Scratchy midweek

While playing this morning, there was a drop in signal from the amp then it went dead for a while, before coming back to life. The immediate reaction was: Darn! Tubes are dying. However, a quick peek revealed glowing, healthy tubes. 

A few moments later, it happened again & I messed with the Master volume control & the amp crackled rather fiercely. However, after switching to the clean channel, everything was working well; no issues with any of the controls. So the quick conclusion was the problematic Master volume control & we all know dead amp pots are a little challenging to swap out. I grabbed the contact cleaner which was nearby & gave the volume control a good spray. For a more effective result, the amp head was laid on its back to allow the cleaning fluid to flow down. That, folks, was the cure to this mess - dirty contacts. I'm wondering why this was the case considering I play almost every day so the Master volume control was always rotated. 

This Waxco Tech brand is, to my knowledge, the cheapest contact cleaner out there (less than $5 if prices remain true at Mustafa Center) but it's the least pleasant in terms of odour. If this bothers you, consider the Servisol, 3M & WD-40 brand instead.

Cycling distortion

This was yesterday's setup; my PRS MT15 & the Tioga Road Cycling Distortion by Animals Pedal. I'm not trying to surpass any gain threshold here simply because the MT15 has loads on tap. The pedal's job is to push it through at lower gain settings. When you pair up two devices with gain going at about 50% each, you'd hear some incredible saturation that's missing if you were to employ only one distortion source. The light pickers among us would relish this as the instrument gets more sensitive to touch. The trade off here is of course extraneous noise generated by two gain sources so if you are not careful with your instrument handling, the set up will pick up every little contact & make it audible at the amp end. This is the reason why distortion / high gain freaks employ a noise gate in their set up as well.

If you are interested, Animals Pedal are available at Davis GMC. 

G & H

Goodbye.

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