YouTuber Waylon McPherson's EQ Ear

genXslacker

genXslacker

Well-known member
So this guy comes up with some cool but simple DIY stuff on YouTube. Some of it is pretty cool, and playing with the circuits is an agreeable way to pass the time...

But every time I build one of his circuits I find it to be dark to the point of ridiculousness. It's like I've rolled down all the tone knobs, thrown a few moving blankets over my amp, and stood 30 feet behind it.

Is this just me losing high-frequency hearing in my old age, or has anyone else noticed this about his circuits?
 
Last edited:
I haven't replicated any of the circuits, I've seen some videos, but maybe it's down to what amps you use/like and how you dial them in? That would be my first guess.

As a related side note, stumbled into this video randomly
, and man that's a lot of words just to avoid saying "It's essentially an EQ pedal with specific settings". Why do you need to brand it "Spectral Arc Exciter™" and say it "replicates the frequency arc of a cranked tube amp". Someone even wonders in the comments if it would be possible to replicate in a modeller - just pop it in a frequency analyzer and show what it does!

It's not as dishonest as a lot of clickbait content seems to be, but it definitely has that social media angle that I hate about so much content these days. Everything has to be special to get clicks, and so you often play things up or misrepresent (or just flat out lie) about things as a result. Absolutely not the worst example I've seen, but still kinda annoying.
 
He just wants to be a bass player, but he's in denial.




I do enjoy watching his vids. I especially liked the recent one where he takes an SMD mic-preamp PCB with built in compressionandnoisegate and shows you how to fab that into a pedal. Very cool.

I've got a few PCBs like that, ones I need to convert to pedals, such as the Voice-Changer...

Voice+Changer-+Circuit+Diagram croppy.png


IIRC he charges for his take on the freely available DIY stuff (ex buffer-buster/pickup-simulator; or the capacitor-decade box),
about the price of a coffee? 🤷‍♂️ Fair dinkum, he's done some of the homework for you, if you purchase his schematics.

Were I to enjoy a macchiato or caffè-mocha with him, I'd tell him:
"It's okay, you go ahead, become a bass player, you know you want to, c'mon dip your toes in, and besides... the dark-side is warmer."
 
Feral Feline said:
IIRC he charges for his take on the freely available DIY stuff (ex buffer-buster/pickup-simulator; or the capacitor-decade box),
about the price of a coffee? 🤷‍♂️ Fair dinkum, he's done some of the homework for you, if you purchase his schematics.
Click to expand...
Tbh the system where you can buy the schematic or get on his Patreon, or you can just watch the video and draw it up yourself, is pretty reasonable? I dunno, feels fine to me.
 
Yeah, @Fama, absolutely!

Like I said — "Fair Dinkum" — he's spent some time developing things and if/when he charges anything at all offers that knowledge at a very reasonable price — cheaper than a Starbuck's latte.

The mic-pre vid I mentioned, for example, is absolutely free info, a gift to the DIY community and looks like a fun project.
Ahh, found it... link was from a post by Temol:

temol

Post in thread 'Circuits on AliExpress that are worth it'

  • Like
  • This ROCKS!
 
Fama said:
maybe it's down to what amps you use/like and how you dial them in?
Click to expand...
I'm almost always plugging in to a vintage Fender, usually a SF Champ if I'm experimenting with pedals/circuits.

Fama said:
man that's a lot of words just to avoid saying . . . .
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm with you. Sadly, I think we're at a point where it's difficult to build an audience if you don't use obnoxious clickbait methods, because your competition is happy to stoop that low.

Ironically, it winds up driving people like us away eventually. I've blocked many channels that consistently fail to deliver on the video title or thumbnail or who consistently use the trendiest obnoxious verbiage. My blood pressure goes up a little every time I see a video title with "crashing out," "panicking," or "exposed".
 
Feral Feline said:
He just wants to be a bass player, but he's in denial.




I do enjoy watching his vids. I especially liked the recent one where he takes an SMD mic-preamp PCB with built in compressionandnoisegate and shows you how to fab that into a pedal. Very cool.

I've got a few PCBs like that, ones I need to convert to pedals, such as the Voice-Changer...

View attachment 116883


IIRC he charges for his take on the freely available DIY stuff (ex buffer-buster/pickup-simulator; or the capacitor-decade box),
about the price of a coffee? 🤷‍♂️ Fair dinkum, he's done some of the homework for you, if you purchase his schematics.

Were I to enjoy a macchiato or caffè-mocha with him, I'd tell him:
"It's okay, you go ahead, become a bass player, you know you want to, c'mon dip your toes in, and besides... the dark-side is warmer."
Click to expand...

Ha! I'm old enough that I don't deny bass-envy anymore. I just don't think I have the biological tools for it. I've always had to rely heavily on the drummer and bass player to keep me in the groove.

