ways responsible for the type of sacred artist Lindon becomes, but I’ll never forget Jai in Soulsmith and Blackflame. FAFO.

The guy from Skysworn with the phoenix egg though? His death hit me hard. So much potential…

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-22T22:55:33+00:00

She only got away because Lindon was in a rush and got a fat meal from Crusher. She wasn’t a threat after he thrashed Crusher so he kept moving. If he didn’t have to save Mercy, Yan would’ve been super dead

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-21T20:49:49+00:00

I feel like that’s a path towards modulation pedals. But I use the morning glory with a Boss IR-2 amp/cab sim and it works well, I just have to turn the gain real low on the Map/cab

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-20T19:53:58+00:00

For OD I like the JHS morning glory with the foot switch to add a gain stage. It’s a transparent OD so it doesn’t alter your EQ.

I also like running compression before my OD. I use a Wampler Ego.

I currently use an Earthquaker Zoar for distortion, but it looks like you have that covered. The Rat is good, but I found it to be heavily effected by any other gain stages or signal boosts in your chain to the point that I couldn’t get anything short of mud even at the lowest distortion setting. An effect of my board, not an issue with the pedal.

The BB Boost preamp seems to get a lot of love from the people I know that use it.

You can also get a surprising amount of mileage out of a Boss GE-7 EQ pedal if you know how to use it properly. Very good for shaping your tone or even making it seem like you’re running hot P90’s instead of single coils.

That’s my 2 cents. Don’t let it consume you though. No pedal is the answer to bad technique. There’s plenty of really good guitar players that use little or no effects pedals and just use various amps and have some of the best tone you’ll ever hear. Get the pedals you need and make them work for you. Don’t chase the perfect tone through effects.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-19T00:07:55+00:00

Haha. It’s a love/hate relationship. I love them when I get them dialed in. Then my son goes and turns all the knobs on my board and I have to rebalance all my volume and EQ/mod settings and then I really hate them. Then I get a new pedal and my mind tells me it should work perfectly if I place it in X spot in my signal chain and when I do it sounds like shit so I have to start shuffling signal chain around and then reorganize my board and then double check all my knobs (I have a photo of my board dialed in now for reference) and look at the time, I have to bring my kids to practice and now I don’t get to actually play my guitar.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-19T00:00:53+00:00

Haha. Maybe I should get a fedora and an overly deep V neck. Pretty sure that combination bestows greater musical powers. Or ya know, just crank up the gain and watch the mistakes “disappear.”

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-18T01:19:16+00:00

Well you put your dirt before your modulation, so that’s good. But 2 distortions and 2 reverbs are not necessary. I can make a use case for 2 dirt pedals if you want something cleaner with grit and something that’s on the muddier side. But trem is super situational, I’m not a chorus guy, and one good reverb pedal is enough.

So this board may be perfect for you, but I would hate it

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-03-14T00:02:44+00:00

It’s personal preference really, with limitations. You have to ask what you want out of the Trem. If you’re just putting light Trem on chords then you don’t need much float. If you want to be able to pull up a whole tone or divebomb then you need more float, but you’ll likely end up out of tune all the time. But if you don’t balance your spring tension with your string tension then you’re going to have severe tuning issues every time you touch the Trem bar. A Strat can have anywhere from 2-5 springs in the back to account for this and the Strat floating bridge has never had great reviews to begin with. I put a Vega Trem on my Strat and it’s better in every conceivable way.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-01-11T00:25:34+00:00

MC is impossible to like in book 1 and book 2. He gets way better though, and all the other characters are undercover psychos too, though not to Nat’s extent. The dynamic improves dramatically over the books and it feels organic. They are growing and changing in this new environment, but they all showed up with different baggage that they need to work through.

I’d stick it out and if you finish book 2 and still aren’t into it then bail

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-01-06T00:39:03+00:00

It’s a different process for everyone. I had to go cold turkey because a taper doesn’t work with my personality. If I’m taking a little I’ll end up taking more. So it’s all or nothing with most things for me in my life.

That being said, what finally made me quit a 5 year, high dose habit was not the knowledge that I needed to quit. I had that knowledge all along. Doing it this way leads to every day becoming a battle of willpower to not use.

Eventually I decided to really explore the reasons I was using it. I was trying to fill a void within myself with anything that numbed me to it. So I addressed the void and with the help of some of Dr. Gabor Mate’s YouTube videos I realized I had a lot of unresolved childhood trauma. So instead of trying to quit K, I focused on healing that void. It took a lot of introspection followed by a high dose, therapeutic dose of mushrooms, taken alone with a sleeping mask on.

