The TC Spark boost pedal is small and will add up to 20db for not much money (around £40 here in the UK).
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Thanks, I’ll take a look.
I use this for cheap battery powered pedal okayness.
I haven’t been able to play my Eastwood MRG Mandolin because I keep breaking the goddam E strings.
Apparently, there is a specific technique that must be applied for installing a string. I never had to do this on guitar because guitars and and guitar strings are much more forgiving.
Still, gonna take the MRG to the local music shop and have them see if there’s any issue with a burr in the tuning post or the nut, before gambling more of my time on the MRG. I’ve already broken 3 E strings on the thing.
Those burrs will get you. Almost every time I’ve had a stringed instrument with chronic string breaking issues it’s been solved by filing down tiny burrs at the nut, tuners, or bridge/ saddles.
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I couldn’t find any burrs, so I dropped the mandolin off at the music shop for inspection.
80% chance the breaks were caused by my improper winding method. I did not know about the technique to loop the string towards the middle of the neck, then loop it back the other way, as shown in the videos. Also, I was not doing a good job of maintaining string tension while winding. The technique shown in the videos to hold the string down near the end of the fretboard never occured to me.
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are you sure you have the right string-sizes (and tuning) ?
I messed that up once with a mandoline.
The first string that broke was shipped with the mandolin. So I was trusting Eastwood to ship the correct strings with their own instrument.
The 2 replacement strings that I broke came from emando.com. Ordered after exchanging emails with the person who runs the store, and he made his recommendations He had better know what strings go with what mandolin! I’m sure he’d be out of business very quickly if he didn’t know his stuff.
We’ll see what the shop says after they’ve finished examining the mandolin.
A whole playlist of free lessons on how to play holiday songs. Each video has tab/notation i think.
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Mark Speer of Khruangbin uses flatwounds on a strat with a Tusq nut and Tusq saddles. Says he plays a whole tour on one set of strings.
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I believe it. Most people, especially pros, typically change their strings due to the sound becoming dull rather than strings breaking. Flatwound strings have a naturally duller sound than roundwounds so as they get dirty and dented (by frets) from use the tonal change is comparatively subtle.
Tusq is a great material because it doesn’t dampen much vibration, therefore preserving more sustain and harmonic content. As far as breakage though, I think it’s more about the workmanship of the slotting in the nut/ saddles. However, harder materials (tusq, brass, etc) will preserve your nice smooth slots longer than softer materials.
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Yeah, apart from burrs in the metal I think I read that there’s some chemistry that happens between palm sweat, metal saddles and the strings that accelerates breakage, and that Tusq or graphite saddles reduce that.
Quad Cortex. Watched the Andertons tube vid today. This sounds ffffking nice!
Also got me thinking, about “warmth and saturation” in synth processing. Are we going about it all wrong with 1073’s, AH’s and BOUM’s. Wouldn’t it sound nicer to go for big fat speaker cab simm’s? I’d kill to have my old pair of KB300 combos back. Haven’t had that level of satisfaction in over a decade.
Anyway…,
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I use guitar rig on synths. Works great.
Edit: that quad cortex looks sick! Makes me almost wish I didn’t have a helix lol!
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I guess it’s the eternal diatribe, analog Vs digital, valves Vs transistors, hardware Vs VST, Mac vs PC…
When I play my guitar, I really like to have my valve amplifier and I find all of this modelling stuff (like kemper or this new neural) awful, but it’s just me!
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I wasn’t entirely convinced either, previously, and the price was way too high for “meh”.
I’ll never-ever throw away my bass and guitar stack, never.
But there’s about 3,600,900 other stack variations out there I’d love to have too. If I can get a decent emulation of all of them for the price of just one, that’s ok. The quadcortex is getting far better reviews than its predecessors, so I’ll give it a go for sure. YMMV
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I have a helix and had a pod hd pro rack before. The helix is quite a bit better than the pod was.
But even with the pod, it was nice to blend with a real amp. Like you said the amount of variations i can get with the helix is worth it. And tbh i really doubt anyone would tell in a blind test.
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I think the first thing I’ll try with it in store is a synth. So I hope they at least have an 80’s Roland Cube emulation, you know, for the Bassists.
Expensive but seems to sound really good!
I really like the size format. Caveats?
One day maybe? The HX Stomp will probably do the job till that day!
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I heard about BluGuitar from an interview with Jennifer Batten. I’m not sure if the Nanotube is a real miniature tube/valve, or solid state circuitry cleverly designed to emulate tube behavior. In any case, seems good enough for Batten. Whatever it really is, the Nanotube(s) is/are in the power amp section which is where the tubes have the most impact on the sound and behavior… instead of in the preamp section. There’s also a German version of the website.
https://bluguitar.com/en/
I love my QES Retrofier Roadtripper MCM amp. It’s solid state, supposedly with tube-emulating circuit design, which thus competes with other “tube-ish” solid state amps like the Tech21s, the Quilters, etc. It brings out the individual character of each of my guitars in ways that my loud rock band amp (Boss Katana) doesn’t. The Roadtripper’s spring reverb is understated, but is my favorite of the spring reverbs I’ve used. In any case, I don’t really rely on vintage-accurate tube sag or any of that stuff for my sound.