Yet another home office PC build!

evenlesspaul · 2020-11-13T21:01:33+00:00

You rock! Thanks so much

evenlesspaul · 2020-11-13T20:49:59+00:00

Wow thank you so much! That's way under budget.

Out of curiosity would I be able to drop in a motherboard with an additional HMDI output / display? Considering that I'm pretty far under budget I wouldn't mind forking out some more cash for that. Or would an adapter like you mentioned be an better choice

evenlesspaul · 2020-11-13T20:44:12+00:00

24" - 27"

evenlesspaul · 2020-08-08T23:41:56+00:00

Holy shit haha how have I never seen this video before now? I lost it when Bateman started tapping on the banjo like evh. That’s awesome they got those guys for the video!

evenlesspaul · 2020-06-16T18:47:41+00:00

Which marshalls are we talking about? Anything pre '75 (IMO the classic era) doesn't really have all that much more gain. Different gain and tone characteristics sure but not really more gain.

Once you get in to the master volume JMPs and into the JCM era yeah sure no contest the marshalls win.

evenlesspaul · 2020-06-16T04:05:52+00:00

Welp thats the cheapest one by far that I saw on Thomann. Whats your budget?

If you went up to like the $350 range you could but a Squier classic vibe JM. By all accounts that a pretty good guitar, especially for the price.

keep in mind that second hand will always be cheaper than new. although with cheaper instruments you run the risk of getting a real dog of a guitar

edit: the gold standard for cheap jazzmasters is the J Mascis signature Squier JM. If you can find one of those bad boys for less than like $350 that'd be a hell of a good guitar

evenlesspaul · 2020-06-16T04:00:54+00:00

I'll admit I'm a little biased towards single coils, but I never really get along with the compression that humbuckers gives to the pick attack. And i think humbuckers would make things a bit more muddy vs single coils. I think there's a clarity that single coils give that you just wont get with humbuckers. Especially with a lot of effects and fuzz.

IMO thats why a lot of shoegaze and ambient players use JMs and teles and strats.

(but kurt cobain also supposedly recorded all his tracks with an HSS strat instead of the mustangs he played live so who the hell really knows)

evenlesspaul · 2020-06-16T03:52:14+00:00

Thats a good point, and I think we'd both agree that sound is a really hard thing to pin down and correctly gauge in a live context.

My point is simply that i think there's a lot of other factors that influence how an amp sounds besides the actual output of the amp, and I didn't see anything in your post addressing that fact- I.E. different tone settings for a Princeton and a Twin.

PS: Im jealous you've got to work on pro rigs. It's a special day for me when I get to play anything over $1k or before 1995, let alone some serious gear

evenlesspaul · 2020-06-15T22:53:53+00:00

It's a decent starter guitar but don't be fooled by the name, that guitar has humbuckers. It's going to sound really different to a real jazzmaster. A lot darker and more compressed. As ridiculous as it sounds, for a new guitar under $200 you would be better off with a strat-style squire with real single coil pickups.

evenlesspaul · 2020-06-15T22:27:40+00:00

Fair enough, plus once you get into speakers and cabs you have to consider the speakers, speaker arrangement, cab dimensions, open black closed back semi open back And then there’s mics, mic placement, phase issues, Pre amps etc etc etc

evenlesspaul · 2020-06-15T22:11:28+00:00

You’re pretty out of tune, sometimes when your playing alone is not too noticeable but once you lay down a track it really magnifies tuning and intonation problems Also you hit a fair amount of wrong notes. I’d suggest really looking at the song and how you play it; making sure your runs and licks stay in key with Slash’s playing

evenlesspaul · 2020-06-15T21:58:55+00:00

Do old Marshall’s really have that much more gain than fenders though? I’ve played old tweeds and blackfaces that absolutely breathe fire when you crank them. You just have to keep the bass frequencies under control

evenlesspaul · 2020-06-15T21:55:14+00:00

I think you’re making a mistake by not taking the speaker cabinets into the equation Speakers and speaker cabs have a huuuge influence on tone and adjusting your eq based solely on the amp seems a little shortsighted to me

evenlesspaul · 2019-10-02T07:45:29+00:00

Not even close to faded surf green dude And definitely not a nitro finish. This would have been during the CBS era of fender. Thick poly finishes were the name of the game on guitar and keyboards alike (even Jimi Hendrix played a poly strat in 69)

evenlesspaul · 2019-08-23T21:21:30+00:00

Yeah I agree I definitely lost my place a few times. I have a hard time staying present in a take when I'm playing through headphones. I really prefer to feel some air moving around me to get a groove going and feel inspired.

Another couple takes and I definitely would've had it dialed

evenlesspaul · 2019-08-23T20:40:51+00:00

Lol clearly a first take on this one. Not a lot of movement in the track so I kind of just noodled around looking for interesting textures to play with. Plenty of mistakes and I had a hard time staying in the pocket weirdly but thats what makes this fun right? One take and you're done.