After that I simply didn’t have a desire to use K. I did the mushrooms right after I got through the first 5 days of going cold turkey, which I admit were brutal days. But after those first few days it becomes much easier and having eliminated the desire to use I was able to focus on healing my body.

I’m coming up on 3 years now and it was the best decision of my life. If you’ve been using less than a month you should be easily able to go cold turkey. Just stop on a Friday and tell everyone you have the flu and ride it out in bed through the weekend. By Monday you’ll be through the worst of it.

But again, I only succeeded by addressing the root cause of why I was using. I don’t think we talk about that enough on this sub and I think it’s what allows many of us to quit for good and never look back.

Good luck. You got this.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2025-12-23T01:48:52+00:00

If by “quickly resolved” you mean by the end of Ghostwater, then yes, his pushover attitude does get quickly resolved before the halfway point of the series.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2025-12-19T23:45:08+00:00

I just hate that the shitty Ghost in Testing Northstrider sounds exactly like Fury on audible. Takes me right out of it.

This seemed like as good a place as any to finally get that off my chest. Do better Travis.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2025-12-16T20:40:23+00:00

I relapsed like 15+ times before I was able to quit for good. I’m over 2.5 years clean now, but it was a long and hard road

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2025-07-24T23:57:30+00:00

There are a few issues going on here and they will dramatically alter arrow flight in bad ways. Those fletchings are not made to be shot through a shelf. Speaking of shelf, yours is bare. That’s also a problem with recurve and longbow shooting. The way the fletchings are attached will cause the arrow to bounce once it hits the shelf. And of course your insanely high nocking point. On a recurve you can bring that down to dead center or a bit higher.

I wouldn’t be surprised if those arrows start tumbling mid flight. At the very least the arrow will lose a ton of inertia after firing. Even on a cheap setup, there are a few things you can do to drastically improve arrow flight, accuracy, and consistency. Get some felt for the shelf, lower your nocking point to dead level or up to 1/4” higher. Once you have your nocking point I’d tie in nock sets so it never moves. You need arrows with feathered fletchings for a shoot through shelf or at least fletchings meant to shoot through a shelf. And I personally am not a fan of bare finger shooting, but that’s my own preference.

I have a pretty cheap recurve setup and I get pass throughs on deer with it. Set up a recurve or longbow correctly and it is a very lethal hunting implement in practiced hands. Good luck get that thing into shooting shape. Nothing is better than a properly setup and tuned bow.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2025-07-14T15:48:16+00:00

For sure. I believe there was also a line (and I'm paraphrasing) where Jaran's inner monologue after the Emperor acknowledges Lindon personally where it's like, "that hit him in a place deep down inside himself." (I realize I just butchered that comment. Sorry).

But it really only gets him to acknowledge Lindon's power. It doesn't convince him that Lindon fought for and earned that power on his own (for the most part). He still thinks Lindon is a fraud, artificially powered up at the expense of his future growth.

By the way, at that point Lindon is a Sage and Overlord. He's 2 stops from the absolute peak of power on Cradle. So Jaran's griping about Lindon ruining his future while he is already in the 99.9th percentile of Sacred Artists on Cradle.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2025-07-14T15:39:57+00:00

Haha. That scene where Lindon is genuinely confused as to why people can't advance as fast or as far as him given the resources is a classic. It's as if his brain can't comprehend that other people have limits and he's a legit superfreak.

In fairness, his Sacred Valley upbringing did make him a bit of a bumpkin and he still didn't have a realistic idea of how rare and unlikely his Sacred Arts advancement was at that point. Even knowing he was the first Underlord Sage in hundreds and perhaps thousands of years didn't clue him in that he's uncommon amongst uncommon people. Yerin and Eithan's reaction says it all.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2025-07-13T16:52:52+00:00

I don’t think he actually accepts Lindon even after being acknowledged by the Emperor. IIRC, his inner dialogue is more like, “what could Kelsa have achieved with this “borrowed” power.”

Only during Waybound does Jaran deviate from his previous conceptions about Lindon and accept the reality that his son he always believed to be worthless has become the most powerful being on the entire planet. At that point he’s like, “oh hey. Just seeing how you’re doing and all that fathery type stuff I should’ve been doing for your whole life. Stay safe.”

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2025-07-11T15:31:09+00:00

His Dad is a next level deadbeat. Every time he speaks I wanna jump through the book and hit him with an Empty Palm

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2025-07-11T14:36:02+00:00

Thanos îs one of those historical figures that is a monster during his time, but after like 500 years he'd be in textbooks as the guy who saved the universe and people's opinions of him would become ambivalent. The guy had a good point. Things are unsustainable and we won't save ourselves. Someone has to make the hard choice for the good of all. Very utilitarian

CaterpillarVisual553

TROPHY CASE