The sound of Mississippi...

I've always been attracted to the sound of slide guitar and blues harp ever since I saw the movie "Crossroads" way back in the 80's. I'd never gotten any closer to "The South" than Las Vegas until I visited my wife's family in Biloxi, Mississippi a few years ago. I've got to tell you, it really changes you. The whole area feels, well.....old. I mean, here in California everything is bright, shiny and new, but in the south time seems to move so much slower. You can just tell by breathing the air and walking through the dirt that so many important things have happened there. The music of the south has a purpose much deeper than fame and fortune. History has been preserved and recounted, passed down from generation to generation through song. This is what draws me to the blues, bluegrass and folk music. It's storytelling at its best.

Anyhow, I've finally committed myself to learning to play slide guitar and blues harp. I found some great videos on YouTube of people teaching the basics and it inspired me. I bought a DVD by one of the posters, Ronnie Shellist, on how to learn blues harp (a.k.a. Mississippi Sax). I ran down to the local Guitar Center and picked up a Hohner Special 20 diatonic harp in the key of A and away I goes...

The DVD, entitled "Harmonica Foundations" takes a totally green beginner like myself and teaches you the in's and out's of blues harp. I've seen the Mel Bay books that try and teach you how to play 'Kum by Ya' on the harmonica, but that's not for me. I've only gotten through the first half of the hour-long DVD and already I've learned some very important things.

I'm a firm believer that if there is something you want to do or learn in this lifetime, you'd better get to doing it. Who knows how long you can put it off before it just slips away from you. I don't want to be a senile old fart pushing my walker around the halls of a hospice gumming my harmonica and playing nonsensical squeaks and honks. Damn! I wants to blow some HARP!! Yesssum...

Another great speaker...

I just received my new Eminence Red Fang 12" 8-ohm AlNiCo speaker and installed it in my Fender Blues Deluxe. I had recently swapped out the stock speaker for a Weber Blue Dog (see previous post) and was quite pleased. However, I've been really curious what difference there would be on the tone with an AlNiCo speaker instead of a ceramic magnet. The Red Fang is a 30-watt speaker compared to the 50-watt Blue Dog, so there will be some difference there as well.

First off I noticed that this speaker has much more bite than the Blue Dog and more pronounced bass and treble frequencies as well. The notes sound more rounded and warm with the Blue Dog, but still very good to my ears. I've only played the Red Fang for 2 hours so far, so I'm going to give it some time to get into my head so I can put the Weber back in and compare. I noticed that Eminence has a new sound clip page on their website of all their guitar speakers. They used a loop pedal to record 3 different guitar parts (clean, overdrive and heavy) and ran the loop through each of their speakers. It's a great way to hear the tonal differences of each speaker.

My Fender Blues Deluxe tends to be a very treble-heavy amp on its own, so the Blue Dog did a great job of taming the extended high end frequencies, but the Red Fang also lends itself well to this amp. Because the amp is a 40 watt all-tube amp and the Fang is only 30 watts the touch sensitivity is really there. I can hear every nuance of my playing with great clarity. It's especially nice at lower volume levels when you simply can't crank the amp up enough to get the speaker to move air.

So far I'm really impressed with the Red Fang, but I need to play with it awhile before I try the Blue Dog again. Either way I'm sure to have a winner. Next I'd like to try the Eminence Cannibis Rex hemp-cone speaker to compare yet another driver. Ahhh...the possibilities are endless (unlike my wallet).

Another 'Must-have' pedal

I've really simplified my rig these days. I've got a closet full of effects pedals, multi-effect processors like the Roland VG-88 and other miscellaneous toys. However, I'm finding that I can do so much more with fewer effects in my signal chain. Currently I'm running my guitar into the AWESOME Barber 'Tone Press' parallel compressor, then into a Seymour Duncan 'Twin Tube Classic' and finally into my Fender Blues Deluxe. The Tone Press is a true bypass parallel compressor which adds some nice clean boost as well as smooth compression without coloring your original tone. Most stompboxes tend to unnecessarily change your tone (known as 'tone-sucking') even when they aren't engaged. I notice this especially with my BOSS pedals and my Dunlop Cry Baby Wah. I'm all about the purity of tone now, so the old adage "less is more" is my current mantra.

I highly recommend that you give the Tone Press a try and see what it can do. BarberElectronics makes some really great pedals that are quite inexpensive compared to some of the more well-known brands such as Fulltone and Keeley. The Tone Press will run you around $140 direct from Barber, while the Keeley Compressor is $219. I can't imagine a pedal being built better than the Barber; they spare no expense on quality components. There are sound clips of a few of their pedals on the website if you want to hear them before buying.

Anyhow, that's my Rave for the day. C-ya...

Weber 12" Blue Dog ceramic speaker

I just installed a 12" 50-watt, 8-ohm Weber 'Blue Dog' Ceramic speaker in my 93' Fender Blues Deluxe to replace the stock Eminence 12" that came in it. The stock speaker was rather thin sounding, especially in the low to upper mid-range. The treble frequencies also had the unenviable 'ice-pick' highs which we all so love to hear (sarcasm, sarcasm...). I must say in Eminence's defense that they are indeed great speakers, you just have to have the right one to match the amp and tone that you are looking for. This speaker was clearly not the right one for me.

