MichaelW
Well-known member
This pedal demo turned out a lot harder than I imagined it would be. Partly because of the content. Since I've been building a bunch of pedals that are in some way associated with David Gilmour I decided to showcase some of these pedal sounds. Trying to emulate David Gilmour is a bit like treading on sacred ground for me.
Also, partly because trying to get close to some of the sounds I'm hearing "printed to tape" is hard. I'm not completely happy with some of the tracks but it's as close as I can get with what I've got built. I'm very glad I don't do this for a living. Gives me a lot more respect for some of the better Youtube demo guys like Pete Thorn and Mike Hermans.
But mostly because I still suck at video editing and none of my mac's seem like they are powerful enough to handle editing multiple video streams. I gave up after a while, so ask for forgiveness in advance for the lack of "polish" of this video and a few "blank" panels. I need to take some video creation lessons from @jjjimi84!
This was a bit of an ambitious pedal demo for me. Ended up being 8 guitar tracks. I'm going to do something a little different with the TL;DR write up since it's too extensive to put into panels on the video itself. You can skip this next bit of monologue if you're not interested
Gear order of appearance:
Acoustic Guitars: I used to do a lot more recording of acoustics and was pretty anal about how they sounded. But it's been well over a decade since I've recorded any acoustics and I sold my mic's. So I really don't have a good way to record acoustics naturally although I've been told that even an SM57 can sound pretty decent with the mic pre's on the Apollo. I may try that at some point. I used my John Allison OM which is the only acoustic guitar I have with a pickup system in it. It's a dual source system with an under saddle piezo and a small condenser mic. I plugged it direct into my Space Heater which is being used as a clean tube preamp, then into the Apollo. I used the Century Tube Preamp plugin for some compression and EQ in the DAW. I was surprised that it actually sounded halfway decent recording direct but it still sounds a bit "plasticky" to me with the Piezo pickup. I recorded 2 tracks panned right and left. Also, I was not able to completely strip out the original acoustic tracks on the backing track so you're hearing my acoustics on top of Gilmour's J45. (His sounds a lot better.....)
PRS S2 Starla: For this track I used a bit of compression with my General Tso's going into my GOTA LPB-1 then running into my Space Heater again but with the gain turned up to just breaking up slightly.
All electric guitar tracks were using my General Tso Compressor, Space Heater set clean as a tube tone conditioner, Tourbus Delay and Gravitation Reverb with various settings. This track had a bit of extra reverb.
M-Line Guitars Special S: This is my oldest guitar build, a Warmoth 7/8 size Strat with GFS Mean 90 pickups. (The current pickup configuration is fairly recent). This guitar had been sitting in parts for over 15 years in my closet before I decided to pull it out and rebuild it. Man I still love it! Kinda beat up and old enough to be "vintage". I originally built it in the late 80s. I used this for the first solo and had a real hard time getting a sound I liked. I probably should have done a bit more research on what gear Gilmour used but I'm pretty sure I'm hearing an Electric Mistress on the album but there's a weird gated quality to it that I can't quite identify. I spent a few days chasing a reasonable facsimile and wound up using my Tater Tot running into my Phase II and the modulation on the Tourbus turned up a bit.
Apologize for the darkness of the image, a thunderstorm rolled in as I recording this. I was glad to get through it without losing power!
M-Line Guitars 90Caster: Two tracks panned left and right for the dual guitar solo. After trying a bunch of different guitars it just sounded right with the bridge P90 on my 90Caster Tele so I went with it. These tracks were identical settings, running into the dirty side of my Arche Boost then into the Grover Drive.
Gretsch Jet Junior: This guitar didn't make it into the video because......basically my laptop puked when I tried to add one more video stream. But I used it for the "call/answer" part during the dual guitar solo. Using the bridge Filtertron pickup running into the Dirty side of my Arche then into my Cattle Driver. Lots of reverb. Somehow I thought I'd be using the Cattle Driver a lot more for this demo but this is the only track it wound up on.
Strat: My trusty parts caster for the final solo. This is an old alder Classic Vibe body, roasted maple Fender neck with Pau Ferro board, Lollar Dirty Blonde pickup set. I love this guitar, it's nothing fancy but I sold my Suhr Classic Strat because I just like this one so much better. This track was the first time I've ever used a fuzz in the context of a song. I used my Gnat Fuzz (thank you for the inspiration to build it @szukalski!) It was run into the General Tso into my Clandestine Preamp into the Gnat into the Spaceheater. Definitely catching the Gilmour fuzz vibe on this track.
For the final verse part I used this same setup with my Strat but moved to the neck pickup and had the volume knob of my guitar down to about 3, the Gnat cleaned up considerably well.
After recording this whole thing, it occurred to me that Pink Floyd are notorious content blockers on Youtube. So I apologize in advance if the video gets removed.