Waylon has gotten a few of my shekels on a few occasions, and I've not regretted it. As you said, "fair dinkum". Plus, I like to encourage him to put out more of his videos.

Some of them actually shed some new light on things for me. Here, I'm thinking of the ones he did recently that illustrate that it's the magnetized strings that generate the signal in pickup coils, as opposed to the strings moving through the magnetic fields of the pole pieces.
 
genXslacker said:
Yeah, I'm with you. Sadly, I think we're at a point where it's difficult to build an audience if you don't use obnoxious clickbait methods, because your competition is happy to stoop that low.
Click to expand...
Frankly I would much rather watch non-clickbaity videos with low production values than clickbaity videos that are "playing the Youtube game" even if they had high production values. "Playing the game" feels like you need to be somewhat dishonest, and honesty is something that is in short supply these days and thus feels very valuable to me.

Of course that is bad news for the ecosystem and professional Youtubers, but it feels like I'm definitely in a minority with that so it probably doesn't have much impact.
 
Fama said:
Frankly I would much rather watch non-clickbaity videos with low production values than clickbaity videos . . . .
Click to expand...

We're in accord here 100%. The people who care about these kinds of things have been using the buzzword "authenticity" lately, and I think it's an apt descriptor of what a lot of us are after.

By extension, I don't want to hear pitch-corrected vocals or quantized percussion. I don't want to see pictures of people who have filtered the life out of their faces, and I positively hate AI-narrated videos. I'd much rather hear some "ums" and "ahs" than the robo-voices that all sound alike and misplace emphases and inflections throughout a video.
 
genXslacker said:
We're in accord here 100%. The people who care about these kinds of things have been using the buzzword "authenticity" lately, and I think it's an apt descriptor of what a lot of us are after.

By extension, I don't want to hear pitch-corrected vocals or quantized percussion. I don't want to see pictures of people who have filtered the life out of their faces, and I positively hate AI-narrated videos. I'd much rather hear some "ums" and "ahs" than the robo-voices that all sound alike and misplace emphases and inflections throughout a video.
Click to expand...
I just want to watch guitar videos.
 
jimilee said:
I just want to watch guitar videos.
Click to expand...
You're in luck. There are plenty of AI-generated videos of people with absurdly long pinkies and ring fingers playing guitars that instantly transform from five-strings to six-strings and have fret markers that mysteriously move around on the fretboard while they're playing.
 
genXslacker said:
You're in luck. There are plenty of AI-generated videos of people with absurdly long pinkies and ring fingers playing guitars that instantly transform from five-strings to six-strings and have fret markers that mysteriously move around on the fretboard while they're playing.
Click to expand...
Cool! Got any links?
 
I've built some of his stuff. But as @Feral Feline says, the whole Patreon thing turns me off.
I've had to take screen shots of his video's to see some of the PTP stuff (as opposed to pay him for a schematic hah!)
But I have to admit, building his Anti-Buffer has been a game changer for me to be able to start using my fuzzes.

img_7424-jpg.90331
 
genXslacker said:
So this guy comes up with some cool but simple DIY stuff on YouTube. Some of it is pretty cool, and playing with the circuits is an agreeable way to pass the time...

But every time I build one of his circuits I find it to be dark to the point of ridiculousness. It's like I've rolled down all the tone knobs, thrown a few moving blankets over my amp, and stood 30 feet behind it.

Is this just me losing high-frequency hearing in my old age, or has anyone else noticed this about his circuits?
Click to expand...
Do yours sound different than what they sound like in the video?
 
Aentons said:
Do yours sound different than what they sound like in the video?
Click to expand...
Yes, but there are so many factors involved there that it doesn't mean much to me. For one thing, lately I'm all single coils, all the time, while he seems like he's a humbucker devotee. Also, I have no idea what he's doing in post.

Even on the videos, though, when he's selecting caps for pickups or something, I feel like he hates treble.

I don't want to bag on him too much. He's a solid player and he comes up with some cool things to post about. My main gripe is the EQ he seems to like.
 
MichaelW said:
I've built some of his stuff. But as @Feral Feline says, the whole Patreon thing turns me off.
I've had to take screen shots of his video's to see some of the PTP stuff (as opposed to pay him for a schematic hah!)
But I have to admit, building his Anti-Buffer has been a game changer for me to be able to start using my fuzzes.

img_7424-jpg.90331
Click to expand...

That's a cool gutshot. Is that your layout or his? I may be poaching that.
 
genXslacker said:
That's a cool gutshot. Is that your layout or his? I may be poaching that.
Click to expand...
His layout with a couple of my things, like the status led. Which is not necessary for it to work but it lets me know when I have it turned on which is nice. I leave it with the volume dimed and control the fuzz from my guitar volume. But the tone knob is very useful to dial out harsh freqs on some fuzzes. Let look around I might have some docs or build notes I can send you.

I also built his LM386 amp board fuzz.
IMG_7413.JPG
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top