Selling: Pedals

If these pedals appeal to you, know that I have put them up for sale. This pedal runs on PSU which I don't own any more so I don't see using it in any circumstances.

Know that I take care of my gear & these are in very good condition. Prices are final & I appreciate your contributions to my well-being. The pain of unstable employment & funding medical treatments are real. Thanks for reading.

Friedman: Dirty Shirley ($180)

Biyang EQ: $80

• boxes included
• Self-collect: Yew Tee / CCK mrt station
• No reservations / trades

PCs

When I bring my LPJ out to play, I usually have given up on the Gibson tone for the day / moment & looking for a saving grace. The LPJ is a gloss-free model & it will always sound more appealing to me when its other glossed out siblings failed to please tone-wise.  

But folks, this LPJ is special because it has a pair of Seymour Duncan Phat Cat pickups; single coils in a humbucker housing. This is the second guitar in my possession to sport a pair of PCs & they sound killer. I'm impressed with the distortion aspects of these pickups; they simply sound good & will out perform humbuckers meant for overdrive / distortion excellence, no kidding.

This is the EQ break down of the PCs from the manufacturer's website. It has a little bit of kick in terms of treble & might possibly be the reason for them sounding good. The general expectation here is that, anything with excessive treble will sound repulsive & serrated, almost next to being useless. All this remains to be perceptive, you need to hear the tone in real time application. These pickups sound appealing despite the manufacturer's caution of a zestful treble response. Phat Cats, no regrets!

EQ pic: Seymour Duncan

MM 2021

The EHX Nano Metal Muff gets a feature revision this year (actually, late 2020). The latest incarnation (left) features a 3-band EQ (yes!) & a noise gate. The previous version (right) was a bare 2-knob affair with a scoop midrange option. Thank you, EHX, for keeping it practical; a more editable EQ section is the way to go as metal heads out there are not about scooping the midrange exclusively. The noise gate also helps tame things down in high gain settings. On my list, definitely.

EQ = Boost?

I remember this episode of EQ talk with an acquaintance some time back who was of the opinion that the EQ pedal is actually a booster unit with frequency manipulations. I disagreed with him to a certain extent because some EQ units do not offer a gain push. These are notable EQ units with no LEVEL or VOLUME control options. An example is seen above- MXR's 6-band EQ. The primary purpose of the EQ is frequency manipulation, if it comes with a little push in terms of volume or gain then it's a bonus. We therefore do not resort to EQ units as the first cut in boosting our signals. We have clean boosts to refer to for that purpose. 

Am I a big fan of the EQ pedal? I used to be EQ inclined when dealing with practice amps. I needed that extra magic so to speak, to compensate what could have been achieved by a bigger amp or a more feature laden amp in terms of tone. These days, even the smaller amps are quite competent in this aspect as they feature 3-band EQs as opposed to that single TONE knob. 

Setting

Had been playing the EVH for the past few days. The settings you see here are fixed regardless of the different guitars that were plugged into it:

• EQ. If you have tried Van Halen's amps in any incarnation, you'd realize that the treble response is excessive. I've totally grounded mine (zero!) as seen above & compensated it through some presence. Even at that much (slightly less than 25%), the amp's still hissing at the top end especially with more volume added in.
• Presence. As mentioned above, it's used to keep track of how much top end ended up in the mix. Unlike the HIGH option, presence here seems to spill over into the other frequencies. It's like a universal control of sorts & possibly the most under-used option in amps together with RESONANCE.
• Gain. I like how the EVH was conceived to be a very angry amp in terms of gain. This way, players are compelled to dial it in to taste, not dime it & think higher gain settings are the best. On that note, I have the tendency to max the gain on amps I use. 😅 But seen here, it's under lots of constraint, just slightly more than 50% to get things through. I'm not saying this is the optimal when EVH is concerned but we should dial it in (for everything in fact, not just gain) on a need basis with careful listening along the way. 