So, in goes the Weber and suddenly a silly grin appears on my face. The amp is now complete! I have obtained tonal Nirvana!...well, it was a great improvement anyhow. The amp is now much fuller sounding and the higher frequencies are no longer piercing. The addition of the rich middle frequencies have given the amp the sound that I have been looking for. It's not a Bogner or a Bad Cat, but for $500 for the amp I can say that I can finally live without spending the money on the aforementioned boutiques. The Weber sounds just as fabulous whether played clean or dirty. The notes bloom nicely and have a great natural compression now and the overdrive sounds have a nice, smooth, throaty growl. Being that this speaker has a ceramic magnet the clean headroom is quite high. I have yet to push the clean channel into speaker breakup, but I can attest that it will be a much higher volume level than I can comfortably stand in front of.

I spied this speaker on eBay and was able to win the auction for $84.00 including shipping. I have recently come to realize the vast importance of speakers in obtaining a good tone. I have spent years and lots of $$ trying out different stomp boxes, pickups, etc...searching for a particular tone. Until now I have ignored the importance of speakers. DUH! Oh well, better late than never, huh? I am interested in trying out some hemp-cone speakers and AlNiCo magnet speakers to see what benefit, if any, there is. Eminence makes an affordable hemp-cone speaker called the Cannibis Rex which sports the same hemp cone that Tone Tubby uses. It runs about $90 new compared to $140 for the Tone Tubby. I'm all for saving $50, right? Also, the Eminence Red Fang is a 30-watt AlNiCo speaker which is supposed to be similar to the Celestion AlNiCo Blue, but at $150 it's a hundred bucks cheaper than the Celestion. Sounds good to me!

I'll keep posting my little ditties and acquisitions in my quest for tone, but I think that short of building my own tube amp, I've gotten pretty close to what makes me happy. Hasta la bye bye for now...

Tube swapping (part 2)

While running rabidly through the endless nirvana that is the NAMM (north American music merchants) show I noticed some cool stuff at the Groove Tubes booth. The thing that interested me the most though was their new 'Substitubes' tube reducer sockets. Basically these little wonders allow you to run your class AB tube amp in an open-ended class A configuration by using EL84 tubes instead of 6L6, 6V6 or EL34s. This also greatly reduces the power of the amp, allowing you to crank it into power amp distortion without breaking the windows out of your house. Too cool! A duet of these babies will run you around $120 while a quartet is $240. Yikes! I decided to check out what eBay had to offer and noticed someone selling a nearly new quartet. My friend Dan offered to split the auction with me since we each only needed a duet of sockets, so I bid on them and won the auction for a whopping $88 including shipping.

I installed the Substitubes in my 93' Fender Blues Deluxe along with a matched duet of JJ brand EL84's. So, how did it sound? Well, it basically left me with no clean channel and the dirty channel was, well.....dirtier. Keep in mind that I was running all 12AX7 preamp tubes which are pretty high gain as well. So, I swapped in a 12AU7 (lower gain tube) in V1 which feeds the clean channel and voila! My clean channel was back. The volume was significantly reduced as well and I am now able to run it up to 5 without it blasting me out. I'm probably pulling around 18-22 watts out of this 40 watt amp.

I don't think that there is anything I can do about the anemic dirty channel in this amp (short of a major modification) so I will just have to focus on getting myself a really versatile pedal to do the job. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Classic is a perfect candidate for the job. I'm not looking for seething distortion, just some nice grit for rhythm playing and some smooth sustain for leads. To this amps defense I must admit that it makes every pedal I've ever put in front of it sound awesome. I've run pedals in front of other amps and they aren't nearly as pleasing as with this one.

For the next installment of 'Tube Swapping' I plan to try different preamp tubes to see what, if any, difference they make. Until then...

My Fave music store...

My friend Dan and I went to True Tone music in Santa Monica today to see what goodies they had for us to covet. Well, they pretty much had everything you could imagine and then some. I saw a wall of custom Bad Cat amplifiers and every stomp box known to man. Walls and walls of guitars and other cool things. Too bad they aren't closer to us!!

Cool guitars...

I stopped by the Reverend Guitar's booth at the 07' NAMM show and played a few of their guitars. I was blown away by how well they sounded and played, especially considering that most of them are in the sub-$500 range. I dig that they have that cool retro style about them...very hip. If I had more room and money I would get the Flatroc in Orange with the optional vibrato bar. Too cool...

Every guitarist must own this album...

If you've never heard The Allman Brother's 'Live at Fillmore East' album, then you need to grab yourself a clean pair of shorts and head down to your local record store. Trust me, you'll need that clean pair of BVD's when your hear Duane Allman and Dicky Betts trade solos on songs like "Mountain Jam", "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" and "You don't love Me/Soul Serenade". Actually, they just released a deluxe edition of "Eat a Peach" which has the entire original album remastered, plus some of the best cuts from the "Live at Fillmore East" concert of 1971. Totally worth getting...