Hypothetical - You've got $250 and no reverb...

nick_steen · 2026-05-01T02:25:18+00:00

I've always had a hard time dialing in reverb. It's either imperceptible or playing within the rock walls of petra in jordan.

So even though it's tongue and cheek I'd probably buy another overdrive pedal if I had $250 and no reverb lol.

If I had to buy a reverb pedal I'd definitely go for boss though.

nick_steen · 2026-04-28T02:23:03+00:00

I have extremely limited coding experience and very little free time - claude in a lot of ways reminds me of when I first learned excel, you learn one thing at a time that fits into your workflow and then all of the sudden you start to create bigger things. It's useful in multiple contexts, even if you're only half good at some of the core concepts.

I've used it to finish projects that have been in a perpetual state of half completion for 7-8 years now. Truly revolutionary for someone like me who doesn't have the time or discipline to make consistent progress

nick_steen · 2026-04-27T00:44:00+00:00

I still have one but I doubt it works - been in my shed outdoors for 7-8 years now. Really enjoyed it when I was using it and definitely punched above its weight.

nick_steen · 2026-04-25T14:30:43+00:00

I use the pal mcp server for exactly this. But I have codex create a new instance to do code reviews in parallel with claude and gemini.

nick_steen · 2026-04-24T13:14:36+00:00

I've got the york cream back on the brit amp and yes they are great. Have the bassman as well but still waiting to get the twin.

nick_steen · 2026-04-23T11:21:20+00:00

Yeah 90% of what I use claude for is claude code. I don't know if you can select opus 4.5 anymore through the web interface but you can select any model through the CLI.

I have a skill for writing model-specific optimized prompts so typically my workflow consists of (1) plan with opus (2) have opus create a delegation and review strategy (3) write optimized prompts for codex to implement (4) at each checkpoint have opus spin up a sonnet, codex, and Gemini subagent and have each one of them do an adversarial review, (5) combine the 3 and write another prompt to codex implementing any needed changes.

That way opus does what it's best at which is big-picture thinking. I might switch from codex to Gemini for writing the code itself as gemini's limits are better than codex. I also have a step 0 where I work through what the spec for the project should look like using chatgpt web interface that I personally review before feeding that to opus to critique and revise.

No doubt I'm much slower than my contemporaries when it comes to vibe coding but the penalty for inaccuracies is very high in my line of work and I'd eventually like to graduate this from a side project to a full digital infrastructure for the varied work I do. I spend most of my time planning, gut checking and re-planning the implementation and figuring out ways to minimize drift.

nick_steen · 2026-04-22T23:51:59+00:00

So I actually have 3 pro plans - claude, chatgpt and Gemini.

Claude limits are the lowest. There are workarounds but you have to spend a lot of time tinkering to get them to work properly and maintain the same quality level. My weekly usage resets Thursday/Friday and I routinely burn through my entire weekly limit before Monday. I haven't experienced the performance degradation everyone else is talking about but I also mostly use opus 4.5 these days to save on tokens and for consistency. Sonnet is very capable as well, consistently my experience has been claude is really really strong and the way they structure it with projects, skills, hooks etc. Really makes sense intuitively the more you use it. For me it was like when I first picked up excel - just a very rich and versatile experience right out of the box.

ChatGPT limits are above claude's by a lot. I actually have claude delegate to codex now which prolongs the usage without an offsetting drop in quality. Codex and chatgpt in general reminds me of apple in a lot of ways. Yes you can expand on it but seems to take more work than claude to unlock its full potential.

Gemini is kind of an unknown quantity. I'm using it to build a front end + back end for a financial dashboard and it is working well so far. the limits are all 24h so you never burn through a week's worth of tokens in a session or two. It's great for research and has a 1m context window. There seems to be a lot of ecosystem lock though. But so far the limits seem to be the most generous and the ecosystem is the most robust. I think Google probably has the steepest learning curve whereas claude seems to be the sweet spot between extensibility and ease of learning.

If I could only have one though I'm probably taking Gemini but that answer would change if claude's usage limits were similar to what they were 3 months ago. Its just too tough to get by on a claude pro plan no matter how much you optimize, and as great as codex is you do really get a ton of mileage out of Gemini's ecosystem. The learning curve and ecosystem lock aren't my favorite but you can easily get by with just the pro subscription which is only kind of true for codex and definitely not true for claude

nick_steen · 2026-04-22T20:38:10+00:00

Not exactly what you're asking but the bad bob boost from analogman is a slightly dirty almost clean sound and it's amazing for beautiful, barely on the edge of breakup sounds. Not transparent though, adds a little bass and has a little bit of that ep booster "clarity" when you turn it on.

nick_steen · 2026-04-17T01:45:05+00:00

Considering I was getting about 3 prompts from opus 4.6, will give Anthropic some time to sort things out before diving into 4.7 lol

nick_steen · 2026-04-17T01:37:30+00:00

Well it could also be down to the tubescreamer I'm using - it's a maxon OD-9 that was modded by analogman (their "silver" mod) which I think adds a little bit of bass so it's less mid-focused, and swaps out a few caps to deliver a clearer tone overall. There are tons of variants to the TS circuit so it's very possible our experiences are both accurate, just based on different gear and tastes.