I have a couple of backup plans but gonna try Youtube first.
Backup plan B
Backup Plan C
mega.nz
Also, partly because trying to get close to some of the sounds I'm hearing "printed to tape" is hard. I'm not completely happy with some of the tracks but it's as close as I can get with what I've got built. I'm very glad I don't do this for a living. Gives me a lot more respect for some of the better Youtube demo guys like Pete Thorn and Mike Hermans.
But mostly because I still suck at video editing and none of my mac's seem like they are powerful enough to handle editing multiple video streams. I gave up after a while, so ask for forgiveness in advance for the lack of "polish" of this video and a few "blank" panels. I need to take some video creation lessons from @jjjimi84!
This was a bit of an ambitious pedal demo for me. Ended up being 8 guitar tracks. I'm going to do something a little different with the TL;DR write up since it's too extensive to put into panels on the video itself. You can skip this next bit of monologue if you're not interested
Gear order of appearance:
Acoustic Guitars: I used to do a lot more recording of acoustics and was pretty anal about how they sounded. But it's been well over a decade since I've recorded any acoustics and I sold my mic's. So I really don't have a good way to record acoustics naturally although I've been told that even an SM57 can sound pretty decent with the mic pre's on the Apollo. I may try that at some point. I used my John Allison OM which is the only acoustic guitar I have with a pickup system in it. It's a dual source system with an under saddle piezo and a small condenser mic. I plugged it direct into my Space Heater which is being used as a clean tube preamp, then into the Apollo. I used the Century Tube Preamp plugin for some compression and EQ in the DAW. I was surprised that it actually sounded halfway decent recording direct but it still sounds a bit "plasticky" to me with the Piezo pickup. I recorded 2 tracks panned right and left. Also, I was not able to completely strip out the original acoustic tracks on the backing track so you're hearing my acoustics on top of Gilmour's J45. (His sounds a lot better.....
)PRS S2 Starla: For this track I used a bit of compression with my General Tso's going into my GOTA LPB-1 then running into my Space Heater again but with the gain turned up to just breaking up slightly.
All electric guitar tracks were using my General Tso Compressor, Space Heater set clean as a tube tone conditioner, Tourbus Delay and Gravitation Reverb with various settings. This track had a bit of extra reverb.
M-Line Guitars Special S: This is my oldest guitar build, a Warmoth 7/8 size Strat with GFS Mean 90 pickups. (The current pickup configuration is fairly recent). This guitar had been sitting in parts for over 15 years in my closet before I decided to pull it out and rebuild it. Man I still love it! Kinda beat up and old enough to be "vintage". I originally built it in the late 80s. I used this for the first solo and had a real hard time getting a sound I liked. I probably should have done a bit more research on what gear Gilmour used but I'm pretty sure I'm hearing an Electric Mistress on the album but there's a weird gated quality to it that I can't quite identify. I spent a few days chasing a reasonable facsimile and wound up using my Tater Tot running into my Phase II and the modulation on the Tourbus turned up a bit.
Apologize for the darkness of the image, a thunderstorm rolled in as I recording this. I was glad to get through it without losing power!
M-Line Guitars 90Caster: Two tracks panned left and right for the dual guitar solo. After trying a bunch of different guitars it just sounded right with the bridge P90 on my 90Caster Tele so I went with it. These tracks were identical settings, running into the dirty side of my Arche Boost then into the Grover Drive.
Gretsch Jet Junior: This guitar didn't make it into the video because......basically my laptop puked when I tried to add one more video stream. But I used it for the "call/answer" part during the dual guitar solo. Using the bridge Filtertron pickup running into the Dirty side of my Arche then into my Cattle Driver. Lots of reverb. Somehow I thought I'd be using the Cattle Driver a lot more for this demo but this is the only track it wound up on.
Strat: My trusty parts caster for the final solo. This is an old alder Classic Vibe body, roasted maple Fender neck with Pau Ferro board, Lollar Dirty Blonde pickup set. I love this guitar, it's nothing fancy but I sold my Suhr Classic Strat because I just like this one so much better. This track was the first time I've ever used a fuzz in the context of a song. I used my Gnat Fuzz (thank you for the inspiration to build it @szukalski!) It was run into the General Tso into my Clandestine Preamp into the Gnat into the Spaceheater. Definitely catching the Gilmour fuzz vibe on this track.
For the final verse part I used this same setup with my Strat but moved to the neck pickup and had the volume knob of my guitar down to about 3, the Gnat cleaned up considerably well.
After recording this whole thing, it occurred to me that Pink Floyd are notorious content blockers on Youtube. So I apologize in advance if the video gets removed.
I have a couple of backup plans but gonna try Youtube first.
Backup plan B
Backup Plan C
File on MEGA
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