new trem finally arrived from Deutschland after months on back order. looks good, or even great actually,
hope it doesn’t disappoint in other regards that actually matter.
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Here’s my choice of performance for graduation from Grade 1 of Neo-Soul Learning Pathway. “Morning Sunshine” by Justus West.
Grade 2 promises more instruction on expression, time-feel, etc.
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Check out how Carol Kaye (bassist from The Wrecking Crew!) uses the metronome.
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OMG I so want a Fuzz war that is the coolest fuzz pedal ever. On my wish list but not for next year since I pledged no gear in 2023.
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I just got feedback from someone on the Pickup Music team for the video I had to record to graduate from Grade 1 of Neo-Soul Guitar Pathway.
He maintained a great balance between informing me of my areas of improvement and being encouraging and supportive, instead of just “you suck and let me tell you the reasons why”. He clearly took the time to watch and listen to the video with attention to detail.
Pretty pleased with the depth of the feedback as well as the manner of delivery.
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You can always do a swap with someone who doesn’t want their FuzWar?
But that wouldn’t be me mate.
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I’m really late to the party, but I scored one of these Fairfield Circuitry Randy’s Revenge ring modulators for a decent price on an auction, and man, it is so good.
The mix knob, low pass filter, and sweep of the frequency knob makes this thing incredibly musical. I love the trem/vibe sounds you can get out of it, and by layering it with your clean signal you can get all sorts of amazing sounds. It goes everywhere from psychedelic Hendrix type vibes to sci-fi tones. You can almost do faux sitar sounds.
Such a fantastic pedal that I’m sure I’m going to have to check out more from Fairfield.
These are good videos, but I’m not sure they even do it justice, because there are so many sounds you can get from this thing, especially when combining with other effects like dirt, delay, and reverb. I’m gonna say five stars for this one, particularly if you ever wanted to experiment with a ring mod. 
(I could picture bands like Altin Gun, Kikagaku Moyo, or even Budos Band doing crazy psychedelic things with this one.)
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Good score. I don’t own one (yet) but a friend has one and I’ve messed with his a little bit. It gets my seal of approval and I’m an absolute lifelong ring mod junky.
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This combination here, with the Flint and Volante, can do some really interesting sounds. I never really got into the Dusk, as I like my MuTron better for traditional autowah sounds, but I’ve come to like the fixed filter sound on it. It pairs really well with the Fairfield RR. One thing I like doing on the RR is filtering the ring mod sound to just dial in a deep metallic bell sound and have it sit low in the mix so it’s just adding these deep metallic harmonics under your notes. It’s really musical when you tune it to an octave and sounds awesome with overdrive.
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The Lee Ranaldo one is still my favorite, I’ve been meaning to watch this one tho, just haven’t had an hour to kill lately.
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I know that a little over a week isn’t long enough to say I’m past the honeymoon phase but godamn this thing is nice. After being gifted last minute tickets to one of the Seattle Unwound reunion shows by someone who couldn’t go, I realized that a jazz bass is the bass sound that I have in my head. The neck on this feels fuller than fender and squire jazzes I’ve played tho, like it’s still pretty thin front to back but it’s just a straight semi-circle and that works well for my hand for whatever reason. The ergonomics on a jazz bass are much nicer than I realized, the first fret feels much closer to my body with this on a strap than on my Jaguar bass. I don’t know anything about active preamps but the preamp in this sounds pretty good to me and has been fun to play with. I’ve seen some reviews complaining about the pickups, and in most cases it seems to me that everything but the worst pickups can sound good if you’re willing to experiment with strings and find the right match. I hated the D’addarios that came stock, threw on some DR strings I’ve liked in the past and the pickups sound great to me.
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How are you liking the Dream 65? I’ve been eyeing it up for a bit.
That sounds like an awesome use. A blend control on a ring modulator is so useful. I find myself running some of mine in parallel loops to get similar results if they don’t have a blend on board.
It sounds like you understand the secret that keeps most guitar players from liking them, they don’t have to be full tilt weirdness at all times. They can be such versatile effects when a little subtlety is applied.
I’m a particularly big fan of the early Devo guitar sounds (ala Hardcore Volumes 1&2 era) which was very ring mod centric. It often just sounds like a strange clangy distortion.
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Was that Unwound show recent? I would have made the trip down if I’d known. Saw them a few times in the 90s and they were so good!
And yeah, DR makes some great bass strings. I think their Lo Riders are some of my all time favorites.
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Yeah, they’re currently on a reunion tour. That show was 3 weeks ago. I never thought I’d get to see them as I’m a little too young to have caught them in their original run and they didn’t seem like the kind of band to do a reunion tour, so glad I got to go!
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It’s excellent. It warrants all the hype IMO. The only negative I could say about it is that it really does need a good power supply or it has terrible noise. I have an older Japanese power supply that can power maybe 6-8 pedals and I run multiple Strymon pedals off it with no issue, but the Dream 65 sounds like crap with it (very noisy). With the Strymon power supply in the photo (which I thankfully already owned), there are no issues and it sounds great. So you’ll want either a good power supply or an AC adapter.
Awesome! I’m gonna go listen to those Devo albums! I love that sound you described. I could see this pedal becoming part of my standard sound, which I would never have expected to say about a ring mod. I’m so impressed with the pedal designer. It’s the rare combination of great ideas and flawless execution.
Anybody have any other favorite Fairfield Circuitry pedals? There is some interesting sounding stuff in this video, but unfortunately they didn’t really learn the pedals before demoing, so not the best demo for truly getting to know the pedals.
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Sorry for all the posts, but I’ve been playing a lot of guitar the past few days. I’m just wondering if anyone else is a big fan of filter pedals?
I got into them kind of late, mostly wah and autowah sounds (MuTron, etc). But right now I’m absolutely loving the sounds I can get with a fixed low pass filter. It’s like a much more satisfying version of a cocked wah or filter knob for me. I’m finding with a low pass filter, I’m able to find all sorts of amazing bluesy and jazzy sounds that always eluded me. I have read that players like Grant Green used to crank the mids on the amp and cut everything else when recording his old Blue Note albums, and I’m guessing concept wise it’s a bit similar.
Cutting some of the unneeded high harmonic content, and using the resonance knob to accentuate certain frequencies does some wonderful stuff, both clean and distorted. People swear by EQ pedals for this kind of thing, but it never worked for me. I think I always thought too much about boosting frequency content and not enough about filtering it (probably a deeper life lesson in there somewhere). I suppose speakers work similarly to filters so it kind of makes sense that it would be pretty critical to guitar tone.
Anyway, it’s kind of hilarious to me to be using a low pass filter and ring mod pedal for bluesy and jazzy stuff, but it works! (Although in this case I’m using this particular ring mod pedal as a really nice sounding tremolo, so not as crazy as it sounds)
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Which filter pedal are you using for this? Or is it software?
Now I’m thinking I should try playing through my Moog Matriarch’s filter.
I don’t use pedals to do this but I do like doing this and playing about with the filters when I plug my pedal board and guitar into my Elektron gear
I’m using a Dr Scientist Dusk pedal. Sadly, I tried my Vermona Retroverb and it doesn’t work as well because the range is a bit too wide (which isn’t too surprising as it’s not great as an autowah either). I imagine the Dr Scientist is tweaked to work best for the range of the guitar so the Matriarch might not work as well. Worth experimenting though. I like the filter first in line before amp and drive pedals.
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