And now..

Well, the Paisley One is there at last, and between tweaking it a wee bit and playing it a fair bit more, it has been quite nice to get to the end of that particular, err, 'journey'.

I am soooo very Generation Zzzzz.

But, that isn't the end of things and it is equally cute to get back on track with what I should have been doing in the first place, and building some amps and effects.

To set the ball-a-rolling then, I'm going to put together a couple of Sophie's and an Amy or two. Maybe even a Cheryl if I'm feeling adventurous. I'm also plotting something new for the Cigar Box Guitar on the horizon, which will be nice.

Oh, and there is also a little Pink Elephant or two that I've got to get my head around...next in fact, but more on that anon.

But it is late,
or early

it is all
about
perspex

nitey-nite

It's In My Brain

Well, managed to do a bit more cutting and pasting, and The Paisley One - to give it it's formal title - is looking a bit more likely to succeed.

Hopefully, you'll be able to see in the fotos that all of the creamy colour has now been paisley-fied, apart from the cavities, and generally it is starting to look the part.

There is still a wee bit of work to be done, as it is a bit untidy here and over there, and we've got to get into the sanding and clear coating cycle for a while, but generally it is rough enough for my tastes yet looking solid enough to survive.

The neck too, mustn't forget that. I've resisted the urge to go Bisto-like, and so it has ended-up nicely honeyed rather than daytime-telly. I also had some gold tuners, which are on in the foto, but as all of the rest of the hardware is chrome, may not be for long.

Going forward, I'm going to wire it basically and fit it together once a few bits show up, and then decide what to do about the electronics for real.

That is the interesting part, of course. I'm kind of torn between using the octaver/fuzz I've been playing with, putting a Sophie's Fuzz in or trying to build a little sustainer, like the Fernandes or Sustainiac ones.

One step at a time though, getting it to play in tune will no doubt be the first step...

Nowt New Under The Sun

It's funny, trying to come up with some designs for new guitar effects as basically (and I am thinking fuzz in the main here) there are so many variations already out there, that how you could possibly know that the 'great new fuzz sound' you've come-up with hasn't already been created elsewhere is beyond me?

Given a world with an infinite number of guitar monkeys with soldering irons, they can't all be writing Hamlet, if you see what I mean.

And having given this some thought, basically, I can't see that it matters. Sound and tone are personal (and like colour I'm still not convinced we all hear or see the same thing anyway) and taste more so.

What perhaps does matter more is how you create the sound and the way circuits are put together, the components used. There are two schools on the components which come down to one question, to use 'original' Germanium transistors or not. Other than that, 99% of components in a fuzz are hardly that interesting.

So yay or nay? Again, I don't think it matters too much, another matter of taste, but the Germaniums do seem to sound different, like valve amps versus solid state. Myself, well so far I've not used them, but I'm going to give them a go this week, so we will see.

On the circuits, again I can't imagine anybody these days is coming up with anything fuzzy that is truly original unless they are adding features or tighter tone controls or hotter boosters, but even then it is just tinkering and the law of diminishing returns will surely cut in. The basic fuzz circuit won't change too much. And these days it is so easy to find so many circuits out there. There are loads of web sites with schematics and layouts that you can use easily enough and try. Many of them (most of them) are clones of 'famous' pedals,and in some cases the only way to get your hands on one without flogging a limb, but there are a few scattered around that claim to be original. All of which is why I've deliberately not claimed our Sophie's Filthy Boots to be anything other than my interpretation of what a fuzz should be. My tuppence, as it were. I'm sure somebody, somewhere will have produced the same sound using the same components in a similar layout, but there we are. (Some dizzy whore, 1800 & 4)

It is funny though (and what prompted this Boxing Day whimsy) but I was reading somewhere about a fuzz some bloke had built, where the board layout was posted. He was claiming it as an original (as we know a dangerous game, I think) when even I could recognise it as a straight lift from one of the more obvious schematic sites. The really funny thing was that his schematic had been laid out using the rather brilliant DIY Layout Creator software, and the one that may have, err, influenced him is in that piece of software's own library of layouts.

Now, to be fair it may be a coincidence, as I have said about monkeys above, and in general terms I think anybody playing with building effects will do as I have and spend a lot of time looking at other people's work and trying to understand how they work, and maybe how you can improve them before coming up with your own variation, but even so it made me smile to read the bluster.

DIY Pedal Kits - One For The Builders

Looking at our web stats, I notice that we seem to get quite a few people looking for DIY pedal kits, which we don't actually make or sell.

Obviously there are plenty of people such as BYOC and Tonepad who will supply your needs, but I must admit, being in the UK this can be a bit time-consuming and expensive and when kits start to get more expensive than buying a pedal that they are cloning, it can be a bit of a leap of faith and also not a little off putting, especially if it is a first attempt at building an effect for yourself.

Anyway, a while back I bought a fuzz kit from a fella on the Music Radar forums, and it was excellent. I was getting into my DIY trip and it taught me a lot, and I have to say the bloke in question was cool in not sniggering when I asked some quite stupid questions. The pedal sounded brilliant as well, and I've since noticed that everybody else on said forum who had gone for a kit was raving about them too (though like me, most were relieved that he was willing to put himself out on the Q&A front.) As it happens I've written something about the whole pedal build thing for the GuitarTools site, which will hopefully be up early in the new year.

But to the point - the fella has obviously gone on to bigger things and I've just found out that he has launched a company called (and it is all in the branding) DIY Pedal Kits.Com and as he is based in the UK, I think that if you fancy having a go, and are similarly geographically challenged, he is the one I would recommend as a great starting point.

Actually, I'd recommend him wherever you are.

He has a few different kits now too, and the prices look good so what have you got to lose?

(And no, I don't know him, we aren't related and I paid for my kit. It is just credit where it is due.)

Sophie's Filthy Boots: Fuzz In Excelsis

Moving on from amps a wee bit, we have also been spending some time trying to come-up with a dirty, sleazy, slapper of a fuzz box, and believe it or not, the convent education hasn't gone to waste after all, and I think we might just have got there.

Breathe.
Must remember to breathe.

I'm sure there will be more as time moves on, but I'm chuffed to announce that our first pedal is a rather naughty little bint we've decided to give the moniker 'filthy boots' or to be more accurate 'Sophie's Filthy Boots', as we feel that it is quite a sophisticated little number, if truth be told, but one that is perhaps trying to shock, if you see what I mean, and deflect attention from it's quite nice, BBC, middle class roots. Our Sophie is a one knob girl, and seems to scrub up well to start with before basically going ape-shit when the party starts.


We were actually going to call this something like 'Lou's Patent Leather New York Boots', but forgot, and so didn't, but the dom imagery of shiny-boots-of-leather could have fitted quite nicely and maybe fed into our decision to go for the daughter-of-the-Beeb kind of nomenclature. So Lou could have worked and maybe should have.


But in the end didn't prove to.

So there we are.