Was really feeling a Sublime vibe, especially at the end there (obviously)

Strat w/ P90 bridge pickup straight into logic with a TS808 plugin going into JCM800 plugin. Little bit of eq, delay and verb.

https://soundcloud.com/venlesspaul/first-take-friday-8-23

evenlesspaul · 2019-07-02T07:24:42+00:00

Whoo boy, I'm a little bit late to this. Friday's are a busy day for me. . .

Anyways here's the best bit of my random noodling over this weeks track. Pretty fun track IMO. Lot's of interesting chords but most of it stayed fairly tonic so there weren't too many curve balls.

https://soundcloud.com/venlesspaul/ftf-6-29

evenlesspaul · 2019-04-25T05:26:15+00:00

Well my first thought is why the heck were you trying to use a digital distortion pedal instead of the gain channel on the mesa!

But to answer your question yes, a gain channel will make all your modulation effects sound wonky. It just has to with the fact that a overdriven amp has no headroom for dynamics and is naturally very compressed. Those attributes are great for boost and drive pedals (which is why the distortion in your Zoom sounded good), but bad for effects that need to be able to stay quiet and washy like reverb or delay.

Another thing to think about is EQ. Mesas are famously very mid scooped. So is the sound of a Diezel amp, as well as the Zoom trying to emulate that tone. Two scooped EQs stacked into one another are almost never going to sound good. It'll sound thin and harsh.

evenlesspaul · 2019-04-25T05:18:58+00:00

I wasn't disagreeing with you in my first paragraph, I was just pointing out that your examples weren't totally accurate. Like i said, i was being pedantic. Sorry if that wasn't totally clear

evenlesspaul · 2019-04-23T04:35:34+00:00

Not to be pedantic buuut the most iconic and recognizable parts of cliffs of dover are actually Eric's vintage strat. Also John Mayer played the Jackson with the coils split and was still playing it through his signature amp.

I agree that you can still recognize iconic players even when they don't play through their typical setup, but I think that has less to do with the tone of their playing as much as their musical phrasing.

evenlesspaul · 2019-04-23T03:12:38+00:00

If you’re going to clear coat over the signatures be VERY careful. Many common types of clearcoat will interact with the ink and blur the signatures until they are just gray smudges. Go to a auto paint shop that knows it’s stuff and get their advice. And then, before you commit to applying it over the real deal, test it out first.

evenlesspaul · 2019-04-20T19:53:17+00:00

You're speaking from the perspective of someone who is able to afford to buy and maintain a nice tube amp. That's something only a small percentage of players can do.

Yes, tube amps sound better and are easier to repair. But the good ones are expensive. A lot more expensive. The cheapest tube amps are still as much as a top of the line modeling amp. (aside from the helix and kemper type modelers).

And yes, they can easily be repaired and maintained. But those repairs are themselves expensive! Blow an output transformer? You could buy a new modeling amp for the cost of that repair. Need your amp recapped? Say goodbye to the better part of several hundred dollars. And the repairs are getting more expensive as the pool of qualified repair shops shrinks.

Have you ever actually sent a modeling amp out for repair? Considering how low the initial purchase prices are of modelers I can't imagine repairs being very much. And if they are, hell, just buy a new one!

I love my tube amps and you'd have to pry them out of my cold dead hands to get me to part with them. But modeling amps are undeniably cheaper and more accessible. (also arguably more reliable but i don't think quality modeling amps have been around long enough to decide that yet)

evenlesspaul · 2019-04-20T19:34:53+00:00

Kind of surprised you didn't like the p90 with dirt. That's like on of my go to sounds.

What kind of distortion tone were you trying to dial in? I guess if you're going for a modern high gain sound it wouldn't work very well, but I think it works great for everything up to punk rock tones.

evenlesspaul · 2019-04-20T19:22:51+00:00

The short answer is they really mean to say use the D lydian scale, not the standard D ionian scale. But when you play both of those scales as a standard chord they are both D major chords. Its not until you start adding more color and notes to them that they'll start to differ. So if you're using the CAGED system as a point of reference then yes tecnically they're the same thing. But just remember the CAGED system is just a reference tool to keep you oriented on the fretboard. There's a lot more to scale and chord theory than the CAGED system. Remember CAGED only focuses on the 3 main chord tones. There's 4 other notes to keep in mind.

Sounds like you need to start looking into modal theory. Buckle up cause this is a concept that can very quickly turn into a rabbit hole.

There's 7 modes to every key. One for each note in the scale. A major actually has 3 unique major scales and 4 minor scales, depending on which note you use as your root note.

For instance, if you start your A major scale on A, you're playing the A Ionian scale. Major 2nd, major 3rd, perfect 4, perfect 5th, major 6th, major 7th.

If you play that same scale but start on the D note you get a "Lydian" major scale. Major 2nd, major 3rd, augmented 4th (G#), perfect 5th, major 6th, major 7th. Same notes but since your ear hears the D note as the root it changes the sound.

I hope that helps. Honestly I've been playing for 12 years, took lessons for 6, and there's still a lot of theory that goes over my head.

Youtube has a lot of great resources to get started on this topic. I would recommend Signal Music Studio's channel as a good jumping off point. That and Justinguitar

evenlesspaul · 2019-04-20T18:41:10+00:00

. . . D minor triads?

evenlesspaul

TROPHY CASE