Boogie in the house (3)

Besides the inherent drive voicing, in my opinion, the Mark V 25's EQ section is quite the make-or-break factor here. You'd be surprised that the sweep isn't as wide as many of us would expect. In fact, I wasn't convincing in terms of detail.

That's where the other EQ section comes in. The slider range here is like the EQ's equalizer; an internal check of what's already there to begin with.Without hearing the amp in action, many of us would consider this an overkill but this is an important feature in ensuring the amp doesn't stay bland when only the rotary EQ is in use. I particularly fancy the fact that I can tailor my top end to make it sound more pronounced without sounding excessively screechy. On that note, the slider set can be activated via foot switch so it means you have the option to use this as a 'boost' so to speak, especially handy if you are the type who favours some solos via the neck pickup.

EQ you

I'm someone who favours midrange but what's going on here? I've basically trimmed both the midrange & top end down.

Ditto this setting. Do you, instinctively, make an amp sound like how you want it to sound like, say when you try a guitar at the stores? You'd probably do likewise in the jamming studio; you dial up what you think might work because it worked for you at home. I'd bet you sound awful while you were at it. In fact, this is largely the reason why many people deem a certain instrument below their expectations, it's because they don't hear what they've heard all along at home, it's how they deal with tone. In this light specifically, it's how you handle EQ.

Ladies & gentlemen, the advice here would be to address tone issues that manifest in real time, as opposed to dialing up you favourite settings. It's as simple as trimming down the top end of a bright sounding guitar, for instance, & not insisting on your scooped (excess treble & bass with zero midrange) tone. Just some days ago, this took place at the music store. I walked past someone who was auditioning a semi-hollow guitar with the amp set to a scooped tone. OK, maybe the previous guy who tried the amp left the settings as such but I found that hard to believe because he kept pumping up more distortion after selecting the METAL amp module. There is actually no hard & fast rule as to how you should EQ an amp for the very guitar that's plugged into it. However, there is this thing called glaring ignorance if you try scooping your soup with a fork. Just sharing :-)

Blackstar: FLY 3... just saying

In my two preceding FLY 3 entries, I've highlighted how this desktop wonder defied its pedigree in giving us a much needed quality tone which is arguably absent in other amps of its kind. Reiterating what I've mentioned before, the FLY 3 gives us some wonderful clean & driven tones in addition to doing well with a mild-type drive pedal in manifesting saturated dirt which is very pleasant to the ears. This segment serves to highlight what could be refined in heightening gratification (not alluding to a deficiency of any nature, of course).

1. EQ = ISF?

What do we understand by the term 'EQ' control? It is the manipulation of frequencies in giving the user more definition of some preferred voicing at the expense of others. In this context, a single control knob that allegedly controls the equipment's overall voicing often highlights the lower frequencies at one particular end & the higher frequencies at the opposition marking. The FLY 3's EQ knob doesn't manipulate the tone as such. As one dials it in a clockwise direction, one does not hear the removal of lower frequencies & the addition of higher ones making the amp going from bassy to trebly- no such effect was observed. In fact, this knob is adhering to the manufacturer's ISF (Infinite Shape Feature) definition; that voices the tone from an American voicing, to a more British take. So a small request here would be the provision of a real EQ control or remove that 'EQ' marking altogether & retain the ISF label so as to prevent confusion. Initially, I thought it was dysfunctional as I couldn't hear the desired EQ effect. 

2.Delay loss

I only discovered this upon the addition of a drive pedal to the signal chain. In a pedal-free set up, the DELAY effect was clearly heard in both clean & driven modes. Once a drive pedal is in use, the DELAY audibility was affected even with the level control maxed out. It's fair to say that players would want the DELAY function to stay true even with the introduction of external pedals in the signal route. If this could be refined- awesome!

With these in mind, it's just insufficient to reduce the FLY 3 from being an impressive little ditty.