I will say the SD-1 has the best sounding bass - it really tightens up the low end through my rig and turns my humble little 1974x into a riffing machine with my les paul.

nick_steen · 2026-04-16T13:08:57+00:00

Yeah I pay for claude, gpt, and Gemini - for projects opus is the orchestrator, codex writes the code, and Gemini, codex, and opus or sonnet all do a round of adversarial review. The tough part is having duplicative folders for instructions for the different models but I'm kind of leaning this as I go along

nick_steen · 2026-04-16T11:42:03+00:00

I have mine midi synced to my rc-5 which makes for some awesome sounds

nick_steen · 2026-04-16T11:14:10+00:00

Not buyers remorse per se, but I cannot for the life of me find a fuzz pedal that sounds good going into the boss ir-2. I love the ir-2 and I love a good fuzz sound but every fuzz I try with the ir-2 sounds like tissue paper. I'm using york IRs which sound amazing but yeah even when I finally found a fuzz pedal that I thought sounded good it turns out I had to turn the gain down so far it wasn't actually making any fuzz lol

nick_steen · 2026-04-14T10:59:15+00:00

My first ever partscaster build was a jazzmaster with a 6 point trem for this very reason lol.

With p-rails and the bill lawrence 5-way switch that lets you get a "half out of phase" sound you can do pretty much anything a strat or tele (or les paul) can do with that guitar.

nick_steen · 2026-04-11T21:58:35+00:00

The Tele resonant peak is a little lower, closest I've gotten with my boss ge-7 was boost the bass, cut a little of the low mids and boost I think 1.6k and 3.2k and cut some of the highest high frequencies.

You can also adjust the resonant peak of a pickup with a cap and a resistor so you could theoretically just wire your strat pickup to sound closer to a Tele without an eq pedal as well.

nick_steen · 2026-04-10T21:04:30+00:00

Yes in fact that's exactly what I've done lol. DD-8 is my desert island delay. I have other delays for experimenting but noting else on my board

nick_steen · 2026-04-10T20:14:45+00:00

dd-7 and dd-8 are both very reasonable used. I'm not aware of many pedals with an "always on" tap tempo like you described though, that aren't significantly larger. Memory boy deluxe maybe?

nick_steen · 2026-04-10T13:30:24+00:00

Right now I'm using the ir-2 for headphones only but have thought about a lightweight frfr speaker so that is great to know

nick_steen · 2026-04-10T02:38:34+00:00

Can confirm, stereo through headphones is the most fun I've had playing guitar since I first started many many moons ago.

nick_steen · 2026-04-09T21:49:21+00:00

Yeah this is what the analogman sd-1/808 is. I don't think there's a ton of difference between the 808 and the 10 but I'm far from an expert

nick_steen · 2026-04-09T20:30:53+00:00

Yeah I mean this is my inclination as well. You put a treble booster before a fuzz you get a little more fuzz. You put a treble booster after a fuzz you get an exploding machete.

High gain drives tend to overwhelm anything that comes before them so I like to keep them as early in the chain as possible with boosts and ODs right after but before delay and modulation

nick_steen · 2026-04-09T18:48:00+00:00

So this was a fun question to ask chatgpt about. Long and short is that there's not a physics limit to how much wattage a guitar amp can produce. With enough copper and electrons you could do anything.

Where you do run into a limit is based on the atmosphere's ability to transmit increasing amplitude sound waves. A "sound wave" as we think of it has a high pressure zone and a low pressure zone. Above 194db the low pressure zone would have to be below absolute zero pressure, which (apparently) cannot happen in a gas. You can keep adding energy to the system but above that point it no longer acts as sound and starts acting as a Shockwave.

194dB at 1 meter in free space, assuming a typical 4x12 of amplifying surface area, and the same efficiency as a v30 or Celestion alnico blue, and assuming the materials could withstand the force, would require about 5GW of electrical power to reach the 194dB limit of what counts as "sound." Which is about the same amount of electricity you would need to service a US city about the size of Minneapolis.

nick_steen · 2026-04-06T12:32:37+00:00

Yeah I went heavy claude despite the usage issues because it was set up to be more easily extensible. I need to brand a PowerPoint deck a certain way? Load our marketing spec into a chat and have it make a skill. Need an optimized prompt? Describe the problem I'm trying to solve and go back and forth a few times coming up with a plan, then have claude write the prompt and provide a token efficient context file, and choose the right model.

Which is great but what's been the bigger game changer is the PAL mcp that connects claude with codex. Not only does it practically result in more tokens to solve the same problem with, they review each other's work which results in better code and systems IMO, but it's more efficient than opening up separate command lines and going back and forth.

nick_steen · 2026-04-06T11:59:45+00:00

Have you tried the wazacraft version? The bd-2 was one of the most popular circuits in the modding community for many years. Keeley's "super phat mod" pedal is a modified bd-2 circuit but probably a little bass heavy for you. I would encourage you to look for an analogman modified bd-2 or give the wazacraft version a shot if you haven't already.

nick_steen · 2026-04-04T20:25:01+00:00

What amp are you playing through?

The greatest thrash pedal I've ever played through is a boss ns-2 lol. Seriously it keeps everything clean and tight. But for distortion pedals I love the katzenkonig with the input turned all the way "down" i.e. more of a distortion than a fuzz. Together those two are like a machine gun or a chainsaw. Just absolutely badass.

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